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It wasn't his fault. Entirely. Kinda.
He couldn't have known how badly a summer spirit would take a prank. Yes, they were notorious for their tempers, and yes he had been weedling at them for weeks now, and sure maybe freezing their entire home took it a bit far, but frankly, he had no idea that would cause the home to completely collapse. It wasn't his fault it was structurally unsound.
Regardless of who's fault it was though, the end result was the same. Jack had learned something new about himself. Apparently, if faced with enough heat, instead of burning, Jack melted.
So, at no fault of his own, Jack laid apon a toasted expanse of rock, as a puddle.
He was held barely together by magic. He couldn't really move much, he could like, shift liquid more to one side and sorta slowly pour himself in a direction, but seeing mostly involved specks of random colors as the melted parts of his eyes grew farther apart the more he moved. So he had no idea which direction to pour himself in.
So there he remained, liquid and warm and bored out of his mind, for three days. Three days of passing sunlight and moonlight and teasing wind creating ripples along him. A hare at some point tried to drink him and while that was uncomfortable, he was honestly kind of offended by the way the hare spat him back out. He wasn't that bad surely.
Jack was in the process of pouring himself in A Direction™ and trying to get around a rock when he heard a voice, finally.
"Jack. Please tell me that isn't you." The voice said, deadpan and already disappointed, which Jack would resent more if it wasn't 100% justified.
In response, Jack stopped moving and just kinda, wiggled, in the hopes an acknowledgement would get across.
A weary sigh came, "I should leave you here."
The inability to quip back was by far the most painful thing Jack had experienced in the last three days.
A faint shuffling sound was all Jack got before things returned to a silent world. Jack waited for as long as his restlessness would allow him to, and then began pouring himself in what he was pretty sure was the same direction as before.
He knew he was finally making progress when he could feel sporadic blades of dry grass piercing through him, but before he could come up with any further of a plan, the voice returned.
"Jack." there was pure exasperation in the tone, "How did you even manage to get over here so quickly?" A weary sigh came, "An idiot, truly." The voice sort of muttered and then Jack felt a truly strange sensation and it took him quite a bit to figure out what it was, but he realized he was being scooped into a container like slime, the mass of him remained together, but more and more was pushed into some kind of container.
In all honesty, what the fuck was a person supposed to do while being scooped into a container. Jack's best guess was to generally try to pour himself in the direction the scooping was going.
"Ah." The voice said, deadpan, "Disturbing." It remarked. Jack resented that as he was trying to help.
After quite a bit of effort, at least on Jack's end, he ended up mostly in the container, but it didn't seem quite wide enough to fit all of him.
Whoever was trying to either save or kidnap him, huffed and set the container up which caused the extremely disorienting sensation of being split in two as some of him remained on the ground.
His container remained still in silence before he heard an almost whispered, "What have I done?" Then Jack was being carried. Well, part of Jack; he couldn't really feel the rest of himself though so he counted it good as dead. Everything darkened in a flash before blessed cold finally struck him.
His savior/kidnapper set him down with the promise to be right back and as Jack waited he could feel himself refreezing. Which was an odd feeling, compounded by the fact that he was freezing in the shape of his container. By the time the person returned, Jack was once again a solid and was in the process of trying to tip himself over.
His efforts were halted, the container stilled, and he made a generally angry noise with what vocal cords he could.
"Right. I can safely say, in all my life, this is the strangest thing I've ever done." The voice admitted.
Jack's container got picked up and then held upside down and he slowly slid out, landing on the flat top of his head, but hey, at least he could breathe finally. As he stayed there he realized he'd refrozen with his body parts in generally the same place they were supposed to be so he could actually see and his arms popped out from his sides leaving little arm shaped dents.
"I regret this." The voice said, sounding extremely disturbed.
"Okay, you need to come around to the front of me because I can't see you." Jack responded, relieved he finally could.
Rather than seeing someone move in front of him, he felt himself lifted up and righted, coming face to face with Pitch. The dark of him in the empty expanse of white and glowing moonlight made Jack's suspicions lean more toward kidnapper than savior if not for the utter annoyance on his face.
Of all the people in the world. "Uh, hey Pitch. How've you been?"
Pitch looked about as done with Jack as a person could possibly be. "In a fever dream." Was his dry response.
"Yeah," Jack responded like a casual conversation, trying to shrug as much as he could. "I know what that's like. I got melted into a puddle recently, if you can believe it."
Pitch looked up with a deep breath like he was praying for patience before he looked back at Jack, "How, exactly, did you get melted into a puddle?"
"I pissed off Firea."
"Of course you did." With that Pitch set Jack back down, surprisingly gently.
"So, where's the rest of me?"
Pitch turned Jack around to look over at the rest of him and Jack found other part of himself was poured into a dozen icecube trays.
"Okay, I'll be honest here, what the fuck Pitch."
"Figured, I might as well have fun with it. Saving you has been a hassle."
"Not totally sure this counts as saving, I think it's called an inhumane experiment. Or cruel and usual punishment, take your pick."
"You're the one who got yourself melted."
"It wasn't my fault." Jack hissed, still staring at himself in minor horror.
"I'm sure."
They both fell into silence as they watched human liquid freeze, or at least, Jack assumed that's what Pitch was doing. Before long though, Jack once again got bored and decided to see if he could move himself around. Bracing his arms against the ground, he found that, luckily, his arms were in fact long enough to reach past the bottom of him. Using that, he lifted himself up and immediately fell back.
"Jack!" Pitch exclaimed with exasperation.
"What am I supposed to do Pitch?" Jack nearly shouted back. "Just rely on you for every movement? Now help me up."
Jack, to his credit, did try to get up himself but it just led to him rolling to the side until Pitch came over to pick him back up.
"Okay, now keep ahold of me until I figure out how to balance."
"Jack, you're a frozen, counterintuitive, bucket. You should not be demanding things."
"Okay sure, now help me." With that, Jack tried once again to lift himself up and nearly toppled himself right back over. Luckily, Pitch listened and kept a hand on him to keep him balanced. It took quite a bit of time and Jack was confined to just walking around Pitch as Pitch sat and refused to crouch-walk around after Jack.
Eventually though, eventually he got it and was able to run around without help. He gave a whooping laugh as he did a lap around the icecube trays all by himself.
"What have I done?" Pitch sounded genuinely distressed.
They both turned to look at the ice cube trays when small noises began rising from them.
"Oh no."
Jack cackled.
"No."
Jack cackled louder and headed toward them.
"Please Jack, I beg of you, Don't."
Jack promptly did not listen and landed next to a peeping icecube tray. He picked it up, turned it upside down, and bent it, causing a dozen icecube Jacks to fall out. They each started clamoring, voices high, as legs and arms cracked out of where they'd been packed into place. As they all righted themselves, the general gist of what they were all asking was "What the fuck."
After that, Jack went around to each tray and popped more cube shaped Jacks out, each batch going through the same process until there were 144 cube shaped Jacks in a crowd chatting with eachother. An interesting thing Jack noted was in the back of each of them, were small wooden splinters and he realized he could kind of feel one behind himself.
Bucket Jack cleared his throat, gaining their attention. "Alright, as the biggest, I'm obviously in charge so, first thing, help each other get your staffs from your back and some of you stack up to get mine.
After some grumbling about who deserved to be in charge they all complied, experimenting and spreading ice and frost as they went. A few even started lifting into the air on small gusts of wind.
Some went behind him as asked and the sensation of something being popped out of his back was yet another new to add to the list of things he's felt in his life. The cube Jacks came around to hand it to him and he took it gratefully, happy to find he still had full access to his powers.
He looked over his army. "Oh we are going to wreak some havok."
He picked himself up to look back at Pitch. Pitch had a deep look of horror on his face, skin paler than Jack had ever seen it. A chorus of cackling came from behind Jack.
"What have I done?"