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Pitch couldn't be blamed. He really couldn't. He would challenge anyone, anyone, to do differently in his place. Even the most magnanimous spirits, Pitch was sure, wouldn't be able to hold up against the sheer nightmare that was dozens of honest to the stars ice cube Jacks.
There was genuinely no way Pitch thinks he could have ever come up with something like this. It was enough to make him doubt his own place as the master of fear because, evidently, there were nightmares out there beyond even Pitch's wildest imaginings.
From the moment the larger bucket-shaped Jack, the one Pitch considered the main Jack, turned to look at him with all his little minis behind him, and they all had that wicked gleam in their eye, Pitch's life had quickly spiralled and he didn't even have a clue where it was spiralling to.
He feels, on some level, this is some ironic punishment. Some spirit with a bone-deep hatred must've gotten wind of Pitch's newly developed, inclination, toward Jack. When Pitch wished he could be around the other a little (lot) more, this was distinctly not what he was looking for.
For weeks on end, he'd been dealing with the 144 mini cube-shaped Jacks running and flying around his lair while he tried, and failed, to find a viable solution. He simply could not achieve the type of heat it took to remelt Jack, and Jack's tendency to piss off every heat based spirit within a three mile vicinity of him meant none were willing to help.
So, given that amount of time, and the levels of nightmarish his life had become, Pitch could not be blamed for his crimes.
The first of the two crimes was small enough to be forgiven. It involved setting hundreds of traps around his lair to catch all the mini Jacks. At first it went well and he got a solid 86 of them before the others started realizing their numbers had drastically dropped. After that, they were more cautious.
That, was just unfair. Pitch loved Jack's caution, because he always carried that air of excitement as well, because any unknown was subject to fear, but to Jack, also potential for fun. There were 58 small Jack's giving off that delicious fear all around his lair.
That was not including the main Jack. He'd taken to spending half his time taking out groups of his minis to 'wreak unspeakable havok like the world has never seen Pitch you have to come see it.'
Naturally, Pitch declined every time and rather spent his time while Jack was out, possibly causing the apocalypse, working on his traps. When Jack wasn't doing potential war crimes, he spent his time with Pitch. Which made catching the mini Jacks rather difficult, but at the same time, Pitch was still regularly forgetting how to breathe around Jack, so he couldn't complain that much.
The whole combination almost, almost made Pitch rethink his planned crimes, but then one of the mini Jacks would crawl under the collar of Pitch's robe to freeze his back in that awful way icecubes could, and Pitch would consider that maybe it was best just to burn down the world and be done with it.
After the first 86, it took 12 more being caught for them to figure out what exactly they needed to look out for. After that, things became much harder, especially with bucket Jack suddenly Very Curious about what Pitch was doing in his free time.
In his defence, the 98 he'd caught so far were not miserable. He had confiscated their toothpicks but they were contained in a huge ball pit made of marbles. Naturally, it being Jack multiplied by 98, they managed to find a thousand and one new ways to play and fuck around which meant the ball pit kept them perfectly entertained.
His thread of guilt only came when he thought about where they were going to go after the ball pit. Then one of the uncaptured ones would dive under his foot as he was walking and make him slip, only to then proceed loudly complaining and play victim because Pitch 'rudely stepped on him, honestly Pitch, watch where you're going; I'm small and fragile.' Least to say, they deserved what was coming.
After that, 46 more needed to be caught. A total of seven more would be caught by traps, most of which were due to mini Jacks recognizing a trap and proceeding to approach it anyway. 13 were caught by Pitch himself, him being able to grab them out of the air when they came down to try to mess with them. He was getting good at recognizing their games.
Five more offered themselves up willingly, their curiosity about what was going on stronger than their self preservation skills. Three were handed in by bucket Jack after they kept pranking him. Pitch obviously took the chance to cackle about Jack getting what he deserved. Two found the ball pit and, in the process of trying to save the others, got distracted by the marble games. Pitch pretty easily spotted the two by the fact that they were floating above the marbles and he also confiscated their toothpicks.
6 were nabbed by nightmares. One was brought in by an outside spirit who somehow knew Pitch was connected to the Jack Phenomenon.
8 were injured in one form or another and so Pitch had to fix them up. He'd have felt more sorry for them if it wasn't for the fact that they all got injured thanks to their own shenanigans. Pitch almost straight up refused to help the one that got injured because it thought diving into Pitch's mouth would be 'funny' and it wanted to 'see what it was like.' Least to say, the tooth marks in the sentient cube were entirely the sentient cube's fault.
Unfortunately, when Pitch announced he wasn't helping the bitten one, it floated up to gently land on his shoulder with a pitiful 'please' and Pitch had no chance of winning that one.
Then everything came down to the last uncaptured mini Jack. Each mini Jack seemed to have a different mixture of Jack's personality. Some had all of Jack's joy, and others were vicious little beings.
The last one, the last one was clever. The last one was a bane apon Pitch's existence. Pitch had not been able to go a day without some incident from the last one. It was so distinct and made itself so well known that Pitch had taken to calling him the tiny devil. Bucket Jack thought that was hilarious and ridiculous but Pitch stood by his words.
The tiny devil Jack was the mastermind behind the time many of the cubes teamed up to attach themselves to Pitch. Pitch only had two hands so as soon as he got one off and let go to get another, the removed one just attached right back. Some even tried to bite him, but luckily, their flat faces prevented that from getting very far. They clung to Pitch for three days. Every time one got bored, the little devil would just call in another.
The little devil was also the cause of multiple stampedes from the nightmares. Pitch didn't even know how but his lair would shake with vibration and the next thing he knew, the place would be swarming with trampling nightmares. The tiny devil would either be chasing them, or gleefully laughing while riding one.
The little devil also kept making the insides of Pitch's shoes wet by very carefully planting chunks of ice that would naturally melt, and be a personal hell. He was the source behind Pitch's chair constantly sliding out of the room he used as an office/planning space. He was the source behind brightly colored stolen eggs being planted in random places around Pitch's lair. And he was the source behind the blizzard that raged through Pitch's lair with all the might of the minis combined.
The little devil was a good half of the reason Pitch was so willing to commit heinous acts.
In the end, he managed to capture the little devil by playing to its sense of pride and loneliness, calling it a coward for running, and pointing out that it was the last one. It ceded its attack after one last time of blowing ice into Pitch's ear and finally, finally Pitch had all 144.
Which led to Pitch's second crime, which was the worst of the two.
He was so petty and spiteful after weeks of dealing with them that, instead of getting a large grinder to do it quicker, Pitch stole strong, normal sized blenders, specifically made for being able to blend ice. If he couldn't melt them, he was going to turn them into a mush incapable of tormenting him.
Once he was ready to go, he took the first of the blenders into the room with the giant marble pit. Powering it with magic bartered from another spirit, he turned it on and immediately got the attention of the cube Jacks. He'd trapped the tiny devil in its own little cage, giving it a single marble to play with, so obviously, Pitch started with that one.
He took it out, a little bothered by the complete lack of fear in the face of curiosity, and put it into the blender. Even setting the top onto the blender wasn't enough to make it even a little scared and Pitch saw a little bit of red in that moment, and with vicious glee, turned on the blender. The loud awful sound of a blender grinding up something difficult and hard filled the room, rapidly going from a clunking sound to a gentle whirr as the blender did its job.
Right. That went smoother than expected. He poured the thick slush out into the original bucket he'd tried to put all of Jack in. It came out in the consistency of ice cream, strangely enough, which meant it was a little difficult and required a utensil to get it all out. For a moment, he stared down at it and questioned his sanity and morality. Offkilter and shaken, wondering if he'd taken things too far, if he'd become the monster so many believed him to be.
Then he remembered the time one of them came up to him and looked him in the eye before proceeding to use wind and throw around all of Pitch's papers and plans, it's last action being to slowly push off the one item that hadn't fallen off Pitch's desk like a cat while still staring him directly in the eye. Suddenly all his questioning went away.
After the first, things became methodical, just taking one or two cubes and putting them in, grinding it all to a thick slush, and pouring/scooping it in the bucket. Cube after cube after cube.
Then he got to around thirty when he heard it. As one began to get ground, it was laughing before it was too ground to have functioning vocal cords. When he heard that Pitch had stumbled back, half of him genuinely considering that he may have trapped himself into one of his own nightmares. He watched in horror as the cube was relegated to the slush before he scrambled forward to turn the blender off.
What, the fuck. Pitch wasn't typically one for cursing, but what, the actual, fuck. He had to take a break after that, to try to find some shred of security in the underland his life had become. He ended up going to bucket Jack. Bucket Jack had been his own hassle entirely, but the larger Jack was more, well, Jack. Unlike the minis, he wasn't dominated by one major personality trait, he was more the brilliant enchantingly complex ice spirit that had once literally blown Pitch away.
He still wasn't quite Jack, but at least he had more goals in his life than just making Pitch go insane. He found bucket Jack quietly carving some ice, resting after a day out in the world. He tired much quicker than complete Jack did, and the mere fact that he chose to continue to come to Pitch's lair to rest was one of the things that made it hard for Pitch to regret what he'd not-so-accidentally done.
Looking at Bucket Jack though, Pitch broke. He ended up telling him everything. The traps and the marble pit and finally, the blender. By the time he got to explaining that the cube had laughed he was nearly in hysterics.
Bucket Jack had just made a soft huff of amusement and gave Pitch a weird look. "Pitch."
Pitch had looked down to him, unsure when he'd looked away, and didn't know what he hoped for. Absolvement, comfort, an explanation perhaps.
"I don't feel pain."
Pitch slowly loosened after that, putting it together and suddenly things made a lot more sense. "At all?"
Bucket Jack shrugged. "Not unless my blood is pumping. I don't feel much of anything beyond just-, just sensation."
"Oh."
Bucket Jack let the quiet go for a moment before he spoke again. "Alright, uh, it is concerning that you tried to blend me up not knowing that, but also, come on Pitch, it's me. If the ice cubes really were against what you were doing, you'd never have caught more than five at a time. They would have at least gone to me for help. Being ground up is not exactly the weirdest thing that's happened to me lately."
"Oh."
"Yeah, so, if you want to, keep doing what you're doing, but also for future reference, don't try to shred people who feel pain."
"Oh." Pitch responded helpfully before nodding and leaving, his entire world view in turmoil. Bucket Jack had been right, Pitch's first clue should have been how easy it had been to capture them all. Sure, it had felt like a herculean task, but in hindsight, it could have been much harder.
This revelation did nothing to sooth the absolute rage he felt regarding the cubes though, so with his sanity more intact, he went right back to grinding the cubes into Jack flavored icecream. It took hours of it and four blenders as each broke from overuse, but eventually he had a second bucket worth of Jack material, once again together instead of in 144 pieces. As he stared at what he had done, and considered the simularities of the white and blue slush to snow, he got an idea.
It was weird and probably shouldn't be done as it was probably a abomination against existence, but everything lately was that, so, with the bucket in hand, he went back to bucket Jack.
He hid before he could be spotted and then reached into the bucket to scoop out some of the Jack icecream and pack it into a snowball. After a quick moment of gauging, he threw it, the ball landing against bucket Jack with a satisfying thud and tipping him over.
There was a sharp sound of surprise and protest before Jack started laughing. He pushed himself back up, lifting himself by his arms to turn around and see Pitch. Pitch just grinned wickedly at him before forming another ball of Jack snow.
Jack looked down at what was in Pitch's hands, a moment of confusion in him before it turned to a hesitant horror. "What is that?"
Pitch grin grew wider. "Guess."
Jack's face fell with the realization. "You didn't-, you didn't just throw my-, my ground up corpse at me, right?"
Pitch just raised an elegant brow.
Jack remained still in stunned silence, looking back and forth between the packed ball in Pitch's hand and his face. Pitch let him stew in it for a while, let the macabre horror of the situation marinate in the air. Once he'd decided it'd truly stained its way into Jack's soul, he threw the Jack snowball.
It hit Jack directly in the face knocking him over again. Then, as Oitch should have expected, Jack started laughing. It started out quiet as he rolled himself onto his side and got progressively louder until he couldn't seem to breath. "You-! You're such a-, a creep! I can't believe you. This is great, I lo-"
Pitch threw another one at him.
Jack spluttered and picked himself back up. "Okay, but this is unfair, you have all the-"
He threw another one.
"Pitch!" Jack exclaimed from where he'd fallen, again. "At least give me a chance!"
Rather than do that, Pitch stood with the bucket and walked over to Jack. Once he was standing over the other, he began reaching into the bucket and scooping out handfuls to drop unceremoniously onto Jack.
Jack squacked and tried to roll away but due to the slight cone-like quality to the bucket shape, he just ended up rolling around toward Pitch again.
Pitch conjured up some nightmare sand into the shape of an ice cream scoop for the added morbidity of it and crouched down to more carefully apply the scoops to Jack.
"Stop! You weirdo! Quit it!" Jack tried to wave him off but as he was the negative space of a bucket with arms, it wasn't very effective.
Pitch did stop though, taking a scoop and raising it, making a show of staring at it contemplatively. "I wonder what you taste like."
There was a beat of silence from Jack before he gave a strained "You know, of all the times I've imagined you saying that, this- this was never the idea."
Pitch naturally opened his mouth to reply before Jack's words fully registered, at which point Pitch choked on air. "What?" he wheezed.
Jack blinked innocently up at him. "What?"
Pitch's mind was mostly made up of white static and so rather than try to come up with an eloquent reply that would probably sound something like 'eh?' he lifted the bucket, turned it upside down, and let all the Jack snow tumble down in a pile onto Jack.
"This," Jack muttered, muffled by the powered version of himself, "this is officially the weirdest moment of my entire life."
Pitch nodded, "Yes, and entirely brought on by yourself."
Jack scoffed and raised his arms to brush snow off his face enough that he could talk. "Right, because you had nothing to do with this."
Pitch shook his head, standing up. "Jack, I don't know what you're implying. I'm perfectly innocent."