Two men, both in thick trench coats, were walking towards a large factory. Their shoes made quiet footprints in the late winter snow and their brass cufflinks shone a dull white despite the cloudy morning sky. One of the men paused and pointed at the main entrance of the factory. They saw at group of large burly men, thick as the famed Redwood trees in California, and the sabers and rifles they touted.

The other man, in confidence but perhaps in foolishness, walked to the guards with his arms wide open.

"Ostanovit narushitelya!" one of the guards shouted. "Eto ne obshchestvennoye mesto!"

"Prostite, my ishchem mistera North," the foolish man said as he presented a piece of paper with an excessive number of stamps and signatures upon it.

The guards inspected the paper, each one taking their time with it but then passing it on to the next one in confusion and surprise. When the less brash man finally caught up to the foolish man, he pulled him aside and whispered, "Are you insane? These barbarians do not care about your paperwork! How many Rubles do you have?"

"None," the other man replied nonchalantly.

"God have mercy on our-"

"Vy oba idite syuda!" a guard shouted at the two men. The more brash man took the lead whereas the more cautious man kept a hand on the pistol hidden in his coat pocket.

"Sleduyte za mnoy," the guard said as he handed back the paper and pushed open the large iron gate.

"How on Earth did that work?" the timid man whispered as they passed through the courtyard of the factory.

"Times are different my good friend," the brave man said as they approached the large wooden doors of the factory. "All hail the good rule of Alexander the Second, liberator of Russia, Emperor and Autocrat of All the Russias."

The door slowly opened and revealed massive steel smelters, towering high and mighty like great volcanoes erupting. These men were taking ordinary ingots, dull and bland, and transforming it into all mighty steel! And, in the process, were making fiery bright suns in the heart of these furnaces!

"Sushchestvuyet chelovek, kotorogo vy ishchete," the guard said as he pointed to an equally as tall and bulky man writing something down in a notebook the size of his palm.

"Spasibo," the brash man said as he tipped his hat in thanks.

The two men walked over to the large man and asked in unison, "Mister North?"

"Da?" The massive man turned to face them and wedged his notebook in a suspender strap.

"Mister M would like to summon you to his property in Austria," the brave man said as the timid man reached inside his coat and presented the towering man with a letter. "It is of the gravest matter that you, and your associates, meet him to discuss matters of security and estate immediately."

The giant man delicately opened the letter and read it, occasionally whispering the words in English. "I shall summon the others," he said through his thick white beard.

"No need Mister North, others have been dispatched in advance to accommodate Mister M's wishes."

"Then I shall leave immediately!"

"How will you be arriving Mister North?" the timid man asked as the massive man strode away. "Boat or train?"

He turned around and said, with a twinkle in his eyes, "Dirigible."

It was approaching the morning in London. The sky was still dark, the birds were not singing, and the rest of the people (apart from the sailors arriving from all parts of the globe) were still resting in their beds.

A short and stout man, dressed in a very light yellow buttoned shirt, carefully crushed some herbs and minerals together. He then took the composite, mixed it with a dark green solution, and placed it in an iron chamber resting inside the fireplace. He sighed and put his hands near the flames, warming it up from the chilly weather that has recently flown in.

The Wonderful Society of Apothecaries has been especially anxious to find out the work that Sanderson has been focusing upon for the past year or so. Their generous funding, provisional laboratory space, and procurement of rare and dangerous materials have been greatly appreciated by Sanderson. Without their assistance, his work would have been stalled indefinitely. After all, how could he honestly acquire Italian gunpowder and gypsum without spending a small fortune?

He was so close, his work would soon show light on transmutational properties! If only he could get one alchemical experiment to work.

Well correction, he has been extremely successful in preforming alchemy. He found a terrible wine from Turkish vineyards and, with alchemical techniques, made it indistinguishable from the finest wine from the Provence region in France! It tastes the same, looks the same, smells the same, everything is the same! The most esteemed statesmen nor the most experienced tavern owners could tell the difference!

But he could not, for the life of him, explain the laws of nature the govern the alchemical processes! He has studied the work of the chemists, the alchemists before, the apothecaries before that, and (even though it greatly pained him as an empiricist) metaphysical philosophers before that!

He sighed and hoped that this reaction would yield a result useful to him. He was on the hundredth hypothesis, and silently prayed to God, "If there is no law to be observed or understood, send me a sign! Send me something that shall forever distract me from my work and occupy my time with something equally as complicated and stressful!"

There was a swift knocking upon the door which suddenly shook Sanderson out of his plea. He walked over to the door and stopped before opening it. Although the peephole was far above him, he crafted a makeshift telescope so even he could see through it.

As he looked through, he noticed two men both wearing a crescent shaped badge that shone dully in the gaslight outside.

He swiftly opened the door and gestured for them to enter.

The two men both bowed slightly and handed him a letter with a golden seal embossed upon it. Sanderson looked at it with some suspicion and opened it.

As he read through it quickly, his eyes widened. He looked back at his fireplace, the iron box now red hot and a strange purple smoke wafting out of the holes he drilled in, and back at the fireplace. He sighed and grabbed a bucket of water near the fireplace and put out the burning logs in it. He looked to the heavens and thought that God has a strange way of presenting Himself to the mortals below.

The men directed Sanderson to a carriage and they departed to the Alps to address an urgent and pressing matter.

A single man was furiously fanning himself. Although the scenery of these Sumatran Islands were the stuff of legends, greens so vibrant that they can only exist in Elysian fields and blues so deep that only Odysseus could have sailed and Homer could have imagined, this place was also intolerably moist and hot. The noon time sun beat down upon him with a thousand whips and the moist air clung to his lungs and throat with such tenacity, one could have only imagined it was forming some disgusting phlegm within him.

And before he thought that the crew would never find their destination, he saw it in front of him. The castle of Punjam Hy Loo. A castle so beautiful that it must have been built out of the most precious gems, the most pure gold, and the most fantastic ivory.

The ship approached a dock made of stones and wood and the man took note of all of the other smaller boats flying in and out of the port. Each one was just as colorful as the jungle flora described in the numerous travelogues and botanical sources.

But as they cast anchor and dropped a plank to walk off the boat, twenty men, all clothed in a deep green and armed with polished steel scimitars ran up the plank and boarded the boat.

The crew pulled out their own swords and prepared for a battle but the man anticipated such a reaction and opened a scroll he hid in his pocket. He unwound the scroll to arms length and let the boarders look at the message.

It was written in a language he could not obviously understand or speak but thanks to numerous Orientalist scholars and linguists, he did not need to speak or read their language. A pity too, considering that English is the most profitable language and the most civilized language of all.

The men put away their swords and said something that he could not understand. But judging from their gesticulations, he assumed that they were taking him to the palace.

The walk to the palace was fairly short, after all the islands were not very large to begin with. The Royal family that owned these islands in Southeast Asia were very powerful and very wealthy. Fortunately, they were cunning and strong enough to establish themselves as traders and their islands as critical trading ports. Unfortunately, their recent son foolishly made an alliance with the Dutch, something that the Empire did not appreciate or agree with. So, in a show of force, the Empire thwarted the royal son and the youngest daughter, as the sole legitimate heiress to the throne, ascended to power.

She of course was a natural. She expanded trade, helped provide rare goods, and provided shelter to their navy. Her power has been challenged in the past, occasionally from the Chinese and other times from the Javanese, but so long as her alliance with the Empire stayed strong the Empire would support her as well.

The palace doors opened and revealed a beautiful courtyard within it. A pool of sapphire water suspended floating boats made of ivory. Birds were being taught to fly in certain manners and do certain tricks. Musicians were playing violins and dulcimers off to the side.

"This Queen is very civilized," the man thought to himself.

The group of men guided him to a woman sitting upon a throne of gold who was speaking to a group of hooded men in some tongue that he could not identify. She then waved them away and sighed.

"Your highness," the man bowed, "I have a message from a certain benefactor."

"I know," she said in perfect English. The man was surprised to hear no accent warping or meddling in her words. "I have been informed by numerous sources that Mister M wishes for an audience with me, the Queen of Punjam Hy Loo, Toothiana. She brushed a black lock of hair out of her face, light brown like cinnamon bark or almonds fallen from the trees. "I shall entertain him as he has entertained me, but first I must attend to some matters of foreign state. A trading company would like to establish a formal agreement with my port and I must brush up on my French."

"Your highness," the man urged on. "Mister M requires your presence immediately," he took out a letter and held it out to her. One of the green hooded men took the letter from him, opened it, dusted a powder over it, and sniffed it. After he was done inspecting it, he handed it to the Queen.

She looked at it, at first in boredom but then her expression shifted to confusion. "I still do not understand."

"Mister M, in all of his wisdom and understanding, would not summon the Guardians if it was not important."

"Even then-"

"He does not request your presence, he does not ask for your attendance, he is summoning you," he growled.

Suddenly a sword appeared at his neck, ready to behead him for implying that the Queen was a dog being called by its master.

"Enough," the sword suddenly disappeared and returned to the sheathe of one of the hooded green men. "You are correct and I shall be at Mister M's estate immediately."

"If we leave now, we will be at Sri Lanka in three days time."

She laughed heartily and stood up from her throne. "Good sir, have you forgotten who I am? I am Toothiana! Queen of Punjam Hy Loo! I shall be there tonight! I would be there earlier but, considering I have to bring you back, I need some additional preparations." Her green eyes shimmered and her robes, adorned with numerous golden pieces, jangled mysteriously.

Five men, all on horseback, looked on the glowing orange landscape. The desert heat whipped about them and their horses were growing tired. The afternoon sun passed its zenith but the heat still remained and emanated off of the Earth.

They carried a flag with a yellow crescent stitched in with poor man's cotton and thread. Normally the flag would be more...esteemed but this place is savage territory. On one hand it was populated by men still living in the past, on the other hand it was colonized by men who acted violently or foolishly in the present. Who could imagine what Australia's future shall hold?

They heard a clap of thunder in the distance but not a single cloud was in the sky. Either it was magic or it was science. Neither could be disregarded as a possibility.

They raced towards the sound of the noise, each with a hand on the reigns and the other on a gun. At first they could not find the source of the noise but then the noise rang out again.

Someone had the good conscience of pulling out their telescope to find this mysterious individual and, with luck, they found a rifle sticking out of a tree in the distance. So they raced to it.

"Sir!" The flag bearer cried out. "Sir!"

The rifle turned on them and fired near the ground of one of the horses. The horse, startled, reared itself and fell down with its owner.

"Sir! We have a message for you!"

The rifle fell to the Earth and a tall man jumped out of the tree. "Oh bugger off will ya? You imperialists don't leave poor souls alone huh?"

"Sir," the flag bearer stuck the flag into the ground before he climbed off his horse. "We are not imperialists. We are the employees of Mister M."

"Oh! How's he doing? Does he still have that," he tapped his right foot rapidly, "that cough?"

"It is much worse nowadays Sir," the flag bearer said somberly.

"Oh," the man's face darkened.

"But we don't have time to talk about that," he walked towards the man and gave him an envelope with a golden stamp on the front.

The man opened the letter and read it to himself, pacing as he did so.

"We need to leave now."

"I need my things. I need my guns, my explosives, my machete..."

"We can split up into two groups. I can take you to Mister M immediately while the others go retrieve your weapons."

"Here," the man took out a piece of paper and a piece of charcoal. "This will let you in to my armory," he said as he scribbled on the page.

"Thank you Mister Bunnymund. Now, are you ready to leave?"

"You won't be usin' that magic will ya?"

The flag bearer's face spelled out an apology as he took out a crystal orb with words inscribed in gold.

"Alright," he said with a breath of defeat. "Let's make this as painless as possible."

It was a beautiful morning in the Austrian Alps. The sun was peeking over the mountaintops, the snow glowed with a beautiful whiteness, and the grass still smelled of fresh dew and Easter.

Suddenly a bright globe materialized in the middle of a field nearby the mountains. It shone with the intensity of the noontime sun and scorched the grass beneath it. As the globe dissapeared as quickly as it formed, what remained was the flag bearer and Mister Bunnymund. The flag bearer was obviously more accustomed to this than Mister Bunnymund since he was still standing and Mister Bunnymund was on the floor, coughing madly.

"Ughh, I hate magic."

But as he looked up from his place on the floor, a flurry of green was swirling around only a few meters away from him. And what emerged out of the green was something that brought him to his feet.

"Mister E. Aster Bunnymund!" Toothiana proclaimed as she extended her arms for a hug. He embraced her and the golden beads and baubles stitched onto her dress jangled harmoniously. "How are you?"

"I'm fine ma'am."

"I doubt it, you look like you just jumped out of a portal."

"Nah," he wiped some of the sweat from his brow. "I was just in the Outback huntin' some wild and exotic beasts."

"Really now?" she quirked an eyebrow at him.

They both turned and saw a carriage pulling up to them. When it came close enough, a short and rather portly man jumped down.

"Sandy!" they both cried out.

He waved to them and then pointed upwards.

The two then saw a large balloon racing towards the Alps and then suddenly, some kind of pod dropping from the sky. Halfway through its descent, it deployed a parachute and gently floated to the bottom.

The three then ran to the mysterious pod and realized that it was a good friend of theirs.

"Privet Mister North!"

"Khoroshiye druz'ya utra!" he shouted joyously as he finally touched the Earth. They all exchanged ecstatic hugs before they all realized that Mister M's men were quietly waiting for them to stop.

"Mister M has arranged for the observation room," one man said.

They all sighed collectively and followed the men to a lift on the side of the mountain. At the base was a carriage with a set of large wheels designed to scale the mountain and a set of tracks that went all the way up. The men opened the carriage and they were in awe of the spaciousness of it and the attention to its decor.

"Did Mister M make this?" Toothiana asked.

"Of course!" one of the men said as he pushed and pulled a number of levers. "He is very good at engineering and inventing things now."

"Even the pillows and rugs?" she jested.

"Perhaps not," another man replied.

The trip up the mountain was filled with reminiscing about the past and exchanging pleasantries. It is not every day that the Guardians are all present in a single room. So many adventures, so many battles, so many memories in this single place.

As they approached the top of the mountain, one man pulled back a large curtain to reveal a single large window with an iron chamber off to the side. It reminded Mister North of a toy box whereas it reminded Mister Sanderson of a crucible. The air

The Alps were all theirs to see but then it was obscured by another window that revealed a paling man talking to a number of others. The paling man looked like he was coughing but then another man brought him a glass of water. As he drank the glass of water, someone brought a sort of tube to him.

The man coughed into the tube and the voice could be heard in the carriage. "I thank you all for coming here upon such short notice. There is much to discuss, and unfortunately, much to take care of. As you may know, my condition forces me to live up in the heights of Grossglockner Mountain, one of the tallest mountains in Europe, perhaps even the world! Regardless, time is running short and we must discuss something disturbing and perhaps frightening."

A man brought Mister North a similar tube and gestured for him to speak into it. "It is quite alright Mister M," Mister North replied. "Why have you summoned the Guardians?"

A person brought Mister M a chair to sit on but he rejected it and continued speaking. "In the early days of Empire, the affairs of the state rested solely in the domestic. But, as the engines that fuel our coffers grew, so did the delinquency and defiance of our people. There is of course a healthy degree of disagreement but that of which endangers the trade, security, and general health of the Empire must be stopped. Therefore, prisons were created.

"So it follows that in the early days of Empire, the Monarchs agreed to create the prison system. But where there are criminals there must be lawmakers to create laws, constables to enforce the laws, and judges and lawyers to administer the laws. But with the administration of a massive prison system, a new profession was necessary: that of the warden.

"Mister P. Black was one of those first wardens in the early days of Empire. He was a skilled soldier who fought valiantly in India but was not skilled enough as to rise to the rank of general or something more illustrious. He acquired the position of warden sometime afterwards, with some thanks to his military service, and was quite good at it from numerous accounts.

"Mister Black's talent was his ability to quell the prisoners into behaving through some means of influence. They exhibited forms of sobriety and lethargy, a refreshing comparison to the constant whining and aggressiveness seen in other prisons throughout the Empire. Although there were never indications of physical torture, something that was quite well used in the early days, the prisoners would always exhibit some form of self harm or depreciation. Cutting, bruising, or scratching upon the stone walls were very common in Mister Black's prisoners.

"He was then noticed immediately by the Empire was commissioned to manage one of the mill towns in the Scottish Lowlands. Again, sobriety and lethargy were common but also a strange deficiency of children being birthed and an unusual frequency of malnourishment amongst all people.

"And these symptoms continued to exhibit themselves throughout the Lowlands as they continued downriver, upriver, through the forests, and into the unpopulated farmlands, and to some extent in the metropolitan areas.

"I have heard some rumors throughout the Empire that Mister Black is planning something. He has been accumulating a concerning degree of wealth from his far flung and exotic investments, he has been extending his contacts to other Imperial courts, and he has been gathering some kind of mercinary force. I have a feeling that he may be plotting some sort of insurrection and you must stop him. Either do it for the Empire or do it because his powers of influencing the nonphysical, the metaphysik, and the human soul itself threaten mankind as a whole; but I ask that you do something."

The four looked at each other before Mister North stepped forward, "We will stop Mister Black."

Mister M smiled softly, a gentle curl forming around his blue lips. "Thank you, all of you. But know that you cannot do this alone. You must work with each other, as you have in the past, but also work with another person."

"Who?"

"Someone in the Wild West has been causing a bit of a stir, Dakota I believe." Mister M put a piece of paper in a bronze tube and pushed it into the chamber that connected both the observation room with the main room. It hissed as Aster opened the chamber releasing the rarified air. He carefully twisted open the tube and pulled out the paper. His eyebrows shot up in disbelief, "Absolutely not. We don't need 'is help."

"Who is it Aster?" Toothiana asked.

Sandy snatched the piece of paper out of his hand and he, North, and Toothiana inspected it.

"We don't need the help of some know-nothing tramp. He's a menace."

"Is this the boy that put you behind a few days on that railroad you are funding?" Toothiana asked.

"Yes, but that's not the point! He's dangerous, he has no control, he's wild and feral!"

"And living with the Aborigines has not done the same for you?" she quipped back.

"That's different. I came back. I went to uni. I became a businessman."

"Who hunts for pleasure."

"And you can't say the same for yourself missy?"

"Enough! Both of you!" Mister M shouted through the glass partition. "You can both sort out your qualms later, but it is decided. Find this boy, tell him of my intent, and return with or without him."

"Understood," they all chanted.

"The eve of the Empire approaches and it is well anticipated that we shall fight through the dark. But whether we are all freemen or we are all slaves can only be determined by that boy."

Aster gritted his teeth and growled, "Goddamn you Jack Frost."

Author's Notes: Wow, it's been a really long time since I've come back here. I mean, it's really been a LONG time but I just saw Rise of the Guardians a few days ago and I was just really inspired! Anyway, I'm a bit rusty in writing fanfiction but I hope everyone sticks around for more!

(And as always) Reviews Returned!