Father Sturges wakes slowly, his head throbbing. The first thing he registers is the sticky feeling of humidity and the grit of dirt that has adhered to the moisture on his skin. The next thing that registers is that he is restrained in a seated position. He can't move his arms or legs, and currently, he is too groggy to realize that he's not restrained to a chair at all. He'll come to realize this soon enough. Father Sturges can't see much, the lights are dim and red tinted, but they at least cast enough light to make out his surroundings. The walls are slick with water and curve from ceiling to floor, like a giant pipe. He's sweating even though it's quite cool, and his eyes sting from sweat dripping down into them. Father Sturges tests his bonds but finds that they're immovable, there's not even enough slack for him to feel what it is that's holding him. In the low, red light he can't really make out what he's sitting on, but it looks black and solid, and it's cold where it presses against his body. Nor can he see where the source of light is, but his whole body runs cold when it shifts somewhere behind him. The sound of slow footsteps echo in the cavernous space, and darkness takes over where the light had previously shined.

"Sturges." The voice joins the echoing footsteps.

Father Sturges says nothing, opting to keep calm instead.

"You have a son, do you not?"

If his situation hadn't already done so, that statement alone would have inspired immediate alert. Father Sturges clenches his fists, his knuckles digging painfully into the material of his seat, what feels like little rocks pressing into his skin.

"I do," He replies softly, "Who are you?"

The footsteps come around and a tall man steps in front of Father Sturges, holding a small spherical object in his hands. The object proves to be the source of light, putting off a strong red glow. Once Father Sturges's eyes adjust, he can make out that it's a globe with thousands- millions- of little red lights dotting its surface. The man holding the globe is obscured by the light, and he uses this to his advantage.

"He's so young, your sweet Daniel. Only, what, six years old? And his mutation is already so strong. Some people might call that an act of God."

Father Sturges sucks in a quiet, shocked breath, a wave of fear rolling down his spine.

"Does Daniel know you're working to destroy mutants? What would he say if he knew you didn't want him out in public? Do you think he'd be hurt?"

"Not- not destroy. Never something so horrid. Registering mutants is important-."

"WHY?" The man suddenly roars, causing Father Sturges to startle in his seat.

"Remove the privacy of so many thousands of mutants? For what?" He hisses.

"Because I want my son to be safe! He may be a mutant, but what about the others that use their abilities for terrible things? What about the mutants that blow up cars and destroy storefronts for fun? How can I know who is safe to be around?"

Chuckling, the man pulls the globe toward himself, leaning closer as he does so. His face is illuminated from below sinisterly and Father Sturges rears back at the sight.

"My God," he gasps, "It's you."

Pitch's smile spreads slowly and unctuously across his face, awash in red, "You see these lights? They stand for every single human on the surface of the earth," he passes a hand over the globe and the lights flicker, "You're going to help me put them out."

Pitch strides down the corridor at a fast clip, Father Sturges following closely behind, encased in a moving mass of black sand. The air breezes by, cooling his already clammy skin further. They pass under banks of lights, many of them dark or broken, but the few that do work illuminate their passage well enough. Father Sturges can see water leaking from the ceiling, and moldy residue that looks like it's been building up for years growing down the curved walls. He can even hear the water dripping as they go, a constant noise all around. More distantly, he can hear what sounds like children crying out. They take a series of lefts and rights and go up more flights of stairs than Father Sturges can count.

"The issue of mutant registration has been proposed to the federal government, did you know?" Pitch asks, his rich voice echoing.

Through a tight jaw, Father Sturges replies, "No. I had no idea."

"That's quite surprising. Seems like someone like you would keep up with that as much as possible. It's in the early stages of legislative approval. But it looks like it may make it to the next phase."

He pauses at a heavy looking, metal door. It only takes him a moment to push it open, and then he's moving outside, pulling Father Sturges behind him. Stars are spattered across the sky, constellations clear in the night, and thousands of evergreen trees are visible over the edge of high concrete walls. The ground is covered with snow, and Father Sturges can see his breath steaming in thick white puffs in front of his face. Suddenly, he is much more frightened than he had been before.

He watches as Pitch walks him up to a large machine, discomfort roiling in his gut so strongly that he has to shift in his own strange seat. The machine looks like a thick, blocky but plain metal chair, with an odd looking metal headpiece attached to the back. The sand beneath him dissolves with a wave of Pitch's arm and Father Sturges is sitting in the snow. He is lifted by the neck of his coat by large, black horses, and is set back on his feet. He looks around to find that they're surrounded by horses, their eyes glowing yellow and their manes fluttering as if being blown by a gust of wind that isn't there. One horse pushes him none too gently toward the chair.

"If you could please take a seat." Pitch says, disingenuous in his courtesy.

Father Sturges shuffles through the snow to sit down in the icy cold chair. He doesn't try to make a run for it, he doesn't know what Pitch's powers are exactly, but he knows that Pitch must be controlling the horses. They would catch him effortlessly in moments. In the wintery air, the sweat on his body has cooled unpleasantly, and he is shivering, now. Pitch comes around and sets the headpiece atop Father Sturges's head . Without warning, smooth metal cuffs glide seamlessly from the arms and legs of the chair, closing and latching before Sturges can even blink. Pitch strides away, standing at a distance from him and the chair.

"What is this?" Father Sturges demands, tugging his arms against the cuffs.

"In the event of your death, would you like me to deliver your effects to your family? Your clothing and such?"

"My death? What in God's name is this? What have you done?"

"It's fairly simple. I've made a machine with a purpose in mind, and you're my first test subject. If this works, you will become a mutant. It really is simple, I hope you're following."

Father Sturges begins loudly protesting, his voice panicked, "You can't do that! You can't do that! My wife, my son, what will they do if I die? My son-!"

"I think you're forgetting something, Sturges," Pitch speaks over him, "I can do whatever I want."

He raises his arms, palms out toward the other man, fingers spread wide, and suddenly, the horses are bounding around the chair as if spooked into a stampede. Their heavy hooves kick up snow and chunks of frozen dirt, a breeze coming off of them as they run. They go faster and faster with every successive circle until Father Sturges can't see the world past their glittering hides. The wind from the speeding beasts has become so strong that it whips his hair up around his head, flickering the lapels of his coat and the hems of his pants. Sturges clenches his eyes shut and tries to hide his face in his shoulder as much as the restrictive headpiece will allow. He can hear some kind of crackling and can see little flashes of light through his eyelids. The crackling gets stronger and louder, the lights brighter, and when he peeks through narrowed eyelids, he can see electricity arcing around the horses, over his head. Soon after the electricity has built to a constant, grains of sand begin flecking against his exposed skin, stinging where they land. After only moments, he is being pelted with sand, his body burns with it, and it tears through his clothing, collecting in thick layers on his skin. He thinks he can feel it sinking into his flesh, and it hurts so intensely that he can't help but start screaming. It is a mistake, though, because the flow of sand is so unrelenting that it gets in his mouth, crisp between his molars and choking him at the back of his throat.

The sun hasn't risen yet, but it will in just another hour or two, the sky black and speckled with far off stars. The night outside the mansion is silent, the kind of silent that comes only after something awful has happened, as if all of the ambient noises have been sucked from the very air. Jack and the Guardians still reside in Manny's office, the quiet pulled around them like a blanket, closing them off from the rest of the world, involving them only in their interactions with one another.

"Do we even know what Pitch's powers are?" Jack asks, leaning his weight on the staff, "I feel like if we knew his powers, we'd be able to prepare for offense or defense better."

"We... don't actually know the full extent of his mutation. We just know that he's powerful." Tooth replies, running her hand over the feathers on her head. She seems a little embarrassed about their not knowing.

"There's not much we know about him at all, really." Bunny shrugs, crossing his arms over his broad chest.

"So what do we know?"

"He definitely has some sort of psycho-kinetic ability. Those horses were made of sand." North says without hesitation.

Sandy signs something that Tooth translates, "Sandy thinks he can control them. Not just make them but control them."

"That's... frightening." Jack mumbles, tossing himself down in the chair, leaning the staff against the side and rubbing a hand over his brow. Baby Tooth leans over from her perch on the arm of the chair and sets her head on Jack's shoulder comfortingly.

"Then he's strong, very strong." Bunny says, sliding down the side of the desk he's leaning on to sit on the floor, "The amount of energy it would take to control that big of a creature and in the number of them that attacked us tonight would be spectacular. No regular mutant could do that."

"So we've got nothing other than "controls sand animals" and "really powerful". Great." Jack says, blowing air through his lips.

The crackling of electricity ceases, the wind dies down, the rumble of hooves fades, and Father Sturges sits in the chair, face plastered to his shoulder and very still. He is covered in a thick crust of dark sand, made so from the furious speed at which the horses ran, dissolving themselves in order to change him. Pitch waits with bated breath, eager to see if his experiment has worked. Sturges gasps in a rough breath, the crust of sand over his chest breaking with a loud crack!

Every breath he takes rattles in his chest and it sounds as if he's in tremendous pain, gasping and shaking as he breathes. He pulls his head from his shoulder very slowly, the hard shell crumbling though no sand falls from his exterior. Which is unusual considering the amount that is already there. He yells as he pulls, trying to separate his face from where he'd curled in into his shoulder to protect it from the whirlwinds. The half of his face that had been left uncovered is thoroughly coated by the sand, blocking his vision completely in that eye. When he finally gets himself free, it has exposed the other eye, which is bloodshot looking and glazed over. Pitch walks over to him slowly, cautiously, as if Sturges will fall away before his very eyes.

"How does it feel?" He asks, reverently as he stares intently at the mutant he may have just created.

It takes a moment for Father Sturges to be able to force it out through lips still mostly sealed, a few grunts punctuating his efforts. He murmurs, so softly, "I feel like a monster."

Pitch sneers at him and laughs, "You should feel useful! You've proven me correct, and I intend to use this knowledge to my benefit."

"Let me go. I want to see my family. I want to go home." He whispers, voice warbling, his body going lax in his seat. Pitch unlocks the cuffs on the chair, moving the headpiece off of Sturges's head. By controlling the sand coating Sturges, Pitch is able to make him walk unsteadily back to the door they first exited through. Their steamy breaths trail behind them.

Sturges sits on the floor in the same pipe-like room he awoke in, lit up by the globe resting a few feet away, his rough frame slumped against the wall like a broken toy discarded to the side. He stays where he was left for an unknowable amount of time, listening to the constant sound of trickling water and cries of children so distant they could be a hallucination. He moves his hand across the floor of the pipe and the hard exterior of it sounds like a rock skidding across cement. He lifts his hand to stare at it, to try and find a way that it still looks like his hand, but it doesn't. He lets his arm fall back down, listless. Sturges needs help, he needs to escape, and if he truly is a mutant now, he'll use whatever he can to get out. He has an idea of where he is currently, and he knows where the closest safe place is.

Using his only exposed eye, he looks around as thoroughly as possible for some way out. There's a hole in the ceiling through which a thin stream of water is running and a metal grate in the floor- the latter being his best bet. The water here has to drain somewhere, and he thinks that maybe he can use that to his advantage. Sturges stiffly and slowly pulls himself to the metal grating. It's difficult, his mobility severely restricted, his body in pain. It takes him long minutes to drag himself over the metal grating, and when he gets there, he drops onto the cool metal with a clang. Upon relaxing his entire body, Father Sturges begins to collapse, body grinding down into particles and seeping through the narrow holes in the metal.

He dusts down into another pipe, this one with several inches of flowing water that leads to another grate covered drain. Father Sturges is washed down this drain, and down countless others, through innumerable pipes, until he is drained into a river.

There is a pensive moment among them after Jack asks, "So, what do we do, now?"

"We've got nothing. We don't know anything about his mutation, his plans, or even why he took the kids." Jack flings his hands out in front of his chest gesturing to the literal nothing in front of him. Baby Tooth climbs up onto his shoulders and instead rests her head atop his.

"It is very late. Or very early. Maybe we should rest as much as we can before we try to think of anything else. Has been a very long night." North says, tiredly.

The others murmur their agreements, shifting and making their way to the door of the office. It is only when they are headed down the stairs to the lower floors and bedrooms that a booming knock comes from the main entrance of the mansion. They freeze, exchanging various looks of confusion, suspicion, and alarm. It's the second knock, echoing through the empty hallways, that startles them and has them jolting into sudden action, all five of them booking it down the stairs. Baby Tooth holds onto Jack's hair with both hands, trying to remain as steady as possible during the flurry of movement.

Tooth reaches the door first, flinging it wide open, the expression on her face one of fierce determination. As if Pitch and his demonic horses would be using the front door this time and she is ready to protect what is left of her home. Instead, the door is opened to reveal a man, hunched over, appearing as if he's been nearly burned alive. On the horizon, the sun is just barely pinkening the sky with its rays.

The man's voice is a withered husk and hard to understand when he says, "I am Father Antony Sturges, I would like to speak with the headmaster of this school, Professor Moon. I'd like to speak to Manny."