This Means War -CHAP.01--RotG-

  It was hard work being a guardian. You spent eternity working to make children happy and keep them believing in you. Because if they didn’t believe, then you began to lose your power. You couldn’t do anything. It was the people around the world – children, most especially – who made guardians who they were. Which was why the guardians had to work so hard to protect them and keep them happy. Keep them believing.

  And that was exactly why Catty Fawkes was glad she wasn’t actually a guardian. She felt like she did enough work as it was. She had only a few nations of people around the world who believed in her magic, but that was enough for her. More people meant more work to keep them all happy.

  And she had enough on her plate already. Bonfire Night was her main holiday, though that was only celebrated by a few countries across the world – the United Kingdom and Canada. But on top of that, she also got involved with Independence Day, New Year’s Eve, Diwali, the Chinese New Year and other exclusive occasions that people held around the globe.

  Before she’d been chosen, she’d been living in the shadows. So not being seen by most people now didn’t bother her in the slightest. She was happy enough to just get on with what she was supposed to do.

  Sometimes, she did get lonely always being on her own. It was often fun to harass the other guardians, but they all had their own work to do and it never stayed fun for long before they really lost their patience with her. They never classed as real company. As real fun.

  But fortunately, there was somebody else whom she could derive endless amounts of entertainment from. The cold to her heat. The ice to her fire. Her polar opposite...

  Jack Frost.

  Now, he was somebody who appreciated what it meant to not be a guardian. Apparently, no matter how much she tried to hassle the other guardians, she’d still never be as much of a nuisance to them, or anybody else, as Jack Frost was. He was quite literally a master of trouble.

  But that didn’t necessarily mean that she liked Jack Frost... Oh, no. If anything, it was completely the opposite. When you had been chosen, yet still weren’t believed in, there was only so much you could do to keep yourself entertained. The powers that Catty had gained when she’d been chosen had only amused her for so long. Until she’d realised the benefit of using them on other people, that is.

  She’d fast learnt that causing trouble for others was one of the most entertaining ways to fill her time. And with the powers she’d been given, it was pretty easy for her to cause the mayhem that she wanted. The only problem was that Jack Frost had figured out the same thing. And he was notoriously better at it.

  And that just made Catty’s blood boil.

  Catty had always hated snow. Well, that was what she told herself anyway. In all honesty, she was just being petty and it wasn’t actually true. Every child, every teenager and even a fair few adults loved to build snowmen, create snow angels, go sledging down snowy hills... Catty hadn’t really been an exception to that, no matter how much she insisted otherwise.

  Now, however, she genuinely did dislike the snow. After years of being hit in the face with snowballs, slipping on the ice, being drenched by freak snowfalls from the rooftops... Though of course, they were never ‘freak’ accidents. None of it was. It was all very much done on purpose by the boy that she’d been competing with for several decades now.

  Which was why she was so damn pleased that she’d been gifted with the ability to melt snow and ice. And that was also what made the dislike between them very mutual. If there was one thing Jack Frost didn’t like, it was his mischief going to waste.

  Catty settled down onto one of the rooftops, melting the snow around her so that she could sit more comfortably. She could feel the cold, but it didn’t actually bother her. Her body ran on too high a temperature for her to be bothered by cold. It was more the damp that she didn’t like.

  It was always easy to tell where Jack Frost had been, much the same as the other guardians and anyone else who had been chosen. Their work always left a distinctive mark on the world. Catty sat with one knee up close to her face, the other leg swinging languidly in the air as she lazily melted away lines of snow, undoing what Jack had created.

  She didn’t wield as much control over fire as she would have liked – it wasn’t her main gift, after all – but she certainly had enough to do things like this. And this was one of her favourite pastimes.

  Wham. Something cold and wet hit her in the side of the head, splattering on impact. Catty was on her feet in an instant, shaking the soggy mass out of her hair, ready to fight back. It didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out who the culprit was.

  “And here I thought you’d already made enough mess around here,” she said, running one hand over the side of her fire-coloured hair that the snowball had hit, drying it instantly with the heat surging from her fingertips. “I didn’t expect you to still be hanging around.”

  Jack landed on the rooftop. Spirals of frost appeared with every step of his bare feet, re-covering the patches of the roof that Catty had already cleared. “Well, I’ve learnt to hang back, since you always seem to get here afterwards and ruin everyone’s fun.”

  “I don’t ruin anyone’s fun,” argued Catty, keeping her hands ready in case she needed to start throwing things back. With Jack, that was always a definite possibility. “Nobody wants your stupid snow.”

  “Are you totally clueless?” asked Jack disbelievingly, leaning casually against the wooden staff that he always carried. “Kids love snow. A lot more than they love fireworks.”

  “Yeah, right,” scoffed Catty, gesturing to the snow on the ground around them that had already started to become trodden into a grey sludge. “There is no way that kids would prefer this... to this.” She conjured up a small starburst and threw it into the air, where it exploded into a golden flower of lights and glitter.

  “Not bad – I’ll give you that one,” shrugged Jack. “But you see, the thing with fireworks is that after about the fifth or sixth one, they start to get... boring.” A snowball materialised in Jack’s free hand. “Yet, no matter how many snowballs you throw, that’s always entertaining.”

  Catty knew to dodge this time, so when Jack threw the snowball at her, it simply sailed past as she quickly skipped aside. She produced another starburst, now definitely ready to fight back. Only when she looked round, Jack had taken flight and disappeared. It wasn’t like him to give up so easily and run away. She kept the small firework in her hand, just in case.

  “You know...” Catty jumped as she heard Jack’s voice behind her. She whirled round to find him balancing on a chimney, looking smug. “You could use a little blue in that dress.”

  He pointed his staff at the cherry red, rainbow-patterned dress that she always wore. Tiny licks of blue frost danced their way up the hem. Catty discarded the starburst that was still in her hand and impatiently shot a line of sparks at her dress instead, instantly melting the frost away.

  “I don’t think so,” she said indignantly. “Blue’s the opposite of red. Don’t you know that opposites don’t go?”

  “Well, technically, the opposite of red is green,” said Jack annoyingly, hopping back down onto the roof beside her. He crouched down and pointed at her dress again, though this time with his finger. “And it looks like there’s some of that in there too...”

  Catty skipped back away from him, feeling irritated. “Try that again and you’re gonna get a firework in your face.”

  Jack straightened up and followed her across the rooftop, his trademark smirk on his face. “Hasn’t anyone ever told you it’s dangerous to play with fireworks?”

  Catty conjured up another firework in her hand. “Why don’t we test it on you and find out?” she threatened lightly. “Here... I made this one blue especially just for you.”

  With that last word, she tossed the firework at Jack, who ducked automatically. It burst into a flurry of blue and silver stars behind him. He pushed off into the air, floating above her with a grin on his face. “Aww, you shouldn’t have. Glad to see I’ve had an affect on your work.”

  Catty gritted her teeth and fired another long line of sparks at him. He avoided those too, easily floating out of the way. Right. If he was going to play that way, then so was she. It was time to fight fire with... Well. You get the gist.

  Using her fireworks as propulsion, like she always did, she zoomed up into the air after Jack. Jack grinned when he saw her coming and flew up even higher, using his staff to rain snowflakes down on her. “Now that’s more like it!”

  Catty dodged around the worst of the snow and melted the rest of it with small bursts of heat and sparks. She whipped up several more fireworks and threw them alternately at Jack as she flew higher too. He managed to dodge all of them and retaliated by creating and throwing more snowballs.

  This was a regular occurrence. The people of the towns around the area were probably always very confused by the freak snowstorms and unexplained displays of fireworks, but what did Catty and Jack care about what people thought? They weren’t guardians. They didn’t have to follow the same rules.

  This was the kind of fun that they enjoyed. Even if it was at each other’s expense. The mutual challenge between them had never changed.

  Catty landed on one of the chimney tops, rotating her arm in a circular motion to create a kind of mobile Catherine wheel. Catherine wheels were her specialty – they were her namesake, after all.

  “Catch!” she called gleefully, pitching it like it was a Frisbee.

  It whistled through the air and Jack had to back flip to avoid it. The Catherine wheel hit the side of the building behind him, exploding spectacularly into a rainbow of stars. It didn’t even leave a mark. That was part of Catty’s magic. Her fireworks weren’t dangerous. Unless she wanted them to be.

  But in this case, she didn’t hold quite that much animosity against Jack Frost. She knew first-hand how dangerous fireworks could really be.

  “You must be losing your touch – your aim’s getting worse,” Jack goaded.

  “It’s not my aim,” Catty countered as she took flight again. “It’s because it’s like trying to swat an annoying gnat that won’t sit still.”

  “I take that as a compliment.”

  Catty feinted shooting sparks again and Jack dodged to the left, like she’d hoped he would. She followed it quickly with another starburst, which hit its mark this time and burst into red, gold and green sparks in Jack’s face.

  He yelped in surprise and automatically shielded his eyes, almost dropping his staff. Catty giggled. Now this was more like it. As much as she hated to admit it, it was quite difficult to catch Jack Frost off guard. But then he had been chosen before she had – he’d had a lot more practice at causing trouble.

  “Now that’s just playing dirty,” said Jack, still floating in mid-air and trying to rub his eyes free of the colourful specks that were dancing before them.

  “Oh, you’d know all about playing dirty,” said Catty. She touched down on another rooftop, intending to create another Catherine wheel.

  “Another compliment,” said Jack lightly.

  He pointed the wooden staff down at her and whirls of frost shot from the end of it. The rooftop turned icy beneath Catty’s boots and her feet slipped out from underneath her. Fortunately, she’d been prepared for something like that and was able to use her fireworks to right herself and get back up into the air.

  But what she wasn’t prepared for was the sudden wave of snow that Jack then cast down on top of her. The weight of it knocked her back down onto the rooftop and off her feet. She landed ungainly on her butt with a bump. Jack burst out laughing somewhere above her in the air.

  “Didn’t see that one coming, did you?” he laughed.

  Damn him. Catty struggled back to her feet on the icy surface, scowling and shaking snow out of her hair and face. She ran her hand over her hair again to try and dry it a second time, but this time, her power sparked and sputtered several times before she actually got any heat out of it.

  Crap. Though she could generally summon enough heat for small tasks, it didn’t work that well if she was already too soaked. After all, a firework couldn’t start if it was wet. Damn that Jack Frost...

  Catty managed to dry herself enough to get her fireworks going so that she could get back into the air. She’d kept it an utmost secret that her powers were rendered useless if she was too wet. She definitely didn’t want Jack to find out – who knew what measures he’d resort to if he discovered her main weakness.

  She felt the urge to say something cheesy and cliché. You may have won this round, but the war’s not over yet. But she didn’t really want to draw attention to the fact that she was taking flight too soon. So instead, she shot off another display of fireworks into the air, trying to build her power back up.

  “I think I’m gonna bounce before I get bored,” she called casually, feigning a yawn. “Catch you later, Mr. Freeze.”

  “What; you’re giving up already?” Jack grinned, looking amused.

  “I’m just worried that the more time I spend with you, the more I may want to start using real explosives.”

  She ducked the next snowball that came her way and zoomed off, laughing to herself. Once she was safely out of sight, she started flying lower to the ground, just in case her powers did suddenly decide to conk out. Her hair and dress were still quite damp. Urgh.

  She drifted along lazily just a few feet above the ground. She didn’t really have anywhere to call a home anymore. Before she’d been chosen, she’d lived in England. But the United Kingdom wasn’t really for her. It was always wet and most of the people there were just too miserable.

  Now she generally hung around wherever she wanted. Nobody could see her, so what did she have to worry about? The one thing that she made sure of, however, was that she was always very far away from Jack Frost when she decided to kick back and relax. She certainly wouldn’t put it past him to blow ice in her ears whilst she was sleeping.

  “Nice dress.”

  Catty stopped in her tracks and looked around. The voice had stood out, sounded so clear, as if it had been speaking to her. She spotted a young man leaning casually against a lamppost, smoking a cigarette. He appeared to be in his early twenties, with quite long, black hair that seemed to have been styled purposely to look untidy.

  He didn’t seem to be taking any notice of the people around him. Instead, he was looking straight at her. He could see her. And he didn’t seem at all perturbed at the fact that she was floating in mid-air. He had to be a guardian. Either that or he was like her. Chosen by the Man in the Moon, yet still not quite guardian material.

  She landed lightly on the street next to him, feeling curious. “Are you a guardian?”

  “Not exactly,” he said smoothly with a brief smile. “If anything, I’d say I’m more like you. You’re Catherine Fawkes – the firework girl – aren’t you?”

  “Catty,” she corrected him automatically.

  “Catty,” the guy repeated, like the name was an amusing anecdote. He didn’t look away from her once. His eyes were a brilliant shade of emerald green. They were almost unreal.

  “Err, so... who are you?” asked Catty.

  “Who am I?” The guy looked thoughtful, the cigarette burning down between his fingers as he paused. “I’ve been given quite a few names. Sometimes I go by Bo. And sometimes Dante... But lately, everyone seems to be calling me Temp. So I guess that’s cool too.”

  “Temp...” said Catty slowly. And he’d thought the name Catty was amusing. “So you were chosen too?”

  “Chosen? Is that what you’d call it?” asked Temp, looking amused. “If you and I aren’t actually guardians, then what the hell were we chosen for?”

  Catty didn’t know what to say. It was a question she’d never been able to answer in all these years. “I guess I don’t really know.”

  “Hey, don’t look so glum about it,” said Temp optimistically, taking a drag of his cigarette and then blowing the smoke out in one long breath. “As long as you can find your own ways to occupy your time, then not being a guardian is actually a hell of a lot of fun. No rules, no responsibilities... Just the freedom to use your powers as you please. Am I right?”

  That was exactly what Catty had always thought. She wasn’t tied down like the other guardians were. She just had to find her own entertainment to keep things interesting. “Right,” she agreed.

  She had no idea who this guy was. He’d literally appeared out of nowhere, yet he seemed to understand her situation perfectly. Maybe there was more to not being a guardian. Maybe she didn’t have to feel at such a loss all the time. And maybe she didn’t have to spend so much time competing with that damned Jack Frost in an attempt to derive just a bit of entertainment.

  Again, Temp seemed to follow her thought trail exactly. “And you do so by waging wars on Jack Frost, right?”

  Catty frowned at the mention of his name. “How do you know that?”

  Temp laughed. “Everyone knows that. We’ve all heard about the poor townspeople around here who think that the freak snow and light displays are signs of an apocalypse.”

  “Seriously?” Wow. People were dumb. That was another reason that Catty was glad she wasn’t as much a part of their world anymore.

  “Seriously,” Temp grinned. He then gave Catty a pointed look up and down, taking in her slightly bedraggled hair and still sodden dress. “But from the looks of it, I’m guessing that the snow won out this time.”

  Catty scowled, suddenly feeling annoyed and self-conscious. She hated losing. Even more so when other people were aware of it. “He wishes,” she said stoutly. “I just decided to leave early.”

  That seemed to amuse Temp even more. “I’m sure you did.”

  His attitude annoyed Catty even further – her temper as short as always, like it was the fire in her. Suddenly, the idea of somebody else understanding her situation didn’t seem that interesting anymore. This stranger didn’t know her. She was done with this conversation. “Speaking of leaving, I should get going,” she said shortly.

  “Oh?” Temp’s smile didn’t falter. “In that case, I hope to see you around... Though I’m sure I will.”

  “Right...” said Catty slowly.

  She had no idea what Temp actually did, so she didn’t know where to expect him to turn up or how to tell if he’d already been in the area. But she wasn’t quite rude enough to ask. Whether they were a guardian or not, the people who had been chosen by the Man in the Moon took what they did seriously. Asking what it was that they did, or saying that you’d never heard of them before, was considered quite offensive. It suggested that the magic they put into the world had gone to waste.

  “I’ll keep an eye out for you. And you should do the same,” Temp advised. “We’re very similar, you and I. I can help you to feel more accepted. I can give you a purpose.”

  Catty said nothing. Even though she wasn’t quite human anymore, she still knew better than to start taking up offers from strangers. She didn’t know Temp. And she certainly didn’t know if she could trust him or not.

  He didn’t seem to be bothered by her silence. “Oh, and if you ever happen to run into Cupid and Psyche, any Wisps or even the Boogeyman... Then tell them that ol’ Temp says hi.”

  Catty raised her eyebrows. She didn’t know that much about any of the people he’d just mentioned either. “Friends of yours?”

  “Something like that,” said Temp with a smile. “Happy flying, firework girl.”

  Catty took that as her cue to leave. Using her boosters, she pushed back up into the air and zipped off down the street. She took one look back to see Temp still watching her, taking another drag on his cigarette. She shook her head and continued on her way. That had definitely been a weird encounter.

  She had a feeling that things were going to start getting more interesting around here. But the question was, was that what she actually wanted?