#normal jim and troll jim deserve better

[sonicasura]

I just had an idea with Troll Jim.

The potion Merlin used to make Jim half troll was more unstable than he thought. Magic is a fickle thing that follows its own rules. There are two things even the most skilled wizard such as Merlin shouldn't do: to change a spell into something outside its purpose and never cast one incomplete.

I believe Jim's case is a perfect example for why as the Trollhunter isn't gonna have his human side for much longer. His new troll side is slowly taking over with each day passing by. The purpose of the potion was to unite Trolls and Humans but not what Merlin intended to use it for.

'Only a troll can defeat Gunmar' so that's what he is getting despite the results being late: a powerful troll. It takes awhile before everyone notices something off with Jim. He begins to look a bit bigger, horns more pronounced, and skin tougher than before. Since some ingredients were clearly absent, the magic behind the transformation decides to take some inspiration from all the species Jim came across to fill in the gaps.

What Merlin had made was a slow acting curse and its won't stop until every bit of the half troll's human form is gone. Though no one is gonna give up even if Jim fully becomes a troll. Maybe there's a reason why the potion was made? Once the answer is found, does the Trollhunter really reaps the full award of both worlds.

The ability to switch between human, half troll and troll. All the strengths Jim should've gain becoming accessible to him unlike before. The sun no longer a threat in his trollish form as the human side protects it. Resilience and strength of living stone enforces Jim's softer yet kindhearted humanity. An embodiment of two different worlds working together as one.

In my opinion, a better way to do Troll Jim or at least fix the wrong message presented in Trollhunters Season 3 with our beasty boy. Honestly they could've take a page from the original Ben 10 about this. After all unity and understanding holds more weight than power itself.

[albentelisa]

Hi! Heres a super interesting ask. How would you write a au where Jim is a changeling and Claire is the Trollhunter? Just to be clear, he and Bular HATE each other.

Hi! That's a premise I really like (and at some point, I wanted to write a fic like that, so I have some ideas).

So, Jim is a changeling, but he's a really young one and lacking a good chunk of the Janus Order's training. In any normal scenario, he'd never ended with a familiar, but Strickler pulled some strings to put Jim in his current position (as he noticed his talent and potential and decided to guarantee a strong subordinate early on). Nevertheless, Jim's lack of indoctrination shows as he is reluctant to follow the Order's rules, gets attached to people and openly shows his dislike of Bular (much to Strickler's amusement - though he'll never admit that one).

Still, Strickler doesn't approve Jim's rebellious streak as he's sure it'll get his protegee into a trouble. Walter is both mentor and father figure to Jim, but he is cordial only on public, while rather strict and demanding in private (though only because he cares about Jim's survival). Strickler starts to date Barbara to get better control over Jim's actions some years prior to the canon events start, however, it soon gets way beyond 'just a mission' as Walter falls in love for real. Strickler denies it, but both Nomura and Jim know the truth. By the beginning of the canon events Barbara and Strickler are engaged and planning the wedding.

As for Nomura, she is Jim's fighting instructor (as much like her Jim is one of more battle-capable changelings). She likes him a lot, but he reminds her of her younger self too much, so she believes that Jim is doomed to face so much disappointment and despair in the future.

I have mentioned before that Jim has attachments in this AU, despite being a changeling. Obviously, both Strickler and Nomura are 'family' for him, even if he never says it aloud (as those two would scold him for that statement), but there are also humans he cherishes too much. First, there is Barbara who he starts to consider his mother rather fast (Jim would kill for her if needed). Then, Toby appears in his life - while initially Toby initiated their friendship and Jim just went along for the sake of keeping his cover, it eventually turned into the real thing. However, Jim keeps his real identity a secret from Toby as he's not sure how Toby will react to him being inhuman. And finally, Jim has feelings for Claire, though he falls in love with her for a different reason than in the canon. In this AU, Jim accidentally sees Claire sneaking out to attend a concert despite her mother forbiding her that. For Jim, it's her bravery and rebellious streak that leaves the lasting impression.

Strickler is aware of Jim's crush and while he doesn't forbid it explicitly (because he's in a relationship with Barbara himself), he still warns Jim to never let his heart rule over his mind.

And then Claire finds the amulet and everything just goes to hell.

Jim discovers it the first, way before Strickler as he catches the glimpse of the amulet in Claire's bag. His feelings are complicated as the correct course of action would be getting the amulet, no matter how. Yet Jim is against hurting Claire, so his first plan is either steal the amulet or pretend it was his. It didn't work as the amulet decides to summon the armor in response to Jim's not-that-totally-harmless intent. Jim manages to fake the surprise and Claire asks him not tell anyone. Another complication is that Toby also sees the armor, so he's also involved now (and Jim isn't happy with that as he would prefer keeping his best friend as far from the troll stuff as possible).

Claire brings Jim and Toby to meet Blinky and Aaarrrgghh. Jim still plans to steal the amulet as Strickler has told him for years that it's the only chance for changelings to be rewarded like they deserved. Besides, it's the perfect way to demonstrate Bular's incompetence. For Jim, getting closer to Claire and winning her trust is vital, not to mention that he genuinely believes he protects her as well as he tries to liberate her from the burden she got by accident.

Meanwhile, Strickler learns about the amulet as well and has a talk with Jim about it. Strickler approves Jim's plan and praises him for finally putting his feelings aside for the sake of the mission success.

Yet Strickler is wrong as Jim starts to waver the longer he is around Claire both as a member of her trollhunting team and a partner in the school play (which he also joined in the hope to get more chances to seize the amulet). After Claire defeats Draal, Jim starts to think that she might have a chance to beat Bular too (and he plans to fight by her side). With that there would be no need to serve Bular and Jim could live free life.

Jim also gets close with Blinky as he doesn't get enough kindness and support from Strickler. No, he doesn't discard Strickler as his father figure, but the new bond is also there.

Strickler starts to doubt Jim, especially after Claire finds the bridge in the museum (as Jim points out that one and gets on Nomura's way when she is close to seizing the amulet). Jim tries to talk his way out of the predicament and Strickler pretends he believes him. However, he also orchestrates Enrique's kidnapping and planting NotEnrique in Claire's family to spy on her. Jim knows nothing about this plan.

When NotEnrique is exposed, he tells Claire about Jim's real identity, but she refuses to believe him at first. Draal suggests a gaggletack test and Claire agrees to the plan. She catches Jim by surprise and learns the truth. Jim runs away, not being able to explain a thing. Claire is hurt as she started falling in love with Jim, but now thinks that everything was just a lie. Toby and Blinky are hurt too as they question their bonds with Jim. And there is some bonding between Draal and Claire as they both had feelings for a changeling.

Jim is angry and upset. Strickler tells him that it was his punishment for rebellious thoughts and that Jim is lucky to get away with just that. Nomura is more sympathetic, but she tells Jim that any love relationship involving changelings are doomed.

Jim considers giving up and just going with a flow as nearly all his bonds outside the Janus Order are in the shambles (Barbara is the only one remaining and Jim is scared that Strickler might scheme to ruin that one too).

Still, Jim comes to help Claire during the Battle of Two Bridges. He is the one who finishes Bular here. He also reconciles with everyone, changing sides for good this time.

It creates a new kind of friction though - Strickler initially flee somewhere (he tells Barbara he needs to visit an estranged relative). Jim initially believes that Strickler won't return.

The team is planning to save Enrique from the Darklands and Jim insists they should get his familiar out too. He plans to tell the whole truth to Barbara too as he has decided to live his life honestly now. He just doesn't know how to do it though.

Strickler returns after freeing Angor Rot and uses binding spell behind Jim's back (as he's scared that Jim can kill him to ensure Barbara's safety - and in this AU it is a real possibility).

Jim is enraged after learning about it and it's even more complicated as they all live under the same roof and Strickler never fails to remind Jim that each of his missteps may endanger Barbara. What he hasn't considered though is that Jim might approach Angor and try to bargain with him.

Alas, Inferna Copula is destroyed in this AU too, forcing Claire and Jim working with Strickler. Poor Barbara learns that both her fiance and son are not humans the same night (and here goes Jim's plan to proceed carefully). She is angry with Strickler, but surprisingly more accepting when it comes to Jim. When Jim promises to return her real son to her, she corrects him with 'other son'. Much like in the canon she forgets about supernatural after the breaking of binding spell, but Jim tells her the truth for the second time in any case.

Much like Jim in the canon, Claire travels to the Darklands alone (actually, that was her plan from the very start as she believes it is her problem to solve). Jim, however, goes to the Darklands too (after beating some guards), so he's now considered a criminal at the Trollmarket (not that he was in good position to start with because of his changeling status).

As Jim and Claire went separately, they don't travel together. Jim finds the familiars first (well, he knows where they are kept), but gets caught by Dictatious, ending the next cell to Nomura.

Claire rescues both her brother and Jim's familiar, but goes back after learning that Jim is still in the Darklands. Usurna orders to destroy the bridge, but the rest of trollhunters steal the fragments and hide them. Strickler, who has returned and now hopes to make up with both Barbara and Jim, also helps them. All of them go to the Darklands too, saving Claire, Jim and Nomura.

Gunmar is out, like in the canon. He tries to seize control over Draal, but Nomura saves him just in time (as she doesn't leave in this AU). However, none of trollhunters are welcome at the Trollmarket anymore because everyone believes they liberated Gunmar.

Barbara is upset that she cannot do a thing while her son and her fiance who is still trying to win her forgiveness are risking their lives while she cannot do a thing. She accidentally stumbles upon the shadow stuff (the team was using it but without much effectiveness) and starts to get mastery of it. Barbara is the one who ends summoning a huge shadow portal to save everyone and gets possessed by Morgana.

The team decides to awake Merlin, and his plan is no different from the canon. He turns Claire into a half-troll and when Jim faces him in a fury, tells him that Jim should be the last person upset as Claire's new species means they can be together. Jim punches him (hell, yeah!).

Jim leaves with Claire to New Jersey. Draal who survives in this AU goes too, hoping to mend his relationship with Nomura.

When Green Knight attacks, Jim takes the hit for Claire, so he needs to fight the corruption. The team goes back in time, with Barbara and Strickler being two additions.

Claire, Jim and Strickler end in Arthur's dungeons and meet Callista there. Barbara tries to talk some common sense into Arthur, and later end joining forces with Morgana (who she's wary off initially). They both plan the escape plan. Jim and Claire travel with Callista, however Strickler decides to hang out around Camelot as he knows some changeling history and wonders if some things might be changed without ruining the timeline.

The return to the future speeds up Jim's corruption, but rather than becoming the beast troll like in the canon, it brings up and multiplies the darkness in Jim's heart. It also makes him bigger and stronger.

Barbara takes Claire and they both go inside the Shadow Realm searching for Jim's soul. They find him trapped with his own insecurities and doubts and try to ensure him that he still has his own place. Jim snaps out of the control and Nari helps to heal his corruption (Morgana helps too).

As the amulet isn't destroyed here, Claire remains the Trollhunter. Jim, however, gets Excalibur and finds his role as the protector of the world.

[goldies-cryptobitch]

I just had to jot down some thoughts because I am on an Until Dawn/Trollhunters spiral (as if anybody can't tell from this commission lol. On a side note, I don't know if I've said it upfront before, but seriously, @undeadchestnut is such a great person to work with if you're looking for artists to visualize your art ideas, would HIGHLY recommend!) I love them both so much, and Angor and Josh both deserved SO much justice and I know I don't usually do a lot of talking here, and I know this crossover is obscure and strange and probably not interesting to most, but screw it, here's a crossover idea dump because I'm always emotional over these two (Mostly Josh right now, but I love them both equally)

◉ Josh being saved from the mines BEFORE dying or transforming into a bloodthirsty monster because seriously, screw those endings. I don't have an answer for why or how Trollhunters would end up there, but they could save his ass with ease.

◉ Jim and Josh being #TeamDaddyIssues, Jim sharing his absurd amount of troll dads because god knows Josh needs a non-neglectful father figure in his life too (Parental figure in general, for that matter. Can't believe the Washingtons ignored their last living child for so long that he could set up his revenge prank with literally nobody noticing. smh)

◉ Barbara helping Josh get over his anxiety/mistrust of doctors and the medical system, especially after those downright cruel Dr. Hill hallucinations, and getting him the medication he needs

◉ Jim and co. being a supportive friend group??? That don't fight 24/7 and bully each other to literal death????? Revolutionary.

◉ Claire accidentally becoming like a reminder of his sisters in Josh's eyes (because she definitely has Beth energy, don't @ me, you can't deny it) and Josh having to work through a lot of the Complicated Grief Feelings he's been pushing down for a damn year, but he can do that in a safe environment this time because the Trollhunters kids are a ✨Supportive Friend Group✨

◉ Sam, Chris, and Josh ditching the rest of their toxic-ass, shitstain friends in favour of the ✨Supportive Friend Group✨

◉ Barbara helping Josh get over his anxiety/mistrust of doctors and the medical system, especially after those downright cruel Dr. Hill hallucinations, and getting him the medication he needs

◉ Angor Rot and Josh both being able to relate to the whole "Most people I've ever placed my trust in ended up betraying me" vibe, but Angor being more mature and knowledgeable (and having a better understanding of actual friendship thanks to the Trollhunters gang) would have to work it into Josh's head that no, bullying each other and hating 90% of your friend group is actually NOT normal, healthy, or a stable way to keep relationships lmao. "Revenge-pranking" and ignoring the actual issue to get over your survivor's guilt and severe hatred is actually Not A Great Remedy, Joshua.

◉ The Trollhunters gang canonically enjoys horror movies, if I remember correctly, so Josh's dad being a famous horror director and the special effects/production skills Josh learned from that could be a fun thing they might all bond over.

◉ On the opposite side of that, the absolutely chaotic pranks Josh and NotEnrique could pull off together with their combined intelligence and thirst for chaos would be off-the-charts wildness. Josh and NotEnrique would be AMAZING friends.

◉ I'd say they'd start a Youtube prank channel together, but given that Josh's prank history is like a more extreme version of the Sam Pepper "Best Friend Murder" prank, that might not go over so well publicly lmfao

◉ Barbara helping Josh get over his anxiety/mistrust of doctors and the medical system, especially after those downright cruel Dr. Hill hallucinations, and getting him the medication he needs

◉ Sam and Claire bonding over their boyfriends' past "i mUsT bEaR mY pAiN aLoNe" idiocy

◉ Sam also lowkey being horrified at how much the Trollhunter kids have had to put up with too. "WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU FOUGHT IN A MAGICAL WAR AT 16?!"

◉ I don't know what Chris might do in the group tbh, but him and Toby sharing the whole "nerdass dork, ride-or-die best friend" role makes me smile. They'd support their bros together, I guess. 😛 (I could see Chris joining in with Josh and NotEnrique's milder hijinks, but he's too much of a mom friend to go as extreme as those two would be willing to)

◉ At that point, Biggest Mom Friend Samantha would have to reel in their craziness and give 'em a good scolding lmfao

[disturbedbydesign]

A Very Bad Thing (Deviance Series - Part 2)

Pairing: Jim Hopper x OFC

Word Count: 3.4K

Summary: Chief Jim Hopper is a mess. He spends his days drowning his grief over his daughter’s death in alcohol and pussy. Having already fucked his way through the small town of Hawkins, he goes trolling for ass a few towns over and gets more than he bargained for in Sarah, a young girl who shares his daughter’s name.

Warnings: Daddy Kink, Explicit Sex (O&V), Spanking, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Everyone’s Got Daddy Issues. 18+ only, no minors.

A/N: I wrote this a thousand years ago but I just rewatched Black Widow and my David Harbour/Hop Daddy problem has returned in full force. Dividers by @firefly-graphics.

Hopper pulls into the parking lot of a fleabag motel and parks his Blazer out of sight. No one needs to know who he is here and it’s better for everyone if they don’t. He’s about two hours outside Hawkins, in a town that people don’t leave; there’s no reason for anyone to know his face or his name, but he’ll use a fake one anyway. He had to get out of town, if only for the night.

Hopper has been plowing his way through Hawkins for over a year now, and this series of mostly regrettable decisions has come with an unexpected consequence. Perhaps he would have expected it had he given half a shit but it is what it is: Hopper can barely walk out his door without coming face to face with a woman who he has known, carnally, in the not too distant past. These interactions have ranged from slightly uncomfortable to violent. He deserved worse than a slap across the face and he knows it, but it still stung like a bitch and he doesn’t care to repeat it.

Tonight he’s on the prowl for some strange. He checks into Motel Hellhole under the name John Baker, takes a quick shower and some pills, and he’s off to the gritty looking bar up the road. Any bar walking distance from a place this nasty is bound to contain a few women willing to make that ten minute walk for a good time with a stranger. He’s not above going home with a pro, either. He’ll take any pussy that comes willingly, and with no strings.

Sarah notices him the second he walks through the door—that tall, thick stranger with the beard and the thighs that she could already picture smothering her—and she decides she has to have him. She doesn’t know exactly how old he is but she’s willing to bet he’s got about fifteen years on her. It doesn’t matter; he’s exactly what she’s looking for and she’s old enough to make her own decisions. She’s a college graduate now—an adult, not a child. She has a steady job, she pays her bills, she can do what she wants, and nobody can tell her what to do anymore.

Especially not Him.

She hates the term “daddy issues”—it’s far too reductive—but it is what it is and she can’t help the things that she wants. She will always blame Him for the way that she is and her therapist says that’s normal. Of course, the doc doesn’t know about the things she craves in the dark, with other men—strangers who could be Him but aren’t. Maybe this is exactly the kind of thing she should be talking about in therapy instead of her usual lies and half-truths but she just can’t bring herself to admit it, even to another woman. Some things should only be discussed in the dark.

It’s rare for her to get this worked up so quickly but this one is truly special. By the time he’s at the bar she’s already thinking about what he might look like bending her over his knee and spanking her until her ass is a searing red. She wonders how far he would let her go—if he’d let her say the things she wants to say but can’t talk about. She wonders if he has things he can’t say either.

Hopper is savoring that first sip—the burn of the whiskey scratching the itch he’s had since 10am—when the jailbait sidles up next to him on a mission. She’s young—too young—but she asks anyway.

“Buy me a drink?”

He shakes his head and laughs. “No.”

“C’mon,” she says. “Just one little drink.”

He turns to her and gives her a quick up-and-down. Early twenties, he thinks, everything is still high and tight on this one. Still, it’s best to be certain.

“Lemme see some ID.”

She just laughs, but he’s dead serious and she eventually digs her driver’s license out of her purse. “Happy now?”

22. It’s questionable, but older men than he have done far, far worse and it’s not the kind of night for scruples. Then he sees her name.

Shit.

“Sarah,” he says. “Pretty name.”

He turns away from her, back to his whiskey, hoping she’ll go away.

“I always thought it was kind of boring,” she says, “but if you like it…”

She hops up on the barstool next to him and he’s praying that she’ll just leave him alone but she’s relentless—fiery and desperate. She crosses her legs and swivels to face him.

“I’ll take a Jack and Coke with lime,” she says.

Just one drink, he tells himself. He will buy her one drink, make polite conversation, and then leave.

The bartender pours Sarah’s cocktail and sets it down in front of her, and when she takes Hopper’s money she gives him a not-so-thinly-veiled look of disapproval. Deep down he knows this nice, old bartender lady is right, but it still pisses him off. Who the fuck is she to tell Chief Jim Hopper what he can and can’t do? Granted here he is not the Chief—he’s good ol’ John Baker from nowhere, just passing through.

It only took that one look from the bartender to make him want to do Very Bad Things to this eager young thing sitting next to him. Because now it was a challenge designed to disgust this old hag behind the bar who had the audacity to question him. Chief Jim Hopper does whatever the fuck he wants, for better or worse.

Sarah squeezes the lime in and stirs her drink with her finger, sucking it dry in a way designed to hold his attention. It works, because on nights like this one, he is more animal than man.

“So,” she says, “you know my name but I don’t know yours. That’s hardly fair.”

Hopper clears his throat. “It’s, uh, John,” he says.

She raises one eyebrow. “Is John really the best you could come up with?”

He meets her eyes and they are blue-green and bright with youth. “Do you really care what my name is?

“No,” she says. “I don’t.”

She finishes her drink far too quickly and Hopper orders her another one. He hears the bartender mutter “pig” under her breath and he smirks at her as she walks away.

The walk to the motel is a short one but it feels much longer in heels. Sarah is using Hopper’s wide body to steady herself but it’s still slow going.

“Why do women wear those things?” he asks.

“Because men like them.”

He chortles under his breath and pulls a pack of smokes from his pocket.

“Aren’t you gonna offer me one?”

“Don’t smoke,” he says, lighting one up. “It’s bad for you.”

She rolls her eyes so hard it hurts. “Whatever you say, Daddy.”

She didn’t mean to say it. It just slipped out. She hadn’t even meant it in that way in this particular circumstance but, well, it’s out there now. She waits, and the pause is excruciating.

“Good girl,” he says.

Even in the dark she can see his smile is wicked. He’s drunk—they both are, but she’s acting drunker than she really is. She doesn’t know why, exactly. Maybe it makes it easier to play the game she wants to play. Maybe she just wants him to want to take care of her. And he does, too. It’s in the way he hugs one arm tight around her waist to keep her steady, and the way he asks, “You sure you’re alright?”

“I’m great,” she says. “Never better.”

The closer they get to the motel, the louder the voice gets: This is Wrong. This is Wrong. Do not do this. It’s a voice, ever so slightly maternal, that he hears often and never listens to. Tonight is no different; it’s worse, even, because his demons are getting louder and hungrier as they approach the door to his room—contrarians drowning out every last shred of reason.

Psst, they say. Do this horrible terrible Very Bad Thing with this pretty young daddy-less girl. Psst, they say. Don’t you miss being someone’s Daddy? Be her Daddy for the night. This one you can help. This one you can save.

Maybe, just maybe, this will help you.

Of course it won’t, and he knows that, but the whole concept holds a sick sort of allure and she is clearly desperate for a kind stranger to indulge her in whatever it is she needs to do. He assumes she’s got her reasons for wanting things this way and he knows that it’s none of his business. It’s easier not knowing. Everything’s easier in the dark.

“It’s cold out here, Daddy.”

It sounds different when she says it: none of the innocence and sweetness of a child, but still with that pleading tone, that need to be both seen and heard.

“We’re almost there, princess.”

He has no earthly idea why he calls her that but it feels like the right thing to do. Hopper turns the key in the door and she pushes past him inside, flopping down on the bed and shedding the troublesome heels.

“Feel better, princess?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

This is a hell of a lot more than he bargained for tonight and he doesn’t really know what he’s meant to be doing, but one look at her sitting expectant on the bed and he realizes that he doesn’t care. He knows this is a Very Bad Thing but it doesn’t feel that way; it feels like blood humming under his skin, muscles tensing, and a throbbing down below. In this room with this girl, Hopper feels powerful, a protector. It feels fucking good, and isn’t that the point of all of this? To feel good for a little while before he inevitably feels bad again?

He crosses the room and sits, legs splayed, in a chair across from the bed, never once taking his eyes off her.

“Bring me a cigarette,” he says, and he waits.

Before tonight, in all her years of sexual activity Sarah had only found two guys willing to indulge her darkest urges. The first was some frat guy in college who would have done anything to get in her pants. She appreciated the effort but it just wasn’t right: he was too young, too short, too lean. He was a boy; she wanted a man. The second was a guy she met in a bar near her apartment in Indianapolis. She’d just graduated and moved as far away from home as she reasonably could, and she’d been in the mood to celebrate cutting that particular cord. The guy fit the basic qualifications but even with beer goggles he was borderline repulsive: bad breath, thinning hair, his body the wrong kind of thick. She felt sick afterward and swore she’d never do it again.

Neither of them compare to this John, or whatever the fuck his name is. He’s everything she’s ever wanted—a little bit more, actually, because he is thick everywhere. She’s trying her best not to choke on him but even with his hands clenched tight in her hair and his voice stern, he’s being almost delicate with her.

He sounds calm when he speaks, almost bored: “You sure know your way around a dick, don’t you? Got a lot of practice I bet, taking home random guys to suck and fuck when you don’t even know their fucking names. Didn’t Daddy raise you better than that?”

He didn’t, actually, but her cunt throbs anyway when he says it. She can barely breathe and he knows it and releases her, and when she pops off his cock she wipes the snot and spit off her face and says, “I’m sorry, Daddy.”

“You will be,” he says. “Stand up.”

She gets up quick and stands stark naked in front of him. He’s leaning back in the chair, languid, with one hand stroking his cock and the other stroking his beard. He takes his time soaking in every inch of her. She’s buzzing with the need to be touched and whispers, “Please,” without thinking.

“Please what?”

“Please punish me.”

He smiles lazily at her and says, “What am I gonna do with you?”

“Whatever you want,” she says, and she means it.

“You’ve been a bad girl, princess.”

“I know, Daddy.”

“And what happens to bad girls?”

“They get the belt.”

It just slips out. She doesn’t mean it or want it, and now she’s frozen in place, waiting, hoping she didn’t just ruin everything.

Please don’t.

He shakes his head slowly and she releases the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding.

“No belt,” he says. “Not for my princess. No, you’ll just get a good old-fashioned spanking.” He pats his thighs. “Now get on Daddy’s lap and take your medicine.”

There is nothing in the world that feels better to Sarah than a good hard spanking. Something about that sharp, stinging, red-hot pain mixed with her inevitable arousal is sickly familiar and provides a kind of release she can’t get any other way. He has big, bruising hands and he’s not afraid to put a little muscle into it and leave his mark on her. She hopes she will see it there tomorrow, after her new Daddy is long gone, as she stands naked in the bedroom of the childhood home she’s still forced to visit. She can see it now: the over-the-shoulder examination, counting the bruises and tracing the handprints in the full-length mirror on the door while He sits quietly downstairs, waiting for mother to bring Him his dinner.

A series of three quick whacks gets her squealing and squirming like a pig in his lap but he holds her there with his forearm. She can feel his cock hard against her stomach. She can’t see his face but she can hear his gruff voice loud and clear.

“Spread your legs.”

She does as he asks and he runs a thick finger up and down and then, finally, pushes inside her. He grunts at her wetness and the ease with which she opens up for him. His other hand is kneading an ass cheek already swollen and raw and the combination of the two sensations—fire and water—brings her close to coming.

“Don’t stop, Daddy.”

He’s not speaking now, only grunting and growling his approval as she starts to push back against his fingers and take them deeper. He smacks her hard, once, and then leans over and licks a hot trail across the small of her back.

“Fuuuck,” she says, long and low, and he smacks her again, harder this time.

“Watch your fucking mouth.”

She can barely find the breath to say, “Yes, Daddy,” but she does and then she feels herself coming hard around his fingers. He sounds underwater when he says, “That’s a good girl.”

There is a moment—brief but horrifying—when Hopper is struck with a terrible clarity. In these few seconds, with his cock deep in this girl’s throat, he is clear-headed enough to acknowledge the absolute depravity of the situation. It is playing on a loop in his head—“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy”—but it’s Her voice he is hearing. He almost pushes her away, pulls up his pants, and walks out the door, but he doesn’t for one simple reason: it feels fucking fantastic. Hopper is deep in animal fuck mode and even though he already hates himself, when has that ever stopped him?

She’s whiny when she comes, which he usually finds irritating, but in this particular instance it seems fitting. He’s ready to fuck this girl through the mattress now so he stands her up, lifts her by the underarms, and tosses her onto the mattress like she weighs nothing. The demons are back now, loud as ever. Psst, they say, fuck her raw, fill her up with cum and make yourself a new baby girl. But even he knows that’s a bridge he can’t cross so he wordlessly digs a rubber out of his wallet and tosses it to her.

She gets it on him with practiced speed and she’s begging him to fuck her in some truly disturbing terms. He thinks about which way he wants to take her first and he decides he wants to see her work for it. He sits on the edge of the bed and pulls her in close.

“Hop on,” he says. “Ride Daddy’s dick for a while.”

She climbs on him, absolutely giddy, and within moments she’s got him lined up just right. She lowers herself onto him, nice and slow, and when her ass hits his thighs and he can’t get any deeper further she moans long and low.

“You’re so fucking thick, Daddy,” she says, and he digs his fingers into her hips.

She’s a bit too bony for his taste but she’s light as anything and when she starts to work his cock he practically snarls. She’s fucking him hard now, head thrown back and nails dug deep into his shoulders, sure to leave a mark. Hopper’s eyes wander up from her perky little tits bouncing to a small mole on her neck—so pale and exposed. The animal part of him wants to sink his teeth into it, break the skin, taste blood; instead, he grabs her under the ass and stands up, balls deep in her, and fucks her until his arms give out.

She’s on another plane now, yelling “Fuck me, Daddy,” over and over again at a volume that would make him paranoid were he anywhere else but this sleazebag motel. This room has seen worse—he’s almost sure of it. He tosses her on her back on the bed and mounts her, knowing he’s close but not wanting it to end. When it ends it will become something other than what it currently is, which is an almost indescribable feeling of Wrong and Right and Good and Bad, all jumbled up in a big bag of Who Gives A Fuck.

He hovers over her, just the tip in, and she whines, “I want it.”

He pulls out and slaps her clit with it. “Then ask for it nicely, you little brat.”

“Please, Daddy,” she begs. “Can I have it?”

“Say you’ll be a good girl if you get it.”

“I will,” she says. “I promise.”

He puts the tip in again and she bucks underneath him, trying to get more of him. He pushes her hips down on the bed.

“Wait for it,” he says.

She whines again, like a bitch in heat this time, and he knows it’s time to barrel toward the end of this thing he’s found himself doing. He enters her with one punishing thrust and she scratches his back raw as he fucks himself to completion.

“Come in me, Daddy,” she says. “Please.”

He ignores it because he really does want to, and instead he opts for something messier. He pulls out, tosses the rubber on the already jizz-stained carpet, and says, “Finish me, princess.”

And she does, with her hands and her mouth and those tiny tits that can’t wrap around his girth. All the while she’s telling him how she wants to taste Daddy’s cum, and before he can stop himself he’s got one hand on her jaw and the other in her hair and he’s grunting and huffing his way over the edge.

He hits her in the eye, the hair, the back of the throat, and before he’s blown the last drop he already feels dead inside. He is seized by a dark emptiness the likes of which he hasn’t felt in a long time. She says, “Thank you, Daddy,” and he can feel the whiskey rising, and when she tries to give him a kiss he jolts away from her, bolts to the bathroom, and vomits in the sink.

After a while he hears a timid knock on the door.

“Are you OK, John?”

It takes all the strength he can muster to put some power into his voice.

He barks, “Get the fuck out,” and he can hear her start to cry before the door slams behind her.

When she’s gone and there’s nothing left in his stomach but bile, he lays down on the filthy bathroom tile and weeps. He whispers to himself, “I’m sorry, Sara,” like a twisted lullaby, hoping somehow it will reach Her.

DEVIANCE PART 3

[rosemaidenvixen]

JIIIIIIIIM! 😭😭😭😭

I hate seeing him so down and full of self-loathing for his troll form- and secrets aside, all the things he hates are normal troll things but he has NO IDEA. All he can see is a disgusting predator/monster that is making his mom miserable 😭😭😭😭 He needs so much support on that front, but for now his life is crumbling around him, he feels alone and that it’s better he be alone, and it hurts to see him hurting! (Also James Senior is a dick, Barbara deserved better and I’m glad she will receive better- you know, once Strickler changes sides. He may be a ruthless assassin, but at least he’s going to feel sorry about it.)

I really hope the trip to Salem gets them answers- and not just because I’m dying for some myself. For the life of me I can’t figure out why the BBoD was mixed in with normal bath bombs. Unless Sarah was like Merlin, could see the future, and always knew where the BBoD would end up. 🤔 And that raises a lot of implications about her motives if that’s the case.

And OMG, the Reveal is coming next? I thought that wasn’t until chapter 23?! I’m actually really worried about what Darci, Claire, Mary, and Toby have planned- since the Reveal is coming, their plan is probably what gets the ball rolling. They have good intentions but lately all their plans just cause Jim stress and I have a feeling this is going to be even WORSE. Who’s POV is next?

Another great but heart wrenching chapter! Good work!

JIm is at his absolute lowest right now, but once you hit bottom there's only one place left to go, and Jim will start moving up pretty soon.

And if you think James Sr is an ass now....let's just say he does not get better.

The Big Reveal is going to be a major event that spans multiple chapters, so it will start during chapter 22, with most of the main drama being in chapter 23 with chapters 24 and 25 being resolution.

For the mystery surrounding the bath bomb of doom I don't want to give too much away, but it is going to be completely unlike anything Barbara or Jim expect.

[incorrigible-groupie]

Actually, the ends weren’t that bad (a TPN/TOA essay)

So.

There are two series that ended recently and which had a lot of impact for me but also a very controversial end, like there are some wars between fans who argue about if the end was good… or not.

And me ? I really want to believe that The Promised Neverland (the manga, obviously) and Trollhunters have very coherent ends.

You’re probably wondering « why putting these two together ? » and I have a reason, multiple reasons actually. Of course, there will be spoilers of The Promised Neverland and the entire Tales of Arcadia saga (Trollhunters, 3Below, Wizards and the movie Rise of the Titans).

First, Promised Neverland. 

And mostly the character who made a lot of people cringe even before the last book : Emma. Cringe because, for some fans, she isn’t someone you can relate with because she isn’t realistic… in every sense of the word.

She is too perfect or at least too perfectly programmed for the plot whisky is not entirely true ! « She is too kind ! » well… maybe not ? I don’t think all her actions were driven by kindness. 

She is too clever to be the naive kind of kind. 

And don’t tell me that if she was that clever, she would have noticed that her orphanage was a farm because… she probably was in denial. Also, how would she imagine that monsters were waiting for them outside ? Maybe she didn’t see, maybe she didn’t want to see. But anyway, when she discovered the truth, her first thought was to get everyone out. EVERYONE.

Of course, there are her family, she won’t let them… but she did have to let some of them because it would have been too complicated, so that prove that she isn’t just a naive idealistic.

She wanted to fight, first for her family, then for every kid of every farm, because that wouldn’t be fair if her kids stayed alive and not the others. Then she also want to save every monsters, because that wouldn’t be fair since they didn’t choose to have to eat meat.

This is not about being kind, this is about being fair. This is about responsibility and guilt.

Emma doesn’t want to save everyone because everyone deserve to be saved or something cute like that, she would have killed less people or monsters otherwise.

She wants to save everyone because she doesn’t want to feel as bad as the people, as the monsters who hurt her and her family. She doesn’t want to be a monster.

When she understood, and ONLY WHEN she understood what it means to hunt, she realized how thin was the line between her enemy and herself so she doesn’t want to live knowing people lived horribly because of her. 

She didn’t want to live with that on her conscience.

And… I think this is kind of selfish ? She doesn’t do that because it’s right, she does that because she wants to be better… I don’t know. She took a lot of risks, for her and for a friends just so she won’t feel that guilt.

But the others don’t care that the mutants die, only Emma who is really clever like I said before understood and was like « yeah so no we need to find a solution or it will haunt me for the rest of my life ». This is more like a perfectionist thing that a kind thing.

Which is… logical for a character like Emma.

Really the characters in the manga are very well-written, especially Isabella who has such a dignified way to die. It was a good end for her, very symbolic, even if I’m very sad about it. When she betrayed the blond guy, I was pleasantly surprised but at the same time it made sense like, it’s very consistent, everything is consistent even if we started with a complex project. Ending the meat industry ? Save all the children ? And Isabella’s end shows how the real villain of the story are the one who benefit from the system (which says a lot about our own society).

But Emma, actually, became « queen » of the system when she made the new treaty, she literally created a new system so… welcome responsibilities while she was only 14. Will she benefit too ? Or even take advantage ? But how could she after everything she learnt, and mostly after so many people sacrificed their lives so she could reach her goal ? Did she deserve it ?

How could she live with that on her conscience ?

The answer is : she can’t. She isn’t that strong. She isn’t that positive. She isn’t that perfect.

And destiny (haha) gave her a solution on a silver plate. Not by surprise like a Deus Ex Machina since we knew there would be a counterparty which won’t be too violent because Emma cleared the path. This was an equivalent exchange. THIS IS LIKE FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST ! (By the way, why does everyone think TPN’s end was too easy while in FMA, the best manga of all time, the solution to get Alphonse’s body back was in Ed’s hands… LITERALLY !).

Anyway.

The demon offered to lose her memory, thinking she would refuse because she would be alone, separated from her family which is… euh… stupid… I mean… have you seen Your Name ?

People who are meant to be together will find each other.

Moreover, Emma was so relieved because it was solving all her problems : nobody dies, everybody goes to the other world, nobody sacrifices themselves, and the guilt she was afraid to live with ? Gone. I think Emma was also relieved to be like « yes, I have a second chance, now I will live a normal life ». And it was selfish because it seemed like she said « so guys I will send you to another universe I know nothing about after I brought you into this mess but now you will deal with it yourself everyone ! ». That was… a little cowardly ?

And the worst was that every encounter she made, every lesson she learnt, she lost them…

Well, thinking about that…

TROLLHUNTERS !

Trollhunter’s end was… hard. And gave me a bitter sensation since not only we said goodbye to our favorite characters but we also genuinely said goodbye to the show. Even if we wanted to watch the show a second time, it was kinda deleted (along with Anton Yelchin acting…) ? 

Yes, it’s hard… but isn’t it ballsy to do a scenario like this ? And we could have expected this, it’s not the first time we talked about time travel in this saga. And for gods sake at the very beginning of the movie there were a lot of things that shouldn’t happen. The train’s crash in New York, the Titans probably crushing people, the bridge being destroyed, and all that jazz… Can you imagine how Jim should have lived with all of this besides everything else he had lost ? And then, Toby died (which affected me more than I imagined).

But it’s not Toby’s death that made Jim want to change everything, it was just the last straw. The last thing that wasn’t supposed to happen. After all, if it was written that Jim was given another chance, if Naru saw that Jim would have to get back, to go aaaaall the way back, there must have a reason, or multiple reasons. Do you think humans could live normally after everything that happened ? Do you think humans and trolls could coexist ? I’m not sure, not after that kind of damage. And Arcadia was destroyed ! The HeartStone, the center of the universe, was destroyed too ! I think even if Toby survived, the end wasn’t that bright…

And the time-travel wasn’t a Deus Ex Machina either because otherwise it would have been a « and then BOUM everything is back to normal and everything is ok » situation, which isn’t… 

We don’t know what will happen. 

Jim will do everything so it’ll be okay but maybe he will make some mistakes. Vendel may not survive, maybe they will take more time to kill Gunmar, Aaaaaargh may be turn to stone again… we don’t know. And I think everyone in the fandom is pissed because of that. Because we don’t know. And I do understand : this is not the end, not a conclusion, not a great finale, more like the beginning of something we won’t get to see (like a legacy?), which is both great and very very sad for us. I hope Dreamworks will do comics or books…

But also, I doesn’t mean that nothing will be like before. There is a lot of things Jim has no control of. For example, what happened to the extraterrestrials, Jim knew nothing about it so he can’t change a thing. And for the wizards too. And when you think about it, what happens in « Wizards » has to happen. Jim won’t be a troll during that arc but it will happen anyway, it’s supposed to happen because it’s the creation of the Trollhunter, the creation of the Amulet ! And Jim has no idea of what will become because he wasn’t really there.

What is supposed to happen will happen.

Friendship or love, it will happen. Even the relationship between Jim and Blinky, even if Jim isn’t the Trollhunter. OH, SPEAKING OF WHICH.

Choosing Toby as the new Trollhunter is a super idea. Toby will accept his role right away. Toby will love his new destiny. And since he will have Jim’s help, he will be okay. Jim doesn’t want his friends to get traumatized again (I mean it’s cool to learn stuff but do you really need to suffer for that?)(I’M LOOKING AT YOU AGAIN, EDWARD ELRIC), so he will do what he can so things don’t get too heavy. And you know, maybe he want (AND DESERVE) to give a bit away. He probably give the Amulet to Toby because he knew Toby is brave enough to fight even without powers… and because he was tired to bear the Amulet ? Anyway, like I said, everything that is supposed to happen will happen and if Toby isn’t the right Trollhunter, the Amulet won’t choose him.

AH ! And don’t forget that Jim doesn’t need the Amulet to be a Trollhunter ! This is literally what the show wanted to teach us, guys ! If you forget it, it proves that it’s not only the characters who had a reset…

A reset…

Holy guacamole this is exactly like Undertale. This is Undertale’s principle. Jim is Frisk who after taking a Neutral Route wants to do a True Pacifist Route ! This is so cooooool !

Except that, exactly like in The Promised Neverland finale (well, not exactly but like a reversed version of it), Jim decides that everyone forgets everything that happened and take the guilt off their shoulders, as heavy as an armor. He erased everyone’s guilt, except his. That is far from being selfish or cowardly.

It’s the opposite ! These two shows which don’t have a lot in common have finales being negative pictures !

And Jim’s end isn’t perfect either because he still has the world on his shoulders (a little less because he isn’t the Bearer of the Amulet, but still a little more because he knows what happens if it goes wrong). 

He is still the Young Atlas because even if the characters in the shows won’t live the same thing, they will still be the characters we knew, the characters we saw growing, the characters as brave and as strong as we used to see : like in Undertale, « despite everything, it’s still you ».

And to everyone who says to me « yeah but it will go wrong because when Merlin shows Jim the future where he isn’t the Trollhunter, it was shit », well : NO.

Jim stays a Trollhunter, he said so ! And I mostly think (since the moment I saw this episode) this all thing was an illusion, not a real future, because Merlin is a real piece of garbage and I was only sad for Douxie when Merlin died (otherwise, I would have celebrate it). And I think Jim knows it too, that it wasn’t real.

By the way, I hope they will find another way to not say « For the glory of Merlin » anymore, I loved the new version of the Amulet in the movie (AND JIM LOVED IT TOO).

All of this just to say that : these endings, even if it’s very frustrating, make sense.

Of course, saying goodbye to so many things I cared about for years make it difficult to assimilate it, but that also means that I really loved it.

And in the end, it showed these two characters flaws, these perfect, pure, way-too-nice characters with too many responsibilities and a huge desire to survive, but who are being selfish for once by taking a clean start.

But they’re doing it with their pockets full of determination… proving how humans they are.

And I really will miss them.

Ready ? Set ? Go !

[mettywiththenotes]

ROTT Thoughts and Spoilers

I know a lot of people aren’t happy with the ending (and That One Thing), and it was a surprise to me too. I think it was obviously supposed to be telling the end of the series, but as a movie on netflix, they also presented it as a stand-alone, which is why Blinky was recapping everything and had no follow-up as to why he was telling it, and why he was going through every bit of what happened. Plus the subplot comedy with Steve. If it was supposed to be both connected to the series but also stand-alone for kids who didn’t know what it was connected to, then they likely felt like they had to add in the comedy to fill in the gaps of trauma and death (though the subject for the comedy is... questionable lol)

I also see a lot of people talking about how everything has been erased now from the timeline, BUT CONSIDER - Jim now letting everything happen again so he can find his friends and let them have the happy endings they deserve without all their trauma

Like I also think the Toby Getting The Amulet part was a little off, but I kinda think it was because Jim was thinking Toby could have the coolness of the armour and heroic duty too! And since Jim is there to stop him from getting traumatized and hurt, Toby gets to have his fun and so does Jim by being his sidekick, fighting bad guys and getting The Good Timeline

BUT ANYWAY I keep thinking about the possibilities of what could go on now, since it seems to be somewhat of an open ending

Like imagine Jim letting everything that happens happen, but having a suspicious amount of knowledge on the dangers

Toby just keeps saying to him “Man, Jim, you always seem to know what to do! It’s like you’re psychic or something!” and Jim just laughs, shaking his head because Toby doesn’t know how right he is

But then it gets more serious and Jim is basically stopping stuff that should have been harder to dodge or get around. Toby gets to the point where he’s like “Okay this is seriously getting scary, Jim. How do you know all this stuff?”

And idk maybe Jim does something so crazy, so very suspicious that he can’t excuse anymore, that he just tells Toby. He just tells him that he’s from another timeline and about what happened and it’s like such a stark contrast to how he normally is in that timeline - Jim is happy now, here with all of his friends, doing somewhat normal kid stuff and being the knowing sidekick because he doesn’t want Toby to die. He’s so happy, but when he can’t make excuses anymore and tells the truth to Toby, it’s like he’s reliving everything with a melancholy expression that nobody is used to seeing

And in truth, he kind of has been reliving everything anyway. He’s been having nightmares of the other timeline - of Draal dying again, of Nari and Strickler dying and not being able to save them. Of course, he can save them now, he has that chance, but he still remembers everything from the other timeline and is still traumatised by it.

And so, not being able to get around Toby’s questions anymore, he tells him what happened, and Toby is hooked on his every word. Listens to him and sees what Jim had gone through.

When Jim finishes his retelling, Toby is as patient and kind as ever. “Oh, Jim, I didn’t know... wait, doesn’t this mean you’ve been reliving everything on your own? All those bad guys and all that pain?”

Jim gives him a considering look before shaking his head a little. “It’s a little tricky. All the events are the same, but not exactly the same, you know? I know what happens, so I can change it, so nobody has to die and nothing has to get worse. And we can find all my friends - our friends - again. And everything will be okay.”

And Jim smiles, because this is better. This is what he wanted, right? Sure, there are some things he misses; his familiar bond with Blinky being one of them. They are still friends and they still talk now, but the bond just isn’t the same as it was in the other timeline. And Strickler still being his step-dad is good, but that bond that they had before, of being direct enemies and student and teacher in both the class and training, is gone, and things are still better and nicer, but it’s just not the same

But this is fine too! Right? He’s better here. Happier.

Toby pays more attention to him now. He’s still his friend and they still save the world together with Claire and the trolls, but Jim can never escape his eye when a bad memory comes up, or something triggers him.

When necessary sacrifices come up (like having to let one of their friends get hit so they can do something that will end the fight quicker, or having to let his friends fail in order to acquire something and then succeed), the guilt on Jim’s face is so visible. He wants everybody to be fine and happy, to meet his friends again in a better world, but for that to happen, there’s a certain give-and-take that needs to take place, and it breaks Jim’s heart every time. He doesn’t let anybody die like in the other timeline, of course not, but he still doesn’t like purposefully screwing them over just to get to a better vantage point where he can deal more damage to the enemy, or do something that will end one of the apocalypses quicker.

It’s a little thing between Toby and Jim for a while that nobody else knows about.

Sometimes, Jim gets his nightmares and he wakes up during the night, cold sweat and shaking. He immediately texts Toby to see if he’s awake, and Toby always is. He offers Jim to come over and talk. Toby has always been such a good friend to him. Somehow, that thought is what makes his breathing come quicker when he remembers the other timeline’s Toby, his dead body in that van.

Jim stands outside his house, still in his pajamas, waiting to be let into Toby’s house. They sneak up quietly and Toby distracts him, or they talk about it. Sometimes it ends in tears, with Toby hugging him and comforting him, and sometimes Jim is muffling his laughter so much just so he doesn’t wake Nanna, or even the whole neighborhood. Toby distracts him with comic books, or with an anecdote on smthg that happened where he had gone off with Aaaargh to a park and tried to keep him hidden from the people.

It’s a secret between them, for now. And Jim finally has someone to talk to about it, until he eventually chooses to tell the others

When everyone is finally back together, he tells them, and they get straight to defeating the Arcane Order, stopping the end of the world and saving Nari, and the effect that she has on the world is that the world is reborn with her power, but she can control just how much gets reborn. So idk maybe the planet just has a little more plants now than it did, and humanity is still saved

But because time travel is tricky, and because I’m not quite sure on timelines, maybe the Arcane Order being defeated extends to both timelines, so all the kids get to concentrate on in The Good Timeline is beating up bad guys and being kids

(ugh, timetravel)

And - of course - they all finally get to have brunch together, like Douxie promised! And Jim gets a therapist because its what he deserves

This kinda got away from me but anyway these are just my thoughts, you don’t have to follow them, and all I can say is thank god for fix-it fics and au’s

Like I guess I’m not too against the ending of the movie, but I will always be thankful for fix-it fan content

[fan-writer02]

Post Wizards ficlet, because I needed me some more Jim content. :D So beware, Wizards spoilers galore! Enjoy. (Click HERE to read this little drabble on Ao3.)

Live

Jim, Claire, Toby, Steve, and Krell split ways with Arrrgh and Blinky, seeing as how it was in the middle of the day and the two trolls would be defenseless to the sun. So, Jim followed Toby and Krell, his hand in Claire’s, finding it odd that it took much longer to cross a short stretch of land. His legs were shorter, he realized, and his feet smaller. No longer could he just step over a fallen log. Now he had to climb.

Toby, Steve and Krell chatted amiably, and Jim tried his best to listen in, to try and pick something up about this near stranger. He vaguely remembered the fellow teen, but by no means did he know him. All he knew was that he could change into an alien. Nothing about why he was here or how he’d gotten here. And he knew that was probably something he should know because he had to stay informed. If the time came that a fight was needed, he should know who his allies were. Because he was-

Jim paused, and heaved a deflating sigh.

Because he is the trollhunter.

Was the trollhunter. With the amulet gone, Jim didn't know if being trollhunter was even a possibility anymore.

Claire tugged on his hand, and he broke out of his musings. She was smiling at him- no, not smiling- practically beaming at him. Her smile was wider than he’d ever seen it, and she’d been smiling the entire trip through the forest. Just… looking at him.

The idea of her watching him made him feel warm and cozy inside, and for a moment his other worries melted away. It was just… them. Claire and Jim. Jim and Claire. If it could be this way forever, he’d never complain.

“You looked far away.” She said with a tilt of her head. They continued walking, picking their way through tall shrubs and grass. She gave his hand a squeeze. Jim smiled, ever so slightly. It was hard not to, not with her hand in his, and some of his best friends nearby. In any manner of speaking, life was good. Finally. But as he’d learned, it wouldn’t stay like this for long. It never did.

“I guess I kind of lost myself in thought.”

“What were you thinking about?”

Jim gestured with his free hand, at himself. His normal human-ness. But mostly at his chest, where an amulet should be sitting, but wasn’t. “Just… all of this. I don’t know where my life goes from here. I can’t just forget the past two years of my life-“

Claire stopped him by putting a hand on his chest. Toby and the others must not have noticed, for they continued, until they disappeared from sight behind some shrubs.  

She looked down at their feet, the dip of her shoulders revealing her sigh. When she finally looked up, her lips held a sad smile, and her eyes held an intensity he’s rarely seen.

He looked away, unable to face her.

“Jim, you worry too much. You’ve… you’ve been through everything- nearly died who knows how many times. I’ve lost count. You’ve lost your friends, you’ve been alone, you’ve lost your identity. It wouldn’t be easy for anyone to come back from that. Please, for my sake- for Toby’s sake. For your mom, for Blinky, for Arrrgh.”

She paused and placed a hand on his cheek, pulling him to look at her. She smiled ever so slightly, before pulling him into her arms, her hand on the back of his head and his nose pressed against her hair. He breathed her in, and even though he felt like sobbing right then and there, he didn’t. He just let her hold him.

Claire sighed again, before finishing. “Please, for all of us… just live.”

He smiled into her hair. She was so good… he didn’t deserve her. Jim hugged her a little tighter.

“I’ll try.” He whispered, and he surprised himself when he actually believed the words. He no longer felt dragged down, or like a weight pressed against his shoulders. He suddenly had hopes he hadn’t had before- especially when he was half troll. Thoughts surged through his mind. Like schooling, marriage, kids, families… a future. The future he’d always wanted.

They pulled away and just looked at each other, before he stepped back and took her hand again, this time leading her through the trees. He felt invigorated and hopeful. Suddenly, whatever lay ahead didn’t seem quite so uncertain.

The trees suddenly halted, and there was Arcadia sprawled out before them. The sun suspended overhead, beaming down upon the town, and to anyone else it would’ve seemed like nothing to take notice of- just your normal small town with it’s old run down buildings and cracked sidewalks. But to Jim, it was one of the most beautiful sights he’d seen in a long time. Because this was home.

Claire moved forward out onto the cliff. The same cliff they’d danced on that night that seemed so long ago, but really, couldn’t be more than a few years. Jim found himself smiling as he went to join her, but he stopped.

He looked down at his feet, where the shadows of the trees ended, and the shine of the sun began. His head screamed at him to back away and retreat back into the shadows, even though deep down he knew the sun didn’t affect him like that anymore. Still, he stood still, staring, his hands clenched at his sides.

“Jim.” He looked up. Claire held out a hand, a smile dancing in her eyes. “Come on, it won’t hurt. I promise.”

He looked down again, his doubts lingering, but he trusted her so took a step. He let out a little gasp at the warmth the sun provided- such a natural warmth! He hadn’t felt it in so long, he now realized he’d forgotten what it felt like at all.

“Wow.” He breathed, before taking a few more steps until he was fully in the glorious gaze of the sun. He laughed and spun around; his arms spread wide. “Claire, this is amazing.”

She laughed, and he felt her arms wrap around his chest. He brought his hands to rest on hers, and she leaned against his back before bumping her chin against his shoulder.

He wasn’t used to being so small. They fit together better now, he realized. While there were definitely things he’d miss about being a troll, this- standing in the sunset, with Claire tucked perfectly against him- was something he’d dearly missed. This alone was worth losing all the pros that came with being a troll.

He closed his eyes, and let the sunlight swallow him. He let out a breath, and with it, the stress and fear and hurt melted away. He was home. And for the first time in a long time, he felt like he was where he belonged.

[tristala]

Tales of Arcadia: Wizards

I’m so sorry. 

I didn’t like Wizards very much. Don’t get me wrong, I love most of the characters and there were some great moments not to mention stellar animation but I felt so little for this story. 

I really wish it was longer or at least they made another season for it but I guess there were budget issues or other problems. It was too rushed for me. The pacing was a mess and it ruined the flow (to me at least). It was like 3Below but much worse because now it was all crammed into a 10 episode season. 

This is an unpopular opinion but I really didn’t like how the time travel plot was executed. Especially with the time constraints of this season. It interested me at first but as the episodes went on it became quite tiresome. For example, how a lot of things just got resolved easily like King Arthur and how quickly he agreed to teaming up with the “monsters” he has hated for years. Everyone else too actually. Boy, they got over that fast. Sure it’s a cartoon but we need more slow burn. I was already rolling my eyes at that point. 

Other things that irked me:

Deya just casually not being puzzled or shocked by a phone (Actually others were also pretty chill about seeing technology but she was the biggest offender to me). Also she talks too “modern” compared to other characters of her time.

Another thing about Deya is that she got over her issues immediately (Then again, almost everyone did). I like her character but I wish there was more conflict. 

Vendel is the only character who they changed in character design. He’s the only one who was de-aged.

Out of all the characters we got to see again Draal was the only one I did not want to see, mainly because of his age and Jim’s reaction. I know trolls have long life spans but come on, at least make him younger. Kanjigar would have been perfect instead.

Speaking of Jim’s reaction (as well as Claire’s but mostly Jim). He has always shone deep sorrow whenever he saw Vendel and Draal in Trollhunters after their deaths. Now, he barely even reacted.

Aaarrrgghh’s past and his switching of alliances was too fast. His and Blinky’s relationship was cute but again, it was too rushed.

I am also not a fan of the time travel plot that makes the characters the one who caused the problems in the first place because when you think about it, who caused those problems in the very first time loop before any interference happened?

I love Steve but man, I really wish Toby was there with them instead, they probably wanted to switch it up but I felt like they did my boy dirty. Especially since he and Jim have been best friends for more than half of their lives.

Once again, Claire learned quickly with magic and everything else. Her voice actress improved but still mediocre especially with her angry battle cries or any yells at that. 

One thing that really really peeved me is that Claire was the main focus on Jim’s journey. Like his mom or best friend didn’t even matter much. It’s always Claire, Claire, Claire, Claire.

How nonchalant was Blinky’s reaction to “losing” his brother. In Trollhunters, he looked or felt very sad whenever he mentioned or thought about him.

Morgana went off the rails too quickly and just began to cackle maniacally. Her redemption was clumsily done as well.

3Below almost had nothing to do with anything, no buildup whatsoever. I’m aware they’re gonna have a much bigger role in the movie but it would be much better if they were acknowledged more? It felt like Krel was just there like a forced insert???

Also is it just me but did Steve get dumber? He’s funny but the other shenanigans he went though were too dumb even for him. Some of his jokes also ruined moments for me like when Merlin died.

All in all most of my complaints exist because of the rushed pacing. If we had more time then I would’ve enjoyed this a whole lot more.

The things that I did love:

The combination of magic and technology.

Douxie and Archie’s wholesome relationship.

The Arcane Order. Enough said.

Claire and Douxie’s teacher and bestie relationship.

The creativity shone in casting spells and the making of the amulet.

The whole moment when Douxie was in limbo(?) and Merlin’s talk with him.

The god tier animation and dynamic cinematography.

And of course, Jim becoming human again.

I still enjoyed this season. I just really wish that there was more. I love the concept of Tales of Arcadia and I am looking forward to the movie.

I’m just so glad that Jim is back to normal and he can have a long well deserved rest.

[purplerose244]

Rewatching Trollhunters season 1 while waiting for Wizards 😍

Every episode is a gently reminder that Jim is a super good boy and deserves nothing of what will happen... reason why I just sob every time this kid does something pure and it's JIM so you understand my sorrow 😭😭😭

I love Steve so much now, especially after he went through this meaningful development... but honestly, at first he was AWFUL. Really. So happy he's good now 😚

I genuinely forgot Steve was hitting on Claire 😅 I don't know if it's because Jiaire is so pure or Staja is amazing, maybe both, maybe none, maybe I just have that bad of a memory 🤷‍♀️

The worldbuilding and the culture of the trolls are so amazing 💕 I do love Akiridions, but since 3Below mostly took place on Earth we haven't really seen much of their culture, that's a bit of a pity. I hope there will be occasions in the future, maybe a few curiosities in the game? Or the surprises promised after Wizards?

The training sessions were very meaningful to me, especially since Jim started as the first human trollhunter and needed to catch up a lot with the trolls' traditions. Idk, I like MC that works hard 💪💪

Two precious boys wanting to get taller in front of the principal 😂 Don't know if the parallel was intentional but it is still super cute of them 💙💙

Jim and Blinky, Toby and AAARRRGGHH!!, their bonds starting and deepening and getting so beautiful ❤

What really got me about Claire is that she is indeed, a smart girl. Classic cliché love interest just gets mad and gets away from the troubled kid who wrecked her house, but she thinks about it instead. How did that even happen? One guy and one baby? Seriously? Man I love Claire, can't wait for her big return in Wizards 😍😍

JIAIRE 💙💜💙💜

Is it normal to sob every time Draal is in the scene? Because ughnnnhbnh *sobs*

I miss Heartstone Trollmarket 😢

And Vendel too holy Deya, why is this serie so heavy on deaths???

Was this also intentional? Maybe I just rewatch 3Below too much 😅

Knowing Angor Rot's backstory back then felt so mindblowing, I was facing a corrupted troll devoured by his own horrible destiny while being aware that at the beginning, all he ever wanted was to protect his village. He was trying to be a hero after all... GETTING EMOTIONAL HERE DANG IT 😭😭😭

Okay Strickler was also awful 😅 But he did change a lot too, especially because of his love for Barbara. It's weird seeing so many "villains" going through so many changes and finally become fandom favorites 🙃

The "death" of AAARRGGHH!!, all the feels for this rewatch 😩

I remember why I fell so hard for this serie, just leaving a season on such a cliffhanger made me 🤯 So many good memories all over these episodes 😍

Is it weird that I prefer the eclipse armor on Troll Jim instead of human Jim? Idk, precious good boy is handsome no matter what, I just thinks it fits better there 🤷‍♀️

ONE SEASON UNTIL WIZARDS PREPARE FOR THE HYPE!!! 🤩🤩🤩

[moonsofmars-writes]

Just a normal date

Fandom: Trollhunters - Daniel Kraus & Guillermo del Toro, Tales of Arcadia (Cartoons) Rating: Teen And Up Audiences Relationships: Jim Lake Jr./Claire Nuñez Characters: Jim Lake Jr. (Tales of Arcadia), Claire Nuñez Additional Tags: Canon Compliant, Sort Of, Fluff, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, Some light angst, Anxious Jim, Post-Season 3 (Trollhunters), jlaire, Inspired by Fanart, Halloween

Summary: While in New Jersey, Claire asks Jim out for a surprise date.

“Jim, stop.” When he looks up, he finds Claire watching him with furrowed brows and pursed lips.

“What? I didn’t say anything!”

“You are overthinking! Don’t try to deny it,” she adds when he opens his mouth, “I can see it. Calm down, everything will be fine.” Her gaze softens, her grip on his hand tightens a little. “We are going to have fun, I promise. Trust me?”

Notes: I saw this amazing fanart by @sparemoon​ and simply had to write something about it because I loved the idea! It’s just so perfect! I hope you enjoy! 

It’s been weeks since they left Arcadia, weeks since he chose to become, as Merlin put it, a “true Trollhunter.” Yet Jim is still not used to feeling so incredibly vulnerable when he walks on plain sight, where everyone could see him and - well, most likely run away screaming. 

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” He asks, looking around nervously. Perhaps he is worrying too much; it’s late, the moon is a thin silver cut in the dark blue of the sky, and the streets are illuminated only by the warm light of the lampposts. The few people they met were dark, distant figures that quickly disappeared in other roads. He still feels nervous as he was walking in broad daylight. After all, this is not Arcadia. He highly doubts that here in New Jersey people would ignore a weird guy made of stone wandering in their roads, if they noticed him. He truly misses home right now. He and his friends hunted Goblins and fought Gumm-Gumms nightly and the only person who ever got suspicious was Eli! Things were so much easier there. 

“Don’t worry!” Claire glances back at him, a reassuring smile on her lips, and keeps dragging him down the street. “There is no danger, I promise you. I have a plan!” 

Read on AO3

“If you say so,” Jim says under his breath. His muscles are still tense and he is ready to jump away from the road if he hears someone approaching. Why has Claire insisted that they walked down the streets? But she seemed so sure when she asked him out for a date, so excited when she convinced him to go into town by her side, that Jim didn’t have the heart to refuse. They have grown closer during their trip and there have been plenty of strolls, just the two of them, holding hands and stargazing, but the last time they had a date in town was ... wait, how long ago was it? There had been that time before the Eternal Night, with Toby and Darci, but Morgana definitely ruined it. And before … Well, there were their patrols but they weren't very romantic - maybe before Gunmar got out of the Darklands? No, before there was Angor Rot and ... Jim sighs, giving up. Apparently being Trollhunters ruined way too many of their dates. 

That’s another reason why Claire deserves to have this. A normal date - or the closest thing to a normal date her half-troll boyfriend can offer her. She would deserve so much more, though, he muses, watching her walk in front of him. She deserves to be taken to dance or to the movie theatre or to eat something in a fancy restaurant - with someone who can actually eat with her instead of munching the cutlery. He hates the fact that he can’t do any of these things anymore. 

“Jim, stop.” When he looks up, he finds Claire watching him with furrowed brows and pursed lips. 

“What? I didn’t say anything!”

“You are overthinking! Don’t try to deny it,” she adds when he opens his mouth, “I can see it. Calm down, everything will be fine.” Her gaze softens, her grip on his hand tightens a little. “We are going to have fun, I promise. Trust me?”

It’s not like Jim has any other choice when she looks at him like that. “Always,” he mutters and he feels his cheeks getting warmer when she laughs. She let her hair down tonight and wears dark makeup around her eyes that make them look larger and intense. She is beautiful. 

“Okay Romeo, then let’s go! We are almost there!” She turns around, making her black skirt lift a little around her legs. The dress she is wearing is new, it has large sleeves and a hood, but he hasn't had much time to admire her before she put on a sweater. Has he told her already how good she looks with that dress? Maybe he should tell her again, if only to see her smile. He’ll have to remember to do that later. 

“Can you tell me where we are going now?” He asks instead. 

She turns just for a moment to wink at him, “You’ll see.” 

Jim knows better than to ask her again, he is not going to convince her to talk. He sighs and keeps following her, occasionally glancing around to make sure that no one is watching them from the windows. 

He hears the music first - loud and rhythmical, it feels closer every step he takes. His ears twitch and his nose wrinkles when the smell of smoke and food reaches him. That’s when they turn the corner and he can finally see the house down the street. Jim halts, his mouth falling open. The walls are illuminated by multicoloured lights and he can see the silhouettes of people dancing in the yard. “Is that - a party?”

“Yes!” Her mouth is curved into a wide grin, “Here’s where I came this morning. They said everyone could come and that we could join whenever we wanted!”

“But Claire, I …” He swallows and takes a step back, eyes darting from side to side looking for a hiding place. “I am so sorry, I can’t come with you! They would start screaming as soon as they see me, and I just don’t - I don’t want to ruin everything. You’ll get in trouble and - and the others are waiting for us, I can’t risk them being discovered!” His chest starts hurting and he has to stop to take a deep breath. 

“Jim, calm down, please!” Claire says as she reaches him and takes his hands in hers, “it’s okay! Do you -”

“It’s not okay!” He interrupts her, “You deserve someone who can take you at parties or wherever you want to go, and instead you are stuck with me.” He looks down, mouth clenched, and pulls back, away from the light of the lampposts and towards the shadow. 

“Jim, please, stop." He hesitates, eyes still fixed on the ground, and that's enough for her to reach him. He feels her fingers travel along his chin and cheeks, then rubbing tiny circles on his skin. "Look at me," she whispers. When he does, he finds her staring at him with determined eyes, brows slightly furrowed. “I don’t want a random guy who can take me at parties," she says firmly. "I want you, Jim Lake Jr. You and no one else. Do you get it? I love you, no matter where you can or cannot take me." 

He stares at her for long moments, breath stuck in his throat. She is not lying, she wouldn’t - she is really okay with it. Something warm seems to melt in his chest, and finally he feels his muscles relaxing. "I love you too," he manages to croak, making her smile. 

"Now, please, breathe."

He does, and his chest starts feeling lighter. Heaving a sigh, he leans towards her until their foreheads are touching. “You are incredible, Claire Nuñez.”

“We both are,” she chuckles, “Now, will you let me explain?”

His voice is small when he answers, “Okay.” 

“Do you know what day it is?”

“Erm … Saturday?”

“No - well, yes, but it’s not just a common Saturday!”

Jim lifts an eyebrow, “Oh?”

She grins and takes something out of her purse. He doesn’t get what she is doing until she has stuffed it into her mouth and gave him a wide smile to show a pair of white plastic fangs. “It’s Halloween, Jim! Tonight we can be whatever we want!”

Halloween? Oh. Oh. “Claire,” he says breathlessly, “you are a genius!” 

“I know,” she laughs as she takes off her sweater, revealing her dress - now he gets it, it's a costume! “Now, let me finish my makeup and then let’s go having some fun!” 

Minutes later, they are entering the house’s yard, Claire now wearing black lipstick and some face powder. She waves at someone in the crowd, most likely the people she spoke with this morning, but Jim is too distracted by the people to identify them. Everyone is wearing costumes, makeup, even masks and fake horns and fangs. His gut clenches when he notices that some people still stare at him, but theirs are not looks of fear, they are looks of - wonder and admiration? 

“Wow dude, cool makeup!” A girl comments walking past him, winking at him front under a black witch hat. “Where did you get those fangs?”

“I, uhm, online?” Jim mutters before Claire drags him away. The girl is soon lost in the crowd, but she is not the only one who compliments him for his “incredible costume” before they finally get to the dance floor. 

Claire spins around so that she can face him and takes both his hands. “Now, may I have this dance?” She asks, beaming at him. 

“Of course,” he smiles, “No Troll assassin should ruin it this time.”

“Don’t say that!” She laughs, “Now, dance with me.”

Admittedly, Jim didn't have much time to practice his dancing skills in the past few months, and at first, he feels a little awkward. What if he ends up drawing attention, what if someone realises his it's not a costume? But then, he focuses on her. Claire dances, eyes closed, a wide smile on her lips, so obviously having fun that his heart warms. Finally, he lets himself go and dances with her - and it’s liberating, like the burden he felt over his shoulders until now has finally disappeared. A laugh escapes him as he takes her hand in his to make her twirl. No one is looking at them - not for the reasons he feared at least, and for once, he realises, no one is going to attack them in the middle of their date. For once, he can be a normal boy enjoying a date with his girlfriend. He can be just Jim again, tonight. 

[yellowmagicalgirl]

A Different Sort of Rage

“Why does tragedy exist? Because you are full of rage. Why are you full of rage? Because you are full of grief.“ – Anne Carson

OR

Toby grieves Claire. He also helps to save the world, again.

You know, at least once while writing this, I asked myself why I’d even bother. Claire doesn’t affect 3Below Season 2 at all, so why would that change because she’s dead? Well, Toby deserved better.

That’s right, almost a year later, the 3Below Interlude to Juliet Dies in This has been completed! That being said, you don’t need to have read Juliet Dies in This to understand this story; you just need to know it’s an au where Claire didn’t make it out of the Shadow Realm during the Eternal Night.

If you did read Juliet Dies in This, then this takes place between chapters 3 and 4.

Trigger/spoiler warning: there is drowning, mild body horror, and talk of suicide in this fic.

AO3

FFN

Toby clung to a set of wooden planks with one arm; the other was wrapped around Jim’s unconscious body. Saltwater slammed against his lower body, cold and angry. On the other side of the planks was Claire and a heavy anchor connected to a length of chain. With each moment that passed, the planks splintered just a bit more. Too much longer, and there wouldn’t be enough wood to hold on to.

“Can you keep the planks steady for me?” Claire asked. “Then I can shove the anchor into the ocean, and we won’t have to worry about it.”

“Be careful,” Toby said, adjusting his grip on the planks and Jim. Claire hoisted her entire body onto the planks. With a grunt she lifted the anchor and began to scoot it to the ocean.

She was about to drop it when the chain glowed gold and wrapped around her.

Toby didn’t let go of Jim, who would surely drown with no one holding onto him.

Toby didn’t let go of the planks, because he wasn’t a strong swimmer even without a friend to hold on to.

Toby didn’t grab Claire. Instead, he watched in horror as she fell into the cold ocean, her hair indistinguishable with the blackness that she was pulled into.

And then Toby woke up. It had been a while since he last had nightmares about drowning and sinking boats. He had had one or two back when Jim had been in the Darklands. Most of this species of nightmare had occurred before he started puberty but had been old enough to really understand just what had happened to his parents.

“Wingman okay?” AAARRGGHH!!! asked.

“Yeah,” Toby said. “It was just a dream.” He glanced at his clock. 12:51 am. He loved having a semi-normal sleep schedule again, but with most of his friends being nocturnal phone calls weren’t always easy. Oh, well. He was awake anyways; may as well call Jim and Claire.

Wait.

Claire didn’t go to Jim and Blinky to find a Heartstone in New Jersey. Claire had disappeared into a black void and Toby had been the one to lock her in.

So that was why he had that dream.

Toby put a reminder on his phone to look into what mental health options his nana’s health insurance had and then went back to sleep. Or at least, he tried to.

Sunshine streamed through the stained-glass windows of the Catholic church that Claire’s funeral was held in, which meant that even if trolls were allowed to go, they couldn’t have. Claire had family outside Arcadia, and to them she had died because she got trapped under rubble in the freak earthquake-and-tornado that had occurred.  To them, Claire was inside the coffin, though badly mutilated by rocks that had slammed into her.

Her body was probably mutilated by Morgana, come to think of it.

Toby tugged at his tie. This felt so stupid. Claire was a hero, and her extended family wasn’t allowed to know. He understood, though. They didn’t want to get anyone from the government involved, at least, the non-local government, since obviously Claire’s mom and thus the rest of the city council involved. The trolls were weakened, and Toby didn’t know if they were bulletproof.

It was probably for the best that trolls weren’t allowed to attend the funeral, but that didn’t mean that Toby wasn’t angry with the situation. AAARRRGGGHHH!!! had been Claire’s friend, too. He should be here. Besides, he hadn’t been the one responsible for this mess.

The unsettling calm in the week-and-a-half since the Eternal Night had given Toby a lot to think about. Specifically, how everything had gone wrong.

He should have smacked Morgana into the Shadow Realm with his warhammer and then destroyed the staff. He should’ve been smarter. He had been fighting alongside Claire for months; surely, they could’ve come up with something so that she would be either in Arcadia or on the road to New Jersey.

There was one thing about this funeral that wasn’t a farce: Claire was dead. Toby didn’t think Morgana would be interested in keeping Claire alive. After Merlin cleared away the Eternal Night, Jim had proposed going to Trollmarket to see if there was anything in Blinky’s library to see if it could help them save Claire. Blinky had told them that he had had one book on constructing magic items, but it was among the first of Dictatious’s books he had burned. Strickler, for all the dark magical knowledge he had from the Book of Ga-Huel, had nothing on making a new Shadow Staff. Probably to keep the changelings from rebelling against their Lady Creator, the former history teacher had mused.

To Toby’s right, Darci and Mary and their families stood for a prayer. Toby’s eyes traveled upwards to the rafters. One troll, or rather, changeling, had made it despite the odds. NotEnrique would probably deny the fact that he had been crying later.

“Dude, you sent me a thousand texts, what is your data plan?” Toby asked as he crawled through Eli’s window. It was easier than he had expected, despite his gym pass not feeling as intense of a work-out as fighting trolls and sparring Jim and – sparring in the forge. That was, that was pretty good, actually, he wouldn’t be the reason for anyone else getting hurt or worse if he tried to keep getting stronger.

“Some of them might’ve been queued up,” Eli said, shrugging as he held up a flashlight under his chin. “I… this is important, but I thought I could’ve gathered more evidence and, well…” Eli frowned and dropped the self-important tone. “I wanted to give you some time, since the funeral was a couple days ago.”

The light returned to Eli’s eyes, or maybe it was just the flashlight glinting off his glasses. His voice once more took on an air of self-importance. “Now, Tobes, are you ready for me to rock. Your. World?”

Toby glanced over at his girlfriend and Mary, who was complaining about boredom. Toby’s hands curled into fists. They had been friends with Claire for longer than he had been, how could they be so, so normal?

“TP, come here! I wanna talk to you about something!” Steve called from where he was leaning against Aja and Krel’s house.

“Don’t call me that.”

“I mean, it means vaguely the same thing as buttsnack but nicer?” Steve said as Toby made his way over to the house.

Toby rolled his eyes. Well, at least one person realized why he hadn’t wanted that nickname. If only Claire had realized that, before she, before she, before she had spread it around the school.

Toby blinked several times, trying to get the stinging sensation out of his eyes. “What do you want?”

“Dude, relax,” Steve said quietly enough as to not let Mary and Darci hear from their spot by the pool.

“Relax? Relax?” he whisper-shouted. “How am I supposed to relax when we’re in the middle of a war that will decide the fate of not only Earth, like the one with Gunmar and Morgana, but also Aja and Krel’s planet too? I relax, people die. If I’m not alert, someone else has to take the hit for me. If I don’t pay enough attention, then I’m the one responsible for trapping someone in an alternate dimension!”

Steve just looked at Toby for what felt like five insufferably long minutes.

“Stop freaking out,” Steve said, pinching his brow. “Or else you’ll be so high strung that you’ll end up swinging your oversized mallet at the wrong thing.”

“Warhammer,” Toby corrected, even though Steve did have a point.

Toby’s therapist said that it was important to have hobbies. Between trollhunting and school, Toby was used to having to be constantly alert and vigilant, and that may have been helping to contribute to his restless mind. Granted, Toby hadn’t told his therapist about the ruthless Akiridion dictator trying to attack Earth because that probably fell into the “I will alert the authorities if you’re going to harm yourself or others” clause in the doctor-patient confidentiality forms he and his nana had signed. However, filmmaking was both a good way to bond with his friends as well as maybe destress.

Pretending that he was only interested in making a short film made him seem vapid, like less of a threat. He didn’t trust these military goons, but he also knew they probably underestimated him. What could a short, fat kid with a warhammer possibly do to them?

Rule One of Trollhunting was to always be afraid, with the caveat of goblins. If Area 49-B was unafraid of Toby, then they’d underestimate him.

Besides, these people wanted to capture all sorts of extraterrestrials. Who knew what they’d do to trolls?

Toby still didn’t know if trolls were bulletproof or not. He got the feeling they wouldn’t be laser-proof.

Angor Rot hadn’t been laser-proof, if that’s what Morgana’s magic had been.

Angor had been their enemy, but he had saved them, too.

Tronos had been their enemy, but he had just saved the entire world.

“Get in my phone!” Toby yelled at the armored extraterrestrial as the Area 49-B goons approached, clearly interested in his warhammer. It reminded him a little of the robbers who had kidnapped them.

“What?”

“You did it before! I’m not letting anyone else die.”

Toby and Tronos barely escaped with the others.

“Okay, so, just so that we're clear, by ‘Earthly forces’, you mean me, Eli, Steve…” Toby said, covering his mouth to hide the sound from Darci. He didn’t want to worry her.

“And the brute,” Zadra said. “Yes.”

“Technically, AAARRRGGHH!!!’s a troll.”

“I'm not confident about your chances, but these are desperate times.”

“Well, not even the word ‘hopeless’ is void of hope, I guess,” Toby said.

“What?”

“Trollish saying. I, we’ll do our best.” The call ended; Toby turned to his girlfriend. “Hey, babe, you seem like you got this stapling thing down pat.”

Darci crossed her arms, suspicion in her eyes. “Toby, what’s going on?”

“It’s… a long story.”

“Then start talking.”

Toby looked away from his girlfriend.

“Is it more troll stuff?” she asked.

“No…”

“Then what’s. Going. On?” Darci grabbed his hand. “Toby, I’ve been to enough funerals this year. I don’t want to go to any more of them, and I really don’t want to have to go to another funeral angry that the person I cared about lied to me about the supernatural battles they were fighting. Not when I could’ve maybe helped.”

Toby sighed. “Okay, to make a long story short, there is life on other planets, including a planet called Akiridion-V. That’s Aja and Krel’s home, but it was taken over.” Toby tugged his hand away from Darci’s, giving her an apologetic look. He grabbed his warhammer and expanded it. “And the guy who took it over is going to attack their house so I really gotta go make sure they’re safe so bye I promise I’ll tell you more later!”

Between all the other problems of his life, having a creative outlet was a great way to destress. Usually. Theoretically. Considering that Chompsky broke character on every take, this was really just another source of stress.

His film wasn’t as important as the Akiridions in orange pods.

“Are those your parents?” he asked Aja and Krel. “Do you want me to help?”

“No, we’ve got it!” Krel shouted, waving him off as he, Aja, Varvatos, and Stuart set up the daxial array.

“What are you doing?” Aja asked.

“Well, while I was holding down the fort, I thought I’d finish my director’s cut.” Toby scowled. “But then Chompsky started acting out.”

There was chattering that only one who had lived with a gnome for months would understand. He was almost surprised that Bagdwella never learned how.

“No, I can’t make you taller in post!” Toby had a realization as he walked away from the gnome. “Wait, does this mean you’re going home soon? Back to Akiridion-V?”

“Of course,” Krel said with a glance towards his parents. “That was always the plan.”

Right. The plan. Aja and Krel were going to leave him. They had more important things to do than live a life in Arcadia Oaks. They were royalty from another planet.

“But wait, not yet!” Toby protested. He wanted more time with his new friends, and maybe he had just the thing to get them to stay. “I’ve got good news! Captain Kleb is going to premiere before Gun Robot 7 at the local drive-in!”

“That’s amazing,” Krel said, sounding surprised. He gave an almost incredulous chuckle. “All our friends are going to be there!”

Not all of Toby’s friends, but a good portion of them.

“Yeah,” Toby said, less enthusiastic than he was a moment before. “We’ll be local celebrities.”

Maybe they city would dedicate a nice park bench to him, for all his combined work as a filmmaker, trollhunter, and crook-catcher. He didn’t deserve an entire street, even though Domzalski Drive had a nice ring to it. Besides, Jim Lake Lane and Claire Court sounded better, more fitting.

“Your moving picture party will be the perfect way to celebrate after we stop Morando,” Aja said, breaking Toby out of the beginnings of yet another depressive spiral.

Toby turned to Aja, Krel, AAARRRGGHH!!!, and Varvatos. Sure, the crystal staircase didn’t light up with each step, but they were about to see the most incredible place ever! It deserved every bit of gravitas that he, Jim, and Claire had been given. “Welcome,” he said in his best impression of Jim and Blinky, “to Heartstone Trollmarket!”

Toby gasped.

“This is ‘the most incredible place ever?’” Krel said.

“Was,” Toby sighed, “before the Eternal Night.”

It was probably a good thing, that Blinky and Jim went to New Jersey so they wouldn’t have to see it. That Claire, Draal, and Vendel would never have to see it. The darkened, broken heartstone and the rubble-strewn streets were horrible to see; this was a place that Toby had considered to be practically a second home. He could only imagine just how terrible his Wingman must have felt at the sight of it.

“I know what it’s like, to lose one’s home,” Aja said as they passed by Bagdwella’s old shop. She was better at comforting AAARRGGHH!!! than Toby himself was. Probably Krel and Varvatos, too. They had left behind their homeplanet, and their house was gone, too.

“Your friends, Jim, Blinky, and the trolls are safe, and that’s what matters the most,” Krel said. Toby was about to thank him for the reassurance – he had gotten good at dealing with human feelings – when rocks collapsed.

Varvatos was right. There was definitely an aura of death and decay. Stupid Morgana, ruining everything.

“That looks… deep.” Varvatos said.

“How do we get down there?” Aja asked.

“We don’t!” Toby said. Memories of watching Jim’s cage fall filled his mind. “If you go down there then you face your deepest fear!”

“Why would anyone want to do that?” Krel asked. The light from the Soothscryer came back up again insistently.

“It’s a long story,” Toby said as the light spiraled downwards once more. “Jim made it out alive, and unfortunately, he’s the only one who has.”

“We don’t have much choice,” Aja said. “We have to find Gaylen’s core before Morando.”

Krel held two of his arms in front of his sister. “I’ll go!”

“No, if we have to fight then it’s better to have safety in numbers. We’re stronger together,” Toby said.

“But you and Varvatos need to fight whatever’s coming,” Krel said as Aja pulled out her hoverboard.

“We will,” AAARRRGGHH!!! said. He raised his voice to a slightly higher pitch. “So, fight!” he imitated, before lowering his voice. “Make proud, Wingman.”

“Will do.” Toby pulled out his warhammer and followed the Tarron siblings down into the Deep.

Unfortunately, Toby followed them straight into a stony wall.

Toby stood on a dock, watching a cruise ship sail away. His nana waved good-bye to him, along with two relatively young adults. They were familiar, just like the ship was. They were familiar from blurry memories and from morbid curiosity because at age twelve, Toby wanted to know just how his parents died.

“Don’t go,” Toby pleaded softly, but he knew it was no use. He looked over his shoulder and caught Jim’s eyes.

“Well, bye, then,” Jim said flippantly. He began to walk away, and Toby realized that so did all the other trolls. Darci, and Dr. Lake, and pretty much everyone Toby knew walked with them.

Toby tried to catch up, but each step was a herculean effort. Eventually, everyone passed beyond the horizon. It started to rain, and Toby realized that he had managed to find his way to the bridge where everything always went down.

A dark sliver appeared in the thin air in front of him. It widened, and Claire stepped out of it. Except “stepped” wasn’t quite the write word, not with how her limbs and neck bent at all the wrong angles. Golden manacles with small lengths of broken-off chains were attached to her wrists and ankles. A noose connected her neck to the Shadow Realm, and when the portal closed Claire collapsed, almost like a puppet whose strings were cut. She caught herself at the last second, dust swirling off the bridge to reform the Shadow Staff in her hand. She stretched each of her limbs as they popped into place with the sound of crunching bones and scraping metal. She then rolled her neck, the noose catching on one of the spikes of her helmet. It didn’t seem to bother her, but it added a gruesome effect.

Claire’s brown eyes opened, going from blank to full of hatred in the span of an instant. “You,” she said. Her voice echoed above the sound of rain and distant thunder. “You let me die!”

She lunged for him, and Toby found that the sluggishness to his limbs was gone as he jumped out of the way.

“You killed me!” she screamed, disappearing through a portal. She came out from almost directly above him, staff pointed to skewer him.

Toby caught it with his warhammer, sending it away from himself. “You, you told me to. You told me to break the staff,” Toby said.

Claire attempted to stab him in the back. “And you didn’t think to wait, did you? You didn’t think that maybe you should have waited for Blinky to have saved me?”

“There was no time, and you know this.” Toby knocked the Shadow Staff out of her hands. It crumbled into ash. “It’s not my fault that you didn’t think of any other way to end Morgana. It’s… it’s not my fault that you’re dead!”

The rain stopped, and the clouds started to part. As Claire looked up to the sky, Toby realized that he was crying.

The sun was eclipsed by the moon and then by even darker clouds. Claire closed her eyes as it began to rain again, this time even harder than before.

“You want to know what’s the best part of being dead?” she asked in an eerily soft voice.

She opened her eyes. They were purple and black. “I don’t have to look at your stupid fucking face anymore.”

Claire lunged for him, knocking his warhammer out of his hands. She pinned him down with one hand. “No one wants to have to look at it. And I’m going to be the fucking martyr that makes sure no one will ever have to again.”

And then she began to punch his face, the edges of her clawed armor piercing him. With each punch more cracks began to grow on her face and hand, but Claire didn’t seem to notice them. She didn’t look like she was in pain like the last time she had grown those cracks. If anything, the lightning glinting in her eyes made her look sadistic.

And then Toby woke up.

“I did it,” Krel said, overjoyed. “I did it!”

“I’m proud of you, little brother,” Aja said, rubbing at her arms. She sounded spooked. “Congratulations, you probably beat me by half a mecron. What… what did you see?”

“Morando destroying Arcadia Oaks and everyone in it, which he’ll do if he gets Gaylen’s core,” Krel said with a slight frown. “And you?”

“The same, but with Akiridion-V,” Aja said. The two of them turned to Toby.

They were going to have to leave anyways; they didn’t need to know that Toby’s worst fear was a combination of Claire hating him in her dying moments and everyone he cared about leaving him.

“Oh, well…” Toby gave a slight chuckle, and hoped that they’d believe the fat stigma. “Dieting.”

They had no time to question his lie because Varvatos and AAARRRGGHH!!! came crashing in.

“Purple. Pretty,” AAARRRGGHH!!! said, gazing at the altar to Gaylen’s core.

“Claire would have loved to have seen this,” Toby sighed, and then startled with a realization. “Kanjigar, do you know if Draal and Claire are, you know, resting in peace?”

Unfortunately, the previous Trollhunter had gone back to the void.

Toby supposed it didn’t matter in the grand scheme of things, not with Aja and Krel being shot down. Still, closure that his friends were okay in the end would have been nice.

“Where’s Krel and Varvatos?” Toby asked as he dismantled yet another OMEN. “Would be nice to get a little more help.”

“Krel’s working on getting us some reinforcements,” Aja said, “and Varvatos is protecting my parents and Stuart. I trust him enough to not try to power the canon with my parents’ cores twice.”

“Wait, why would he do that? He’s not evil enough to power things up using unwilling people!”

“I thought that too, but since two royal cores are needed it’ll be Krel and I and not my parents.”

“No.” Toby brought his warhammer down enough that deep cracks were left in the concrete where the OMEN once stood. “Aja, you can’t. That’s suicide.”

“It’s not suicide, Toby. It’s sacrifice. Of all people, I thought you understood that.”

“Oh, trust me. I understand that. I also understand that those two look really similar sometimes. Aja, promise me that I won’t have to attend any more of my friend’s funerals this summer.”

“I can’t, but that’s why Krel’s working on reinforcements. I don’t want to do this, but I will if that’s what it takes.”

Toby would have argued had an OMEN not thrown a truck at a random kid. There had to be another way, one that wasn’t trying to fight a losing battle. One where all his friends made it out.

“He’s too strong,” Toby said. “He’s stronger than…”

No.

Morando was not stronger than Morgana. He couldn’t let himself believe that. They were all going to live, and no one was going to sacrifice their life for the good of everyone else, even if they were on the very same bridge where Angor and Claire died.

And Toby had legitimate hope when Zadra and various ships from Akiridion-V came through the wormhole.

Except they weren’t enough. Morando grew red wing-like appendages and created a massive explosion of red light.

“Morando is too powerful,” Krel said.

As the Tarron siblings hugged each other for what shouldn’t be the last time, Toby tried to think of another way to kill Morando.

“Go back to town,” Aja said. “Make sure everyone’s safe! And… I’m sorry, Toby. There’s a reason why I didn’t promise.”

“On it!” Steve said. “Please don’t get stepped on!”

“You too, my Palchuk!” Toby couldn’t tell if it was cruel or not for Aja not to say goodbye.

There had to be a third option.

“What are you waiting for, give me a ride!” Steve shouted. Toby fired up his warhammer.

Morando was at least as strong as Morgana. Maybe he was stronger. Two people would die. Someone’s hand would get cut off by a –

There was another way.

Toby set Steve down and began to fly off in the opposite direction.

“Where are you going, buttsnack?” Steve shouted.

“To save your girlfriend’s life!” Toby began searching through his phone to find the number for Akiridion-V. They could try to open a portal from within Morando’s body, and hopefully Akiridion anatomy was such that it would kill him.

It was probably a good idea that Toby had used his warhammer instead of the Shadow Staff. Too gruesome.

He was on the second ring when he watched Aja and Krel fire the canon.

He felt relief, and then guilt.

It was over.

Toby didn’t know what to say. Aja, Krel, and everyone else from Akiridion-V were leaving. So were the Foo-Foos and Eli.

“Do you have to leave?” It was selfish. Of course they had to leave. Toby closed his eyes and tried to drown out Deep-illusion-Claire’s words. They weren’t leaving because of him; Aja and Krel had to go and rule an entire planet.

“Thanks for keeping that promise about me not going to your funeral”? Too selfish. It put the focus too much on him.

“Being an orphan isn’t so bad, just look how I turned out”? Too insensitive, considering that he could barely remember his parents.

“Sorry about your parents, but I’m glad they’re dead instead of you”? That wouldn’t stop the guilt.

Except, Krel was staying.

Toby would figure out something comforting to say, eventually.

The world was going to end. Again. And this time, Toby’s new allies were a talking, bipedal cat and a pair of teenagers who were currently going through their emo phase. Said emo teens were about a year older than Toby, and supposedly they were wizards, but honestly? Aja and Krel seemed more competent than these two.

At the very least, Aja and Krel were better at lying. The minute after the cat had called them out on “experimenting unsupervised”, Zoe had started rambling about college apps, which had segwayed into summer homework, which somehow turned into how she and Douxie could make non-exploding potions without Archie’s supervision.

It was a little creepy, just how exasperated the cat looked.

Douxie stared at Toby quizzically before interrupting his friend’s rambling. “Your friend – the possessed one. Is she okay?”

A cold sort of rage crept into Toby’s bones, and with it, came the desire to scream at Douxie for having noticed that Claire wasn’t okay, and not having really done anything. Storm out of the apartment, telling Steve to tell Toby anything important, but refuse to work with the wizards.

But Claire made her decision. There was nothing that Toby could’ve done to change that, much less a guy who went to their rival school.

So instead of yelling, Toby took a breath, and said coldly, “Let’s just say that Claire’s at peace now.”

[earth-ambassador-jim]

A Bad Reaction: Chapter 2

Summary:

“Changelings call it "Gravesand”. Derived from the pulverized bones of fallen Gumm-Gumms, gravesand aids us changelings in shedding our human form and embracing our more trollish nature…“

Strickler is a little off in his calculations and the gravesand draws out an unexpected response from Jim. Hopefully he can figure out what is wrong and how to fix it before it is too late.

AO3 - Fanfiction

~~~~

Barbara wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting when the pink rock monster had kidnapped her and brought her to an underground bunker but meeting her ex-boyfriend had not been it.

The moment she set eyes on him anger had eclipsed fear as the ever growing feeling of betrayal she’d been brooding on for the past few weeks reared its head in full force.

 “What. The. Hell.” Barbara said slowly -but with great feeling- as her hands clenched at her sides.

The sharp pain in her skull that had just started up was not helping. For some reason the painting she had been working on surfaced in her memory.

“Sorry to interrupt,” The pink monster said in what sounded like an amused tone. Barbara jumped. She’d forgotten about it for a second. “As much as I want to see you beat up Strickler, there are more important things to deal with right now.”

It was then that Barbara saw who was in the table in the middle of the room. A sharp gasp escaped her and she rushed to her son’s side.

Her fingers immediately went to his throat, feeling for his pulse, and then to his forehead before she turned around to stare at Walt. She had been angry before, but it was nothing compared to what she was feeling now.

“What have you done to my son?” Barbara practically growled.

Walt… Strickler swallowed audibly and held his hands out, open and palms facing her, in from of him.

“It was an accident…” He started to say slowly.

“An accident?!” She yelled. “Is that why you have him tucked away in this secret base? You lured me out here with his phone! And what’s that?!” She added pointing at the monster.

And why did she feel like she should know the answer? Barbara drew in a sharp breath as pain lanced through her skull again.

“Please let me explain. You may yell at me all you wish later,” Strickler said.

Barbara grit her teeth and drew in a breath to start yelling again.

She never got a word out.

At that moment Jim jerked upright on the table. Barbara turned toward him and felt her heart skip a beat. His eyes, now open, were glowing a sickly red and gold. He made a low guttural sound in his throat and his lips pulled back in a snarl. She stumbled back a step.

He drew in a shallow gasping breath. His still glowing eyes widened and he clawed as his chest for a moment before collapsing back on the table.

For a sickening moment Barbara couldn’t move, then the symptoms she had just seen registered and she lunged forward with a string of curses. She pressed two fingers to his neck and felt a calm fall over her as her years working in the ER asserted themselves.

“Is there an AED here?” She asked Strickler sharply as she pulled Jim’s shirt up.

Some part of her mind vaguely registered a series of branching scars that she hadn’t seen before but, as they were currently unimportant, she mentally filed them away for later. Strickler ripped something off the wall and hurried over to her. She received the machine, noting that it was an older model than the hospital’s, and then with quick efficient movements placed the pads on her son’s skin.

“Get clear,” She said sharply.

Jim’s body jerked as the electricity coursed through him. Barbara checked his pulse. It was weak but the rhythm was now regular again.

She let out a sigh of relief before turning back to Strickler. The underlying protective rage layered over with her professional calm made her feel like she was floating outside her body.

“Explain what is going on now,” She said coldly.

~~~~

And so her ex-boyfriend explained how humans weren’t really the only intelligent species on earth, that magic was real, and that her son had been drafted to fight giant rock creatures.

It turned out there was a bit more to those images and dreams that had been flickering through her mind since the accident than she thought.

“Let me get this straight,” Barbara said as she kneaded the skin of her forehead. “You decided that it was a good idea to give my son, a minor, some sort of troll heroin to ‘hone his feral instincts’… you didn’t see any way that could go wrong.”

She was also rather disappointed in Jim for going along with this. They’d had the drug talk. Just because it was magic did not make it any less of a drug.

“How do you still have your teaching degree?” She wondered out loud.

Off to the side the pink changeling snickered.

“That’s not important right now,” Walt… Strickler said. “Right now I need your help to keep Jim stable while I figure out what exactly is causing this.”

Barbara really wanted to argue that Jim should go to a hospital to receive proper treatment, but she doubted they would know what to do with gravesand poisoning, or whatever was going on. She was also not foolish enough to expect that they would just let her leave. Not without a fight that she couldn’t hope to win. She drew in a slow breath and counted to ten before blowing it out through her nose.

“So you haven’t found anything in your files about why this might be happening yet?”  She asked.

“No,” Strickler responded. “But I still have a few more to go through.”

“And these other trolls that Jim is helping can’t help?” Barbara would really like to have someone else here. Wal… Strickler had dropped completely off the bottom of her trust list. She wasn’t sure how she felt about the other changeling. “There isn’t any kind of troll-doctor?”

“Unfortunately Trollmarket’s healer was one of the first casualties according to Young… Jim. There might be other healers but it’s unlikely they will know how to take care of a human and even if they did they would not be familiar with gravesand.”

Barbara sighed.

“Okay, you keep searching your files.” She turned to the pink changeling. “I’ll need you to…”

She paused eying the changeling’s sharp claws with trepidation. It seemed to catch on and in a flash of pink transformed into the museum curator Ms. Nomura. Barbara jumped but otherwise didn’t react.

“Okay,” She said with a sharp, shaky breath. This was fine. She was fine. She could do this. “I’m going to need you to assist me. Follow my instructions exactly.”

Ms. Nomura moved to stand beside her and they got to work.

~~~~

“Any progress?” Barbara’s voice was something that could have loosely been described as professional.

Strickler looked up from the file he was currently reading.

“Nothing yet I’m afraid,” He said shoving down a pang of longing.

Barbara made a quiet frustrated sound and turned away. She and Nomura started talking in low voices. Strickler rubbed his eyes and glanced around the room. How long had they been here now?

Jim was now hooked up to a heart monitor and oxygen. He looked bad. Rashes had appeared on his skin and he was sweating profusely. Something in Strickler’s chest twisted involuntarily.

He had done this. He should have known better. Humans reacted differently to even regular medications. Why did he think having a child inhale magic sand was going to be okay?

What if they couldn’t save him? What then?

The more analytical side of his mind was already trying to come up with contingencies for dealing with a new Trollhunter this late in the game. The more pessimistic side suggested that between Barbara and Nomura he wouldn’t live long enough to have to worry about that. He’d deserve it too, he supposed.

He grimaced and pulled out his pen to fiddle with.

Focus.

He needed to save Jim. Failure was not an option.

He opened the next set of files, a series of experiments that had been ran by a changeling scientist back during the Cold War.

He started reading and froze for a moment before reading faster.

It wasn’t possible…

~~~~

“A question Barbara,” Strickler said. There was something stiff and deliberately level about his tone that made Barbara wary.

“Yes?” She asked without turning around.

“Do you have any pictures of your… of Jim’s father?”

That did make her turn around.

“Why would you need that?” She asked suspiciously.

“I will explain if my hunch proves correct.”

Oh she didn’t like that at all…

She studied his face. The lines around his mouth and eyes were tense.

“Please… it’s important.”

She made an irritated noise and glanced at his computer.

“Can that connect to the internet?”

“Yes…”

She wasn’t really in the habit of carrying pictures of James around. In fact, she’d gotten rid of most of the ones in the house as well. Both she and Jim generally preferred to pretend he didn’t exist when they could.

She brushed past Strickler and started tapping away. In a few minutes she’d pulled up an old finished projects page from a company website.

“That’s him,” She said pointing at one of the men in the picture. She pushed down the old ache in her chest as well as the strange feeling that rose when she realized how much Jim as starting to resemble him.

Barbara moved out of the way and Strickler settled down into the chair. In a few quick moves he’d downloaded the image and cropped it down to just James Senor’s face. Then he opened the image in another program. Immediately the computer pinged. The word “match” appeared on the screen.

A few more clicks and a new window was opened up on the screen.

“Barbara? Is this him?”

Barbara leaned over his shoulder. He twisted slightly in his seat to watch her expression. Her eyes tracked across the page and her lips moved slightly as she read through the words before she froze.

“Why…”

“It would appear that your ex is a changeling,”

“What?!”

Strickler moved back as she pushed forward to read the file more thoroughly.

“This explains Jim’s unusual reaction to the gravesand,” He continued. She could just barely hear him through the roaring in her ears. “Normally, in humans gravesand would only serves to draw out their feral instincts. It makes them angrier and their eyes glow. Long term use may have other side effects, but one use should not result in something like this.”

“So why is it causing this?”

“Because the gravesand is trying to activate Jim’s dormant changeling traits.”

“His changeling traits?” She echoed.

Strickler nodded and pushed a hand through his hair.

“Yes, but since Jim was… I assume he was conceived while James was in human form?” Barbara didn’t appreciate the question there but nodded anyway. “The only genes he has from his father are the ones that would allow him to shift not the biological template he needs to have a trollish form to shift into.”

“Which means..?”

Strickler grimaced.

“To put it simply the gravesand’s magic is causing Jim’s latent shifter magic activate, but as there is nothing to shift into his cells are basically tearing themselves apart.”

That wasn’t good. Understanding, mixed with new fear, settled in Barbara’s chest.

She turned away from him back toward her son frowning as she took off her glasses and polished them on her scrubs. This seemed to be one of the situations were knowing what was happening was not going to make thing easier…

She wasn’t even sure if she could use conventional medicines on Jim with the gravesand in his system.

Strickler was frowning as he continued to leaf through the file.

“It looks like all recorded cases have been fatal…”

Barbara whipped around, her heart lurching sickeningly in her chest. Across the room Nomura stiffened.

“But!” Strickler said before either of them could say or do anything. “The scientist in charge of the trails theorized that if a sample of changeling blood and stone was enchanted and then injected into the hybrid it would give the sifting magic something to latch onto and pattern a trollish form off of.”

“Did they test this?”

“No,” Strickler said. “It seems that the changeling in charge of the tests met an untimely death before he could find anymore test subjects.” There was an odd tone to his voice that Barbara could not quite pin down. It vanished quickly as he moved on. “I do however have the groundwork and necessary ingredients listed for the spell here.”

“What are the chances of success?”

Strickler sighed.

“I can’t really say. I doubt they are high… but what choice do we have?”

“You said that none of the… half-changelings… survived the gravesand?”

“None recorded.”

“Did they try removing the sand from the lungs? Or any similar measures to stop the reaction?”

“Yes and they all failed.”

Barbara stood quiet for a moment, acutely aware of the two changelings waiting for her response. She hated everything about this situation. She had a short moment of time to make a decision for her son that would at best be life altering and at worst fatal and the only information she had was from shady people that she didn’t trust.

But if she didn’t do anything…

Barbara glanced at Jim. She clenched her jaw and sucked in a breath through her teeth.

“Then I think we should take the route that still has a chance even if it is slim,” She said finally. “What do we need to do?”

Strickler took in her straightened posture and determined expression with a wistful expression. A jolt of bitterness passed through her.

“I am going to start running over the runes and layout for the spell to make sure there are no errors. Nomura…” The magenta changeling straightened up. “I will need you to retrieve some things from my office.” He pulled his pen out of his pocket and hesitated a moment before tossing it to her. “The lock is behind Landmark Thucydides.”

He paused for a moment and then pulled out his notepad and quickly scribbled out a list of what he would need and where she could find it.

“I’m also going to take a quick run to my apartment and retrieve the rest of my magic supplies.” He turned to Barbara. “I should be about a half hour. Can you handle that?”

She nodded.

“Good. Let us go.”

Barbara watched as they left.

Gradually their footsteps faded from hearing.

It was just her and Jim now.

She walked over to him and gently smoothed his fair out of his sweaty face. Even without touching his skin, she could feel the heat radiating off of him.

His eyes remained closed.

Barbara blinked furiously as a lump began to form in her throat.

How had it come to this? She’d known something was wrong.

Her vision blurred and she sucked in a harsh breath.

Why didn’t he tell her? Why hadn’t she…

Barbara’s hands clenched around the edges of the metal table as the first sob broke free.

~~~~

~~~~

Author Notes:

I am going to go into a little more into the specifics about what is going on with Jim's reaction to the Gravesand in the notes next chapter, so be sure to read those!

We’ll get a little more on Barbara’s thoughts on the situation next chapter, but right now she really just needs a good cry.

I was a little rushed on editing this chapter (Just started a new job this week!) so let me know if anything needs clarification.

[maiolica-admirer]

Order Vs. Chaos

There is one thing that honestly was not shown enough in the show and likely why I endeavour to write it as much as I do, that thing being the relationship between Stricklander and Nomura who rather uniquely is the only one we're allowed to see before and after his road of redemption.

Before the Battle of Killahead Bridge we're given a fine example of changeling culture in that they're very disposable and your siblings are just as happy to throw you under the bus even for a perceived slight or failure which we later learn is Rule 3 in action (Everyone and everything is a tool to get what you want). While walking into the museum, Nomura is angrily arguing with Strickler despite the power dynamic being tipped in his favour but from her word choice, she's not submitting to his authority whatsoever. She's even limping and giving what she can get back and even says on the incident:

"The goblins were supposed to hide our tracks, not lead them to us!"

In the gif set I have queued tonight (Pure coincidence!), when Strickler says "You've been compromised" she actually looks about ready to strangle him for a split second before spinning round to try and deflect Bular's sword. Her pride has already been dented but that was a very low blow from the one trying to take control of the situation and get Bular back into line. Instantly the dynamic rises in his favour and she's literally left scrambling for her life. Strickler keeps trying to push for her demise (Which would certainly placate Bular) but fails when Nomura manages to swing things back into her favour much to his great irritation.

The next time we see them together is brief with the Eyestone being added and Nomura (Unusually for her) awaiting in human form and results in his demotion with Fragwa, Otto and Nomura take gleeful enjoyment out of but eh changelings. Nomura no doubt got an extra kick out of that one for before as her pride has more than once shown her to have a rather spiteful streak. After this, a small moment when she mentions Not!Enrique being missing and they talk on fairly equal terms.

The last time we see them together for a long time is The Battle of Two Bridges, their dynamic firmly back into backstabby co-worker territory and unspoken choices on which target who will go for which given what we see much later these two have clearly fought side by side and know how the other works. It's a strange thing, they work very separately yet still manage to play off one another's strengths and awareness like Nomura's style is much more suited for the trolls than Strickler is with his knives even if she's still outmatched.

Then everything falls apart, Nomura gets sucked into the Darklands and for a long time that's the end of it with Strickler able to walk away with a new dream and her left to rot.

We also cannot forget his roasting at Jim and her hands while imprisoned too. She's not surprised he went and had his little knife fight and the picture day comment, clearly finds it hilarious and was going to say something before being ever so rudely interrupted. Strickler clearly has a history of his dramatics and she's not above mocking him for it.

We catch another glimpse of the pair of them during Unbecoming where Nomura's pride has not been dented, she's clearly excited about the fun times ahead and is talking to Strickler in a way in that suggests it is how their dynamic is normally when no outside interference affects it. Their paths must not cross much on the day to day but they clearly do respect one another by reputation or otherwise and get along fine, or at least as fine as changelings tend to do with one another anyway. She's not at all worried about him being missing for Gunmar's arrival, from her wording she likely assumed he was already out there enjoying payback on the human world ahead of her.

A minor one that can also be mentioned is how effortlessly she dodges his knives while drinking tea in the sewers. Just how much have you two sparred or been witness to the other in a match over the years exactly?

Our final real interaction is during the Eternal Night in the form of Nomura who is the only one he doesn't kill steal from. He just checks in with to make sure she's holding up okay in the fighting before both split up and continue forth after that brief moment. He never does this for anyone else, being too busy on a maniacal killing spree that Nomura would be proud of which is an unexpected similarity appearing where you'd least expect it. You know except he can't resist being more dramatic about it because Strickler.

So you might be wondering, where the hell do I get the chaos gremlin thing from?

The answer is easy. Nomura when she has a focus is almost zealous in performing that thing be it acting as the museum curator, hunting targets or protecting the bridge with flashes of the natural changeling dramatic streak and dripping sarcasm. When she's not however, she seems very unsure what to do with herself until she gets a new goal such as suddenly skipping town to go track Strickler down, hauling him back to Arcadia (Road trip!!) and re-entering Jim's life. I've no doubt she was the suggestion for breaking into his house as it's a very her thing to do for someone who does not tend to yield to human conventions all that much if there's a way more efficient and they were both so casually there with tea.

Gremlins gotta gremlin.

She even teases the Trollhunter and has no issue with the troll cocaine idea so out the box thinking or just the sheer entertainment value of things going unexpectedly is something she's clearly all for though less inclined to deal with the consequences afterwards. Her personality strikes me as one that is naturally snarky, you can't suppress snark if it's part of your personality speaking as someone who is very, and hates to be bored /without something to do and will do things which can come off chaotic and erratic to others but it is very similar to how she acts on hunts and in fights. Can't kill or maim something/someone? Well plenty of other ways you can mess with them anyway, or just plain annoy, and more so when you have a reputation to dissuade those from speaking out against you. Test the boundaries, see what you can get away with.

And who better to be a target than someone she gets on very well with that after being thrown under so viciously she bounces back quickly onto equal footing again? You have a fellow disaster sibling right there to steal pens and wine from who later becomes one of few survivors left you get on well. If she's willing to argue to his face, she'll be more than willing to snark him in it as well should she decide the topic is deserving or more innocent teasing like true siblings.

He can control the chaos or at least attempt to but good luck controlling a spiteful or worse, bored, Nomura.

[katcadecascade]

Tides at Lakeshore

A Trollhunter fanfic with Kanjigar still alive as the Trollhunter and Barbara Lake is a wizard. 

Summary: Those who carry the sword of daylight follow the guidance of the Lady of the Lake.Right now, the current era of these two beings are apparently having troubles with their respective sons.

[X]: Archive of Our Own

[X]: Fanfiction.net 

Chapter 1: Hello Hallucinating

As the Trollhunter, Kanjigar the Courageous fought valiantly, landing each strike with a powerful blow. Facing off against Bular was always a grand feat of danger in this long dreadful war.

Here under the bridge of humans, exchanging parries as the sun rises, Kanjigar hears only one thing ring through his head.

‘This ruse will save your life,’ a wise woman said. ‘I sense the bindings of destiny to come at full force. Something dangerous is coming and I wish for you to live to defeat it.’

Her last warning was specific.

‘Don’t touch the light until the battle ends.’

Thus as sunlight narrows the battlefield, Bular taunts the Trollhunter.

“Yield, Kanjigar.”

“A Trollhunter never yields.”

The two trolls clash swords, avoiding the rays of deadly light as much as possible. Bular may have superior bulk as he kicks Daylight out of Kanjigar’s hands into the sun.

Quickly thinking, Kanjigar resummons the sword back into his hands, guarding against another strike.

The sun rose high as they scurried their way to the bridge’s under railings. Bular pinned Kanjigar down, forcing him over the ledge. Kanjigar managed to hold his weight right before his horns touched sunlight.

“It’s me or the sun,” Bular spat, grinning madly, “either way it’s your doom.”

Kanjigar gritted his teeth. This must be the way the fight ends. He strained his ears to hope that no human eyes are around before his ruse ends.

“I command Daylight, Bular,” Kanjigar tightly held onto his enemy, “I fear no sun.”

With all of his might, Kanjigar jumped off of the railings, constraining Bular’s left arm.

The Gumm-gumm only had seconds to realize that the Trollhunter wasn’t hissing in pain of petrification. Unfortunately for him, his arm trapped by the hunter burned in the light. With his free hand Bular hung to the bridge railings and saw how his left arm turned into stone.

The Trollhunter fell from the crumbling hand and landed gracefully on the ground, mockingly safe in the daylight.

“How!” Bular roared, regaining his ground and clutching his damaged arm.

“My amulet can hold many powers,” Kanjigar boasted, “One such is the ability of day walking.”

“There’s no honor in cheap tricks, Trollhunter!”

Kanjigar rose up his sword to the Gumm-gumm, “I have no need to give you honor or glory, only to my kin. Do you still seek to fight, son of Gunmar?”

Bular roared once more, spitting insults but eventually Kanjigar watched the troll retreat back into the shadows of the sewers.

Finally alone, Kanjigar breathed out relief and returned to his own haven of darkness. Honesty he was terrified if the gem of day walking didn’t work.

But it did and Kanjigar lives to fight for another day.

More proof to trust the guidance of the Lady of the Lake. But there are words of hers that he cannot make action of.

[]

Meanwhile, the shabby shape of the sleeping Barbara Lake is revealed to her son when he checked her that very morning.

Jim Lake sets down the breakfast tray and polished up her glasses. She looked more exhausted than usual from the dark circles around her eyes.

He glanced back to her note on the door.

Busy work last night. Sleeping in. Remember to take your meds. – Mom

No matter what message she leaves for him, she insists to remind him about his pills.

There’s no real reason to argue against her. She’s Doctor Barbara Lake. Of course her son will listen to her.

The only problem, Jim finds out, is that his pill bottle is empty. He even rattles the empty bottle for emphasis. Apparently it slipped both of their minds about getting a refill, either too busy at the hospitable or at school or with housework.

Shrugging, Jim talked to himself, “It’s just one day. I’ll be fine.”

An hour later he did not feel fine.

Toby sent him worrying glances throughout class and Jim barely paid any attention to it. A small twinge of pain ached on his jaw bone and his head began to throb a little. Most of all his eyes could barely stay open. Occasionally he had to blink away the visual snow that cloaked his vision.

By the bell ring he was barely comprehending that Mr. Strickler has been calling his name.

With a surprise jerk, Jim fell out of his chair. Toby was at his side to help him up as the rest of the class left. With a clearer head Jim embarrassedly noticed that Clare saw the whole thing with a concerned frown.

“Mr. Lake, are you alright?” Mr. Strickler helped the boy gathered his scattered supplies.

“I’m fine,” he said the same time Toby said, “Probably not.”

“You don’t look too good,” the teacher continued, “I have to ask if you’re coming down with something.” Jim raised a hand to his forehead, just to make sure, but his temperature felt normal. He even let Mr. Strickler do the same thing and he was still concerned and confused.

Jim glanced around, aware that it was only him, his best friend and his favorite teacher here but wariness still relevant to his aching head. “I ran out of my medication today, allergy pills,” he assured, “I guess my body really needed them.”

“That’s a bit alarming,” Mr. Strickler said.

“Yeah this isn’t as bad as the last time you didn’t take them,” Toby added.

Jim clenched onto his handbag, feeling a little flushed at the worried eyes aimed at him. “I’m just tired, that’s probably it.”

“Or stressed,” Mr. Strickler said, “I fear that you’re carrying too many responsibilities. I know that it’s just you and your mother but if you feel overwhelm-“

“I’m okay,” Jim rushed, “We’re okay.”

Mr. Strickler gave him a small smile, “I was merely going to suggest that you ask for help.” He nodded over to Toby, still at his side with a thumb’s up. “You’re shouldering the weight of the world like Atlas.” The teacher walked over to his desk to write something. “I believe I’m long overdue for a conversation with your mother. Also here’s a nurse’s note if you feel like you’re getting worse.” He handed the papers to Jim. With one last worried gaze he said, “I do only mean the best for you, Young Atlas.”

Pocketing the notes, Jim offered a grateful smile, “Thanks Mr. Strickler.”

As the boys left the room, Mr. Strickler called out, “One more thing, if you’re feeling better, I submit that talking with Miss Nunez would be more effective than staring.”

Toby snickered, “Take the advice Jimbo. You’re going to need it.”

“Shut up,” he lightly scoffed.

[]

“I’m glad to hear everything went well,” a feminine sigh echoed the crystallized healing room of Vendel the wise.

“The look of his face,” Kanjigar laughed, “I’m detailing an artist immediately.” At the unamused scowl of the elder troll, the hunter switched gears, “Anyway, from the way Bular fought and screamed he seemed as eager as ever to kill me.”

“He always wants kill,” Aaarrrgghh said.

“Yes but this felt different this time,” Kanjigar continued, “I sensed he’s anticipating something. He fought with great tenacity and alarm.”

Blinky rolled his six eyes, “He does that only when you quip about his father.”

“Speaking of fathers,” the woman began, “how’s everything with you and Draal?”

“Lady Lake, we’re supposed to talk about the fate of troll kind,” Kanjigar groaned, rubbing his temples for good measure, not like the woman can see it.

A snort from the communication tool irritated the Trollhunter further. “Last I checked he’s a part of it. Meaning you should take my advice and spend more time with him.”

“Shall not,” he said and beside him the three trolls sighed over another round of this argument. “I must prioritize my duties as the Trollhunter. You agreed with me about keeping him away from my scared charge.”

“Yes but I also told you to bond with him as well!”

“There you go off again with your human thinking,” he grumped, “Troll culture is about bonds forged through bloodshed battles and I will not risk my son into a war he cannot win. He’s not ready.”

Aaarrgghh roughly nudged his shoulder with a stern glare, “Fought with us at bridge.”

“That was when Deya bared the mantle,” Kanjigar dismissed, “I am proud to say we conquered that battle but now that I am the Trollhunter I will leave no burden fall upon my son.”

“So what’s stopping you Kanjigar?” Lady Lake asked harshly, “I guided you to live another day and for what, all to fight more?”

Vendel approached the speaking tool before Kanjigar could make a move to destroy it, “Lady Lake, we thank you for your guidance and council but this is a nature of us trolls. I’m afraid mere words cannot sway the most stubborn of stones.”

“Hey!”

“Of course Elder,” Lady Lake said, losing the intensity in her voice. “All I’m suggesting is that you deserve to spend time with your son.”

“I do and I will,” Kanjigar promised, “but after the end of the Gumm-gumm King.”

He stomped off without a goodbye. As the Trollhunter he values every warning and advice from the bloodline of the original Lady of the Lake. Her existence was a mere folk tale to young whelps but only elders, important figures, and the Trollhunter have a direct connection with her.

Well as direct as a communication tool can be.

The few previous Ladies of the Lake made direct contact to troll kind but only in dire extremes. Now the current one asks for privacy and only Vendel knows her face. It is better off that way, Kanjigar reasons as he walks through Trollmarket.

His world must remain hidden from human eyes. He has the sneaky suspension that Vendel has connection to other magical humans on the surface but Kanjigar is fine to remain ignorant to that information.

As he makes his way to the Hero’s Forge, his son Draal approaches him.

Just as he was about to greet his kin, Kanjigar narrows his eyes at the broken spike on the youngling’s shoulder. “My son, is there a reason you have fewer spikes then I remember?”

“No,” Draal said too quickly, shifting to have a better profile, “Father I wanted to check up on you. I heard about your fight with Bular.”

“I won obviously,” Kanjigar said shortly, too focused on getting a good look at his son’s back. Draal still attempted to turn away but he got a good look at the scratches and scorch marks. “Draal did you go train in the Forge without my permission again?”

Draal didn’t waste time with denial, “So what if I did? It’s not like you would even give me permission.”

“I told you, only Trollhunters train there.”

“And yet you bring anyone willing to spar with you except me!” Draal exclaimed, “Why don’t you ever want to train with me?”

“Right now you are acting like a whiny whelp,” Kanjigar stated, well aware of the civilian eyes watching, “I don’t have time for this, son.”

He brushed past Draal, swallowing down the tight feeling in his throat for once again pushing away his son. It’s for his own good, Kanjigar told himself. Lady Lake doesn’t understand this part of his life and no advice from her will change his mind.

[]

By the end of the school day, Jim can confidently say that he needs his drugs.

Okay, not the proper term for prescribed pills but he’s using humor to cope.

First he tries to introduce himself to Claire. All he got from that was embarrassment, a tiny spark of hope, and a flyer for theater auditions.

Second he tries to talk Psycho Steve out of bulling Eli Pepperjack. It was pretty intimidating and the loud noises weren’t helping his headache.

Lastly the mentioned headache was gradually gotten worse. Sharp pain prick in his jaw and Jim wanted to guess that this is probably his wisdom teeth coming out early. But then his ears feel too sensitive to sound and massaging them weren’t helping. At the very least the weird pressure on his head lessened but his head still feels off balanced.

His eyes through, that’s the real problem. Jim would swear that when he checked his reflection his eyes would flash with a different color for a millisecond. Toby said that he didn’t notice a thing but believes him all the same.

Honestly if it wasn’t for Toby the poor boy would’ve broken down.

Toby helped Jim get back home and made him lay on the couch for a while.

“And you don’t have like a spare hidden around?” Toby hollered out, double checking the bathroom cabinets. He padded back down the stairs to see Jim groaning into the pillows. “Oh boy this is worse than last time.”

Jim pulled the pillow off of his face, “I don’t feel so good, Mr. Domzalski.”

“Don’t you dare pull that on me!”

“The pain is real!”

“Oh my Guillermo,” Toby slapped his forehead, “I think you’re ready to play Romeo, Jimbo.”

“If I can get my meds,” Jim squeezed his eyes shut and reach over for his phone. Learning from earlier, Jim had the brightness all the way down as he speed dialed his mom. “Nope, straight to voice mail again.”

“Well she’ll be home soon.” Jim threw his best friend a doubtful look and shimmied over to lie on his stomach and press his face into the pillow. “Jim, you should be on your back so you can, yah know, be able to breath.”

Toby could barely hear the muffled, “Head hurts!”

He heard Toby walk over and then felt the boy pat his back gently. “I’ll go whip up some good old fashion chicken noodle soup. Nothing like Nana’s recipe to help a growing boy as she likes to say.”

Jim made an effort to grunt out a thanks but it must of have gotten lost in the pillow as he tried to sleep. It felt more like lucid dreaming. He can clearly hear Toby in his kitchen, using the medium size pot and oh how weird that he knows the specifics.

But that’s the least of his worries as he scratched at his head, the twin pressures that returned with a force of agony. Jim thinks that he’s biting on the pillow because his jaw bone has the unpleasant sting again.

It feels all too slow and he digs his nails into his scalp, trying to scratch away the pain and it turns sharper once he realizes that he must have scratched some skin off. Jim squeezed his hands, gaining some self-control to see blood under his finger nails.

Mindlessly he licked away the specks of blood, almost satisfied with the taste.

Then he looks at his hands and sees blue.

He just licked away the red smudges of blood and now there’s blue something specked on his hands. Weirdly his first reaction is to lick and chew it away but no, it’s his skin that’s blue.

Jim shucked off his jacket wildly, gaining Toby’s attention.

“Hey Jim, everything al-“

Both boys stared at Jim’s arms, patches of blue skin tone seeping seamlessly with his usual complexion. And then Jim attempted to scratch it all away in a panic.

“Jim, stop!” Toby ran over to get a hold of his friend’s shaky hands and sharp nails. Jim’s arms now had red dripping into this mess. “Jim, look at me.”

The boy’s eyes are wide and he’s starting to breathe too fast. “Toby, what’s going on? My allergies, what, what’s happening?”

Too confused and scared at the abnormal changes, Jim peers at his arms, the blueness hasn’t spread but he notices how his nails changed to a pure white hue and gotten sharper and inhuman.

Jim’s barely aware that Toby’s been patting his cheeks. They’re both scared but Toby knows that his mind is far clearer and makes the decision to let go of Jim to call Dr. Lake. The moment he got the lady’s number ringing Toby feels the air shift and hears the door slam.

A cold weight drops into his stomach as he saw his best friend zip away in only a matter of seconds into the fading light of the sun.

[]

After his training in the Forge, Kanjigar goes to the surface, comforted by the late evening sky as the sun winks out from the horizon. He still has the gem of day walking but he won’t make a habit of using it. He needs to keep trolls and human matters far away from each other.

It might not be entirely possible but a troll can hope.

He thinks this because the two worlds are already as chaotic as they can get. A mixture of the two has already been attempted by the race of the changelings, a truly horrible experiment.

Kanjigar continues his trek through the woods, keenly aware of any movement from either man or animal. With the looming threat of Bular, he’s been risking a lot of time on the surface, attempting to catch any track of his misdeeds, hence the purpose of the gem of day walking.

It was a suggestion from Vendel to push the boundaries of the Amulet and with the title of Courageous how could Kanjigar refuse?

He walks this path alone to shield his kin from the dangers that Bular has likely plague upon the humans. Lady Lake has shared her suspicions of Bular acting on the violent quality of eating humans. Kanjigar knows that as the Trollhunter he’s supposed to protect both sides of the world.

Kanjigar admits that he has already failed one side of it with his inaction on human affairs. Explaining his incapability translated into excuses for Lady Lake. She’s not wrong.

Lady Lake has wisdom from her own ancestors, each one different from what Vendel has said. The Elder tells him that the current one is far more engaged despite the anonymous calls. Kanjigar patiently waits for further insight on that but for now he walks.

That’s when he smells it, blood of an impure.

He hasn’t smelled that type of scent since he caught Draal coming back from a battle with a changeling years ago.

The Trollhunter chases after the source. It moves fast, away from the lights of human domesticity. Something must have gone array, Kanjigar justifies, likely its mask was cracking and it’s fleeing to its master.

Fleeing to Bular.

No, Kanjigar must intervene and soon he catches up to the changeling. It runs clumsily, disregarding the natural stealth of its kind. Running up to the changeling, Kanjigar sees how small it is and how it is whimpering, destressed.

The changeling is unstable, that’s dangerous. Kanjigar wastes no time to tackle the whelp, pinning it to the forest floor.

“You’re done for the night, impure,” Kanjigar sneers.

He expects fiery insults about his ancestors, of labels of being a brute and slave to Merlin. Instead the whelp just screams, scrabbling under his weight.

The changeling flails its limps and sobs out, “Oh my Guillermo, please, please don’t kill me!”

“Gill-mo?” He tries to say.

The babbling of last words continues much to the Trollhunter’s confusion. “There are so many recipes I want to try! I want to graduate and actually have a real conversation with Claire. Toby, oh man Toby, I’m so sorry. Why did I run? I look like a monster! I’m blue? Why am I blue? Is it because my eyes are blue or because I wear my blue jacket way too much? No, oh no Mom!”

Finally the words stop but Kanjigar doesn’t feel any better when the whelp cries out for its mother.

If this is the changeling’s signature move to catch the enemy off guard, well it’s working. But what kind of battle tactic is crying for mom?

The wailing go silent and Kanjigar realizes that he spent way too long just staring oddly at the other troll.

“Please let me go,” the whelp whimpers and oh Deya, this truly is a whelp, only a babe. His eyes hold an innocence that only a father can know. Draal once had those clear eyes, long time ago before he ever picked up a weapon.

Kanjigar slowly moves off of the boy but still keeps a tight grip on his scruff. Well no, there’s no real scruff actually so he holds on tightly to the boy’s shoulders.

“I’m not going to kill you,” Kanjigar said slowly, trying to calm the boy. He wants to threaten an ‘unless’ because this is still a changeling but now standing over the boy he sees the stubs of horns. They barely poke out. He only notices them because of the speckles of blood at scratched skin.

Narrowing his eyes, Kanjigar tries to get a better look at the boy’s skin in the moonlight.

It’s in a human skin tone, squishy and too soft to be considered troll. And yet there are patches of blue on the boy’s arms. Kanjigar may not know the skin tenderness of humans but he knows the skins of trolls and changelings. This boy barely qualifies at one. For Avalon’s sake Kanjigar can’t even see his tiny tusks!

The boy still stares at Kanjigar with horror, as if he’s as menacing as Bular.

The thought disgusts him so Kanjigar speaks to the boy like he once did to a young Draal, “I’m sorry for attacking you. I believed you to be,” he coughs, “be a nefarious, old troll.”

His weak smile does nothing to ease the boy. He glances at the hand still clutching his shoulder and back to Kanjigar. He utters out, “Troll?”

“Yes a troll,” Kanjigar knocks on his horns for emphasis but gets confused at the boy’s growing confusion. “Wait you do know what a troll is, yes?” The boy slowly shook his head. “But you are a troll or at least part?” Kanjigar takes a moment to process his own words, “Huh.”

In that though process, he becomes oblivious to the boy’s meltdown.

“What?” He shakily said, “No, this isn’t happening. This is just my allergies. I must be hallucinating.”

Instinctively, the Trollhunter said, “Hello Hallucinating, my name is Kanjigar the Courageous.”

The boy slowly blinked and his ears, too small but still pointy, twitch.

“That’s it!” The boy raises his arms above his head, shrugging off Kanjigar’s lost grip. “I am dreaming!”

“Dear boy,” Kanjigar weakly smiles, “please chose a name, Dreaming.”

“ARGH!”

“Hmm, missed a few letters,” he muttered.

The boy began to march off, “I’m going home!”

Wait.

“Wait!” Kanjigar quickly grabbed the collar of the boy’s shirt, effectively stopping him, “I can’t let you return to your familiar’s household.”

The boy raised an eyebrow at him, “Okay I barely understood that sentence. All I got is that you’re not letting me go home.”

Kanjigar quickly thinks. This whelp of a changeling ran into the woods panicked over his trollish features. He hurt himself until he bled, too confused and scared and… and new. He might not be able to shift like a mature changeling.

“Do you think it’s wise to return still looking like this?”

That gets the boy to pause and he looks to his talons. The white of it still has some blood.

“I don’t know what’s going on,” he admits, fisting his hands with a determination that matches Draal’s, “but I’m going back to Toby, we can figure this out together.”

“I’m afraid I can’t let you do that,” Kanjigar said, duty prevailing any other option. He can’t let this changeling gossip a dangerous secret to presumably a human.

The changeling’s ears twitch up and oh how young this whelp must be to be so expressive with merely his ears.

Kanjigar ignores the look of horror as he slams a heavy, armored fist onto the boy’s head.

The boy drops to the ground with a groan.

The Trollhunter carefully takes the boy into his arms.

Vendel must have some insight on this right?

[shadowron]

Harlequin: The Immortal Elf Metaplot Railroad Adventure (1st Edition). Part 1: Physical

In which the runners are hired by a dwarf, hassled by some orks, and do a datasteal against some elves. Trolls get a pass.

Written by Ken St. Andre (creator of the games Tunnels & Trolls and Stormbringer, among many others I wasn’t aware of when I wrote this), 

Illustrated by Jim Nelson (another iconic Shadowrun artist).

Respect.

This is a straight-forward B&E/datasteal, featuring those classic blossoming with nodes Matrix systems that the decker gets to see while everyone else uses the bathroom (both in and out of game, most likely). The interesting twist comes at the beginning, with the aforementioned orks: they are hired by the aforeaforementioned dwarf (who is their Mr. Johnson) to stand in between the runners and the Johnson – presumably as a way to test the runners’ ability to get out of minor scrapes without immediately reaching for their HK 227s but honestly just serving as their first target practice of the run. Come on’ – if there are condition monitors next to their description, they’re asking for it.

Please, get the rest of them some hats too.

The Mr. Johnson is a Mr. Morlock (yes, like in H.G. Wells The Time Machine, and not the first pilfering of names from other media in this adventure), a hump-backed albino dwarf who wears lace-trimmed purple satin clothes and has no sense of trying to blend in anywhere. He tells the runners to break in to a publishing firm named Sylvan Information Systems that is (wait for it…) “an Elven house, meaning it publishes Elven authors or designers almost exclusively,” to do two things:

Steal a handwritten manuscript of the next Ehran the Scribe book

Plant a computer virus, provided by Morlock, that he says will wipe out any electronic copies, but honestly could be anything because the runners will blindly trust him.

From here the runners break out their Etiquette dice and do some Legwork, but this run is really not subtle – they need to break into the building and do that stuff. While possible for the decker to do the computer part first from outside the building, they have to go in anyway to grab the hardcopy, and planning the virus early would certainly put the company on higher alert, so there’s a good reason for the decker to tag along and hide under a desk decking while the rest of the party takes light arms fire from the approaching guards.

I mean – that’s how it always worked when I played.

Maybe this would have worked better...

Except not here. 

After 7:00pm there are no guards.

Like, anywhere in the facility. How crazy are these corp chummers?

The text is written so that the GM strongly hints that the incursion should happen in the nighttime hours, which is what they probably would have done anyway, but there’s always the possibility of some scouting during the day – even dressing up the Elven Decker in a Fine Suit and sending him in there with some of his Little Mutant Vik Ninja Cyberboy! Fanfic, posing as a prospective author. But also knowing how the game is always played – the runners will instead want to break into the place AS SOON AS POSSIBLE because then they can get their Karma and nuyen and finally buy that Ares MP Laser they’ve their eye on. So, while the players don’t know this, there are no guards present at night. So what’s protecting the place?

Sylvan Information headquarters is in the eastern part of the Bellevue district, a nice part of town where everyone has a SIN and unemployment is low… Though some Lone Star vehicles are always on patrol in the streets, most of the security is private and does not call attention to itself.

This “most” must apply to everyone except Sylvan, because as we will see, it most definitely does call attention to itself. Audibly.

The Sylvan headquarters sits in the center of its own little landscaped park. Beautiful lawns surround the building, with walnut, oak, apple, and cherry trees dotting the grassy expanse.

Good because you know the Shaman is going to be all “WhAt TyPe Of TrEeS r ThErE I LuV nAtUrE!”

Oh you’re getting manabolted for that.

In the northeast corner of the grounds is an artificial lake holding three small islands linked by bridges. Beneath the surface, huge fish swim lazily back and forth, glittering gold, orange, and white.

The Merc and the Street Sam will take turns taking potshots at the fish.

Sam: “Why does everyone always think we’re violent? Do you think it’s the g-”

Merc: “...it’s the guns.”

But you get the idea – this is a beautiful idyllic landscape for which the Elves within to write their Elven Books about Elven Things and drinking Elven Wines and Lembas Bread and Whatever. You’d think the primary external security would try to blend in with that – subterranean Hobbit-hole like bunkers where pointy-eared leafy-ghillie-suit wearing commandos lie in wait with their smartlinked Smartbows, or maybe a series of Earth Elementals that rise up out of the ground to block any after-hours unauthorized intruders. 

Nope.

The whole complex is surrounded by a three-meter-high electrified fence. Touching it without shielding results in a character suffering 5M4 electric shock.

First of all – ouch. Second of all – this is not the security of a New-Age Metahuman Publishing Company. This is the security of a High-Security Secret Prison for Troll Cybercriminals. That beautiful idyllic landscape described above looks a little out of place when surrounded by a TEN-FOOT-HIGH ELECTRIC FENCE. This makes no sense except to provide a random obstacle for the runners to bypass.

But bypass it they will, because they must. What opposition will they find beyond. Guards?

The four company guards are normal Humans armed with stun batons.

Even thought I’m wearing Heavy Security Armor and have the face of a Ringwraith, I still only have a stun baton. I’m really just here to annoy you.

Yeah, they’re not going to survive. Except…

They come on duty every morning at seven and go off duty at seven in the evening.

Wait, what? Leaving aside the brutal 12-hour shifts, if you are worried enough about break-ins that you have a 

THREE. 

METER. 

ELECTRIC. 

FENCE.

You are not going to leave the rest of the joint unoccupied at night. Other than door locks, is there nothing to protect the building after the party gets a trampoline and bounces over said fence?

Well, it’s not totally unoccupied. 

Four barghests patrol the park grounds at night.

Ayup! The Eight-Titted Devil Dogs are here! 

Count my mammae. Count them.

Plus their keeper, who lives in a tiny apartment in the basement and I assume dresses like this guy:

It’s from an obscure 80s movie.

So that’s the penalty for breaking and entering here – no prison time or fines, it’s straight to being driven crazy with fear, paralyzed by their howl, and then eaten using “teeth (that) glow slightly in the dark because of luminescent bacteria in its saliva.” It’s never good when they describe a monster’s saliva. This, again, is so WAY out of line with the image presented of an otherwise mundane, small-print publishing company.

So while the runners are rewarded by finding a non-combat option to get past four orks in an elevator, they really have no choice except to use up ALL of their APDS ammo inside these poor puppies.

That’s right, chummer. You just killed four dogs. Live with that.

What did we do to deserve this? Other than try to eat you?

After the fence and the dogs, the rest of the adventure is essentially an afterthought – the players have crawled enough dungeons to know to search all of the rooms, so they will find the manuscript, the decker will deck the sculpted system and plant the virus, and collect their nuyen.