A/N: The title was actually given to me by an anon on tumblr in a fic title ask/this is the story I said I'd write to fit such a title. This story will focus on Wirt (OtGW), Toby (Trollhunters), and Wendy (Gravity Falls), and eventually introduce Jazz (Danny Phantom). Post-series for all fandoms, set in college so I suppose technically a college au, not just a future fic. For lumanae on tumblr. Standard disclaimers apply. Happy New Year, everyone! Please let me know what you think if you've the time.

Wirt stared.

It was his first week of college. His first week on campus, really, as he'd only moved in the day before term began. (He still had a couple of boxes on his desk to unpack.) He'd heard plenty of crazy stories, but that was to be expected. He'd already learned not to believe everything that came out of his roommate Toby's mouth, just as he'd learned that he was to call Toby's grandmother Nana whenever Toby honoured her request to drag him down for a weekend visit so she could get to know him.

Some classes had given general overviews for their first lecture, and the others had jumped right into it and he felt like he was already scrambling to catch up. Sometimes, he thought it was lucky he'd managed to make it to class on time, especially since he'd already gotten lost in the basement of the chemistry building looking for the place his biology lab would be held next week. Frankly, he was lucky that Toby had taken pity on him and given him the rundown on the best places on campus to get food and caffeine, not to mention showing him a couple of underground shortcuts he hadn't even realized existed.

It had been a crash course, but he'd learned the ropes.

At least, he'd thought he had.

But that was before Toby's friend Wendy 'straight out of the wilds of Oregon' Corduroy had smuggled an axe into their dorm room.

"That's…that's an actual axe," Wirt said. He knew the door was closed, knew it was locked, knew no one could possibly walk in on them, but he managed to tear his eyes off the axe just long enough to check again anyway.

Wendy snorted. She was perched on Toby's desk, already reaching into her pocket for a stick of gum. "It's a hatchet, squirt. Which means it's smaller and lighter than what you're thinking of."

"He's not technically wrong, though," Toby said. Wendy stuck her tongue out at him before popping the gum into her mouth.

Maybe he'd accidentally ended up bunking with a psychopath.

Toby picked up the hatchet and examined it. "It seems to be weighted well."

Maybe he could ask for a room reassignment.

"Of course it's weighted well. You met my family on moving day, Domzalski. I'd be disowned if I couldn't pick out the best of the bunch."

This was insane. That was a weapon. It wasn't allowed. How had she even—!

"I'll teach you guys how to throw it this weekend," Wendy said. "It'll take you a while to get the hang of it."

"Eh, I figure I'll pick it up quick," Toby said with a smirk. "Wirt's the one who'll need to figure out the balance when throwing."

He had no idea how he'd even gotten to be a part of this. Why had they involved him? This would make him an accomplice! Could he even report this without getting into trouble?

Did he want to risk it when his roommate had a hatchet and figured he already knew how to throw it? When he had a friend who definitely did know how to throw it?

"I…I don't know if I really need to," Wirt said slowly. "I mean, I've already gotten a bunch of readings and assignments—"

"Hey." Wendy pointed at him. "Neither of you look like you could survive the apocalypse, okay? I just want to make sure my friends are safe if it happens."

Toby laughed. "I don't think zombies are what we need to worry about."

Wendy shrugged. "I never said anything about zombies. But this stays between us. Meet me at my place Saturday morning. We'll go out to the country for practice, just the three of us."

"Um." Wirt swallowed. "What about your roommate?"

"Jazz? I'm not worried about her. She might not look it, but that girl can handle herself. She just doesn't know how to hide her weapons. You two, on the other hand…."

"Oh, come on, don't lump me in with him," Toby said, jabbing a thumb in Wirt's direction. "I'd be way better in a fight."

Even Jazz had weapons? That weren't Wendy's? He'd only met her for a few minutes when Toby had introduced him to Wendy, barely remembered what she looked like beyond the red hair, but she'd seemed nice. Stable. Unlike the people he was currently with.

"I'll be the judge of that on Saturday." Wendy hopped off the desk. "In the meantime, find a good hiding spot. Concealed but accessible. Sorry I've gotta cut and run, but I'm gonna be late for a library study session with my grade-obsessed roomie. Give it three weeks, and then it'll get to her." She unlocked the door and tossed a two-fingered salute at them over her shoulder. "Later."

Wirt slowly sunk down onto his bed even as Toby crossed the floor to lock the door behind Wendy. "What…what are we going to do with that?"

Toby eyed the hatchet for a moment. "Drive some nails into the wall and hide it behind a poster between our beds?"

"You're kidding."

"It's better than behind the dresser. Or under a bed or in one of the desk drawers. When you're attacked, they don't really give you time to grab your stuff."

"Welcome to college, Wirt," Wirt muttered. Louder, he said, "I don't even have a hammer."

Toby grinned. "Don't worry, I've got us covered."

Saturday was a disaster.

Wendy had had her truck packed by the time they got there, and by ten, Wirt had no idea where they were. After the hour drive and half hour hike, Wendy was setting up targets and Toby had the audacity to start humming.

Things got worse once Wendy's lessons began.

Wirt couldn't seem to hit a target. Any target. No matter how close he was. Well, fine, if he was really close, sometimes he could hit the target, but he couldn't get anything to stick. Even if the hatchet miraculously hit blade first, he couldn't get the angle right.

It took him six hours (not including their picnic lunch, courtesy of Wendy) to chip the corner of Wendy's wooden target. His arm had been aching since the first hour, even when he'd started switching between his throwing arms and taking copious breaks. None of Wendy's advice helped.

Toby, on the other hand, stuck a bullseye on his third try.

And then he just got more consistent.

"How are you good at this?" Wirt asked at one point.

Toby smirked. "I have many hidden talents."

Somehow, that wasn't comforting.

Wendy wound up giving Toby a passing grade, but on the drive home, she informed Wirt that he was slated for extra lessons. "You're not dying on me," she said when he tried to protest.

"Funny, I'd believe that more if you weren't trying to kill me."

She laughed. "Trust me, I'm not there yet."

Yet?

"C'mon, I'll train you," Toby piped up, nudging him in the shoulder. The truck was only a three-seater, and Wirt was trapped in the middle. "We'll get a dartboard or something and at least work on your aim. Totally innocuous stuff."

"I see why you two get on so well," Wirt grumbled. He had a feeling they wouldn't let this drop. If that were a possibility, they wouldn't have gone so far away to train. Or spent most of the daylight doing it.

He didn't know why, but whatever this was, it wasn't just some fad for them. Wendy seemed to genuinely believe she was helping, and Toby was too good to just be in it for kicks. He wouldn't have minded the training, but it couldn't just be for survival training. Actual survival training would involve more than how to throw a hatchet into a homemade target. He could handle the sewing part, but scavenging? He was little better than he'd been in the Unknown. He was better at playing a musical instrument than crafting something useful. He didn't—

Seriously. Why were they both so chill about this whole apocalypse thing? Did they think it was a joke?

Maybe they were hazing him or something. That was a thing in college, wasn't it? Something people did before you were officially accepted into whatever it was?

Maybe they hadn't just met, either. Maybe they were actually long-time friends and saw him as a gullible target. And he couldn't blame them. He'd fallen for a lot over the years.

But…this was kinda elaborate for a prank, wasn't it?

It had to be a practical joke, though. There weren't any other options. How could it not be a joke? This was the real world, not…whatever the Unknown had been. The apocalypse wasn't actually going to happen. Not in his lifetime. Not unless the Powers that Be decided to fight each other, and he was pretty sure everyone valued their own lives too much for that to happen.

It was possible his new friends were conspiracy theorists, but….

No. More likely, he had an overactive imagination.

Way more likely.

An overactive imagination, and two new friends who were jokers.

Whatever. Greg would have an idea to get them back. He was better at that sort of thing. For now, Wirt was better off sitting back and trying to enjoy the ride.

Wirt had no idea how Wendy had gotten a key to their place, but she wasn't shy about using it.

To be fair, he hadn't asked Toby if he knew, but he hadn't wanted to in case he didn't like the answer. He wasn't entirely confident that Toby had procured it for her. He'd made the mistake of asking Wendy how she'd gotten it once, and she'd just smirked.

Ignorance seemed safer.

So when she waltzed in when he was trying to wrap his head around his calculus assignment, all he said was, "Toby's in a bio lab till four and I don't have time for extra practice." It wasn't worth commenting on the fact that he'd locked himself in in an effort to focus.

A futile one, apparently.

Wendy leaned against the edge of his desk. "You're getting better, Wirt, but you're not getting that much better. Do you and Toby even use that dartboard he bought?"

"He does," Wirt mumbled.

Wendy hummed and picked up one of his assignments and started flipping through it. A month of telling her to stop hadn't quelled her habit of snooping. Wirt figured it wasn't worth fighting, that she probably would stop if she knew he was anything more than mildly annoyed, but— "Did you ever have to do derivatives?"

"I'm not here to crunch numbers," Wendy said without looking up. She was frowning. "Wirt, is this an analogy for death?"

"Is what what?"

"This Unknown place you wrote about."

Wirt froze. His creative writing assignment. He hadn't realized that's what she was looking at. He'd had a few assignments in the last few days that required him to hand in hard copies, but that—

"It's pretty detailed. I didn't know you could write like this." The papers were tossed on top of his math book. "So, spill. Death? Limbo? Purgatory? Or just, like, a coming-of-age story dealing with responsibility and struggles and accepting certain things about yourself and whatever?"

There was a note in her voice he hadn't heard before. Not desperation, nothing like that, but not joking, either. Not like he'd expect. But it was more than just curiosity. Harder. Like a command lay beneath it.

Wirt carefully flipped the papers back over and moved the assignment off to the side. "Honestly, I don't even know," he said. "I just wrote. And tried to stick a bunch of themes in there. It's probably all of that stuff."

She stared at him. Pursed her lips. Moved her gaze down to his math work. And then tapped the question he was working on in the textbook and said, "You copied that down wrong. It's f double prime, not f prime. I'll catch up with you guys later."

She was gone before he had a chance to ask her why she'd come in the first place.

Wirt was almost asleep when he heard, "So what's the Unknown?"

He groaned. "I turned that assignment in two weeks ago. Can't you guys give it a rest?"

"Maybe if you give me an answer. So sue me. Wendy's got me curious."

"I'd rather slug you," Wirt muttered into his pillow, pulling his spare over his head. "Do we have to do this now?"

"It was pretty detailed. How'd you think of it?"

"I have a good imagination."

A snort. "Huh, and here I thought you might've wandered into another dimension."

Wirt was too tired to laugh. Too tired to pretend to laugh. "You done yet?"

"Almost. One of my friends is on break next week. They've got a reading week. She's coming to visit. She can't crash here, obviously, but Wendy and Jazz have a couch they said she could call home, so she'll be around. A lot."

"Great."

"I just figured I should warn you."

"Why would you need to warn me?" A heads up was fine, expected even, but warning? Toby didn't use that word lightly.

Toby didn't answer, just mumbled a goodnight before creaking springs and rustling blankets meant he was rolling over and planning on not talking anymore.

Unfortunately, Wirt was already awake.

When Wirt met Toby's friend Claire, he understood why Toby got along so well with Wendy.

"Nice to meet you," she said, very politely shaking his hand. And then, without missing a beat, she turned to Toby. "Why the hatchet behind the movie poster?"

She'd been in their dorm room a grand total of two and a half minutes, tops. Just long enough to finish the introductions. It's not like the hatchet was that visible; it had taken them forever to hide it beneath the poster so that it couldn't it be seen, and no one else who had stopped by their room had ever commented on it. So how come she'd managed to spot it so quickly?

She wouldn't be asking Toby about the hatchet if she'd known where it was, not unless he'd been putting her off until she came in person, but what kind of sense did that make?

Toby grinned. "Insurance," he said. "Y'know. In case of monsters."

Claire's eyebrows rose, and her eyes flicked towards Toby's desk and then to Wirt before finding Toby again. "Monsters," she repeated. "Right."

She didn't sound skeptical, like a normal person. She…she almost sounded resigned.

"Does it at least have good balance? It's weighted well?"

Really, it made instant sense that Toby was friends with Claire and Wendy.

Maybe Toby had at least told her to look for something hidden in their room, if not that it was a hatchet. Or maybe he hadn't told her where it was, just that they had a hatchet in the first place. Maybe she hadn't just walked in and spotted their secret instantly, without even knowing they were hiding one.

Toby made an exaggerated gesture towards the hidden hatchet. "See for yourself, señorita."

Claire's exclamation of delight as she handled the weapon—and, more to the point, the ease with which she wielded it—made Wirt think Toby's warning hadn't been entirely unfounded.

Toby and Claire didn't spend much time in the dorm room after all, but Wirt didn't have to be a genius to figure out that the two kept talking about something and didn't want to say too much around him. All he understood was that it involved someone else named Jim—likely as not, the third in the high school photo Toby had taped above his desk. Considering the only others up there was one of his nana with her cat and one of him with Wirt and Wendy, it seemed a safe enough bet.

They talked about a few other people, but most of those were by some nickname. More to the point, they were nicknames he didn't recognize, so even if Toby had told him about these people, he couldn't piece it together. (Though he had no idea how someone got to be named Blinky, Not-Enrique had to be some inside joke. Maybe he looked like someone named Enrique and kept getting mistaken for him by people who only knew Enrique?) Anyway, it was too hard to keep them straight when he wasn't supposed to be eavesdropping in the first place.

It wasn't until Claire was actually gone that Wirt finally worked up the courage to ask Toby about the stuff he'd heard. "Is your friend in trouble?"

"Claire?" Toby spun his desk chair around to face Wirt, who was sitting on his bed. "She's always in trouble. Mostly because she's helping other people out of it."

"No, the other one. Jim. I heard you guys talk about him, and you sounded worried."

Toby blew out a breath. "That's complicated. Claire's going to keep me posted. Right now, it's nothing you need to worry about."

Wirt smirked. "So not the start of the apocalypse?"

"Not yet, anyway."

"Great. Means I can actually focus on my last couple of midterms." He knew Toby's were over—at least, his first round was; he had a few classes that had two midterms—which was probably the only reason he'd survived Claire's visit when most others were studying.

It was funny, though. He'd have figured, if Claire's college did have a reading week in the fall, that it would be after midterms, but this was the middle of October. It was prime midterm season.

"Hey, uh, where's Claire study, anyway? I don't remember."

"She's in New Jersey. Small place. You won't have heard of it. I never had."

"You sure?"

"Definitely."

"Try me."

Toby rolled his eyes. "Heartstone. Happy? Anyway, since you apparently don't acknowledge your text messages, Wendy said to give you a heads up that she's got a couple friends coming to town for a few days, too. High schoolers scouting out potential colleges, including our stomping ground. She wants to know if we can meet them for supper at some point."

Toby was right—he hadn't heard of Heartstone—but the subject change gave Wirt pause. Toby was usually happy to talk about his other friends. Honestly, he was usually happy to talk about anything. Especially when it was an excuse to procrastinate on his homework.

Wirt decided to ignore it for now and gave a shrug. "Any day should work for me. Next week's pretty open. Mostly just writing papers."

"Awesome. It should be good. From what she tells me about them, you'll love them."

"I'm sure I will."

The Pines twins didn't fit Wirt's idea of normal, either. He was beginning to doubt that anyone his roommate (or his friends) knew ever would. It wasn't Mabel's love of homemade sweaters or the way Dipper almost immediately asked him about the Unknown (why had Wendy told him about an old assignment, anyway?) when they met up at the restaurant just off campus. It wasn't the way they sometimes finished each other's sentences, either, because judging by their grins, they were hamming it up for his and Toby's sake. It was more….

Well, it was the fact that when the subject somehow turned to cryptozoology, they knew a lot.

Even Toby looked surprised, though in all fairness, he looked happy about it. And some of his questions were…oddly specific. The twins looked delighted. Wendy was just smirking as if this was going exactly as she'd expected.

Wirt had hoped the conversation would change when Jazz joined them for dessert, but it just made things worse. She wasn't so much skeptical of their stories as she was analytical. Like she wanted to learn as much as possible even though none of it was real. She kept asking questions. And no matter what she asked, they had answers—Dipper especially.

Wendy had given him a playful nudge when she'd finally interrupted to bring up demons. Dipper's face darkened, like he wished she'd left well enough alone, but he and Mabel were able to spin yet another tale. Jazz looked delighted. Wirt couldn't remember if she'd brought up alternate dimensions or if it had been Toby, but that had easily been a half hour tangent. Wirt had no idea how they came up with these things. Sure, the Unknown had been real, or at least as real as it could be, but it's not like pocket dimensions or doors to other worlds existed all over the place. The twins' stories were obviously fabrications even if they purposefully didn't frame them like that, and Toby and Jazz and Wendy loved playing along—to the point that they'd keep asking his opinion on things even when he didn't try to join the conversation.

But seriously. If gnomes were actually real, they wouldn't vomit rainbows. That just…. It didn't make sense. Rainbows were just light broken into the visible spectrum. If that light had no reason to refract and disperse in the first place—

He was thinking too much about this.

Just like he had about things in the Unknown.

At least these things were just stories.

Wirt found the sheets detailing exorcisms—both ghostly and demonic—mixed in with his schoolwork that night. He didn't recognize the handwriting—any of the handwriting, since it looked to be done by three different people—but the top piece of paper was addressed to him. Wirt, hope this helps. It was in the same hand as the majority of the notes.

Dipper's, maybe. He'd talked more details than Mabel. And Wendy could've easily slipped the papers into his room since she had a key. He wasn't sure about the third hand. Mabel had mentioned their grunkles, but he'd gotten the impression they were travelling somewhere. But considering the tiny, careful details that supplemented the first set of notes on the ghost section….

Was this why Jazz had had weapons?

Was it actually possible that Wendy had managed to wind up rooming with someone as crazy as she was in her own way? Someone who believed whatever story Wendy had fed her and didn't find it weird to be asked to write up what was very likely pseudoscience at best? He'd thought Jazz's major was something like psychology, but maybe….

Wirt flipped through the pages. One of them was definitely written mostly in Latin. Another was covered in a language he didn't recognize at all, which is probably why the phonetic pronunciation was written in brackets behind every sentence. Another was English but filled with words he didn't know.

He wondered what the heck he'd gotten himself into.

Maybe he should transfer somewhere else. Or at least put in for a different roommate for next term. Distance would help, would it?

Except, insane as it sounded, insane as the situation was, it seemed like his friends were just trying to help him. Maybe Wendy really had realized the truth of what he'd written up for his English assignment. Maybe that's why she wouldn't let him get away with waving it off.

But if she didn't just believe it was real because she apparently seemed to believe everything like it was real, what was her story? And Toby's, since he was the same way? Claire's? Mabel and Dipper's? Even Jazz's?

"They have to have just been telling stories," Wirt said aloud.

But Toby wasn't around to reassure him, and he couldn't quite convince himself.

It was past midnight some weeks later when Wirt saw the…creature.

He woke shivering, pulling the blankets around him, and then he realized that the draft from the window above his bed was stronger than usual. It wasn't whistling like it did when the wind was from the north, and it wasn't like Toby to accidentally leave it open.

He was about to sit up to double check when something moved, momentarily blocking the light as it squeezed inside.

Wirt was too terrified to breathe. He knew it couldn't be the Beast; if nothing else, it was far too small to be the Beast if it could fit through the window so easily. It could have torn through the screen, but he hadn't heard breaking glass. It must be dexterous enough to have pried the window open.

It was too dark to make out details when the thing moved so fast. It was small. Dark and muddied in the dim light—green, maybe, or blue or brown or even grey—but either with distinct markings or wearing something a little bit lighter, too. Whatever it was, it scampered across the wall on all fours, not seeming to see him. At least, if it did, and if it noticed he was awake, it didn't do anything. It just dropped something on Toby's bed, on the pillow he hadn't drooled all over, and then let out something that was either an honest-to-goodness laugh or a freaky, growling call. It dropped the floor between their beds but was gone when Wirt blinked again, before he ever got a better look at it.

The light was blocked off again.

He heard a snap.

Then a creak.

Then the light was back, illuminating what might be…paper? A note? If it hadn't still been on Toby's pillow, Wirt would have thought it was a dream.

That morning, Wirt pretended not to see Toby scoop up the crumpled note without a word. Toby didn't read it, didn't even acknowledge its existence, and Wirt wondered if this had happened before. If he'd just never noticed until now.

If this wasn't the first time, what else had he never noticed before?

When Toby headed off to class, Wirt stayed behind. He was supposed to be in English right now, but he couldn't….

That wasn't important right now.

One missed class wouldn't ruin his grade.

Whatever this was, on the other hand….

The screen on the window hadn't been torn; the frame was a little bent, but it was hardly noticeable. There were no telltale gouges or anything of the sort. The window, as per usual, didn't quite close, but honestly, Wirt couldn't remember if it ever had. Now, he was left wondering if this was why.

Wirt pulled down one of the notebooks from the shelf mounted above his desk, pulled out the loose-leaf sheets he'd stuffed inside, took a closer look at the notes on exorcisms he hadn't thrown out like he should have.