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"I just… I just don't understand," Jim whispered, unable to meet Claire's eyes.

The young woman reached up to cup his chin and point his head towards her, marveling, not for the first time, just how much taller her boyfriend was now that he'd been transformed into a half-troll hybrid. "Understand what, Jim?"

"How can you… How can you still want to be with me? I mean… Just look at me!" Jim cried helplessly, gesturing to his taller and more muscular armored frame, to his horns, and fangs, and blue stone skin. "I'm… I'm a monster!"

"No," Claire told him, tears running down her cheeks. "You'll never be that. Not to me. No matter what, when I look at you, all I see is the man I love."

"Claire…" Jim whispered, tearing up himself.

Gently, he put his arms around her. Staring at each other with nothing but love in their eyes, they leaned towards each other, lips parting…

And then Claire's eyes shot open, and she recoiled. "Claire?" Jim asked in surprise, naked hurt plastered across his inhuman (but still quite handsome) features.

"Jim," Claire whispered, a terrified look on her face. "Are we… Are we the protagonists of a cheesy young adult supernatural romance?"

Jim's eyes widened as a look of horrified realization crossed his face.

"No, no, no! The answer is clearly "Barbecue!" I'm not even from this planet, and even I know that! What sort of paltry excuse for an educational system do they have here?!" The mighty Varvatos Vex demanded, barely holding himself back from hurling the remote control at the TV screen. "Were Varvatos Vex on that game show, Varvatos would grant those pitiful flesh-things a glorious death! It's the most merciful thing they could hope for!"

Suddenly, from off in the distance, a howl could be heard. A howl of purest anguish and despair, the sound of a man who had been driven to the brink of madness as his world was torn down before his eyes, all of his dreams and hopes for the future irrevocably dashed by a cold, uncaring universe as he was confronted by a horror beyond his imagining.

Varvatos Vex recognized this howl instantly, for Varvatos Vex had been the cause of many in his day. "What? Varvatos Vex is the only one allowed to be the cause of such unimaginable torment! Whoever is hoarding in on Varvatos Vex's specialty shall be granted a glorious death!"

The royal siblings in his charge poked their heads out of their rooms, annoyed looks on their faces. "Varvatos, can you please cut it out with the "glorious death" bit already? It is getting, as the humans say, 'aged,'" the elder sibling, Aja complained.

"I do not think that is what they are saying," her younger brother, Krel, said doubtfully.

"It is past your proscribed time of slumber! Go to sleep, or Varvatos shall grant you a glorious death!" Varvatos bellowed. The king and queen-in-waiting sighed in exasperation and closed the doors to their rooms.

"I'm sorry, but the answer is 'barbecue,'" the host on the game show Varvatos was watching told the foolish contestant in apology.

Varvatos bellowed in fury and threw his remote control at the TV, breaking it.