Trolls: Dårlig and Feige
Chapter 4: Factory Cousins
Immigrants in Villainapolis learn very quickly during their first weeks in the city. The first major thing they learn is that when it comes to settling down permanently, the neighborhood at the end of 10th Street is NOT the perfect place. It was the city's main industrial neighborhood, where all the factories were installed and the employees got the worst salaries, making 10 to 15 blights an hour, the equivalent of hardly 5 human dollars.
Each of the six blocks that formed the neighborhood had buildings glued to each other as if somebody came up with the idea of invisible cement that could stick titanium-strong factories or weak brick warehouses. The crummy apartment buildings that stuck occasionally between a factory and a warehouse were just narrow enough to replace an alley. Smoke constantly came out from the industrial chimneys, coughing its way up to sky and not even the residents could tell if it was regular smoke or grey-colored clouds among the blue sky, which made it harder to tell if it was going to rain though your weather app told you otherwise.
The moment Feige and Genny arrived just outside the neighborhood (Genny refused to park her car in the place, so they had to walk from the parking spot all the way to the factory), they had to put on breathing masks. Later, Feige understood why. With the constant smokes coughing from every manufacturing area, locals and workers could get sick. She was even shocked when she saw some children waiting until they got inside a school bus to remove their masks.
"This place makes Sean's neighborhood look sympathetic. Why on earth would anyone live under such conditions?" Feige asked in disgust.
"Not everyone can have it sweet here just like in any other city," Genny said. "There are those who thrive in good careers and then there are those who need to butt off in factories that gives them hardly anything." She pointed up ahead. Right at the end of the street, where it literally ended, stood a massive grey factory that stood up to the others like a palace. When the girls got to the factory's main gate, the words WONKA'S CHOCOLATE FACTORY screamed right at them in grey metal letters.
"Funny. For a guy who's into chocolate and candy, I thought it would be more... colorful." Feige looked skeptically at the building that stood before them, threatening to squash them if it became sentient.
Genny found the buzzer and pushed it. "Wonka's Chocolate Factory, how may we assist?" The operator asked.
"Hi. We may have found out that Mr. Wonka's son is still alive and..."
Genny couldn't finish her sentence. A trapdoor popped open right underneath their feet and the girls fell in. They screamed as they slid down a tunnel that twisted in all directions while constantly changing neon colors.
"I usually love rainbows, but this is RIDICULOOOOOOOOOUS!" Feige screamed.
A circular opening popped open and the girls landed in a dark mint office. Their butts landed right into two red velvet chairs that faced a chocolate brown desk. The chair behind the desk turned, revealing the sitter to be an old man with gray hair cut into a bob, his velvet trench coat dusty, his high top hat wrinkled, and his latex gloved hands clutching on the tip of his cane.
"Where. Is. My. Son?" He demanded.
Feige scowled at him before saying sarcastically. "Nice to meet you too, Mr. Wonka. How are you doing? Is this how you normally treat your guests?" She pointed at the opening behind them.
Mr. Wonka frowned when he saw her. His mouth dropped slowly before clenching his teeth and grabbing his cane, threatening to hit Feige with it at any wrong move. "You're a Troll! A giant Troll! Did Peppy send you? As karma?" He demanded.
"What? No! I don't even serve him! Trust me, I am nothing like the other Trolls... Hang on, how do you the former Troll king?"
Wonka lowered his cane. "Wait... Peppy is no longer the prince?"
"You knew Peppy as a prince? Like, back in the days when Bergens used to eat Trolls?"
"Bergens no longer eat Trolls?" Wonka dropped back in his seat, his hands letting go off the cane. "I must be in a parallel universe..."
"Um, sir?" Feige tried to be as patient as possible. "Let's make it even: you tell me how you know the Troll royalty and I tell you about your son. Deal?"
The man nodded and sat back upstraight. He sighed, looking ashamed for some reason.
"It was a really long time ago... perhaps sixty-years ago. I was traveling the worlds, searching for new ingredients or inspirations to make even more fabulous and tastier candy. One day, I was in a peculiar forest and I was observing its perimeters when my telescope got me a sight of an oddly gray town where grey ogres kept tiny colorful creatures in a tree in a cage..."
"That must have been back in the days when Bergens still kept Trolls in captivity until they'd eat them in Trollstice!" Feige looked at Genny.
"Indeed." Wonka continued. "I was so fascinated by how these tiny colorful creatures in the distance looked oddly positive despite being in a cage, and I can assure you, I've seen deadly bored caged canaries. So in the middle of the night, while everyone was asleep, I snuck into the town and got close enough to the cage. That was how I met the Trolls. Prince Peppy was the first one to have reached out to me. 'Why are you trapped here?' I asked. He told me that tomorrow morning, the town's citizens would gather to eat some of his people selected by the royal chef. 'Why don't you escape? Even the space between the bars is big enough for many of you to go through,' I said.
"'Even if we did, the Bergens would just find us!' 'Then come with me. I could sneak you out of the city'..."
"Yeah, I'm guessing this is the part where Chef and her cooks caught you in the act, they captured you, and she made you an offer that you couldn't refuse that led you to turn back on the one you made to Peppy," Feige said, raising an eyebrow.
"Pretty much. How did you know?"
"Let's just say that when your dad betrays his own species so that Chef could spare his life... is like watching at least ten thousand movies with the exact same plotline." The Troll girl shrugged. She reached in her hair and pulled out one of the Everlasting Gobstopper wrappers she had found back in Sean's house and the photo. The moment she put them on the table, Wonka immediately grabbed the picture. "Willywaffle... I left this photo to the Huns when they filed up his disappearance..."
"Yeah, uh... Shan Yu doesn't know I took it from him." Feige want on to explain a great deal of things to Mr. Wonka. The disappearances, the clues she had 'randomly' found under the bed of Ursula's daughter, the sheriff connecting Naomi's disappearance with the one of Willywaffle Wonka seven-years-ago... "And since Sean told me about the rules of parallel universes, we assumed that if I saw an older version of your son living in the real world dimension, then that would mean the one from here must still be alive."
"My son is still alive..." Mr. Wonka gasped. "After seven years..."
"Out of curiosity, Mr. Wonka, what were the circumstances that would make Otrera Beldam attack Willywaffle right on the eve of his thirteenth birthday?" Genny asked. "Aracdames were known to prey on emotional children up to the age of twelve."
"I don't know why she ever decided to attack him right before he turned thirteen." He shook his head while his eyes looked miserably at the photo. "I don't even know if my son disappeared because of the attack or if he ran away primarily because we argued on that day."
"You two argued?"
"Yes. You see, as an extremely big present for my son, I was planning on taking my son with me on his birthday to sign the papers that would declare him the next-one-in-line to run my factory after my death. I told him about it the day before, but he wasn't happy about it."
"He didn't want to run the chocolate factory?" Feige asked.
"Well, not mine. He did grow up to love candy as much as I did from the consumption to the fabrication. He used to tell me that he'd love to be a chocolatier like I was, but what I failed to realize until we had our argument was that he meant 'going to explore', 'hunting for ingredients', and 'see the world's inspirations that would make his own candy out of scratch'. He wanted to explore to make his own chocolate business... rather than just run the family one.
"He locked himself up in his room and refused to speak to me until tomorrow. After he purposely skipped lunch, I asked one of the employees to bring him over his dinner and an apology letter that I wrote. Next thing I knew, my factory got invaded by Hun Elites who claimed that Otrera Beldam's recent child hunting pattern was targeting my factory, and then the servant ran back screaming at me that a metal human spider was harming my son.
"We broke the door to Willywaffle's room and we found Otrera Beldam trying to force buttons onto my son's eyes. Knowing her species, she must have goaded him with temptations that would allow him to surrender, but since she was attacking him, it was obvious that Willywaffle refused to let her sew buttons into his eyes. She kept pulling him into her clutches until I was able to pull him away from her. Since she was dragging him by the ankles, her metal needle fingers scarred him.
"The Huns apprehended Otrera. While my son was being taken care off in a hospital, I attended the trial where Otrera was sentenced to exile. She hissed and claimed that she'd return, but nobody believed. And then when I returned to the hospital, Willywaffle was gone. I asked everyone at the hospital, but nobody saw him leave. I asked everyone in the neighborhood and this one, but no one saw. The Hun Elites couldn't find him and even the black market crooks had no idea where he went!" He calmed down and turned to look at Feige. "But if what you say is true, my son may be just as alive!"
"OK, but even if he's still alive, why did he decide to not return home?" Feige got up. "If he was saved and Otrera got exiled, shouldn't he have stayed home with his family?"
"Otrera broke into his room. Aracdames usually drag their preys away from home." Genny pointed out. "Maybe he ran away from home because he feared that he wouldn't be safe after the incident."
Earlier today, in the Crooked Foundation Stone Foundation
Morning rays of sun slipped through the broken windows of the Crooked Mill and reflected right into colorful piles of glass bottles. As the rays widened, the glass bottles that hung on the willow tree that grew from the second floor of the ancient building spread their shattered rainbow. One of the broken pink lights hit the bed in the third floor.
One would have to be crazy enough to sleep in the same floor of a spinning shaft, but since the Crooked Mill had lost its purpose throughout the city's evolution, it no longer functioned the traditional way. Instead, it became the home of someone who just wanted a roof to sleep and live under.
Will, the con artist who unknowingly got spotted by Dårlig, grumbled as the light hit him in the face. He kicked off the purple Romanian drape he used as a blanket and got up from the pathetic peasant mattress he slept on.
"Morning, master. Annual bath ready." A small human, barely high enough to reach Will's knees even with his masses of upright black hair, was waiting for him by a large wooden tub, which the creature was filling up by pouring boiling water from a bucket.
"Thanks." Since Will didn't have any PJs to sleep in, he instantly went in the tub. He screamed the moment his skin touched the water. "Burning!"
"Loom spend all night fetching water from well and boiling it for master to bathe after he wakes," the creature said. "Annual bath important. Loom go get soap." The creature slid down the wooden ladder leading through the other two floors, taking the bucket with him. Will groaned in exasperation, but decided to take the opportunity to rub himself with the inconveniently hot water. It stung him everywhere, the feet area the worst. He brought up his left foot and stared at the stinging area. His ankle, bearing horrible white scars. Scars so thin and sharp, it was like a lion had scratched him with knives for claws. Scars that his right ankle also bared but were currently hidden by the water.
Loom came back with the soap and a sponge. When he saw his master staring at his ankle, he lost his smile to a sadder expression. "Seven years came. Master's birthday coming sooner than expected. Can't we go back home?"
Will sighed. He didn't say anything and let Loom do the scrubbing with the soap and sponge. "You know I can't go back, Loom. Even behind the factory's security, I wasn't safe. After they failed to protect me when I was a kid..."
"Wonka and Huns win and mean witch go bye-bye from city," Loom pointed out as he scrubbed the back of the young man's neck.
"Adults were useless." Will said. "It is more important to survive than live." He sighed. "If you want to go back to the factory with the other Oompa- Loompas, you can..."
The Oompa-Loompa shook his head. "Loom loyal to master! Master kind to Loom since Loom born in the factory! Loom sacrifice anything to keep master from loneliness! If master not return to factory, then Loom stays!"
Back to later, in the factory
Feige and Genny were given a quick free tour of the chocolate factory as a small thank from Wonka concerning his son. Now the author doesn't have to remind the readers of the wonder stuff the factory held (they can easily remember the stuff from the movie adaptations), but what the author can tell you is that the girls were marveled by how the colorful magic behind the chocolate-making contrasted the grey atmosphere of the 10th Street neighborhood. For Genny, it was something that defied every scientific rule she had learned, but for Feige, it was the discovery of the employees.
"Oompa-Loompas and Trolls are cousins?!" She exclaimed when she got introduced to two Oompa-Loompas while Mr. Wonka was showing the girls the famous chocolate room and the two small creatures instantly ran at her, shouting 'Cousin!'
"Cousin species, to be exact," Mr. Wonka said with a smile. "Granted, the size differences and the Trolls' far more colorful pigmentation question the relationship between the Trolls and the Oompa-Loompas, but both species are awfully small in human perspectives and both are known for joyful moods, singing, and dancing."
"Present for cousin!" One of the Oompa-Loompas pulled something out of his uniform's pockets and showed it to Feige. She bent down to have a better, fascinated look at the candy. It looked like a star made of eight colorful crystals, small enough to rest in the Oompa-Loompa's palm. They then started to glow, turning the candy into a rainbow emergency light show.
"Cool candy," she smiled.
"Uh, Feige?" Genny nervously pointed at Feige, who looked down at the aimed direction and yelped. Her navel was glowing as well.
"It never did that before!" She covered her navel in embarrassment. After covering it for a good thirty seconds, she removed her hands. The glowing continued.
"Incredible!" Mr. Wonka took the glowing candy from the Oompa-Loompa. "The Troll gemstones from the Everlasting Gobstopper must be reacting to the Troll gemstone you have on your tummy!"
Feige's eyes widened and her head robotically went up. "I'm sorry... Did you say that the candy... has Troll gemstones?"
"What's the deal on Troll gemstones?" Genny asked.
"My dad told me that Troll gemstones were the seeds that created the Troll Tree that Trolls first came from. They're like... the original source of happiness, the fuel that brings Trolls the endless happy nature they have!" Feige explained. "Twelve navel Troll gemstones from twelve female Trolls were the key ingredient in the potion that Dårlig and I drank, the one that gave me my giant size. I guess the consumption gave me a side effect." She turned to Wonka. "The offer that Chef gave you... She gave you Troll gemstones, didn't she?"
He nodded. "She said that Troll gemstones were useless in the Bergens' feastings on Trolls. She claimed that the moment a Troll was eaten, the Bergen would just spit out the navel jewel. And when some tried to eat the navel jewels by cutting it off from Trolls, they were just flavorless rocks. Chef gave me an entire bag full of tiny gemstones. 'Good enough for the belly of one thousand Trolls,' she told me. 'Better to experiment on that than waste time on full bodies that can spoil.'"
"Bribed by jewels," Genny said in disgust. "Why is it so common for people to be taken away by money and jewels?"
"And you managed to industrialize the Troll gemstones into this?" Feige pointed at the Everlasting Gobstopper.
"Three months spent on research with my eyes glued on the microscope," he said with a nod. "When it seemed like I was getting nowhere, I got into my glass elevator and dunked the entire bag's content onto Mt Fudge in anger. Three days later, an Oompa-Loompa comes to tell me that they sensed something off while they were digging in the chocolate mountain. I joined them in their digging and what we found was incredible! In three days, the Troll gemstones had sunk deep into the mountain to create an underground cavern full of beautiful colorful crystals the size of baseball bats! I took tiny samples of each crystal, and after some physical testing, I discovered that they made flavors that never stopped once they went into your mouth!"
"And you created the Everlasting Gobstoppers," Genny grinned. "Candies that could never lose flavor!"
"Never?" Feige arched an eyebrow.
"Rita had one once and she managed to still have it in her mouth for a year!" Genny nodded.
"It is a miracle." Wonka nodded. "Of course, the Troll gemstones proliferate very quickly when mined, that's why I usually select the best, ripest ones to make the Gobstoppers. For those that are not well-tended or overripe, I sell them away."
"How do you sell Troll gemstones?" Feige asked in disbelief.
"You'd be surprised how many people in Villainapolis mistake Troll gemstones as simple gemstones or diamonds. Aside from my chocolatier business, I have succeeded in making the most money by selling overripe Troll gemstones to the Villainapolis upper-class, celebrities, and jewelers."
"Jewelers?" Feige rubbed her chin and got back up again. "Would it be possible to have a list of all the people in Villainapolis that you sold Troll gemstones to? Hopefully I'm wrong, but it might help us in the investigation."
"Why would you hope to be wrong?" Genny asked.
"A mall jewelry shop owner disappears along with every sellable product in the store, then a little girl who has been playing with a button-eye clone and eating a large amount of Gobstoppers... All of this happening seven years after a button-eyed witch tried to eat the kid of the guy who not makes Gobstoppers but also makes them out of Troll gemstones that he also sells away as jewelry material. Things seem to come together in one inner circle."
Meanwhile, at the Brewing Cupcake
"And here is your order to go," Mrs. Hexe gave a friendly look to her customer as she handed him his box full of cupcakes. She kept running in and out of the kitchen, bringing orders for the clients that were mobbing the shop and requesting to take it with them. Back in the kitchen, Dårlig was working as fast as he could to get the pastries ready while Mrs. Hexe's sister used a spell to make the dish cleaning go a whole lot faster. It was only around 2pm that they finally ran out of baking ingredients, leading them to closing the shop for the day.
"This is insane!" Dårlig dropped on the floor. His skin was sweating from the heat he had endured via ovens and stoves. "Is there some kind of national sports game going on?"
The back door knocked. Mrs. Hexe's sister got up and went to open the door. After paying the passing newspaper boy, she closed the door and came back with a newspaper at hand. "Well there's the answer," she said. "Kory Lokisia is throwing a concert next weekend."
"Kory who?" Dårlig was confused.
"A teenager pop sensation at Villainapolis," Mrs. Hexe said. "She used to go to the same school as Ingwer until she went into the singing industry. Kids just love her music."
"Says here that she finally finished her Dark Shooting Star Tour at Eviladelphia and that until her next tour is announced, she'll be doing charity concerts and contribute half of the ticket earnings to the local community shelters," her sister nodded.
Mrs. Hexe grabbed a piece of paper and started writing things down. "Good thing the market's open today. I won't risk my skin in a mobbing supermarket." She turned to her sister. "Could you keep an eye on the shop? Dårlig and I will go do the grocery shopping at the market."
The sister grumbled and tossed away her magazine. After washing his hands and rolling down his sleeves, Dårlig followed Mrs. Hexe. She handed him a bag of groceries while she proceeded to whip her apron until it became a purple trench coat. They went out to back alley. Dårlig grimaced in disgust when he spotted another rat trying to scurry away from them.
"Out of the way, you foul vermin!" Mrs. Hexe pointed a finger at the rodent. A pink bolt of lightning grinded the thing into a pile of peppers.
"Very good aim, ma'am!" Dårlig applauded as they headed to the street.
"I never liked rats," Mrs. Hexe shrugged.
"Same here." The young Bergen thought back to when he had hit one with a pry bar last night.
"You know, rats used to be the spying servants of Aracdames," she said. "If you saw a rat in the alley, that meant it's mistress was in the city, but you saw a full colony, the witch was nearby. I used to tell my little Ingwer that if she ever misbehaved, the rodents would rat her off and the Aracdame would take her away from home."
"Right." Dårlig said nothing else afterwards, not wanting to remember that his first three days in Villainapolis involved same-gender species scorning him. The cruelty it was to imagine that his ancestor was a respected monster hunter who got his legacy spoiled because his descendant, Chef, didn't live up to the expectations. Sucks to be you, Dårlig's inner conscience mocked.
They walked all the way to this large roundabout five streets away from the Brewing Cupcake. Multiple stands were placed, selling diverse objects from freshly picked produce and fresh meat to interior decoration items like black clay pots and dreamcatchers made of seashell shards. As they went from merchant to merchant, Mrs. Hexe only took one item per type that they needed. To Dårlig, it didn't look enough.
"Are you sure that one bag of flour will suffice?" He asked while Mrs. Hexe gave five blights to the baker who sold bags full of milk white flour.
"You don't honestly believe that I waste my money on a delivery truck, do you?" Mrs. Hexe laughed as if he were joking. "I'm a witch, Dårlig. If I need cocoa beans to store up in my shop, all I need to do is buy one authentic bag of cocoa beans and use a spell to create duplicates. Not only do I save money, but I avoid overloading."
"Smart tactic," he commented. He turned his head around to see the other stands in the area. "Say, do you know where I can purchase oysters? I'm thinking of making a seafood dinner for Feige when I get back home." OK, technically it was a lie. He really needed to find an oyster holding a black pearl to get his way into the Stone Foundation. But then again, he could always buy extra to make the actual dish.
Mrs. Hexe gave him a big smile as they moved to a stand of Eastern spices. "Your Troll friend is awfully lucky. It's not everyday one sees a Bergen pushing up his limits to please his different species girlfriend."
Dårlig blushed and tried to hide it by pretending to smell out the different pots of purple honey. "Feige and I haven't exactly gotten the chance to date yet. I mean... I guess one could say that the proof of us going past the friend zone goes back a couple years, but... you know, size issues..."
The candy witch nodded as she went on to open the cans and sniff through them to determine which went back and which ones would she bring over to the vendor. "Love is hard when you're evil, it's harder when it's of two different species, and triple challenging when it's the two of them. My sister and I for instance are married to two ogre brothers."
Dårlig whistled. "Wow! The house must smell the doubled odor of belching ogres!"
"They mostly eat, watch TV, and sleep. I hardly see them do anything else. And it gets challenging with our children. When a child is born of two different species, you never know what parental side will affect them. My sister's son is still a baby but he already displays his father and uncle's sense of appetites, but my daughter Ingwer is an angel. She managed to harmonize her talents in magic while also trying to watch her hunger."
The Bergen boy nodded quietly before finally asking. "How exactly does it work when... same-gender species mate? Last time I checked, Ingwer and Sean both come from same-gender species and I'm guessing Ingwer's paternal ogre country is mostly male."
"That is an excellent question you are asking here, Dårlig." Mrs. Hexe paid the vendor and the two moved on to the next stand. "As you know, when we say same-gender, it doesn't necessarily mean that it's all one gender, but that the majority will be one gender and that majority will be the most gifted. It may seem rather pompous and hypocritical, but most of the time a same-gender species will try to mate with another same-gender species to produce better offspring. Majority female species meets majority male species while the minorities hit off with one another. In my species, child-luring through treat witches are more compatible with ogres, who make their jobs a bit easy because they primarily ask for food."
"OK." Dårlig shook his head. "Do you have a better example?"
"Hm." Mrs. Hexe hesitated. "I already told you about Aracdames. That species was entirely female, but they still needed to mate with males to reproduce more of themselves. Luckily for them, they found their perfect match in all-male monsters called hollowgasts."
"From Miss Peregrine's Home For Peculiar Children? I think I know what you're talking about. Giant monsters with long, needle shaped arms and legs, faceless, and large fanged months with forked tongues that feast on eyes?" Dårlig said. "And when they physically morphed into humans, they had white pearly eyes?"
"Yes. Child eye feasting was a thing that united the two species, along with mutual taste for sadism. Until your ancestors annihilated the Aracdames, almost every Aracdame mated with a Hollowgast, and if they still liked each other even after the offspring came, they'd live and hunt children together. But since those females are gone, their male companions disappeared in the shadows."
"Yeah, I wouldn't want to meet them." Dårlig slightly turned his head and saw the stand neighboring the one they were currently in. It was a seafood stand run by two people, an adult and a boy probably a year younger than Dårlig, with green fish scales, webbed feet, and red eyes. The adult was dealing with the vending while the boy was guiding one of the customers through their display of mollusks. Dårlig's eyes hit the bull's eye.
A pile of oysters and three of them were open to display the pearls that came with the oysters, ranging from pure white to smooth black.
"Excuse me for a moment." Dårlig ran away from the stand and dashed to the seafood stand. "Hi," he told the boy. "I'd like to get a couple of your oysters with black pearls."
"Ten blights each," the boy said.
Dårlig grinned and he started piling up the money at the cash register. His ticket to Stone Foundation was guaranteed.