Jeez this is a long one, but I suppose you guys deserve it for waiting so patiently! Hugs to reviewers KalypsoKari87, KazzieLegran and sarcasticJournalist. Also hugs for new favouriter and follower clonedProphet, just because I'm feeling huggy today.


~ CHAPTER 53 ~

Rolling Dicekind with the Gamblignants

"I'm a Violet Blood," the handsome teen stated with his finger on the page. "So… what does that mean?"

Silence. Dwayne could see those icy eyes fixed on him. Sawyer's three companions were waiting for the answer. Camila and Wesley also weren't speaking. Then Reagan moved, a shift, her bent leg left the wall to touch the ground beside her other one. Apart from that she remained still.

"It means…" Wesley was the first of them to speak. "I'm surprised you haven't already tried to kill all of us."

"Obviously you guys have made a mistake." Sawyer removed his hand from the page, a steady commanding tone to his voice. Dwayne could easily imagine him as a noble aristocrat.

"I've read several books on sea dwellers, all of you are supposed to be tyrants. Nasty pieces of work." The ash-brown haired boy pressed, leaning forward and resting his hands on the table. Sawyer's gaze was intense and eyes unwavering.

"So in other words you don't trust me?"

"Yes." Wesley admitted and Dwayne shuffled uncomfortably.

The three of them were now eying Sawyer with distrust. Reagan was a Satan-worshipping psychopath who'd kidnapped, tortured and even tried to kill them. She'd faked being drugged so she could be taken back to the base. Then she'd preceded in kicking the shit out of them and trying to maim the mother grub before they lucked out and managed to imprison her, keeping her in confinement for a month and eventually settling her insanity.

All of that came from a Purple Blood. Sawyer was one step up from that. Sea-dwellers possessed incredible strength, aquatic abilities and near-immortal lifespans. From what Dwayne knew of high bloods they only became more sinister and cunning the higher up they were on the hemospectrum, until you reach the Fuchsia Blood who of course can only be embodied by one troll at any time. Even when there were billions of trolls, the highest blood caste tracked and killed each other so that there would only ever be one empress.

What Sawyer said next surprised Dwayne.

"That's not fair." He spoke resolutely, eyes still determined. Wesley only stared back at him, his own face flinching against the higher blood's intensity. After another moment of silence he whipped around to his companions who were blinking in surprise. "Kaylah!"

"Hm?" The girl looked at him.

"Have I ever given any of you reason to fear me? Have I threatened to harm you with my strength?"

"No." She answered honestly. "You can be intimidating, but I don't think that's intentional. And you've never threatened us."

"Torrie!" He turned to the Asian girl. "I've never tried manipulating anyone for my own goals, right? Even when you frequently lost control and started smashing things in hulk-mode I never physically restrained you. I just let you be, right?"

"That's true." The Indigo blood answered impassively.

"Jasper!" When he barked at the meek boy he jumped a little. "Have you ever seen me lose control?"

"He's right." The Indian boy faced Dwayne and the others. "Sawyer's always been in control of himself. If anything he's a little too disciplined."

"So I ask you," Sawyer glared at Wesley whose face was slack with surprise. "How is it fair for you guys to pass suspicion on me when I've never acted in any way that would warrant it? Just because of my blood colour? That's ridiculous."

"I'm sorry Sawyer." Dwayne felt himself suddenly feeling ashamed. "You have to understand why we need to be cautious. All of the books have painted a frightening picture of your blood caste."

"Well obviously I'm an exception. You heard my friends, I've never 'lost control'. I'm not angry. I've never exploited them for any reason. So it feels sucky that you'd just lump me in some category cause of this blood caste system." He ranted passionately. He took a few steady breaths before straightening himself. "If what you said is true then all of us are completely different to the extinct trolls we've read about from this other planet. We're trolls yes, but we were each raised as a human. Culturally and socially we've developed completely differently."

"I hear what you're saying, Sawyer." Dwayne replied, still aghast. "I'm sorry. We both are. For what it's worth I don't think you're evil either. It's just… we'll see. I don't think you'll harm us, especially if you have no reason to. You don't have to worry, we won't treat you any differently."

Yet another silence fell across the group of eight. Until Reagan pushed off the wall and stepped forward.

"You seem to be doing a fine job at emotional manipulation to me, sea dweller." Her black eyes stared down his cool blue ones and a chill descended upon the room. Sawyer's gaze was stony and then after a while the white-haired girl whipped around and left the room.

Everyone else exhaled and Dwayne let out a sigh of relief. Talk about tension.

Sawyer's eyes were fixed on the doorway and he crossed his arms, it looked like he was done berating them. Camila reached up to scratch the back of her hand, like Dwayne and Wesley she was also embarrassed.

"Okay…" She clicked her tongue. "Well you guys know pretty much all we can tell you now so… Dwayne? Wesley? Anyone, no? Okay… you guys will hopefully be living with us… right? Great. There's books here and um, I'll show you guys the rest of the hive? Or you can just walk around yourselves, whatever." The small girl edged away from the table and Kaylah went to follow her, Jasper also tagged along.

Sawyer moved immediately to leave the room and start investigating by himself, arms still crossed in frustration. Torrie paused and then moved away to look at things on her own as well. When the three shy trolls wandered off together it was just Dwayne and his Moirail. The green-eyed boy blinked at Wesley whose gaze was fixed on the table.

"So… what do you really think?"

"About Sawyer?" Pause. "I… don't know what I think."

"Can we trust him?"

"It looks like he really hasn't hurt any of the others. What's got me is this: if all Violet Bloods are tyrannical rulers why hasn't he established himself as their boss? Why hasn't he got them trained and intimidated to do whatever he wants them to? His kind is supposed to love power."

"I'm thinking that maybe we can trust him." Dwayne admitted and Wesley lifted his gaze off the table then to stare at his soul-friend. "How could he resist not conquering them if it was in his nature, and for that matter, why? Maybe Sawyer is an exception to the rule?"

"Maybe." Wesley responded but there was uncertainty in his eyes. Then Dwayne reached across the table and put his hand over the other boy's. He loved how that felt entirely natural. Wesley also didn't flinch at all.

Then after a moment Dwayne straightened up and withdrew his hand "Knowing you you're probably going somewhere by yourself to process and think about stuff, the surveillance room right?"

"Hmm."

"I'm going to go socialize. I want to get to know our new friends better. See ya."

"Bye."

Dwayne left the room eagerly, a new bubbling excitement starting to well up inside him. Four other trolls had joined forces and done just fine without a Jade Blood mediator. They'd found their own harmony and hopefully that would spread and start to even things out around here. Reagan didn't seem to like Sawyer much, maybe she was intimidated by the competition? Then again land and sea trolls supposedly never got along.

It didn't matter if Sawyer was manipulative, not really. What mattered was that he'd never bullied or harmed the other trolls in his group. He could scheme for power and emotional control all he wanted, so long as it didn't interfere with their mission to find the other trolls and rebuild their near-extinct alien race.

For the rest of the day there was activity. For the first time their huge base started to seem a little crowded, but that was only because Dwayne was used to there being only a few of them. No longer was there this long-standing silence, no longer did Dwayne clench up as he turned corners because he feared the silent Reagan would be just standing there, coal eyes trained on his soul. Now the green-blood could hear chatter from multiple rooms ahead, he could navigate the corridors and then enter the room knowing exactly who was going to be in there.

It was nice, the pleasant banter. For the first time Dwayne could imagine this as a home. It felt homely. Seven other teens who were just as weird as he was, in the same situation. They were two thirds full – Dwayne tried imagining what it would be like when all twelve of them were here. A family of sorts, hopefully over the years in space transit their higher blood feuds would all fade away and they'd just be a big group of spaceship-bound chums.

Dwayne felt happy, sincerely happy. Their situation had been so dire, but now with the sound of eight trolls occupying the base he felt like maybe he could actually do it. Their impossible mission might just succeed after all. More than that – it might even be easy. With Kaylah sensing the remaining trolls and Jasper scanning the future for threats they could get through this without anything horrible like before ever happening again.

Dwayne stopped by a doorway, clinging to the side of it. Again he wished the mother grub could be here to see this. Her last psychic message to him had been that she had faith that Dwayne would succeed. Well here they were, succeeding. Her trust in him had been wondrous, but he still wished she could be here to see that all of her effort was paying off. He thought of the Matriorb then and such a strong wave of maternal love washed through him that he was surprised by its intensity. Such a force of mother-like affection, anchoring him to this planet, an overpowering urge to nurture.

Jeez Wesley was right about him, Dwayne was such a woman.

Letting go of the doorway he wiped his eyes, they were starting to brim with tears. Tears of joy. At that moment Sawyer came wandering through again, his gaze fixed on the ceiling. He passed Dwayne without acknowledging him yet again. There was no animosity coming from the teen, he'd been exploring the place while lost in his thoughts for the last few hours. He probably hadn't even noticed Dwayne was there.

Continuing on toward the kitchen and eating area Dwayne looked across and saw the three other trolls crouching by the TV. Camila, Kaylah and Jasper had been pretty much inseparable all day. The three low bloods, they chatted and joked and jeered. It seemed like normal teen talk. Torrie was with them now as well, by the tone of her voice she was annoyed about something. The other three still sounded in high spirits, lost in the discussion. Dwayne had followed them around a bit too and they'd all talked about themselves, for the moment he was content with just listening to their boisterousness from a distance.

Too many people trying to talk at the same time and it just made for a lot of garble; they were all feeding off this high-spirited energy. The eagerness that accompanied new friendships.

At the end of the day all eight of the trolls were gathered again in the dining room. Reagan, again, stayed at the edge of the room like a satellite in orbit. Plates of pasta sat in bowls on the table and in the centre was a big fold-out map of Australia, big enough that its edges were hanging off. Cooking for so many people was beyond Dwayne, but luckily the low bloods had all chipped in to help.

Jasper was nice enough to offer chopping up the peppers and onions, since he didn't have much experience at all with cooking – so he'd said. He seemed kind of clumsy, dropping vegetables more than once. They rolled off the chopping board and bounced on the floor while he tried to assemble the items. Torrie had only watched us until Jasper cut his finger with the knife. Then she'd shoved him aside and done the chopping much quicker while he sucked his thumb and watched us by the island counter.

Camila was similarly useless. She'd opted to cook the sauce and dumped an entire jar of concentrate into a frying pan, pushing around the sludge with a wooden spoon and not adding anything to it at all. Dwayne threw it out and Camila joined Jasper on the sidelines, giving verbal encouragement and teasing in her usual fashion.

Kaylah was the only one of them who seemed adept at cooking. She knew how to do everything properly, she and Dwayne worked together getting everything ready and then the other three helped set the table. Sawyer had wandered in and out of the room lost in thought, not noticing what they were doing. Reagan and Wesley didn't come out of their hiding places until dinner time.

Dwayne adjusted the map while Jasper slurped up a string of fettucine, red sauce flecking somewhere across the Pacific Ocean.

"So let's go through this again." Wesley stated, pushing his bowl and spoon aside. "Dwayne and I both come from New South Wales, here and here." His thin fingers brushed the map. "So does Kaylah right?"

"Yep! Home of Sydney, greatest city in Australia." The ombre-haired girl spooned another mouthful in.

"It's safe to say we cross that state off the list. It has the highest population but still, what's the chances we're going to find a fourth troll in the same state?"

"Melbourne's better than Sydney." Torrie crossed her arms and rested them on the table, almost in a sulk.

"That's right." Wesley scratched his head. "Torrie here's from Victoria. Jasper came from a place near the desert by Adelaide in South Australia and Reagan came from Perth city in West Australia. Sawyer of course, came from Hobart in Tasmania, the island state down here." His fingernail trailed down to the heart-shaped state surrounded by water down south.

"How'd you get here, fish boy?" Camila dared to say. "Did you swim?"

Sawyer gave her a dry smile.

Dwayne moved around his fettucine with a spoon "You probably flew over in that helicopter right?"

Around noon the blonde guy had gone back to the aircraft and landed it closer to the base just so they didn't have to carry their luggage so far. The group of four had brought clothes and some food rations with them. Obviously they had nothing on the master food supply stored here, sealed and vacuumed plastic for optimum freshness.

"You know there's this joke on the mainland that all Tasmanians are inbred." Camila continued to pester.

"Really? We say the same about you lot." He answered back with a growing smirk.

"Back on topic." Wesley pressed. "We have trolls here from all states except-"

"Oh my God!" Camila banged both fists on the table and the empty plates jumped. Everyone turned to look at the now standing girl. "That means the only state left is Queensland! Wahoo!" She jumped away from the table and started running around victoriously. "Yes! Finally I'll get to the gold coast! Beaches, hotels, waves! This is going to be awesome!"

"Yes." Wesley turned back and the group ignored the brunette as she started running around in the next room. "Our plan was to teleport to a rural area of a state and then leave the base, travelling around until we happen on the sensory trail of a hidden troll. We only have three teleportations worth of Uranium though, so the actual tracking down part could still take months."

Kaylah swallowed another mouthful and then wiped red sauce off her chin "We'll see. You guys have something now that you didn't have before. Two extra trolls with psychic powers. This will be a piece of cake."


Yay feel good chapter. I guess you guys also deserve one of those, after all this story has had its fair share of angsty chapters. I'm glad that things seem to be working out now, but of course I know all the twists and turns that are to come mwahaha. As for what you said KalypsoKari87, anyone can feel free to leave suggestions in reviews or a PM. You guys can talk to me if you want, I swear I'm not intimidating!