Taser

He woke from his fitful sleep to the thin creak of door hinges unused and much abused. "You sure he's really out?" one voice asked.

"Looks almost dead to me," another replied.

Douxie turned his head just a fraction, opened his eyes a slit.

Through his eyelashes, he saw two of 49-B's yellow-suited minions opening the door to Jim's cell.

Within his chest, his heart leapt in sudden painful hope.

Douxie didn't dare twitch, didn't dare breathe as one figure went into the cell and prodded at Jim's shoulder with a long pole.

Please let Jim be faking, please let Jim be faking...

If he was faking, he was doing a really good job of it; he barely moved, his limbs loose and slack. "Yeah, he's out," the first drudgeon said to the second. "Come help me get him out of here."

"We're gonna need a bigger gurney," the second said, coming to the first's aid. "Christ, he's heavy. We're gonna need some more help-"

Jim's eyes snapped open, and he was on his feet in a flash. One minion hit the wall hard and slumped down next to it, out. The second managed to get a taser off, but the electric current only made Jim roar and reflexively swat the body of his tormentor into a different wall, where he met the same fate as the first: unconsciousness. And possibly paralysis, brain damage, or death.

After fourteen years at their and others' hands, Douxie found he didn't much care.

And Jim's door was open.

The troll poked his head out and looked up and down the corridor carefully as Douxie sat up on his cot. Jim moved out into the hall, curling and sweeping around the plexiglass door frame with a grace that gave Douxie just a hint of what he must move like, what his Trollhunter training had shaped him to be.

Jim stepped carefully a few paces forward, then stopped at Douxie's door. He paused, his blue eyes flicking up to meet Douxie's gold. And in that second, he knew exactly what was going through Jim's mind: whether to open the door and free a vampire... or to take his chances on his own.

Douxie's fingers curled around the edge of his thin mattress. He swallowed. Waiting.

"I'm trusting you," Jim said, and kicked the door.

The hinges snapped, and the door came flying in, crashing into the back wall.

He should say something clever, Douxie thought. Something witty.

But absolutely nothing came to mind.

"Come on," Douxie said, and stood.

For the first time in fourteen years, he exited the glass cell under his own power.

"It's the middle of the day," Jim murmured, even bigger up close than Douxie had thought. "We can't leave the building. We're out of our cells, but they'll still have us trapped like rats."

"Your armor of Daylight doesn't give you any immunity?" Douxie asked.

Jim shook his head. "Kanjigar, the Trollhunter before me, was wearing it when he died. Falling into sunlight. He turned to stone and shattered."

Douxie winced. "Right, we're both screwed then." He glanced at his magic limiter. If there was a way to get it off...

But it was skintight, always had been. The burn marks on his arm had always been a pretty good indication it had been welded onto him while he was unconscious. And inside... its claws dug into flesh that had long since healed to accept them. It made attempting to do guitar practice, even with air guitar, a painful bitch, but more importantly, it made the bloody thing impossible to remove.

He set his jaw. "Let's see how far we can get," he said. "If it comes down to it... I have an idea."

And he did not like it, not one little bit.