I was gonna make you wait another day, but eh I was feeling nice after last chapter.
OoOoOo
Branch felt like he had gotten hit by a caterbus. His body felt heavy and refused to cooperate with him, his eyes unwilling to open. His head spun and he felt like he was going to throw up. He wriggled, but his movement was restrained by thick rope.
"-him go! This has nothing to do with him!" Poppy. She sounded angry, but behind that there was fear. He didn't want her to sound like that. Why did she sound like that?
Wait, Poppy. The memories came rushing back as his head cleared a bit. He had found her, he had been about to free her. But then what-? Pain spiked in the back of his head. Right. He had been attacked from the back before he could cut off her restraints. Branch cursed himself. Normally, he could have gotten that done in thirty seconds flat. But he had been slow, sluggish. And now they were both paying the price for it.
Tears formed behind his eyelids; couldn't he do anything right?
"It has everything to do with him," another painstakingly familiar voice hissed. It set off warning bells in his mind, but he couldn't place where he had heard it before. His brain felt fuzzy. "He took everything from me."
"He didn't do anything!" The ferocity returned to Poppy's voice. "You betrayed us!" Betrayed? Who had betrayed them?
"I did what I had to," hissed the other voice. "I did it to survive. You would have done it too!"
"Never!" spat Poppy. He didn't think he had ever heard such contempt in her voice before. "I would have never done that to my friends-"
It smacked into Branch like a ton of bricks. He knew who had kidnapped Poppy, and he was furious with himself for not seeing it before. That was why Daisy made him uncomfortable, he had been dealing with someone like her for years. She was manipulative and passive aggressive and insincere. Just like-
"-Creek!"
Branch forced his eyes to open, ignoring the pain racking through his skull. And sure enough, there he was. His clothes were tattered and he no longer had that arrogant, self-assured aura about him. But no doubt it was Creek.
How could he have been so stupid? The signs were right there. Creek would have known where Poppy's pod was. Creek would have been able to enter the village without drawing attention to himself. Creek wouldn't have been unaccounted for because as far as they were concerned, he was long dead.
A part of him had forgotten about the purple troll. After not hearing from him after a few months, he and Poppy had come to the conclusion he had died with Chef. He cursed himself for not investigating further. Creek was a danger to their village and Branch had written him off as a nonissue.
And look where that had gotten them.
Creek's face darkened and it made the fuzz on the back of Branch's neck stand up. "I don't enjoy hurting you, love, but you keep testing my patience." Branch watched, helpless, as the purple troll brought his hand back and smacked Poppy right on her cheek. The crack was deafening.
His rage was instant. Branch clenched his jaw, biting back the growl forming in the back of his throat. His hair twitched to wrap itself around Creek's scrawny neck for daring to lay a hand on her, but he knew he couldn't risk it. In his state, he had a good chance of missing. What if he hurt Poppy by accident?
To Poppy's credit, she recovered quickly. Branch had barely blinked before she whipped around and sank her teeth into his arm. She bit down hard, cutting right into his flesh.
Creek screeched, desperately trying to pull his arm away. Branch felt a sick sense of satisfaction and pride as Poppy drew blood. It was the least the bastard deserved. While Creek shrieked obscenities at her, Branch realized that his knife was a on the floor few inches away from him, the idiot hadn't bothered to take it. He extended his foot forwards; if he could just get to it...
It was kicked away.
Branch winced, raising his head to meet Daisy's cold eyes. Her gaze moved from him to Creek, giving the younger troll an unimpressed look. "Are you done?" she asked. "Because this one was about two seconds from freeing himself."
Creek flushed, whether out of embarrassment or anger he couldn't tell. "I would have handled it, Mother," he hissed, managing to free his arm. Daisy's role in this suddenly started to make sense. Creek must have somehow reunited with her between Viva and Clay leading the rest of the Putt Putt Trolls to Pop Village and now.
Daisy rolled her eyes. "Sure you would have." She approached Poppy, and Branch suddenly felt even more afraid than when Creek had hit her. She reached out and grabbed a fistful of pink strands, causing Poppy to yelp. "You've caused me a lot of trouble, Your Majesty." She used the title mockingly.
A snarl formed on Branch's lips before he could stop it. "Let go of her," he growled, hatred burning inside of him.
Daisy looked at him with disgust, her grip tightening in Poppy's hair. "And the gray troll dares to speak. I remember you, a miserable child no one wanted. Your brothers left you. Then you got your poor grandmother eaten. You've been worthless your whole life, haven't you?"
Branch flinched, the truth of her words cutting into him. Nothing she had said was wrong. He was worthless- worse, he was a burden. That was why his brothers had left him. That was why Grandma was dead. That was why they were in this shitty situation.
It was all his fault.
Poppy hissed, kicking her legs. "Don't talk to him like that! Branch is worth ten times more than you and your coward son combined! Don't listen to her, Branch, she's wrong! You know that!" He wished he could believe her.
Daisy yanked her hair harder. "I can't believe they made you queen," she sneered. "A stupid, naive little girl who nearly got the entire village eaten and then left my poor son to die." Guilt flashed across Poppy's face.
Branch bared his teeth. "Your son nearly got the entire village eaten," he corrected. He wasn't going to stand aside and let her belittle his girlfriend like that, especially not in favor of Creek. "Poppy was only trying to save his sorry ass."
Daisy waved him off. "Not that any of that matters," she continued, and Branch's heart stopped when he realized she had a knife in her hand. And it was dangerously close to his girlfriend's face. "You won't be queen for much longer."
Fuck, fuck, fuck; he needed time. He had to stall, keep them talking, anything to stop that knife from getting any closer. "What's even the point of all this?" he demanded. "To kill us? What does that solve? All it's gonna do is piss our family off." Well, Poppy's family. Why would his brothers bother after what he had said?
"Oh, don't worry about that, mate," Creek chimed in for the first time in a while, a terrifying grin on his face. "Poor Queen Poppy, turned on by the Bergens she befriended. Her pathetic little boyfriend trying to save her and failing."
Poppy gaped. "You're going to blame the Bergens?" she demanded. "Are you crazy? No one will believe that, we've been peaceful with them for over a year!"
"If only there was a group of trolls whose paranoia is still sky-high," added Daisy, her voice sickeningly sweet. "If you think the Putt Putt Trolls feel safe in that village of yours, you're mistaken. All it'll take is an incident like this and everything you've worked for will be gone."
This was... evil. No wonder Creek had always given him a bad feeling growing up, his mother was a sick, twisted person who had raised him to be the same way.
Anger and devastation blended together on Poppy's face and it made Branch's heart hurt. He wanted nothing more than to make everything better for her. But he couldn't because he was so fucking useless. "You won't get away with this!" she shouted.
Creek chuckled. "I believe we already have, love. If you haven't noticed, you and your oaf are tied up and helpless. There's no one who can stop us."
"I wouldn't be too sure about that." Hope soared in Branch's heart at the familiar voice. He forced himself to tun to see a pink troll with yellow hair standing in the threshold of the room. It was Viva, and she looked pissed.
OoOoOo
Yup, it was Creek the whole time! Obviously, I mean I didn't do a great job of hiding it. Eh, I'm not a mystery writer. We slander Creek in this household.
Unrelated, but how would guys imagine a human AU? I picture Poppy and Viva as Puerto Rican (maybe half-Italian) and Brozone as Blasian (specifically half Filipino). Don't ask me why it's so specific, I just can't imagine them as anything else.
Also unrelated, but JOHN DORY WON THE TWITTER SEXYMAN POLL. He beat out San by .2%. That might be the wildest thing I've seen in my life.