Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
first released 2nd February 2022
Hisirdoux sighed. "Right," he said, feeling the weight of responsibility pulling down his shoulders. "Jim. Toby," he said, turning to look at those two, who still stood in the frame of his bedroom door, Barbara having followed Steve to the front door. "If I might have a word?"
"If this is about the footage-" Toby started.
"It's not about the footage," Douxie interrupted him. "It's about the fact that you stopped laughing when I started acting like I reciprocated Steve's feelings, and whether or not you realize just how badly that all reflects on the both of you."
"Uhhh..." Jim cast a look at Toby, as if suddenly realizing how his actions seemed. "It wasn't homophobia?" he tried.
"Glad to hear it," Douxie said flatly, crossing his arms. "How about you tell me what it was, then?"
"It was... um." Jim blinked and seemed to fail at finding his words.
"It was because it was you," Toby said stoutly. "And Steve. And Steve's hilarious when he's not being a dick, but you made it into something serious."
Hisirdoux blinked. "So you don't think his entire will and sense of self being overridden by a curse was serious?"
"Well. I mean. It was kind of funny?" Toby tried.
He just stared at the younger boy for a minute, then pulled the ring out of his hoodie pocket and tossed it at him. Toby scrambled the catch but kept hold of the ring; his reflexes were good. "If it's so funny, Toby," Douxie said levelly, "then how about you put on that ring?"
Toby's widening eyes flickered back and forth between the ring and Douxie. He didn't say anything, but a kind of horrified refusal was written all over his face.
"Not so funny now, is it?" Douxie asked. He stalked forward and took the ring back. He looked back and forth between Jim and Toby. "Steve was just barely able to hold on to enough sense of self to protest going into a bedroom with me. If I'd pushed, though? He would have folded like origami."
"But you're not into that," Jim protested.
"You know that. Does Steve?" asked Douxie. He sighed and held the cursed ring up before the two boys. "The other name for love spells is 'slave curses'. Still think they're funny?"
Wide-eyed, they both shook their heads.
"Good," Douxie said. He pushed past them, heading back downstairs, and then to the Arena, to return the cursed ring to its rightful place on the "do not touch" shelf.
Okay, so Douxie was ticked at them. After his explanation, Jim could totally understand why. And knowing what he knew...
"Ugh," Toby complained, face-down on the dining table. "How could he expect us to know that? I mean, we're not wizards like him! We don't need to know everything about, like, curses and stuff."
Jim breathed out and stirred the soup he had simmering. "I don't know, Tobes. Maybe we do?"
"We're Trollhunters!" Toby complained. "Our job's to hit the bad guys with swords until they stop. Not break curses. That's for Douxie to do, and, like, Vendel and stuff."
"And we do whatever else Trollmarket needs," Jim reminded him. Which might mean things like dealing with curses.
"Ugh. Wanna place any bets on how long it'll be until Bagdwella's needs to be de-gnomed again?"
Jim laughed. "No." He took a sip of the broth and let it linger on his tongue, considering the balance of flavors. Maybe just a little more pepper, he thought, and some parsley leaves sprinkled on right before serving.
He stood still for a long moment, thinking about what they both were, and their duties. Their responsibilities. What they both knew lay before them. He set down his spoon and turned to his best friend. "Toby," Jim said, "are you scared?"
Toby scoffed. "Scared of what, Jimbo?"
"Gunmar," Jim said quietly.
"Shyeah, no. We've got this wrapped up! You, me, Claire, Douxie... heck, we're even going to have Aja and Varvatos kicking butt next to us!"
"And Eli and Steve and Darci helping out," Jim agreed. "But, Tobes... the rest of us are just to deal with the Gumm-Gumms, and slow Gunmar down a little." He couldn't help his frown. "You have the Eclipse blade. You're the one who has to kill him."
Toby's hand clenched, as if around the hilt of a sword.
"You managed it," Toby said, green eyes meeting blue.
"I barely managed it. But while I can do the half-troll thing now, you can't. Not unless Merlin comes back."
Toby looked at the surface of the dining table. His clenched hand turned into a fist. "I don't want him to do to me what he did to you, Jimbo."
Jim abandoned the kitchen and went to sit next to his best friend. "I don't want him to come back at all," he said. He reached out, rested his hand on Toby's arm. Toby didn't look up. "We can do this, Tobes. You took out Bular," Jim reminded him. "Faster and cleaner than me. And there's no Morgana throwing a wrench in things this time. It'll be easier. We just need a different strategy."
"It's not that." Toby's mouth narrowed into a line. Finally he looked back up. "Well, maybe it kinda is. We're a team, Jimbo, you and me."
"Always have been, always will be," Jim agreed.
"And we've got team Trollhunters backing us up," Toby added.
Jim nodded.
"The problem is, though... we need to get team Trollmarket to fight too," Toby said. "I mean, Blinky and Aaarrrgghh and Draal will be there... but how's Arcadia going to accept all the trolls if only a couple show up? And how are we really going to have a chance if it's just us?"
Jim froze. That was not something he'd considered. "I... don't know, Toby."
Toby swallowed. "I mean, you said Deya got them all to fight in the past, right?"
Jim nodded. "Somehow."
Toby's mouth became a line. "How do I-we-convince a bunch of pacifists to fight?"
Jim thought about it. "I wish we could ask her how she did it."
There was silence for a minute, then he and Toby looked at each other again at the same instant. "Wait-" Jim said.
"-The Soothscryer!" Toby agreed, his eyes large. He grabbed Jim. "Jimbo, you gotta do this with me and introduce me! Because I've only met Kanjigar in there. No one else talks to me."
"They're all just critics," Jim grumbled, remembering the experience all too well. "All right, Tobes, you're on. Tomorrow, we go to the Void and see if we can shake down Deya for some information."
Paused behind a closed basement door, listening, Hisirdoux smiled. Then opened the door, his irritation dissipated, ready to make amends.
Draal lurked outside the museum, skulking in the shadows, waiting.
Humans came and humans went, getting into their foul-smelling vehicles one by one and departing. Patience did not come easily for him-he hated waiting-but a pat at his pouch reminded him of his purpose here.
Finally, she appeared, in her human guise, wearing the magenta garments that were nearly the color of her true skin.
No, not her true skin, he reminded himself. She considered both forms her own, no matter that one was only supported by the magic binding her to a human infant-
She stopped at the door to her own vehicle, and sighed. "I know you're there," she said, not even pretending to miss his lurking presence. "You might as well come out."
Caught, Draal emerged from the shadows.
Her dark eyes regarded him levelly. She was always calm, hard to read... except when she was not. "What do you want, Draal?"
Glib words deserted him. Unlike Blinky, they had never been his communication method of choice. "I have a gift," he finally managed. "For you."
One perfect eyebrow arched. "A gift?"
He nodded and pulled it out of his pouch, unwrapping the butter-soft leather that had protected its sheen.
Nomura reached out and took it from him. The hair comb was just barely not too large for her human form, just barely not too small for her troll one. A perfect half-circle with tines below, it gleamed gold even in the artificial lighting of the parking lot. The inlaid moonstone glimmered like iridescent mist. It was the sun and moon in one, a reflection of the duality of her nature. Draal hoped Nomura caught that significance. He doubted she would miss it.
After a still moment, she ran fingers across the comb, a gentle touch. "It's beautiful," she said.
"If I may?" At her nod, Draal reached out, grasped the half-circle, and tugged.
The hidden knife came out, a curved rocker blade embedded within the top half of the ornament.
Now Nomura's eyes were wide.
"Danger, within beauty," Draal said softly. "It seemed... appropriate."
She took the bladed half from him, tested it against the pad of her thumb. Her brows raised, clear appreciation writ across her face. The curve of the handle, which formed the top of the hair ornament, seemed to fit well in her hand, as he'd hoped. "Impressive," she said, sheathing the blade.
"The alloy will not rust, nor easily lose its edge," he told her.
"That must have cost a pretty penny." She examined the hair decoration more closely. The seam was almost completely concealed by the inlays of moonstone. The comb's teeth were just shy of lethally sharp, and for all their fineness held strength. They would bite through even a troll's skin. Nomura looked back up at him. "Why?"
"I had hoped," Draal said, "that you might allow me to court you."
Her hand tightened on the gift. "I am not a troll," she told him. "I am a changeling."
"Yet from what I know, some of your kind have married humans," he told her. "Why not a troll?"
She spat on the ground. "Those they married never knew their nature. They were unions for political advantage. Only a fool falls for a changeling."
That wasn't a "no." Draal allowed himself a small smile. "Yet I know, and I am still asking to court you."
"What do you want out of it, Draal?" she demanded. "Cute little periwinkle babies? I can't give them to you. We're sterile, you idiot."
He tilted his head, an acknowledgement of the hit. "I want you," he said. "A worthy partner. One who expands my world and challenges me to be better."
She seemed to have no reply to that.
"If you truly do not wish it, say so, and this will be the end of the matter," he told her. And waited for a response.
She looked away. "I would never be accepted among your people."
"My people," Draal said, "are learning to change. The Trollhunters are ensuring that. So long as you do not return to working with Gunmar?" He shrugged. "Sooner or later, they will fall into line. We are not so overwhelmed with daylight allies that we can throw one away."
Her eyes narrowed. "Have you run this mad mating scheme of yours by Vendel?"
"I have not," Draal told her. "Who I court is none of his business."
"And who you marry?"
"If I choose to bring an outsider into Trollmarket... well." Draal smiled. "He has already given you a key to the door, and a piece of the heartstone. I do not think he will say no."
He had reshelved almost every single book in his collection. The floor was pristine. And yet Blinky still could not recall where he had left the stone from Killahead. He moaned and sat down, his head buried in two of his hands, the other two crossed on his lap in front of the swell of his belly.
"The one thing Master Jim entrusted to my care," he lamented, "and I have lost it! My failure is complete."
And without the stone, they could not hope to open Killahead Bridge again. They could not defeat Gunmar, or rescue Fair Claire's brother, or...
...or deal with Dictatious.
"Is it my own cowardice infecting me, preventing me from handling matters with my brother?" Blinky asked, uncovering his face and propping his chin on a fist. "Is it because I subconsciously do not desire to deal with Dictatious, that the stone remains hidden from my view?"
The first time around, he had blinded Dictatious, an unplanned, spontaneous act during Jim's rescue. And it had ended up to his advantage: unable to see for the first time in his life, Dictatious had been reduced to a certain level of helplessness. Blinky understood that humans, clever beings that they were, had devised ways around that same limitation, assistance devices... but Dictatious had not known of them, and, unable to trust his brother, Blinky had not seen fit to tell him of them.
Not when he could never be certain how deep Dictatious' treachery ran.
So what was he to do this time? Certainly Dictatious would be among the waves of Gumm-Gumms pouring through the bridge. Would it be base cruelty, to deliberately plan the same punishment, when he still could not be sure how much of his brother's actions were driven by survival and how much by a changed nature?
Did it make a difference?
Blinky would never be able to trust his brother, blinded or not, again.
Well, that was a simple enough footing to start on, he supposed. "Flesh of my flesh, stone of my stone," he murmured, rubbing at the diamond Jim had chiseled out from his chest.
He was a father now, legally as well as in spirit. And the duty of a parent was always to the future, to the child. Not to the past... not to the brother who might or might not be a traitor.
Dictatious could not be allowed to harm his boy... either of his boys, Blinky thought, for this time around he had also found himself filling a paternal role toward Tobias, though it was as yet unacknowledged between them.
(Someday, he might have two marks of parentage upon him. If that came to pass, he would rejoice; if it did not, having both a son and a protégé was nothing to be ashamed of.)
So. Dictatious was unlikely to be able to harm either of his boys in combat, save by being an unexpected knife in the back. (Which Blinky would not put beyond him.) But both boys knew enough to be wary of him already, so even that possibility was nothing to be concerned about.
No, where Dictatious would be dangerous would be in the aftermath of the battle. Returned to his place among trollkind, he would spin himself to be a victim of the Gumm-Gumms, rather than their ally. And unable to prove that he was not, Blinky, a known conspiracy theorist and human-lover, would have to watch helplessly as his charming silver-tongued brother wove his way deeper into their society. Eventually, he might try to do what Usurna had failed at, and take out Vendel... naming himself the new leader of Heartstone Trollmarket in the process.
Such a thing could not be allowed to pass. Blinky needed to find a way to defang his brother.
But how?
"Blinky look concerned," Aaarrrggh said, lumbering into the grand empty space that was the library.
"Yes, I am taking thought on my brother," Blinky told him. "We must find a way to contain Dictatious' poison before he is released from the Darklands."
"Oh." Aaarrrgghh sat down on the ground, his mossy fur brushing against Blinky's shoulder. "Dictatious... good with words," he offered. "Like Blinky."
"Yes, quite," Blinky agreed. "And his reputation will be far more sterling than my own. I worry about what he might do here in Trollmarket. He may very well style himself a returning hero, victim of his Gumm-Gumm oppressors."
"Hmm." Aaarrrgghh sat still in thought for a few minutes. "Undermine him?" he offered.
Blinky blinked. "You... may have a good idea there, my friend," he said, turning it over in his head. "Perhaps. If we can spread word that his ordeal has left Dictatious perhaps not quite right in the head... Yes, I think that plan might work!" He smacked one fist triumphantly into another and turned to hug Aaarrrggh, who leaned into the embrace, rumbling quite contentedly. "You are quite the brilliant strategist, my friend!"
"Not general for nothing," Aaarrrggh pointed out.
"Indeed not." Delighted to have one problem at least potentially solved, Blinky turned his attention back to the other. "I don't suppose you know where I might have put the Killahead Bridge stone?"
Aaarrrgghh hummed. "Where did Blinky see it last?"
Blinky thought on the matter. Jim had given it to him, he had hidden it among his books. Hisirdoux had put it in the enchanted chest when they'd had to move out. Had he taken it out of the chest while they'd stayed in Jim's basement? He couldn't recall doing so. Nor had he seen it since their return.
"It's still in the chest!" Blinky realized. He smacked a hand to his forehead. "Oh, I am such a fool!" he castigated himself.
"Better there than lost," Aaarrrgghh opined.
"Yes, of course, you are right." Blinky gave Aaarrrgghh another embrace. "What would I do without you, my dear companion?"
"Forget own head," Aaarrrgghh replied with a fond pat to the said appendage.
Blinky had to laugh. "You are most probably right."
The potato cannon itself was not difficult to build. Some pieces of PVC pipe, a few joins, and a Schrader valve from an old bike tire, and Eli was ready to go. All he needed was a bicycle pump to build the air pressure back up between shots, and they'd be set. And to, you know, actually apply the PVC cement glue and let it cure. But he wanted to make sure he had all the pieces in order first, had everything set up right. Sitting cross-legged on his bed, he did that now, slotting all the pieces together, one after another. Testing the heft in his hand. Because this was going to be his weapon, as much as the mace. Maybe even more so - Jim and Toby had been talking about getting him positioned on top of a building during this big upcoming battle against the evil trolls. He'd have a better line of sight there, and be less likely to be swarmed and killed after his first shot.
Killed, Eli thought, and swallowed. Because somehow he didn't think they were lying about that. About how dangerous this all was, or was going to be.
He was a skinny geek. The idea of going into a real battle was laughable. He was the kid who until a couple weeks ago routinely got stuffed into lockers by the school bullies. He couldn't fight! And he wasn't like Claire, or Mary, or Douxie, who all had magic. He was just... him.
Eli's hands clenched on the potato cannon. Because even if he was scared, and couldn't fight, that also didn't mean he could just do nothing. There were monsters coming, ones who would destroy the world, and no one knew about them. And grownups wouldn't believe them. No one would.
It was their group against the evil that lurked in the night.
And he was going to do his part.
Nodding, Eli returned his attention to his work.
Everything fit together, and it should work. But right now, the tricky bit that he was turning over and over in his mind was the fact that he was apparently supposed to be launching coins. Cursed gold coins, and after seeing Steve all lovesick from a curse, Eli was one hundred percent sure he didn't want anything to do with touching the stuff on the cursed shelf. So he really hoped Douxie would magic up some curse-proof gloves for him for when the time for the big battle came around.
Added to which, the technical difficulty he was wrestling with was in getting the coins to lay flat in the barrel and not, say, get stuck and spin, making the apparatus useless for launching them.
"Okay," he told himself, thinking. "Shake things up and look for a different angle. If I can't launch them reliably on the circular side, could I launch them reliably on the flat side?" If he could do that, they'd look like mini Frisbees, or flying saucers.
Which reminded him of what Douxie had not said, but had hinted at, about the actual existence of alien life.
Oh god, meeting a real alien would be so cool!
Unless they were like the ones in the movies and TV series that tried to take over Earth. That would be so not cool. Earth had enough problems, it didn't need people from other planets coming here with theirs too.
But maybe they...
"No!" With effort, he wrenched his attention back to the task at hand. "Focus, Eli," he told himself.
Okay, the only way to launch the coins flat would be to have them loaded flat, between two parallel surfaces. So he'd need to take apart the barrel and graft in two flat surfaces, blocking off the remaining curve on top and bottom at either end so (a) the air blast wouldn't be diluted, and (b) he didn't accidentally load a cursed coin in where the compressed air wouldn't be blasting.
"That's more work, but it's doable," Eli told himself. Tomorrow after school he'd go down to the Arena with some calipers and take accurate measurements so he didn't accidentally make the slot too narrow, which would be even more work to fix. Then it would be back to the hardware store to pick up some PVC board, and back to work. He'd have it done in no time, and then he could do some test launches!
He was going to save the world.
Best. Project. Ever.
Author's Note: Eli's line of "Shake things up and look for a different angle" is totally a reference to Big Hero 6.
