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sakon76Your Future Hasn't Been Written Yet
by K. Stonham
first released 5th January 2022
"So, um, what are we looking for?" Steve asked nervously, gripping his baseball bat tight.
"A guy in a trenchcoat and hat," Toby replied. "Except when you get up close and look under the hat, it's all goo."
"No face," Jim agreed. "They're pretty creepy."
"See!" Eli told Steve triumphantly. "I told you they were creepers!"
"Toby," Claire said incredulously, "why do you have your camera?"
"Duh, footage for the film, Claire!"
She stared at him for a second, then sighed, exasperated. "I can't believe you're filming this instead of fighting it."
"Well, there's like five of us, plus Nomura, plus Douxie and Archie on the way," Toby said reasonably. "And it's only a gruesome, it's not like fighting Gumm-Gumms or anything."
Jim snickered. "He's got a point," he said to Claire. "Come on, let's split up. Anybody finds the gruesome, call out. Or, like, call on your cellphone or something."
"I'm with you, Jimbo," Toby said instantly. "You always have the worst luck, so you're gonna be the one who finds it."
Jim looked put out.
"It's not like he's wrong...?" Claire offered. "I'll take the newbies. Come on," she told Steve and Eli. "You two are with me."
Nomura shook her head as the two groups of teenagers split up.
"No tactical thinking," she muttered, and stalked off by herself.
If a gruesome was here, in her museum, it was going to go for the obvious target: Bular's corpse.
Which was where she was going to be waiting for it.
Somewhere else entirely, a mustache-adorned goblin squeezed through a crack in reality and appeared in another dimension with a pop!
It looked up at the pair of mind-slaved Gumm-Gumms who stood on guard, blew a defiant raspberry at them, and skittered off in search of its target.
It had news, and the dark lord was going to want to hear it.
Toby spun around slowly as they walked.
He bumped into someone.
"Hey, watch it!"
"Uh, hey, Seamus," Toby said apologetically to his classmate who had a fist raised in the air.
"What are you even doing here, loser?" Contemptuous eyes raked over the camcorder in Toby's hand.
"Taking in the gems and minerals," Toby replied. "Hey, did you see they've got a section of rocks in the south hall that are like deadly poison?"
Surprise and interest washed over Seamus' face. "Really?"
"Yeah, it's totally cool! You should check it out."
"Hmph." Half intrigued, half surly, Seamus pushed past Toby and stalked out of the room.
"Nicely done," Jim complimented.
"Eh, he's a jerk, but at least he's interesting," Toby said, and raised his camera to pan around the room again. "Well, no trenchcoats and fedoras here. Shall we move on to the next room?"
"Ugh, there's nothing here!" Steve snarled.
"I don't know. This stibnite is pretty cool," said Eli, peering closely at one of the glassed-in rocks. "It says they used to make spoons out of it and they poisoned the people who used them to eat."
"Whoa, that is pretty cool," Steve said, eyes widening, leaning in closer to take a look.
Claire coughed. "Guys? Focus. We're not here for the rocks."
"Right, right." Steve straightened, then looked back at the spiky silver crystal. "I'll be back to look at you later," he promised it.
"Jim says nothing in the north hall," Claire reported when her phone buzzed with a message. "He and Toby are heading back to the main hall then moving up to the second floor."
"Well, there's nothing here either," Steve complained. "We're moving on too. No way am I letting Loser Lake find that creeper before me."
"Oh, hey, Toby!" Darci waved as she ran in the museum.
"Darci!" Toby seemed surprised to see her, then recovered. "Oh, the hackysack tournament ended?"
"Shyeah," she said, looking him over. "Wait, where's Sir Isaac?"
"Eh, I left him with a babysitter," Toby said, shrugging.
"You left our baby with a sitter? Toby!"
He made shushing motions with his hands. "We think there's a gruesome loose in the museum, Darci! He's safer at home."
"A gruesome?"
"Goo monster," Jim supplied.
Darci blinked. "That just sounds gross," she said.
"Yeah, it kind of is," Toby confessed. "You want to help us hunt for it?"
She looked back and forth between the two Trollhunters. "How dangerous is dangerous?"
They looked at each other. "Not... too dangerous?" Toby ventured. "I mean, if it was too bad, we'd be hustling you out of here."
She huffed. "Well, all right then. But I want to know about this babysitter you left our child with!"
"Uhhh...."
"Chompsky's all right," a new voice broke in. "More reliable than some folk I've known, that's for sure."
"Douxie!"
"Did you get the flour?" Jim wanted to know as the wizard wandered up to them.
Douxie rolled his eyes. "I have a backpack full of flour, which I have discovered is rather like paper, in that it's disproportionately heavy to its size."
"You're the one who chose to buy the store out," said another Douxie, walking up to his doppelganger.
"Uh..." said Darci, looking back and forth between the two of them.
"It's Archie," Douxie-One told her.
"Your cat?" she demanded.
Douxie-Two rolled his eyes. "It's more accurate to say he's my human," he replied, "but yes."
"So, uh, why the human-ness?" Toby asked Archie, who was distinguishable by his glasses.
"Opposable thumbs," Archie said. "They make it much easier to, say, throw flour bombs at gruesomes."
"Ah, gotcha."
"In any case," Douxie said, kneeling and unzipping his backpack. "Here you all are, weapons du jour." He started handing out small bags of flour.
Jim looked at his askance. "Two pounds? Where even sells two pound bags of flour?"
"The dollar store," Douxie informed him. "I figured they'd be easier for all of us to pitch than the five-pounders you usually buy."
Jim hummed and tossed the small bag up and down in one hand. "Yeah, I can throw this."
"Hey," Claire called, exiting the south hall, Steve and Eli following her like baseball bat-clutching ducklings. "Any sign of it yet?"
Jim shook his head. "Nope."
"And flour for all of you lot," Douxie said, handing the sacks out to the newcomers.
"Hey, whoa, what, why's there two of you?" Steve demanded, looking back and forth.
"What I want to know is, which one of you is the evil twin?" Toby asked.
"Me," said Douxie at the same time as Archie said "Him."
"So," Douxie said, standing and shrugging his emptied backpack back on, "any sign of our quarry?"
Toby snorted. "Not yet. Maybe it's not even here."
"Well, what's it supposed to be looking for?" Darci asked sensibly, looking around.
A set of matching blinks from Jim, Toby, and Claire.
"Bular," Claire said, slapping her hand to her forehead.
"Come on," Jim said, taking off at a run. The rest of them followed him.
"Not my exhibit!" Nomura snarled, slashing at the gruesome. It divided itself in two, avoiding her blade, then flowed back together.
It made what she recognized to be a rude gesture at her.
"Carrion eaters are strictly-- not-- allowed-- in the museum!" she told it, trying to herd the thing away from its target.
It was damnably difficult to fight something that was immune to swords.
Finally, finally, the closed doors to the exhibit hall opened, and a horde of teenagers poured in.
"Took your time, didn't you?" she snarled.
"Uh..." said the blond jock, staring. "Who's the scary purple lady?"
"She's a friend," Jim said. "Come on, surround the thing. Nomura, keep it busy?"
"What do you think I've been doing?" she demanded, slashing yet again as all the teenagers scurried into place, ringing the gruesome.
"Everybody ready?" Toby said. "Ready, aim... fire~!"
One after one, they threw their projectiles at the gruesome as Nomura flipped out of the way, landing behind Claire. The monster twitched and shuddered with each impact, absorbing the bags of flour.
But it wasn't until the very last one, hurled with a pitcher's neat aim by the Black girl, that it stiffened, keeled forward, then collapsed. The gruesome hit the floor and exploded into a cloud of dust.
Nomura coughed and blinked, waving a hand to clear the air before her until the dust cloud finally settled and cleared.
Everyone was flour-coated. The girl who'd pitched the last bag and the two boys bearing baseball bats looked shocked. Everyone else just seemed resigned. One of the two wizards turned into a cat and jumped up to the other's shoulder, leaving footprints in the dust coating the black hoodie. The cat washed a paw over its grayed fur, then promptly began spitting, presumably because of the taste.
And everything, absolutely everything in the entire room, was layered with gruesome dust.
"My exhibit!" Nomura snarled, pissed.
"Uh...." Toby looked around. "Don't suppose you've got an industrial vacuum around...?"
She glared at him.
The cat nudged the wizard. Who sighed. "Push broom, milk slorr," he muttered, and held up a hand. A broom flew into it.
"Aw, man, this is going to take forever to clean!" the jock wailed.
"Isn't there any way to, like, speed it up?" his little dark-haired shadow asked nervously.
The wizard paused. Looked at his familiar. "Arch?"
"Well, there has to be an upside to no longer being his apprentice," the cat said.
"Guess that's true," said the wizard, and smirked. Toby gasped in delight and whipped a camcorder out.
Douxie held the broom out before himself and let the power flow. The hovering broom lit up blue. And copied itself. There were two brooms. Then four. Then eight, then sixteen....
He didn't got further; splitting his attention sixteen ways was already going to be intricate enough. Closing his eyes, Douxie held his arms out, first two fingers of each hand held together as he sank into his power and set to cleaning.
Some of the brooms dusted off the exhibits, the bridge, Bular's corpse.
Others brushed lightly, carefully, at his friends.
The rest whirled around the floor as Douxie stood in the middle of the magic, guiding it all.
A sound broke through his trance, introduced itself to his consciousness.
He opened his eyes to see Nomura, whistling Dukas' The Sorceror's Apprentice.
Grinning at her, Douxie directed all the brooms to sweep the dust into one huge pile in front of Killahead Bridge. When that was done, he raised a hand and the dust followed his motion, funneling high into the air, then sweeping down into the trash can in the corner of the room.
The sixteen blue ensorcelled brooms recombined into eight. Into four. Into two. Into one.
He let go.
The broom teetered for a second, dancing with gravity before it finally, inevitably, collapsed, clattering down to the floor of the newly clean room.
"Tell me you got that," Eli murmured to Toby.
"Every last second," Toby promised, patting his camera.
"This film is going to be so cool!" Eli squealed.
"Okay, okay, so there are creepers... and different creepers," Steve was saying as they all walked home from the museum. "And some are good, and some aren't, but there's no way to tell the difference."
Jim exchanged looks with Toby and Claire. "There's plenty of ways to tell the difference."
"Yeah, like if they're attacking you or not," said Toby, wheeling his bike along.
"This is all so confusing!" Steve wailed.
Douxie patted him on the shoulder. "You'll get it eventually."
"Don't touch me, man!"
"Awesomest night ever!" Eli cheered, arms up in the air. "Well, except the part where we crashed my mom's car, that part was not awesome."
"You crashed your mom's car?" Darci demanded.
"Not us! Mustache did it! The creeper."
Darci looked appalled.
"You have a pretty good arm, Darci," Jim told her.
"Four years of softball," she told him, pumping up her throwing arm.
He nodded. "That'll do it."
"So, um, how did you like your first taste of Arcadia's weirdness?" Toby asked her.
She considered. "Not too bad? I mean, that thing was ugly, and I really don't know about that purple lady, but we managed okay, didn't we?"
"Yeah, we totally did."
"And thank you for leaving Sir Isaac with a sitter," she said. "That kind of thing's no place to take a baby. Especially a flour baby."
"Can't believe your school actually has you do that," Douxie commented. "I always thought flour baby assignments were just in TV movies or something."
"Yeah. Flour babies," Jim said, sounding down.
Claire touched him on the arm, gave him an inquiring look.
"It's about that thing we were talking about earlier," he told her. "I'll tell you and Tobes later, okay?"
"Okay," she said softly.
They all ended up at the Domzalskis', reclaiming their surprisingly healthy and intact temporary offspring from the gnome and his wife. "Good job, buddy!" Toby said, holding his hand up. Chompsky gave him a high-five.
"Aww, did you have a good time playing with the other babies?" Eli cooed to Flip. "Come on, let's get you home and Daddy will tell you all about tonight's adventures, little Flip."
"Hey, who said he's going home with you, Pepperjack? He's my son too!" Steve said as the two of them walked down the street.
"But Steve, you said--"
"You know," Jim said, watching the unlikely pair walk away, "suddenly it makes so much more sense why one of Steve's kids was named Eli Junior."
"Yeah," Claire agreed.
"I am not touching that topic with a ten-foot-pole," said Toby.
"Well," Darci said, walking up, Sir Isaac Gluten held in her arms, "he's not really a conventional sitter, but I have to admit your little gnome friend did a good job, Toby."
Toby grinned. "Chompsky's solid."
"Yeah. Is it okay if I take Sir Isaac home for the night?"
"Sure thing." Toby patted the flour sack on its Sharpie-drawn hair. "You have a good night with Mama, okay, little guy? And I'll see you in the morning."
Darci shifted her attention to her best friend. "You want to walk home with me, Claire?"
"Uhh...." Claire looked at Jim and Toby and Douxie and Archie. "Not tonight? I think there's something I need to talk about with these guys."
Darci's eyes narrowed. "Magic stuff?"
Jim nodded.
"Didn't we get enough of that earlier?" Darci asked.
"No such thing as too much magic," Douxie replied with a smile. "You did very well tonight, by the way. A lot of people would have cut and run rather than face a gruesome."
Darci snorted and rolled her eyes. "I'm not just about to run away from a little danger when my friends can't."
"Which makes you braver than rather a lot of people," Douxie told her.
"Yeah, well, bravery's just doing what you have to, then having a breakdown about it later," said Darci.
Douxie's smile morphed into a full-fledged grin. "Indeed."
"All right. Well, me and Sir Isaac are heading home for the night, then, and will see most of you in class tomorrow." She gave a wave, and a chorus of "Bye, Darci!"s followed her out the door.
Soon enough, the five of them were up in Toby's room, fortified by Nana's milk and brownies. "So, uh, you wanted to talk about something with us?" Toby asked his bestie.
Jim sighed. "Two things, sort of," he said.
"Is this about the immortality thing?" Claire asked. She was sitting on the floor, her legs crossed, baby Petunia on her lap. Next to her, Douxie was sitting the same way, but with Archie on his lap instead.
"Yeah," Jim said. He looked at Douxie briefly, then back to Claire. And Petunia. "Douxie said if any of us pick the immortality route... it pretty much rules out kids."
Claire stiffened, her hands clenching on the flour baby. "What?"
"No one knows why," Douxie said softly, "but contrary to what Greek mythology would lead you to believe, it is very hard, almost impossible in fact, for immortals to have children." He looked at Jim. "And I still don't think you choosing immortality is a good idea, Jim, but I acknowledge it's your choice to make."
"There's two reasons to choose a thing," Jim said. "Love, and fear. And sometimes, those reasons just...." He laced his fingers together, illustrating dovetailing. "I can choose this because I'm worried about something worse than the Arcane Order happening somewhere down the line and because I think you deserve something better than being alone forever. And also, Mom wants to adopt you. Just so you know."
Douxie's face did a funny thing then. He looked like Jim had managed to smack him with something bigger than he'd ever expected, that he truly did not know how to deal with it. His fingers twitched in Archie's fur. His mouth moved, but no sound came out. His inhale was shaky. After a moment, he looked away, swallowing like he wanted to cry.
"Douxie..." Claire said softly.
"And the other thing, Jimbo?" Toby asked, trying to give the wizard a minute to pull himself back together.
Jim sighed again. "Apparently Archie was the one who realized this, but... what happens if Arcadia Oaks doesn't experience the Eternal Night?"
"Well, no one dies," Claire pointed out.
"Yeah, and they never get to see trolls fighting for them," Jim rebutted. "They never learn what's beneath their feet, or how to accept things, people, that are different."
"Douxie believes this will have ramifications on Area 49-B attempting to capture your friends the Tarrons," Archie agreed.
"Oooh... yeah." Toby, as the only member of their trio who had stayed in Arcadia that summer, winced. "Yeah, without the town standing up to Colonel Crazypants, she's gonna nab the two of them for sure."
"You mean we have to let it happen?" Claire demanded.
"No." Douxie had collected himself and was rejoining the conversation, even if his eyes were suspiciously wet. "The thing is, it can't happen the same way this time around. We've already made too many changes. Morgana won't be in play whenever we deal with Gunmar, so the actual 'Eternal Night' won't occur."
"We could... fight Gunmar at night?" Toby reasoned out.
"Maybe," said Jim, looking thoughtful. "If Strickler can set up bait, let him think you're being forced to open the bridge...."
"You'll still have to let the battle get out of the museum, though, to let people see it," Archie pointed out.
Toby winced. "After tonight's fight? Forget Gunmar, Nomura will kill us if we trash her museum."
"What if..." Douxie said, sounding like he was working out a plan. "What if we made a spectacle of it?"
"What do you mean?" asked Claire.
"What if the bridge wasn't in the museum when we open it?" Douxie asked. "What if we moved it to, say, the town square?"
"We could put anti-Gumm-Gumm wards on all the buildings, to keep people in them safe," said Claire.
Douxie cast her a lopsided smile. "We'll want something stronger than what you did on those campaign signs last time," he said. "But I think we can manage that."
"Wait, you knew about those?" Toby demanded.
Douxie tapped by his eyes. "The spell's kind of obvious if you've got the Sight. I saw a few of them, figured out the pattern of which signs had the spell, and decided to stay out of it. As per Merlin's instructions," he added only a little bitterly.
"Okay, so we move the bridge, open the portal, fight Gunmar and the Gumm-Gumms in full sight of all Arcadia Oaks," Jim said. "Assuming no one twigs that we were the one opening Killahead in the first place, that could work. The next question is, do we want to do this before Aja and Krel and Varvatos arrive, or wait for them? We've only got a couple more weeks before they land."
"Oh, that'll be a great greeting," Toby said. "'Hey guys! Remember us? Want to fight another big battle with us?'"
Claire laughed. "Being fair? Aja and Varvatos would think that was a great welcome to Earth."
"I knew there was a reason I mostly hung around Krel," Douxie sassed, but he was smiling.
"Goodnight, Claire," Douxie said, and followed Archie inside the Lake house. Leaving, probably very deliberately, Claire alone with Jim on the porch.
They stood facing each other for a minute, neither of them knowing quite what to say. "Claire," Jim finally started, but she interrupted.
"I understand why you feel like you need to choose immortality," she said.
His surprise was written across his face. "You... do?"
She shrugged. "Sure. I mean, that's part of why you're a divine king, isn't it? All that conscientiousness and responsibility and stuff." Shifting Petunia into one arm, she reached up and brushed a strand of hair out of his face. Claire's fingers touched his circlet; even if she couldn't see it, she could still feel it. "And I guess there's no way you'd ever have left Douxie alone, is there?"
Jim sighed, an apology in his eyes. He captured her hand in his. "Claire, I'm sorry."
She shook her head. "You wouldn't be you if you didn't care about other people that much, Jim."
"He's my brother," Jim said quietly. "I wasn't joking earlier about Mom wanting to adopt him."
"I didn't think you were. And God knows Douxie needs a family." But she didn't know quite how to articulate what she was feeling.
Jim brought her hand to his mouth, kissed it. "You said once that you'd date me for a hundred lifetimes," he reminded her softly. "And you didn't give up on me when I was a different species. Is this going to be what breaks us?"
"No!" Claire said instantly, eyes flying wide. She'd made her choice, and Jim was it for her. There was no way she was leaving him.
He smiled. "Good. Because I'm looking forward to being your twenty-something boytoy when you're this beautiful witch in her seventies."
Claire had to laugh at the image. "Everyone at the nursing home will be so jealous of me."
"Like I'd ever let you go into a nursing home." Arms around her, he drew her in close. "We can adopt. Or there's... sperm donors," he said, stuttering and blushing over the words.
"Or I could just become immortal too," Claire said softly.
His arms stiffened. Jim drew back slightly. "Claire...."
"I'm not sure what I want," she told him. "But... it's still on the board, okay? It's not something I've ruled out. We've got time to decide."
Jim pulled her back in close. "Yeah. We've all got time," he said quietly, as they swayed there together on the porch, their flour baby held between them.
The next morning Coach Lawrence stood astounded at the front of his class, where every single student pair had brought their flour baby back, safe and sound, after a full twenty-four hours of parentage. "You all get A's," he said, tearing up. "Not one of you failed. I am just... so... proud!"
He collapsed weeping onto his desk as all but three of his students exchanged bewildered looks.
Author's Note: Cool poisonous rocks here. And, yes, I could not resist Douxie as The Sorceror's Apprentice - it's practically what his introduction scene in Wizards was, after all!
