#side note- I didn’t really try to make it match up with the invention timeline

[mollymauk-teafleak]

The Bianca Nureyev Detective Agency

This was an anniversary present for my wonderful girlfriend @spiky-lesbian who is just the most wonderful girlfriend ever and I love her a lot!

Juno tries to entertain his and Nureyev’s daughter on a slow day in space...

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Being a space pirate did sound good on paper. It sounded like a life full of narrowly dodged laser bullets, sprawling on beds of golden creds, witty one liners delivered to fallen foes in the smoking ruins of their empires that you’d just toppled and large, audacious hats.

And it was like that, about twenty percent of the time. But what they didn’t tell you was that the other eighty percent was a hell of a lot of waiting. It was a lot of snail crawling through deep space, killing days upon days worth of time in cramped metal hallways, eating stasis food and absorbing simulated sunlight. Planning your next big twenty percent could only take up so much time.

And it only got harder when you also had a three year old space pirate to entertain.

“Mamaaaaaaa,” Bee Bee poked her head up over the edge of the sofa, looking like some burrowing animal resurfacing, “I’m bored.”

Juno lowered the case file he’d been reviewing, eyeing his daughter with the tired amusement only a parent could muster, “Oh?”

Bee Bee scrambled up onto the family room’s busted old soda, sinking down beside her mama. She peered at him for a moment, taking note of the way he was sat, one ankle folded over the other and tried to copy him as best she could with her chubby little legs.

“Space is boring,” she declared, “There’s nothing to do.”

Juno set the files aside, silently accepting that he wouldn’t be getting back to them anytime soon, “Nothing? Nothing at all?”

“Nope,” his daughter gave a forlorn sigh, “Nothing at all.”

“Well then,” Juno shrugged, sinking down into the sofa so they were level even if it would be murder on his back later, “We’ll just have to think of something to do, won’t we, kiddo?”

Bee Bee giggled, “Yes. What was mama doing?”

“Oh,” Juno looked to the files he’d piled on the arm of the sofa, “Nothing interesting. Just looking into cases where other people have tried to do the same job we’re going to do.”

“And what happened to them?”

Juno winced. It wasn’t as if their daughter was unaware of the dangers they faced in their line of work. Pirates weren’t exactly famous for operating within the confines of the law, even in her storystreams. And since she’d been born, she’d seen her daddy at work, often getting a birds eye view of it all from a wrap slung across his chest.

“Well. Jail mostly,” he admitted, knowing he didn’t have to hide the truth from her even if it didn’t feel good to.

“Huh,” Bee Bee hardly blinked, swinging her legs, “Well, Auntie Buddy’s way way smarter than all of them. And Auntie Vespa is faster and Auntie Rita is better and Uncle Jet is cooler and my daddy is the best at stealing ever ever in the whole galaxy. And my mama’s the best detective. So we’ll do just fine.”

Juno grinned, reaching over and stroking back her curls, “Yeah. We’ll do just fine.”

“So can I help Mama? With being a detective?” her eyes sparked excitedly.

He knew that look, once her mind was fixed on something she’d follow it to the far side of the universe. She was like her daddy in that. But she wouldn’t exactly find much interest in going through old case files that somehow managed to make jewel heists sound boring. Though the tactics these failed thieves had used didn’t have an awful lot of pizzaz to them. Probably why they’d flopped, or at least that’s what Buddy would say.

“You know what?” Juno snapped his fingers like he’d just had a fantastic idea, “You’re just the kid I need for this very important case!”

“I am!” Bianca beamed, not a question. She had perfect confidence in her own abilities.

“It’s a classic head scratcher, kiddo,” Juno announced grandly, mostly to stall for time while he decided just what this case was going to be, “I’ve been at it for years and I’ve never been able to crack it but with your pluckiness and my brains we might just solve the case of...uh...the case of daddy’s missing glasses!”

Bee Bee gasped appreciatively, “Daddy’s always losing his glasses!”

“He is,” Juno snorted, “And we’ve got to go help him, right?”

“Right!” she jumped onto her feet, bouncing up onto the couch cushions and promptly tumbling, Juno just about managing to catch her. It didn’t seem to diminish her enthusiasm, as her legs windmilled wildly, “Let’s go!”

“Okay,” Juno grinned, “Well, first thing is to examine the scene of the crime and…”

“No, mama!” Bee Bee frowned, looking at him like he was profoundly stupid, “First thing is to dress up.”

“Of course. My mistake.”

Apparently no detective work could be done until Bianca was wearing her mama’s old coat, the one he’d hung onto for sentimental reasons even after he’’d been unable to really call himself a detective. And long after the leather had worn on the elbows and there were none of the original buttons left on it.

It needed to be rolled up quite a few times to even get the tips of her fingers poking out of the sleeves and the bottom of it looked like a mad kind of wedding train but Bee Bee grinned in delight and it was pretty good to see the old thing getting some use again.

“Now we go to the scene of the crime,” she declared, waving her arms, “Daddy and mama’s room!”

“Come on then, co-detective,” Juno laughed, “Lead the way.”

If Nureyev was surprised to see them burst through the door, it didn’t show on his face. He didn’t scare easily. He only smiled and tilted his head, quickly shoving the book on pregnancy he’d been reading far under Juno’s pillow. They weren’t quite ready to broach that subject with Bianca yet.

“Hello, my loves,” he hummed, “What adventures are we on today?”

“We’re playing detective!” Bee Bee toddled up, clambering on the bed to give him a quick hug before anything else, “Going to find your glasses.”

“Oh could you!” Nureyev smiles pleasantly, “It does seem I’ve misplaced them again, reading is something of a chore without them.”

Juno arched an eyebrow at his husband, “You wouldn’t possibly be deliberately reading that book without your glasses so you could claim you have while not retaining any information or looking at any of the diagrams?”

“An outlandish notion,” Nureyev flicked his fingers at him airily, turning his attention to Bianca who was now crawling around the bed, bent over so she could scrutinise every inch of the sheets like a bloodhound with a scent, “Please, dear little detective, will you take my case?”

“We on the case, daddy!” Bee Bee assured him, hurrying over to give him a hug, now just because she wanted to, “We’ll find the glasses.”

“You gotta question the witness,” Juno advised, “Build a timeline.”

Bee Bee nodded, looking up at Nureyev with a sudden fierce seriousness, “What is your timeline, daddy?”

He couldn’t help but smile down at her as he pretended to think, “Let’s see...well, I went to the kitchen for breakfast...then I had to collect some floorplans from Buddy’s office, I read them over in the family room with my wife...then I had an appointment with the physician. Then I came here to have a nap and do my assigned reading.”

Juno rolled his eyes at that last one.

“We’ll track 'em down!” Bee Bee declared, barrelling off the bed onto the ground. Again, her mama only just managed to catch her, “Come on, Detective Mama! Before the trail goes cold!”

Juno chuckled, pausing briefly to lean down and kiss Nureyev, before he followed his daughter, not needing to hurry too much, one of his strides matching about five of hers.

Their trail through the ship took them most of the rest of the afternoon, clattering through the winding corridors, the two of them making up wild twists and turns whenever suited them, inventing new characters, dastardly schemes that had happened off screen, speculating wildly on new threats. Buddy of course joined in enthusiastically, she was a regular and beloved playmate of Bianca’s. Just searching her room turned into a frantic search to disarm a bomb left by this mysterious glasses thief, a bomb that turned out to be in Buddy’s chest which could only be fixed by a hug from a plucky little detective.

Vespa was less willing, they caught her in the middle of disinfecting all of her scalpels. But even she wasn’t immune to Bee Bee’s charms, eventually playing her role with grudging grace. And Juno was able to get a quick whispered update on Nureyev’s check up, feeling a little better that it wasn’t just him and his husband who knew, that he had someone to offload all his anxiety on, the same anxiety he was trying to shield said husband from.

Even better, they ran into Rita in the kitchen and the game then swerved happily into the wildest corners of two vast imaginations, going off on a tangent that somehow involved werewolves, a falling moon and a galaxy wide ring of prolific glasses thieves (it turned out Rita had lost her pair too, though they did turn out to be perched on top of her head).

It was when Bee Bee was rolling happily around on the floor that she suddenly froze and squealed in triumph. She bounded up to the side table next to the old, sagging sofa, less than an inch from where Juno had been sitting earlier.

“Here! Here’s the glasses!”

Sure enough, there was a pair of cat eye spectacles on a silver chain resting there. Even Juno couldn’t raise much of a grump when he realised they’d been inches from their goal at the very start of the job. Some cases just worked out that way.

“We’ll have to take them back to your daddy, huh?” he panted, collapsing next to his daughter on the sofa. Somewhere along the way he’d picked up glitter on his black turtleneck, a rubber glove from the infirmary stretched over his head like a mad hat and one of Buddy’s scarves wound around his neck.

“Yes! And then get paid,” Bee Bee nodded, making Juno slightly nervous about what sort of payment she was going to demand. She’d asked to be paid in ice cream last time they’d played this game.

She plopped down next to her mama, leaning against his arm, adding more glitter to his favourite jumper, “Mama? I don’t think daddy is very happy right now. I think something’s up.”

Juno froze, “Uh...what makes you say that, kiddo?”

“Well…” Bee Bee wrinkled her nose, “He just seems...floppy. Always flopping on you and he looks pale and he doesn’t sleep good, mama. I think he’s sick.”

Juno tried to keep his face carefully neutral, “Your daddy’s fine, honey, I promise.”

“Hmm,” she replied, in that way she had that let him know she didn’t believe him in the slightest, “But it’s okay. Because we found his glasses and that’s gonna make him happy. And then we’ll help him more and we’ll do detective and find his happy.”

Juno relaxed, wrapping his arm around her, “Oh yeah?”

Bee Bee beamed and nodded, “Cos I’m the best detective ever! And mama helps!”

Juno sat back, laughing mostly to himself.

“You know what, kiddo? I thought I was pretty good but I think you really might be the best ever.”

[magic-and-moonlit-wings]

Reaction to ‘Wizards’

There were some elements of Wizards that I was quite pleased with and others I found disappointing.

Here are some notes I took while watching it: 

“I was busy,” says the guy who was ASLEEP.

Cuckoo clock in bookstore looks like Bular’s head.

Green Knight can teleport, confirming potential parallel character to Angor Rot and Tronos Madu, both yellow-eyed assassins with teleportation and tragic backstories (later confirmed, yes, there are parallels between this character and those two besides the visual one)

Jim always tips at the cafe; yup, that sounds like Jim 

Gunmar saving Jim: irony. Is Jim going to go to the Gumm-Gumm camp now? 

Confirmation that portrait was Arthur and Guinevere and she is “gone”, presumably by magic or killed by a troll - is she dead or did she just leave? (Later confirmed, dead)

Morgana’s name is carved on the tree under Arthur’s and Guinevere’s - was she in love with Guinevere too? 

Is that Nari with Morgana and Guinevere? (Later confirmed, yes)

Stone doll Callista finds looks like Angor’s totems - same village? He said it was “Gunmar’s war” that destroyed it, and she says it was a human attack, but Angor might’ve seen it as a retaliatory attack by the humans which Gunmar’s actions had provoked?

Arthur being the one to cut off Morgana’s hand makes Merlin SLIGHTLY less of an asshole for using it in the Amulet, but a lot of this still could’ve been avoided if Merlin had been willing to shut up and listen. 

Oh, except it wasn’t Arthur who cut off Morgana’s hand the first time anyway? 

Episode 3 ends without Steve getting knocked on his back, so that scene must’ve been his sparring match with Lancelot in Episode 2 instead of keeping it an Episode 3 tradition (like how Zuko and Iroh hug in Episode 18 of each season of Avatar the Last Airbender)

Why would Douxie be grossed out at the idea of swimming naked? Swimsuits have only been around for, what, 80 years? Presumably it was a specific lack of desire to see Steve naked.

Neat take on the Lady of the Lake. 

AAARRRGGHH used to have a triple set of horns - what happened to the other two? Receded, amputated, knocked off? Also, Gunmar says AAARRRGGHH is ‘holding back’ when they spar and has yet to win against him - if AAARRRGGHH was doing that on purpose, this supports my theory that he was debating how safe it was to stay on Gunmar’s side for some time before deserting. 

Morgana possessed? 

Angor Rot saved Morgana/recovers her body and gives a funerary-sounding blessing, showing he was sympathetic to humans before losing his soul  

Oh, and Nari gave her the new hand 

Wait, so who steals Angor’s soul in this timeline? 

Called it on that servant guy being a Changeling - he appears in the background of, like, every scene that episode where they’re talking about Morgana using unexpected strategies to sneak into Camelot. 

Wait, except his human form is an adult - so is he a polymorph? Or Familiars can be taken as adults but babies are easier to contain and have less ‘established personality’ to match after replacing them? Or has Morgana already been creating Changelings? AAARRRGGHH calls Jim “impure” when they meet in Dwoza, suggesting Gumm-Gumms already know what Changelings are, except Morgana wasn’t working with them yet

Is Callista going to be Deya? (Later confirmed, yes)

Show seems to be matching up with old theories about Deya being the first Trollhunter, confirming that the show, comics, and novels are all separate continuities (since comics and novels show pre-Deya Trollhunters). 

Gumm-Gumm berserkers - mind-controlled or grit-shaka’d (talisman of “no fear”), to throw themselves into sunlight like that?

Steve seems ready to refer to any half-decent older man as his dad, like when he refers to Merlin as ‘Wizard-Dad’. Maybe it’s because I was watching Brooklyn 99 recently but I’m reminded of Jake Peralta.

Big Jim’s crystal neck protrusions look like Strickler’s knife collar back when I thought that was part of his body. Glowy lines look like Gunmar; tie-in to Gunmar born of a “corrupted Heartstone” since Jim is “corrupted” now?

Aw, Krel called Ricky his dad. 

How did AAARRRGGHH fit through the HexTech door to the backroom?

“Cat and mouse” line cuts to a shot of Archie obviously imitating Nari (confirmed a few minutes later)

Toby has obviously seen Ghostbusters. “When someone asks you if you are a god, you say YES!”

Decoration in bookshop looks like Angor’s head.

Was that lightshow of Nari searching the world for Jim’s soul just a visual metaphor for her powers or did literally everyone on Earth see that?

“There’s a force neither of us can escape - gravity!” says the woman who can fly.

Morgana’s occasional echo-y voice in Trollhunters matches Bellroc and Skael - possession/magical-influence related?

So did Merlin have that book on him or did his body turn into the book?

Are all dragons fluffy and/or shapeshifters in this universe? 

Might’ve been smarter to keep Merlin’s staff intact and destroy the Grimoire so the Arcane Order never knows where to find the Genesis Seals, just saying.

If Morgana didn’t become “the Eldritch Queen” until, like, IMMEDIATELY before Angor approached her (therefore days earlier at most in the unaltered timeline), how had he heard of her to seek her aid? Was he actually reaching out to the Arcane Order? At least this explains why he didn’t go to the Trollhunter for help - there was no Trollhunter to approach yet.

Big Jim ‘dies’ in the same pose as AAARRRGGHH in Trollhunters Season 1 and Draal in Unbecoming, both false death scenes, for five-second foreshadowing Jim was alive. 

Mixed feelings about him being human again - like I’ve said, I didn’t think the Troll Jim subplot was well-executed but I also felt like, now that it’s been established, the show needs to stick with it. Since everything’s over I’m going to headcanon Jim having shapeshifting powers now and being able to switch between human and troll at will, he just didn’t think to try to do so on-camera.

Also, I feel like Jim’s relationship with Claire is once again completely overshadowing his relationship with Toby, instead of them being different kinds of relationships with equal weight. 

Barbara is going to be pretty shocked when her human son shows up again. She and Strickler don’t appear at all in this series, even in cameo. 

Maybe Jim’s not a troll anymore because, with Merlin and Morgana both dead, their magic is “broken” and that’s what was holding his transformation in place? Merlin’s through the potion, Morgana’s through the Changeling femur, both through the Amulet.

Is Jim still going back to New Jersey? Blinky’s got to, unless the trolls there have elected a new leader or they’re bringing the New Jersey Heartstone back to Arcadia.

Series ending scene also would work as the final scene of a movie, setting up a sequel hook even though it’s supposed to be over now. 

Seems like wizards are long-lived and age really slowly? Possibly a “will not die but can be killed” situation, like vampires, or unicorns (at least in The Last Unicorn) 

Additional thoughts after finishing the show and thinking for a while: 

I don’t get how Morgana could end up with such a reputation among trolls - enough to have superstitions about her, seen when Dictatious objects to Usurna saying her name - when they only interacted with her for like a few days at most. I guess she made a pretty strong impression on Gunmar, who passed that on to everyone else? Or maybe she cultivated that reputation over time via the Changelings?

Speaking of the Changelings, does this mean that, while Morgana designed the process to create them, she doesn’t make each individual one? Otherwise she would’ve had to pre-make a bunch in the time between getting her new hand and being trapped in the Heartstone. Although, if she can steal Angor’s soul remotely (with the idea she was already trapped in the Heartstone when that happened), she can probably also make Changelings remotely. 

I’m kind of sorry the Changelings got invented so quickly; I figured there would be some trial-and-error to that process.

How I think the Original Timeline went: 

Morgana would’ve turned to the Arcane Order seeking magic allies, later in the day that gets changed when the time-travelers arrive. Possibly she seeks out Nari, specifically, remembering her from childhood. 

Merlin then sees Morgana as the Future Threat and he or one of the knights (not Arthur) cut off her hand in the resulting fight. 

Merlin makes the Amulet. It chooses Callista, who is still in Camelot’s dungeon at the time, and she agrees to fight Gunmar in exchange for her freedom. 

She fully intending to go back on the deal and run for it, but then something-something-something and she learns her original name and saves the world anyway. Probably she’s the one who took down and imprisoned AAARRRGGHH in Dwoza, which inspired the other trolls there to follow her. 

Morgana finds out about the Trollhunter shortly before Angor arrives to ask her for magic, which is why she orders him to hunt the Trollhunters down.

Arthur thinks Merlin killed Morgana and wants to avenge her, leading him to the Arcane Order for the original not-time-loop-prompted attack.  

Show did a good job establishing and developing Douxie’s relationship with Merlin

Also, how did that bookshop end up a center of Merlin’s power? He’s only been in the modern world for a few months. Did he set a shop up off-camera while the trolls were travelling to New Jersey and the Akiridions were discovering Earth? 

How did Ricky Blank lose his head, anyway? Can Hex Tech fix him? Krel says magic and Akiridion tech combine harmoniously. 

[snarksandsarcasm]

World Trees and Akenash

It’s a big tree and a very fascinating one, too. It doesn’t have green leaves and it’s crown is small compared to the space its roots can inhabit. And it’s heart sits right there on the top, exposed to all sorts of elements, potentially, moving towards the sky as the tree grows. 

Through its tree veins flows Amber, a golden sticky sap with many qualities. It comes in raw liquid amber, a distilled form fit for human consumption and a dried form. 

Raw amber is acid and burns away human flesh (see young Aaron) and only elves and Styx/goblins can deal with that substance without any harm. 

Distilled Amber seems to be used as a stimulant. It isn’t quite described what it does but it creates substance addiction. We know that guards yearn for it their boredom and possible loneliness in the tower and that Styx complains about the shared minds/thoughts. So consumption of Amber allows all users to share their thoughts. Like a magical Twitter. To the user this is all but a fantasy, so they just think anything (and we know how strange, exciting and disturbing thoughts can be) without constraint and find it enjoyable that others can join in their thoughts. If they substance users would talk to their peers, they would probably find out that they have in all reality shared the same thoughts, but I am sure that is beyond their understanding. 

Dried Amber seems to be found widespread even after the Fall of Akenash. Another sign how big of a role the World Trees played in the environment of nature of this world in general. I imagine it to be a mix of a rubber and oil chalks. Brittle but also bendy. It’s like oil or rock minerals. Handling dried Amber doesn’t seem to cause any issues to humans. It can be brewed back into raw Amber and from that potentially into distilled Amber. Maybe it can be grated and further worked with to create explosives and to provide light and warmth.

The Tree seems to be a structure of twisted roots, stems and branches, intertwining and growing into a shape resembling a common tree. It is not quite as big as the Home Tree on Avatar, where it’s Navi people live in its giant structure, but certainly seems to have the same potential. Akenash’s tree is big enough for several such small levels, one of which is location for the final boss fight.

The roots are much larger than the rest of the tree. This may be the case for this particular World Tree as they ‘need’ to grow that long and large to find a place to take nutrients from. On the other hand, they don’t get anything from stone walls so what would those nutrients be in the first place? Certainly not water. Similarly the leaves don’t get any much light either, but how can we know the World Tree’s real potential if it’s looked up in a dark and dry place like this? Look at the initial cage structure to hold the tree in the picture. When we get to see the tree it has grown beyond and its roots reach into the lowest and darkest corners of the tower. In the roughly 40 years of Akenash’s lifetime. A big feat. Let this tree stand alone for 200 years and it will have outgrown the tower. Either way, it seems to live just fine without any much access to light or water. It does in fact deliver more to the outsides that it does consume in resources. It gives, it doesn’t take. The name ‘World Tree’ is a fair one. And if it’s not in such confinement it may just be a true and essential provider of life to all living beings.

The cocoons are marvelous. They are like large grapes growing from the roots here and there. Their cocoon wall is a see-through brittle substance but reusable. The human scientists refer to them as ‘embryos’ but I am not sure how accurate their understanding is. This would suggest elves grow from the Tree itself. But we also know elves where human once and we know how they reproduce (and SoD features both female and male elves). And looking how Styx was able to merely ‘rest’ in a cocoon and be ‘reborn’ … I see the cocoons more as rejuvenation and health pods. At any point any elve can rest in them to regain their health and retain their eternal life.

There are several World Trees but this particular one is the only one in human hands. One Akenash guard tells us as much. We know from OOAM that the humans occupy the centre part of the Iserian continent. In the North and West are the elves and dwarfs, the South is occupied by orcs, separated by a nice big wall. The East hasn’t been specified but I seem to imagine ocean for some reason. Styx left for an unspecified World Tree far away from where his Tribe lived. Upon finding himself changed he started his quest to undo the damage. Why not use the Heart of the Tree he studied? Why must he spend 200 years to ‘find’ the World Tree in Akenash? For some reason or other that previous World Tree wasn’t available to him anymore and he needed to locate another one with a functioning Heart. Musings for another time. Suffice to say, there ARE other trees, even more on the same continent, but they are not accessible to humans at this point.

It is not very easy to place all the races and determine their political positions. That would be musings for a different time. But we know that the humans don’t have access to any other World Tree, at least not unless they have good trade deals. So they protect their Tree and try to milk it as much as possible. Hence they built Akenash. It serves as a laboratory for Amber research and a factory for Amber resources.

Akenash was designed by Querberus, a human inventor. He refers to the tower as his masterpiece. It probably existed in his head for a long time before being used as a World Tree container and Amber factory. From my timeline attempts (I share them later) I figured that Akenash existed for about 40 years before falling. Orcs will build another tower in OOAM so I have little doubt they were also the main workforce for this one, too. Along with force-like magic in this world I can imagine such a massive structure was built in less time than we would think. Maybe a decade? Especially if Querberus is overseeing everything, knowing exactly what goes where, with the full support and resources provided by the human government for this project. Querberus went so far as even to design custom made, flying transport ships. Although, for that too, I am sure the inventor had some earlier prototypes at hand to finalize and perfect. From the final scene in MoS we can see the falling tower still sitting on a triangular patch of land, as if, some time prior, the whole tower lifted itself up from the ground. This may have been a desired result or an unexpected side-effect due to the powerful Tree housed inside the tower, we don’t know. That screenshot also suggest that the towers location was somewhere in a mountain range region.

We don’t know what else Querberus did before the tower of Akenash. But it seems his reputation is that of a Da Vinci even early on. He may have done many useful and practical inventions even before that at a younger age. He was a genius and it is a shame that after Akenash, he didn’t have the freedom to create many more projects. Shame on Aaron. (Side Note on the airships: They are designed with fire heating the air inside the balloon. I don’t think that is so effective, otherwise our Zeppelins would have functioned the same way …. but regardless of that, very little burning material is kept on the ship, unlike a whole coal wagon for early railway trains. I thus conclude that Amber might very well be used to keep the fire up one way or the other. I see it as a very essential, very powerful element full of energy in this world.)

We don’t get to see any females in the MoS game, for neither humans nor elves (whether the latter need them as such is also a question for another time). There are no family units or domestic areas. Therefore, the tower itself is a pure workplace, like an Off-Shore Oil rig. Shifts last for several months before one may return home. This applies to the humans and to the elves, although I can imagine the elves have less desire for intimacy with a partner than the humans do, when nothing really is private for the elves to begin with. But they may miss their original tribes and do their duty to this poor mistreated World Tree with honour and pride. 

The infrastructure of the tower is massive. They have a library, a giant incinerator (does this keep the tower afloat?) and a huge prison complex. I think the humans had prisoners work on the tower construction itself and then in the tower to deal with the dangerous substance Amber and needed that area to house them all. Like a big prison/concentration camp. Only guards and high-end officials have the choice to go and work in Akenash.

Being vulnerable humans they can’t completely do their work without the help of elves. Styx referred to the last time humans died trying to extract the Amber from the roots of the Tree and reminds Barimen how the World Tree belongs to the elves, as a race. They have agreed to tend to the Tree on behalf of the humans. Hence the need for the elf ambassador to ensure good working conditions and to make sure the deal made is being adhered to. This also explains the human hatred towards the elves, who are here out of necessity, not nice company. And the elves don’t like the humans abusing a World Tree. Room for tensions!

We don’t know what exact Amber products are being made in Akenash. We see many containers full of raw Amber everywhere but that’s it. Considering the size of Akenash, there might be space to create huge items such as military weapons, vital airship engine parts or just silly little things such as light matches using an application of ground Amber on their tip. I guess this is another good topic for another time. Amber products!

Considering how much presence I give Amber in this world, the Fall of Akenash must have been devastating for the humans. Their primary source of Amber gone. Trading will continue and dried Amber is still largely available, but it’s not as convenient as having your own World Tree. But it’s consequences on politics and economics is something for another time. Especially as Styx suggested in the Intro that the World Tree is a big secret of the humans, hence all the locks and guards. But such a thing cannot entirely be kept secret. I can see how the government will not disclose it’s exact size/production capabilities etc to their citizens or trade partners but I am certain enough people know what Akenash is for. Why it took Styx so long to find this place? Good question. But we may equally ask why Styx went through such a pointless game anyway, considering he is strong enough to just go ahead to the Heart grabbing it. Hm.

Some questions I haven’t got an answer to:

Tree Reproduction

Is the Heart of the Tree a seedling? Do the new seeds sit in the glowing leaves in the crown? Does the tree bloom? Bear fruits? If it’s a tree this big, who does the pollination? Giant bees? Would it not be possible, that after the Fall of Akenash from the remains of the Tree a new one will grow? I would say that generally new trees are rare. There are many spread throughout the world, but I’d wager you can count them on two hands. If they’d grow like apple trees there would hardly be the need for the humans to put so much effort into guarding the one Tree they have.

Other Mutations

Humans mutated into elves many eons before. An Orc can mutate himself into a goblin within 2 decades. Roabies are mutated giant critters. So what else can and will mutate? Fruit flies? Little lizards? We haven’t seen anything else. Direct contact with raw Amber causes deformation and deterioration of tissue so that might be Cause Number 1. Digestion of distilled Amber seems to affect and open up the mind only. So really anything that has direct contact with raw Amber might change, which in actuality is less than what we think. Who would choose to do that? Death of the creature seems more like than the deformation. 

[chemicalmagecraft]

I Would Totally Kick Jiraiya’s Butt Chapter 14

Chorono: I really, really like the way you think, but there's kind of only one Ketsuryugan and a whole complicated mess of the timeline around that, so unfortunately Kouki will not be able to get it any time soon, if at all.

That one guest: Yeah I totally get where you're coming from, and that's a bit of a worry of mine too. Luckily I was already going to do something that's a solution for that problem: nobody'll think Kouki's particularly broken if everyone's broken! Unfortunately I won't be able to show that much of that in this and probably the next few chapters, but let's just say that there will be so many irons in tons of fires by the time of the Uchiha massacre. ;P

kukukuku~

Hinata's palm struck me in the jaw, causing me to grunt. "Kick his ass, Hina-chan!" Kurama cheered from the sidelines. It was nice seeing how well those two were getting along, even if it meant him encouraging her to beat me up. The two of them actually helped each other a lot. Hinata warmed Kurama up to humankind and got him to be slightly less angry, while Kurama made sure to rub some of his "I'm better than you lousy humans" pride off on her, causing her to be a bit more confident. Plus he liked imparting little bits of arcane knowledge upon his favorite human, meaning...

I just barely noticed with my chakra sense that Hinata was leaking a small amount of chakra out of her fingertips, so I jumped back. Unfortunately, I'd determined with my eyes that expressing too much interest in obtaining the Byakugan with my chakra assimilation would only cause most of the clan to grow wary of me, so I didn't have the ability to actually see her jutsu, but at least I knew to stay away. I made a few seals, but had to stop when the barely-there chakra rushed me. Even though I moved my arms the chakra swerved faster than I thought it would, causing my left arm to go completely numb. "Ow," I said despite the fact that the problem was that I couldn't feel any pain in my arm. "You're getting faster with that, aren't you?"

"Yeah," Hina-chan said. "Kurama-chan helped me figure it out."

I tried to move my arm, but couldn't. Eight Trigrams Heavenly Will as it was called by most of the family, or much less pretentiously Tenketsu Puppetry Jutsu by Hinata, was a jutsu Hinata invented by combining the basics of Jūken that she was learning with the chakra threads I'd showed her how to make and then some sort of advice from Kurama. In addition to acting like a ranged, though technically much less potent, version of Jūken, the threads stayed inside the tenketsu of the victim meaning that not only was any recovery from the attack blocked until they were removed but she could also, as her name for it suggested, puppeteer my arm. "Impressive, sis, but you know that that doesn't exactly work on me." I raised my right pointer finger, causing a single link of yellow chain to form on it. With a bit of concentration, I changed the yellow Adamantine Sealing Chain to a purple permutation, Adamantine Destruction Chain. I swiped at roughly where I felt the chakra threads with it, managing to snap all of them and suck the foreign chakra from my body.

I'd figured out that my assimilation could also adapt powers that were compatible enough together. I was already working under the assumption that I couldn't just make new elements by combining people's affinities because that would be broken, but I did alchemize Ai's Adamantine Sealing Chain together with the Kikaichū's Parasitic Destruction to make chains that could drain chakra as well as disrupt it for some extra chakra cost. Plus, the disruption and absorption effects synergized, enhancing each other's performance. And there was also the || combination, Parasitic Sealing, which allowed me to cover my body in an aura that disrupts and absorbs chakra. But I digress. I pointed the chain link at Hinata, shooting an entire chain at her. The general consensus of anyone who I used my special chains on was that if I got a grab in the fight was over. Sure, I could still only have more than a few links out for a few seconds without any boost, but between the draining and the throw I could easily pull off with with the chains I only needed one good grab to wear down even adults. At least enough to jump in with a few cheap hits to finish them off. Hinata obviously knew this by now, so she ducked under my chain, then rolled out of the way when I tried to pin her to the ground. I was expecting her to do that, though, and had already prepped my next jutsu. Metal marbles, designed so I could hurt but not kill with my magnet release, scored hits on her side. I charged, and she blocked my foot with her hand. I winced, realizing my mistake when my leg turned numb from the near-instantaneous point-blank Heavenly Will. I used my core-based flight to try to kick her with my other foot, but she got it before I could.

"Full body takeover, eh?" I asked as the rest of my body below my neck was wrested from my control. Really, having a relatively non-draining jutsu that might as well be an automatic win to anyone in melee distance is even more broken than I am...

"Sorry, but can I practice this for a bit?"

I tried to shrug, but remembered the futility. "Go ahead. I still have control over my sage cores, so I can catch myself if you slip up." Hinata spent the rest of the sparring session finding stupid dances to make me do, egged on by Kurama. I did get her to work on her proxy chakra control a bit, though. She could almost make me do Jūken by the end.

kukukuku~

Tenten said something, probably about how much it stank that we had to go to school, as we walked ourselves to school. Well, they walked and I floated because I actually may or may not have a bit of trouble matching other people's walking paces, especially if I'm not paying too much attention. I don't know what she was saying, though. I was thinking. I mumbled something in response and pulled out my sealing notebook and note-taking pencil, which I used to write down the formula I thought of. I tuned out their conversation as I sketched the complex seal down as best I could. "You messed up a little there," Tenten said as I was finishing off the last strokes.

"Hm?" I asked.

She pointed to one of the runes and oh my that was very wrong. "I'm not sure, but I think it'll just tear a hole in the fabric of space if you don't fix that stabilizing rune." I thanked her and hurriedly fixed it.

"I feel like maybe you should not write down a seal that could potentially tear a hole in the fabric of space itself until you're absolutely sure it won't do that?" Neji said with more than a little concern.

To be honest, I didn't blame him, but... "Graphite's pretty much the worst for making seals," I explained, "which means that it's really good for practicing making seals because it's almost impossible to activate it without noticing."

"Well why didn't you have me use a pencil when you were trying to teach me seals, then?"

Finished, I stowed the notebook. "Okay in my defense I wasn't expecting you to screw up the easiest seal in the book when given detailed instructions, much less screwed up enough to accidentally make an incredibly simplified explosive seal. And with the last seal I had you do, I think we both know that you should always assume that there will be an explosion when making a paper bomb." I tried to teach Neji fuinjutsu once. Turns out he's literally the worst at it. He somehow managed to turn a basic light seal into a thankfully tiny bomb with only a big enough blast radius to burn itself off of whatever it's written on, which apparently was a theme with him. No matter what, he would always make bombs out of whatever seal I gave him. And then, when I tried to have him purposefully make a bomb, hoping that maybe he was just some sort of bomb savant, he somehow managed to make a seal tag that teleported itself and whatever it was touching to a random place within a fifty meter radius. Which, okay, free spacetime ninjutsu, but how? "I'm still scratching my head on how you managed to make a short-range teleport out of a bomb. Speaking of, what's your mom make of it, Tenten?"

"She's still on that high from the wedding, so she's been more concentrated with being all lovey-dovey with Mommy than looking over the seal, but she did say to never let Neji near a seal again when I told her it was supposed to be a paper bomb."

"It wasn't really that bad, was it?" Neji asked.

Tenten laughed and shook her head. "Not at all, Neji..."

"...It's much worse," I finished her sentence with a slight grin. We high-fived. "When I looked at the seal you were making with my eyes, I saw a lot of different possibilities. Random teleportation was one of the better ones. You don't want to know what the worse ones were."

"Right." He didn't believe me. To be fair, I did tend to mess with him... And was messing with him. "So what's the seal you were working on supposed to do? I'm assuming it's somehow related to spacetime."

"Yeah, normally when people screw up seals that have nothing to do with spacetime, the result doesn't do anything to the fabric of reality," Tenten said, elbowing Neji.

"Shut it."

I shrugged. "You're right, though. It was most certainly a spacetime seal."

"Yeah, it looked a bit like an object summoning seal, but a little different," Tenten said. "Was it meant to swap objects between two paired seals?"

"Close. My hope is that it'll form a portal between two locations when chakra's input on both ends, and that it's compatible with demon sage chakra. It's still a little rough around the edges, though."

"Let me guess, secret base," Tenten said.

I brushed my hand through my hair. I was combing it less now, so it was a bit curlier and fluffier. "Obviously. In fact, I have an agent working on finding the location right now. Haven't found anything good yet, though."

"How do you have an agent?" Neji asked me.

"Magic." I noticed a certain building and pointed at it. "Hey, isn't that the school? That looks like a school."

"Yup, that's the school," Tenten said. "Mommy took me here a lot. Mama's job is a little less kid-friendly, plus the teachers looked after me when I didn't want to sit through Mommy's classes."

"Oh right," I said. "Your mom's a teacher."

"Yeah, I said that earlier, weren't you paying attention?"

Something about that sentence felt a little doomy, though I couldn't tell why. "No, I was thinking about how to breach through spacetime to reach another location without accidentally summoning Mega Neo Beqthulhuzillaon, Destroyer of Souls and Eater of Worlds."

"Is that an actual concern?" Neji asked. "Are you messing with us or could you have actually summoned some sort of eldritch horror monster?"

I smirked. "You should know the answer to that question by now. I'm assuming you know the way, Tenten?"

"Duh."

kukukuku~

I tried very hard not to groan. "My name is Uzumaki Tenko," our teacher for the next few years said, writing it on the chalkboard. God I hate chalkboards. If I were Hokage I'd make chalkboards illegal. "I look forward to teaching you." I slumped in my seat. It's not that I didn't like her. Tenko was really nice. No, the problem was that she knew I was a literal genius relative to my age level, and with that comes... expectations... Before, my plan was to just rest on my near-complete high school-level education to put the bare minimum amount of work into the actual academic parts of ninja school, which considering what grades I got with how little effort I put into school before would've made me best in class or thereabouts already. But Tenko already saw me put actual effort into something, meaning she might have been able to tell when I didn't put in the work. So if I didn't want to hear about it from her and Tenten both I'd have to at least half-ass it. Ugh...

I sound like Shikamaru, don't I?

"Didn't I tell you she was going to be our teacher earlier?" Tenten muttered to me. I guess that was what I missed... "And why are you so annoyed Mommy's your teacher?"

"Because she'll actually care if I don't put any effort into my work," I whispered back.

"How terrible," Neji snarked. I flicked him with natural energy. Using natural energy without sage mode may have been a lot weaker, but I could at least flick someone sitting right next to me hard enough to feel. He flicked me back, though. My Neji may have been completely seal-illiterate, but he was just as much of a ninjutsu genius as in canon, and figured out how to feel and manipulate natural energy just by watching me do it, though he hadn't quite managed sage mode yet. We proceeded to engage in invisible and incredibly petty warfare that Tenko would probably have stopped if she were a sensor. Luckily, Tenten was too amused to turn us in. She almost gave us away with her giggling, though.

"Now, why don't you introduce yourselves?" I'm not saying that I completely tuned everyone's introductions out, but I am saying that the only names that I retained aside from Hyūga Neji, Uzumaki Tenten, and Rock Lee was someone whose family name started with something in the ka line and whose given name was Kaede. Kaede is a pretty awesome name. Why couldn't I have been a Kaede?

"Hello. My name is Hyūga Kouki," I said when it was my turn. "The reason why I don't look like Neji despite us having the same family name is because he's adopted."

"What!?" Neji spluttered. "No! You're the adopted one!"

"It's nice to meet you," I halfheartedly finished, pretending Neji said nothing. He flicked me for my troubles when I sat down. I flicked back, and as if someone assassinated a duke or something, Flick War II began.

kukukuku~

"Just remember that these are friendly matches," Tenko said when we were all sitting on the ground by the sparring ring. "If I feel like someone is being hurt too badly, I'll stop it there. And once more, it's taijutsu only."

"Why'd you look at me when you said that?" I asked. Her glare turned a little more accusatory. I shrugged. "I wasn't gonna do it anyway..."

"Right," she said, turning away from me. "You may now look at the slips of paper I gave you. Who has one?" Tenten and a boy I should probably have known the name of raised their hands. "You two are first. And Tenten, try not to rough him up too badly, okay, sweetie?"

The unnamed kid grinned maliciously. "I hope teach doesn't get too angry after I beat up her precious daughter." Neji and I exchanged a look and snickered. Right, like that kid stood a chance. When they were told to start, the kid jumped in for a punch. Tenten dodged easily and shoved him to the side. He stumbled and fell.

"Get him with your Uzumaki strength, Tenten," I cheered dully.

She scowled at me. "For the last time!" Tenten shouted, then picked up the nearest object. Namely the unnamed kid. "I'm not!" She hoisted her hapless victim above her head. "Freakishly strong!" She threw Hapless Victim at me. Without even blinking, I deployed the demon sage cores hanging from my earlobes. One formed a springy barrier in front of me that safely absorbed the impact of the collision without too much damage to Hapless, while the other formed a barrier under him to cushion his fall.

"I have no idea why I would think that," I said as I recalled my cores. "Truly, your ability to lift over your body weight in small child despite being yourself a small child is totally unremarkable." She blushed and growled at me.

"Kouki, please stop antagonizing Tenten," Tenko said. "The match is over, Tenten wins."

"How did you do that?" another small child I probably should've known the name of asked me.

"Magic."

Hapless (I was now trying to commit his face and chakra signature to memory so I could keep calling him that) groaned and sat up. "I thought we weren't allowed to use jutsu!" he complained.

"You weren't," I said. "The Uzumaki bloodline manifests itself passively in the form of enhanced vitality and strength, something that Tenten definitely has even if she doesn't quite have the traditional looks."

"HEY!"

"So really, you didn't stand a chance." Hapless stomped off to his seat and the rounds began again. After a few, it was my turn, as well as, "coincidentally" enough, a young Rock Lee.

"Remember, no jutsu," Tenko reminded me.

"Yeah, yeah," I said, then got into my fighting stan- "Ah, crud," I muttered. I had not been doing regular old sparring enough. I couldn't even remember the last time I'd actually practiced fighting someone without ninjutsu or genjutsu.

"Start."

I dodged a really shoddy punch. To be honest, it was pretty weird seeing Lee suck at taijutsu. I leaned away from another punch, then caught his arm. "Stop," I commanded. I uncurled his fist, removed his thumb from his palm, and then forced his hand into a proper fist. "It's a common mistake," I assured him. "If you punch someone with your fingers around your thumb, you'll probably break it. Oh, and hit me with those two big knuckles, not the entire fist." When I released him, he cautiously punched me. "Good," I said after catching his hand with mine. "However, I'm afraid that now I have to..." I twisted around and slung his arm over my shoulder in an attempt to suplex him or something. "Finish you!" Key word being attempt... I may or may not have only lifted him onto my back...

"I don't think you did what you were attempting to do..." he said.

"Stupid physics. I always hated that subject..." I shrugged and just dropped backwards in what I hoped looked like a planned move. I really needed to work on my taijutsu.

"Okay, that was not at all what I was expecting..." Tenko sighed. "Kouki wins, I guess..."

"You okay?" I asked as I got off Lee.

He sighed. "I am fine..."

The third noteworthy match was Neji versus a hotblooded Yamanaka girl with orange hair like that one Fū guy and red eyes. While Neji was technically a pseudo jinchuriki by now from my experiments, his powers were weird and technically even his "passive" strength would be considered an active jutsu, especially because he could turn it off. The Yamanaka, on the other hand, was surprisingly strong for a Yamanaka. Maybe she was part Uzumaki? She did have red hair. At any rate, while Neji was almost overpowered at one point, he beat her. He was a genius after all.

kukukuku~

"Hey," I said, then sat down on the floor next to Lee. Okay, I actually floated just a bit off the ground, but the sentiment was there... "Sorry about beating you so bad."

He sighed. "No, it's okay... I already knew I would not do well here. I cannot use ninjutsu or genjutsu, and you saw how my taijutsu is."

"Can you channel chakra into things?" I asked. I really wanted to know what would happen if I started him off early.

"I can, but no matter how hard I try, I will not be able to use a jutsu. The doctor said that there is a problem with my chakra coils, so I am incapable of moulding my chakra into jutsu..."

I shrugged. "Not exactly a dealbreaker, if you're willing to work extra hard."

"What do you mean?"

I summoned my crystal ball. Yeah, I know it's kind of a stereotype, but I'd made the jutsu from that crystal ball jutsu Sarutobi used to see Naruto in the first episode, so blame Kishimoto. "Watch this." I waved my hands over the floating crystal ball, casting the jutsu. Despite not activating my Shōraigan, the crystal ball changed to show another location. By using a physical medium, I could show my vision to others and didn't have the same backlash, though with the downside that it wasn't private and I didn't get nearly enough information. "See that man?" I said, pointing to Gai training. "He used to be about where you are, but now he's one of the most dangerous shinobi in Konoha through taijutsu alone. Do you want to know how?" I put away the ball and looked at Lee. His eyes said yes. "An insane amount of practice, training, and diligence, combined with challenging himself to do something even more difficult whenever he fails a training exercise. You should probably take time to rest every once in a while, especially at first to keep from permanently damaging your body, but I see a fire in you. There's no reason why you couldn't become as good as or perhaps even better than him one day."

There were stars in his eyes, and he was almost crying. "Do you think so?"

I gave him a small grin. "I know so. Also..." I pulled out the other thing I had for him. "This is a bit of a beginner's fuinjutsu kit, at least my version of it. Try and see if you have some aptitude for it. You may not be able to inscribe seals with chakra alone, but if you pick up enough you could work wonders with seals." Imagine Rock Lee with the ability to make and use seals. To be honest I have no clue what would happen but I do know it would be amazing.

He stood up, energized, and gave me a deep bow. "Thank you very much! I will make sure to become a splendid ninja!"

My grin was genuine. "I'm sure you will."

kukukuku~

Usagi

I lurched along the dirt path. My new body of stone was not suitable for travel in the slightest, but I had no other alternatives. It seemed that compatibility with myself was not quite as common outside of Konoha as I assumed it was at first, and the rabbit was either a stroke of luck on my part or perhaps somehow related to how Kurama was present in End Valley at one point. Perhaps his chakra acted as a primer. Still, I did sense a few scattered people in small villages who had compatibility, though I couldn't in good conscience simply abduct and kill an innocent person. I needed to find a bandit with compatibility.

"Well well well, what do we have here?" a source of malicious intent jeered as two men appeared from behind trees. Speak of the devil. The two bandits, however, were nowhere near compatible.

"There's a toll to use this road," the other bandit said, brandishing his sickle. They had yet to realize my anomalous existence on account of the cloak, gloves, and mask I had fashioned for myself.

"Oh," I said. "I do apologize. I was not made aware of the toll. You really should put up a sign."

"You gettin' smart with us?" the first bandit asked. "We'll rough you up!" I probably didn't look like much of a threat either. The body I'd formed for myself was rather on the short side, to save energy. It was still definitely in the adult range, but not by much.

"You two are bandits, aren't you?" I asked. I already knew the answer, of course.

"Of course we're bandits, now give us all your loot!" The sickle-wielding bandit rushed me. That was a mistake. My body became fluid, the eyeholes of my mask gained two red lights where my eyes should have been, and I dodged effortlessly. I removed one of my gloves, then placed my hand on his face.

"Do you take chakra instead?" I asked, then infused his body with demon sage chakra. He dropped his weapon as his brain itself was altered in such a way that, while he didn't technically die, he certainly couldn't have been said to have been truly alive anymore. I removed my hand, revealing red markings across his face.

"What the hell!?" the other bandit shrieked. Without turning to him, I sent a signal to my new thrall. The bandit that I had just "killed" snarled like a beast and rushed at him. The... I suppose the best word for it would have been "zombie" bit the man on his arm with partially crystallized teeth. The man shrieked, throwing the zombie away and running in terror. I nodded to myself and split my attention in two, one half of my mind focusing on breaking the zombie down into more demon sage cores and the other tending to the bandit. When my zombie bit him, it infected him with my chakra, causing the cells in his arm to start to transform into the demon sage core-like material that I'd used to zombify his partner. I altered the rate at which the infection spread, causing it to slow near the surface while speeding up within his blood and bones. My hope was that he'd notice the infection, cut his arm off and assume he got it all, then hurry back to his leader while carrying the infection. That would be fun. When I was done with the carrier, I turned my full attention to the zombie, which was almost prepared. With a final command, the corpse disintegrated into red powder. Some of it scattered to the wind, where it would be carried elsewhere. The rest came to me. About half of it went behind my mask, where it bolstered my existing core. The other half I formed into another core that I hid within my cloak. With that done, I placed all of his belongings into a bag I had tied to my makeshift body under the cloak. I wasn't to know fuinjutsu, after all. I continued down the lonely road, ever-so-slightly quicker than I had before.

kukukuku~

A/N: Just FYI, the ka line is any of the hiragana/katakana sounds that start with a k- noise (ka, ki, ku, ke, ko).

I thought of a power for Tenten to have, but it's kind of even more out there than usual. Like, technically it has a slight basis in canon, but exaggerated far beyond what that canon basis is, even more than what I have planned for and alluded to with Neji. Figured I'd say that cryptically now so I can tell if I need to make changes if too many people object. I think it's cool, though, so I'm probably going to do it unless literally everyone tells me not to. And possibly even not then.