#these r unfortunately pretty bad but i’ve been busy and also kind of rotting so everything i touch is cursed

[andromeddog]

baumer and friends

[magic-and-moonlit-wings]

Chapter 53: Identity

Becoming The Mask

Barbara was at work when her phone buzzed. She didn't have time to check it – she was busy with a toddler who had swallowed a paperclip.

If it had gone into the kid's stomach, things might have been okay. There was some risk of the sharp point doing damage, or the wire catching and tangling in the intestines, but the rounded ends of the paperclip meant there was also a chance it would simply be passed through.

Unfortunately, instead of ingesting the paperclip, the child had aspirated it, so it needed to be removed from her right lung.

Immediately after Barbara got out of surgery, she had to work up the x-rays of a teenager who'd crashed his Vespa into a tree. Nothing was obviously broken and he didn't have a concussion, but there was a risk of hairline fractures.

And then, (because why not,) there were three successive cases of people who had stuck odd things up their butts and gotten those things stuck.

By the time she was able to sit down for two minutes and gulp some coffee, she had forgotten about her buzzing phone.

She didn't even look at her phone until she was leaving for the night. Barbara got it out to turn the ringer off, since she wasn't supposed to be on call that night, which never stopped anyone when they were short-staffed, which was often, and she was tired enough it would probably be dangerous for her to be treating patients again until she'd had some sleep.

(Also, she was probably tired enough that she shouldn't be driving, but Barbara never let herself think about that.)

After finding out she'd missed something as big as her kid sneaking around to fight a secret magical war, Barbara was trying to reassert some boundaries between her time at work and the rest of her life.

Her phone announced that she'd missed a notification.

It was just an exclamation point. What had that been supposed to mean?

Barbara turned her phone off and drove home.

"I'm back, kiddo!"

"We're in the kitchen!"

'We' meant Jim and Toby. Jim was pulling a shepherd's pie out of the oven. Toby and Barbara both inhaled appreciatively.

"You said it's lean ground beef, right?" asked Toby. Jim smiled and rolled his eyes.

"Yes, Tobes. You know if you cut all the fat out of your diet you'd get protein poisoning, right? Mom, back me up."

Barbara took a moment to remember this. She wasn't a nutritionist – she'd encountered this concept in a novel a few years ago and looked it up to see if it was true.

"He's right," she said. "It's the rarest kind of food poisoning. Not much risk of it happening here and now." Not in a city in the United States, haven of processed and instant foods.

Jim portioned out the steaming vegetables and meat and mashed potatoes. Barbara added some sour cream to hers.

"Is Nana out tonight?" she asked Toby.

"Yeah, she and some of her chess buddies are doing a tournament. Informal, I think, but maybe a prize? Like, a gift certificate or something."

"We should see if we can get her and Mr Strickler to play a match sometime," said Jim. "I think I heard once that he's a grandmaster, but I don't know how often he plays anymore."

That combination, Nancy and Walt, made Barbara's brain click and remember the significance of that exclamation point she'd sent herself.

"So … it's been a month. Have you made any progress on telling your friends' families about trolls?"

Both boys froze.

"We gave Vendel a bunch of family stories," said Toby. "Once he's done reading it, we'll find out if we have permission or we're going behind everybody's backs."

"Guess I should warn him the clock's ticking again," said Jim.

"We could maybe tell people now and say we're LARPing, and tell the whole truth later?" Toby suggested. "That's what my therapist thinks is going on."

"You told your therapist?" asked Barbara and Jim together, in very different tones.

Jim's eyes were huge. He had a white-knuckled grip on his silverware. "Tell me you didn't use the word 'Trollhunter' in front of her."

"… No?" said Toby in confusion. "I just said your character was a magic knight on a quest to fight an evil troll."

Jim sighed. "Okay, that's generic enough it's probably safe. Don't use any specific names or terms, though."

"Dude, you seriously think someone is spying on a random high schooler's therapy appointments?"

"Someone is spying on a random high school's entire history class," Jim pointed out.

The rest of the meal was tense. After they were done eating and cleaning up, Toby went back home, and Jim went upstairs to do homework.

Jim's yearbook from the previous year was on one of the shelves in the living room. Barbara brought it over to the couch.

She could use this to get an idea of who Jim and Toby's classmates were, at least.

Jim didn't have many signatures in the book. There was Toby's, of course. The rest all had generic messages – "Have a great summer" from Eli Pepperjack, "Have fun this summer!" from Shannon Longhannon, "See you in September" and a doodled smiley face from Claire Nuñez, and "Enjoy summer break" from Seamus Johnson.

People Jim knew? Or random classmates he approached so he wouldn't look 'weird' for not caring about yearbook autographs?

Barbara made note of all the names. She felt like Jim had let slip that the other children who knew about trolls were girls, early on, but she couldn't quite remember for sure and didn't want to rule anyone out. She flipped to the class photos to match names to faces, so she could keep watch for the signatories hanging around her house or across the street.

+=+

Enrique carefully printed the English alphabet. It hadn't been that hard to mimic from a reference image, but this was his first time writing it independently. He haltingly hummed the song to keep track of his place.

"Pretty good," said Claire, reading over his shoulder. He fought the urge to turn and strike. He was (supposed to be) safe. Claire wasn't purposefully lurking in his blind spot to attack him. "Definitely way better than my first scribbles. I guess next you should learn to write your name."

On another piece of paper, she printed it for him to copy.

The first letter was N. Sensible enough. Except wasn't that one pronounced 'nuh' instead of 'en' when it was in a word and not the alphabet? He shrugged. Claire knew this writing system better than he did – if she said Enrique started with N, he'd go with it until he had some evidence otherwise.

The second letter was O. He frowned. That … didn't feel right. Shouldn't it be an R?

The third letter was T. He stopped.

"Read it," he said to Claire, trying not to growl.

"Not Enrique," she said, without shame. "You only copied the 'Not' part so far."

Angrily, Enrique scribbled out the letters he'd written so far and the bit he'd copied from. In fast, shaky letters he copied out the rest of it and underlined it.

"No," said Claire, getting angry in turn, "you don't get to use that name. That's my brother's name, not yours."

"The kid can share. It's mine now."

"Oh, come on," Claire scoffed. "You're, like, hundreds of years old. I get that Jim's used to being called 'Jim' after sixteen years in deep cover or whatever, but you can't possibly have gotten that attached to 'Enrique' in just a few months."

… Did she really not know?

"It's the only name I've got."

"Bullshit. Other trolls had to call you something when you were in the Darklands."

Now he growled for real. "That wasn't a name."

"What, some kind of codename system? Then I'd think you'd welcome the chance to start using your real name again."

"I don't know what it used to be!" he snapped. "No one exactly kept track of who they were grabbing. And if we lived, it was 'Changeling' this and 'Impure' that if it wasn't just 'hey you'! Enrique's the first name I can remember having and you don't get to take it away from me!"

He stood there breathing hard for maybe a full minute. He'd cracked the pen. There was gloppy ink on his clenched fist. He licked it off before ink could drip on the floor, and popped the plastic into his mouth.

Claire's voice, when she spoke again, was a lot softer.

"How did anyone tell the Changelings apart, if … if you didn't have names?"

Enrique snorted. "You think they bothered? One Changeling's as good or as bad as any other. S'probably part of why Jim and the big Boss Man were so quick to change sides when they had the chance."

"Even the other Changelings?"

"The rule about not getting attached starts early."

Claire looked like she was about to cry. That … that wasn't fair, she didn't get to make him feel bad for her when they were in the middle of a fight …

"We give each other nicknames, sometimes," he admitted. Imp had been a popular one, if nothing else about a Changeling stood out. "Us or the goblins. But then when we get up top, it's like a rite of passage, you know? We get a name then. Using the old nickname's … like an insult. Saying you weren't worth making a surface agent."

Claire blinked rapidly a few times, then hugged him. He almost clawed her before realizing it wasn't an attack.

"Oi, easy!"

"You can't have my brother's name," she said stubbornly. "But we'll figure something else out."

"Not exactly your call to make," Enrique retorted.

"Don't ruin the moment."

"What moment–?!"

+=+

Previous Chapter (Troll Dads become official!)

Table of Contents

Next Chapter (Angor Rot’s debut!)

Not featured in the above chapter: Jim's internal panic, as he frantically tries to figure out how much Toby has already told Dr Archenn and how to warn Toby off telling her anything else, without exposing yet another Changeling's identity to humans.

Featured in the above chapter: my headcanon that Otto addressing Not Enrique as 'Imp' in early Season 2 was a deliberate insult. I've actually got a different nickname in mind for Not Enrique, it just didn't feel natural to bring it up in this scene. Imp, short for Impure, is basically a 'starter nickname' that all Changelings have in the Darklands, until and unless something about them stands out enough that the other Changelings start calling them something else.

[howtohero]

So You’ve Been Mutated Beyond all Recognition

So, you’ve been mutated beyond all recognition, bum deal. All your friends got to be rubber bands and firecrackers and adonises, more beautiful and popular than ever before, but not you. You’ve got porcupine quills now, or you’re made or rocks, or you’ve got the worlds most pronounced underbite. (Hey, if nothing else, at least you’re breaking records.) Well, we can’t all be beautiful, so thanks for making that sacrifice for the rest of us. I hope you weren’t like attached to your old body. Or your old life. Or babies not screaming in horror at the sight of you. 

You’re a monster now. There’s no two ways about it. I mean, come on, you’ve got horns. But being a monster isn’t all bad! Especially since I’ve been raising awareness for monster rights. You’re welcome by the way. And besides, I think it’s a pretty established fact that everybody really secretly wants to be a monster anyway. That’s why Halloween is such a popular holiday. (Be on the lookout for my companion piece “So You’ve Been Mutated into a Sexy Nurse.”) Now that you’re a monster you can do all the things you never got to do as a human! You can hide from angry mobs! You can cure hiccups effortlessly! You can be mistaken for Bigfoot! (The famous author!) Sure you won’t have the nicest sight when you look in the mirror, but the odds are good that any mirror you look at is going to shatter anyway! As a monster there’s nothing that can get in your way. If anybody gives you a hard time just flash that winning, fanged-filled smile, and threaten to eat them. 

The only thing you won’t be able to do is live your old, human, life. But that’s fine! Your life wasn’t that great. Now you can devote more time to being a superhero and protecting people. If you’re being honest with yourself you know that you weren’t exactly spending as much time as you could helping people, especially if this mutation is what’s spurring you to become a crime fighter in the first place. You used to waste time building model trains or playing sudoku but not anymore! Now you’re stopping runaway trains and sparring with sentient sudoku machines! Finally you’ll be contributing to society. It should be noted that you’re going to need to be saving twice as many lives as you were saving before you became a personified shag rug. You’ll have to work twice as hard and not look nearly as good doing it as other superheroes in your field, just to for people to stop brandishing their torches and pitch forks at the sight of you. 

Mutations like these are usually irreversible. It’s kind of hard to unmutate cells. I’m no biologist but I assume that’s a given. Sure, there are your special unique examples such as those heroes who use their own unique take on the Hyde formula or distilled gorilla testosterone blended with heroin and baking soda, but for the most part, once you get de-evolutionized or gene-spliced or mutant-ray-gunned or cursed by a witch, that’s that. No backsies. Unless you have one of those true love’s kiss dealios but that’s not really our genre. (Though there’s an idea!)

But that doesn’t mean you can never do normal human things like ride the bus or go vegetable shopping! Using these easy tricks grocery shopping will not be beyond your grasp! The first thing you’ll need to do is get a trench coat. Usually that’ll do the trick. Nobody pays attention to a guy in a trench coat. Even if you’re eat feet tall and smell like rotting fish. Even if you’re a robot the size of a car with wings and antennae. Even if you’re three kids trying to get into an R rated movie (or three kids stacked on top of one another in order to fight crime, shout out to “Adult Manferd”). A trench coat is the best way to go about your regular human business without getting onions chucked at your head. Some people might recommend wearing oven mitts over your hands or horns or large sunglasses to cover your face, but I’m telling you all you need is a good trench coat. Maybe a fedora, but that’s more of a stylistic thing. You can also use a hologram projector if you’re missing your old visage or if you want to see if you can somehow hold on to your old, pre-cosmic rays life. Unfortunately, this is not anywhere close to a perfect fix. You see, hologram projectors can only do so much. If your proportions are not those of a regular human, or if you’ve got a tail or your body is covered in fur or scales or dead cockroaches (hey, these things happen) then the hologram projector won’t be that much use to you. Trench coats don’t care what your skin is made of, or how many heads you have, or how much ooze you’re secreting. Trench coats will always have your back.

Now that you’ve been mutated beyond recognition you never have to worry about running into old acquaintances at social functions (you’re never invited to any anyway!) or on the subway (you’re too wide to fit through the subway doors!). You never have to worry about whether or not it was your turn to visit grandma. You don’t have to worry about being eaten by monsters. You don’t have to go pta meetings. You have an insatiable craving for antelope flesh (don’t lie, we know you always wished you had an overwhelming desire to eat an entire antelope). I think it’s clear that the positives way outweigh any negatives. So I recommend going for surgery in a Transylvanian back alley, or denying a witch lodging for the night, or having a parent with a dominant mutant gene. If you’ve ever wanted to howl at the moon without the neighbors complaining or going to a costume party without a costume, becoming mutated beyond all recognition is the move for you!