/A rough map about where things happened to those that are confused/

"talking"

'thinking'

[message]

Modern Jim: After living with Barbara for a while and her cracking his 'serious adult' mask, he begins to act a bit more like a teen but not quite. At least he relaxes enough to have simple, meaningless fun with Toby. He has upgraded his wardrobe. He got some cloth and sewed himself some pants, shorts, shirts, more comfortable and elastic underwear, he even made some T-shirts with his favorite logos. Nana has also gifted him some clothes but they were too small to wear, so he made bigger versions of them to wear and gave them to charity.

P.S: He looks great in Christmas sweaters! Want a short about it? Write in the comments!

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"This is unfair! I have acquired knowledge about the modern age and am able to function on my own! Why should I go to school again?!" – Jim was fuming on the backseat of Barbara's car.

"I know but it has to be done. Education is mandatory in modern times." – she looked at him apologetically.

"I know! It's just annoying. I know all these stuff and even more, so I find it pointless."

"Hey, at least you'll be in one class with Toby! That's good, right?"

"Y-yeah... I guess. He's interesting at least, for a human child..." – he was embarrassed to say it out loud.

He liked Toby, really liked him, and was a bit embarrassed to admit he wanted the company, so Jim 'agreed to play with Toby after a lot of persuasion'.

She stopped the car in front of the school gate.

"We're here. Jim, please, just try it and listen to your teachers. I know it must be hard but..."

"Ah. No, no... I'll be fine. Truth is, I have been studying on my own after my teacher died."

"Your teacher?"

"Yeah, she was a great with and the others in the settlement accepted me. In the end, she aged, like all humans and died."

"I'm sorry."

"Ah. Don't be! This happened even before your grandparents were planned! Also, she'd probably hit me with her staff if she saw me moping." – he laughed it off, even Barbara chuckled a bit at the image of a woman hitting someone like Jim with a staff.

Barbara sent him to school and left for work that day. Jim, on the other hand, just stood there in the hall. He hated to admit it that he was a bit nervous. Going from almost hermit-like lifestyle to a public school was a hard transition. A door opens and a familiar chubby boy exits it. He immediately brightens up.

"Jimbo! You are also here!" – Toby hugged him and he awkwardly returned the gesture.

"You are also here..."

"Yes, of course I am! So! In which class are you? I'm in class B!"

"Um...I'm also in class B?" – he was a bit unsure.

"That's great! We'll be together!" – Toby then dragged Jim in the classroom.

Soon the bell rang and Jim was seated with other 1st graders as the teacher introduced herself.

"Hello kids! Nice to meet you! I'm miss Hopkins and I'll be your teacher." – she smiled.

"" Hello miss Hopkins!"" – the class said at once and Jim parroted.

"Now! I know it's the first day but I have a fun task for you. Now, let's all write the alphabet together!" – she smiled brightly and bulled a pen from her pocket.

The kids shuffled to get notebooks and pens out of their bags and Jim barely managed to suppress a groan. He wanted to bang his head in the desk and utter every curse and profanity he had learned in his life but couldn't. People would look at him strangely because he was 'speaking tongues' and he'd probably break the fragile desk with his forehead.

'These first years ARE going to be hell!' – he thought.

===Time skip===

"It's OVEEEEER!" – Jim shouted in pure happiness as he came home.

"Hi dear!" Barbara greeted from the kitchen "How was school?" – she asked out of habit.

"Do you even need to ask? Boring! Like always. I know all these stuff, so I'm not only wasting time but I also think I'm losing brain cells!" – he said half-serious and half-jokingly.

He got the shoes off and threw the backpack on the floor as he approached the kitchen. Jim entered and a nasty (for humans at least) smell hit him in the face. Barbara had been trying to salvage whatever was left of the thing she was cooking.

"Sigh... Don't bother fixing it. I'll eat it with the pan and make you something before I go out." – he said and transformed into an older form of himself.

"You are going out tonight? I though you didn't like going out at night due to the risk." – she was curious but left him deal with the disaster.

He opened the window and removed the ban from the stove. He then began preparing her dinner. A simple salad, and stuffed potatoes in the oven. He even made lunch for tomorrow, one for her, him and Toby. She smiled at the small gesture her son did for his friend.

"So, what happened? You look a bit more stressed and I guess that's the reason you want to go out during the night." – she said as she prepared the table.

"It's just... I'm really pissed off. The older kids made fun of Toby's weight, how some teachers would look strangely at me, just because I've not been to a kindergarten and how some kids said I'm so scrawny because I don't have a father! It just made me SO mad!" – he grit his teeth and squeezed the fridge's handle.

Barbara was glad he was in human form because she'd have to replace the handle otherwise.

"Don't take their words seriously! I've worked with teens and I know how their minds work, so I'm going to do my best to help you get rid of this stress." – she said all professionally.

"I KNOW that I shouldn't listen to them but, damn, even YOU are younger than me, mom! It feels a bit wrong, you know..."

"Hey, Jim, don't worry about minor details like that. I bet those kids would have been scared if they saw you- "

"I KNOW!!" he shouted and immediately regretted it due to the look on Barbara's face "I'm sorry... I know that, but it's just..."

"You don't like to mention either your father and brother." She put a hand on his shoulder "Trust me, I know how it is. My parents won't visit me because I married James and they didn't like him. I sometimes regret not listening to them but then, I wouldn't have met you. You are now part of MY family and that won't change, no matter what!" – she squeezed and he transformed.

This showed her just how emotional he was about it. Strong emotions would always make him transform unwillingly. He was getting better but this still was a problem for him.

"No, you were right. They will be scared if they saw how I really look. The same would probably happen with other trolls OR they'll get angry and attack me." – he said, continuing his preparations for dinner.

The potatoes still needed time to bake, so he put a timer and walked out of the kitchen. Barbara followed him and saw him swish his hand, point it at the curtains in the living room and they closed on their own.

'No, with magic. He doesn't use it a lot so it's sometimes easy to forget he can do it. It's still surprising how there's magic for closing curtains.'

He sat on the sofa and it creaked. He winced and looked at her.

"Hey, do you think I'd need to go and find myself a new couch? I don't think this one would last long with me sitting on it." – he tried to shift the conversation.

"Maybe, but let's talk about how YOU feel. I know tat teens especially shouldn't bottle up their emotions."

"I know they probably talked about James but when those kids said 'your father', my mind flashed to MY father. How he was looming over fallen trolls and either slaying them with no mercy or worse, turning them into his puppets."

"Hey, don't worry. Your dad's in those Dark-lands you mentioned, right? Also, you had nothing to do with it, nor you could do anything about it."

"Yes, but I was literally MADE for this... this war! I was taught, trained and raised to be the perfect warrior and fight alongside my father and brother. I ATE human meat! They'd even praise me and say just how much I was like my family, and they were right. I DO look like my father a lot. I have similar built body, just more agile and with longer legs. The same color, even my eyes glow the same way as his! I fear... I fear that the only way for me to ever belong is to lie about who I am." – he gripped his horns and stared at the carpet.

"Come on, how many times do I have to tell you the same thing?" she huffed "I know that getting out of your family's shadow isn't easy and I can't even begin to fathom how troll things work but I know it's going to be hard. You are you and not some clone of your father. It's going to get to a point where someday you will have to prove the others who you are really. It's going to be hard but don't give up! Living alone must have been hard..."

The atmosphere got awkward but the timer dinged and made Jim stand up.

"I'm going to get the food out and serve it. You can, come and eat, not immediately, if you don't want to... Yep, I'm going!" – he smiled a toothy smile, tusks and sharp teeth showing as he headed for the kitchen.

.............................

They ate in relative silence. Barbara enjoyed the potatoes and Jim chowed on the ruined pan.

"Haha... My food seems to be perfect for trolls, am I right?" – she couldn't quite laugh at her own joke.

"Yeah, it's not bad." – he muttered and chowed down the whole handle.

Barbara looked at her plate and Jim gulped loudly, licking his teeth to get rid of any leftover bits.

"I'm going out for a while." – he stood up from his seat, a pillow on the floor.

"OK. Just- just don't get into too much trouble." - she looked at him, worry in her eyes.

"Don't worry, I won't. In fact, I do everything I can NOT to get in trouble!"

He walked out of the back door and headed into the woods. He was feeling quite stressed and restless lately, so when he was far enough into the woods, he took off his shirt, pants and shoes, leaving him in dark blue shorts. He felt too confined in them, despite making them to be comfortable and fit him well. Jim was going to burn out some stress and didn't want anything to bother him. He hung them on a branch. He stretched, popping his neck and ran into the dark woods, his dark living stone making him almost invisible, only glowing blue eyes gave out his position.

Trees blurred as he darted through the forests of Arcadia. He LOVED the feeling and it reminded him of the past, his long treks through the mountains and great plains of America. His eyes spotted a small clearing on a hill nearby, so he headed to there, jumping over rocks and even swinging around a tree, leaving scratch marks on the trunk. Jim was in the clearing in under 5 minutes. He jumped over a fallen log and landed on all fours with a loud thump. He stood up and dusted his palms, frowning.

'I still feel restless. Maybe I should exercise some more.'

Jim looked around the clearing and went into a resting position. After that he began to do a series of stretches, cardio and other exercises he'd seen on TV. He smiled as all his joints and limbs were stretched and moved, free of the confined space he had in the house. Slowly but surely his exercises turned from simple stretches to more complex acrobatics, flips, turns, rolls and jumps. He darted all over the clearing and nearby trees, displaying his above-average agility for trolls, especially ones his size.

After a while, you could hear loud noises and crashes from the clearing. Now Jim was long past the cautious phase, in fact, caution has been thrown out of the window. He temporarily decided to shut part of his brain off and went into a familiar routine, one he still did after all this time. He lifted stones as weights and was currently bench-pressing a boulder his size.

he threw the rock to his left and stood up, rolling his shoulders

His arms were staring to burn but nowhere near what was enough for him. He then started breaking rocks with his legs and arms, he threw branches and broken trees. Jim stopped at one point and lifted a thick and sturdy branch.

'Hmm... about the right size, so maybe...'

He swung the branch around with one arm and entered a stance. Feed wide, not in one line, around the same distance away as his shoulders. He leaned forward and slashed with the branch. It made a *fwuip* sound as it went through the air. He pulled back, leaning to the side, a quick step, spin and another slash. It hits the ground and grass mixed with dirt is sent flying. He continues like that for a while but his frown deepens.

he growls – he grumbled to himself.

He then broke the branch in two with one clean knee hit and threw the pieces away. He was frustrated and kicked a boulder next to him. It barely shook and it irked him for some reason. He glared at the inanimate object and suddenly slammed his horns in it. He went on all fours and started pushing the boulder forward. His claws dug into the dirt as he pushed on. Soon he was moving forward, the boulder was leaving a relatively deep gouge as it was pushed by the juvenile troll. This struggle continued for a while, until he had pushed it to the opposite end of the clearing. Jim finally stood up with a slightly smug look, as if saying to the rock that he's stronger than it.

'What am I doing?! This is stupid!' – he snaps himself out of it.

Jim places a clawed hand on the boulder and looks around the clearing, seeing the damage he's done.

'Just like in the past...'

There's rustling in the foliage a few tens of meters down the hill he was on. He sees flashlight light and voices.

"I heard the noise from up here!" – a deep, masculine voice says, the flashlight pointing in Jim's direction.

"I'm not too sure Hank. With your monster hunting and all... I think you spend too much time in these woods." – a squeakier male voice says back.

"Shush! I know that this may sound strange to normies but trust me! In these past few months there had been sightings around Arcadia and I'm sure there's some creature in these woods. I'll take a picture of it and will get rich!"

"Yeah, but if the monster is real, how will you make sure we're not dead?!"

"I have a teaser and pepper spray. Everything is fine!"

Jim decides to bolt but couldn't hold back a snicker. Those men were probably talking about trolls, so pepper-spraying them would at most enrage them and teasers didn't work on rock very well. You'd need something MUCH more powerful for it to work. He ran through the woods but could still faintly hear the shouts of the two men, as they had probably found the clearing.

.....................................................

Jim stopped and panted. He looked around but the tall trees were obscuring his view, so he found a thick one near him and climbed it. He was careful but still tensed when a branch would bend too much or a twig would snap. Finally, he was high enough to see where exactly he was. It was surprising to see that he'd ran in the opposite direction and was in the other end of town.

'I guess I deserved it.' he looks at the sky 'Around 4 in the morning... I should head back.'

He jumped down and whipped his head to his right. He squinted at the foliage but after seeing nothing, he turned around and ran. His paranoia was screaming at him, so as he was running away, he ducked behind a bush, made sure there was nowhere around and transformed into a 30+ year old man with jogging clothes on. He quickly entered the park and continued his 'daily jog' for the morning. He passed by the canal and shivered, not in an unpleasant way though. Even through all the layers of rock and dirt, he could faintly feel the Heartstone. He smiled and continued to his home, feeling nice, despite how tired he felt.

'I should get my clothes back, clean myself and make breakfast... Tomorrow's a weekend, so I can sleep until I want!'

..............................

Barbara woke up to the smell of French toast and heavy feet making their way up the stairs. She was just sitting up when Jim opened the door.

"Good morning." – she yawned.

"Good morning. I made you breakfast."

"You not going to eat?"

"No, I'm spent! I worked myself last night, so I'm going to crash on my bed and sleep for the rest of the day, probably."

"OK. Just don't make a hole in the floor!" – she joked.

"Hey! It wasn't my fault that bed frame was faulty!" – he placed the tray on her bedside cabinet.

She smelled lavender from him and could see how his fur was a bit damp, oh she realized he didn't have a shirt on.

"Good dreams Jim!" – she wished.

"Have a nice day, mom. Oh, if Toby comes, tell him something. I'm not in a condition to go out and keep my magic stable while playing."

"I will."

He closed the door and after a while she heard the thump of Jim flopping down his bedding on the floor. The bed frame that was in the room before he came in broke after he sat on it, so he opted to sleep on the floor with the mattress underneath him. She then giggled.

'Why am I always asleep or without a phone then he uses the shower? It was so funny the first time I saw him awkwardly washing himself in the bathroom. The shower barely reached his shoulders! Hehe.'

===Meanwhile during the same night===

Blinky was packing a few essential things in his bag. He was going out, alone to look for evidence and maybe find a snack. Vendel didn't want to believe him, so he was going to prove his point and shove the truth in Vendel's face if needed to!

"I have to do this! Alone."

He snuck out, putting a cloak on and making sure no one saw him do so. He used the Horngazel to open a doorway and ran out.

Blinky was now in the outer parts of town. He had searched the streets, doing his best to stay hidden and away from well-lit places. He had found close to no traces of proof that Kanjigar's dream was somewhat prophetic. However, he had almost squished a goblin that had scuttled a bit too close to him while he was sneaking around.

'Maybe there really is noth- No! I believe there IS something around here! It's important! I can feel it in my horns.'

He slowly made his way through one of Arcadia's many parks and entered the woods. It was a smooth transition that went almost unnoticed. It wasn't even midnight, so Blinky had high hopes to find at least something. Kanjigar was out on his nightly patrols, so he had time until early morning to bet back without anyone noticing, well AARRRGH might notice something but it was unlikely for him to report it if Blinky was back before sunrise.

.......................................