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Branch was absolutely, unequivocally, definitely carrying too much.
To tell a loner troll his business was to invite a maelstrom of scorn and barbed hair-lances, therefore Pop’s resident blue stud carried on unchecked. His arms had ceased their purpose as single body supporting limbs somewhere around tool number seven, and had instead evolved into a precarious Jenga tower of hammers, blueprints, rope coils, measuring tape, three different wrenches (for reasons), and a bucket of screws that jingled ominously with each and every solid step. A spirit level was clenched between his teeth, tilting dangerously—both literally and philosophically.
Still, he marched on.
Because Branch did not half-as- did not half-BUILD things. And if the bunker, and his bros were getting a water slide, both it and they were getting a ten-story, gravity-defying, spiral-twisting, scream-inducing marvel of engineering that kept every nook and cranny clean. Anything less would just be… a damp roundabout of disappointment.
He squinted up into the cavernous blackness he had selected all those years ago, craning his neck so far back he nearly dropped the screwdriver wedged behind his ear. Ten stories. Give or take an inch. The mammoth hole was the maw of a predator a troll never had the time to document or process, support beams faintly lighting its insides like so many jagged, load-bearing teeth. Branch, without fear, shifted his weight, the tools wobbling like they were reconsidering their life choices.
“Okay,” he muttered around the spirit level, which bobbed in its rainbow liquid as though nodding its encouragement. “Step one: scaffolding. Step two: reinforce scaffolding. Step three: don’t fall.”
A hammer slipped. Branch caught it with his foot. It was an instinctual move that he had been years-honed. It should have concerned him more than it did.
As he began setting down his equipment—slowly, carefully, like defusing a very judgmental bomb that had picked up on his almost medical necessity for perfectionism—he failed to notice the subtle change in the air. The bunker, usually content to hum along with its musically requisite inhabitants and sophisticated filtration system, had gone suspiciously quiet. No spiders. No critters. No background harmonies. Not even a rogue kazoo.
Instead, something else stirred in the cosy underground passages.
“Almost... got... it…!” Branch said to no one, hoisting a ladder that was several storeys taller than he was and significantly less cooperative. “Just need to—”
Like he and his brothers’ first inglorious attempt at Complete Family Harmony, he was cut mercilessly short.
Without warning, several flashes of glaring colour whipped down from above with the speed and confidence of a marine predator with tentacles built for precision and speed. Pink. Purple. Lime. Teal. They wrapped firmly—but not unkindly—around his hard torso, arms, and one very indignant leg.
Branch had exactly half a second to register, with ire, what was happening, before he was yanked straight into the air.
“HEY—!” he roared as the ground dropped away, his view becoming that of prey stolen away by hungry Popguzzler Hawks, tools raining down like a very specific kind of metallic hailstorm. “What the heck are you guys DOING?!”
He dangled mid-air, spinning slightly, as lush. outgrown hair strands tugged him upward with synchronized efficiency. It was less rescue and more strongly worded intervention.
Below him, four familiar, and completely diverse, figures stared back up at him from the tool-strewn earth. Hair taut. hair taut and expressions varying from amused to concerned to confused, to… Why you be needin’ two sets’a hack-jumping jack-saws, baby bro?
“Whoa, whoa, whoa~! Chill them beans, baby brother!” John Dory called up with a toothy grin. Annoying old ba-
“You packin’ a hella lotta weight with all dem tools...” Clay added, pulling at one cushioned wristband, raising lime eyebrows.
“With no spotter, ta boot...” Bruce chimed in, dreamy eyes hooded and lips set into a firm frown. The disapproving, scarcely veiled worry of a veteran father of 13 playing a very poor hide and seek game.
Floyd said nothing, but raised his thick pink eyebrows, waiting to hear his baby brother out.
Geez… had Branch spent too long with Johnny already?
Branch crossed his arms with dignity – as much dignity that he could whilst suspended several feet in the air. Whilst upside down. “I was being efficient.”
The hair tightened just a bit, lifting him higher still.
“Yo,” Clay replied easily, with a lopsided grin that spoke of brotherly affection and zero patience fo’ safety-hatin’ foo’s, “Ain’t no efficiency, bro. Dat an OSHA violation wit’ ambition.” The crazy-haired CPA glanced to the side, to entities his brothers could not see, and raised his eyebrows further. You know wut he talkin’ ‘bout.
Branch huffed, spinning slowly as the familiar brown and oranges of glow-stick lit bunker hallways came back into view below him—the hollow, the ladder, the scattered tools, and the ultimately untouched and yet rough-hewn trolling’s dream of a water slide shower.
“…I was going to install railings,” he muttered.
The hair did not loosen.
The youngest member of Brozone’s face hardened, and his bare chest puffed up under the brotherly bondage of rainbow hair, suddenly turning his siblings’ righteousness right back at them.
“Do you guys have ANY IDEA how dangerous that was?!” he scolded, gesturing emphatically to the abundance of timber and tools littering the floor like a building site that had been lost to a cave-in.
All four brothers exchanged a slow look, brows cocked.
Clay was the first to step forward, speaking smooth, like these kinds of situations, tension and all, was perfectly normal. “We jus’ seein’ what was goin’ down with all the ruckus, baby bro.” Can’t concentrate on the feels for Sad Book Club with a storm blazin’, aight?
Flexing himself free with an oft pursued prey’s expertise, Branch landed with a huff, immediately bristling, adjusting his grip on the supplies he had retained like a troll on a mission.
He told ‘em exactly how it was.
“So’s I thought I’d build it,” he said coolly. “Seein’ as I promised Floyd way back.”
The room went quiet, save for a very inopportune and inappropriate low whistle.
Violet eyes widened. Floyd’s blue hands flew up, palms out. “Oh— Branch, that wasn’t—”
He ceased in that moment. Caught in oceans of baby blue. The starkest blue of a clear sky at the height of Summer.
For Branch was looking at him.
Bright-eyed. Earnest. Idolizing.
Floyd swallowed down further words like so many dry and sour cherry seeds.
“…a promise I’d forget easy!” he finished, forcing a grin. “Right? Haha—ha… yeah…”
He rubbed the back of his pink to paler hair, drooped ears drooping further still under the combined big brother glare now aimed squarely at him.
Bruce cleared his throat, slipping fluidly from every Trolls’ Heartthrob into a mode of concern that was distinctly… paternal.
“Now, y’know I gotta appreciate a good slide better’n anyone,” he said. “I got four installed in the bar. Really adds a sense’a class with the hula hoops and blow-up narwhals.”
Branch perked despite himself, “Oh yeah?”
“But,” Bruce continued, raising a thick forefinger and giving a single wag, “you said yourself it weren’t safe, Bitty B—”
“Branch,” Branch growled, like a cuddledog’s final warning, eyes narrowing.
“—Branch,” Bruce corrected quickly, losing momentum for just a moment and losing his place with an eye-roll as his older brother picked up.
“So’s ya can’t expect us to just sit around with our thumbs up our a—” John paused too long, before continuing, recalling what universe he was in, “—ARMpits,” he finished with a blink. He paused, visibly recalibrating. He smirked with a combination of fraternal teasing and doting, “…when you could be smashin’ your widdle itsy-bitsy baby teeth out!”
“Well, joke’s on you, ‘cause almost all my adult teeth’re through already,” Branch shot back smugly, “An’ anyways—”
He jabbed a thumb at his bare chest.
“—you all seemed pretty fine leavin’ me to myself before now, right?” HA! That oughta learn ‘em.
The room deflated. Branch almost heard the distinctive, sad ‘pfffftttttt…’ as the air eased out and sucked out the mood. At least, he hoped he had imagined it.
They were bros, but he wasn’t ready to share their trollcake-bakin’ just yet.
Every brother looked stricken, like they’d just been hit by a glitter cannon packed with blame, shame, and expertly whittled emotional stakes.
Branch noticed instantly. No as immediately as a healthy, emotionally grounded Pop Troll, but… well. He noticed. Eventually.
He shifted, cleared his throat, and moved on fast — real fast.
“An’ besides,” he continued, rubbing his nails proudly across the short blue-green hairs on his chest, “I amended the design. Totally doable. Totally safe. Totally POPPIN’ right now!”
With a slow, chilled grin, Clay’s lean green arms whipped out and smoothly lifted the thick roll of plans from Branch’s grip, “Lemme jus’ see dat real quick…”
The change was instant.
Clay’s keen, bright blue eyes sharpened. Focused. Analytical. Mathematical.
That was, after all, the same troll who’d once been voted Most Likely to Attend College and Pass With Flying Rainbow True Colours — and Most Likely to Rig King Peppy’s Chair With Pink Molasses and Flufferball Whoopie Bombs at Princess Poppy’s Coronation.
When life got serious?
You trusted Clay. With the finances and corporate contract law, anyways.
He scanned the plans with his analytic gaze, rolled them back up, and smiled wide and toothy.
“Those some sweet, sweet plans, baby bro.”
The tension eased, and Branch’s chest puffed up, throwing his bare arms out in self-righteous frustration, “THANK you!”
Then, Clay added, flat as a fizzy apple gummy strip, “But it ain’t a one-troll job, ya dig?”
Green fingers became the counters to a long list of possible (and probable) consequences.
Structural failure. Water pressure backlash. Velocity trauma. Dangerous colour mismatching.
The brothers gasped louder, with greater gusto and lung capacity, with each as they were mercilessly and factually reeled off.
“Oh man— I’m gonna—” Floyd slapped a hand over his mouth, eyes rolling back as he fought off a wave of rainbow nausea. The warm, heated sugar aroma burned behind his palm. His imagination doing all the damage.
The fun-boy CPA Brozone bro pulled a pencil from his hair, licked the tip and giving his lips a smack. “Now if ya jus’ take out the ultra blower, bust it down some, lil’ cheeky emergency exit drop here—”
Branch snatched the plans back sharply, hissing like an indignant viper.
“HEY.”
He shoved them into the magical void of his blue-purple hair nest. “You’re overreacting.”
John Dory crossed his arms. “Yep! Overreacting like FOXES.”
The four brothers considered him with a combination of annoyance and confusion.
JD did not register any of it. He’d said words and they’d heard him.
“...What is that even supposed to mean?” Branch asked, eventually, the genuine curiosity and confusion losing out to irritation as he turned to stomp away from them in favour of returning later.
“It MEANS…” the teal-buzzcut loner started, folded his strong, broad green arms tighter, “You ain’t buildin’ it alone.”
Branch’s bare feet had been stamping away with inflated purpose, only to halt.
The air suddenly gained a weight like that as was inevitable over a festive period.
He turned slowly. On one foot. With all the dark fear and foreboding gravity of a ghost in a Rock-Troll horror scrapbook.
“…ExCUSE me?”
JD shrugged, utterly unbothered, or just not registering the drop in Branch’s voice. Unversed in the ways of social cues. “Yeah. You heard me. Mucho nada slip’n’slideo, hermano.”
Fury burned behind baby blues. Utter, unbridled, and unchecked. Branch’s gut, his chest, and then his head SWELLED with it. He opened his mouth, closed it.
Again.
Then… he visibly forced himself to breathe. To count back from a number significantly higher than 10. He then jabbed a forefinger at them.
“Oh, you wanna bet?”
Four brothers blinked at him with varying degrees of apprehension.
Branch squinted, and frowned for gravity, “I’m gonna not build it so good you guys’ll be bouncin’ when you see it!” he declared, turning once again, and stomping away towards a yawning orange bunker passage, leaving his tools (and the colossal mess) behind, only to pause, and shoot a narrow-eyed glare over his shoulder.
“How big and awesome I’m not buildin’ it, that is!”
Bruce, Clay, and Floyd looked to each other in discomfort. Floyd rubbed a bare arm, wondering how to address it best, as John Dory just looked bemused by the wording his youngest brother was using.
“Right under your noses!” the tirade continued.
The youngest blue band member backed away, glaring meaningfully.
“It’s gonna be THAT good!”
They watched him go — anxiety becoming a palpable presence, perhaps another addition to their Brozone dynamic, until one troll tried to thwart it with token, if misdirected, manful bravado.
“Heh,” JD said with pride self-inflated, raising a calloused hand bound in faux leather. “Totally got that nailed through to him real good.”
Blues and Violets regarded him with a chronic sense of the unamused.
John Dory was however, undeterred, as he boomed out, raising his big ol’ paw and giving it an inviting wave.
“BOO-yah!”
...No one high-fived him.
He grimaced, and finally dropped his arm, finally staring with his little bros into the passage, watching their Bitty falsetto’s fleeting shadow as he left them.