Changeling in Marvel-Land
My name is Jareth Bowie, and I would love to tell you that the file you have probably already read is the result of a seriously traumatic childhood, or growing up in the system, but the truth is that mom and dad did their best. They were good parents, they taught me to be a good kid, and no matter how much it hurt, they dealt with my issues as they continued to crop up. There were the little things. First, I have an allergy to iron. Not steel, that is so low grade I can handle casual contact, and stainless is no issue, but if I picked up the cast iron frypan hanging on the kitchen wall and carried it to the stove I would have a second degree burn on my hand. That is right. Burn from the totally cold cast iron. Then there are the “neurodiversities”, as dad calls them, or the Jarethisms, as mom calls them. Dad says that neurotypicals make the rules and categories but half of the greatness of our entire society comes from the neurodivergent like me that can find no place in it. Mom says they make me, me, and she loves me for them. I think mom and dad are both bugnuts crazy, because a dozen therapists and a lot of time on the internet in and I can tell you my syndromes don’t exist.
I cannot tell a lie. I don’t mean I am honest. To be honest, I am one of the shiftiest little pricks you will ever meet, but I could not tell a lie at gunpoint. Then there is the mushroom thing. Not an allergy that one. Its more of a…..hatred that mushrooms as a collective hold against me. Not the tame farmed mushrooms, they do what they are told and end up sauteed for it (there is a lesson there somewhere), no I mean the wild mushrooms. The goddamned Fairy Rings may as well be electric fences to me because they bounce me like the dinosaur fence in Jurassic Park. Seriously, thrown ten feet and shocked so hard I can’t talk for a minute afterwards. Then there is the twilight…..thing. You see, there is a time at before dawn and after dusk, where the sun isn’t in the sky, but it isn’t all the way dark, where I see things. Things that I would love to say were not there, but I have tested, and they are. No one else can see them, which isn’t as reassuring as you think, because they go around the things that aren’t there and deny doing so. The things I can see come in too forms, unspeakably beautiful, so starkly and inhumanly beautiful as to make you want to burn all art that dared to claim to capture beauty as a pathetic mockery of a truth they cannot grasp. Then the other kind, the dark ugly things that make the primitive part of you know that this being lives for the screams of its prey, and the pain of its kills. Neither one moves me, and that terrifies me most of all.
The last thing mom and dad have never quite been able to deal with is the violence. I don’t seek it out. I swear by the sun, the moon, the stars and the tree that I do not. Yet it always finds me. I am smart, not just or even primarily in books. My grades are scary good, but not because I work hard at it, just because putting in the effort mom and dad taught me was my duty meant I ended up top five in whatever subject I was in. I stayed away from team sports because I had “competitive issues”. That is a nice way of saying I won at all costs. On the soccer pitch, the hockey rink, the rugby field, or football, if you got between me and the objective, bad things happened, and I won. I am not tall. I stand five seven, weigh a buck fifty five, but I benched the max the school gym set allowed of five hundred pounds, and I could deadlift about half again more. I shied away from team sports because once my blood was up, that was the end of sweet reason and about the time blood, screams and phone calls home started. Turning my back on organized sport was a bit of a mistake because it got me labeled “nerd” and the bullying tried to start. Tried to start because the verbal abuse I didn’t notice. I shouldn’t let you think I ignored it, I enjoyed it without thinking about it because I gave better than I got, only what I said hurt and humiliated each person I insulted with the sort of deep personal knowledge I swear I didn’t have until my tongue started wagging and all their dirty little secrets just tripped out as I wove them into webs of cruelty designed to show that I was far better at cruelty than they could ever be, but do test me. Please.
As I have told three principals now, I never really notice it at the time, it is of so little concern I don’t pay any more attention to it than dodging people in the hallways. The attempted bullies do notice though, and the harder core ones decide to skip the middle bits and go direct to violence. That is when the problems really start. You see, when the violence starts, my senses go weird. The world goes so slowly, my blood catches fire, I can smell the sweat on their skin and read their emotions in it, I can hear the pulse in their veins, the shift of their muscles, the creaking of their tendons, and their motions may as well be happening in slow motion. I start to laugh. Loud hard joyous laughter as I shatter bones and cripple. The punches thrown lead to wrists caught, turned, elbows dislocated or forearms snapped. Sometimes I dance between the punches, casting both arms up or wide coming up between them with my own before I shatter both their collarbones to leave their arms hanging like string cut puppets. Sometimes I let them swing and swing and swing as I dance around them, slapping their blows away one by one until I grow bored and shatter both their knees almost casually just before adult supervision manages to get between us.
When I was younger and did this, the older students would hunt me down to “teach me a lesson”. That cost me a school and my first shrink. You see, in grade 5 I put four high school football players in hospital for one such educational episode. Once I started laughing, I knew the dance would continue until I was done or my dolls stopped twitching when I poked them. I don’t deserve mom and dad because knowing I could do this, they loved me anyway. I was a good kid because they raised me to be one, but I swear by the moon and the tree that if you brought violence to anyone I cared about, I stopped being human, and at least half of me only really felt alive at the time. I read comic books when I was small, but largely only followed as they matched the video games I ruled at (amazing reflexes) with my friends. They loved superhero games, fantasy RPG, and first person shooters. Superhero games were big, I mean the world was filled with film of the X men, the Avengers, Fantastic 4, rumours of Daredevil and Spiderman, a lot of debate about the Punisher. One of my girlfriends (Tanis) thought I could be a superhero, but I remembered how I felt when I hurt people. I read comics, that didn’t make me a hero. Wolverine was tolerated and the Punisher was, well people split on him, but I was slightly crazier than them when blood was on the wind.
Dad gave me “The Talk” when he took me to my first martial arts dojo after the “thing” in grade five that left those high schoolers in hospital. He told me that he wasn’t going to get me hurt trying to not fight back when someone was targeting me. He loved me, and he wanted me to be safe, not only from the violence others would do to me, but the violence I would do to them. He told me the difference between a man and a monster isn’t that they use violence, its that a man makes rules for himself to decide when to use that violence, and how much was justified in each case. A monster just did as they pleased in the moment and was often unable to face the memories of what they had done. He was raising me to be a man, and he was going to see that I was trained so that I could decide when violence was necessary, so that I could defend myself with appropriate force. He didn’t want to see me too terrified to look him in the eye because of what I did to protect myself.
I already could disassemble anyone I ran into; I went to my first dojo to learn the rules on how to use force to defend myself and others without becoming a monster to do it. I guess you could say it was the same need that drove me to enter the army. I was a violent man, but if I had the right rules, I could also be a good one. Plus, I was not physically normal. I didn’t tire like normal people, I was FTS according to sensei (faster than shit), and I could take damage that should have put me in the hospital without really noticing. The army was everything I wanted it to be. The Infantry pushed me, not the physical bits, those were honestly a breeze, but the zero tolerance for defect pushed even my limits. Learning to work as a team, to move not at my own speed, but at theirs, to not cover the whole of the battlefield, but my sector, while tracking the overall movement of our group through all kinds of terrain, obstacles, and later, enemies.
Combat was better than sex, and I LOVE sex. My girlfriends think I am good at sex, but “really twisted”, so when I say combat is even better, I am telling you that I had serious moral questions about my character when I found out how much I loved being under fire and returning it, of sprinting from cover to cover, laughing as I fired on the move and saw targets falling from my off hand shots at the sprint. I never needed the NVG as I could see better with my own eyes than the optics, and during combat, I didn’t even need the optics. I could track the bullets as they flew and see my own leave little ripples of shock on the cloth and tissues they hit and bored through. I am told this isn’t normal. I was a little worried about my sanity, but the service counsellors scared me further when they told me that my emotional responses were absolutely unchanged from my baseline and that I represented no risk of PTSD. I was saner after combat than before. This, frankly, made me doubt my humanity even more.
Jump School was the deal breaker though. The crème of the company gets the offer to go Airborne. I was in the middle of “is there something wrong with me” debate 897 when my NCO/IC called me into his office for a talk. My pers file was in front of him, and a coffee was set in front of me. He smiled, beware my sergeant when he smiles me lads, beware indeed.
“Jareth, you have done fine as a scout, worked through assaulter, weapons, comms, even medic, not a single ripple, but I really don’t see you being challenged. I think a troop like you needs challenge, and I think you would thrive in the kind of intensity that the airborne has. Not every soldier is up to it, but the ones that are don’t just stop being assets when they leave the airborne companies, they go on to be the bulk of the infantry leadership afterwards. What do you think Jareth, the idea of jumping out of a perfectly good airplane to land in the middle of a firefight sound like a wonderful way to spend a Friday?”
We were both grinning as he slid the papers across to sign. I was about as hard to seduce for the airborne as I had been for the divorcee with the fake boobs and completely real six pack and ass you could snap something off in. I regret neither choice. I was a good fit for the airborne, I just hid a little less of my “Jarethisms” as mom would call them, than I did with the line troops. It was okay to be just a little better, and I got drunk off that and came off a lot better. I loved the training, loved the guys and one girl who was on the course. They were not just good troops, they were the best of their units and you can see that each of them was used to carrying more than just their own weight. It was like being the lone wolf trying to fit into a pack of sled dogs into finally looking around the room and seeing nothing but other wolves grinning back at you.
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We practiced jumping from towers so often that I was yearning to jump out of my first plane with more desire than I remember for jumping into Becky Collins who was my first love. I do miss Becky. Should call her when I get leave next. Anyway, it was the night before our first jump that I felt something snap inside me. I don’t know what it was, but it was like I had been bound; chained. Even though I could move my limbs, see, hear, and think my whole life, that night when I felt that cord get cut, as it snapped back loose, bindings came off me. My senses became a dozen times more acute, my muscled twisted and bunched in new and strange ways, I hungered, oh my god how I hungered. Blood, sex, challenge, battle, the hunt, murder, meat, food, drink, sex, killing, screaming, oh god the thought of the screams and the fear had my blood rising like no lust could. What in the name of the tree was wrong with me.
We got into the Herc and I was a poster child for a good troop. I went through the double checks with emotionless routine, eyes active, seeing everything, tracking everything. I moved on the command and relaxed with the casualness of a tomcat with a full belly, unlike the nerves shown by everyone else. Don’t get me wrong, I wanted to panic, but the thing awake inside me now didn’t panic. It made things panic. Something was coming. Something terrible was coming for me. Something ancient and powerful was coming for me and I just couldn’t wait for it to try. That is it, seeing the service shrink and I don’t care if the whisper in the Junior Ranks mess is that “anonymous or not, that shit end up in your records someplace”. I was going buggy and needed to maybe have a word with somebody about it.
We saw the light for the jump come on, the jump master yelled and we got up. We hooked our static lines, and moved one by one to the door to jump. The jump master was there at the door to make sure your static line was hooked, and to slap you on the back when it was time to jump. Honestly to kick your ass out if you froze, but I didn’t freeze. I felt it. The hawk. The call of the icy winds of the storm to leap out into the abyss and dance. Laughing, I jumped. I tossed my weapon bag below, felt the drag line snap tight below me, felt my static line catch above me and the harsh ballcrusher of the chute release. The parasail opened perfectly and I grabbed my risers. That is when shit got weird.
An elf stepped out of a slice of the sky, a slice that moved at my rate of fall perfectly, as the elf smirked at me.
“You felt it last night, didn’t you Changeling. The child we traded for you was killed, you don’t need to know how, and you must return. There is an imbalance. The human we took has died, the fairy we took must return. One mortal life for a fairy one, the balance kept. We don’t need you to be here any longer changeling. Time to come home.” The elf said with a sneer, fingering the silver hilted longsword at his waist, looking at me the entire time like some load of dogshit he had been sent with a too-thin baggie to pick off the master’s lawn.
On some level it explained a lot. The iron problem, the inability to lie, the violence too probably. You know what, so what. I had a family, they were my real family even when I wasn’t a really great kid. I had a country that provided for me, and one I gave my oath to serve. So my “real parents” were done playing house with a stolen human and wanted me back? Fuck them, and fuck this Legolas knockoff.
“So just because I’m an elf you tossed away like garbage, you show up and say games over, come home, and I am expected to say yes sir, and leave my whole fucking life behind and go play sparkle twinkle elf games with my birth parents?” I snarled.
The elf laughed, then sneered. “No, you changeling filth. No one would trade an elf baby for a mortal. You are a goblin. Your kind are only good for two things, killing and pretending to be a higher creature while hiding under the changeling’s glamour. If your dear mother could have seen what you really looked like she would have dashed your head open against the stones, and your father would have burned what was left alive.”
He really was a prick wasn’t he? He was also wrong. I don’t know what I looked like but if you but a baby xenomorph in mom’s arms and told her his real parents tossed it away like garbage then Alien would have been a far different movie. She did nurturing, and dad did consequences. I am the monster they raised, and I can tell you this, I don’t fear meeting them again if pricklet the Keebler elf takes my glamour away. He was under the mistaken assumption I had no choice.
“Fuck off Legolas, before I rip your kneecaps off and turn you into legless.” I smirked at him. That, perhaps, was unwise.
I was used to being faster than anyone around. I was maybe faster than him in reaction speed, but not by much. My hands were controlling my risers, and would collapse my chute if I moved them too much, which is why I could do nothing but gasp when that silver sword came out and cut my main chute away.
“Bring back a live fairy, bring back a dead one, as long as the balance is maintained, nobody cares. Don’t worry, I have left behind the standard changeling body to show a nice normal human corpse. Now, try to stay in one piece, I will ruin these clothes if you drip on me when I drag your corpse to the portal.” The elvish bastard said this as he descended faster than me towards the ground with cheerful unconcern, apparently he had a magic trick to not turn into road pizza when hitting the ground at terminal velocity.
I didn’t have that magic trick, I had a FUCKING RESERVE CHUTE. I popped my reserve chute and came in for a hard landing and roll, but I was done pretending, that prick intended to kill me and both of us already knew I wasn’t human. I tore the parachute from me as I was about ten yards from the ground and leaped on him like a cougar. His sword flashed out in an arc, but fear made him telegraph it, and I spun my body like a diver doing a roll in pike and went from claws out for his face to jump boots between the shoulder blades as I rolled over him. We both went down hard; I was rolling he was face planting. I swarmed up him like a deranged chimpanzee, laughing like a maniac as he screamed like a bitch. So he was an elf, and thus valuable, and I was a fucking goblin, good only for killing and bullshit changeling games. Well, how about we see just how good this little goblin is at killing?
Meat puppet here still had the sword, he was waving it about, but nobody cared. I put my boot through the back of his knee to bring him down, and he drove the damned sword into the ground when he went sideways. One hand grabbed his long flowing (fucking hair product commercial) hair, and bent his head backwards, the other hand ripped his throat out right to the spine, and threw a handful of elven airway, jugular, carotid, off for the watching ravens to feast on. Now that I am down I see, well fuck me. There it is, there is my body. I looked like I had come down with a fouled chute, some tangled and snapped lines, a fouled reserve chute when the main didn’t detach. A decent job actually. If I wasn’t me, I would buy that was dead me just lying there.
I nodded to dead asshole “Top notch work. Mad respect you murderous elven twatwaffle. You do good elf magic, but I do better goblin killing.”
There was the slight problem of the circle of moonlight water hanging in midair like a sort of sideways pond. I am willing to bet that is the gate. Fairy sent him because with a dead human (there) they had one fairy too many, and living or dead, going back that way I would balance things, and me passing through would close the gate. I didn’t have a ton of time, whatever games he played left me away from the supposed drop zone, but not by much. They would be on the way to find me already, whatever I did, I had to do it now.
Trusting my less than human urges, because it turns out I was, I drove my right hand into dead Legolas chest and ripped out his heart. I picked the twerp up in my left hand and thrust him through the gateway. As one dead elf went through, that tug I was feeling stopped. The balance part was kept, Fairy the realm was happy enough with the exchange. The gate collapsed around my left hand and cut it like a blade, the spell holding the gate open until I passed through had been triggered when I stopped moving more than just my arm through.
Jesus motherloving monkeyfucker but that hurts. Enhanced senses when your arm get ripped off are NOT HELPING. Yet the cold part of me rises up and stops my trained response for dealing with total amputation of the left wrist by offering me a counter proposal.
I want direct pressure and a tourniquet to stop the bleeding, the passing out and bleeding to death thing. My inner goblin however suggests that the reason I am holding a still warm and twitchy elf heart in my left hand is so that I could take a moment right now to eat it.
I took a bite. The glamour was no longer binding me at least, I won’t swear to what other people saw, and I can tell you my mouth opened a lot wider than it should, and my teeth were like something out of Jaws. I began eating the heart like I would an apple. It was a bit bloody, but bloody good on the whole. 10/10 would recommend. I forgot to ask the dude’s age, but it was a very good year for elvish minion hearts. I was reflecting on the flavour and watching how my left hand was regrowing as I ate the tasty elf bit when I felt some blood washing down my chin. I didn’t want it getting on my uniform, so without a thought my tongue lashed out to grab it. Gene Simmons eat your heart out. Tanis was right, that tongue was ab freaking normal. Full on tentacle level freaky. How did the glamour keep me from noticing this thing could reach my belly button while I was standing fully upright? Goblin love baby, accept no substitute.
Elf gone, gate gone, illusions maybe about to go away, and a fake dead me that I will bet my balls will pass a full autopsy as more normal human me than my body would, I decided I had to run. I don’t care if the illusion is up or down, I am not running without telling mom and dad that I am alive, and the whole goblin thing. I mean, if they can’t deal, that’s fine. At least I can tell them that I love them and that if I am not totally a monster that is entirely on them. If I am, well, that is entirely on me.
I took off in a jog towards home. I was about two days run through the forest, but if I can’t tell if the illusion is up or down, or could fade at any time, I can’t exactly just grab a Go Train and join the big city commuters on the trip home. Nope, one goblin, charging through the twilight of the forest, headed for the poor mortal fools who took in a changeling all those years ago, and dared to love it. Do you know what makes me laugh, Dad introduced me to this anime called Goblin Slayer. I loved it, mom refused to be in the room when we watched it. The hero of the anime’s only job was to kill goblins, in a world filled with demon lords and death cults, the thing he dedicated his life to destroying, what he viewed as the ultimate evil, were the goblins. I always agreed with him.
Laughing like a maniac, I hit the forest doing about sixty kilometers per hour on my own two feet.