Where chaos goes to die.

And once the storm is over, you won't
remember how you made it through,
how you managed to survive. You
won't even be sure, wether the storm
is really over.

NOW PLAYING A LIVE RECORDING OF A MORNING WEATHER SEGMENT THAT MAY OR MAY NOT EXIST:

Good morning, Arcadia Oaks! (static, fixes tie, clears throat) Lovely day we've been having. Enjoy it while you can! (viscerally uncomfortable laugh-turned-cough) Okay, quick weather warning. (eyes shift to whatever poor guy is feeding this much richer guy lines, deliberation, maybe he should quit and move to Alaska, no he has kids, he wonders if he could afford a divorce, oh the weather forecast, clears throat again) There is . . . a natural disaster brewing somewhere in your neighbourhood. (you're going to die.)

END OF SEGMENT. SORRY, IT WAS THE LONGEST A MADE-UP WEATHER SEGMENT COULD BE. YOU'RE STILL GOING TO DIE, THOUGH! HAVE FAITH!

Ha ha. Well, not really. Loads of people would hate that message. If that completely untrue segment was released to the public, it would be panic like you'd never seen. How in the world could our sweet suburban town manage to hold a tragedy in its hands? How long do we have before it crushes us into the earth? Can I finish my bottle of wine first? Sweet suburban towns like Arcadia Oaks were way more unstable than they let on—which should've been a given, considering what they were housing.

There was a dilapidated record store stuffed in the crevices between Arcadia and the disastrous. You would rarely ever see the woman who owned it. She wouldn't be caught dead in there. It was too tiny, too flavourless, too boring for someone with the ferocity and bitterness of lion's blood. She was precocious, insufferable, a real migraine. If you saw her on the street you'd be scared of her. You probably should be. So no, you would not find her in the record store she so miraculously owns.

You'd find worse. You'd find her ward, sitting behind the cash, ratty strands of blonde hair falling flat against her placid skin. You'd think my God, I have never seen somebody this close to the colour grey in my entire life. She'd split her face into a smile and it would be magnetic and nauseating. Your eyes would flick down to the pin on her shirtsleeve. HELLO, MY NAME IS—and in jagged, crooked letters with thick Sharpie pen—STORM.

Congratulations. You've found your natural disaster. Kill her while you can. (Or bribe. She takes bribes too.)

Storm was practically perfect in a weird, ghoulish way if you squinted hard enough. She had a pretty hefty reputation at school (disrupting classes and acting like everyone she hated was dead), and was begrudgingly beautiful. Having the golden boy, Steve Palchuk, as her boyfriend was about the only thing standing between her and reclusion. She was a popular girl because she had a good boyfriend, good looks, and a stunningly acidic personality. Nothing special.

So what was it about her that kept people coming back? They didn't like her. Or want to know her. They were just . . . interested, and curious, and a little judgemental. It was almost frustrating when people didn't understand why they were so fixed on her. Storm liked thinking it was because she was witty, or endearing, or smart. But all it chalked up to was that she possessed a certain mysterious quality like no other:

Witchcraft. (And perhaps the worse case of amnesia known to man.)

Practically perfect was the overstatement of the millennia. There were bits of her so ugly it would drown all the good stuff out. Like her cramped apartment above the record store, with that cruel owner as her only companion, lion's blood lining what was left of love and broken teacups. She had a pet snake, coiled and hidden around her neck. Her cheeks, stained black beneath her eyes, the only keepsake of who she once was. The only keepsake of the memory she'd poisoned. Storm couldn't remember the life she lived before Arcadia, and the loss had numbed overtime. She was centuries young and felt brutally old. A stain in her own history. There were spots in her brain even magic couldn't scrub clean.

She'd been keeping herself out of trouble for a good couple years, but that was before Jim Lake Junior showed up to school with a relic humans decidedly should not show up with. Storm felt the reckoning before it even began. Something was transforming in the flow of magic. Rising. A war was on the horizon. And for some reason, she felt the need to protect these three stupid humans in case they wiped out the entire planet. (Which was weird, considering she didn't care about the planet until that point as evident from that lovely fake weather segment.)

For the first time in her recollected life, she was seeking magic out like a hungry dog. She actively poked around corners, knelt into the darkness, stopped fatal punches and balls of fire whenever the humans were too close to heaven. After spending so long as a shadow (and as a cashier, of course), protecting a human Trollhunter with zero experience was a very strange obligation to put on yourself. But people do strange things.

Like fall in love.

Storm has prided herself in keeping her distance from everything and everyone, until Douxie Casperan tied himself to her and would not let go. It was infuriating how wonderful he was—he had the same wit as her, the same crookedness, the same weathered glitter in his eyes. No matter what the fuck she did, she knew pulling away was futile. If only that fake weather warning had aired. Maybe it would've warned him.

He would've known that Storm destroyed everything she touched. She was poisonous. Reckless. Not a force to be taken lightly, not something that should roam the world and bear her heart. There was something hellish in her, and it went back further than she could remember. She had been erased from history books and internet feeds and everything in between, but for the first time in her life she felt she was on the verge of something she didn't want to forget.

Fuck, if she was going to meddle with history, she was going to do it right. She would fill those holes in her brain with whatever she wanted and carve a new past for herself. Even if it killed her. If the disaster that poor weatherman was speaking of broke loose, splintered wine bottles and bones and everything in between, it would still be worth it. Sorry, Arcadia. You are going to die. But natural disasters have never been so promising.

Because when the dust clears, she knows someone will finally be waiting for her.

STORM REVETTE | HELLSTORM

My friend is taken, bucko. I suggest you get a move on before I dent your face.

DOUXIE CASPERAN | RAINWATCHER

Who said it was your friend I was interested in?

( + )
MEG REVETTE | BLOODSUCKER
STEVE PALCHUK | WAVEBREAKER
JIM LAKE | DAYLIGHT
CLAIRE NUÑEZ | SHADOWALKER
TOBY DUMZOUSKI | EARTHSPLITTER
ELDORA CELESTE | STARGIRL

But one thing is certain. When you
come out of the storm, you won't be
the same person who walked in.
That's what this storm's all about.
—Haruki Murakami

DISCLAIMERS:
i do not own trollhunters, wizards, or any of the tales of arcadia series. i DO own storm, and the rest of my original characters and plotlines in this series. if you want to draw inspiration from any part of this book for something of your own, ASK ME FIRST. this book deals with emotional manipulation from a caretaker (meg sucks so hard), snakes if you're scared of those, and profanity. please don't read if any of these trigger you!!

A/N
after like a year. it's here. this book is the first of two in my Cosmic Collisions series; the second one is a krel tarron book coming out around the time this book wraps act one, & recommend reading both once they're out because their plots interconnect literally all the time. like constantly.

i'm SO EXCITED to finally get storm and douxie out of my brain bc they have been taking up too much space in there & they need to move out. storm is a complicated person (the much-needed angry girl team trollhunter deserved) so it certainly will take her time to warm up to . . . anyone. her memory prior to her time in arcadia has been erased (a la jason grace) so she doesn't know or understand exactly what happened to her or where she comes from!! so fun!! her friendship with the trollhunters gives me serotonin and same with steve who is going to be so important in this fic steve is a very integral part of this so don't worry about investing a bunch of time into his character only for him to disappear and become a side plot nobody cares about!!

also i'm fixing everything. FUCK you rott.

dt's: 4jhwoo -ladyinferno kandrakars simqlea -suneaters melancholy-hillz -taybaes alex2fandoms  wallowsinangst fairiest ST4RFALLS miracuIouss -hanlonss burialsite puresthell fqerietales trsaagnes heartsvirtue WillowRavenheart24 + everyone else who asked!! some of you guys have been waiting literally like. a year for this thank you so much for helping me and being patient <3

this is said at the end of every author's note ever but it IS for a good reason; please vote and comment and engage in general when you read!! it's more gratifying for both the reader and the author & maybe this fic won't take me a year to finish if i'm lucky :) i still don't know exactly how this book is going to turn out i'm kind of winging it but i'm still so excited thank you so much for reading and interacting, hope u brought a poncho because a Storm is coming!
—perrie <3