"Biggie?" Poppy said in surprise. She and Branch ran up to find him being attacked by some flying critter with white fur and enormous red eyes. The Trolls had never seen anything like it!

"Help! I'm being harangued by a monster!" Biggie cried as he fell down, the critter preparing to bite him with its two pointy teeth. "Someone stop it!"

Just before it could hurt the large Troll, Poppy lassoed the critter with her hair and pulled it away. She failed to notice it dropping a black piece of paper.

"Gotcha!" Poppy said triumphantly, only for the critter to start squirming around in her hair angrily. "Ah! It's in my hair! It's in my hair! Get it out, get it out, get it out!"

Without further instructions, Branch tackled the critter, which looked like a fluffy bat, and gave it a belly rub.

"Shh, shh... There you go," he said quietly, rubbing the bat's eyeballs as it calmed down. "There you go. Calm down. Who's a good boy?"

"What is that thing?!" Legsly asked in shock.

"It's creepy!" Cooper shuddered.

"It's scary," Satin and Chenille said together.

"And naaaaaasty!" Guy Diamond vocalized, holding Tiny Diamond close to his face.

"Lookie, Mommy!" Flower cooed, pointing to the scrolled up paper the bat dropped. Poppy picked it up and found a sticker that read, "TO QUEEN POPPY."

"Don't worry, everyone," Poppy said, trying to calm down the uneasy crowd. "It looks like it's just an invitation."

While the rest of the Trolls sighed in relief, Branch remained skeptical. Who would be sending them an invitation? Poppy opened the paper up and it read:

Barb, the Queen of Rock, announces her

ONE NATION UNDER ROCK

World Tour

Bring your own string to the biggest party the world has ever seen!

"Queen of Rock?" Poppy wondered. What did that mean? Before she could let it completely sink in, however, her father, King Peppy, snatched the invitation away.

"It's nothing!" he shouted. Poppy could clearly tell he was lying. "It means nothing at all! It's just junk mail! You don't need to worry about it! I mean, quit looking at it, everyone! Forget what you saw!"

King Peppy began ripping the paper with his own teeth in a crazed state. Branch then tackled him and gave him a belly rub.

"Shh, shh, shh... There you go, there you go," he said quietly, rubbing the old king's eyes and curling his moustache. "Calm down. Calm down. There you go."

"Feel better, Gwampa?" Flower asked sweetly, stumbling towards him.

"Okay, I'm calm," King Peppy sighed. "I'm calm."

"Dad, what's going on?" Poppy asked curiously.

"Well, I have long feared this day would come," he explained to his daughter. "I was hoping to protect you from this, Poppy."

"Protect me? I'm not a little kid anymore, Dad. I'm the queen now."

"Yay, Queen Mommy!" Flower cheered, falling on her bottom. Branch picked her up and held her close to him nervously.

"You're right," King Peppy sighed in defeat. It was time Poppy knew. "The truth is... we are not alone in this world."

Suddenly, they all heard a creepy noise coming from Mr. Dinkles. Biggie covered the worm's mouth and shushed him.

"There are other kinds of Trolls," King Peppy cleared up. The rest of the Trolls couldn't believe it!

"Wow, that's... Dad, that's great!" Poppy said excitedly. "The more Trolls, the merrier!"

"You don't understand," King Peppy insisted. "These other Trolls aren't like us. They're... different."

"Different how?" Poppy asked. "Different like Legsly?"

"I love being me!" Legsly said happily.

"Or Fuzzbert? Or Smidge?" Poppy kept asking, even pointing to a Troll covered in pink hair with four heads and eight arms. "Or Skyscraper Troll?"

"Yeah, different like me?" Skyscraper's heads asked in unison.

"No, it's not that," King Peppy answered. "They're different in ways you can't even imagine."

To further explain, he played some of their music and began dancing to it.

"You see, we love music with a hummable hook, with an upbeat melody, with a catchy rhythm that makes you want to snap your fingers, tap your toes and wiggle your butt. That's our music. That's what makes us Pop Trolls."

"Ooh, Pop!" Flower giggled.

"But these other Trolls," King Peppy continued, "they sing different. They dance different. Why, some of them can't even begin to grasp the concept of Hammer Time!"

"You can't touch that!" Legsly screeched as the rest of the Trolls began running around in terror.

King Peppy decided they should break down to a smaller group, and led Poppy, Branch, Flower, Biggie, Cooper, Legsly, Smidge, Guy and Tiny Diamond to a waterfall hidden away from the rest of the village. He pulled out an ancient scrapbook and told them a tale as old as time...

"In the beginning, there was silence. The whole world was without song or dance (pretty boring, huh?). Until one day, someone made a sound. The Trolls were so inspired by the sound, they took six strings. And those six strings had the power to control all music. They could play anything! Techno, funk, classical, country, hard rock and pop, along with every kind of music in between. There was something for everyone. It was one big party!

But little by little, Trolls became intolerant of each other's music. They fought over what kind of music the strings would play. The elders realized there was but one solution: each tribe would take a string and go their separate ways. And the six tribes have lived in isolation ever since."

"Now Barb's announcement makes sense," Poppy realized as she looked at a map of the six tribes. "She wants to reunite the strings so the Troll World can be one big party again!"

"Yay!" Flower cheered, not quite understanding what was going on.

"Wait, that's all you heard?" Branch asked skeptically. "One big party?"

"Yeah!" Poppy replied. "It's when all the Trolls lived in harmony, and what's more important than living in harmony?"

"Well, I heard fighting," Branch argued. "The strings together leads to fighting."

"Exactly, Branch," King Peppy agreed, heading towards the waterfall. "That's why we need to keep our string safe."

As the waterfall parted down the middle, the retired king revealed a harp with a single string that glowed pink attached to it. It was the pop music string! As the others watched in amazement, King Peppy strummed the string and it played a beautiful song, letting out a glittery, pink energy with it.

"It's beautiful!" Poppy said in awe as some glitter landed on their bodies. Some got on Flower's nose, causing her to sneeze.

"And powerful," King Peppy added. "Which is why we can't let it fall into the wrong hands."

"And we won't, not on my watch," Branch assured him. "What we need is a plan."

"Don't worry, I've been preparing for this day for years... We run!"

"Run?" Poppy asked, baffled.

"And hide!" he added.

"On it!" Branch said, putting on some camouflage. Both of them began running off, but Poppy stopped them.

"But we don't even know what we're running and hiding from!" she said.

"We're hiding from Barb and all the other different Trolls," King Peppy replied.

"You're assuming the worst about someone you haven't even met!" Poppy pointed out.

"You're not listening to me," King Peppy argued.

"You're not listening to me!"

"I'm your father!"

"And I'm the queen!"

"Uh, father trumps queen," King Peppy declared. "Now, there's no time to debate this. Let's go! Come along, Branch!"

Branch hesitated for a moment before following Poppy's dad. He didn't like going against Poppy, but he also didn't like the idea of everyone he cared about in danger. Flower just stayed with her mother and reached up to her so she could be held.

"We're all Trolls!" Poppy insisted as she picked up her daughter. "Differences don't matter."

🖤☠️🖤🌺🖤☠️🖤🌺🖤☠️🖤🌺

"I wanna go home," a rock with eyes painted on it "said" to another rock, which had eyelashes. The rocks weren't really talking, the voices were being done by Willow, an eccentric teenage Pop Troll who used to have a crush on Queen Poppy... only to be turned down by her.

But that wasn't why she left the village.

"We can never go home," the other rock pointed out. "We're too dangerous to be around the other Trolls."

"But why did we have to move to a swamp?" the first rock complain. "It's slimy, it's stinky, and there's water everywhere, and I hate getting wet!"

"You weren't complaining when we took a bath together!"

As Willow pretended the rocks were fighting, a head popped out from one of them and bit her in the nose!

"Ow! You're supposed to only have one face!" she shouted in pain. Turns out, one of the rocks was actually a snapping turtle, and boy, was he mad. Once Willow pulled him off of her nose, he just went after her hand. "Ow! Leave me ALONE!"

Furiously, Willow let out a powerful blast of purple lightning, which sent the turtle flying. Although unharmed, he felt terrified and just ran for the water. Willow pulled down one of the sleeves of her leather jacket and noticed her black markings get slightly thicker, like blood pumping through veins.

A few months back, Willow found out not only did she have magical powers, she was also cursed with something called a Darkness, and she could only get it out if she felt a warm feeling powerful enough to wash it way. If she let the Darkness take over completely, she'd be doomed to live as a cruel, heartless monster for as long as she lived. Willow didn't think she'd be able to feel something that powerful, so to the protests of her friends and family, she forced herself to live in exile.

And I find it kinda funny, I find it kinda sad

The dreams in which I'm dying-

She paused to use her asthma inhaler, which caused her giant, purple eyes to pop halfway out of their sockets.

- are the best I ever had...

As Willow sobbed, she heard a strange noise. It sounded like a guitar, but with a more powerful sound. Someone was playing a type of music she never heard before. Although she had a feeling she shouldn't, Willow opened up a pair of dark grey wings that sprouted from her back and began flying in the direction the music was coming from.

🖤☠️🖤🌺🖤☠️🖤🌺🖤☠️🖤🌺

That night, while the rest of the village was asleep, Poppy and Flower gave Barb's bat a cute makeover, much to her annoyance. A pink bow was tied into her fur, glitter was sprinkled all over face with giant false eyelashes, sparkly pink nail polish on her toes, and she wore hot pink glitter lipgloss. Some of it got on one of her fangs.

"Oh, look how cute you are!" Poppy gushed, giving the bat an envelope. Flower hugged the angry critter and giggled. "Barb is gonna love your new look! Tell her I look forward to helping her plan the world's biggest party!"

"Poppy!" a voice angrily whispered, causing Poppy to scream in surprise. She jumped and turned to notice Branch had been watching her. "What are you doing?"

"Oh! Nothing," she lied nervously, trying to hide the bat behind her green cape.

"Ooh! Poppy's busted!" said a flowery travel balloon named Sheila B, who was ready to take Poppy on her journey. Poppy tried to shush her, but it was pointless now.

"Sneaking out to meet Barb?" Branch said in disbelief. "Heading into enemy territory?!"

"She's not the enemy," Poppy insisted. "She's a queen, the same as me!"

With the envelope in her grasp, the bat frantically flew off, but not without bumping into Branch first.

"Bye-bye, little bat!" Sheila B called out. Flower just waved goodbye.

"Your dad just told us that Queen Barb is bad news," Branch pointed out.

"Well, my dad doesn't know everything," Poppy argued.

"He knows more about this. You didn't even know there was a string until this morning."

"He may be fine in a world where everyone lives in isolation, but I'm not!" Poppy said defiantly, packing candy and glitter on the balloon.

"Well, but we don't anything about the other Trolls," Branch attempted to reason with her.

"Well, we know they're Trolls," Poppy pointed out. "Branch, look around Troll Village. Everybody's different, even us!"

Branch's face fell. He hated being reminded that. Suddenly, they all heard a sneeze from somewhere in the distance.

"Oh. Did you hear something?" Poppy asked.

"Stop trying to change the subject," Branch replied.

"Look, being queen means having a lot of power, and it's my job to use it for good," Poppy explained, picking Flower up from the ground and placing her in the balloon. "I can't stay home when there's a world full of different Trolls out there just like us!"

Branch sighed in frustration. "This is a terrible idea that will most likely blow up in your face."

"Okay, bye!" Poppy said, ignoring his warning. She cut the rope and the balloon began floating away.

"Bye-bye, Daddy!" Flower giggled, waving goodbye to him.

"What?!" Branch said in disbelief as they headed off. He tried holding his ground, but found himself climbing up a tree and jumping into the balloon with his arms crossed. "And I guess... I'm coming with you."

"Oh! Thank you," Poppy sobbed in relief. "I really didn't want to go by myself."

"Hey!" Flower shouted angrily.

"Oh! Sorry, Flower!" Poppy said, tightly hugging her. "I didn't mean to forget you. I love you so much!"

"I wuv you, too," Flower replied, hugging her mom back.

"Road trip!" Sheila B shouted as they headed off into the night sky, not knowing what lied ahead of them...

Don't expect me to finish this so quickly. Some things I still haven't figured out yet. If you have any suggestions for those things, though, that would be great. Thanks.

Until next time. 🌈