Chapter Text
Doc Scratch stood in his lavishly decorated room in his lavishly decorated mansion in his lavishly decorated green moon in his lavishly decorated universe. He'd had quite a bit of fun shaping an entire universe to his will, though it wasn't really his will he was serving, but his master's. Then again...
Nevertheless, it had been one of his more enjoyable tasks, if pleasure were something an omnipotent, omniscient being like himself sought. Which is not to say it isn't. Yet, while he had personally been involved in the creation of entire planets, he had found it beneficial to sometimes take a look at the finest of details, even the birthing of individual grubs, which could be a difficult task when the Mother Grub of the Alternian race dispensed thousands of grubs at a time. Still, the tiniest tweak could often have profound effects on a chaotic system.
Doc Scratch allowed himself a small chuckle at the very idea of chaos - he had long believed that chaos is entirely subjective, and is merely a different pattern of organization that weaker minds will fail to comprehend. All things happened for a reason, and reasons beget patterns, and patterns beget order. As he mused, Doc Scratch chose a random grub to view with his spectacular omniscience. While there was no guarantee this grub would even survive the brooding caverns, nonetheless ever become a person of any interest, even an omniscient, nearly omnipotent being like himself needed downtime.
As Doc Scratch watched the progress of the small brown-blooded grub, however, he found himself concentrating less and less on his endless inner monologue, and more on the actions of the grub he was watching. So far it had passed all but the most difficult challenge of the brooding caverns, evading wild Alternian animals, managing to skitter over relatively large chasms, and even evading geysers of randomly spouting acidic rain - using a rhythmic sort of dance, no less! Sure, some grubs just charged straight through that challenge, and the ones that died, died, and the ones that survived were made hardier for their trials. But this grub was displaying a surprising knack for evasion, not something Doc Scratch had carefully groomed this species to be naturally adept at.
As the grub entered the final cavern, Doc Scratch began to watch in something akin to real interest, a feeling he had not felt in quite some time. The final cavern was in fact one of many final caverns in the brooding complex. They had been designed to funnel roughly the same number of grubs to each of the hundreds of final chambers, from which many grubs would enter, but only one could leave, ensuring that only the strongest of the strong would make it into troll society. As dozens of grubs charged at each other, tackling, scratching, and gnawing until blood and pulp lay strewn about the cavern floor, the small brown grub skittered up onto a ledge, and carefully edged its way along it, above the action, and towards the exit, from which it would follow more corridors until it wound up running into the lusus that would take care of it for the rest of its life.
Meanwhile, the grubs fighting on the ground had been narrowed down to five, and the fighting had gotten truly vicious. Doc Scratch was silently commending the young brown grub on its strategy of waiting and then pouncing when they were all exhausted, showing cunning and ruthlessness, but he was almost positive that even with that advantage the grub would not survive a battle with any of the grubs below, nonetheless the large blue one that was assuredly going to win.
And thus the large blue-blooded grub did win, but Doc Scratch didn't even feel his usual smugness at being correct (and since he was always correct, there was hardly a time when he wasn't smug), for he was ever so slightly... sad? Disappointed? These were not familiar emotions to him. But nevertheless, he felt some sort of... longing, he guessed, for the brown-blooded grub to make it out alive, but there was no way it could win against the... wait, what's this?
Doc Scratch refocused his omniscience, and saw that during the fray the small grub had simply exited the cavern, technically completing his trials. Doc Scratch chuckled to himself - the grub had showed not ruthlessness, but cunning of a different sort. It had done its best to stay alive, and succeeded. Doc Scratch continued to watch as the grub was found by a small winged lusus, not much bigger than the grub itself, and the lusus garbled a name to the small grub.
"Tavros... Nitram. Hmmm... I will have to keep an eye on you, young Mister Nitram." Doc Scratch then spent many happy hours internally monologuing about how he couldn't actually keep an eye on the young troll due to his lack of any actual eyes.