Chapter Text
In retrospect, Sasha should have known better than to go along with one of Marcy's ideas. She wasn't usually one to come up with ideas, always just going along with whatever the rest of them were doing because she was too caught up in her own little world to think about anything else, and the rare occasions that she broke out of it to pitch in always led to them doing something weird or embarrassing like dressing up in weird costumes to sneak into somewhere or covering a song from a video game that wasn't even in a real language for the band. To think that Anne's parents questioned why Sasha was the one who decided on plans; better for them to get in trouble than it was for them to be humiliated.
Marcy's latest idea seemed innocent enough, though: have Anne steal a cool-looking music box from an antique store, mess around with it a bit, and have that snowball into them doing more fun stuff with Anne for her birthday. It wasn't something she would have thought of, but it was nice that Marcy, of all people, was advocating for petty theft, and whatever kept them from going to Anne's birthday party was fine in her book. It must have been her own personal feelings on certain things that let it happen, even though past experience would have made it obvious that it would have gone poorly.
Admittedly, the music box teleporting her to another world in a flash of light wasn't a direction she thought that even the craziest of Marcy's plans would take things, although it did feel like a natural progression of things. One minute, the three of them are hanging out in the park getting ready for Anne to play them a song, and then all of a sudden, Sasha was by herself in a forest, her clothes covered in dirt, and a giant talking frog with one eye started screaming at her and saying that she was going to eat him. She almost considered it, if only to shut him up, but instead, she opted to run away until she ended up hiding spot.
"Great, just great," Sasha said to no one. "Stuck in some crazy frog world with no way home, having to hide out in a slimy log," Sasha wiped a bit of slime on her skirt, "so I don't get eaten by a giant bug, or something. Today went even worse than I thought it would." With a heavy sigh, Sasha curled up in the part of the log with the least amount of slime, made a makeshift pillow out of her backpack, and did her best to try and fall asleep.
"I hope the girls ended up somewhere safe. Better yet, hope they're still home." That was the last comment Sasha made to herself before falling asleep.
It was times like these that Anne understood why her mom said Sasha was a bad influence on her and Marcy. Sasha was better than people gave her credit for, sure, but that didn't change the fact that she had a bad habit of getting them in trouble and often keeping herself out of it all. It wasn't usually fun, but as far as she was concerned, it was better to put up with the bad experiences to keep having the good ones. That line of thought never went well over with her mom, and it always ended with her saying that Sasha was going to make her end up somewhere bad, someday, which Anne had assumed meant juvy or in a ditch.
She never thought that it would be the ocean she was currently drowning in because the music box Sasha had her steal teleported her somewhere.
"Help! Someone! I'm drowning! I can't remember how to swim! I—" Anne stopped thrashing about for a second when she noticed that her hands and feet weren't crashing against roaring waves, but solid ground. "This isn't an ocean, or if it is, it's, like, an inch deep."
Anne suppressed her feelings of embarrassment and stood up to better observe her situation. She had clearly been taken far away from home thanks to the power of the music box she was stuffing into her backpack; in front of her was a giant walled city surrounded by ruins and giant coral, so if she had to guess, she wasn't on Earth, anymore. If she was going to get answers about what was happening, or at least find a place to sit down and gather her thoughts, then that was probably where she needed to go.
Okay, Anne, don't freak out, don't freak out, Anne thought as she made her way to the entrance of the city. You're in some crazy water world or something, probably a planet millions of light-years away from home, and you have no idea where Marcy and Sasha are, but the best thing you can do to not make things harder is to just stay calm and not freak out over anything else. Anne knocked on the giant door as loudly as she could, barely noticing the robed lizard people that decorated it, and a golden shell from high above flew open to reveal a robed lizard person poking its head out.
Anne didn't hesitate to scream, but at the very least, the lizard person also screamed, so she wasn't the only one freaking out.
"What the heck are you? Are you a lizard demon? Are you gonna eat me?" Anne asked in rapid succession.
"I'm not gonna eat you! Newts don't eat whatever you are! What are you, anyway, some kind of hairless ape? Oh my frog, is this an ape uprising? Are you gonna eat me?" the robed newt asked in rapid succession.
"I'm not gonna eat you! I don't eat newts, especially not talking ones!"
"Okay, so we both agree not to each other. That's good. Go away now." The robed newt was retreating back into the door, but Anne's shouting got him to poke his head back out. "I have a job I need to do, you balding ape, so if you're not going to eat me or start some sort of monkey riot, go away!"
"I'm not an ape, and I'm definitely not balding!" Anne patted her head down to make sure that the portal hadn't burned off all of her hair and was relieved to find that she wasn't reliving that unfortunate incident with Marcy, although she didn't enjoy discovering that she had bits of coral and seaweed stuck in her hair. "Look, I don't know where I am, and if I'm lost, then my friends are lost, too, so can you let me in and help me find someone who knows about magic music boxes?"
"Magic? Hah! No one in Newtopia wastes their time on magic, and even if they did, like I'd let you come in here and infect the king and everyone else with whatever monkey virus you've got in you."
"I'm not a—Monkeys don't even—Look, just let me in! I'm soaking wet, I've got garbage stuck in my hair, I lost my favorite shoe, and I have no idea where I even am, so just throw me a bone and let me come in to get some help! You said you have a king, right? Let me talk to him!"
"You? Talk to the king? That's rich, monkey girl!" The robed newt laughed a nasally laugh that made Anne want. "Only high-ranking government officials get to see King Andrias, them and any would-be assassins who are getting punished for trying to kill him. Other than them, nobody can see King Andrias! Not nobody, not nohow!" With that, Anne had an idea for how to proceed; it wasn't a great one, but she didn't have anything else going for her, so it would have to do.
"I'm one of those! An assassin! I'm here to kill the king and, I don't know, start an ape uprising, I guess?"
"Ah-ha! I knew it! You're under arrest, missy, now stay there, and don't go running off with your monkey magic, or whatever it is you'd do!" The robed newt disappeared back inside the door. In a matter of seconds, it opened up, and a legion of giant newts dressed in robes masking their eyes and wielding spears marched out and surrounded her.
"Huh. That was fast," Anne said as one of the newts tied her up. Anne was pushed back and forth until she ended up on the other side of the door, and as it closed behind her, she hoped beyond hope that everything would work out for her.
More importantly, she hoped that her friends were okay.
It was official, today was the best day of Marcy's life. It was already going to be the best day of her life thanks to everything she had planned with Anne, but then it looked ready to become the worst day of her life thanks to the terrible stuff her parents were going to do to her. Luckily, she found a way to make it the best day of her life again, and even though it was a one-in-a-million chance, it worked just like she wanted it to. She didn't need to think about her parents or being sad anymore, because all that mattered was that she could keep being with her friends for as long as she wanted; all she had to do now was sell it and they could get a move on with the rest of their lives.
"Anne, Sasha, are you guys okay? That sure was crazy, right? One minute we're just messing around with the music box—sorry I made you steal it, Anne, but you know none of us had enough cash for it, and I just knew you were gonna love it—and then all of a sudden, bam! We're just sucked into another world! What a crazy and unbelievable set of circumstances that absolutely no one could have predicted, right? I know you're both probably freaking out a little, but this is going to be so much fun! You know all those isekai anime and light novels we love so much? It's gonna be just like that, trust me! First thing we need to do is make our way to the local village so someone can fill us in on what sort of danger is threatening this world, probably a demon king of some kind, and then we're gonna need to get weapons and start training to fight the evil forces plaguing the land. Sasha, you should be a knight or a brawler because of how tough you are, I'll be a mage because there's definitely gonna be magic here and I love magic, and Anne, you can probably pick whatever because I know you'd be great at anything because of how great you are—I don't mean that in a weird way, or anything! Unless you want me to mean it in a weird way, by which I mean—Hey, why are you two letting me ramble for so long? And you're not even saying anything about us being here. Why?"
It was at that moment that Marcy decided to finally survey her surroundings. She was in a forest, a good place for an adventure of this sort to start, but the ground was nothing but rocky terrain, the trees were all dead and casting enough shadow to make the darkness seem even more menacing, and the cries of birds and creatures she couldn't even attempt to identify permeated the air of an otherwise silent night.
Scariest of all, there was no sign of Anne or Sasha to be found.
"Sash? Anna-Banana? Come on, you were right next to me, so you've gotta be here, right?" The loud roar of some beast told Marcy that standing still wasn't the best idea, so she started walking through the barren forest. "Are you guys playing a prank on me? Getting back at me because it was my idea to take the music box in the first place? Well, you got me, I am so pranked right now, so you can come out from wherever you're hiding now, please!" Another roar pushed Marcy's brisk walk into a rapid sprint. "Okay, you're mad, I get it, but this is a good thing! What was so great about our old lives, anyway? If we were still on Earth, all we'd be doing tomorrow is going to the same boring school in the same boring city we've lived in for our entire boring lives, and that's boring! I mean, if it was really all that great, then no one would want to leave it, yet here we have my parents, who just want me to have nothing to do with it anymore, so much so that they never even thought about asking me! That must mean it all sucks, so why are we even talking about it, right? It makes no sense!"
There was another roar from something, but Marcy didn't keep running; she stopped moving at all, too caught up under the weight of her own words to go anywhere.
"Now I'm actually glad you guys aren't here. I don't want you to hear that, I don't want you to be mad at me. I just wanted to have a fun day, I just wanted to keep having fun days with you, but then it all got messed up and—It'll be fine, you'll see! We're gonna go on an adventure, form a party of quirky characters with varying degrees of tragic backstories, and free the world from an ancient evil after months of introspection and molding of our personalities! Doesn't that sound like fun? Please say it sounds like fun. Please say literally anything so I know I'm not as alone as I feel."
Marcy didn't get a verbal response from anyone. All she got was the sound of something hitting her in the back of the head, the sound of her falling down into the dirt, and the sound of her own breathing softening up as she lost consciousness.
Her last thought was that of disbelief that she got her friends involved as something as unfun as what was happening to her.
Naturally, Sasha's second day in whatever crazy world she had ended up in hadn't been going any better than her first. The talking frog she ran into before must have ran scared all the way back to wherever he lived and spread the word about her, because now frog people were running around the entire forest going on about, from what she gathered, catching a hideous beast before it started eating them; it was clear to her that she was living in a world that didn't have mirrors. She didn't need them licking her or spitting acid or whatever it was that giant frogs did, so it was clear that she needed to construct a weapon to defend herself.
An hour later, she had succeeded in gluing a large rock to a stick she found in a pile of mud.
"And to think I was getting a D in art class. This is C+ work, at best," Sasha said as she waved her makeshift hammer about and trudged through the forest. "Just try and get me, you stupid frogs. I'm not afraid to throw down with all your slimy garbage. I've been picking fights with people for years, and ever since middle school, I've actually had a good win/loss ratio, so go ahead and help me average it out a little more!" It was working. She was feeling confident; there wasn't an ounce of fear coursing through her system, only pride from the knowledge that she would win against whoever would want to mess with her; it was almost like she was already back home.
Her reminder that she wasn't back home came about from her running into a pink frog wearing a green hat and goggles and holding a slingshot. Sasha screamed, the frog screamed, there was definitely a lot of screaming to be had.
"Stay back, you ugly beast! I'm not afraid to use this thing!" the frog said as he pulled back the sling on his slingshot.
"You're the ugly one here, not me! Also, pretty big talk for someone shaking like a leaf!" Sasha said as she pointed her makeshift hammer at the frog.
"Nuh-uh! I'm way too brave for that!" His body betrayed his words without hesitation.
"Yeah, I'm real scared." She shouldn't have said that. Just the sight of the frog messed with the feelings of confidence she was trying to force out into the open, and her brain was having a hard time registering that she was supposed to be sarcastic. "I'm gonna be real nice and let you off with a warning, so put down your weapon."
"You, first."
"Fine. On the count of three, we both put our weapons down. One. Two. Three!" Neither of them moved an inch. "You're a little rat, you know that?"
"Well, you're a big rat, what with that weirdo face of yours! I hope you know that!"
"Okay, I am so gonna—" A bloodcurdling scream cut through the air. Sasha lost any and all ability to remain calm and threw her makeshift hammer like a tomahawk, albeit missing the pink frog by a mile.
A second later, what appeared to be a giant praying mantis jumped out of a large bush and screamed for a second before falling down on its face, a face that Sasha's makeshift hammer was lodged in.
"Uuh—"
"Holy frog, there were two beasts running around. No, wait, it was just one, and it was that one, and you defeated it to save me! You're a hero!" With that, Sasha felt her confidence resurging. She still didn't like having to look at a giant talking frog, but taking advantage of people who saw her as the great person she knew she was was more than familiar territory to her.
"Yep, that's definitely true from a certain point of view, so you're welcome, whatever your name is."
"It's Sprig!" the pink frog said with a smile. It was like any and all animosity was gone; she could definitely work with that.
"Sasha. So, if you don't mind taking a break from being thankful for how great I am, I'd love it if you could go back to whatever swamp you hopped out of and tell them all that—"
"There it is! There's the beast!" Sasha turned to see the same one-eyed frog from the previous night running onto the scene with an angry mob of other frogs of varying colors and sizes, most of them holding torches and pitchforks.
"Sprig, you caught the hideous monster terrorizing Wartwood? I must say, I'm impressed," said a wrinkly orange frog holding some sort of pink ball with a yellow bow; the rational part of Sasha's mind told her that it was a polliwog or a tadpole or whatever baby frogs were called, but she wasn't going to rule out talking bowling ball, just yet.
"No, we've got it all wrong. She's not a hideous monster, she's a hideous hero!" Sprig said, helping in a way that almost made Sasha not want help, at all. "Look, look! She bludgeoned that praying mantis before it could eat me and anyone else who might have come by."
"Sure, she did," said a portly toad; Sasha wasn't sure how she knew the difference, but there it was. "I bet she was aiming for you the whole time and just struck down that thing by accident!"
"That is so not true!" Sasha lied.
"They're both pretty convincing arguments. I don't know who to believe," a random frog said.
"We should toss her in a smelly pit for good measure, anyway," another frog said.
"Works for me!" a third frog said, raising his pitchfork up high above his head. Other frogs followed suit, and Sasha was liking her chances of success less and less, especially when she only had Sprig, of all things, defending her. It appeared that the only viable option was to cut her losses and run, and that was something she could live with.
As Sasha ran the numbers in her head for how many frogs she'd likely have to punch in the face to escape, a bloodcurdling scream sounded out that was similar to the praying mantis, only louder and more primal. Naturally, what ran into the clearing was a red-colored praying mantis far larger than the one she had killed, and judging by how all of the frogs ran away from it in terror rather than try and stab it or set it on fire, it was probably far tougher an opponent.
"Sasha, we've gotta do something before that thing eats everyone!" Sprig said.
"Well, they're all just running away in a panic, so that's probably a good way to go. Let's follow suit," Sasha said.
"You can't do that! Just use all the strength and wits you used to take down the smaller one! Please, I'm begging you!" She still didn't want to do any of that, but the fact that someone was begging her for something inflated her ego just enough for her to comply.
"Okay, you distract that thing just enough so it's set up for me to beat the snot out of it. Can you be loud and annoying enough for that?"
"Can I ever!" She hadn't expected a response like that, but Sprig was already off jumping around and slinging clumps of dirt at the praying mantis. Sasha did her part by dislodging her makeshift hammer from the corpse of the smaller praying mantis, simultaneously fighting back the urge to vomit as juices flew out and splashed her clothes a bit; thanks to that, the conflict became personal.
"Eat rock, you freak!" It wasn't the greatest battle cry, but it was Sasha's, and with it, she unleashed a mighty swing against one of its legs in the hope of breaking it and making it fall to the ground. That did not work, as the praying mantis appeared relatively fine and now turned its attention towards Sasha. "Uh oh." The next thing Sasha knew, the praying mantis swung one of its arms at Sasha and hit her hard in the gut. She dropped her makeshift hammer out of shock, and the impact was so hard that she thought she was going to go flying into a rock or a tree or whatever else she could crack her skull on.
Yet by some miracle, she stood her ground. The praying mantis was pushing against her with all of its might, and the sharp end of its arm was cutting into her stomach a little, but she still fought against it. She couldn't let herself lose here. She couldn't let herself be done in by a giant bug, of all things; she was Sasha Waybright, she was better than that, and no matter the world, people needed to know that, even if they were stupid bugs. That thought square in her head, Sasha poured all of her strength into her legs and, with a more appropriate battle cry and a flash of pink in her eyes for some reason, flipped the praying mantis high above her head and slammed it into the ground behind her. The other frogs all stopped running about as the praying mantis stopped twitching and became completely motionless.
"We did it!" Sprig said, hopping about with joy.
"Yeah, we did!" Sasha said. "Don't know where a lot of that came from, but don't look a gift horse in the mouth, right?"
"Right! What's a horse?"
"Probably another freaky monster like this one, right here," the portly toad said. "By the way, now that your little brawl is finished, will ya be leavin' on your own, or do we have to get back to running you out of town?"
"'Hey, thanks for saving our butts, Sasha. We'd all be dead without you.'," Sasha said in a purposefully poor imitation of the toad. "Hear that? That's what you should be sounding like, yet here we are."
"That's it, everyone grab your pitchforks!" The frogs did as he said with little hesitation. If there was any time for Sasha to start running away, it was now.
"Knock it off, all of you!" Sprig said, jumping between Sasha and the mob. "Sasha saved all of us, and you want to run her out of town? That's not fair! She's lost and all alone here, so shouldn't we try and help her?"
"No, no we shouldn't."
"Yeah. Just because she didn't eat us today doesn't mean she won't try to eat us tomorrow," the one-eyed frog said.
"Yeah, you all disgust me, so that's not happening," Sasha said. The pitchforks and torches were pointed directly at her, but she stood by her statement.
"Now, now, everyone, the girl might be a little on the rude side, but Sprig is right about how it wouldn't be right of us to run her out of town when she just finished helping us," the wrinkly orange frog said.
"Fine, Hopadiah, but if you and your boy want to stick up for her so much, then you're the ones who are gonna take care of her," the portly frog said. He and the rest of the frogs then walked off grumbling various things under their breath, a few of them dragging the praying mantises along with them and talking about different ways to prepare them for dinner; to think they thought that Sasha was the disgusting one.
"So we've got a monster living with us now. That'll be fun until it becomes horrible, I guess," said the talking bowling ball.
"Yeah, well, you really don't need to bother. Just give me a map out of this place and we never have to see each other again. Hopadiah, you seem like the smart one here—"
"Hey!" Sprig interjected.
"—so I bet you have one. Fork it over, would you?"
"You can just call me Hop Pop, and that's not gonna help you much," Hop Pop said. "All of the paths leading out of the valley are frozen over right now, and it's going to be another two months at least before they clear up."
"Are you serious? I can't wait two months to get out of here! Just show me some other way to leave!"
"The only other way out of the valley is through the mountains, but if you go that way—"
"You will die," the talking bowling ball said.
"Polly's right. You will die." Sasha made no effort to suppress the groan she had every right to make in response to that.
"Hey, it's okay, Sasha," Sprig said. "We're gonna have so much fun together that those two months will just fly by, trust me."
"Yeah, sure. Not like I can afford to do anything else," Sasha said with her body slouched over.
"Okay, dibs on not bunking with her," Polly said. Hop Pop told her to be nice before telling all of them that it was time to head home, something that Sasha was included in, whether she liked it or not.
Two months stuck living with a bunch of gross frogs before I can go looking for the girls and find a way home. Great, just great, Sasha thought as she trudged along after Sprig. Well, it could be worse. Two months should be more than enough time for me to start running this stinkhole. At the very least, she had something to keep her busy.
Newtopia was, by and large, the coolest place Anne had ever seen in her life. Everything was covered in coral and gold plating, there were the kinds of fancy-looking buildings that her parents always passed by on drives around town, and a wide assortment of smells was hitting her nose that were good enough to distract her from how wet everything felt against her shoeless foot; for a second, it even distracted her from how she was running the risk of imprisonment or execution just to get to talk to their king. She started panicking about that again the instant she thought about how she wasn't thinking about it, so she was going to do her best to not think about it anymore.
The newt guards took her over to the large castle in the center of the city, obviously where the king resided, and directed her through a series of marble hallways until they reached a pair of doors surrounded by a carving of a menacing octopus; if Sasha and Marcy were there, Anne knew Sasha would have gone on about how it reminded her of one of the demons from her video games while Sasha rolled her eyes at the whole thing, and that just made her feel sadder. As those thoughts bounced around in her head, the doors opened up, and through them stepped a green newt in a fancy dress with a pair of newts in knightly armor at her sides.
"Wait, you're the king? You're a lot less imposing than I thought you'd be. You're also way more girly, too," Anne said.
"That's because I'm not the king, you imbecile," the newt said. In retrospect, that made a lot of sense. "I am Lady Olivia, royal advisor to King Andrias, and if you're really an assassin sent to kill him, how could you not have known that?"
"They never gave me his picture and I didn't want to assume he wasn't allowed to be an effeminate crossdresser in this day and age?" Lady Olivia was glaring at Anne as if she wanted to cut off her head then and there. "Okay, full disclosure, I'm not actually an ape assassin sent here to kill your king. I only said that because it was the only way I could get in the city and talk to him, so, surprise!"
"You lied to us? I thought we had an understanding!" said the robed newt from earlier.
"You've been insulting me from the moment we met, dude."
"That doesn't mean we couldn't have an understanding before you're locked away in a dungeon for the rest of your days."
"You are insane. Olivia, you get what I'm saying, right?"
"I stopped listening to you when it became clear just how infuriating a thing you are to be around," Lady Olivia said. "Well, you might as well still get your wish. His Majesty was forced to clear a block of his very busy schedule to deal with you, and severely punishing those who waste his time is just barely just cause for that, I suppose."
It was a strange thing for Anne to be happy about, yet there she was, being happy about it. The newts that dragged her into the castle all dispersed and Lady Olivia and her knights dragged Anne through the doors into a throne room decorated with coral and crystals and a wide assortment of rocks, and sitting on the giant coral throne at the end of the room was a giant bearded newt with a crown and armor. It made much more sense for someone like him to be the king.
"So, you thought you could try and assassinate me in the name of your ape brethren, did you?" the king asked, his voice booming across the room. "I must say, I admire your boldness to be so upfront about it, but at the same time, I laugh at the stupidity of your lack of planning."
"King Andrias, sir, she's actually not an ape assassin," Lady Olivia said. King Andrias' serious face abruptly shifted into one of disappointment, something Anne hadn't been expecting.
"You mean Wukong the Wily and Wistful isn't up to his old tricks again after seventy-seven years of silence?"
"No, no he is not. My apologies, I thought we were talking loud enough in the hallway for you to hear us."
"It's fine, whatever. I didn't want to fight that guy again, anyway." Now King Andrias was pouting. In an hour filled with surreal sights, that was the most surreal. "Why is she even here? Just throw this whatever this is in a dungeon for a couple weeks, or something."
"No, no dungeon, please!" Anne said. "I'm sorry that I got your weird hopes up for a battle with a giant monkey that probably rides on a giant cloud, or something—"
"How do you know about the magic cloud?" Lady Olivia asked.
"—but I just needed to talk to you because you're the biggest guy around, so if anyone could help me get back to my world, it'd be you." At that, King Andrias' face perked up a little.
"Did you say you're from another world?" Anne nodded her head. "How did you get here, then? People don't just randomly walk into other worlds. Not the kind of people you want to hang around with, anyway."
"I don't get it, either. My friends and I were just—Hey, can someone untie me so I can get something?" Lady Olivia sighed before doing just that. "Thanks. So my friends and I were just hanging out and messing around with this weird music box," Anne pulled said music box out of her backpack to show it to everyone in the room, "and then there's this big flash of light, and now I'm on some weird lizard world. You wouldn't know anything about that, would you?" King Andrias did nothing, nothing but put a smile on his face that got wider with every second. "Um, your kingliness, everything okay up ther—"
The next thing Anne knew, she was being lifted up into the air and hugged by a giant newt; it was hardly the direction she expected things to go.
"You found it! I can't believe you found it! Oh, you can't imagine how long I've dreamed of this day, child!" King Andrias laughed.
"That's great, but can you be happy without suffocating me, please?"
"I can try, but I don't know if I can!" He said that, but he did drop Anne to the floor rather harmlessly, a little pain in her butt notwithstanding.
"King Andrias, just because you're happy about something and we don't know what this thing is doesn't mean that you can just forego proper etiquette," Lady Olivia said, to which King Andrias responded by blowing a raspberry.
"Okay, this is the best thing to happen to me, all day," Anne said, her words peppered with a bit of laughter.
"It's the best thing to happen to me all century!" King Andrias said, his words making the room shake and making a few newts stumble over themselves. "Tell me, child, who and what are you, exactly?"
"My name's Anne Boonchuy, and I'm a human from Earth. Was I on the money to think you could help me get back there?"
"If that means that you were correct, then yes, you were!" One of the few good things anyone had said to Anne all day. "You see, Anne, that music box is an ancient Amphibian artifact—that's the name of this world, by the way, Amphibia—that has the power to open portals to other worlds. My ancestors once used it to traverse the multiverse in the name of peace and science until the day it became lost in the cosmos, never to be seen again, until now."
"This little box is that important? I was just gonna stuff it under my bed next to some old socks when I got home, but I guess that would have been in poor taste. Anyway, I know you probably want to get right back to all of that multiverse stuff, but my two best friends got sucked into the portal, too, and I need to find them, so can we hold off on it until then?"
"Even if I did want to use the music box right now, which I definitely do, no one can. Take a good look at it and tell me if you notice anything about it that's different from when you first found it." Anne did as he requested and surveyed the music box for a moment before quickly coming across what she assumed he was talking about.
"These gems are all grey, but they weren't like that when I found it. What's up with that?"
"Those gems are where the power of the music box is concentrated, so if there's no color, then that means it's out of power. The box never ran out of power during the time my people used it, so I'm going to need to do some research into how to charge it up."
"And once it's charged, we can use the music box again?"
"Precisely. Once the box is fully charged, everything will return to how it should be." King Andrias' smile got wider as he said that; his positive attitude was almost infectious, Anne mused. "In the meantime, I'll devote as many resources as I can to finding your friends before it's ready to be used again. How does that sound?"
"That sounds great, thanks! Wow, didn't expect a king to be such a nice guy like you."
"Of course our king is nice. Who else but a nice king would have a painting like that?" Lady Olivia asked, directing Anne's attention to a painting of King Andrias happily sitting with smiling newts, frogs—Anne didn't know those were a thing, too—and fishes underneath a rainbow.
"That is a very convincing painting. Wait, is it covering something up?"
"Never mind that. Olivia, prepare a room for our new friend at once, and then a grand feast for the both of us with the finest beetles and worms in the city!" King Andrias said. Anne hoped that all of that tasted better than it sounded, and if not, she hoped that she'd be able to fake it after how nice he was being. "Oh, and leave the music box here. I'm going to start my research as soon as possible, and having the box with me will make it far easier for me."
"Yeah, no problem." Anne tossed the music box into King Andrias' massive hands and he stared at it with glee; again, his positivity was downright infectious, almost making Anne forget about all of her troubles.
As Lady Olivia pushed her out of the throne room and rattled off rules of etiquette between groans, Anne couldn't help but remark on how great a place she ended up in and hoped that the other girls were just as fortunate.
"Insolent mortal brats!" the Demon King spat as his ethereal blood spilled out across the ground. "My chaos is all that breeds order in this world! To vanquish me is to vanquish the world you have been striving so hard to protect!"
"The kind of world you want isn't the world we want to live in!" Marcy said without skipping a beat. Her hair flew in tandem with the breeze, and the glow of the Shishenli in her hands made her batrachite armor shine a brilliant smaragdine; she had never felt cooler.
"You tell him, Marcy! Now go finish this guy off!" said Sasha the Brawler. Her muscles were nearly bursting out of her armor, yet she was still leaving the finishing blow to Marcy; what a true testament to the trust she had in her.
"This is the final attack! You can do this, Marcy!" said Anne the Bard. The other members of their party whose names Marcy couldn't place at the moment—or the faces, for some reason—were also shouting words of encouragement, but none of it was as sweet as Anne's, for none of it came from someone as important to her as Anne. With those words ringing in her ears, she knew she could do it, she knew she could do anything, especially this.
"This ends now!" With a powerful cry, Marcy the Hero leaped into the air and inflicted one final Holy Evolution Slicer across the Demon King's chest. All of the Shishenli's mystic energy was shot into his body; beams of light shot out from every corner of his flesh, and he let out one final scream before his body was blown apart into nothingness, the dark realm surrounding them following suit.
"We did it! We did it!" Marcy jumped up and down as the world returned to one of light and her party cheered her on. "See, guys? I told you this was going to be fun, and it was! We just saved an entire universe!"
"Heck yeah, we did! Can't get that kind of stuff done in the boring old lives we used to live, so good call there," Sasha said with a thumbs up.
"Marcy Marcy Marcy, thank you so much for talking me into stealing the music box; it was the best thing that ever happened to us!" Anne said as she brought Marcy in for a big hug. The constant hugs from Anne had been a constant pleasure across the adventure, even if they did make Marcy feel happy to the point of embarrassment and caused Sasha and the rest of the party to tease her.
"Aw, it was nothing."
"No, it was everything! You made our lives so much better by doing something so selfless and brave, and don't you dare let anyone tell you differently! But most of all, going on this adventure helped me finally realize how I really feel about you." Marcy felt her heart skip two-and-a-half beats.
"O-Oh? I-Is that right?" Marcy let out a random sequence of random noises as Anne leaned in close enough for their noses to touch.
"I know I shouldn't have waited until the end of our adventure to say it, but I needed to be absolutely sure that nothing would get in our way." It was really happening. "If I'm being honest Marcy, this probably started way before we came here, but I was too scared of what it would mean for our friendship if you said no." The one thing she had truly dreamed of was coming to life before her eyes. "It was the same when we got here, but if anything, that just made it clear that I couldn't ignore this anymore." She had always imagined how it would play out, but seeing it actually happen was far more incredible than anything she could make up. "Marcy, I, for as long as I can remember, I—"
"I think I have a good way of finishing this thought." With a surge of confidence truly befitting the Hero she was, Marcy leaned in close to Anne to slowly, but surely, make the most magical thing that could happen between them happen. Even with all the commentary from Sasha and the rest of the party, she was still going to do it, because after everything she had done, she deserved something like this, she truly did.
And then Marcy woke up.
Marcy woke up in a daze, unsure of what was happening. The Shishenli was nowhere to be found, her batrachite armor was gone, and she couldn't feel the presence of the Great Frogger inside of her. That was all bad, but there was a more pressing issue that caught her attention.
"Anne! Sasha!" She called out for her friends, but no one answered. She was alone in what appeared to be a dark, smelly, and wet jail cell, the sound of rats scurrying about somewhere the only sound being afforded to her. "Oh. So this is what I'm doing, and all the other stuff was a dream. I didn't get to be a Hero, I didn't get to save the world from evil, I didn't get to kiss Anne, I-I didn't get to do anything."
"I wouldn't say that. You've provided me with a great deal of entertainment, at least." Marcy jumped back a bit as a new voice entered the scene. Accompanying the voice was a figure making its way out of the shadows, the figure being an anthropomorphic toad in armor and a cape with an old scar running across a clearly nonfunctional right eye; he was a scary sight, but what truly sold it was the menacing, toothy grin he had on his face. "Hearing all of the nonsense you've been going on about in your sleep made it worth sitting around here until you woke up. You were all like, 'I'm the Hero, Sasha, leave it to me!' and, 'Oh, Anne, you're so cool and brave and pretty,' oh, oh, and also how you kept saying, 'I'm a good person, I'm a good person,' over and over again. I just know there's a great story there, and I can't wait to hear why you'd be so desperate to convince yourself of something like that."
"I-I just—" The toad kicked the bars of Marcy's cell and silenced her in an instant.
"Sorry, that's on me. I stopped talking for a second, so of course, you'd think that meant you had the right to talk. You don't. Not until I say so, and I still have more to say here. I am Captain Grime, head toad of Toad Tower, and your jailer for the foreseeable future. The other toads think that you're some sort of hairless ape trying to spy on us, no doubt a sign of Wukong the Wily and Wistful being up to his old tricks again, but considering all of the strange items we took off of your person, I think you're something else, entirely, something that's not supposed to exist here on Amphibia, and I don't like that one bit. You're going to tell me where your friends are, how you arrived here, and what you're up to, okay? Now you have permission to speak, so take it."
"I don't—I just, I—" Marcy's words fell apart in her mouth as she wrapped her arms around her legs and started crying. Very unbefitting of a Hero, so it was very befitting of her.
"Oh, great, you're a crier. Well, take as much time as you need, not like we're all that busy here. That being said, don't try and take advantage of my hospitality too much, girl, because if you do, well, let's just say that you're currently getting special treatment compared to my other prisoners, and it would be rather easy for me to put a stop to that." Captain Grime laughed through his sneering grin as he exited the room, leaving Marcy all alone. All alone in a situation of her own design, and if things were going that poorly for her, she didn't even want to imagine how things were going for Anne and Sasha.
"I don't want that; I never wanted anyone to get hurt. If anyone's getting hurt, it should only be me." Marcy fell asleep with those deprecating thoughts running through her head, because after everything she had done, she deserved something like this, she truly did.