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Anne Boonchuy, Defender of Wartwood and the Valley, Protector of the Kingdom of Amphibia, the Blue Flame, Marshall of the Freezing Keep, Champion and Shield of the Frurch (Frog Church), Dawnbringer, and Consort to the Queen, considered the sheet music in front of her. Amphibia had a unique system of notation - rather than using a staff system the pitch of notes is indicated by the placement of a dot on a chart, cleft determined by reverse placement up or down along the intersection of a dozen or so lines, with the length of the note to be held indicated by a curving line that connected the musical notes together, tweaked slightly by accidentals and transpositions, with the beat measured by different runes that ran along the bottom of the graph to represent drum strokes.
It had taken a while to get used to, but Anne was now comfortable enough to read it even while being jostled in a cart, her fingers working the levers of concertina-carcass, carrying the tune in a series of squeaking button presses while squishing and un-squishing the organic instrument. She narrowed her eyes as she muttered the proposed lyrics under her breath, growing more frustrated as she reached the end of the measure.
“ ‘-And be you blithe and bonny, Converting all your sounds of woe, and a hey nonny-nonny?’ Seriously Wally?” The armored woman grumbled, the accordion balanced on her lap letting out a defeated groan as she tossed it aside to land in the straw behind her. She re-examined the music again, trying to find something to salvage. “I said I wanted something with a Hozier sound. I know you listened to an album before my phone broke! This is not like that at all!”
“I dunno, it sounded kind of catchy!” Sprig called out over his shoulder to his human sister, switching the reins of the slug drawing their cart to his other hand.
“It’s a reel, not a ballad, it’s in 3/8 time so if I slow it down it’ll sound like a funeral dirge, and did you hear any of those lyrics? There were five different references to vaginal sex.”
“Whaaat? No, it was just about how you want to make a sweet meal of porridge after sheathing your wooden sword oooooh-” The pink-hued frog’s revelation is interrupted when he’s punched in the shoulder by Ivy, the slightly shorter teenager immediately pushing her boyfriend aside to better talk to the human.
“Soooo you’re not gonna collab with Wally again I’m guessing.”
Anne blew a raspberry and put the sheet music in her satchel. “I dunno, maybe if I want to write a song about poaching crickets and getting drunk, but I am not letting him help me out on any song that’ll be played in front of Marcy and Sasha. Ever.”
“Smart call,” Ivy confirmed, falling backward over the driver seat bench to land in the itchy but comfortable straw alongside the much taller girl and putting her feet up on the wood she’d formerly occupied. “You hear that Sprig? It’s a smart idea not to write a love song for a present unless you actually know it’ll be good.”
“It was my first time writing a song! Next time, for sure -” Sprig is interrupted as their cart hits a bump in the road that causes the contents to shift violently to the side. Without thinking, Anne immediately reaches out to hold onto a plain wooden box to ensure that it wasn’t jostled before setting it back down carefully. She doesn’t breathe out until it’s firmly ensconced once more in a rough nest of straw.
“Frog damnit, I thought the road toads had already been through here,” Anne swore while her adoptive brother slowed the pace of their slug over the shattered and loose paving stones.
“I don’t think it would matter - everything’s all torn up.” Sprig noted, turning about in his seat to get a look underneath the cart to inspect the damage.
“Moles?” Ann asks, annoyed as she pushes herself up with one hand and balances in the air upside down for a moment before completing a perfect summersault to land on the damp earth.
“Not unless moles know how to use hammers, in which case we should probably consider apologizing to them for all the times we hit them with our hammers.” Sprig announces, pointing to the cracks. “Someone smashed this up good. I think this might be an-”
“Ambush!” Ivy barked, her staff flicking out to shove the human aside as an arrow buried itself in the cart, vibrating violently as more arrows zipped through the air with a whine that reminded Ann vaguely of mosquito-hawk wings.
“Ugh, why do we have to fight bandits again?” Ivy complained, batting away the projectiles.
“Because nothing in life is easy?” Anne asked sardonically, drawing her sword, her wood and metal armor rattling lightly as she shifted into a fighting stance while the woods came alive around them. She counted the dark shapes currently using the brush and trees as cover and felt reasonably sure they were up against fourteen or fifteen other people. Not the worst odds, she considered, even as they fanned out onto the road to block off any potential escape routes.
Anne and Ivy backed up to the side of the cart, each looking in a different direction before a sound like thunder split the air and filled it with the smell of swamp fire and rotten eggs, making the group of attackers pause when a lanky newt dropped from the trees, a large chunk of their shoulder missing. There were two more explosions at the moment after and before any of them had a chance to process this, a pair of frogs fell to the ground, spilling the crossbow quarrels across the shattered road.
“I dunno, bandits aren’t normally this thorough,” Sprig began before rolling out from cover, hunting rifle in hand. It wasn't particularly impressive to look at given how much noise it could make. To Anne, it was archaic in comparison to the weapons her species commonly had back home and reminded her vaguely of something an old-timey cowboy would use, but according to Marcy, a rifled lever-action repeater was still lightyears ahead of the much more crude single-shot smoothbores that were currently being used by the regiments, even if the hammer needed to be cocked manually after each round fired. Sprig had taken to firearms like a duck to water after his slingshot had proven incapable of getting through the thick metal plates of Frobos, and had even improvised a series of magnifying lenses along the length of the barrel so that he could sharpshoot with the same precision, but that wasn’t necessary at this range.
The cloud of blue smoke produced by the weapon obscures everything for a moment - until it’s parted by Anne as she dashed forward, eating up the distance between the cart and a cluster of toads armed with polearms who are immensely surprised to find she’s already cut through the wooden shafts of their weapons before they can raise them to defend themselves. She swung her sword almost lazily and swatted the projectiles out of the air.
And then a dull red beam of light burned through the foliage behind them in a wide arc, sending a shower of burning branches and leaves down on top of them like combustible hail that blinded Anne, allowing a toad to get in under her guard and deliver a wallop that knocked her off balance. A retrofitted Frobo emerges from the burning cover, head removed so that it could be directly piloted by a pale axolotl as more arrows rained down on the trio, concentrated most heavily on Sprig and Ivy, while more amphibians armed with morningstars and hunting spears swarmed the human.
The pink frog slid under the wagon, getting dirt and mud all over his clothing as he rolled to cover while Ivy leaped forward over the barrage to try and deliver a spinning kick to the mech’s pilot. Unfortunately, a metal hand grabs her by the ankle instead, leaving her hanging upside down.
Ivy, who rarely backed down from a challenge, used her staff to strike the axolotl repeatedly in the face, cracking the pale amphibian's goggles and teeth, instead of trying to escape. The frobo flung her down hard at the ground, impacting into the broken stone with a sickening crack.
Sprig closed his eyes at the sound of the impact and then immediately leveled the rifle at the modified machine soldier, the bullets leaving large dents in the things telescoping arm plates as it braced and the amphibian pilot cursed cloudly, slapping at the controls that had been jerry-rigged over the ancient technology's innards. The decapitated Frobo extended its fingers, bladed tips protruding from slots within, and swiped through the air at Sprig, rending the air repeatedly just where he had managed to hop away from.
The frog was agile, but a razor-fisted punch managed to catch him on the shoulder, shredding his clothes and knocking his weapon into the mud. Sprig could see the pilot grin, gills flushed with excitement, yanking hard on the joystick to pull the other arm that ended in a laser emitter to point-blank range, the building charge of cherry red energy scorching the tips of yellow hair that it brushed over.
Then, the tip of a sword was shoved right through its back and out its chest plate, and Anne used the blade as a fulcrum to heave the massive war machine away like she was pumping water from a well. Wildflowers bloomed in her hair, her eyes were not her own, subsumed by the deep blue of the calamity energy she was channeling. Sprig barely had a moment to take in the details before Anne dragged her sword free, spilling wires and gears and black oil over the road in the process, and slapped the sea-steel automaton with the flat of her hand, sending it flying backward into a mile marker. The axolotl was stunned by the impact and didn't have time to shake off the shock before the damaged Frobo's power crystals disintegrated in an explosion of bright violet light and intense heat.
When the smoke cleared, the only person still standing was Anne, her entire body shining like a falling star. And then she fell forward into the dirt as the power she had called upon dissipated. It took a moment for her to regain consciousness, a nervous-looking Sprig and a battered and bruised Ivy kneeling over her. The slug was just visible behind them. It had panicked and bolted in all the confusion - but it was a slug so that meant that it had moved about five feet down the road and then decided that was enough activity.
"Anne. You okay?" Her brother asked, taking his hat off to wipe the dust and sweat from the human's face.
"I geddem?" Anne asked instead of answering, eyes slightly unfocused. Ivy winced, looking over her shoulder at the trail of dismembered body parts that had collected in the furrows the human had carved in the earth with each blow.
"Yeah. You got 'em." Ivy assured her lightly, earning a thumbs up from Anne before she face-planted again into the dirt, the plant life in her hair already beginning to wilt.
Sasha Waybright, Chief Commander of the Great Tower Garrisons, High Toadlord of the Kingdom, the Red Heron, First Sword and Law Keeper of Amphibia, Guardian of the Burning Keep, Kingslayer, Consort and the Hand of the Queen sighed as she considered the sandwich. It was filled with bugs, slathered in mold, and soaked through by bogwater. High cuisine that she had learned to stomach over the years but could never really muster up the determination to actually learn to like. It was good, hearty, filling, and packed with vitamins and protein and minerals no doubt, and it smelled like feet.
She took a bite, crunching through chitin and crust, and swallowed anyway because a. she needed the energy, and b. for some dumb reason the troops under her command apparently were inspired that she was eating the same food they were. It still didn't change the fact that it tasted like bugs, even after all this time. Sasha shook her head, knowing that if Anne were here she'd probably be chomping away at this nasty ass sandwich like it was Mickey D's, and continued to eat as she distracted herself by inspecting the walls of Lily Paddington again, raising her binoculars with one hand while the other continued to shovel food into her mouth.
Lily Paddington was a nice town - kind of cute with all the little houses nestled against each other topped with flat circular roofs made up of hundreds of the swamp flowers layered on top of each other. The cuteness was significantly undercut by the fact that hanging over the sunken gates that ringed the massive pond was the mayor, a stout blue toad. Well. Former mayor considering that he was currently suspended in a wooden gibbet. Really hard to run a town from inside a cage. Or when you were dead.
She put the binoculars down after realizing that her right hand no longer had any more nutritious food to shovel into her mouth and spurred her riding locust towards the pickets that Yunan had sent ahead of the main force to watch the ins and outs of the town while the rest of the army pulled the siege equipment into place and set up a perimeter around Lily Paddington. Hopefully, none of it was going to need to be used, and this entire situation could be resolved peacefully, but a show of force was a necessary and important part of the process.
The insect underneath her rubbed its legs together as she pulled at the reins, letting out a chirrup of annoyance as it slowed and then stopped, allowing her to dismount and lead the excitable animal by the reins. Locusts were fast but flighty beasts and easily startled and it looked like some sort of commotion was breaking out on the main road. Troops moved to clog the waterlogged thoroughfare as a cart drawn by a plain brown slug approached.
"Could you move aside, please?" A very familiar -and very bored sounding- voice rang out from the cart. "I really don't want to deal with this right now. I've probably done something to help you guys before, couldn't we just skip this whole rigmarole?"
Sasha paused and then immediately let go of the reins, picking up her feet and not caring about the mud splattering her expensive lovebird leather boots.
"Out of the way scrubs!" She barks at the toads who had intercepted the cart, and they immediately backed off leaving a clear shot for her to leap directly onto her wife's back and hug her tightly, wrapping around the metal and wood and leather armor and squeeze tight. "Anne!"
"Sasha!" Anne replied happily, hugging the other woman just as tightly. "Oh my gosh oh my gosh oh my gosh, I had no idea you were here!" She pulled Sasha away slightly, drinking in the sight of her. "What are you doing in... this place, Sash?"
"Oh, you know, 'nother peasant uprising. So not the drama. I sent a telegram to Wartwood telling you!" The tall blonde said, pressing her forehead to Anne's, rubbing their noses together.
"Telegraph lines were cut down." Sprig stated as he hopped over the side of the cart, sighing happily as he sank into the mud and splashed around just a little.
"Again?" Sasha asked, incredulous, stepping away to massage her eyebrows.
"Yep! People figured that trick out really quick." Anne's adopted brother said in a cheerful voice, shouldering his hunting rifle.
The paler human pressed her head to Anne's chest, grumbling. "Anne, please, put me out of my misery. I'm begging you - pull the trigger piglet."
"Aw, Sash, don't worry so much," Anne soothed, rubbing her head. "I'm sure it was just- an accident. Someone probably just thought the lines were playthings and wanted to play on them. ...plus, I don't carry a gun."
"Yeah, and you still use a slug. A slug." Her wife complained. "We're stinking royalty, I don't understand why you haven't upgraded like I have. I wouldn't be caught dead in that outfit."
"Hey, I’m working class for life! Plus, slugs are great, you just gotta get to know 'em, alright?" Anne defended, petting her slug's face and turning it to Sasha. "If you know how to take care of 'em, and feed 'em, and bond with 'em, then they'll be more reliable than any other mount you could ever find! ...Oh my gosh I sound like Hop Pop." Her face fell as she came to that realization.
"Check your ears, if they're filled with hair we know it's spreading," Ivy warned Anne, leaning over from the driver's seat to pat the human's curly brown locks.
Sasha smirked slightly and stepped backward with a ballet dancer's grace, allowing a second high-velocity projectile to slam into the broad shoulder teenager with a clatter of metal on metal.
"Anne!" Polly immediately cried out, hugging her very, very tightly and lifting herself off the ground to do so, scraping her bronze gauntlets against the human's. "I missed my favorite sibling so so so much!" She said, looking up at Anne through a thick greasy mat of roughly chopped yellow hair that was escaping from underneath her hood.
"Oh my gosh, Polly!" Anne cried out as well, hugging her close. "I've missed my favorite sibling too! Look at how much you've grown since I last saw you!" She chuckled, looking Polly over. "I remember when you were still just a ball with a tail!"
"Hey, aren't you forgetting someone?" Sprig asked, opening his arms.
"Of course, how could I forget - IVY! I missed you too!"
"Hey Polly, looking grungy." The slightly taller girl stated with a lazy grin.
"I know, isn't it the best?!"
"What about me?" Sprig immediately complained. His sister pulled herself over Anne's pauldron to look down at him.
"Oh hey Sprig, you're here too." She turned her attention back to Anne. "Feel my bicep? I am getting BUFF!"
"Oh trust me, I could feel that from the impact!" Anne said, wincing slightly as she put a hand on her stomach. "Your training under Yunan going well enough, then? She managing to keep up with you?"
"Pfft, I'm running circles around the old lady." Polly boasted proudly. Anne already knows what's about to happen before it happens but the younger frog doesn't notice her mentor step quietly behind her until the much taller newt speaks.
"Is that so? Then you can run circles around the perimeter too! Ten laps recruit! Double time!" Yunan ordered, extending her left arm and tail to point her squire at the muddy rows of logs that had been set up - walls outside of walls to keep the besiegers safe if they should find themselves besieged.
"Uuuuuugh." Polly dropped back down to the ground sighing petulantly as she hiked up her cloak. "I am not letting you leave till you tell me about all the cool stuff you killed!" She called out to Anne as she jogged away.
General Yunan approached, drawing herself up and extending her tail in lieu of her missing right arm for Anne to shake. "Marshal Boonchuy. We had no idea you were in the area. The scouts should receive a thorough flogging for their negligence!"
"Y'know, I'm not sure that'll be able to happen," Anne said through gritted teeth. "Seeing as how I have a sinking feeling they've been, uh, decommissioned. Permanently. By swords. Through their guts. We ran into assassins." She admitted, looking to Sasha.
Ivy reached into her pocket and produced a handkerchief that was wrapped around a lacquered badge. The carved wood bore a regimental crest - a crane's head - crossed with the telescope and arrows of the Observer Corps.
"We found this in one guy's pocket, and another one had a bandaged-up bullet wound that was still fresh. Odds are good the assassins got the jump on whoever you had in the area." She announced solemnly, handing over the badge to Yunan.
"I mean- we dealt with all of them I think, so you should be okay -" Anne began before being interrupted by a dramatic sigh from Sasha.
"When will these idiots learn we're basically untouchable goddesses and that they should just fall to their knees and worship the ground we walk on?"
"Y'know, when they come across attitudes like that, that kind of bumps up their want to do more assassination attempts," Anne mentioned. "And- it was closer than I wanted it to be, actually. They're getting stronger, Sash."
"One of them even had a Destroyer Frobo modified to be used as a mecha! It was super cool and it almost blew my head off!" Sprig added.
"What happened to it?" Sasha asked.
"Oh, it exploded with the guy still in it."
"Hah, classic!" The blonde laughed, but her face fell just a little. She shook her head. "...no, yeah. I guess this explains why you didn't get my message either. Someone probably spliced the line between here and Wartwood to intercept our communiques. Dammit. These guys are getting too well organized."
"Yeah," Anne frowned. "...I'm worried about Marcy. I know, I know- she's safe in the castle, and goodness knows it'd be stupid to attack the capital, but still. It's been years since..." She trailed off.
"Hey, she's a lot stronger now." Sasha immediately tried to assure her wife. "She barely needs to use her cane to get around anymore and - she still has the ace in the hole." She said, hand going to her cravat, touching the pink gemstone in its center lightly.
Anne nodded. "I know, but- I just wish she could be better. And all the stress can't be helping, either." She mentioned.
"Yeah." Sasha agreed quietly before putting her arm around the taller girl's shoulder, squeezing her tightly and silently. The two of them seem lost in thought for a moment before Sprig clears his throat.
"Anne, Sasha - why don't you guys head to Queenshold early this year? Me and Ivy can handle this - whatever it is that's going on!"
Anne looked at her brother in concern. “Dude, we just dealt with assassins, and you don’t have calamity powers. I can’t just send you guys off like that!”
"Hey, it'll be fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiine." The pink teenager tried to reassure his sister. "We can handle uh -" He looked to General Yunan who rolled her eyes before speaking.
"A revolt over the new currency and a revolutionary commune that's seized control of Lily Paddington."
"Yeah, that! Easy!"
"No. I have to deal with this personally." Sasha stated, shaking her head. "If people are sending hit squads after us again then I'm going to make an example out of this town, so everyone will think twice before trying it again."
“C’mon, is all this really necessary?” Anne piped up. “Couldn’t we just talk to the peeps here, and just kinda find out why they don’t like the new currency? It’s probably just something simple, like, not liking how it feels when they pick it up or something.”
"They beheaded three Obfustocracy clerks and put their heads on pikes and have three more they're keeping as hostages." Sasha disagreed.
"It - might still be possible to get them to end this peacefully," Ivy suggested, leaning forward just a little. "Have they made any demands?"
"The right to elect their own representatives rather than have one assigned to them, a reprieve from the horsefly tithe, free city status -" Yunan continues.
"Well, that doesn't sound too unreasonable."
"And that all toads and newts be ejected from the county and their property seized and redistributed."
Sprig sucked in his breath through his teeth. "Sheeeesh."
"Yeah, that last one's not happening," Anne decided. "...Well, surely not everyone supports these demands. Maybe we could find whoever it is that's deciding what these demands are, and- either convince them to make do without the last demand, or- kill them, and get someone else to make the demands." She offered up as a suggestion.
"How do we know these people aren't responsible for the assassins?" Sasha asked her wife, frustrated.
"I genuinely don't think that a podunk town could send out assassins that were that well equipped," Anne retorted. "C'mon, Sash. If we rule out of fear, what's gonna happen when we aren't the ones ruling anymore? What's gonna happen when we aren't here?" She asked. "As Marcy would put it - 'Those are renegade actions that'll lead to the bad ending, and we'll have to watch as everything we know and love crumbles around us.' Don't really want that."
Sasha's shoulders stiffened but instead of arguing she blew her breath out through her nose. "I’m supposed to be keeping the peace, resolving legal disputes, building shit. I did not sign up to fight the fucking Vietnam war 2 electric boogaloo this time it's frogs." She stated, chopping her hand through the air.
"... what's Vietnam?" Ivy asked.
"It was like a - country or something in... Asia? Anne, was Vietnam in Asia?" The blonde asked, unable to remember herself.
"Dude, why are you asking me?" Anne replied. "You know I was this close to flunking out of geography. You remember what I told you about the USA, Ivy?" She asked.
"That's where you grew up!" Sprig immediately answered for his girlfriend, who nudged him lightly with her staff for interrupting.
"They grew up in Los Angeles, Euseh was - the country that city was in."
"It's U-S-A," Anne explained, "You say the letters out loud. But yeah- Vietnam was a place that wasn't in America, but it had oil and terrorists, so America was like 'mine', and then a lot of fighting happened. That's very dumbed down, but yeah. That's the gist."
"Big army versus a bunch of smaller ones. Every time they stomped out one, another one would pop up. That's what we're facing here." Sasha added. "What's the good of being in control of this place if we have to run around putting out forest fires every week?"
"I mean, hey, we won't be in control in a year!" Anne reminded her, going for reassuring, but really only managing to make the mood more awkward.
Sasha frowned harder, but before she could get into the well-worn argument over whether or not it was a good idea to push the constitutional convention back she stopped herself. "... Anne, you really think they'll listen to us if we go and talk to them?" She asked her wife, putting her hand on her face.
"Hey, c'mon, you know me," Anne grinned persuasively, putting an arm around Sasha. "Getting people to listen to me is like- my whole thing! And plus, with you and Yunan around, they'll be too scared to try anything!"
"Tactically, we'll lose nothing but time - and that works against them. Their supplies are limited." Yunan added, nodding in approval.
"Okay. But I'm coming with you, Anne. Just in case..." The paler human requested before kissing the curly-haired teen on the cheek.
Anne let out a reluctant sounding noise. "I dunno, Sash. They might be a little less... willing to cooperate if you're there as well. Not that you're not amazing -I certainly know how amazing you are, at least- but the people kiiiinnddaaaaa don't like you very much," She reminded her.
"You already used your powers once today. Don't lie, I can tell. You have flowers blossoming in your hair. I'm still juiced and ready to go!"
"I don't plan on using my powers, though," Anne tried. "I could easily just take Polly with me, and that'd be practically the same thing if I really needed my powers. But I don't need them, because it's just gonna be talking."
"At least - let me walk you to the gates." Sasha offered as a compromise. "That way I can get to you in a minute if things go south."
"Oh, I can easily say yes to that," Anne grinned at her, sticking out her arm. "Take me to my destination, o handsome wife of mine."
Sasha smiled back, the scars on her face becoming slightly redder as she slipped close to the taller teenager, bumping her hip up against Anne's.
"Try not to break anything while we're gone shorties." She says to Sprig and Ivy, who both scowl at being reminded of how much taller the humans had grown after hitting puberty.
"I'll organize an expeditionary force while you talk. Just in case." Yunan added, slipping her tail and arm around the two. "In the meantime, since my lazy scouts have all died like cowards, I'm going to need you two to debrief me!"
Sasha leans a little bit closer to Anne as they make their way through camp, passing by a team of newts and toads rolling a cannon into place. The metal workers had embellished the grey tube with a stylized depiction of Anne beheading a crane along the base.
"So, apart from the assassins, how have you been?" Sasha asked, slipping into Latin - one of the few things all of them had learned in Catholic School. Whenever the teenagers were surrounded by others but wanted to talk privately, they spoke in one of the tongues they'd learned on Earth and taught to each other that had no Amphibian equivalent. Chinese for Marcy, Thai for Anne, and Latin for Sasha.
"It's been going alright," Anne replied. "Been rallying more people into believing in our cause, one monster defeated at a time. Has been a little tiring, though," She rubbed the back of her neck. "I miss the Plantars farm. I know I was just there recently, but I still miss it. And -I can't believe I'm saying this- but I'm actually starting to get tired of watching Sprig and Ivy do their thing," She admitted. "I mean, they're so adorable and I love them both so much, but it's just kinda..." She waved her hands in the air.
"Sickeningly sweet? I knoooooow." Sasha agreed, hanging her head. "Get used to it. Maddie's still in Newtopia for the next month or two."
“Ugh,” Anne groaned. “She’s the only one who can control them, these days. And- tell me if I’m acting a little crazy here,” She said to her wife as they continued to walk. “But it’s odd that Sprig’d be like ‘ah yes, go and visit Marcy without me, right?”
"Well, maybe he wants you out of his hair so he and Ivy can have some quality alone time." Sasha teased, leaning to the side as they passed by her locust, pausing for a minute to reach out and fish through the saddlebags with her right hand. "Being around his big sister is probably just as much torture for them as it is for you."
"Yeah, but like- why would he want that?" Anne asked. "I mean, I've been acting nice around him and Ivy! I haven't been getting in their way, I've kept the shipping to a minimum, and I managed to stop cooing after simply an hour when Ivy saved Sprig from falling off that cliff in a romantic way! I don't know why he'd want me gone!" She said, "...Though I will admit, it's tempting. I really do want to see Mar-Mar again."
"Hmmm, well, maybe I have something that'll lessen your sorrow." The blonde said, retrieving a brick-shaped object wrapped in waterproof leather and offering it to Anne.
"Wow, a brick!" Anne gasped melodramatically. "Sasha, you shouldn't have!"
"Oh just open it already you dork, or I'll take your anniversary present back!" Sasha threatened, leaning more heavily on Anne, attempting to unbalance her.
Anne chuckled and unwrapped the gift. "I've got one for you, too. I'll have to give it to you when we get back to the cart."
Underneath, Anne finds something she thought she'd never see again. Her phone!
It was virtually unrecognizable from when she'd first bought it back on earth, and was now mostly Amphibian proto-tech. The touch screen no longer functioned so she had to navigate with an attached keyboard and roller mouse like an ancient palm pilot, and SIM card had long since died and so had been supplanted by tiny piezo-electric crystals to carry communications to the only other phones in Amphibia, and of course, it was now encased in durable corrosion-resistant bronze. It may have resulted in a nearly unrecognizable monster of technology, but, more importantly, it had every single song, every single movie, every single photo she had saved.
"Oh my gosh!" She held her phone up like it was The Lion King, her eyes becoming wide as saucers. "Sasha! Sasha, this is my phone! You found my phone!" She pulled her wife into a big hug, lifting her off the ground slightly. "This is amazing, this is- I can't believe that you actually found it, you're the best wife ever!"
Sasha lets out an excited giggle, nuzzling up against her lover's face. "I had to take apart three crime syndicates in Brackenport to track it down. Some stuffed up Axolotl academic had it in like, a million pieces, and sold each one to a different guy."
"Jeez, that's so cool," Anne said, admiring her phone. "Man, now I feel like my present's gonna underperform."
"Mmmm, probably, but I am the best wife ever so it's understandable." Sasha preened happily before kissing Anne on the lips while she was distracted.
Anne smiled happily as they broke apart. "Hhmhhm, I've missed you, man. It gets boring out there."
"Me too. God, after this is finished, do you want to just - head to an inn and plough the shit out of each other?" Sasha asked, wiping her lipstick from the taller teen's face.
"Uhhhhhhhhh," Anne blushed furiously. "Wow, you have not changed. I mean- oh hey, we're here!" She announced suddenly in lieu of admitting to being flustered.
The picket guards, a green and yellow-hued frog and a purple newt, saluted the two humans as they pass by, and Sasha attempted to look dignified before them as they approach Lilly Paddingtons gates. Like most amphibian architecture it had two entrances - one above and one submerged in the water below. Both were currently barred.
"... before you go. I gotta tell you something important," Sasha said, stepping back but not too far, unwilling to pull away just yet. "One of the clerks they have hostage? Super important. He knows the recipe for gunpowder. I don't think they're aware of it yet, but if they are - if they do manage to get him to talk..."
"Yeah, we don't want guns to get too far around," Anne nodded seriously. "Make sure that clerk stays alive and safe. Got it."
"... god, I wish you'd let me just go in there and smash shit for you..." Sasha whined softly, scuffing the toe of her boot through the mud almost petulantly.
"I wanna at least try to do this peacefully, alright?" Anne told her, taking her hands. "I know, I know, it's not your style, but- I wanna try. I don't like it when big armies bust up small towns. Reminds me of how stuff began in Wartwood, and that didn't exactly end well if you recall." She said, "I'll be fine, I can take care of myself even when I don't have my calamity powers. I mean, hey- I've beaten you before, haven't I?"
"The sun was in my eyes." Sasha retorted, unable to hide a smile before stepping back, her fingers the last to part from Anne's body.
"Yeah, 'cuz I bounced it off my blade,'' Anne smiled back, nodding to her as she began to walk out. "I'll see you in two shakes of a lamb's tail, promise. And don't look in the cart, I'm keeping your present in there!"
"Okay, but if you die I'm totally gonna look!" Sasha threatened, raising her voice and waving in the shadow of the rough wooden stockade's walls.
Anne stepped over muddy ground that had been well churned by the passage of many creatures as she walked towards the town. Walking was tricky in places like this - you needed to spread your weight evenly or you'd sink up to your knees in the mud, which was a lot easier when you had webbed feet. As she got closer to the gates, she hears the buzz of buzzards, the insectoids clustered around the wooden cage currently pulling at the mottled flesh of the toad within as they hovered around it.
From here, she could smell the sickly sweet scent of decay more strongly, and see that gates had been adorned with three heads that had been preserved by being dunked in pitch in order to slow decay and deter scavengers. Two newts and a toad stared down at her with unseeing black eyes, but other than them Anne couldn't see anyone else - but knew she was being watched. A sixth sense that she'd developed from the years of fighting told her that there were people with weapons waiting for her out of sight on the other side of the wall.
"Helllooooooo-oooo!" She called out loudly. "Wassup? You guys wanna talk? I wanna talk!"
There was another minute or so of silence before finally, a small yellow frog peeked above the parapet, eyes bulging comically in shock. The frogs were - well, they weren't cute but they were at the same time. Ugly-cute. They would probably make amazing models for marketable plushies back on earth, but here their exaggerated facial expressions just seemed to feel wrong juxtaposed to the carnage of combat. These were real people, a small voice inside of her reminded herself. Not puppets, not cartoons, not characters in a video game. There were real lives at stake.
"Are you Anne the human girl?" A high-pitched voice shouted back at her.
"Eyup!" Anne nodded once. "That's me! I've come to talk to you guys about your negotiation claims, and whatnot! Who's the guy in charge?"
"We are all brothers in the eyes of Frog!" A different voice shouted, before being shushed.
"Yes uh - no leaders here. Everyone's equal!" The higher-pitched voice stated with slightly less confidence.
"'Cept for the newts."
"Right, 'cept for the newts, they don't count."
Anne pursed her lips. "Hmm, cool. Who's the person who came up with the demands, then?" She asked them. "I wanna talk with 'em! And can we do this in a way where I don't have to keep shouting? I don't want a sore throat."
There's another conversation and then the sounds of people shouting and then shoving at each other before something clicks behind the gate, and a small door just tall enough for an average Amphibian to pass under without having to crouch is opened. A very thin, weedy-looking frog with slotted grey eyes and patchy yellow skin is pushed out.
"Um. By ALMOST unanimous consent, I, If-Frog-Had-Not-Suffered-For-Thee-Thou-Wouldst-Be-Damned Miller, have been elected to speak for the collective uh - commune thing."
"Almost?" Anne raised an eyebrow. "...You didn't agree to this, did you?"
"The will of the people has spoken!" A much louder voice shouted from behind the frog with a very long name, who shuffled awkwardly forward.
"So, have you come to join our glorious revolution and lead Frog's chosen people to victory?" He asked Anne hopefully, hands clasped together.
"Nah, that sounds culty, and as a general rule, I try not to do cults." Anne dismissed, plopping down into a sit where she was. "It sounds interesting, though. How is it? How are you doing? You don't look too good, would you like a fly-bagel?" She asked, bringing her backpack around to her front and rummaging around through it. "I had half of one this morning, but I didn't have the other half. You can have it if you want, though."
Miller hopped forward and then gently sat himself down in front of Anne, one foot in the murky water that cradled Lily Paddington.
"We're not a cult!" He immediately tried to assure Anne. "It's just - you know, uh, we thought that it was about time for us Frogs to be in charge, considering everything."
“Hmm, well, I don’t necessarily disagree with that,” Anne nodded to him, offering half of a fly-bagel. “That’s honestly part of why we want to end the monarchy confusion and make it a diplomatic elective thingo. I dunno, I’m not very good with politics,” She mentioned with a whisper as if she was sharing a secret with Miller. “But- would that be solved by removing the toads and the newts from your town? That just seems like it’d breed more hate and whatnot.”
"Oh no, they're the ones who are responsible, they've been messing things up for years!" Miller said, accepting the bagel and eating it between words, the baked good disappearing in a few bites. "They carried out the old King's orders after all. You can't just let them have a say in how things are supposed to be or they'll put themselves back on top again. You know that. You toppled Toad Tower! You led the uprising of Frog Valley! We kicked out all the tax collectors and their bully boys before, we can do it again!"
"Well, you're not exactly wrong, there," Anne admitted. "But you seem to be forgetting that a newt and a toad were two of the people responsible for taking down the old king. Without Yunan and Grime, the rebellion would never have succeeded." She reminded Miller lightly.
"... look, you gotta play nice with the Kingslayer around, but we both know how it really went down." Miller confided to Anne quietly. "If old Grimsey hadn't died, he'd have just put himself in charge, like he was planning to from the beginning. Toads on top and us at the bottom again. And Yunan, well, she knew she couldn't stand up to you considering what happened to her arm so she bent the knee, but she and her friends in court have got poor Queen Marcy wrapped around their thumbs."
Anne frowned at the frog's words. She knew that people would come up with stories to suit their own needs, but that didn't mean she had to like it when she heard them. "Look. I know Marcy quite well, and- sure, maybe there are people in her court that think they have her wrapped around their finger, but in truth, she's playing them against themselves. And that's what you need to be able to do too." She poked him in the chest. "Think about it for a minute. Why did the toads hold as much power as they did in the first place?" She positioned.
"Well, because they're bigger and stronger than frogs and stupider than newts."
"And why did the newts hold so much power?"
"Because the old King consorted with demons!"
"No, that's not-" Anne sighed. "Because they have good schools, and are taught much more about the world and politics than most frogs are. You can't outsmart them."
"But then you came along!" Miller said, standing upright. "You were sent to us by Frog to lead us out of the darkness of the Night!"
"But what happens if I'm not there for you guys?" Anne questioned him. "I'm only human- er, well, I guess that phrase wouldn't mean much to you." She admitted. "I'm mortal. I can't be everywhere at once, fight for every single person at once. You need to be able to fight your own battles, Miller. I mean, what are they doing right now?" Anne asked him, waving a hand at the gates shut behind him. "Your people have sent you out here to fight their battles for them. You didn't want this. That type of attitude is going to get you back to where you started. You can't out-politic the newts, you can't out-strength the toads, so you need to outshine them." She stated as a solution, giving jazz hands as she did so.
"... outshine?"
"You need to show them that, while you aren't going to fade into the background, you're not going to fight them on their terms," Anne explained. "By kicking them out of your home, you are daring them to come back with their fancy words and big weapons, and taking it over by force. But, if you keep them with you, you can help them realize that you're not pushovers, and that -more importantly- you can be 'helpful' to them.
"Make them rely on you, make them want you, and then they'll give you what you want!" Anne told him. "Let them see you as shy and demure, like you're the same frogs that you were before the king was killed, and work towards your own goals without revealing them. Give yourself power, and a seat on the council, through sheer gosh-darn frog hospitality!"
"But they're trying to take our coppers!" The unwilling negotiator said, his arms flailing like a muppet. "And replace them with these worthless pieces of paper that say they're worth a copper but they can't be because they're paper and not copper!"
Anne took a breath. It was time to take a page from Sasha's book, and lie. Sort of. "C'mere, I'll let you in on a little secret," She beckoned Miller closer. "Copper is actually losing value. It's becoming so worthless that people want to use it for things other than currency. This paper money is gonna fix that, it'll keep things square. I can't tell you the specifics, but all you need to know is that, at this moment, the paper money is actually worth more than your coppers."
If anyone else had said it, Anne could guess that they would have been laughed at - but the look in the yellow splotchy frog's eyes told her that he would actually trust what she had to say. "Really? Copper's not going to be worth anything?" He asked for confirmation.
"Nope. By the time this paper money is completely rolled out, copper'll be practically worthless." Anne confirmed. "So if you can convince your brothers in Frurch to accept the paper money, and deliver the clerks to me unharmed, I can convince the Kingslayer to work with you on all your demands except the last one, that toads and newts must be evicted from your home. That's a very good deal in your favor."
If-Frog-Had-Not-Suffered-For-Thee-Thoust-Would-Be-Damned looked back over his shoulder, eyes drawn to the gibbeted corpse and severed heads. "... the town won't get into trouble for uh - some acts of civic high spirits?"
"That'll be part of working on the demands, but you'll be given much better treatment by cooperating." Anne nodded.
Miller tugged at his collar. "It's just that - well you know how angry mobs are, right?" He admitted, embarrassed.
"Yeah, I know," Anne commiserated. "I lived in Wartwood for a while."
"I'm not sure everyone will go for it but I'll try my best to convince them." He decided, straightening up. "Once I tell them that you're not for a glorious cleansing tide to sweep aside the old order I'm sure they'll come around." He fiddled with his buttons. "Also we are almost out of food. We were about to start eating our shoelaces."
"Oh gosh, shoelaces are horrible to eat." Anne shuddered. "...Wait, you guys have shoes?"
"Not anymore! We ate those yesterday."
Anne blinked. "Alright then. I'll stay out here until you guys come to a decision. In fact, if you do decide to work with us, send out one of the clerks for me to take back, as proof that you're willing to cooperate." She requested, standing up and brushing off her butt.
Miller nodded repeatedly and hopped back as fast as he could to the gate, talking rapidly to the people inside. Anne doesn't see what happens next, as she's turned away, but she can feel it - the displaced air that rushes to fill a void carved through it with a sound like a thunderclap, water forced out of the ground and mud turned to earth for a moment by the force of the strides. Sasha is standing in front of her, a crossbow quarrel clutched in her now bleeding hand, her eyes glowing bright pink.
Someone just tried to shoot her.
And probably would have killed her given the fact that the tip of the bolt is just a few scant inches away from her throat.
"...Thank you," She mentioned blithely, the fact that she almost died having yet to catch up to her.
Sasha crushed the missile into splinters and turns to glare at the gate, pushing Anne behind her. "No. More. Games." She says, voice amplified with an unnatural timbre. "Bring forward whoever just tried to kill my wife and I'll let the rest of you live!"
Someone doesn't get the message - or perhaps panics - and more arrows are launched. Sasha's rapier appeared in her hand to bat the barrage away.
"You've got till the count of ten! Nine! Eight! SEVEN!" Before she can reach six, three frogs are literally tossed over the parapet, and another two quickly follow.
"These are the ones! Sorry! Sorry!"
"I should just burn this entire place to the ground!" Sasha thundered as she stepped closer towards the gate, deflecting a clumsy thrust with a pitchfork from one of the attempted murderers and slicing the hand off that held the weapon in a single sweep.
"Sash, wait," Anne approached her wife. "Don't do this, I was getting somewhere!"
"You tried to help them and they SHOT you." Sasha fumed, head turned towards Anne as she thrusts, skewering two more frogs through the throat without even having to look. The remaining survivors throw themselves to the ground or scrabble at the gate.
"I- I know, but they were still listening!" Anne tried. "I was doing something, I know I was!"
"We're sorry! We're so sorry! We'll do anything to make up for it!" Miller shouts as loud as he can from the other side of the door. Sasha squares her shoulders - and then takes a step back towards Anne.
"You are all very lucky that my wife is more forgiving than me. But you will still have to pay for what you've done. You will tear down the walls of your town and never raise them again!" She declared, eyes burning with energy. "Or I'll do it for you and tear down every other building too!"
"And she is not kidding!" Anne warned them, sounding actually worried for them. "Very very much not kidding! I cannot stress the level of kid that she does not have!"
"Open the gates now." The blonde ordered with a soft growl and in a moment the barricades were pulled away in front of her. "Send out your hostages and whoever was responsible for whipping up the lynch mob that killed the others!" She added, her voice growing more hoarse before finally the calamity power is pushed back down into the gem, leaving her barely standing on her feet. Sasha's done this enough however to manage to stand up straight without looking woozy as the former rebels scurry to carry out her commands.
"Wow." Anne moved closer to her wife, subtly allowing her to lean on her if necessary. "Married life has not softened your edge," She whispered. "You are still just as terrifying as you used to be."
The former cheerleader accepted the unspoken offer, using Anne to support herself as the troops flowed past them to swarm through the gates and make sure they stayed open. "Hf. Yeah well." Sasha huffs, pausing for breath between words. "Just wait until I hit menopause."
"Oh, gosh." Anne shuddered. "...Don't hurt them, okay? They're willing to work with you, they're just- they're worried frogs are going to be shunted back to having no political sway again."
"I got a reputation to maintain though babe. What will people say if I don't impale anyone and dance around in their blood?" She joked, laughing weakly. "Jesus christ, does this always take so much out of us?"
"I mean. Always did for me." Anne shrugged. "You're good at keeping it hidden, though."
Sasha stumbled - just for a moment - and almost falls directly onto Anne, staring up at her as she clings to her hands for support. "Sweeping me off my feet Boonchuy?"
"Always," Anne grinned at her. "It's a good fighting move. And a better dance move."
"We would have totally owned prom." Sasha decided, regaining her composure, her scars still an angry red but her breathing regular again. "I bet I would have rocked a tuxedo."
"Yeah, you definitely would've." Anne decided. "Maybe... when we get back home, we could try to get you one?"
"Would we still be in Catholic school? Would the nuns let us dance together, you think?" She asked, shaking her head. "What am I saying, they were nuns, they never let anyone enjoy themselves. We'd probably kill them if they saw us kissing."
"If we went back to Catholic school, we'd probably kill them just by existing," Anne replied. "And obviously we wouldn't go back to school. We'd write a book about our adventures here in Amphibia and make millions of dollars off of it, and live on easy street for the rest of our lives."
"Oh, or we could sell giant bug meat to expensive restaurants." Sasha proposed, squeezing her wife's hands. "You could open your own restaurant even! And we could charge people through the nose to eat worms."
Anne gasped. "Oh my gosh, we could! People would love this type of Amphibian cuisine! It's delicious!"
"... you better not have gotten me a big cookie filled with mealworms for our anniversary."
Anne smirked. "Well, you'll just have to wait and see~ee."
"Oh come on, I just saved your ass! I want to see now!"
"It's in the cart! We need to wait until we get back there!" Anne explained. "I'll give it to you then!"
"Okay, then we've got to do it now. Yunan'll be out here any minute to take charge and start bossing people around." Sasha said, picking up her feet again and tugging on Anne gently.
"...Alright, fine, just don't let her kill anyone." Anne reminded her. "Remember: renegade actions will lead to the bad ending. We don't want that."
"Okay, but you gotta control Polly. I don't know how but she manages to keep finding boomshrooms."
"Oh, you'll never be able to stop her from getting her hands on those," Anne shook her head. "I'm sure it'll be fine, they should respect her, at least. ...In fact, maybe we should try and convince Yunan to let Polly lead out for a bit. They might treat her better."
"... fucking frog racists. Speciesists?" She asked, looking to the taller teenager to confirm her suspicions.
Anne shrugged. "More- religious cult-y. but yeah. Speciesists. Kinda. I get where they're coming from, though. Under Andrais's rule, frogs never really got involved in matters of... well, anything. Aside from farming, nobody listened to them. I think they're taking things too far, but they do have a bit of a point. That's not how things should end up going."
"Let me guess, they thought you were the messiah?" Sasha asked, raising an eyebrow. "Did they expect you to chop my head off and lead them to the promised land?"
"I mean, they said something about 'bloody revolution' but I wasn't really paying attention," Anne admitted. "The biggest deal they had was the whole paper money biz. That's- yeah, that's a pretty big change."
"... man, I have heard so many people complaining about that it's not even funny." She admitted as she ambled forward only to be hit by Polly at the knees.
"That was so freaking cool!" The pink frog enthused, out of breath.
"Aren't you supposed to be running laps twerp?"
"Yeah nah I'm not doing that when there's a town to loot! I'm gonna go and see if I can find some new gardening shears for Hop Pop."
"No looting, Polly," Anne said sternly, frowning at her sister.
"Aw, I never get to ransack and pillage." Polly puffed her cheeks out, disappointed.
"...Well, maybe a little looting, 'cuz they're speciesists, but keep it to a minimum. In fact, I think you should be in charge of like, making sure that everything's alright with interacting with them, because- yeah, you're a frog, and you're absolutely deadly. They'll probably be more willing to talk with you than Yunan."
"Wait, hold on - I get to be in charge? Seriously?" She asked, dropping her pout and finally processing the rest of what Anne had said.
"Yeah, so please please please don't kill anyone," Anne begged her. "It doesn't look good when the person leading out is all callous and bloodthirsty. Doesn't paint the picture we're going for."
Polly nodded once and then turned away, beginning to walk towards the knot of activity building around Lily Paddington's gates while laughing maniacally.
"... well I don't feel safe." Sasha decided before turning her back on the whole affair to dig through Anne's cart.
"Yeah, that is the laugh of a girl who did not register a thing I said after 'yes, you're leading out here,'" Anne pushed Sasha aside and dug through the cart herself. "Now move over, lemme actually give you your present instead of you stealing it from me."
"Fine, fine. It better not be a concertina carcass, because I saw one of those crawling around in there." Sasha said, turning away and then covering her eyes for good measure.
"Wait, it was crawling?" Anne asked before shaking her head and getting back on track. After a few moments of rummaging around, she took the plain wooden box out from the cart and gingerly handed it to Sasha. "Now don't shake that," Anne warned her. "It's fragile. Probably gonna need to stay in the box until we're back home."
"I'mma open it and see for myself." Sasha declared, slipping the top off and then frowning as she examined the bright pink sphere nestled within the heat moss. "You got me a... sculpture of Polly when she was a tadpole?" She asked before reaching down to gently run her fingers over the object and then pause when she feels something stir within.
".... no stinking way! Is this a heron's egg? How the fuck did you get this? Did you kill a heron?"
"Yep!" Anne stated proudly, puffing out her chest. "Killed the mom, and found that little sucker in a nest a little ways up. I thought you might like to have a heron for a mount, eventually!"
Sasha beams, gently lifting the spheroid and laughing. "This thing is either gonna be the most bad-ass pet in the entire world or kill me. Either way, I'll die happy."
"Yeah, that's what I thought you'd say." Anne grinned. "...And I got you something else, actually, too. Not as an anniversary present, exactly, but like." She took a breath. "During Sprig and I's little adventures, we came across a pretty good painter who had lost his paintbrushes down an anthill, and a clocksmith who had lost his tools down the same anthill. Long story short, we got them their tools back, and they wanted to repay us, and..." She took a silver pocket watch out of her pocket and tossed it to Sasha.
On the inside of it, there was a small painting of Sasha and Grime sparring together, looking happy. "Thought you might like something as like, a reminder that he was important to you. Or something." Anne mentioned hesitantly. "If it's- if you don't like it, I can just throw it away, don't worry."
"... Nah. It's good." Sasha decided quietly, putting the egg tenderly back into the heated box so that she can examine the painting a little bit closer. "I was... just thinking about him the other day actually. I was gonna take a side trip to see Percy and Braddock and - hell, I don't know. Remember together, I guess." She ran her finger over the painted figure, still smiling. "He was such a jerk, Anne. I miss him."
"Yeah, he was." Anne nodded, looking at the painting as well. "...I miss him too."
"I hope I'm doing right by him." The smaller teenager said to her wife, closing the watch carefully. "Thanks, Anne. This - really means a lot."
Anne put a comforting hand on Sasha's shoulder, giving her a smile. "Okay. I'm glad. ...And I think I've changed my mind, I kinda want to take Sprig up on his offer to head back home early." She admitted. "What about you? You wanna surprise Marcy by appearing ahead of schedule?"
"Oh, you know it." The blonde declared, slipping the watch into her pocket. "She's gonna be so happy when she finds out we're going to be mamas." Sasha joked, patting the box lightly. "What should we name our little murder machine? Heartstomper? Grime 2: the Grimening?"
Anne snorted, walking around the carriage inquisitively. "The second one sounds pretty good. Where do you think Sprig and Ivy are? I wanna tell 'em I'm taking them up on their offer."
"Well they're teenagers and horny and dealing with a spike of hormones from seeing you almost get killed, so they're probably off - laying eggs and jizzing all over them or whatever it is frogs do for sex."
"Please don't say that about my brother," Anne shuddered. "That's- ugh. I don't want to think about that. Maybe we can just- go. Not deal with that. It should be fine. We'll leave a note!" She decided. "We'll just leave a note somewhere where he can find it, or something. It'll be fine."
"Shit, here comes Yunan." Sasha curses. "Ah fuck, maybe we should just lie down and pretend to be dead until she goes away." She suggested to Anne as the one-armed newt stalked closer, one hand clasping her tail over her chest.
"Heeyyy, Yunan!" Anne greeted immediately, sweat pooling at the back of her neck. She knew that she probably wasn't in trouble with her (why would she be? Everything had gone fine) but still- there was something about the newt that made her feel like she'd done something wrong. "Sasha and I weren't doing anything!"
"Yeah - you seem to have this well in hand." Sasha joked, waggling an eyebrow and receiving a snorted laugh from Yunan, the newtopian army general slapping her roughly on the back with her tail in response.
"Good one! I see the day is ours, with minimal bloodshed. Which is a bit of a disappointment, but I can't fault you for your speed. You two cracked this city open like it was a crab claw! But I'm afraid that I - need to discuss something else with you two." Yunan shifted, clawed fingertip darting out to pierce a bug floating in mid-air nearby. She began to take large chunky bites out of it like it's an apple while she talked. "Now that this campaign has wrapped up, we should begin proper pacification procedures and begin to assemble reports-"
The blonde sighed heavily, not even bothering to put up a mask of interest until Yunan spoke again.
"But I must miss out. I am requesting a leave of absence."
"What?" Anne stared at Yunan like she'd grown a second head. "You? A leave of absence? You? Why?"
"You didn't take a leave of absence when your arm got chopped off. You held your doctor hostage until he agreed to let you go!" The other human gaped.
Yunan smirks. "Oh, that was fun." She agreed with Sasha, before clearing her throat. "But ah - I'm afraid that I have... personal matters to attend to. With Lady Olivia." She pauses before letting out a surprisingly girlish squeal, flicking the remains of her meal away to take Anne's hand. "We're going to have children!"
Anne gaped. "Wait, seriously? You're having babies?" She squealed along with Yunan. "Oh my gosh, that's amazing, Yunan! You're gonna be a mom! You! I genuinely never would've expected that!"
"I know. Take that aunt Forscythe!" The newt cackled happily. "I do have enough maternal instinct not to eat my own eggs!"
"... wait. But - you and Olivia are both girls though, right?" Sasha asked, turning her head to the side.
"Yes, we'll be spawning together."
"So you have a sperm donor or something?"
"... what?"
"A sperm donor - a guy who donates his, you know, goo."
"Why would we need someone else's goo? Are you questioning my virility? My goo is incredibly potent!"
"I feel like I'm hearing a lot more than I really need to at the moment," Anne mentioned. "I'm happy for you though, Yunan. That's amazing."
"Lady Olivia sent me the news by messenger fly last week, but - well, I couldn't leave my post in the middle of a fight!"
"I mean, you probably should have, considering you're - pregnant, or will get pregnant?" Sasha suggested, earning a snort from the newt.
"And miss a potential bloodbath? Not on your life!" Yunan sighs happily, pressing her tail to her face. "I - wanted to inform you personally, however, as I'll need to leave posthaste for Queenshold."
"Oh, well, why don't you travel with us, then?" Anne invited. "We're heading back there too!"
"Or you could leave by yourself too, it's no biggie if you want to do your whole 'my army slows me down' schtick-" Sasha offered as an alternative.
"I'd be delighted to have you both as company on the road. Maybe we'll run into more assassins!" Yunan stated with perhaps more enthusiasm than is sane.
"Or maybe not!" Anne added, in her diplomatic voice. "Maybe it'll just be a nice, scenic thing?"
"But if we do, they will rue the day they ever encountered I, General Yunan! Scourge of the Sand Wars -" Their new travelling companion began, launching into her list of titles. Sasha glared at her wife.
"...What?" Anne asked, confused. "She was going in the same direction, wasn't she? This way we'll have a bit of help if we run into anything."
"I just spent the last three weeks living in her armpit and she never shut up once!"
"Yeah, and Sprig and Ivy never shut up either, I lived!" Anne shrugged. "How bad can she be?"
General Yunan is seated alongside Anne in the cart, and she takes the brunt of the older woman's bombastic inclinations while Sasha rides side-saddle on her locust to better shoot her wife's smug looks. There was, of course, one upside - her phone, the loyal electronic companion providing her with background music to the drive, even if Sasha tried to take over the playlist after she brought it out.
By the time night falls, Anne isn't sure what was more exhausting - the multiple attempted murders she dealt with, having to fend off her wife's repeated attempts to listen to the entire discography of Taylor Swift or having to listen to Yunan exhaustively categorize her battle tactics. Thankfully there are more guarded rest areas now than there used to be and before the moon is up Anne and Sasha find a walled coaching inn. Having reached the pleasant fugue state of exhaustion, when her arms feel like they're made of wet noodle and her entire body feels swaddled in fluff, Anne really doesn't register anything that happens until she plants face-first into the bed.
“Ohhhh, sweet, sweet, actual bed,” Anne’s groan was muffled by the covers as she sank into them, not even bothering to take off her clothes. “I’ve missed you so much.”
"You going soft on me Boonchuy?" Sasha asked as she wiggled out of her boots and then sat down next to Anne's head, threading her fingers through the taller teen's curly hair to pick out bits of detritus that accumulated with almost clockwork regularity there.
“I am very soft. Always have been.” Anne mumbled. “Blame the Plantars. They made me softer.”
The older girl smiled, thinking for a moment before removing her own jacket and laying it carefully over the side of the bed, then her riding pants and undershirt, and then finally removing her sensible black boyshorts, which she draped over the back of Anne's neck.
“Hmmmm, I’m tired, Sash,” Anne said in return, though her hand did go exploring to find her wife. “Just lemme go to sleep.”
The lazy fingers trail along soft skin, puckered in some places from healed injuries, and then alights over stiff curly hairs. "I'm not sleeping in the same bed with you if you're wearing that dirty dingy junk. Shouldn't the prospect of fooling around be enough incentive for you to strip?"
“Sasha. I have heard so much more about newt reproduction today than I ever wanted to. I don’t think fooling around will interest me for another fifty years.” Anne commented dryly, though she did wiggle off her boots without looking back.
"... what about a warm bath?" Sasha offered, leaning close to work the clasps of the bronze armor open.
Anne lifted her head slightly. “Mmmm, that does sound kinda tempting.”
Her nearly naked wife kisses her on the forehead lightly, her chapped lips a little rough but warm.
"C'mon. This place has indoor plumbing. Let's fucking break whatever goofy bug-based device they use instead of a water heater." She offered, tugging at Anne's gauntlet next.
“…Alright. Lessdo it.” Anne waved her hand around in the air helplessly. “Carry me?”
"Oh you baby." The paler human chided, her arms sliding underneath her lover's chest and hauling her into a sitting position.
“‘M not a baby, I’m taking advantage of the situation,” Anne protested. “You should be proud, I learned from the best.”
"I'm gonna get you back, just when you least expect it." Sasha protested, scooping Anne up and carrying her princess style to the bathroom, grumbling contentedly while the water heats up. The bathtub is big as far as amphibian fixtures go - which means that there's barely enough room for them to sit side by side with their knees pulled up to their chests. Sasha falls quiet as she sinks a little deeper into the water as it quickly grows more murky.
"What'd you get for Marcy?" She asked after turning off the water, content to soak with her eyes closed.
Anne let out a long breath as she sunk into the warm bath. “It’s actually similar to what you got me. I found some old stuff of hers, and wanted to give it to her.”
"Nice. She'll go bonkers if you actually manage to find one of our old textbooks, I think." Sasha confided, unpinning her hair and letting it fall around her, long yellow strands of hair quickly pooling around her and drifting like seaweed after she dunks her head underneath the water.
“Actually, I found better,” Anne claimed. “Her old dice bag -which is still mostly full- and a mostly intact Player’s Handbook.”
The smaller girl laughed, shaking her head. "Where'd you find that? Lemme guess - guarded by some crazy cultists who thought it was a book of prophecy or something?"
“Got it in one,” Anne nodded. “Though the dice bag was just- on the side of the road outside a truck stop. It was honestly a pretty lucky find.”
"You remember that time Marcie got a d6 accidentally lodged up her nose? Did you find that one?"
Anne snorted. “Oh my gosh, I don’t know. Was that the time she panicked and made you perform the Heimlich maneuver on her?”
"Man, those bruises lasted for weeks. She didn't take her hoodie off in the shower at school for a solid month." Sasha recalled happily.
“Yeah, I remember that. Simpler times.” Anne hummed. “I hope it’s in there, that’d be fun. Bet you 10 bucks that if it is in there Sprig’ll get it stuck up his nose next.”
"Ew, if that happens just burn it. It'd be cursed." Sasha decided, lifting her arms out of the water to stretch, the noise of her back cracking amplified by their surroundings.
“A cursed die is a good thing for the DM to have.” Anne countered, sinking lower into the bath. “Mmmh, I honestly forgot what it was like to have warm baths for a while when I first came here, did I tell you that?”
"I remember. You practically creamed yourself when I said you could take a shower." Sasha remarked, turning awkwardly, the water sloshing around her chest as she began to massage Anne's shoulders slowly.
“Yeah, I honestly forgot that showers were even a thing,” Anne admitted, sighing as she was massaged. “Bet you weren’t much better, though. Being kept prisoner in toad tower must’ve been more dirty than staying with the Plantars.”
"Yeah, I was pretty ragged -" Sasha began before pausing, a memory bobbing to the back of her head. "Hey. Hey Anne. You know how you spent like, a year, running around with only a sock on your left foot?"
“I have no idea what you’re talking about,” Anne said resolutely, refusing to acknowledge that time.
"Yeah, I'm not gonna make you remember how bad your athlete's foot was after. The other shoe though - I just remembered what happened to it. Grime found it." She said, grinning happily. "He showed it to me back when I was still a captive, evidence of other humans! It was like, the first time I knew you were alive."
“Shit, really? You guys had my shoe?” Anne asked, opening her eyes for the first time since entering the bath. “Why didn’t you give it back to me when you had captured me and my town? You had plenty of time!”
"That was like, two months later!" Sasha answered. "If you hadn't blown the whole dang tower up you'd have probably gotten it back eventually."
“I’ll be honest, if you’d given me my shoe back, I probably would’ve betrayed Wartwood then and there,” Anne said. “Did it get blown up with the rest of the tower, then?”
"Probably," Sasha said with a shrug, before grinning. "If it's still there, I'm gonna find it, have it bronzed, and throw it at your head as your birthday present."
“Or you could just give it to me!” Anne requested. “Getting that one back might solve whatever curse has been placed on me to always lose my left shoe. I’ve gone through so many of those.” She moaned.
Sasha draped her arms over Anne's shoulders, nestling her chin against the crook of her neck. "... I couldn't get Marcy's Nintendo Switch fixed." She stated morosely instead of answering Anne's request.
“Aw, were you planning on giving it to her as a present?” Anne asked.
"Yeah... one-trick pony, I know. Expensive electronics." She admitted, shaking her head. "I wanted to give it to her and be like 'oh it's no big deal, I'm just a miracle worker'."
“I mean, you got one of those reactions,” Anne offered. “You get her anything else instead?”
"Mhm. I... learned how to sew and made her some plushies." Sasha said, for the first time somewhat sheepish.
“Aw, Sasha!” Anne squealed, squeezing her wife’s cheeks. “That’s so adorable! She’ll love it!”
"Yeah well, I'm not very good at sewing." She tried to qualify, blushing pink. "I wanted to make animals from earth, but the horse ended up looking more like a lumpy camel, and the whale looked like a sausage. I also made a - puppy. Or kitten, depending on how you look at it."
“Oh, I don’t doubt that they don’t look too good, but the fact that you did something as soft as make plushies for Marcy is gonna make her overjoyed.”
"Yeah. It's really hard to figure out what to get someone who's literal royalty." Sasha admitted. "Like, whenever I saw something cool I would have to remember that Marcy could just - get it if she wanted it, no questions asked."
“Yeah, but you being the one getting it would change things!” Anne said. “She’d love whatever you got her, if only because it’s like ‘hey, I thought of you.’”
"I'd kill to be able to go back to Earth, just for an hour. I'd run to a Claire's and load up on bath bombs." Her wife decided. "She'd love to have some cheap over-scented soap from back home."
“Yeah, she would. …I’d send mom and dad The Text.” During some of the quieter moments that Anne had had her phone for, she’d composed a text (well, more like an essay) that explained everything that she’d been through, and had a fair amount of photo evidence attached. It was a pipe dream, but it made her feel better to think up how she’d explain everything to her parents.
"... Not me. I'm dead to them. Better that I stay dead," Sasha stated firmly, having made up her mind long ago on this subject.
“Fair.” Anne nodded. “What do you think will happen when we do get back?”
"I 'unno. I never really decided what I would do, before -" She began and stopped. "You ever think... it's better that we stayed here?"
“…I dunno,” Anne admitted. “If- if it ends up being a choice, like- I can choose to go back, or I can choose to stay here, no backsies, I… I don’t know which one I’d choose.”
"Yeah. If the box had worked when I opened it, sent you back - you'd have hated me for the rest of your life. Wouldn't you?"
Anne winced but ultimately nodded. “I- that was a really shitty day. And all three of our relationships very nearly could’ve been destroyed then. I hated that day. So much.”
"... yeah." Sasha echoed quietly, before rubbing her eyes with her fists. "I was such a spoiled little shit."
“You were hurt. Your parents didn’t help with that.” Anne said. “And- Amphibia’s changed you. Helped you grow into yourself in a better way. It’s changed all of us. No matter what, it’s always going to stay with us.”
"Marcy shouldn't have had to pay for my mistakes though." She said, touching on the tender well-worn argument that they'd been over more times than either of them could count.
“She didn’t, she’s paying for hers,” Anne said tiredly, trying to nip the fight in the bud before it blossomed. “I’m paying for mine, and you’re paying for yours. And together, we each have decided that we wish to help each other with our burdens, that’s why the marriage happened. She’s not hurt because of you. In fact, you’re probably the only reason we’re still alive.”
Sasha nodded, before cupping her wife's cheek, kissing her softly. "And if it wasn't for you, we'd both be dead. Really makes up for the fact that you had an entire civilization of fungus on your feet."
“It wasn’t a civilization!” Anne protested, tossing water at Sasha in protest. “It was more like a city!”
"You're lucky I'm around, or else you'd be a disgusting slob covered in slime!" Sasha retorted, splashing back.
“I would metamorphosize and fully turn into a frog!” Anne decided. “Or a newt, actually! Yeah, a newt would be more apt.”
"No, Marcy would be the Newt. She made an entire Newtsona, remember?"
“Yeah, but there was a newt Plantar who was a lot like me, she was awesome! She was like, my spiritual ancestor, I have to be a newt like her.”
"Just as long as I don't have to be a toad. Ugh, all those bumps..." She shuddered, looking down at her fingers which had begun to go wrinkly.
“Oh c’mon, you have to be a toad.” Anne retorted. “They all love you, it’s your destiny, Sasha! Reject humanity, become toad!”
"And be three foot eleven and covered in warts? Never." Sasha vowed before standing, water cascading down her back as she wrung out her hair.
“Percy isn’t covered in warts.” Anne shrugged, slomping over the side of the tub instead of standing. “I don’t wanna get out. It’s nice and warm in here.”
"You know where else is warm?" Her wife asked as she stepped out of the water, rolling her shoulders. "The bed. Under the covers. Under the nice clean sheets and comfy blankets."
“Hmmm, but getting there is gonna be cold,” Anne whined. “I dunno if I’m strong enough to go the distance, Sash.”
"Are you okay with the risk that I might drop you? Because my arms hurt and you're wet and that's likely to lead to tears."
“I’ve been dropped on my head more than once during my time here, I can deal with one more time.” She made grabby motions toward her wife. “Now lift me up, like you are walking me into our new home.”
The former cheerleader draped a towel over her shoulder, the terry cloth acting to give enough resistance so that Anne wouldn't slide from her arms like a dead fish as she slipped her over her shoulder, carrying her in the most demeaning way she could think possible.
“I was trying for bridal style, Sash,” Anne grumbled.
"Yeah well next time you carry me, you can pick the pose." Sasha retorted, slapping Anne lightly on the ass in response.
“Like I wouldn’t anyways.”
The two dropped down onto the blankets, not even bothering to climb into their nightclothes or caring about the massive wet spots that were soaking into the mattress underneath them.
“Mmmh, blankets, blankets,” Anne mumbled, burrowing under the covers with the speed of a caterpillar that was late for migration spinning a cocoon. “Aah, warm.”
"... hey Anne. I love you," Sasha murmured quietly as she closed her eyes.
“I love you too, Sasha,” Anne said back immediately, pulling Sasha closer to her. “Especially because you’re one of the only three hot-blooded people in Amphibia. Now gimme cuddles.”
Sasha relaxed, letting the taller girl be the big spoon as they press together under the covers, and then - silence, the two luxuriating in each other's presence as they drifted off to sleep.
There were a lot more people on the roads these days - traveling was still dangerous of course, given that most of Amphibia's animals were higher up on the food chain than the amphibians themselves, but the refurbished and expanded road network helped facilitate travel. It had taken roughly a month back in the day to get from Wartwood to Newtopia. Mail carts made the trip now in a week's time if they only stopped to change out snails and drivers frequently. Queenshold was placed far more centrally than Newtopia - one of the perks of having an entire castle that could fly and the authority to land it anywhere, allowing for quicker response times to the more heavily populated regions of the kingdom and better coordination.
Anne was aware, vaguely, of the logistical nightmare this entire process presented to Marcy to micromanage, but given that her own role was that more of an itinerant monster slayer, free-lance negotiator, and traveling ambassador, at most all of this meant to her that there were more people to talk to on the way to or from nearly anywhere. Merchants and traders, wandering troupes of actors and entertainers, hunters, mercenary companies, animal herds being driven to market or pasture, sometimes even just people on vacation looking to see a different part of the world.
And refugees - there were a lot of refugees on the roads, though not as much as there had been after the war. Entire communities had been targeted by Andrias to put a stop to the spread of the rebellion early on, like a gardener tearing an entire tree from their orchard to stop the spread of a nasty blight. Then there had been the towns unknowingly built upon ancient sites of technology that had come to life unexpectedly, the places that had been torn apart by pitched battle, or had been torched to deny their fledgling alliance food and resources. Robots didn't need to eat after all. Sometimes the fires would spread uncontrolled through the forests, and blanket the entire countryside in grey ash, like dirty snow in the middle of summer.
But things were better now - you wouldn't see entire towns camped out in ditches by the side of the road. Famines weren't as common. Farmland was being reclaimed, places that were destroyed born again, though never quite the same. And yet people still walked the - now much safer thanks in no small part to Anne's careful management of Amphibian wildlife - roads without any purpose or place to go, worldly possessions and families in tow, trying to find someplace better. A lot of those people lately were all headed to Queenshold, where the city of tents and temporary shacks were finally being replaced by more permanent structures. Yes, there were still a lot of tents, but it was looking more and more like an actual place people could live rather than a heavily militarized hobo camp.
The now grounded palace however outshone everything around it though. Newtopian architecture was fancy, and the gold and cream-colored coral walls made all of the construction around it seem a little bit shabby in comparison. It looked like someone had plucked part of a fairy tale and plunked it down in the center of a dirty mess. So it wasn't really that much different from LA.
"So. What kind of death traps do you think Marcy set up for us this time?" Sasha asked, stretched out in the bed of the cart despite hating the way the straw would cling to her imperial black outfit. Recently she'd taken up the affectation of smoking grinweed in an ivory pipe carved from the tooth of something that looked like a deer but had too many legs, and was careful to only do so downwind, where the acrid yellow smoke wouldn't make certain someone's eyes water and nose runny.
"Ufgh. Is it too hopeful to say that she hasn't set up any this time?" Anne groaned. Marcy was great, but hoo boy were the deathtraps a little... intense, usually. "I mean, it is our one year anniversary, soooo...."
"Hmm. Nah. She loves being 'dungeon mistress' too much." Sasha decided, pressing her head against Anne's back. "I'm thinking flamethrowers. We haven't dealt with those before."
"If it is, I wonder how many times she set her clothes on fire." Anne mused. "Maybe we can just... use our calamity powers and skip 'em. That'd be nice."
"That sounds like quitter talk to me." Yunan insisted, shaking her head with disappointment at Anne from Sasha's ride. They followed the exterior wall, avoiding the main gate and being let in through a much smaller entrance that only a select few knew about. The perks of having a powerful wife.
"Yeah Anne, besides you want Marcy to give you the pout?" Sasha added before coughing - hard. Smoking was a very recent affectation after all.
"I dunno, do you?" Anne challenged back. "You know she doesn't like it when you smoke. And besides, she'd only pout until we give her her presents! Then she'd forget all about the traps!"
"Hey, I look badass with this thing." The blonde objected, sitting up as they came to a halt in the personal stables. Joe Sparrow chirped inquisitively from his perch, his milky eyes still closed. He wasn't quite awake yet but the sound of voices was enough to make the older avian stir, ruffling his feathers and attempting to puff himself up. "If you want," Sasha offered, "I can do the traps for you, but I will be insufferable about it and hog the reward kisses."
"Oh no, I'm not letting you hog all the kisses." Anne retorted immediately. "I'm getting those."
"Maybe, maybe this time I'll beat you to the end." The paler human stated, extinguishing the pipe with her thumb and then dropping it into the bags they had accumulated, standing up and brushing the straw off her. A purple newt named Tilly was already moving to unhitch the slug and water him for Anne as Sasha brushed past her, moving towards the door cut through the solid pink hued coral that the stable was built into and had been labeled: "WARNING! ONLY THE STRONGEST AND TRUE OF HEART MAY ENTER!" with three exclamation points for emphasis.
"Welp, think that's our entrance," Anne commented, scanning the door. "Five bucks on... a giant bug that can be dealt with through like, feeding it a heart or something. Or by slamming it's head in."
"Yunan you coming or you gonna be a little bitch and take the loser's entrance?" Sasha asked over her shoulder.
"Normally I would but - well, Lady Olivia is waiting for me..." The newt said, fidgeting with the edge of her cloak lightly as she blushed.
"Your loss!" The paler human stretched, cracking her neck and back before bowing and opening the door for Anne. "After you, my dear." She enunciates in a fake posh accent.
"Oh no, after you, I insist," Anne bowed as well, adopting the same accent. "Age before beauty, after all."
"Pearls before swine," Sasha added, before taking the opportunity to slap Ann on the back of the head and run forward, giggling.
There's no giant bug this time, but there are arrow traps, swinging pendulum blades, a pit of unexpected spikes that are on fire - Sasha takes that as a win even if they're not technically flamethrowers - and a complex pressure tile puzzle that's just straight up Super Dance Fusion. Sasha rolls her eyes lightly as Anne concludes their coordinated dance moves with a dab and the wall in front of them opens to reveal a darkened audience room, half illuminated by the yellow light that filters through the stained glass windows. The massive throne is bathed in darkness, two green pinpricks of light flaring into existence as the figure seated on it rises.
Marcy Wu (First of her name), Chief Magistrate of the Obfustocracy, Grand Duchess of Newtopia, Elector Countess of the Sandport of Saltseas, Twice Born Moth, Dungeon Mistress of the Verdant Keep, Lady of Crows, Commander of the Newtopian Royal Army, High Queen of the Kingdom of Amphibia by the Grace of Frog, Nightbreaker, and most importantly, their Wife, considered the two panting women in front of her.
"Anne Boonchuy... Sasha Waybright." Marcy remarked quietly before stepping out of the darkness to better adjust her glasses, a happy smile on her face. "Welcome back! Did you like the obstacle course I set up for you this time?"
"Yeah! It's been a while since I've played SDF." Anne nodded, rushing forward to scoop her wife up in a hug.
Marcy squeaks softly as she's picked up, her soft silk robes pooling around her feet. She leans forward and plants a kiss on Anne's cheek.
"Next time can you do guitar hero?" Sasha asked, slipping behind Anne to kiss the smaller, lighter human on her temple.
"I'll see what I can do!" Marcy vowed, cuddling against Anne. "So, tell me, how were your travels?"
"Long," Anne replied. "They were fun and everything, I ended up fighting off like, three herons at once at one point, but still. I missed you, Mar-Mar."
"I missed you too Anna-Banana." The dark haired girl coos, blushing just a little at the pet name.
"Barely any decent fights on my end." The blonde said, stepping up to seat herself on the throne without a care, nestling in the pile of pillows Marcy cocooned herself in. "All I had was a bunch of angry idiots and I couldn't even kill most of them."
"Well, your fault for choosing to lead an army," Anne shrugged. "When it's just you, your brother, and your brother's girlfriend, you don't have to deal with nearly as many idiots."
"Now Anne, Sasha has a different job! You're a Witcher, and she's basically a Jedi." Marcy reminded her lightly before slipping down out of Anne's arms and climbing up with a little bit of exertion to seat herself on Sasha's lap.
"You hear that Anne? You're just a witch." Sasha remarked before Marcy shook her head.
"No, no, not a witch - a witch-er. You know, from the books and the video games?"
"...Totally," Anne claimed. "It's like... a person who turns others into witches? I don't think I do that."
"No! A Witcher! Like Geralt!" Marcy insisted, gesticulating with more excitement. "An alchemically mutated superhuman who develops supernatural abilities at a young age so they can battle wild beasts and monsters!"
"Oh, that's what that is?" Anne asked. "That sounds so much cooler than a jedi! Take that, Sash!"
"Well, I'm gonna get a laser sword so I'm the cooler one, obviously." Sasha retorted.
"Man, I wish I could get a copy of ‘the Last Wish' for you guys! It's sooo good." Marcy continued, clenching her fists, green eyes sparkling. "Oh, and then we could play the Witcher 3. Witcher 1 is kind of janky and not super necessary and while Witcher 2 is better I really feel like CD Projekt Red-"
"Mar-Mar, sweet heart, love of my life." Sasha interrupted, pinching the queen's lips shut with her fingers. "I say this in the kindest way possible - please shut up about video games for five minutes, I just got home and I had a really long day at the office."
The black haired girl blinked and then rubbed the back of her neck. "Sorry, sorry, I just - man, I bet Cyberpunk 2077 is out now, it'd blow your guys freaking minds."
"I bet it's trash," Anne commented, putting a hand on Marcy's shoulder. "I mean, we've had our own video game adventure here, practically, so would anything else really hold a candle to this?"
"How can you say that after I did a playthrough of Vagabondia Chronicles with you!?" Marcy asked, shocked. "That game is - high art! It changed my life!"
"Mar-Mar, we literally have superpowers."
"Pretty sure being a queen is more impressive too." Sasha agreed before leaning in to kiss Marcy on the lips lightly, making her flush harder. "So. How's the queening business doing?"
"Oh it is so bad you guys. It's just - awful!" The smaller teenager immediately replied, still smiling.
Anne frowned, concerned. "What? What's wrong? Have there been any assassination attempts?"
"I wish. Then one of you could save my life and I could swoon into your arms." Marcy stated, resting her chin on her palms. "I have to talk to so many people. There are lots of fun parts, don't get me wrong - I just finished negotiating a three quarter decrease of the salt tax! - but it's just day in and day out people talking at you and you have to sit there and LISTEN. You can't even read a book under your desk!"
"Ah, poor Marcy," Anne cooed, rubbing her back. "I don't think I could do that. I can't listen for so long."
"Why don't you just blow them off? You're in charge." Sasha suggested as an alternative as her wife slumped against Anne, leaning into her hands.
"Amphibia is a complete and total mess. Back when we started it was all - 'give these people supplies to see them through the winter' and 'free these serfs from indentured servitude' or 'a man has fallen into the river in lego city, build the rescue boat to save him!'." Marcy removed her glasses so she could massage the bridge of her nose. "Now it's Game of Thrones courtly intrigue stuff."
"I'm surprised you don't like that, didn't you try to get your parents to let you watch Game of Thrones when you were ten?" Anne asked.
"Oh yeah and I read all the books that were out - oh man, I bet Winds of Winter was finally published..." She starts to trail off before Sasha kisses her on the neck to bring her back to the present, flushing. "But I'm trying to build things up, not tear them down. Chaos is a ladder when you're at the bottom, when you're at the top it's really disconcerting to have people shaking the ladder you're balancing on. I could start chopping people's heads off I guess but - that'd make me as bad as him."
Anne winced. "Yeah, that seems rough. ...But, uh- let's not worry about that now, it's a special time right now!" She said, "It's practically our anniversary, with maybe a few days, give or take."
"... it is?" Marcy asked, surprised, blinking owlishly as she put her glasses back on.
"Marcy did you forget -" Sasha began before their wife laughed nervously.
"What? No! Of course not! How could I forget our anniversary - in uh.... threeeee?" She draws out the number longer than is necessary.
"It's the day after tomorrow, Mar-Mar." The blonde informed her gently.
"In two days!"
Anne let out an overexaggerated gasp. "Mar-Mar! How could you forget our anniversary? Why, I bet you didn't even get us presents!" She swooned on top of Marcy obnoxiously. "Why, I cannot believe you! Sasha and I ought to punish you for this by... by sharing a kiss without you!"
"Uuugh I'm a terrible spouse." Marcy despaired. "I should have planned like - a banquet or something to celebrate. Why didn't Lady Olivia remind me?!"
"Well, she's kinda got her own thing going on at the mo,'" Anne shrugged. She pinched Marcy's cheeks and guided her to face her. "Mar-Mar. You aren't a bad spouse, you're a busy one. Honestly, I gave you a fifty-fifty chance of being too wrapped up in your work to remember the days. It's okay, Sash and I aren't mad, like, at all."
"We're not mad, just disappointed," Sasha added in her best impression of an adult man's voice. "It's fine Marcy, seriously." She relented as the smaller girl bit her lip. Slowly, Marcy relaxed, the green in her eyes flickering again.
"Okay, but I'm going to make up for it. You two are the best wives I could have ever hoped for and deserve the love and adoration that title comes with."
"D'aw, that's so sweet, Mar-Mar." Anne cooed. "But before you do- we got some presents for you!"
"Oooooooh! Presents!" Marcy immediately straightened up, clapping her hands. "You guys didn't need to get me anything! I literally have everything!"
"Oh, you do?" Anne asked, a glint in her eye as she opened her backpack. "Alright, then I guess I can just throw this Player's Handbook away. And these dice, too."
"No, no, no, no!" Marcy immediately surged forward, taking the somewhat stained but still legible book and surprisingly heavy bag of dice, doing a happy little dance that jiggles her crown around her ears. "My creatures and caverns fifth edition table top role playing game kit! Aaaaaah!" She hugs it to her chest, unable to contain a small shriek as she opens the dice bag. "And look! This is the d6 I got stuck in my nose! It survived!"
"Yup! It did!" Anne puffed out her chest proudly. "You can go ahead and give me my kisses, now."
Anne is wrapped up in surprisingly strong arms and lifted up off the ground, a crackle of verdant verdigris running through Marcy's bangs before she puts her down to kiss her square on the mouth.
"We have to finish our campaign!" She declared, bouncing on her toes. "Do you both remember your characters?"
"Uuuuh. I think I was like - an elf or something? Are elves purple?" Sasha guessed as she stretched, cat-like.
"Not in the least," Anne admitted, still slightly dazed after the kiss. "I- I think I played a frog? Or am I thinking about Amphibia?"
"Oh it doesn't matter. It's been so long since I had a book from home that was this intact." She pressed the cover to her face and inhaled deeply. "I'm going to have my top archivists immediately transcribe this and then seal it away forever in the special collections."
"Oh boy. I'm not sure I can top that for you. I mean, books are your thing and stuff." Sasha admitted, waiting a minute before standing, opening her backpack and retrieving a collection of crudely stitched dolls made from soft fabric. "I uh - I made these though. They're not that great." She says offering the armful of disfigured animals to Marcy who delicately removes a tiger with only one orange stripe. The queen of amphibia's voice is quiet when she speaks.
"You - made this?"
"Yeah. I couldn't trust anyone else to get it right - you remember how fucked up they drew that rhino when we told them about it -" She continued before stopping as Marcy sniffs, her upper lip wobbling. "... Marcy. Oh god Marcy, I'm so sorry. I know they suck, you don't have to keep them, we can just throw them out-"
"This is the most beautiful bear with a racing stripe I've ever seen." She says, burying her face against the fabric.
"It's... supposed to be a tiger." Sasha clarified but Marcy probably couldn't hear her over her happy tears.
"Told you she'd love 'em," Anne grinned smugly at Sasha. "You made 'em, after all."
"Shut up." The blonde snapped without venom, covering her face to hide the blush that was spreading over her cheeks. She grows even redder when Marcy takes her by the chin and kisses her as well, though it's a little bit less romantic than Anne's embrace considering her upper lip is coated in snot.
Sasha doesn't seem to mind though.
"Thank you. Thank you both so much." The smaller human said, hugging her presents tightly to her chest. "I don't deserve either of you."
"Bullshit, of course you do," Anne replied immediately. "Look at all the good you've done for Amphibia since you've been here- you're a good person, Mar-Mar. I'm proud to be your wife."
"And the sex is nice too," Sasha added, wiping her eyes as well.
"You guuuuys. Would it be bad if I asked you what you wanted? Or should I just get you what I think you'll both like?" Marcy asked as she calmed.
"It'd be bad 'cuz I dunno what I want." Anne shrugged. "Genuinely. I'm actually very happy with everything I've got at the moment."
"Half of the fun is the surprise anyway." The blonde agreed, rising from the throne to wrap an arm around the other two human's shoulders. "But I am putting in a request for our anniversary dinner. No bugs. Please."
"Anatomically speaking bugs are only a subset of insects but I know what you mean, so - yes. No creepy crawlies." Marcy reassured her. "... ah. I'm starting to run a little low on juice for today." She mentioned, clutching the gemstone around her throat. "Do you guys... mind if I turn it off for now?"
"Of course not," Anne reassured her. "Your health comes first."
"Anne's been looking forward to carrying you anyway," Sasha added. Marcy grins, though there's a little less joy in her features, and closes her eyes. The calamity gem glows, borrowed energy returned to its source, and she immediately sagged, her knees wobbling after losing a balance. She seemed - much smaller now, even though nothing about her had changed physically, apart from losing color in her cheeks.
"Ring for Lady Olivia? She can handle - the book and stuff. Then we can head straight to bed." Marcy requested, leaning more heavily on Anne, suppressing a cough.
"She might be a little busy at the moment. We can just bring the book and stuff to the bedroom for tonight." Anne suggested, lifting Marcy up easily.
"Busy? Doing what?" She asked, slightly confused. Lady Olivia was one of the few people who knew about Marcy's health and she made great pains to be available to her surrogate daughter to attend to her in private.
"Yunan, probably," Anne replied.
"... oh. Oooh. I didn't know she had come with you. She usually never leaves the field unless she has to," Marcy commented, surprised.
"I know, I was surprised as you are. She and Olivia are trying for kids right now though, and you have to do that in person apparently." Sasha explained. Marcy opens her mouth in a small 'o' of surprise, a hand going to her chin.
"They're doing the Whiptail ritual? Oh my gosh!"
"...Is that what they call sex in Amphibia?" Anne asked. "And why do you know that?"
"Well only when it's two women who want to conceive. The Whiptails are a tribe of all female lizards whose traditional form of reproduction is parthenogenesis. They have a fascinating culture."
"... what the fuck is parthenogenesis?" Sasha asked as she picked up Marcy's gifts and gently slipped them into her backpack, sliding it over one shoulder.
"Parthenogenesis is a form of asexual reproduction that occurs without sperm!"
"Oh, cool." Anne hummed. "I think. Honestly, I really only knew what one of those words meant, and not exactly in that context."
"Two girls can have babies without a man." Marcy translated.
"Oh. I guess they don't need anyone else's goo then." The blonde stated, mildly surprised.
"Yeah, that's pretty cool." Anne decided. "Amphibians, man. Some days, I wish I had been born one. I mean, their taste in food is great."
"How can you say that? You've tasted fried chicken - you remember what that's like, right?" Sasha asked, pausing as Marcy coughed again, needing a moment for the spasm to pass. The paler human opened the door leading to the queen's private chambers, located in a hidden panel behind the throne.
"It's - it's cool, yeah. Normally - parthenogenesis creates a clone of the mother - but the ritual combines and merges traits from both parents." Marcy continued, regaining her breath.
"How?"
"Magic!"
"...Magic?" Anne asked. "I mean- I guess that makes sense, it does exist in this world, I think."
"I've been studying the - old traditions a lot. I want to be a wizard so bad..." She vowed quietly as they climbed, the cool darkness of the twisting staircase returning some of the color to her cheeks.
"'Course you do, Mar-Mar." Anne chuckled. "Have you tried any magic yet?"
"Not a lot outside of alchemy with Maddie. Curse magic has some of the most detailed information, but we're gonna crack the code for other stuff too. Then I'll be able to cast fireball!"
".. and also you'll be able to heal yourself and find a way back home?"
"Huh? Oh yeah, that too I guess. But mostly just-" Marcy punched the air, wiggling in Anne's grasp. "Pchow! Explosion!"
"Yeah, that sounds about right." Anne nodded, shifting Marcy slightly as she opened the door to their room. "Aight, we're here. I think you can put the stuff on the table, Sash."
Their room was - surprisingly sparsely furnished. Marcy occupied it most of the time by herself, so there were books of course - but these were read for pleasure rather than work or research. Most of them were still thick enough to be used as door stops but she still enjoyed them. There was furniture of course, high quality stuff, including a writing desk and a telescope pointed out the large balcony. But mostly this was a space intended for living in rather than conducting the complicated public lives they all had to balance.
A couch, a large pane of magnifying glass placed over Marcy's phone screen so they can watch movies in bed, small collections of knick knacks that ranged from the intriguing like models of a galley at sea to the surprisingly mundane - feathers, shiny rocks, small toys that were posed fighting each other over a map.
Marcy is normally inclined towards messes, filling up every available space over time with whatever she's currently fascinated with - but this room is kept clean and cleared of clutter. The most extravagant item is the massive bed, big enough to fit three people comfortably and still have room for fussy sleepers to wiggle and kick.
Carefully Sasha sets the dolls she made down at the foot of the bed and leaves Anne's treasures on the writing desk, placing a simple wooden cane with no ornamentation other than a small smiley face crudely carved into it on the nightstand for easy access before seating herself.
"... it's so good to have you both here. This place feels empty without you." Marcy sighs quietly.
“I’m sorry we can’t be here more often,” Anne replied, setting her down on the bed. “I miss you, like, all the time on the road.”
"I know." Marcy sighed, removing the jewel around her throat and setting aside, glad for some reason to remove the non-existent weight. She began to slip out of her robes, turning away from Anne and Sasha for a moment to do so. The massive scar that runs through her chest and back is angry and red today from what little of it they can see as their wife slips into a night shirt. "Once we get the new government up and running, let's just - retire and never leave each other again."
"We can go to the Plantar farm, live as farmers," Anne suggested. "I know Hop Pop would love that."
"I am not becoming a farmer." Sasha immediately rejected.
“You could become one of the town guards!” Anne offered in turn. “…The only town guard, actually. Wow, Wartwood still doesn’t have a town guard, I don’t know how it’s taken me so long to see that.”
"Pfft. If we're retiring anywhere it'll be some place that isn't in the ass end of a swamp. No offense Anne." Marcy smiled, laying back as Sasha stripped, leaving herself in her preferred sleeping clothing - her underwear and nothing else. "We could keep an apartment in Newtopia. I'd like to be close to the university so I can manage experiments directly."
“Hmmf,” Anne grumbled as she sat down on the bed, unlatching her armor. “Betrayed by my own wives. What would Hop Pop say if he could hear you both say those things, huh? You’d kill him with a broken heart.”
"He'd probably thank us because he's finally got the house to himself." Sasha decided, scooting closer to help Anne remove the bronze from her body. "We'll retire back in LA anyway." She offered as an alternative. "Someplace classy, near the beach. Maybe a two bed three bath..."
"... I dunno Sasha," Marcy murmured, folding her hands over her chest as Anne's heavy armor is dropped to the floor. "I'm pretty sure it's not legal for three people to be married to each other on Earth. That's like - bigamy or polygamy or something...."
"Eh, so we can't have like, tax forms and whatever, so what?" Anne shrugged. "We can still be married, just not in the eyes of the government. And who cares what the government thinks?"
"People might still... think we're weird," Marcy said as Sasha laid down beside her, her hair falling over her face in a cascade of golden yellow.
"You still worried about what your parents will think?" She guessed.
"... just a little."
"Okay, if you being married to two women is the thing they have a problem with -not the superpowers or the frog nation, or being stabbed in the back- then they're like, as bad as Sasha's parents, and I'm fairly certain they're better than that," Anne reassured her. "They'd definitely be confused, though."
"I never told them I liked girls," Marcy commented, not for the first time. "So, it'll probably still be kind of shocking, even in comparison to uh - all the other stuff. I've been thinking though. If - when - we find a way back home. We can't let anyone else know about Amphibia."
"What?" Anne asked, shocked. "Why not?"
"The minute we show people the talking frogs they won't think we're crazy-" Sasha added, propping herself up on her elbow.
"No, no. It's not that. It's just - I was reading my old US history textbook last month, and... well, humanity doesn't have a great track record when encountering alien cultures that are recovering from crisis. I mean, even putting aside the fact that Amphibians might not be... immediately recognized as people, we still should consider just basic biology." She rests a hand on Anne's bicep, stroking the muscles.
"Like what?" Anne asked. "The fact that they're frogs might make people less likely to accept them? ...I mean, you're right, but still."
"Most Amphibians are - well, weaker than us, even without our calamity powers factored in," Marcy said, shaking her head. "We're taller than even adult newts, and - well, not me because I don't get as much exercise, but you guys are definitely stronger than most toads. And we're not as prone to sickness as frogs are, even though we're completely alien to this environment."
She squeezes Anne's tawny skin as she talks, eyes distant.
"I want to believe that humans wouldn't... do shitty stuff. But the the fact that Amphibia has so many natural resources and proto-tech? There are too many bad actors out there to assume we won't be opening up this place to be exploited."
"...Yeah, you're right," Anne admitted, falling back as she put on her pj's. "I- I still want to tell my parents, but- nobody else."
"So much for our book deal..." Sasha sighed, accepting the facts that had been laid out to them. "If we can't go back I guess it... might end up being for the best in the long run. Better that there's no way for anyone else to come through here and do what I tried to do."
"I guess, yeah," Anne admitted sadly. "But- I wanna see my parents again. Let them know that I'm alive, at least."
"... is it weird I miss your parents too?" Sasha asked.
"Oh no, Anne's mom and dad are super great." Marcy immediately attested. "They practically adopted me since my parents were always too busy with work to pick me up from after school activities."
"Your parents were a lot more in love than mine were." The blonde decided, draping an arm over the taller girl's chest. "It made me sick to watch them call each other pet names at the time but - yeah. No, I'm pretty sure my mom and dad straight up hated each other when they got the divorce."
"Yeah, my mom and dad are great." Anne nodded. "...I hope they'd be proud of me. Of us, if they knew what we were doing."
"How could they not be?" Marcy asked with a smile, dimples forming in her cheeks. "You're basically a superhero without the tights! I mean, if I had a kid I'd be impressed if they could punch a hole through a brick wall." She paused, looking over towards Anne. "Oh and you're saving people too, that's important, but like - come on. Superpowers!"
"Heh, yeah. I think they'd just end up being worried about that, honestly." Anne chuckled. "I wonder how they'd like my new froggy family? I hope they get to meet the Plantars, eventually."
"Please, your mom adopted a feral alley cat after it licked her. She'd be like putty in Polly's hands." Sasha decided. She turns over, pressing herself into the big spoon position against Anne. "Tomorrow... I'm gonna go and visit Grime. Either of you want to come along?"
"Yeah, I'll join you." Anne nodded. "I need to tell him I'm disappointed that he never gave me my shoe back."
"... he was the one who stole your shoe?!" Marcy gasps, shocked. "He's responsible for your curse!"
"Right?!" Anne agreed vigorously. "Like come on, dude! I know I blew up your tower, but that just feels like overkill!"
"Anne, your only curse is that you never learned to tie your shoelaces right," Sasha stated, closing her eyes.
"I dunno Sash. This seems like dark magic is at work." Marcy argued, sliding her feet under the covers.
"Yeah, I know how to tie my shoelaces!" Anne retorted. "You make two loops, and stuff one inside the other!"
"... I can't go with you two. Sorry. I'll pick out some really good flowers from the arboretum," Marcy commented, her voice small. "I haven't been able to leave the castle in three months. Too much of a security risk."
"One of these days, we'll have to sneak you out of the castle at night," Anne told her. "Someday soon, too, while Olivia is busy fucking Yunan."
"Mmhm." Sasha agreed. "Besides, with us around? Nobody'll ever touch you. Except for when we're someplace private of course."
"Hm. Okay, but - we really do need to be careful." Marcy warned cautiously. "I'm seeing evidence of some sort of organized conspiracy starting to take shape. Not bitter-enders this time, I think. People who want to replace us."
"Really?" Anne asked. "Can't they just wait for like, a year? We'll be gone by then."
"Mmm, that might be why they're doing it now," Sasha mentioned softly. "If they can take the throne now it'll be a lot easier for them to hold onto power. Maybe cancel the convention, start their own royal line of succession."
"Yeah, I guess that makes sense," Anne grumbled. "Ugh. I just hate that they have to be doing that. We want what's best for Amphibia, can't they just let us do our work?"
"... I still think we should kill him." Sasha declared quietly.
"No. I can't. I just - I can't Sash. There's no way he could be behind this. Six people in the entire world know Andrias is still alive, not including us. None of them would ever talk." Marcy bites her lip and closes her eyes tight.
"And he knows the most about the music box." The paler teenager supplied the rest of the argument. "It'd still make me feel better to know he can't hurt you, no matter what happens."
“We could remove his arms,” Anne suggested. “And his legs. Leave him as just a stump with a head.”
"Salamanders can regrow lost body tissue, up to and including their limbs, eyes, and even substantial parts of their nervous and circulatory systems." She shook her head. "He's nothing without the Night anyway. Just... a sad old man."
“Well we can just cut them off for fun, then. He’s a bastard.” Anne mentioned. “Though isn’t there a way around that? Like, couldn’t we burn the edges or something, or cut off his arms and put him in a metal basket so they regrow all deformed and useless?”
"Or maybe we could dunk his arms in acid every morning," Sasha added.
"Hey. Let's just - leave things as they are for now, okay?" Marcy asked, curling herself up into a ball.
Anne sighed, and rubbed Marcy’s hair soothingly. “Sorry. We just- Sasha and I kinda hate him. A lot.”
"I hate him too. But I promised myself I'd never be like him again." The teenager says with a shake of her hair, her fingers clenching underneath the blanket. "One day, he'll be alive and I'll be dead, and he'll know I lived my life how I wanted, and was happy, and he can never hurt me again. Then he can die."
“…That’s fair,” Anne told her quietly. “You were never like him, ever, but if this is what you need to know, then Sash and I will be glad to give it to you.”
"Thank you..." Marcy says, her voice almost as small as how she's trying to curl up. Sasha gently slides her arm around the smaller girl, hugging her silently until Marcy untensed, her shoulders sagging before burying her head against Anne's chest. "Thank you." She repeats again, before slowly going still, eyes closed but no longer kept shut by muscle tension.
“…Shit, I forgot my other present,” Anne whispered after a moment.
"It'll keep. Show it to her tomorrow morning.... unless it's like food or something that's gonna go bad, then I'll eat it for her."
"No, no, you're right, it'll keep." Anne nodded. "Besides, I need to put the finishing touches on it. And it's for both of you, so even if it was food, you'd have some too."
"Hmmm, you're really buttering us up. You must want me and Marcy to do something nasty." Sasha accused and teased in the same breath.
"Pfft. No, I just give gifts to say I love you." Anne mentioned. "Plus, it's our one year anniversary, of course I gotta butter you up. It's a good tradition."
"Mm. Well, I might just give you a reward anyway..." She offered before closing her eyes as well. "Tomorrow night."
"Hmhmhm," Anne grinned. "Well, can't wait."
Anne didn't have many dreams, at least none that she usually remembered. There were some nights of course where she'd wake up in a cold sweat, her body stiff and sore and more often than not a foot or so from where she'd gone to bed, entangled in blankets. Sometimes things would be broken, knocked off the walls. Sometimes the pillow would be wet with tears and her eyes itching. But those nights came when she was alone - alone with just her thoughts that her traitor brain loved to pelt her with before slipping into unconsciousness.
Sasha didn't fidget as much, but she didn't sleep much either - she had the opposite problem really, her mind empty but unable to find calm, leaving her paralyzed, staring up at the ceiling, arms over her chest, still as a corpse, eyes open while she waited for the daylight to return and with it her body's surrender to exhaustion that would let her actually rest.
Marcy slept the worst out of the three of them. Sometimes she would have nightmares that would make her shiver in her sleep. Sometimes she just woke up exhausted, more tired than when she'd gone to bed. And then there were some nights where she woke up screaming, not knowing where she was or even who she was. Doctors, healers, and alchemists had been consulted - but unfortunately the field of Amphibian psychology wasn't exactly advanced. Trepanation had been suggested far too many times.
Marcy refused to take sleeping tinctures - or any drug - that might impair her in any way. Sasha drank, heavily, for a very short period before her then girlfriends interceded, and now relied more on some sort of herbal tea that tasted bitter but was at least tolerable to the taste buds.
Anne - well, Anne had exercise, pushing herself to the point of physical exhaustion to ensure uninterrupted if not restful sleep.
That night, Marcy woke a few times, but the presence of the two other teenagers was enough to soothe her - at this point Sasha didn't even need to be awake, her body responding reflexively to the blankets getting tangled by twitching feet to hug whoever was unsettled to her chest and hold them there.
When morning came, each of them felt more well rested than they had in weeks - and none of them were particularly interested in getting out of bed until finally Marcy rose up, rubbing her eyes.
"Okay, sorry. I just - I gotta pee real quick." She murmured in apology.
Anne groaned in response. "No, Mar-mar," She whined petulantly, waving her hand blindly to grab the other human. "Stay."
"Bff." Marcy blinked owlishly as the blurry shape of Anne's hand wiggled into view - and then bounced off her cheek and chin. In response, she licked the back of her wife's arm, up to her wrist.
"Ack!" Anne yanked her arm out of reach of the wet tongue. "No! Bad Mar-Mar! You've been hanging around frogs too much."
The smaller teenager managed to squirm away from her wife sandwich, leaving Sasha pressed face first into Anne's shoulder, not even a snore coming from her lips. If Anne didn't know better and couldn't feel the rise and fall of her chest, she might very well assume the blonde was dead.
"Sorry, sorry," Marcy whispered in apology as she slid her feet over the side, groping the nightstand for her glasses and then for her cane which she uses to push herself upright. "I'll be back in a minute. Promise." She assured Anne, using her cane to help her maintain her balance.
"Mmm, you better, I wanna cuddle still," Anne informed her wife, peeking out of the covers blearily at her. "...You need any help?"
"I got it. Go back to sleep."
"Oh, I plan on doing that anyways, but I'm sure Sasha would be glad to help," Anne said.
"You're terrible." Marcy teased lightly as she hobbled away. The rhythmic thump of her cane against the stone floor grows quieter as she disappeared into the en suite bathroom.
Sasha opens one eye, working her jaw back and forth, stirred at the mention of her name. "What time is it?"
"Um..." Anne looked out the window. "A time. Probably in the morning, if I wanted to guess."
The blonde nodded, closing her eyes, her shoulders slowly relaxing. "Had the dream again." She commented quietly.
She didn't need to tell Anne which dream.
The 'watch Marcy die' dream.
Anne winced. "Ah. Sorry." Whether she was empathizing with Sasha over the pain of the dream, or apologizing for not helping her through it, even Anne wasn't sure. "Marcy just went to the bathroom."
"... okay. Good." Sasha sighed and she smiled with the small influx of relief those words brought. "Want to go and get that mystery present now while she's distracted?"
"Hm," Anne considered whether or not to for a moment. "...Nah, soon. I need- it needs to warm up for a hot second before it's ready. But I should be able to grab it pretty quickly, anyways."
"Please tell me it's not a pet. Do we really want a Domino 4?"
"No, no, it's not a Domino 4. Though was Domino 3 really that bad?" Anne asked. "And besides, why would a pet need to warm up?"
"Domino 3 smelled. So bad. And - I don't know, something cold blooded?" Sasha stretched, her back cracking lightly before she placed an arm around Anne's shoulder, kissing the taller teen on the cheek so as not to knock her out with morning breath.
Anne kissed her back on the cheek in return. "How soon do you wanna leave to go to the memorial?" She asked, then paused. "...Oh my goodness, we've only been married one year and I'm already getting down to business first thing in the morning. I've become so old."
"Earlier is better. I want to get in and out before people are on the streets." She sighed quietly, thinking over the last time she had walked through Newtopia during the day and gotten pelted with garbage from unseen assailants.
"Yeah, that'd be for the better." Anne agreed. "... It sucks that they don't like you."
"I don't mind it. We've got a good thing going on - you're the velvet glove. I'm the iron fist." Sasha stated. "Besides, I don't care. People I know like me. I don't need validation from random newts and frogs."
"Well, that's good." Anne chuckled. "Honestly, you may be the only one in our little family that actually feels that way." She grinned even further and pinched Sasha's cheeks. "And to think, before Amphibia you wanted to be a popular girl!" She cooed. "And you said that you weren't going to change."
"Yeah, well, you're just lucky I realized I was bi. If I had been straight it would be all over for you." Sasha conceded before pushing Anne away lightly to give her enough room to sit up.
"No, not you too!" Anne complained. "C'mon, lay down! Keep me warm!"
"Anne, my nips could cut diamonds right now, you really want them pressing against your back?"
"I never said you had to be the big spoon," Anne protested, but she sat up as well anyways.
Sasha dragged herself a little bit closer, seeking out the other girl's hand under the blanket.
"Guys, do you want me to make breakfast?" Marcy asked as she stepped back into view. "I really think I've got a good idea of what a quiche should look like now."
"Oh, a quiche? Again?" Anne looked to her blonde wife with hesitation clear on her face. "Well, Sash, what do you think?" She asked, hoisting the decision onto her.
"I learned from my mistakes - it will have eggs in it this time," Marcy vowed.
"Thanks but, save it for tomorrow Marbles. We gotta get going."
"Oh - right. The memorial." Marcy noted, looking down. "Yeah, yeah - you guys go do that now. I'll get someone to bring flowers using this brand new speaking tube system I installed!" She gestured to the wall, her tone perking up almost immediately as she pointed to the tiny metal trumpet that had been embedded into the coral.
"Yeah, sorry Marcy," Anne said. "We'll just have to trust your cooking tomorrow, then."
"You guys need to eat more." Marcy insisted even as Sasha reluctantly pulled away from Anne and passed by her other wife on the way to the dresser, her hands folded over her chest. "Neither of you look like you're getting regular meals as often as you should."
"I'm eating!" Anne protested. "It's just, sometimes Sprig and I can forget… for a little bit, but not that long!"
"I'm gonna own up to it, I really try to avoid eating anything I don't make myself," Sasha admitted as she pulled on her pants and picked out a scrunchy - red embroidered with white flowers - to tie her hair up into a ponytail.
"Sashaaaaa, don't be a baby," Marcy whined at her, slapping her shoulder lightly.
"I'm not a baby! I'm okay with eating bugs, but I will not join you two in your Timon and Pumbaa routine." The former cheerleader attested. "I will never enjoy anything with a thick exoskeleton. Ever. I'm swearing off shellfish when we get back home too."
"Aw c'mon, you'd get used to it!" Anne cajoled. "I did, it took me less than a month!"
Sasha huffed just a little bit as Marcy leaned in.
"You know every time you kiss me and Anne you're getting a little bit of our chewed up food in your mouth-" She began before the blonde immediately pushed a pillow to her face.
"That's it. I'm using the bathroom and then I'm outie, c'mon Anne. Get your ass in gear."
“Alright, alright, I’m getting up,” Anne replied, stretching as she ambled out of bed. “Gimme like, five minutes to get ready, Sash.”
It actually takes about twenty minutes for Anne to splash water on her face, brush her teeth, bother the little hair that was growing from her ear in a weird place long enough to pluck it out, clean out her nostrils, and then dress - but Sasha, despite her repeated threats of leaving, waited.
She was dressed in her 'courtier' outfit - black suit pants made of some material that had a velvety texture, a slightly frilly white shirt with lace ruffles around the collar and cuffs, her calamity gem lodged in the center of a cravat, and her hair pulled back into a severe ponytail. It made her look very business-like, and her riding gloves and boots could key the entire outfit from 'I'm in charge of this meeting' to 'I'm going to use a riding crop on your ass and probably make you very flustered because of it', but the effect was some undercut by the fact that she was laying on her stomach on the bed, idly kicking her feet in the air like she was about to write into a very pink diary, watching something on her phone.
Anne can hear the blonde's pre-recorded voice, tinged with static as she entered the room.
"- one more time!"
"Cower in fear!" General Yunan shouted a little bit too loudly as she and Polly were brought into frame, the two of them facing away from each other and striking mirrored poses. "For today you face the Scourge of the Sand wars-"
"The Menace of Monsters!" Polly picked up, shifting into a different stance.
"Defeater of Ragnar of the Wretched!"
"The girl who punched King Andrias in his big stupid face!"
"The youngest newt to ever achieve the rank of general in the great Newtopian Army!"
"And the youngest frog to ever squire for a general in the Newtopian Army!"
"General Yunan and Polly Plantar!"
The two of them shouted in unison as they both dabbed, and Sasha barely suppressed a snort of laughter as she watched.
“Okay okay okay, I think I’m finally good to go!” Anne claimed as she futilely plucked a piece of foliage out of her hair, stepping into the others peripheal vision. “You ready, Sash?”
"Been ready for an hour." Her wife said, turning off her phone before offering Anne her hand. Marcy, being Queen, had the luxury of hanging out in her pajamas and was thoroughly exploiting it, laying around with a book on 'Loste Childes of the Myst' on the couch.
"Here, don't forget these," Marcy said, rolling over and then extending her cane to lazily open the dumb waiter, on which was waiting a bouquet of flowers - bright purple and violet, lavender and white, and green and yellow blossoms tied together with neat black ribbons. "Say... hi for me." She requested quietly.
“Thanks Mar-Mar, you’re the best,” Anne said, taking the flowers. “Don’t worry, we will. Oh, and before I forget,” She turned around to look back at Marcy as she went to leave. “I’ve got another anniversary present I’m gonna give you and Sash when I get back. Hopefully. If I’m happy with it by then.”
"Whatever you picked out, I'm sure I'm going to love it." The smaller girl vowed, letting her head slip out from under her t-shirt so she could blow them both a kiss as they left for the streets.
The streets were empty, but they weren't - empty empty. Anne could tell that there were thousands of people around her at any given time in Queenshold. A city was never quiet - not in the way a small town like Wartwood could be, when literally everyone and everything could be guaranteed to be asleep at the same time. So many people in so small a space each created their own little noise that, taken separately could have been easily ignored but together left a small background hum.
The palace guards watching at the gates, exchanging small talk, the fires burning inside braziers, the quiet tap and electric hum from the telegraph office, animals moving just out of sight. There were also the people who had to get up earlier than the others - the people who kept the many small parts of machinery necessary to keep the city alive running while others slept so that they could be passed off immediately without interruption.
“Man, I always forget how loud it can get here,” Anne commented off-handedly. “And it’s not even noon yet! Everything’s a lot quieter for the most part out in the woods.”
"LA was worse though." Sasha decided as they walked, her hand squeezing Anne's as they passed out of the boundaries of the half constructed walls, down to a small hill that lay almost a mile away, overlooking the less permanent but more complete fortifications that the regiments used to muster. "I'm pretty sure we'd go deaf now if we had to sit through traffic in rush hour again."
“Yeah, I’ve had that thought before, actually,” Anne admitted. “Can’t believe I’m saying this, but Hop Pop might be right: there is something to nice simple farm life.”
"Stars are nice to look at." Sasha admitted as she climbed the hill, following the well worn path. There were two toads standing guard at the top - both saluted to the teenagers.
"You guys take five. We'll look after things here." The blonde said, and the smaller of the pair looked up at her the way frogs tended to look up at Anne. A mixture of awe and reverence and curiosity - but also sadness. Almost pity but not quite.
"Yes, Toadlord." The other said, much more used apparently to the sight of the humans, nudging their compatriot to draw their attention back to the present so they can march down the hill together, armor rattling lightly.
Sasha took a deep breath and stepped towards what they were guarding - the shattered remains of Barrel's warhammer, having been lodged deep within the hill after its meteoric descent. The hill was still bald and scarred from the energy discharged in that battle, and might stay that way for the rest of eternity - who could tell?
A small stele had been raised for the shaft of the weapon to rest upon, inscribed in Amphibian with a few words. "A great tragedy has ended. A great victory has been won. The skies no longer rain death. The wounded and dead are homeward bound. Treat them kindly."
Anne silently passed the flowers to Sasha. She’d always been closer to Grime, after all.
The blonde takes the blossoms, holding them to her chest before stepping forward to lay them down alongside others that had been strewn around the memorial, kneeling them to arrange them in a slightly neater pile before bowing her head before speaking in Latin. She wasn't trying to hide what she was saying - this was just something that had to be said in that language, a series of words that had to be said in the right way in the right place at the right time if the memories dredged from Catholic school were anything to go by.
Anne knew what the words mean, and repeated them quietly with Sasha, head bowed slightly.
"Hail, Mary, full of grace,
the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou amongst women
and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for us sinners,
now and at the hour of our death.
Amen."
Sasha opened her eyes slowly and rested her hands on her thighs, a deep rattling breath escaping her chest before she managed to speak.
"So. Uh. Been a while I guess. Don't worry, I know you're not going anywhere." Sasha stated with a rueful grin. "Just been busy I guess. Things are - good. Better than they were."
She paused, searching for the right words. "I know you don't care much about it but I'm sorry and - and -" The blonde stopped, shaking her head.
Anne put a hand on her wife’s shoulder. “…It sucks that you’re dead,” She said lamely after a moment. “I mean, I do feel less bad about the whole deal because I just learned that you stole my shoe, but- not by much. Oh, and Marcy says hi.”
The joke snaps Sasha back to the moment, and she smiles more firmly. "Yeah, Anne is so pissed. God you were such an asshole when we first met. I loved teaching you about - talking to people, it was amazing. Thank you for listening to me. And... also taking care of me, when I didn't have anyone else."
She rubs the tip of the metal pole lightly. "I don't know what you'd tell me if you were around. Probably to stop moping and move on. To be happy that I'm alive maybe? You really never talked about what to do after the war ended… I really wish you were here right now though."
Sasha coughed, blinking away the tears that had accumulated in the corners of her eyes and begun to run down her face. "You could be the Toadlord and I could lounge around the castle."
Anne rubbed circles on her wife’s back, content to simply be a grounding force for her.
There's a few more moments of silent contemplation before Sasha looks up over her shoulder. "I'm so sorry Anne. If it wasn't for me, we'd still be home, and nobody would have died. "
“Don’t be,” Anne replied simply. “We all have a part to play in all of that. And the biggest part to play came from the backstabbing git Andrias, and last I checked you weren’t him.” She informed her wife.
"I don't know why I'm so sad. Grime told me he wanted to go out in the middle of a big fight. This was basically - more than he could have hoped for, right?" She looked down at the flowers. "Fate of his and our worlds hanging in the balance and all that."
“I mean, you still lost him,” Anne tried. “That still counts, even if it’s how he would’ve wanted to go. It’s still time cut short and all that. I mean, I have a feeling that Polly would want a similar death, don’t you think all the rest of us would be super bummed out if she died gloriously though?”
"Yeah. Probably worse, considering she's a cute kid and not - a grodie old man with bad depth perception." Sasha said, bitter humor in her voice.
“No doubt she’d become one in a heartbeat, though,” Anne claimed. “Just watch- our backs will be turned for one second, and suddenly she’ll be like a Grime Junior. Or a Yunan Junior. Or an unholy mixture of the two,” She shuddered.
"Hop Pop'll probably outlive us all at this rate," Sasha commented. "... you think that there's anything - after?"
Anne shrugged. “Dunno. I mean, I have run into ghosts before -at least, I'm fairly certain they were ghosts- so maybe. I dunno, I can’t really imagine a world that has magic in it without some form of underworld, honestly.”
"When we bite it, I hope he'll be there. It's not the same without him."
“Yeah, I hope he is too,” Anne said, squeezing her wife’s shoulder. “That way, I can finally beat him up for taking my shoe. Oh yeah, and it’d make you happy to see him.”
Her wife barked out a short laugh, before sighing. "Do you remember a song from home? About - poppies growing over a battlefield? I think people would sing it on a holiday or something."
“Honestly, I can’t remember most songs that weren’t pop or indie,” Anne claimed. “Why?”
"No reason I guess. If I could remember the lyrics or the tune I'd probably want to try singing it but - I guess I've had enough of one flavor of sadness for today. I don't want to get weepy and nostalgic over earth next." She pushed herself up off the ground, dusting off her knees as it began to drizzle. "Thanks for coming with me."
“No problem,” Anne said, patting her shoulder. “Glad I could be here for you, at least.”
"We should head down to the training field and terrorize the new recruits over how they hold their pikes or something. It'd be what Grime would want." Sasha offered, taking the taller girl's hand again.
Anne shrugged. “Sure, I’d be down for that. Not too long though, I wanna get back to Mar-Mar before dinner.”
The two of them turned towards the fort instead of back towards Queenshold, where Sasha made an absolute nightmare of herself. Uniforms were inspected, weapons checked, drills run repeatedly. The army no longer differentiated by species, but most of the units were organized by roles that lent themselves to certain traits.
Frogs were better marksmen on average and very good at retreating rapidly in the face of danger - before, in the few uprisings where they had fought for themselves, they generally preferred guerrilla tactics, to harass the enemy and disappear back into the country they knew better than their opponents rather than force pitched battles. They made up the core of most of the skirmishers, gunners, and scouts - though many more were employed just in keeping forces supplied as baggage handlers, quartermasters, and aides de camp.
Toads were stronger, less agile but harder to knock down, and most had been born into a militarized culture - they knew nothing else except war - but the old kind of war. The war that involved a lot of menace and short but brutal campaigns to sow terror and break the enemy’s morale. Retraining them to the new type of warfare, which was fast, mobile, and waged to preserve peace rather than enforce discipline, was something many of the older toads were resistant to. They generally made up the bulk of the front line and, while many would prefer to act as shock troopers, were often expected to play a much more defensive role in protecting others.
Finally, the newts, as a whole, had been quite comfortably ensconced in the position of the officer class during the old days - so much so that many bought their positions rather than earned them in the old Newtopian army, and had very little actual experience of commanding troops other than by pointing them in a general direction and then expecting them to get on with it while they watched from the sidelines. Weeding those out had been difficult, but it was beginning to pay dividends. There was a new generation, who were also much more willing to get their hands dirty. Not as strong or as agile as others, they still made very decent infantry but excelled as cavalry given their much more thorough experience in breeding and caring for the variety of different animals that were used as mounts.
Sasha is finally satisfied to relent from her surprise inspection after an hour or two - it was still drizzling but the sun was partially out, and it made the air turn into a variety of hues from the shifting rainbows. It also meant, however, that the streets were much more crowded as they made their way back, and Anne could feel the change in attitude.
The amphibians in the army seemed to respect, if not actually like, Sasha given her command experience and deferred to her where they might argue with Anne. Among the smallfolk though, the blonde was treated with open hostility and fear, while they flocked to Anne's side and embraced her as one of their own.
The effect of the two of them walking down the street, hand in hand, always produced a mixture of reactions. People wanted to get closer to Anne but also skirted around Sasha, making odd bubbles in the foot traffic. Smiles for Anne, cool gazes for Sasha or averted eyes. Outright hostility was rare, but no one would forget the role either had played before the war. The girl who had fought to protect the weak and downtrodden, the other who had oppressed them, tried to conquer them.
“It’s always so weird to see them do this,” Anne whispered in Thai to her wife. “I’m not really used to it.”
"Yeah well. We have our roles to play. You're the hero. I'm the hot morally ambiguous -" Sasha began before something broke on her shoulder. An over-ripe vegetable - not a tomato, those were way too expensive to just toss given how dangerous they were, a slightly more firm rotten turnip instead - splattered across her face and chest as it burst.
“Hey!” Anne glared sternly in the direction of the thrown vegetable. “No! Bad- whoever that was!”
A group of kids - probably no older than pollywogs - leered down at Sasha from a nearby rooftop, more projectiles in hand, but they immediately drop them as they catch sight of the other human's stern glare, rotten eggs and old squash discarded as they race in the opposite direction.
Anne sighed. “Sorry about that, we should head back a little quicker, probably.” She brushed rotten vegetable off of her wife’s chest. “At least they stopped before the eggs.”
The blonde's shoulders stiffened, her hand raised up - and then brought down firmly to her side.
"I hate when they do this. If I let them get away, that means they'll throw more shit at me later." Sasha said in Latin, suppressing the edge of anger in her voice. "I try to get them to stop and I'm the bad guy for yelling at little kids, or the scary monster if I snap. No matter what I do, I lose."
“Just let Marcy and I handle it,” Anne requested. “If they realize they’ve got us disappointed in them, they’ll stop. Eventually.”
"If I had a Twitter account here, I'd be ratioed to hell and back." Her wife commented, picking up the pace.
“Well then, it’s a good thing you don’t!” Anne shrugged. “Besides, the toads all like you. A hell of a lot more than they like me as a general rule, they all see me as a weak little shit. And they’re not afraid to say that to my face.”
"That's because you never get in their faces," Sasha advised, looking at the road under her feet rather than the people around her. "They'll respect you if you show them you're not willing to back down more than if you try to find a compromise."
“Yeah, and you get in the frogs' faces too much.” Anne returned. “They’ll honestly be more likely to forget about what you’ve done if you take the time to negotiate with them - they honestly enjoy the bargaining more than the actual deal, a fair amount of the time. Also, show them games on your phone. That worked for me, at least.”
"Maybe it's better if one of us is the default bad guy and the other is the default good guy. You know - good cop bad cop." Sasha suggested, wiping her face off with her hand.
“Sash,” Anne stopped her wife and placed her hands on her shoulders. “I know that you always try to say that you’re fine with everyone hating you, but I know you. It’s definitely not as bad as it was back on Earth, but this is still eating at you, isn’t it?”
Her wife looked up to meet her gaze, her fingers curling. "It does." She admitted rather than trying to fob her off with a lie or misdirection. "Not as much as it did - but. Yeah. I'm not going to change people's minds though. I did bad things Anne - people have a right not to forgive me for what happened."
“Yeah, but they still might,” Anne stressed. “All we would need is a big rebranding! Some big event where we can show the world the ‘New Sasha’, who’s all about peace and cooperation!”
"And what if they decide they don't like you because you're sticking up for me?" Sasha asked, turning around and beginning to walk backwards up the hill. "We're barely holding the kingdom together with spit and glue Anne, we shouldn't rock the boat."
Anne shrugged. “Eh. I’m used to the general populace having a problem with me, I can deal with it again. Besides, I’ll still have Wartwood, and the Plantars. And maybe, if we had more of the general populace liking all three of us, things could go smoother?”
"Maybe I should just sail off towards the horizon, like Colombo." Sasha proposed as an alternative. "Find some country where they don't know who or what I am and start over again there."
“I will lock you up in the castle dungeons before I willingly let you leave again,” Anne replied, shutting her down instantly. “Besides, if you did that, Marcy would invent the airplane and abandon everything just to be with you, which would truly leave the kingdom in shambles.”
"If you lock me up put me next to Andrias, so I can spit at him all day." Her wife requested, folding her hands over her chest and turning on her heel. "And - I get it. I get it, you think I'm a good person. Sometimes though, I don't think that's true. How do you know I'm not just manipulating you again? I could be. I've done it before!"
“Well, I’d like to think you wouldn’t go as far as marrying me if you didn’t actually love me, for one,” Anne explained, moving to walk by Sasha’s side. “And two, I’d also like to think I’m a bit wiser by now, not so blind to think I’m never being manipulated. And you haven’t asked me to do anything that goes against my morals or makes me feel icky, either, so even if you are manipulating me -which you aren’t- then I don’t really mind.”
"How can you trust me when I don't trust me?" Sasha asked, her tone halfway between annoyed and despairing.
Anne shrugged. “It’s pretty simple, I just do. Maybe I’m gullible or what have you, but I don’t think so, not anymore. You’ve changed so obviously to me, Sash, I think you’re a lot better of a person than you give yourself credit for. …I mean, the old Sasha would’ve just tried to forget about Grime, not fight for a memorial in his honor.”
Her partner is quiet, contemplative before moving again, her foots falling to match Anne's pace. "If Andrias hadn't been evil - if he had just been this big friendly guy everyone thought he was, I'd still be that same person I think. I just don't know how to square that. That it took someone to be worse than me to make me change."
“To be fair, it took me a similar deal.” Anne supplied. “The first time that toads came through town to collect taxes, that’s really the first time I can look back to and recognize who I am now in, if that makes sense. And I’m sure that if you’d landed yourself with the Plantars, you would’ve had a change of heart much faster.”
"Maybe." Sasha conceded, looking down again as they approached the palace walls. "I can't ever imagine you going along with Grime or Andrias though Anne. You're just - you're just better than me."
“Are you kidding?” Anne chuckled. “I totally would’ve. Ask Sprig, I was pretty toxic as well when I first came here. I just landed into a better support system than either of you guys did.”
"Hm. Maybe I'm not any better than these dumb frogs. Putting you on a pedestal."
“Can’t blame you, I am pretty great,” Anne boasted, puffing out her chest.
"Ugh, and now I hate you." Sasha decided as they passed by guards and gates without ever having to break their stride, people scurrying to open the doors for them. "You gonna go work on your super-secret project?"
“Yeah, probably.” Anne nodded. “Wanna make sure it’s good before giving it to you guys, so you may not see me for a little bit.”
"Fine, I'm gonna take a bath. And then probably spend a couple of hours talking to Marcy about what's been happening in the east. God I hope Yunan and Olivia are finished banging by then or I'm going to have to do so much talking."
“Do you think they even do the do?” Anne asked. “I mean, if it’s basically just magical cloning, do they even need to be nekky for that?”
"I mean - they gotta right?" Sasha asked, flummoxed. "Eh, I'm not gonna bother thinking about it. I know too much about their love life as it is."
“Yeah, same.” Anne shuddered as they entered the castle. “…Though I have a feeling Marcy would know.”
"... hey, if it was just you stuck here all alone, you think you'd have ever - you know, tried it?" Sasha asked, pausing at the foot of the stairs.
“…I feel like I don’t want to ask this, but try what?”
"You know. The local flavor." The blonde added, rolling her hand in the air. "I mean, they do have those really long tongues so that's a point in their favor but they're so cold."
Anne grimaced. “I… might’ve? I mean, they are sentient -or sapient, or whatever the term for human intelligence is- so they’re more like aliens than amphibians, right?” She shuddered. “Eugh, that is seriously off-putting to think about. Thank you so much for putting that thought in my brain, Sash.”
"Hey if I had to think about you do too." She retorted with an evil grin. "Try not to think about weird lizard sex while you're working on your gift!"
Anne groaned. “Yeah, I was already thinking about that! Not that that has anything to do with your present, just- never mind!”
After cleaning up, Sasha sought out her wife in the solarium - a fancy word for a room with a lot of windows - where a butler (or footman or whatever) said she had retired to after conducting open court most of the morning. There the Queen of Amphibia rested on an old pillow, much darned, crown discarded like it was a cheap piece of junk behind her atop a pile of books. Marcy kneeled, her head bowed forward, while her closest advisor Lady Olivia ran a seashell comb through her black hair. Olivia hummed as she worked, her voice soft and raspy, and for a moment Sasha remembered her mother, now just a vague cloud of intentions with a sharp voice and foggy features in her mind, tying her hair into braids when she was six.
The blue newt continued to card Marcy's hair, working out the tangles that had built up from the human not bothering to brush her hair before bed or after getting out of the shower, and the two of them seemed in their own world, someplace very far away, where the world was soft and without pain. Sasha hated to interrupt but coughed anyway, straightening up slightly as Lady Olivia turned her bright turquoise eyes on her, the action exposing just a hint of the scarred over but still angry red gash that ran across her throat that was usually hidden underneath her lace collar.
"Sorry to interrupt." The blonde said, caught wrong-footed, not sure of what to say.
The newt put down the comb, kissing Marcy lightly on the head before moving her fingers, signing her words since she could no longer speak coherently or without pain ever since her voice box had been damaged.
"<It's fine Sasha.>" Olivia stated with a movement of her thumbs and a rotation of her wrists.
"So uh - you and Yunan -" Sasha began, before pausing, flustered when Olivia smiled in a way that seemed much more intimate than when her wife had been shouting about goo.
"<Yunan needed a rest. I wanted to check in with Marcy anyways.>" The newt courtier stated. Marcy twitched slightly but kept her eyes shut, obviously trying to block out the world for now. The blonde knew from experience her wife would need a little bit to decompress and regain her energy, so she seated herself cross-legged across from the much smaller amphibian woman.
"Long day I see."
"<She has a lot on her mind.>" Olivia signed back, her face falling slightly. "<And she still hates delegating. I wish she would lean on me more. Not that I don't understand why she doesn't.>"
Sasha nodded, falling quiet. "You'd think that after all this time - people would just move on. Like, not even forgive and forget but just spend their energy doing something else other than hating you."
"<People like having someone to blame.>" The blue-skinned amphibian stated, her navy tresses shifting slightly as she shrugged. "<It makes problems seem easier.>"
"They're ungrateful if you ask me, after everything we've sacrificed." The former cheerleader stated with a small glower.
"<It is what it is. I think it's a sign of how good a job we're doing when we make people mad.>" Olivia answered back smoothly, and Sasha couldn't disagree with that, so instead she took Marcy's hand, rubbing her thumb along the smaller human's knuckles.
"So uh - kids huh?" She finally asked, waggling her eyebrows at Olivia knowingly.
"<Yes - I want two. Yunan wants ten. We'll meet somewhere in the middle.>"
"As long as you two are having fun in the moment, I'd worry about the consequences later." The human advised flippantly before pausing, looking the older woman over again. "Why now?"
"<I feel like it's safer now. That there's a place for them to grow up in the future.>"
"You sure you're not just empty-nesting? Sad your little Marshmallow is all grown up?"
Olivia rolled her eyes in response. "<She may be the ruler of Amphibia - but she'll always be my Marcy.>" The newt answered simply, falling still as her former ward turned over, blinking blearily, her fingers seeking out the newts and lacing together, the two of them rapidly tracing words against each other's palms. Marcy laughed, smiled, sat up, and groped for her glasses only for her wife to slip them over her ears.
"Thanks, Sash."
"No prob, Bob."
Olivia released Marcy's fingers and gathered up the hem of her dress, bowing her head - there was no need for any formal dismal or invitation while the humans begin to talk, falling into an easy back and forth.
When Anne finally joined the other two teenagers in the solarium, Marcy has set up her work desk, currently covered with messy piles of paper and unsorted unopened envelopes and books with her back up against the window, so that the sun would shine directly on her. Sasha meanwhile lounged - which was honestly her preferred state. The girl could relax almost anywhere, though at the moment that meant she was leaning against the wall on her shoulder, one leg out the other pressed against a column to stabilize her as she talked.
" - so the problem is I think that the money isn't able to circulate. Notes are accepted by the big merchant houses, which is great, but most people are too far down the chain to ever meaningfully interact with them. Maybe we should consider legalizing gambling with the new notes so that people would have a reason to start using them in smaller quantities."
"Mhm," Marcy replied, her pen scratching away at her notebook, her attention elsewhere.
“Or, we could just abolish currency and capitalistic society altogether and just trade rutabagas instead,” Anne offered as a means of greeting.
"Yeah maybe," Marcy murmured, not even noticing, too far into the zone.
Anne grinned, sensing an opportunity. “Hmm, you know? Rutabagas are a little niche, it should be something everyone has readily available to them. What d’you think it should be, Sash?”
"Oh obviously it should be teeth. Frog teeth would be a great currency, don't you think so Mar-Mar?" The blonde asked, pushing away from her perch to saunter next to Anne.
"Sure, sure." Marcy agreed noncommittally, chewing on her pen.
“So is that your official word as queen then?” Anne questioned. “Should we start sending out tax collectors to punch frogs in the mouth and steal their teeth?”
Marcy blinked owlishly, looking up. "Wait, wait what are we talking about again?"
"Damnit Marcy, are you writing fanfics again instead of listening?" Sasha sighed, reaching out to pull the notebook forward. Marcy immediately pulls back, letting out a nervous laugh.
"What? No, no, no, no - I'm just - working on - something. It's not important!"
Anne tsked. “Mar-Mar, I really thought we were getting somewhere! We’d just come to the decision to rid the dollar bills from circulation and replace them with teeth!”
"Well no obviously we're not doing that-" Marcy immediately objected, giving enough of an opening for Sasha to snatch the journal away to get a closer at what had kept her wife so absorbed. She frowned, puzzled.
"Marcy, are you doing algebra homework?" She asked, turning the book over to reveal the pages filled with letters connected with dots and dashes. "We haven't had a math class in six years!"
"Actually I took calculus and upper-level physics at the University three years ago, so technically it's been half that amount of time."
“Why would you willingly go to school in a magical fantasy land filled with frogs?” Anne asked though she wasn’t surprised. It was Marcy, after all.
"Because it's fun!" She said, before frowning and looking away, a shade of pink creeping into her features. "... anyway, no it's - not algebra homework. It's... a breeding chart. You know, like a family tree, only backward. You're planning for uh - livestock - that haven't even been born yet, mapping out lineages ahead of time."
“You’re making a math chart about cow sex?” Anne peeked over Sasha’s shoulder to look at the chart.
Sasha's amused grin immediately disappears as she finally realizes that the letters constantly appearing are AB, MW, and SW. "... should we be concerned with the fact that these are the initials of our names in your breeding chart?"
“Do you have cows that you named after us?!” Anne asked, shocked.
"No it's - I've been thinking - and - well -" Marcy fidgets, pulling her robe up over her face and attempting to shrink inwards before finally speaking softly. "I want a baby."
"What?!" Sasha asked, eyes wide as saucers. Marcy inhaled and repeated herself, almost shouting.
"I want a baby Sash!"
“…Wait,” Anne held up a finger. “You mean like, an actual child? You want a human child?”
"Yes! Please don't hate me." Marcy requested, covering her face as she burned bright red. If she was any redder she might be mistaken for a chameleon.
“No, no, we don’t hate you for this, Mar-Mar,” Anne assured her, ever the people-pleaser. “It’s just- kinda sudden. What, uh… is this something you’ve been thinking of for a while?”
Sasha dropped the book back on the desk. "Is this because Yunan wants to get knocked up?"
Marcy squirms, picking at her robe lightly before answering in a small voice. "... maybe."
"Marcy, we can't have kids, we're all -"
"That's not a problem actually! I've been researching the Whiptail ritual and I think we could rejigger it to work on us!" Their wife said, immediately popping upward.
“Okay, what does a Whiptail ritual involve?” Anne asked. “Is it just like- sitting in a pentagram and going ‘humuna-humuna’ until a baby appears?”
"Actually it's very interesting, you see sex is a key part of the rites to ensure gestation -" Marcy began before Sasha shook her head and interrupted again.
"Hold up, hold up, hard stop here. What happens if we have a kid and we never find a way back to earth? We'd just be leaving them here, completely alone, the only human in the world!"
“Yeah, you’re not wrong,” Anne admitted. “I mean- one of us would probably end up being that anyways if we never got back home. Though if we had multiple kids, they may not be as lonely.”
"It's still the same thing in the long run, we're just passing our problem down to people who would be born without any choice in the matter," Sasha argued, her voice firm. Marcy nodded, raising her hand.
"I know, I know - that's why I'm doing this chart! Assuming that we never find a way to introduce new genetic material into the breeding pool-"
"Please don't say those words about potential children." Sasha requested, hand covering her eyes as Marcy continued without a pause.
"There'd still be some variance introduced by the ritual. In fact, it would actually be good if each of us acted as father - donor of genetic material - and mother - the one who carries the child to term - in a different sequence. But then, of course, the question becomes -"
"Marcy. I am not comfortable with what you're suggesting." The paler human objected.
"It wouldn't be incest! I mean - not from a purely genetic point of view. We would still be looking at a pretty hard population bottleneck but I bet I could find a way to crack it. I just - need to figure out the right pairings ahead of time."
“Yeah, no, I’m not comfortable with that either, Mar-Mar, sorry,” Anne stated as well. “I’m not saying no to the idea of kids, but like- let’s not be those people who do the whole ‘technically it’s not incest!’ song and dance, alright?”
"Besides, weren't you talking last night about how bad it would be if human beings started to pop up here?" She paused to look at Anne, who was more experienced in this arena due to her experience as a monster hunter.
“We'd basically be an invasive species that would be poised to out-compete the actual Amphibians out of their environmental niche,” Anne stated. “Also- don’t really want to live on through any kids I have. Kinda want them to be able to do their own thing.”
Marcy removed her glasses, rubbing her eye lightly as she sank back into her seat. "I know. I know. But - but if we never find a way back home, I don't want to die here alone."
Anne sighed. “We aren’t alone. We have each other, and- well, I may be a little weirder than you two, but I wouldn’t really feel alone anyways. We’ve got the Plantars and the others, after all.”
"People are constantly trying to kill us, Anne!" Marcy snapped, a little bit of anger in her voice. "We haven't had a single year where someone hasn't tried to poison us or assassinate us or just straight up stab us in the middle of a fight. I'm safer here but you guys are out there risking your lives all the time!"
“Okay, and how is that an argument for having a child?” Anne asked. “How is it fair to take a baby and thrust it into that position as well?”
"Maybe - maybe people will realize they won't get rid of us so easily! Instead of just killing three humans -"
"They'd have to worry about killing four of us, or five, or even six - with the rest of those people being our children Marcy," Sasha insisted, tremulous in tone. "Do you really want to put them through what we went through but worse? Having to grow up constantly fighting to survive?"
“It- might not be as bad as all that,” Anne supplied. “The cities are fairly safe, usually, and if we can fade into pretty much obscurity then the attempts on our lives might fade a bit.”
"No. As long as we have these powers, we'll always be a target. We're too powerful to ignore." Sasha placed her hand to her throat.
"It's not fair," Marcy said softly, her voice breaking, hot tears streaming down her cheeks. "None of this is fair! I want a family! I want to be normal!"
“Marcy,” Anne sat down next to her wife, softly stroking her hair. “I get that. All of us do. But we can still be a family without having kids,” She tried. “We have each other, and the Plantars, and Yunan, and Percy and Braddock, and Oliva. We have a family here, even if they don’t look like us.”
"We can always adopt. There are lots of kids out there who need a good home." Sasha added softly, uncertain of whether to draw back or move closer as Marcy began to cry into Anne's arms.
“Yeah, I was going to suggest that next,” Anne said, beckoning Sasha closer. “There are plenty of kids that were displaced by everything that happened with Andrias, we could probably take in one or two. And regardless, we’re still teens,” She stressed. “We have time. And think about it: if we did decide to have kids right this instant, and then suddenly did find a way back home, how awkward of a conversation would that be with our parents?”
"We're never going back home again Anne." Marcy despaired quietly even as Sasha slipped their hands together and squeezed. "We're going to die here..."
“We’ll find a way,” Anne stated resolutely. “We’re fucking amazing, we’ll find a way home if we want it.”
"This is the reason why the Pensives or - Pevensies or whatever their last name was- went back to England even after they got old -" She mentions, before Sasha coughs lightly, directing her gaze back up.
"Who?" The former cheerleader asked, and Marcy took a deep breath, wiping her nose.
"You know from The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe? The one with the furry Jesus?" The smaller girl asked, the trivia coming out with a smaller more controlled sob. "The Pensives were the only humans in Narnia -"
"Weren't there a bunch of humans later though?"
"Oh they weren't related, I think they were uh -" Marcy pondered for a moment, surprised. "Wait, where did the other humans in Narnia come from? Ugh, I wish I had google."
“I always kinda felt like the Pensives left Narnia by accident, honestly,” Anne mentioned. “Like, they were hunting a white deer or something, found the old lampost, and then… they came out of the closet. Or the wardrobe, technically.”
"Yeah but it was like - it wasn't fair for them to have to spend their lives growing up without any other human contact so - they got to go back and be kids again. I think. Ah, I didn't really like the Narnia books." Marcy mumbled, snorting loudly. Sasha reached into her pocket, retrieved a handkerchief, and held it to the smaller girl's nose for her to blow loudly into.
“That would suck, though, having lived that long only to have to live it again.” Anne decided. “I really hope that’s not anything like Amphibia’s like. I’m not going back to thirteen, I can’t.”
"Yeah if the option is going back to Saint James or staying here, I am staying here." Sasha immediately agreed.
"It might be nice. We'd be able to skip a couple of grades! I could probably test into college-level courses." Marcy offered with a hiccup.
“I have killed people, Marcy,” Anne replied. “I am done with school.”
"So what, you're going to become a thirteen-year-old mercenary?" Sasha challenged, amused.
“If that’s what it takes!” Anne declared. “All I know is that school is no longer an option for me. …Maybe we should have children, it’d probably make my mom and dad less likely to force me to get a high school degree.”
Marcy laughed, the laughter turning into coughing as she clears her throat. "I'm sorry. I was being selfish again with - all of this." She said, reaching out to the notebook and tearing out the complex shipping charts she'd drawn up.
“Eh, not entirely,” Anne said. “I’ll admit, I’ve been kind of entertaining the idea of kids -adopted or not- for a little while now.”
"... me too," Sasha admitted. “We'd make some weird little gremlin though, with or without magic."
“Oh, definitely,” Anne nodded. “They’d grow up to be absolutely batshit insane with us as parents.” She turned to Sasha. “Why’ve you been thinking about kids? I know for Marcy it’s kind of Yunan and Olivia getting busy, is it the same for you?”
"Nah. Just - watching Polly running around these last few weeks." The blonde said, shaking her head. "She's a cute kid."
"... and what about you Anne? What put the thought in your head?" Marcy asked, her tone brittle but happier.
“How do you think?” Anne asked. “Hop Pop. When Sprig and Ivy and I last visited him, he was getting all up in their biz about how ‘he was getting old’ and ‘he wanted some great-grandkids before he passed’ and all that. He was mostly joking, but it still got me thinking about the whole deal. Goodness knows the only reason he didn’t ask me about any was that I told him that us three weren’t compatible like that.”
"Hm. He just wants more unpaid labor." Sasha declared. "I'm glad we're here, like this at least. I don't know if we could have come together if we never left earth. One of us would have been the third wheel."
“Oh yeah, definitely.” Anne nodded. “Coming to Amphibia was good. Would it have been better if we’d been a bit more prepared and whatnot? Yes, but still- whatever happens, has happened, or will happen, I’m glad that we’ve been a part of Amphibia.”
"Yeah. Yeah. I'm happy that we got to do this together." Marcy decided. "I just wish we could spend more time together without things falling to shit. I miss you so much." She pressed her lips to Anne and Sasha's cheeks lightly.
“I miss you guys too,” Anne said quietly. “…Oh! That reminds me, gift!” She hopped up, dashing to the corner of the room and hiding something behind her back.
"You gave me something already!" Marcy immediately protested before being shushed by her wife.
"Let her have this," Sasha advised her queen lightly. "Show us what you got girlfriend."
“You mean wife,” Anne retorted lightly, a nervous grin on her face. “Okay, first though: I wanna you guys to guess at what it is, it might help dull some nerves.”
"Well, it's for both of us..." Sasha noted before Marcy raised her hand like they were back in school.
"Oh, oh, is it a collection of wooden carvings that you've made of important places and people you've encountered on your travels?"
"Is it a board game?" The blonde asked as well.
“No, though now I have good ideas for what to do next year if I can sit through Hop Pop teaching me how to whittle,” Anne said.
“Violá!” She exclaimed as she took a small guitar out from behind her back.
"Actually that looks more similar to a ukulele. A viola is in the same musical instrument family as the violin, with its larger size giving it -" Marcy began before Sasha snorted.
"Mar-Mar. The gift isn't the guitar. She wrote us a song."
“Hey, you guessed it!” Anne grinned. “You didn’t happen to hear me singing it, did you? Because if you did, that wasn’t the finished stuff, don’t worry, this’ll sound better!”
"Nuh-uh, I'm going into this completely blind," Sasha assured her with a shake of her head, propping herself up on her elbows.
"Oooh, Anne, you shouldn't have gone through all that trouble." Marcy immediately demurred. "... but I do love to hear you sing to me so please, continue!"
“Okay, alright,” Anne nodded. “Well, I just- I wanted to do something special. And the first year we were here, I wrote a song, so I thought that the first year we were together would also be nice to commemorate with a song.
“Alright, here goes nothing,” She took a few steadying breaths and began the opening cords on her guitar.
