Chapter Text
The problem with infiltration, Sasha noted, was always an exit strategy. It didn’t matter how many routes she planned, something always went wrong. Something, something, plans and contact with the enemy, something.
No time to complain about it now.
“Seize them!” Andrias’s bellow buffeted them from behind- an almost physical push despite his distance from them.
Exit strategies were especially difficult to manage when your target was a fortress free-floating at heights that would leave her and Grime as a stain on the forest floor if they took the short way out.
And also when your infiltration was a rescue mission.
“Left- portal room…” Marcy wheezed into Sasha’s ear from where Sasha had settled her on her back, voice still weak and raspy from whatever the hell that… thing had been up to in the past months.
Prideful asshole had really enjoyed having a mouth way too much, and using a voice that didn’t even belong to it to gloat about what it was, and what it planned to do.
Which worked out in Sasha’s favor, rescuing Marcy. The Core spent too much time wasting Marcy’s breath on twisting words of steel and venom into Sasha like a knife, and paid too little attention to the actual knife a surprisingly stealthy Grime slipped through the wire connecting the helmet to… somewhere in this stupidly labyrinthine castle.
“Here! It’s here!” Sasha’s friend and guide pointed out what would hopefully be their ticket out of here.
There. The music box rested innocuously on its pedestal, polished wood glowing in the orange light- the sunset? The Core’s remaining eyes? God knew how much of it still pulsed through the castle wires like binary blood.
Tugged by an invisible fishing line, Sasha reached out to the music box. Pink light flickered like a heartbeat as she picked it up, fingers brushing over the war-bright crystal lodged into its casing.
Sasha froze as she stared at the box in her hands, thoughts snarling into knots like a kitten tangled in a ball of yarn, and just about as effective. Wait, how do alien portal generators work?
Gangly arms surged in Sasha’s peripherals as Marcy reached over her shoulders and grabbed at the box herself. “Let us just- circuit here, Earth’s energetic address is, shoot, um-”
“Sasha, we have to go! Now!” Grime’s voice, drill-sergeant strong, but almost drowned out by the armored thuds of a truly massive amphibian coming for their lives.
The oak-heavy doors slammed open just as green-blue-pink flickered in front of them, parting the very air around them like a knife through spark-silk.
No time, gotta run!
“There- whoah!” Marcy yelped into her ear, grabbing tightly onto her as Sasha lunged for the portal, half an eye on Grime to make sure he made it-
And not any eye on the music box, fumbled by Marcy’s shaking fingers and Sasha’s whiplash-quick dive for escape.
Sasha’s world went thunder-white, ears ringing, and she knew no more.
--
Coarse grass tickling at her arms.
A bright heat dappling magma-patterns across her closed eyelids.
Faint, grumbling croaks that she’d gotten used to hearing a long time ago- the captain was prone to voicing his thoughts aloud. Grime.
A heavy weight on her chest, but one that was still far too light for who it belonged to.
Sasha opened her eyes, squinting at spring-soft skies with cheerful cloud-wisps scuttling across flawless blue. Placed two fingers gently on Marcy’s neck from where she was sprawled over Sasha’s torso, and then slumped back in relief when Marcy’s pulse was strong, if a bit slow.
Impulsively, she buried her hand into greasy black hair, cradling Marcy’s head into her chest from where she was about to slide off of the sun-warmed leather chestplate.
Sasha reached out, grabbing a hasty fistful of rough grass and wildflowers in her clawed glove, just to make sure she wasn’t dreaming, and they had escaped Amphibia. Red paintbrushes, some blue-constellated flower, a weird-looking thing with a protruding seed-center. Huh. These don’t look familiar- this is Earth, right?
“Commander. Good to see you’re awake,” Grime’s voice carried dryly enough to make Sasha feel like a useless layabout who failed Basic. “I don’t suppose I can expect your counsel, finally?”
Yikes, someone is cranky. “Hey, shut it, old man. You could have woken me up any time you wanted, and you know it.” Big softie. Still, Sasha levered herself upright, careful to keep Marcy tucked against her, the dark armor searing at Sasha’s arms like asphalt in summer. “... Actually, keep an eye out a bit longer, yeah?”
Sasha awkwardly propped Marcy’s unconscious body against her arm and her raised knee, trailing her free hand over beetle-dark carbon fiber armor, looking for- aha, there it is.
With the catch wrenched aside, the weird armor fell off Marcy in shell-stiff halves with a pneumatic hiss. Good for making sure she didn’t overheat too much in this fog-thick heat, and also for making Sasha grimly aware of just how thin her friend was. She couldn’t count Marcy’s ribs, but it was a damn close thing. And she hadn’t woken up yet.
We need to get her- shelter, water, help, something. Sasha tucked Marcy’s head down against her breastplate. Slid one arm under her knees, and one under her back, where the knobbly protrusions of Marcy’s spine were uncomfortably easy to feel through the suit.
Sasha wobbled to her feet, arms firm beneath Marcy's back and knees because she was never, ever letting her go, not again.
She only swayed slightly as she surveyed the terrain the portal dumped them in- a notable accomplishment, given she felt like God had flushed her down the celestial sewage drain.
Rolling, ruddy planes of coarse grass, dull with the tail end of summer's heat. And it was hot, in a way that even the thick, intermittent clusters of tall-branched oak or claw-sweeping cedar wouldn't protect them from.
She gave in and voiced her frustration. It had been a long day. "Okay, where the hell are we?"
"I was hoping you would know," Grime griped from beside her, shading his eye with a flattened palm. "This is your home, after all."
"Uh, Grimesy, hate to disappoint you, but this is not LA."
Only one way to find out where. “Hey, Grime, do me a favor and reach into my pouch- the one right next to my sword sheath,” Sasha called.
“Ah, right, you said this device works to its fullest potential on your home world? Good idea,” he remarked, fishing it efficiently out of Sasha’s side-bag while her arms were full of unconscious Marcy.
While Grime fumbled through the phone password she’d told him months ago, Sasha awkwardly hunched over and shuffled Marcy around, eventually shifting her into a very droopy piggy-back ride. “Alright, give it here, let’s see what we got.”
Phone in hand, Sasha squinted at the upper corner. There was a singular wimpy LTE bar, but it kept flickering in and out as the buffering signal continued to spin beside it, mocking as a predator’s staring eye.
“Well, we’re on Earth, at least,” she told Grime, showing off her saintly patience by not shaking her phone around as if hoping to get a faster loading time rattling out of it. When it did finish loading…
“Mmph. S… Sashy?” wheezed out weakly beside Sasha’s ear, faint breaths tickling her hair.
“Marcy!” Sasha couldn’t turn around to really look at Marcy, but she could certainly try, pressing her cheek into patchy, greasy black hair. “Hey girl, back with the rest of us?”
“Mmm, five more minutes…” faded from Marcy’s barely-moving lips, and she was limp again, clammy cheek pressed into Sasha’s neck like she hadn’t touched another human being in months- oh. Right.
… Well, it was something.
So was the map application on her phone. Which showed-
“Where the hell is San Augustine?” Sasha wondered aloud.
“Not somewhere you’re familiar with, I assume?” Grime questioned.
“No. It’s like if you aimed for South Toad Tower and landed in-” Sasha zoomed out from their pinpoint on the map, further. And then further. “-In the middle of the northern ocean, how the heck did we end up in Texas?”
“Your friend was the one who had the box,” Grime pointed out, which immediately raised Sasha’s hackles, even if he did have a point.
“We were in kind of a hurry.”
“Oh, anything is better than being in the castle,” Grime agreed, squinting at the heat-wavering horizon once more. “But something tells me we’re a little bit off the mark, if you’re so shocked by this ‘Texas’ place.”
Sasha snorted, punching in some quick directions and- ouch. “Yeah, try a thousand and a half miles off the mark.”
“Miles?” Grime’s good eye nearly bugged out of his skull as he wrenched his gaze away from the alien landscape to stare at Sasha incredulously. “Earth is that big?”
“A lot bigger, actually.” Sasha took a full rotation of their surroundings. More wildflowers she didn’t know the names of, wave-rippling grasses, and enough cedars that made her hope it wasn’t allergy season on Earth yet. “We need to find shelter- civilization of some kind. The town we’re nearby is apparently pretty small, but it’s something.”
“Shelter first, and then transportation, if we have to travel that far to get to your home base. With allies, if we can, stealing a wagon or some mounts if we can’t,” Grime nodded. “What are our options for that? Any past squadmates you can contact with your long-distance phone capabilities? Family?”
“Not my parents.” Sasha cut him off ruthlessly, mouth smoke-sour. “Either of them.”
“We can’t exactly be picky about allies or resources right now, Commander,” Grime pointed out, reasonable and ruthlessly efficient in sniffing out exploitable resources as always. “Especially given our lack of other connections.”
Normally, he would be right. But Sasha refused to concede defeat on this, even if it happened to be a viable idea. Which it wasn’t. “They’d probably either turn you away or turn you in, anyway-”
Marcy stirred faintly, murmuring, half-conscious, “They suck.”
“And they super suck,” Sasha finished for her. Her mom had been especially weird towards Marcy when they got older and she changed her name, so if anyone had an equal right to resent the nettle-bitter unfairness that the Waybrights liked to drop on the shoulders of others, it was Marcy.
Sasha hadn’t even realized just how much they sucked until she experienced something so terrible as imprisonment and war. But also something so solid and good as finding more people she cared about and who cared about her in return, and finally becoming the person she decided she wanted to be, in the Plantar basement- and perhaps even earlier, on a playground in the LA suburbs.
“Well, they sound charming.” Sasha could practically hear the raised eyebrow-ridge. “Personally I think if your family won’t outright stab us as a greeting-test, it’s still an option, but this is your world. What else are our options?”
“... The Boonchuys,” Sasha realized, because Anne had been sent to Earth too, just over a month ago. “Anne must have found them after she went through the portal- they can help us.” Wryly, she added. “And they’re at least seventy percent less likely to stab you, I think.”
“And you’re sure they’ll be willing to help us?”
“I sure hope so,” Sasha grumbled under her breath, already tapping on Anne’s contact to call her. Guilt threaded down her throat at the old photo, at the reminder of how different things used to be. If not willing to help me and Grime, then willing to help Marcy.
On speaker, Sasha’s cracked phone rang. And kept ringing.
‘Call Failed,’ it taunted.
“Oh you’ve got to be shitting me.”
“Is your phone broken?” Grime peered critically up to where Sasha held her phone to the sky looking for a signal like a hitchhiker looked for a shady eighteen-wheeler.
Sighing in defeat, Sasha brought her phone back to eye level. “No, stuff just has a hard time going through because we got dropped in the middle of nowhere. Lemme try something else.”
Sash: ok idk if thisll even send but. found marcy, back on earth, music box dumped us in the asscrack of texas and i know things ended badly last time we saw each other but can you convince your parents to give us a ride.
It seemed like an eternity passed as the progress bar slid glacially across her screen, though it was more like a few minutes in reality.
Another undertowed eternity dragged at Sasha’s nerves as there was no reply.
Sash: Please.
Anna Banana: SASHA
Anna Banana: WHAT THE HELL HOW DID HHHHGH
Anna Banana: YOURE ALIVE AND MARCY IS W
It cut off from there. As the minutes passed in grass-rippling quiet, Sasha worried that the thready signal died completely.
Anna Banana: Sasha pls answer me is marcy ok are you safe dont ghost me like this god please
Oh hell, she was panicking. Anne never freaked out like this over text unless she was rattling apart, like the time she and Marcy nearly got hit crossing the street by a red light runner.
Sash: anne we’re ok, marcy and grime are with me and the signal is just bad so I won’t see everything. pls we can talk when we’re not stranded
Which no, absolutely not, Sasha was not skirting around the inevitable awkwardness of seeing Anne again. She wanted to be better, someone who deserved her friends, but what if she messed up, what if the sun-bitter frustration at just a text conversation freaking Anne out this badly was her falling into old habits as soon as she was around her friends again-
Marcy nosed deeper into Sasha’s neck, seeking out skin contact even in her sleep- and even if Sasha was about as pleasant a pillow as a sweat-soaked wad of fur. Which was what she was, really.
Marcy had always been clingy. Like she was never getting enough touch.
… She probably hadn’t been.
Somewhere along the lines of them hitting middle school, Marcy had just… stopped asking to hold their hands in the hallways or squeeze underneath their sweaters when the lights were too loud and the sounds were too bright. What was cute when they were kids was embarrassing when starting high school, even after Marcy changed her name and started finally wearing the girl’s uniform.
Sasha still assumed Marcy was just growing out of childish neediness like the illusion that all of them were actually growing out of it. Stupid. Sasha shouldn’t have just- just neglected Marcy like that just because she stopped asking for contact out of anxiety about rejection, or embarrassment, or worst, fear.
… Sasha had missed holding her friends, too.
She nearly jumped out of her skin when her phone reprimanded her in a tinny alert that was crunchy enough to let her know her speakers were just as much of a warning of her phone’s impending closed casket funeral as the rest of the beat-up parts of it.
Honestly, she was just glad it kinda worked. Mostly. At least half of the time. Which given, y’know, Amphibia, was pretty impressive. Sasha was pretty sure at least half of her was broken by it, at least.
Anna Banana: this is Bee, Anne said you were stranded?
Sash: yeah we’re stuck in some spitball town called san augustine. is anne ok?
Anna Banana: her mom has her, she’ll be okay! Just a bit shocked, she hasn’t been sleeping well. She wanted me to ask about Marcy, she said she was with you?
Sasha typed out her status report. Backspaced. Tried again.
Sash: unconscious but stable, breathing and heart rate ok. no injuries i could see.
At least no current injuries, the thought lanced through her brain like a needle of fire. The patchy wisps of hair regrowth around the evenly-spaced burn scars dotting Marcy’s scalp, the raised rift of scar tissue Sasha felt across Marcy’s back through the plugsuit- all healed over, because Sasha had been too late.
Anna Banana: okay thats good. if anything comes up, CALL US. it will take us a while to drive down there, so here is what you need to do- i looked at the town, and there is a motel there. You can use our credit card numbers to get a room, ill send it and the address to you.
Anna Banana: and STAY PUT. dont let anyone see any of your frog friends, we have already had some run-ins with the fbi
Sash: hey mr b can u resend the pics and address i think the crappy signal didnt let it through
And then her brain snagged on that last text much like she’d snagged her clawed glove between a frobot’s joint panels and gone for a ‘surprise joyride’ fifty feet in the air at way too many miles-per-hour.
Sash: hold on run ins with the What??