Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Marcy thought she was done with living. 

She’d died already - what was the point of coming back?? Who would even want her back, anyways? Not Sasha and Anne, that was for sure. She’d betrayed them. No one could love a traitor. That wasn’t how it worked in her stories. The side character betrays the protagonist, the side character dies, and everyone moves on while muttering something like “I never really liked her, anyways.” 

But she was alive. Very much alive. And was being given a redemption arc, no less! Lady Olivia and General Yunan (of course, she forgot about the minor characters everyone forgot about; of course, they would take pity on her and try to save her) had come to her rescue - but stupid, clumsy Marcy had tripped. It was her fault this was happening to her. If she’d just been able to walk like a normal person, none of this would be happening. 

If she’d just been able to accept the changes happening in her life - first on Earth, and now in Amphibia -  she wouldn’t be dying again. 

The cold, deathly embrace of the chair made her skin feel numb. Only tiny pinpricks of pain on her arms and legs hoped to break through into physical feeling, but that was quickly swamped over by her frantic brain. 

She should’ve been able to see this coming - why was everything blurring away? Stupid, clumsy, careless, unwitting; even these thoughts slowly drowned in a sea of panic. Fear gripped her and all rational thought was tossed aside in favor of trying to get away from that helmet because this was wrong, wrong, wrong- 

She stared up at the blinking green lights, her eyes darting to Olivia and Yunan. The two newts called out - they wanted to help but they couldn’t and if Marcy had just been smarter they wouldn’t have to be worrying about her at all and- 

Andrias averted her gaze as her eyes turned to him, begging for help. Marcy’s gaze flickered back up to the helmet, the lights closer and bigger now, endless patterns of constellations - some, she even recognized; most, she didn’t. She tried to move her head, anything, but the chair’s restraints held her fast. 

It lowered itself onto her head completely and for a moment all Marcy could see were flashing green lights on a backdrop of black and all she could hear was beeping. 

Something pricked her in the back of her head, the feeling of a tiny metal chip sliding under her skin and latching itself to the base of her neck causing her to jump slightly (more out of surprise than pain).

And then every nerve in her body exploded in pain, pain worse than when she was stabbed, pain worse than anything she’d ever felt before. She thought she might pass out - the green lights turned sickly orange and she tried to close her eyes, but couldn’t. Slowly, her mind started to go numb as well as her body. 

And then, just like that, she was gone.

Chapter Text

Marcy jolted awake with a yell. 

“NO-!” 

She gulped in air as if her life depended on it, fingers grabbing the edges of her bedsheets. It took the panicking girl a few moments to calm down, and then realize where she was. 

The first thing she noticed were the boxes everywhere. Some were marked FRAGILE; some were open, revealing action figures and Creatures and Caverns campaigns and books; some were bigger than her, but most were the size of normal moving boxes. 

Then her gaze floated around the room - the open curtains, allowing sunlight from outside to shine in. Posters all over her walls, displaying her favorite animes and video games. The open journal on her dresser with little doodles of frogs and gems on it. Wait. 

Moving boxes.  

Her eyes widened in shock. 

No.  

“No.” 

It couldn’t have been a dream - it was too real! Everything they’d been through, the friends they’d made, the lives they’d lost, the-

Them. 

Marcy scrambled out of bed, her legs getting tangled up in the sheets and causing her to awkwardly roll out with a loud “umph.” 

Nonononono please please please it couldn’t have been a dream please-  

The girl stumbled out of her room (it wasn’t really her room - it was the room in the new house she would be sleeping in, the room she was already remembering arriving in late last night, hanging up a few posters but not getting past the first box before her parents told her to go to sleep, why had they sounded so angry and so worried at the same time?) and down the hall and then down some stairs, the memories of her dream that couldn’t have been a dream already fading from her mind as new ones flooded in. 

Running out of the house in tears. Stopping for breath in front of some kind of shop, and then running further, all the way to Anne’s house, fighting back tears as they all sang “Happy Birthday.” 

Her parents arriving, demanding their daughter back. 

Marcy going back with them, and spending the night in the car on the long trip to Oregon. 

Falling asleep thinking about that cool art she’d seen in the book at the library before she got the text from her dad, wishing she could just escape it all. 

She found herself in the unfamiliar kitchen of their new house, where her mother was drinking coffee.

“Mom,” she said, hands shaking. “I need to call Anne and Sasha. Where’s my phone?” 

Mrs. Wu blinked in surprise. “Honey, you just woke up. Why don’t you have breakfast first?” 

“No, mom, this is important, please.” Tears were already brimming in her eyes - the memories of the dream were slipping away. Her mother gave her a sympathetic look and held out the girl’s cellphone. 

“Okay, but only for ten minutes. They’re probably-” 

“Thank you so much, Mom!” she swiped it out of the woman’s hands and dashed back upstairs, fingers fumbling over the call buttons for the group chat she shared with Sasha and Anne. 

Calling “The Girls”... 

The anime ringtone she had picked out sounded once. Twice. 

“Hey, girlfriend! Good to see you! What’s up?” Sasha was, of course, the one to answer first. Just hearing her voice made Marcy’s stomach tie itself into knots. The temple, the betrayal, the rebellion, King Andrias-  

“J-just wanted to call to - u-um, ask something,” Marcy replied. “D-did you have a weird dream last night?” 

The word “night” made her throat close up, but she couldn’t remember why. 

Just as the little picture of Sasha was about to respond, Anne joined the call. 

“Marcy!” she grinned that goofy grin Marcy loved so much. “I was… not expecting you to call so early. I’m not out of my pajamas yet.”  

A shuddering breath left Marcy’s lungs. They were both here. They were both alive. Neither of them looked scared or angry or dirty or covered in scratches and bruises. 

“She was just asking if we had any weird dreams last night. Right, Mar-Mar?”  

The girl nodded, her throat closing up again. 

“Nope, unless you count the grim reaper cutting off someone’s hair all that, cause that’s what I dreamed about,” Anne replied. “But I’m pretty sure that’s the normal dream-weird. Why? What’s up, Marbles?”  

Marcy looked at the ground. 

“It was about Amphibia.” 

She waited for a reaction; nothing. 

“Amphibia,” Sasha echoed. “That sounds like the name of a kids show about frogs. Maybe the science lesson bothered you more than you thought it did, Marce. I know Anne was grossed out by having to dissect a frog, but you?”

“You wanna talk about it?” Anne offered. 

So she did. 

She told them everything that happened, from arriving in Newtopia to watching Anne and the Plantars leave to the pain of the sword through her chest. She left out some things, of course, but the visuals remained the same. 

“Whoa. I take it back, maybe you inhaled something back in chemistry class.”

“Sasha!”

“What? I’m just voicing my opinion, sheesh!”  

“It felt so real, ” Marcy added, for at least the fifth time. “Th-the more I think about it, the more it sounds so silly, but - are you sure you don’t know who Sprig is, Anne?” 

“He’s the frog kid you mentioned. The one I’m friends with in the dream, right?” Anne recited, and Sasha made a whistling noise as though impressed with her memorization skills. Marcy’s heart sank. If Anne couldn’t remember Sprig, then what-?

“Maybe you should talk about this with a licensed therapist,” Sasha proposed, interrupting Marcy’s thoughts. The girl opened her mouth to reply, but a shout from downstairs made her stop. 

“Marcy! Time’s up!” 

She sighed. 

“I better go, my dad is calling me. Talk to you guys later.” 

“See ya, Marce.”

“Bye, Marbles.”  

The call ended, and Marcy put the phone on her bed, starting to make her way downstairs again. 

“I can’t believe you rewarded her behavior yesterday!” Mr. Wu yelled, pacing back and forth. “She needs to know that running away isn’t going to-” He paused as his daughter entered the kitchen. 

“She missed her friends. Can you blame her? We pulled the rug right out from under her feet.” Mrs. Wu walked over and gave her daughter a peck on the head. 

“It’s fine, Mom, don’t worry,” Marcy replied. “We had more than enough time to talk.” 

She drowned out the rest of the day in catching up on the Cynthia Coven series - her dad wasn’t too happy about it, but she wouldn’t be starting at school in Oregon until next week. She read some crossover fanfiction - although Marcy had never read The Good Witch Azura series, even she could appreciate decent plot pacing. 

Slowly, the dream started to fade from her mind. All except for the last part - the burning pain, the points of light, the orange glow; it was engraved too deeply in her memory, and she remembered every painful second of the nightmare. 

With a sigh, the girl clicked out of the tab, closed her computer, and laid on top of her sheets. Her limbs felt heavy and her brain felt sluggish, and not even all the fluff and hurt/comfort fics in the world could fix that. 

She turned over in bed, groaning slightly at the effort. As her eyelids started to droop, the last thing she heard was, Memories processed. Reaction was not serious. Continuing download.

Chapter Text

Marcy was happier than she’d ever been. 

She and Sasha and Anne (Mar-Mar and Sashy and Anna-banana) were traveling in the woods of Amphibiland, breathing in air smelling of petrichor and something else pleasantly sweet. The endless blue sky above was dotted with streaks of white clouds, and occasionally a large bird or insect would fly overhead. The forest was filled with the chorus of a countless number of massive animals, only increasing their volume in a wonderful symphony that felt as though it was created just for her. 

She smiled brightly at her friends, who smiled brightly back at her. It was surreal. Almost too good to be true. 

Sasha was sporting a new set of armor that looked even more amazing on her than her clothes back on Earth (which was saying something, because Sasha looked breathtaking in whatever she wore), complete with a cape that fell to about her knees, the skull of some kind of animal on her shoulder when did she wear bones on her armor?, a medallion on the center of her forehead, and long, braided hair that was almost as long as her cape. 

A curved sword hung from Sasha’s hip, but she didn’t seem to be in the mood for using it, instead letting the weapon swing at her side. For a moment Marcy thought the blonde had some kind of scar - on her cheek or over her eye, she wasn’t sure - but then it was gone and the girl decided she’d imagined it. 

Her gaze turned to Anne - wonderful, beautiful Anne - with her smiling face and hair dyed blue with twigs and leaves sticking out all over the place. Anne hadn’t donned any new outfit or armor besides a simple golden breastplate with blue highlights. It looked nice on her, Marcy thought. It felt real, like she wasn’t trying to cover up who she was. The Thai girl’s smile made Marcy’s stomach do a flip, and she coughed awkwardly as heat rose on her face. 

Marcy blinked and thought for a second that maybe Anne had tears rolling down her cheeks, but it was just the way the light from above shone through the leaves and sent speckled shadows across the forest floor, or maybe the bioluminescence of the glowing orange mushrooms around them mingling with the light from above to create the strange effect. The smell of burning flesh left her nostrils and she shook it off as her imagination. 

They traveled for a while longer before stopping in a clearing in the woods. Soft earth was packed tighter under their feet while Marcy took notes on all of the flora and fauna she could. This was paradise. This was exactly how things were supposed to be. She would never have to leave her friends, and they could go on amazing adventures just like this one forever and ever for as long as they wanted. 

While Marcy studied a particularly interesting cluster of blue and pink flowers shaped like stars, Anne was momentarily distracted by a butterfly and watched it flutter about the clearing on sparkling, dark blue wings. Marcy turned her attention to watch in amusement when she heard the rattle of Sasha’s armor as the blonde looked over as well. Things flickered for a second, and Marcy could’ve sworn the butterfly was a moth with strange tooth-like patterns on its wings. The fuzzy orange haze disappeared from her mind as the girl’s train of thought was cut short by a rumble, a crash, and a roar. 

Sasha leapt to her feet, brandishing her sword as it glowed with a menacing pink mist. Anne’s eyes narrowed and her hands clenched into fists. Marcy’s hand flew to her trusty crossbow the assortment of spells that she kept tied around her waist, her grip tightening on her staff. 

A massive creature lurched from the trees, bright red eyes burning into Marcy’s memory. It looked almost dragon-like, but also a bit like a moth or nothing at all, and reality seemed blurred the longer she stared at it.

“What the heck is that thing?!” The words gave her a dizzying sense of deja-vu, and even though they came out of her own mouth, it almost felt like she couldn’t control how she said them. The girl found herself rooted to the spot. Sasha ran past her, swinging her sword above her head and bringing it down with lethal force. 

A scream ripped from Marcy’s throat and the creature simultaneously, and she fell to her knees as a burning sensation spread out from her chest to her arms and legs and fingers and toes and eyes-  

Orange and green dots blinked through her vision as the girl’s tortured cries faded from her own ears. For a moment, she was sitting in the chair again, binary code running through her veins as her organic body was treated like a computer. A muffled, painfully familiar voice spoke deeply, her mind just barely too foggy to properly comprehend his words. Her spine hurt from this hunched-over position, every nerve felt scrubbed raw, and she couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. 

And then Anne was shaking her shoulders, and she was crumpled up in a ball in the clearing, tears streaming down her face. 

Anne’s hair wasn’t dyed blue anymore. It was a bush of brown on top of her head. Sasha’s armor was different, her hair shorter. She had a scar across her cheek that made Marcy’s head spin. Sasha’s worried expression looked wrong now, none of this was right-  

Didn’t they hate her, after everything? They said that they wanted nothing to do with her, and yet here they were, with these expressions on their faces that didn’t make sense. Marcy felt the memory of cold stone brush against her burning skin, and she felt for the small bruise on her jaw she’d sustained after falling without being able to stop herself. The soreness in her leg, even after it was long-since healed from her head-over-heels tumble down that flight of stairs- 

“HEY. Stop it.” Anne’s voice sounded like her own, but it was just a little off, a little too not-quite-Anne. 

“This is real, Mar-Mar. Stop trying to remember.” Sasha’s voice that wasn’t Sasha. 

Marcy covered her ears with a whimper, folding even further into herself. “No, no, this isn’t real, this isn’t-” 

How did we get here in the first place? her brain screamed. Where’s Sprig? Or Olivia and Yunan? Or Andrias?? What part of “Amphibland” is this, and how do you know that’s what it’s called?? Are you a mage or a ranger? WHO ARE YOU?! 

The world crumbled around her as the glowing orange haze returned in a cacophony of voices fighting for space in her mind and yet all speaking in perfect harmony, with a deep voice at the forefront of the melody. 

Processing unsuccessful. Emotional reaction too extreme. Retrying program.

Chapter Text

“Marcy. Earth to Marcy, are you still in there?” a voice said off to the girl’s side, snapping her out of her daydreaming. Marcy made an “oh!” sound and nearly dropped the book she was holding. 

Are you still in there? Marcy, please, I-

“Sorry,” she apologized sheepishly, glancing over at Sasha. “I kinda… spaced out for a second there. That was weird.” The nagging sense of dread crawling up her spine was also weird, but she decided not to mention that part. You know how you feel when you were just thinking about something, but can’t quite remember what it was? 

Sasha snorted in amusement, a playful smirk on her face. “Well, hurry up. School’s been over for twenty minutes and I’m not going to waste time waiting around for you.” Marcy wanted to point out that if what the blonde said was true, then she’d already “wasted time” waiting around for Marcy, since she was still standing here, tapping her foot impatiently. Sasha walked off before Marcy could fully dive into that train of thought, and a quickly muttered “hey!” was all she managed to say before running after her friend. 

St. James Middle School was just as dull as ever, with grey lockers lining the halls and some kind of weird puddle in the corner that could’ve been orange juice but also could’ve been something else - for a few strange seconds, it almost looked like blood (but that was ridiculous, so when Marcy blinked and saw that it was definitely not blood, she mentally scolded herself for thinking anything different before running to catch up with Sasha again). 

After a few moments, Marcy caught up to her friend, panting from exhaustion. Sasha giggled and Marcy convinced herself that the blush in her cheeks was from exertion. Just outside the front doors, Anne was waiting patiently, leaning slightly against a pillar and trying not to glance at her phone. The moment her two friends came outside, she brightened up and waved them over. 

“Marcy! Sasha!” 

“Sorry we took so long, someone was lost in dreamland for a second there,” Sasha joked, giving Marcy a glance. 

“No worries, my parents are running a little late,” Anne replied. 

“Speaking of which,” Sasha added in a singsongy voice, “who’s ready for the best. Sleepover. Evaaaaa?!” The three of them jumped up and down in excitement - it was a wonder Marcy’s parents had even let her stay for the night at Anne’s place at all, actually. The girl suddenly felt a sharp spike of pain through the back of her head, but dismissed it as a random bodily pain that everyone got without explanation sometimes. 

Just as Marcy was about to open her mouth to properly respond to Sasha’s statement, the Boonchuy family car pulled up in front of the school. The girls piled in, Sasha already chatting up a storm about that weird kid who was always making googly eyes at Anne. The Thai girl grimaced at these remarks and replied confidently that she had absolutely no interest in him. 

“Quiet down back there, you three,” Mr. Boonchuy peered at his passengers with an expression somewhere between annoyed and amused. “And if you’re going to gossip, at least include me in the conversation.” 

Sasha snorted and put an arm around Marcy’s shoulders as though to balance herself. 

Oh my God Sasha is leaning on me and does her hair always smell like strawberries and gosh, it sure is hot in here temperature-wise, Mr. B should really turn up the AC, the Taiwanese girl thought lopsidedly, hoping her face didn’t look as red as it felt. 

She blinked, and suddenly the car was pulling into the Boonchuy driveway. 

“Alright, out of my car,” Mr. B ordered lightheartedly. Marcy crinkled up her nose in confusion. They had arrived at Anne’s house already? Maybe he did need to turn the AC up - or maybe she was just spacing out again, silly Marcy, stop worrying so much! 

“Move, Mar-Mar! You wanna start setting up our stuff or not?” Sasha’s remark had almost no anger in it, but she did look slightly annoyed by the hold-up and Marcy didn’t want to keep her friends waiting. 

“O-oh. Right, sorry, Sash.” She pushed the door open and hopped out, slinging her backpack over her shoulder. It was especially packed today - what with the sleeping bag, extra books, a magazine Sasha had let her borrow, and of course her classic “ROLL PLAY” pajamas. 

“Anne! C’mon, girl!” Sasha was already at the front door, knocking loud enough to alert the neighbors. Mrs. Boonchuy came to answer it and a brief flicker of annoyance darted across her expression before she smiled. 

“Ah, Sasha and Marcy, good to see you,” the woman said. “Come i-” Before she could finish, Sasha was already inside, kicking off her shoes and looking around. “-in, and make yourself at home,” Anne’s mother’s grin seemed a little more forced. 

“Come on, Marbles!” Anne smiled warmly and took the girl’s hand. Anne is holding hands with me and do her eyes look weirdly beautiful or is that just the light and OH GOD WHAT IF I’M HAVING A HEATSTROKE OR SOMETHING-

The bush-haired Thai girl dragged Marcy inside, and nearly tripping over the front step brought her thought train to a halt. 

“Ack, sorry!” she yelped, trying to balance herself. 

Anne smiled and rolled her eyes a little bit. “Pshaw. It’s fine.” 

“YOU TWO COMING IN OR WHAT?” Sasha shouted from inside. 

“Coming!” they replied in unison. 

“After you, milady,” Marcy mocked a French accent. Anne laughed and the two went inside. 

They decided to set up in Anne’s room, where Sasha had already prepared a list of Scare Dares for the night. 

“My mom’s making popcorn so we can watch a scary movie,” Anne was saying as Marcy rubbed her eyes again. 

“After that we can play Scare Dare,” Sasha grinned. “Pajamas, junk food, and gossip galore!” Marcy and Anne returned the smile. 

“Pillow fights, movies, and tearing up the dance floor!” they chorused. For the final part, all three girls chanted in unison: 

“And listen up 'cause this I won't repeat,

“Never, ever go to sleep!” 

The three laughed, falling backwards onto their sleeping bags. For a few moments, Marcy took a moment to appreciate the glowing stars on the ceiling. She wanted some for her room, too. Besides, she could set up the constellations and tell the girls about Globus Aerostaticus. 

“Marcy,” Anne’s voice startled her from her daydreaming. “No falling asleep, remember?” 

“Right, sorry,” she laughed nervously and pushed herself into a sitting position. “What were we doing?”

“Scare Dare,” Sasha replied. “I was thinking of starting with something simple, first. Carving our initials into Anne’s bedpost.” 

“What?!” Anne yelped. “That’s not simple! My mom’ll kill me!” 

“We won’t do anything else!” Sasha replied. “And you’ll have a memento in case we get, gosh, I dunno, separated, or something.” 

Like that’s ever gonna happen, Marcy thought. We stick together like glue. I’m nothing without these girls. Wait, weren’t we going to watch a movie?

Anne frowned. “I still don’t think it’s a good idea.” 

“But this isn’t even that excitiiiiing,” Sasha groaned. “Ugh, fine. I guess you’ll just have to put your names in the Book of Losers again-”

“Alright, fine!” Anne yelped. “Go ahead.” Sasha smiled, pulling out a small wood-carving tool. Marcy had no idea where she’d gotten it. The blonde quickly carved her initials into the bedpost and handed it to Marcy. For a moment, the girl found herself hesitating, but then, before she could reason with herself any more, she quickly carved her own initials. 

The wood was hard and rough under her touch, but strangely satisfying to cut through. And something about it was bizarrely comforting - now Anne would have to remember her forever, and would have a piece of her even when they were apart. 

“See?” asked Sasha. “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Marcy shook her head wordlessly. Anne wiped her hands on her pants. 

“Alright, Sash what’s next?” 

“Next up, the good stuff,” Sasha replied, rubbing her hands together. Her eyes gleamed pink in the light of Marcy’s portable lava lamp. “Some classic T-O-D. Whoever cracks first has to put their name in the Book, of course, but we can leave the really scary dares for when it’s dark.”

Marcy swallowed. 

“So, who’s first?” Sasha asked. Anne shrugged. 

“Why not.” 

“Truth or dare?” 

“...dare.” 

The blonde girl laughed almost maniacally. “I dare you to show us the most embarrassing picture on your phone.” 

Anne’s face turned red. 

“Ooooh, now I wanna see!” Marcy flapped her hands in her lap. With a sigh, Anne pulled out her yellow phone and unlocked it before scrolling for a little while. After a moment’s hesitation, she held out a meme with a screenshot of an electronic drawing of her face badly edited over an outdated meme. 

“Ohhhh, God,” Sasha snorted. “That’s… pre-tty bad.” 

Anne didn’t say a word as she tucked her phone away again. “To be fair, I was ten,” she said finally. Marcy giggled. Sighing again, Anne turned to the raven-haired girl. 

“Truth or dare?” 

Marcy thought for a moment. “I’ll pick… truth?” 

Anne’s eyes glazed over as she tried to think of something to say. 

“I’ve got one,” offered Sasha after an embarrassingly long silence. She whispered into Anne’s ear and the bush-haired teenager blinked a few times. 

“It’s a classic,” Sasha smiled reassuringly at Marcy, who did not feel reassured at all. 

“Uhm… got a crush, Mar-Mar?” 

Marcy reached for her smoothie when did they order smoothies? and slurped at it nervously. There was another awkward silence. 

“Gimme that,” she said finally, snatching the Book of Losers out of Sasha’s hands. The blonde girl made a face. 

“Oooooooohh, someone’s got a secret cruuuush,” she sang. 

“Oh, shut up, Sasha,” Anne replied, but her tone was joking. “I’m sure Marcy’s got her reasons.”

“Aw, but aren’t we best friends?” Sasha batted her eyelashes at the Taiwanese girl. “Don’t you know you can tell us anything, Mar-Mar?” She doesn’t know she doesn’t know she can’t know, Marcy’s mind screeched from between her ears. 

Marcy scribbled her name down and held out the book for Sasha to take. “I wrote my name. Now stop bothering me about this.” Sasha rolled her eyes and accepted her friend’s defeat. 

As she did so, the lava lamp’s colors changed from pink to orange. Marcy blinked. 

“Did you see that?” 

“See what?” Anne asked. 

And then the world fractured apart. 

And thirteen orange eyes stared at her. 

And she remembered everything. 

And the overlapping voices reverberated through her mind louder than ever, shaking her to the core.

The Core. 

Mental capacity and ability processed. Reaction was not serious. Final download stages initiated. 

Chapter Text

“Anne!” Marcy tumbled head-over-heels as she fell, and kept falling, and everything was dark and bright at the same time and orange and red spun through her mind and everything hurt. She finally hit something hard, but when she looked up to see what it was, there was simply empty air. 

Clutching her aching head, the girl stood up. It was quiet. 

Too quiet.  

It was a cliche, she knew, but it was true. 

She was standing alone in a dark void. About an inch of dark water lapped at her ankles, and her toes were just barely submerged. She hugged herself, a tremor zagging down her spine. She felt as though she’d been pulled out of a hot tub and dunked in a pile of ice cubes. Her feet were freezing, and slowly the rest of her was catching up. 

“Sasha?” her words were distant to her own ears, as though coming from everywhere around her except her own mouth. As though she wasn’t really talking at all, and something else was saying what she meant in a dark echo of her voice. “Olivia? Yunan? Andrias? Is anyone here?” 

Her head felt light and empty, so different from the cacophony of voices from moments earlier. Her chest hurt, too, in a sort of dull aching pain. She remembered the dreams she had - about moving away from her friends, about getting to live the life she always hoped they would, and about the fateful night she finally realized how much she loved them both. 

She’d broken free before; maybe if she told herself this wasn’t real, it’d go away? 

“This isn’t real,” she said. “This is just a dream. I’ll wake up any minute. This isn’t real. I’m not in danger.”  

It felt like a lie. 

It is a lie, a voice mused, and she stumbled backward, whirling around. Hovering over her, like the setting sun on a dark horizon, were thirteen glowing orange eyes, each at least three times bigger than her (and most even larger). Its voice was like her own but darker, more hollow, and yet filled with a million different ones speaking in perfect unison. We’re afraid that’s the furthest from the truth you’ve ever been, Marcy Wu.

“Wh-” it took a moment for her to remember what this was. “You’re the-” Marcy fell into the water again, pushing herself away from the Core’s eyes. More appeared around her, surrounding the girl and all staring intently. Panic set in, and she curled into a ball, hands over her head. The cold water below her seemed to rise slightly, but she was too scared to notice. 

We have assessed your mind. It is compatible with our requirements, the Core continued. We simply need your thoughts to become ours, and the process will be complete.

“Y-you think I’m j-just going to - let you take over my brain?” Marcy stared up at the eyes, tears falling from her own. “I - my friends are still out there, and they’ll-” She choked back a sob. “They’re going to come back for me.”  

“Are you sure about that?” The voice around her changed, and the water shifted, growing upwards into a familiar pair of shapes. Sasha and Anne stood facing away from her, heads down, holding each other’s hands. The colors of their clothes - their clothes from Earth, before everything - were muted and dark. Anne’s voice had that same strange echo effect that made it sound like it was coming out of a surround sound speaker. “Why would we ever come back for you? You wanted to live in a fantasy world - enjoy your dream come true.”  

“I-I know this is a trick,” Marcy’s voice wavered. “Y-you - they wouldn’t be wearing their clothes from Earth i-if they were really-”  

A small blue light flashed up Anne’s form, starting at her feet and ending at her head. Everywhere the blue touched, there was color, starting from her purple-white shoes to the top of her bushy blue hair. 

Blue hair?

The image flickered for a second, and then Anne was wearing her Newtopian armor, and her hair was brown, and she only had one yellow shoe. 

That was weird.  

The same thing happened with Sasha - a pink light covered her from head to toe and her Earth clothes were replaced by dull red armor and long, blonde hair. They were both still facing away from Marcy. 

“After everything we’ve done for you, and this is how you repay us?” Sasha’s voice hissed, and her grip tightened around Anne’s hand. “Trap us in another dimension, almost get us killed, lie to us about it?! What kind of a terrible friend would ever do the things that you’ve done, let alone one actually worthy of friendship?” 

“I-I was only trying to do what was best for us-”

“Well, we never asked for this,” Anne said. “We never wanted this. And you didn’t even think to ask.”

“I didn’t even know if it would work! P-please, I’m sorry!” She reached out, trying to catch on Anne’s arm, or touch something other than cold all around. 

That can be arranged. 

Before Marcy’s hand could reach them, a wall of fire burst up between her and the girls, momentarily blinding her and sending blazing orange heat into her face. She fell flat onto the ground, water splashing up around her. Through the flames, two pairs of eyes - one glowing pink and the other glowing blue - stared at her for a moment, before everything went dark again and the fire subsided. 

So. Back to square one. 

Marcy reached up to wipe away her tears but found her face was dry. Wearily, she climbed to her feet again, finally noticing that the water was now nearly to her knees. 

“What..?”

We don’t wish to force this upon you, the Core responded to her unfinished question. So we are giving you a timer. Join us willingly or we will reset your mind and rewrite your code. 

Fear seized the girl’s chest. Forget her friends? No, no, no, she couldn’t let this thing take away the only-

You can feel how much pain they bring you. Let us relieve you of that burden. You don’t need them in order to be powerful, Wit. 

“I-” she stopped. “...is what they said… true? Do they really… want nothing to do with me?” 

The Core’s sympathetic silence was enough to break her heart all over again. We’re afraid there is nothing left for you if you go back to them. They will turn you down. 

But we will not make their mistake.

Marcy blinked. 

You are a powerful ally, Marcy Wu. One we would not want against us. So join us instead - we can give you everything you ever wanted and more. Andrias will pay for his pathetic attempt at playing king. Your so-called “friends” will pay for leaving you behind. We alone will conquer other dimensions and claim them as our own. Imagine - the power of millions of galaxies, all controlled by our hands. 

The girl felt herself trembling as the water rose to the orange eye on her chest. Everywhere she touched, the water became tinted with that same orange. It made her stomach churn. “Wh-what happens if I refuse?”

You know what. All memories of who you were will be erased. We will rewire you to be more compatible. Nothing will remain but a vast empty slate for us to do with as we please. 

The cold water at her chin felt like a threat now. A cold dagger pressed against her back neck. Submit or be erased, it whispered, from somewhere within her head rather than echoing around her. 

Sucking in a breath, Marcy closed her eyes as the water reached just below her hairline. She tried to paddle up, but something rooted her feet in place. She was running out of air. White pixels flickered in her vision, lines and lines of 1s and 0s that made her brain spin. 

010000100111001001101111011010110110010101101110001000000110100001100101011000010111001001110100011100110010000001100001011011100110010000100000011000100111001001101111011010110110010101101110001000000110110101101001011011100110010001110011

01010111011001010110000101101011011011100110010101110011011100110010000001110011011101000111001001100001011011100110011101101100011001010110010000100000011000100111100100100000011101000110100001100101001000000111011001101001011011100110010101110011

010010100110111101101001011011100010000001110100011010000110010100100000011011000110100101100111011010000111010000101100001000000111011101100101001000000111000001110010011011110110110101101001011100110110010100100000011010010111010000100111011100110010000001100110011010010110111001100101

01001111011100000110010101101110001000000111100101101111011101010111001000100000011001010111100101100101011100110010110000100000011011110111000001100101011011100010000001001111010101010101001000100000011001010111100101100101011100110010110000100000011110010110111101110101001000000110000101110010011001010010000001001101010010010100111001000101

Just before she was fully submerged, her lungs, begging for oxygen, and her brain, screaming for it to STOP, loosened her tongue. 

“Okay! I’ll do it!”

Good girl.  

A jolt of orange shocked her system as the water ignited, flooding over her head. 

But you should know one thing first. 

Marcy choked as her nerve endings exploded, her body going into spasms of mental torture. The orange electricity crackled through her veins, and the white pixels in her vision turned a bloody red. 

We never told you what we would do if you agreed.

Don’t you think it’s time to say goodbye to those childhood friends of yours?

The words echoed through nothing as black turned orange turned white and Marcy’s screams faded. 

Back in the waking world, Andrias finished his smug introduction, stepping back from the chair. Olivia and Yunan covered their mouths, tears in their eyes. 

Marcy’s body slowly dragged itself upwards with a sickening crack. It snapped its neck a few more times, getting the kinks out of its joints as ten glowing eyes opened and the Core smiled for the first time in millennia. 

“Why, hello there,” they greeted the assembled newts. “It’s a pleasure to be back.”

THREE STARS THAT ONCE SHONE BRIGHT

ONE DROWNED BENEATH A GREATER MIGHT

HAD NO TIME TO EMBRACE THE FALL

HAS HER CHOICE DETERMINED ALL?

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