Chapter 3: Scales and Dreams

Summary: While Anne and Sasha are looking for Marcy, Sasha struggles with her feelings for them. Amity has a nightmare.

Sasha had woken up early that morning confused and still half-asleep. She quickly caught on to the mood of panic in the little campsite realizing Marcy was missing. The small note she'd left didn't do much to reassure her or Anne.

Right now the two were hiking down the side of a cliff they'd previously found Marcy's cloak hanging from.

"I hope she's alright," Anne mumbled. Sasha grunted in agreement as she slid down the steep hill at the bottom. Anne's relationship with Marcy was… close. It made Sasha feel a twist in her gut towards the two, but at the same time, she couldn't just hate them. It was more of a longing for something… but she wasn't sure what that 'something' was.

Feelings nowadays were so strange. Sasha wanted to bury her head in a pillow and scream.

"Uh- hey, Sash?" Anne's voice made her heart jump. She put on a calm face and looked back.

"Yeah?"

"I think you should see this…" Anne was holding Marcy's journal in two hands, holding one of the pages down for Sasha to see.

"This morning I woke up feeling almost drained. It felt like I'd just run a marathon, or run away from something." The blonde read aloud, "I've never felt this feeling before and it doesn't feel good. I know the Core and its remnants were destroyed, but something is pulling me to believe it's not truly gone. What the hell?" She wondered, "is Marcy okay?!" Thinking about her being seriously hurt made Sasha's insides flip.

"Andrias- The Core- it did something to her." Anne started, her voice anxious, "The Marcy we know now might not be the same one we knew before." She snapped the journal shut and placed it behind her in the backpack. Anne mumbled something under her breath that wasn't audible to Sasha, but she didn't want to be a bother about her secrets.

"Wait, did you hear that?"

"Huh?" Sasha snapped back to reality at Anne's question.

"I heard something…" the brunette said quietly. A tense silence fell between the two.

Until Sasha heard it as well. 

It was very distant, but you could hear a familiar voice yelling for them.

"Sashy…! Anne!..."

"MARCY?!" Anne called, cupping her hands around her mouth. She let her hands fall to listen for a reply.

"Girls!... Over here!..."

"Oh my gosh-" Sasha spotted a small figure in the distance waving both arms wildly. "-I see her! MARCY!" she began to run towards their lost friend, Marcy becoming more audible every step Sasha took.

Eventually she was only a few feet away and Sasha noticed she could only see her top half… floating?

Upon closer inspection it was really just Marcy in what seemed to be an almost-translucent lake. She looked… greener.

Sasha skidded to a halt at the edge of the water. She hooked her arms around Anne's waist as she went flying by, slowing her down, yes, but the momentum was enough to take them both off their feet. Sasha sat up with a cough, soaking wet and hair drooping in front of her face. She moved the hair out of the way and saw Anne with a similar problem, her hair looking heavily full of water. She shook it out, scattering thick water droplets everywhere. The two looked at eachother and dissolved into giggles. 

After about a minute of laughing, Sasha's lower stomach began to ache from it and she sat up with gasps of air, a smile still plastered onto her face. She noticed some ripples in the water and peered closer with a small hum. She recoiled as the water in front of her nearly exploded with action. Sasha screeched and fell over backwards. She heard two bursts of laughter that made butterflies fill her stomach and looked up to see her two friends.

Marcy wheezed, slapping the water with a webbed hand.

Wait.

Webbed hand?!

"Marce!" Sasha exclaimed, darting forward to hug her, "don't scare me like that." She scolded playfully. She was glad to have her back, although she was pretty soaking wet.

"Uh, Mar-mar?" Sasha opened one eye with her arms around Marcy protectively. It was just Anne.

"You're kinda… green."

"Oh yeah!" Marcy pulled out of the hug, her eyes glowing with excitement.

"I made a curse and it sort of backfired. So now I look like this!"

She had fins growing from almost every inch of her body, scales covered most of her skin and dotted her face like freckles, and she had gills on her neck.

"You're like a mermaid." Sasha complimented, gently reaching out to touch a fin but stopping as Marcy flinched. 

"Uh… can I feel your fins?" She asked softly. Marcy hesitated but nodded.

"So, is it just looks, or can you do anything different?" Anne asked curiously. Sasha ran a finger over Marcy's gills and scales, her hand moving to gently brush her back fins.

"It's so cool! So, first, I found out I can breathe underwater. It's kinda weird but at the same time amazing. And I think I have some sort of night vision, too, to help me see when the water gets deeper. Did you know that the surface of the lake looks different underwater? It's blue! Now that I think about it, it's sorta like our water back home, but the colours just flipped." She rambled, splashing water onto her neck every now and then. "It's a whole other world down there! I wonder if I can replicate the curse for you two, then we could see it together! But, of course, I'd have to find the person who cursed me, first, and then-"

"Wait, stop." Anne raised her hands in front of her. "Did you say someone elsecursed you?" Sasha, who hadn't been listening much, now perked up, removing her hands politely.

"...yeah? Usually when Maddie and I made curses together, they were on non-living objects, or dead pet fleas." She was silent for a minute, working out the math. "But the curses were usually permanent- oh." Anne nodded, and Sasha wondered how she already knew this.

The Thai girl noticed her confusion and started to explain, "Once when we were in Amphibia, Sprig and I upset someone. He put a curse on us and we had to force him to cure us, or it would've been permanent. Forever and ever. So because Marcy was cursed by someone else and not herself…"

"I won't be able to change back to normal." Marcy sighed, "Unless we find the person and they're kind enough to use a cure. But… uh. I might've accidentally… called them delusional."

"Marcy, you what?!" Sasha's voice was much louder than she had meant it to be.

"I'm sorry! I was just trying to help!" Marcy insisted, sinking a bit further into the water as her eyes grew wide.

"Whatever she did, we need to find this mystery person." Anne quickly interrupted when she saw Sasha about to snap.

"We need to help Marcy."

Amity ran through the familiar halls of her school. Something was wrong. Something was very, very wrong. Bits of the walls chipped and cracked, floating away as though moved by gigantic, invisible hands. She turned a corner and saw them. Two huge blue stars, both with black eyes and red pupils that burned in the back of her brain. They stared at her and fired a collective beam of light. Amity saw a small wooden puppet fall inside the dollhouse. It looked just like her, and she picked it up to examine it closely. It was tiny, just a bit bigger than her pinkie finger and had little strings attached to its limbs.

"Heyy, Blight. Glad you could join me for the game!" A familiar high-pitched voice called to her from behind and she whipped around, holding the doll firmly in one hand.

"Collector. What are you doing here?" Amity knew Luz had forgiven them… at least for a little while, but…

"I was bored. Thought I'd drop in to see ya. Being an all-powerful creature is only fun most of the time. So I'm visiting you!" they spread out their arms happily, a wide happy grin on their face.

"What games do you wanna play?! We have all the time in the world! Or, uh, until you wake up." They rested their head on their hands, floating on their belly, "we could play some of my favorites!"

"But… I'm…" Amity blinked and looked down at her fingers. She curled them up into a fist and let them relax again.

"I… guess I have time." Luz could wait for now. As long as she was safe.

"GREAT!" The Collector snapped his fingers and a game board for tic-tac-toe appeared in front of the two. Amity let a smile slide onto her face as she made the first move.

Maybe, while she was asleep, she could relax for a bit.