Eyes | Amphibia

Chapter 19

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The journey to Newtopia was surprisingly quick; The snail they had chosen was a fast one. They had arrived by morning.

Exhausted, Anise and Sasha demounted the snail and looked at the ginormous gates in front of them. Behind them lied Newtopia.
"Woahhhh..." Anise stared up at the gates in absolute awe, as if her weariness had left her immediately at the sight of them. "Those gates are HUGE! How big is this city?!"
"Pretty big," Sasha replied with a small chuckle. She tried to move her arms to stretch, but was hit with a shooting pain in her bad arm as she did so. She had almost forgotten about it.
"Ugh!" He hissed, gripping his arm and wincing.
"Your arm still hurts, huh?" Anise frowned. "You really should see a doctor, Sasha. That looks serious. Your veins... they're so dark..."
"No. I'm fine. That'll just slow us down." Sasha huffed, letting go of her arm and fixing her posture. The state of her arm worried her, but her expression didn't dare betray it. "Come on, let's go."

...

As they entered the city, Sasha was hit with a wave of nostalgia. Everything was so familiar, yet so different. Because of all of the destruction from the war, a lot of Newtopia had been rebuilt, or was still under construction. Sasha's mind was promptly infiltrated with the memories of her battle with Darcy. While the memory stung, it reminded her to be on the look out for the malevolent being. By now, it could be anywhere.
Anise, on the other hand, was absolutely mesmerized by the city. "Woah! This place is incredible! It looks so ancient yet so modern at the same time! — Ooh, what's that?" As Anise started toward a statue, Sasha grabbed her shoulder with her good arm and furrowed her brows.
"Anise, we don't have time for this! You can explore as much as you want after we take care of The Core." She asserted impatiently.
"Oh, right, sorry!" Anise quickly turned back around, and the two went on to search the city for any sign of The Core. As they searched, they were stopped by many of the city folk asking about why they were back, but Sasha did his best to keep them on track.

...

After awhile of searching, the two were beginning to lose hope. They'd done loops around the city, but there was no sign of The Core anywhere.
"Do you think it already left Newtopia?" Anise suggested. "Or maybe it's hiding out somewhere?"
"Why would it leave Newtopia, though?" Sasha sighed. "This is where the castle is. If it's anywhere in Amphibia, it has to be somewhere around here. Maybe we should—"
Before Sasha could finish her thought, a familiar voice called her name from behind her. With wide eyes, the blonde slowly turned to look at the source of the voice.
Sure enough, Grime was staring back at her.
"Grime?!" Sasha gasped, quickly running over to the one-armed toad with a big smile. Of course, she had been planning on looking for him, but she hadn't expected to find him in the heart of Newtopia.
"Sasha!" The old toad pulled the blonde into a hug with a hearty chuckle. "It's really you! What are you doing here? I wasn't expecting to ever see you again, especially not so soon."
"I wish I was here just to visit, but I'm afraid that isn't the case." Sasha's voice grew more bitter as she remembered the urgency of the situation, stepping back from the hug. "Something really bad is happening, Grime, and we need to act fast. The fate of the universe is at stake."
"Seriously? I thought we were done with all this drama..." Grime muttered to himself, before straightening up and looking at Sasha with determined eyes. "Okay. Come with me to the castle; You can explain the situation to me on the way there."

...

Sasha had just finished explaining the situation and the plan they had established when they arrived at the castle, leaving Grime dumbfounded. "You're telling me, The Core is here again, running around in Marcy's body, with a weapon that is capable of all the calamity stones could do and more?!" He exclaimed.
"Yes," Sasha sighed. "The Ultra Stone. Before we got here, it zapped my arm with the stone and did this to it. I can barely move it." The blonde turned to give the toad a better view of his impaired arm.
Narrowing his eyes, Grime studied the sight before him. Sasha's arm was so pale — almost gray — and her veins were black like ink. "Shouldn't you see a doctor about this? It looks serious."
"No!" Sasha shouted, stepping back and holding her arm. She was tired of people telling her to see a doctor when they had so little time. "There's no time for that! We need to stop The Core before it's too late!"
"But Sasha," Anise finally spoke up. "You promised Anne you'd get it checked out, and I promised Anne I'd make sure you did. You won't be able to fight well in that state, and we're already here, so you might as well just let a doctor look at it."
"The pink-haired one is right, Sasha." Grime added. "It wouldn't hurt to get it looked at. We can take care of everything here in the meantime."
"Ugh! Fine, if it'll make you people stop bugging me about it!" Sasha groaned. "But if they can't help me, I'm leaving, okay?"
Grime and Anise both nodded, content with that agreement. "Fair enough," The toad took a seat on his throne. "While you're doing that, your friend and I will work on compiling some troops and coming up with battle strategies. As King of Amphibia, that shouldn't be much of a problem."
"Wait wait wait— King of Amphibia?!" Sasha gasped. "Grimesy! That's amazing!"
The toad nodded, showing his sharp teeth in a proud smile. "Well, someone had to take Andrias' place!"
"I'm sure that'll make this a whole lot easier!" Anise chuckled, smiling at the old toad.
"Definitely," Sasha nodded. "Alright, I'll go and see that doctor now, I guess. You guys stay here and work on compiling some troops. The Ultra Stone is super powerful, but it's all The Core has right now, so with strong fighters we should be able to take it down pretty easily." She then added more solemnly, "But we can't actually kill it. It's The Core, yes, but it's still using Marcy's body. She's still in there... I know she is. We just have to scare it enough so that Maddie can use her spell to get that vermin out of her."
"Understood, Sasha." Grime dipped his head in a nod, to which Anise reciprocated. "We'll do the best we can."

With that, Sasha left to go see the doctor, and Grime and Anise stayed in the throne room to come up with some battle plans.
They were on the right track. The Core would stand no chance against their army, and Anne was back in Wartwood working with Maddie to come up with a spell to fight The Core from inside. It'd have to back down after all that, surely.
The hardest part of this was going to be locating The Core, Sasha feared. But there was still hope.

Everything was going to be okay.

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