41. Handy Anne

Chapter 41: Handy Anne

So. Haven't written in a bit. I needed a while to decompress from… you know… everything.

It's a lot to deal with. All that's happened. Even the fact that I've been here a full three months is super-hard to process. It feels like it all was compressed into the space of a month, somehow. But yeah. Three months. I've been living in this kooky frog world for three months.

At least we got word that the ice pack in the canyon leading out of the valley has finally melted. It was beginning to feel like it would never happen, but now we can fnally get started looking for a way out of this place. And for Marcy.

Marcy. It's been so crazy lately that I've hardly had time to even think about what could be happening to her, but seeing what happened to Sasha, I'm worried. How do I know she didn't somehow wind up in a worse situation? Sure, she's brilliant, but she's also so easily distracted and accident-prone. And, well… this doesn't really seem like the kind of world that would go easy on someone with ADHD, y'know? Distraction here could get you killed.

…no, best not to think of it. Hey, maybe she got lucky, right? Maybe she wound up safely inside the walls of a city, maybe she quickly made a connection with someone high up who could take care of her. Yeah. Maybe that's what happened. Worrying myself sick over her won't help anyway.

Right now me and Sprig are waiting for Polly and Hop Pop to get back. He said he was going to be picking up supplies for our road trip, and, hopefully, checking in with his contacts for information on the music box. It's been a while, but information on something like that is probably really hard to come by, so I get it's going to take some time. I hope it isn't much longer though. I have a feeling that box is the key to this whole mess.

So this is it. Once we're all packed, we're off. Our destination is Newtopia, Amphibia's capital city. It's supposed to be full of the world's wisest scholars, and HP figures that if anyone would know how to get me home, it would be them.

And for the trip, HP's really gone all out!

I don't know what I was expecting, but he bought a ding-dang RV! Or at least the closest thing Amphibia has to one. And even though he claimed that he got it really cheap, he doesn't exactly have a whole lot of coppers to spare. Between the wagon and the supplies – not to mention all the income from the farm he's giving up just to go on this trip with me – he's putting a lot on the line for me. And it feels like I really haven't done a lot to be worthy of it.

But there is one thing I could do… make sure the farm's still here when he gets back. He hired Chuck to look after the place – you know, the tulip guy – but I've seen the horrors this world spits out on the regular, and Chuck looks like he'd blow away in a stiff breeze, let alone a flaming locust tornado. Which is a real thing here. I think I'm gonna have to do a little home renovating.

Well, I am wiped out, but I have to say, the farm is basically a fortress now!

After letting Chuck know his services won't be needed, I loaded up on supplies at the Grub n' Go and Loggle's and got to work.

And dang, when I build a fortress, I build a fortess! We got spikes, we got cannons, we got giant mousetraps (for the giant mice). I even put an axe in the chimney, in case… I'unno… Amphibia has a Santa Claus and he turns out to be evil. You can never be too careful. I feel kinda like that kid in that old movie, The Kid Whose Parents Left Him by Himself. Wonder what that kid's doing now?

With all the traps I had in place, I had one last thing to do. While the house needed protecting, I couldn't forget about the crops. Loggle had this goop that's supposed to "give crops a fighting chance". Probably some kind of super-fertilizer. I guess I should be concerned about the eerie green glow it gives off, but Loggle wouldn't sell me the stuff if it wasn't safe, would he?

Mental note: In the future, do not, repeat do not, use glowing green goop on anything. It leads to monsters.

It was every kid's nightmare: Mutant vegetables! Killer carrots, demonic daikon, pernicious potatoes, evil eggplant, criminal cucumbers, rampaging rutabaga, nefarious… uh… nappa cabbage? And also this dummy thicc turnip that was kinda just… there.

They weren't that much of a threat. Between Sprig, Hop Pop, Polly, and myself, we were able to make pretty short work of those vicious vegetables (My alliteration game is on point today!) ..,at least until they began to fuse together into some kind of… Veggie Robo.

Now, you're wondering, how do we handle that? Well, at first it looked like it wasn't going to be much of a problem. It stepped right into one of the mousetraps I had lying around and toppled right over. Only… it fell right into the house, wrecking everything I'd accomplished. And that was the last straw.

I'm not certain just how I found the strength to do it (it's like I was tapping some kind of inner power I didn't eve know I had), but when the thing got back up to attack again, I was running up its arm and just slicing and dicing the sucker like something out of an anime.

The only thing left standing was Chonky Turnip Boi. I decided to spare them, 'cause they wre kinda cute, honestly. Of course, my luck, it'll come back to bite me in the future, but for now, I really didn't want to deal with it. There was enough on my plate as it was. Like explaining to my family that I'd gone all Frankenstein on their livelihood.

Well, Hop Pop took the destruction of the farm in stride, and I quickly found out why. Turns out Chuck doesn't just grow tulips… he's also the world's fastest contractor. He had the whole house rebuilt in less than a minute! I honestly don't know how he did it, but he did it. Why doesn't he lead with that?

Well, with everything settled here, we're off to Newtopia. It's been real these last months, I'm I think I'm ready for something new. All I know is, my destiny is out there, somewhere.

Seriously, what did happen to that kid? I heard he's married to the rich girl from "Checkin' in with Mack n' Jodie" and "Checkin' in with Mack n' Jodie but On a Boat". That can't be right, can it?

A.N.: So… I'm a little creatively stalled on my other story, so I figured I'd update this one! Here we are. The beginning of season 2. And the debut of my favorite character in the series: the turnip with a big butt! I'm gonna be honest: When they posted the description for "The Root of Evil", I thought for sure they were going to turn out to be the villain of the episode; after all, we hadn't seen them for a long time, and turnips are roots… I'm fine with what we got, but I'll always be a little bit disappointed that we never got to see them one last time.

OMAC: Yep

Snake screamer: True, but like you said, Anne didn't know this, and Sasha and Grime didn't either… and really, I don't think any of the characters really learned anything about Lief and Barrel until the very end, and then only what they got from Lief's letter. This is lore that really, only the viewers are privy to.

Jose: Thanks!

Next: Fort in the Road