Chapter 70

Luz looked at the other three girls... The ones who knew each other already. The ones who had not stopped hugging since they got here. She knew that they lived on opposite sides of the country, but...

A thought crossed her mind. An idea she knew she shouldn't vocalize, even as it wormed its way toward her mouth.

"Don't do it, Luz," her brain said.

Despite this, the temptation to ask the question that had popped into her head persisted.

"Don't you dare," her brain chastised.

And yet the temptation remained. And when the girls let out yet another joyful squeal at their reunion Luz's willpower ran out and the question escaped: "Are you guys a polycule?"

This led the other three girls to pause what they were doing, step apart, and stare at her momentarily.

However, the awkwardness was cut short when the Taiwanese girl asked "Arewe?"

"...I do have two hands."

"I go both ways."

"I have literally never pictured myself with anyone as a constant in my life but you two."

"Girls can be hot..."

"You know, in hindsight, the way I acted towards you guys back then was a little..."

"I might have referred to you both as 'my loves' when writing about you in my journal."

There was another awkward pause before the Thai girl spoke up: "We'll get back to you on that."

"Well, now that that's out of the way," Magik began, "why doesn't everyone introduce themselves?"

Everyone took a seat and Luz awkwardly introduced herself. "I'm um, Luz. Luz Noceda. From Gravesfield, Connecticut... Actually, it's Noceda-Clawthorne but the paperwork on this side hasn't gone through yet."

"Anne Boonchoy, from LA," said the Thai girl. Why did that sound familiar?

"Sasha Waybright," the blonde, "Also from LA."

"Marcy Wu," the last girl said. "...Used to be from LA. Now I'm in Massachusetts... Not handling it as well as I could but, well, what's there to do about it?"

"I'm sorry to hear that," Luz replied.

"So," Magik began, "I started this group to help girls who had experiences similar to mine when I was around your age. Now, so far the four of you are the only girls I've found," she continued, "but even if helping you three stay in touch," she gestured to the other three, "and giving you more people to talk to," she gestured to Luz, "is all we accomplish then this is still a win. Now, to get something out of the way: I am not doing this because I think you girls are like me. Quite the opposite, I am doing this because I want to make sure you don'tend up like me."

"...What do you mean by that, Ms. Rasputina?" Luz asked.

"So, everyone knows me as the cool, gothy, bisexual icon who was trapped in the Limbo Dimension but took it over and emerged wielding powerful magic," Magik began. "But the truth is... Being in Limbo, for years from my perspective, messed me up badly. I was a girl about your age in one second, then I got lost and spent years being tormented by Belesco with my only support being the corpse of another version of my brother that I could talk to and sometimes another world's version of some of his friends. I spent years studying magic both light and dark in secret, doing anything to obtain any scrap of power until I was strong enough to defeat Belasco, but you see," she finished, "the young woman who emerged from Limbo, a blink of an eye later to my friends and family, wasn't the same as the young girl who was lost. I was the 'evil X-woman' for a long time because by the time I got out all I cared about was seeking power for its own sake while using sex and violence to cope with my pain. I even tried to murder my brother a couple of times just becuase he got in my way... But then I hit rock bottom and finally got help, and a few years later I'm somehow now a role model. None of you are as bad off as I was, and I want to make sure you stay that way," Magik finished.

A lot of that was... Not widely known to the public. Still, Luz couldn't help but find herself liking Magik more after that admission. If... If she could be that bad off but then get better then... That was something worth bragging about, wasn't it?

"...Thank you," Marcy replied. "I'm stillin therapy nearly two years later, and while my circumstances aren't the same as yours I appreciate what you're doing. Even just being with Anne and Sashy more often is already a big help."

"Oh, jeez, how bad was it that you still need therapy?" Luz asked. "...Was that insensitive?"

"It's fine," Marcy said. "The truth is I was having fun up until I got stabbed in the back."

"What happened?" Luz asked.

"I got stabbed in the back," Marcy repeated. "By someone I trusted. With what was basically a giant lightsaber that was at least twelve feet long and as thick around as a large grapefruit. It didn't hurt, exactly," Marcy continued, "cause, you know, it took out part of my spine and fried a bunch of nerve endings but... My orignal heart, sternum, and parts of my lungs just don't exist anymore. I was clinically dead for... At least until they got me into a rejuvenation tank but... Okay real talk we don't know exactly what's going on in here," she said with a tap to her chest. "I was hospitalized for a while once everything was all said and done but... We know I have machine interfaces embedded into my nervous system in my limbs and that several bones and organs inside have been replaced by duplicates made of a mixture of organic and synthetic materials that don't quite correspond to how they're supposed to be. Also, my blood is green now. That's a pollutant that should be filtered out of my system... Eventually."

"...Wow," Luz said. "I hope whoever did that to you got what was coming to them."

Marcy looked sad at that. "Andrias was... He hurt me, bad. And he betrayed me, but... He was still my friend, and he was as much a product of his circumstances, generational trauma, and the chain of harm, as he was of his own choices... He did the right thing in the end and even though he can never really make up for what he's done the last time I saw him he was trying. I don't know if he's still alive, his cybernetics were damaged pretty badly—" Anne briefly looked guilty. "But if he is I wish him well and if he isn't I hope he's found peace."

Luz thought over what the other girl had said and it made sense. "Yeah, if that's where he came from then... Never mind, I wish him well too." Marcy smiled at that.

"Anyway," Anne interrupted, "we should probably give you the full story: It started on my thirteenth birthday when I stole a fancy-looking music box from a thrift shop."

"...Why?" Luz asked. It wasn't like she had much of a moral qualm with theft after living with Eda for so long but from Anne's tone, it sounds like she didn't have a good reason.

"Peer pressure," Marcy and Sasha answered simultaneously.

"I've been friends with these two since Kindergarten and they've been friends even longer," Sasha said while gesturing to the girls on her left. "But the truth is... Well, we weren't always good for each other."

"I was freaking out becuase my father waited until the last possible moment to tell me that we were moving across the country far away from the only two friends I've ever had," Marcy added, "saw the music box and decided 'well obviously that's a McGuffin' and well, I didn't know if it would work but I just got a feeling like 'that's totally the plot token from a portal fantasy story' and so I text Sasha and say I found the perfect birthday gift for Anne and..."

"And it turns out she was right," Anne said. "The box took us to the world it'd originally come from but we got separated from each other. And um, to be clear, while we had our problems and finding out that Marcy basically got us stranded on purpose hurt but we're all cool now," she then made a show of putting an arm around each of her friends. "Anyway, we landed on a small continent called Amphibia, which is—"

"Wait, you're the girls from the Frogvasion!" Luz said as it clicked. "And um, Anne, you left a testimonial on the Avengers website for Doctor Strange... I thought your name sounded familiar."

"Yeah, that's us," Anne confirmed. "So yeah, towards the end of our adventure, I straight up died killing the bad guy... And then the next thing I know I'm talking to a cosmic entity in the form of my pet cat who said they made an exact copy of me from right before I died, lore dumped on me and then asked if I wanted to take their place as a godlike protector of the Cosmos and then said they'd ask again when I died again when I turned them down becuase, well, I'm just a kid and I've made plenty of mistakes... Anyway, the idea that I might not be the real Anne gave me an existential crisis but Doctor Strange confirmed that I was still me," she finished. "Also he doesn't like the Guardian... Something about slacking off and being negligent in duties and not even bothering to find a replacement properly, which, you know... Fair. Also, I know exactly how old I'll be when I die!"

"...That last bit was a little too cheerful," Luz noted.

"...Yeah, I'm kind of hoping I go senile in my late eighties," Anne admitted. "Just you know, forget that I know the old expiration date. Anyway, we're getting ahead of ourselves. In Amphibia, we got separated and I ended up in a farming community in Frog Valey and was taken in by the Plantars who I will always be proud to call my family."

"I landed near Toad Tower, a Toad Army outpost that ruled over Frog Valley," Sasha said.

"I woke up in Newtopia where I fell down a flight of stairs," Marcy recited. "I broke my leg but luckily the newts had free public health care."

"Was that supposed to rhyme?" Luz asked.

"I might have written a song," Marcy admitted. "Ooh, gotta change the ending though, um, the original last line doesn't work anymore." She then laughed nervously.

"We'll be here all day if we talk about everything but, I experienced immense character growth and confronted my flaws as a person while occasionally getting eaten alive by giant monstrous predators," Anne said.

"I started as a prisoner of the Toads before basically becoming their princess after helping with a monster attack," Sasha added... "And um, really doubled down on my more toxic traits and ended up the worst possible version of myself for a while..." Anne patted her on the back. "Anne and I got into a fight when we reunited and then I was an outlaw for a while before hooking back up with her and Marcy only to betray them and overthrow the King of Amphibia... Which actually turned out to accidentally be a good thing."

"I treated the whole thing like a Creatures and Caverns campaign, roleplayed as an Artificer Rouge, learned alchemy, had a bunch of fun adventures, hooked back up with Anne and Sasha, learned curses, and then got tricked and betrayed by Andrias which lead to the stabbing," Marcy said sadly.

"Turns out I had cool Anime powers from the box," Anne added.

"Technically we all did but most of hers and all of ours was still in the box," Sasha said, "or, we put it back in the box so it would work again..."

"Turns out the ancient newts used the power of the Box to conquer, enslave, or destroy other worlds both to get resources and to cope with the Ancient Newtopian Monarchs' crippling fears of death and irrelevance," Marcy added.

"The Plantars and I ended up back on Earth," Anne said.

"I retreated back to Wartwood and founded the rebellion after hitting absolute rock bottom and vowing to be the kind of person who deserves Anne," Sasha said. "...Which I am only now realizing is a romantically charged phrasing."

"And I spent weeks in a rejuvenation tank and then got possessed by a malevolent AI modeled on the uploaded consciousnesses of the aforementioned Monarchs"

"Eventually the Plantars and I made some friends back in LA who helped us get back to Amhibia, the Frogvasion happened, and now you're all caught up," Anne finished.

"So, Luz," Marcy said, "what's your story?"

"Before I answer that," Luz began, "is Creatures & Caverns a Tabletop RPG? Is it like Dungeons, Dungeons, and More Dungeons? because I tried to get into that once but some of the rules made me go crosseyed."

"Kinda," Marcy said. "DD is one of the old school RPGs, been around forever and it's had... Five or six editions so far I think. When they switched to their third edition they started publishing under an Open Game License which means that anyone can take the base chassis of the game and use it to make their own stuff and when they switched to their fourth edition it was just too different from what came before it for a lot of people's taste so a Third Party company took the DD chassis and made their own polished version of the Third Edition, with some serial numbers filed off and an original default setting. I like it because it's got everything people liked in the third edition of DD but C streamlines a bunch of the rules, does a better job of handling the power curve between martials and casters, and has more inbuilt customization options for each class that aren't just fluff, you know?"

"Okay, that makes sense," Luz said. "So, anyway... My story... Um, it's kind of a lot..."

"We have plenty of time," Magik said.

"And parts of it make me look bad," Luz admitted.

"Trust me we've done worse," Sasha said confidently.

"Does this look like a face that would judge you?" Anne asked while going wide-eyed, puffing out her cheeks, and poking herself in the face from parallel angles with both hands.

"Okay," Luz agreed. She took a deep breath and then she started. "So, it all begins no long after my fourteenth birthday, when I devoted myself to giving a spectacular book report..."

And so Luz recited everything of importance to her story from the disastrous book report to her chasing after Owlbert and meeting Eda to her first meetings with her friends. When she got to Grom and how she started dating Amity, she paused to confirm she was Bi becuase why not which earned her a 'Bi Five' from Sasha, and then she moved on to fighting Belos for the first time, what she knew now was her first guilt induced depressive episode when she felt like a burden on Eda after all was said and done leading to joining the selkidomus hunt to try and make up for cash being tight while they were lying low, her return to the human realm to face the music with her mother only for that to go just so much better than she could have hoped up until she was kidnapped but at least she got a new sister rout of the ordeal, the portal key getting broken and then stolen, the musical duel with Mephisto, carving Stringbean who she summoned as a staff to show off before letting her fly around and be fawned over by the other girls, and then things started going downhill as she got to more and more mistakes... She hadn't intended to tell them about Philip and the time pools but they'd been so encouraging and commenting when she'd said something they could relate to their own experiences.

"After that is when... As I said, my phone still worked for calling back home as long as I didn't get more than a couple miles from the portal door, and while I was off time traveling with Aunt Lilith is when my Mom called and talked to Eda about... She was worried about how long I might be stranded and wanted things to be as secure and stable for me as possible, and... When I came home injured Eda realized that what Mom was asking of her was what she wanted to so... She adopted me. Mom's still my Mom even in the Boiling Isles but over there Eda's my Mom too. I'm Luz Noceda-Clawthorne, the human witch, warrior of peace, lover of nature, Strongest Witch on the Boiling Isles, and daughter and apprentice of my predecessor in that title!" she declared, once more summoning her staff to hand as she stood to make that declaration.

"...I miss Yunan," Marcy said suddenly.

"After that, it was mostly just normal stuff until Hunter and I um, ended up inside the Emperor's Mindscape... Turns out he was Philip, and I helped him get what he needed to attempt a total genocide of the Boiling Isles," Luz finished. "And I know, intellectually, that I'm not responsible for his actions but... I can't help but be terrified of how my friends will react. Especially since they're all stuck here with me now, we don't know if their families are alive, or if there's any way of getting back and—" Luz cut herself off. "Sorry, that's um... That's the depression talking. I was diagnosed yesterday. Got some things to do to help manage it and I'm gonna be getting more therapy but... Well, Belos is dead as far as I know and that's basically the gist of it."

Marcy had been taking notes the whole time, but Sasha looked contemplative. "So my take away from this is that your friends must really suck."

Luz immediately shifted into Symbiote mode. "You take that back right now."

"Sorry, I call it like I see it," Sasha defended.

"Sash," Anne chastized. "Not cool."

"No, but seriously, she's told us all the things they've done to her that she's forgiven," Asaha replied. "If she's honestly afraid that they'll hate her for something as little as getting tricked by a bad guy who she didn't even know was the bad guy at the time then they clearly don't deserve her."

"Take it back!" Luz insisted again.

"No," Sasha said, standing to hold her ground. "They must be horrible people if you honestly think they'd hold it against you."

"They are all wonderful people who I am lucky to call my friends and there's no Titan taken way they'd hold it against me!" Luz shouted. Everything went silent for a moment as she realized both what she'd just said and that, despite everything, in that moment she'd believed it. "Oh, you're good."

Sasha smiled. "Yeah, I've always been the manipulative one," she confirmed. "I saw a chance to use it for good and I took it."

"You should be a therapist," Luz continued.

"I've been thinking about it actually," Sasha admitted. "Been taking psych classes and everything. I think it'd be nice to help kids who made bad decisions get unstuck from toxic mindsets. Anyway, sorry if that was too harsh."

"No, we're good," Luz said. "I uh... I think I'm ready to tell them the truth now. Thank you."

"I think after that you could all use a short break," Magik said. "I've got a coffee maker on the table there, one of the fancy ones with the pods for individual servings."

"Ooh, that reminds me," Anne said as she rummaged through her backpack and pulled out a Tupperware container that probably shouldn't have fit in it. "I brought cookies!"

Marcy went wide-eyed and gleefully savored the one Anne handed her. "Oh, how I've missed Anne's homemade cookies. And the flavor, I haven't had anything like this since I moved!"

"Want one, Luz?" Anne offered.

"Is there any dairy in those?" Luz asked. "I'm severely lactose intolerant."

"In these, no," Anne said.

"Then yes, I would love to try one."

Anne handed Luze a cookie and just as Luz was about to take a bite something seemed to occur to Sasha. "Wait, Anne, are those...?" She looked at the container of cookies and turned to Luz. "Luz don't!"

But, it was too late. She'd taken the first bite and was savoring the unique crunchiness as Sasha gave her warning.

"Oh, yeah... I forgot um... There are bugs in there. Sorry," Anne said with a sheepish grin. "Marcy and I both got a taste for them in Amphibia and sometimes I forget..."

Luz took another bite out of the cookie. "Girl, please, I've eaten eyeballs." And organs, blood, bugs, and unidentified eldritch glop. "And even if I hadn't, bugs or not this is a pretty danged good cookie. Can I get the recipe?"

Anne said she'd write it down for Luz, and with a show of reluctance that wasn't 100% genuine, Sasha took a cookie as well and nibbled on it.

After cookies and coffee, the conversation resumed.

"So, Luz, you've got symbiote powers," Marcy noted. "You have a symbiote name?"

"Calamity," Luz replied.

This earned a pause before Anne said. "Well, I guess we don't have a monopoly on that name."

"Huh?"

"The music box," Anne explained. "Did we never say its name? It's called the Calamity Box. The gems that power it were called the Calamity gems, and we're the Calamity Girls becuase we had the power of the gems for a bit."

"Oh, cool, and... Wait," Luz said as something clicked in her head. A conversation she had months ago. She pulled out her phone and started flipping through her pictures.

"What are you doing?" Anne asked.

"When Eda was captured," Luz said, "Hooty searched the house for useful things and mentioned that 'the Calamity Box' in the basement didn't work so we couldn't use it to save Eda. When I asked him what that was, he said it was a magitech box from a frog dimension. I just sort of shrugged it off as Hooty being Hooty but... Since then I've learned that he's actually an ancient demon who knows a lot even if he's not... The sharpest bulb in the crayon box." She'd taken a picture of the box he'd been referring to once, on a whim. "Is this the box?" she said when she finally found the picture and showed it to the others.

"...It, looks like it but... How?" Marcy said.

"Titan's blood," Luz said. "It makes temporary portals between the Demon Realm and the human realm and stuff from the human realm ends up on the Boiling Isles," she explained. "...Maybe it's not just the human realm that these portals connect to? It's been how long since you saw the box? I never did ask Eda when or where she got it."

"It's been over two years," Sasha said. "And it's not like the box has any value without the gems, so... Not like anyone would be keeping that much of an eye on it... it could have gone missing."

"Or it could be a copy," Marcy said. "It's unlikely that in thousands of years, the Newts never tried to make a backup in case the orignal got damaged... And multiverse theory can be a jerk. It could be a box from an entirely different Amphibia."

"You know what this means though, right?" Anne said.

"If Luz and her friends find a way back to the dimension where they left their loved ones..." Marcy said.

"Then she might be able to help us make a way back to the one where we left ours," Sasha finished.

"If that's okay with you?" Anne said suddenly. "I don't want to assume."

"You act like I'd say no," Luz said. Obviously, she'd need to talk to Eda and make sure it hadn't been seized by the Emperor's Coven but all in all, this was just more motivation to get a working portal open.