Chapter 4.
The ceiling could get very boring very fast you stare at it non-stop for thirty minutes straight, like Sasha has. She's been like this since Marcy's funeral, and it was starting to worry her.
Since she left Newtopia, Sasha had felt this… 'noise' inside her head. A fog, filling her brain and chest with static, making it impossible to think or rest or move forward, trapping her in an endless present. It was easy enough to ignore when she was running for her life. But when she reached the mill, she had to stop, and the noise became unbearable. Now that Marcy was 'underground', all the noise had left her, as well as all the color. The fog has been lifted, leaving nothing in its place but silence.
Sasha could live with a little silence. But this peace was terrifying.
The door was slammed open. Sasha tilted her neck lazily to look at Grime, standing in the threshold, shovel under his arms, covered in dirt head to toe. He looked like a very angry mole. He lifted his shoulders, as if waiting for something.
"What?" Sasha asked.
Grime glared at her. "'Ooh, Captain Grime. That sure is a deep grave that we dug together. Why don't I, your loyal Lieutenant, pick up a shovel and give you a hand so you don't have to fill the whole thing by yourself?'" Grime mocked her.
"I don't sound like that," Sasha retorted. "And you could've asked, you know?"
"Would you have helped?"
"…no."
Grime let out a series of grumbling noises and threw the shovel into a corner. Then he disappeared inside the kitchen (now with the curtains back in place) and returned, ten minutes later, dressed in his civil clothes and with one of the grocery bags on his arms.
He dragged the chair closer to Sasha, dragged the table closer to his side —stealing Sasha footstool in the process— dropped the bag on it and finally, sat his heavy butt on his chair. Which was also his bed. And a sack of flour.
"I don't know how they do things in your world. But in here, once these 'reunions' are done for, we have a feast!" Grime shoved a hand in the air, like they were about to eat salmon and sushi instead of grocery store junk. "Let's start with something light, shall we?"
In a flurry of hard-to-follow hand movements, Grime cut the bread, sliced the beetle meat, ripped out a big portion of worm cheese, soaked everything in mayonnaise, and finally put the whole thing together. The result was a sandwich with enough lard to build a pig from scratch. Grime held his creation like it was a work of art and not something whose look alone could give you permanent acne.
As he was about to bite into it, Sasha produced a dagger from inside her boot and threw it. The weapon flew and impaled itself in the sack of flour, barely missing Grime's head.
"Hey! What gives?!" shouted the man.
"I should ask you what gives. How can you eat something so gross in a moment like this?"
"… I was gonna share it?" Grime said, confused. He ignored Sasha indignant scoff and brought the sandwich to his mouth again.
Once again, Sasha produced a dagger from her belt and tossed it, this time hitting the sandwich with enough strength it slipped out of Grime's hand. The sandwich hit the floor, its content spreading over, leaving only a mountain of ingredients that loosely resembled a sandwich.
At this, Grime shrugged. "Still good 'nuff."
Sasha rubbed her eyes. Grime had only two moods; angry and hungry. And unfortunately, he was stuck in the later.
"Grime. Forget about your stomach for a second, would ya? I need to know what your plan is, because last time I checked we're still outlaws, Andrias' still in power, still have the box and is probably looking for us or for a way to invade Earth or both!" Sasha breathed in, feeling the anger boil inside her. "We need to strike back."
This didn't get any reaction out of Grime; in fact, it got the opposite of a reaction. The toad just slummed deeper into the flour sack-turned-chair. For the first time, Sasha noticed how grey Grime looked. He was what? Forty? Fifty? In any case, he looked a decade older now than a few days ago.
"You think I haven't thought about that? I've been squishing my brain about this ever since Newtopia and this is what I figured out." He stretched his arm to grab a can. He lingered on the bog-grog, but chose the soda in the end. "First, the plan failed. Obvi. The Toad Army couldn't even get inside the city walls, and the last we saw of them, they were struggling against the robot frog army. The Toad Lords won't be very happy with us, assuming, of course, they weren't wholly decimated by Andrias' light-canon thingy."
"It's a laser beam," Sasha corrected with a bitter voice. She'd forgotten about that.
"Whatever. Second —and this takes into account the Toad Lords not killing us on sight—, we won't convince them to trust us to stage another coup, stinking war hammer or not." Grime waggled the can around. "And third, even if the Toad Lords suffered from short term memory loose and decided to give it another shot, the biggest toad army in this world couldn't hope to defeat a 30 feet tall newt who commands a flying fortress, a 'laser boam' thing, and a whole army of never ending, fearless mechanical warriors!"
Grime slammed his hand on the table, shaking it nearly to the breaking point.
"So there you have it. Forgive me for feeling a bit against the wall right now."
Grime stared at his can, wishing real real bad that he'd picket the bog-grog. He looked at least two decades older. Sasha bit the inside of her cheek, pushing down all sympathy and concern. Now there was no time to be chummy, it was time to take command.
"You don't have a plan, is that what you're saying?" Sasha asked.
"Yes."
"Fine. We'll go with mine then."
Sasha jump from her sack-chair and swiped an arm over the table, knocking over the rest of the meat and bread. Then she unfolded one of her maps over it, showing a detailed view of Frog Valley.
"We can't stay here forever, obvi. And you're right; we can't go back to the Toad Lords as it is. They'll laugh at our faces. Or worse." Sasha rubbed the back of her neck. Grime touched his throat in reflex. "So, I'm thinking about Wartwood. Its ugly, smells like manure, and it's definitely small and far away enough to be under Andrias' radar. Plus, it's a Frog Town, so nobody would look for your ugly toad face there."
"Says the girl with the sword hairdo."
"And once we're there," Sasha went on, ignoring Grime's comment, "we can start rebuilding our army."
"We had an army. A good army. A toad army. It wasn't enough."
"We'll just build a bigger army then, duh!"
"And where exactly are you gonna find soldiers for that army, duh!?"
"What are you talking about? We've all the people we need." Sasha hand went to her pouch and took out yet another dagger (you can't ever have enough of them).
She raised the dagger above the map and stabbed it several times. "Here, here, here, and here."
Captain Grime straightened his back to get a look at the map. For the first time since the funeral he seemed to be paying attention.
The dagger had left a mark in the four biggest towns in Frog Valley.
Grime lifted his gaze to look at Sasha and… No, she wasn't joking.
"Now you get it," she said, taking no small pleasure in seeing her Captain's dumbfounded expression. "How many people live in this valley? 20.000 at least, according to Toad Tower tax records. Thought I wasn't paying attention, huh? Well I was. Stinking frobot army or not, Andrias couldn't fight them all if they rallied. If we got just ten percent of the people of the Valley to join us-."
"Ten percent is way to generous."
"You wanna be a negative? Fine. Five percent of all the able-bodied men and women would still be enough to replace our Toad Army." She began to pace around, trying to put her thoughts into words. "Yes, I get frogs are lousy warriors and very small, and basically living squeaky toys butwe'll have to do with numbers alone. We'll start with Wartwood —won't be too hard. They love Anne. As soon as they know what Andrias did, they'll practically beg to join our cause. With them, we'll rally the whole Valley, and then we use our new army to force the Toad Lords into giving us our old army back. Then we mesh up our old army and our new army and use our New-Old army to attack Newtopia and kick Andrias gigantic butt out of the throne. It's a perfect plan!"
Sasha gasped, breathing heavily, heart beating with anticipation. The thing about having so much silence into your head it's that it allows you to think. She went through all the possible course of actions she could think of, and this was the one that gave best result. So convinced she was of her idea, she couldn't understand Grime's lack of enthusiasm.
"Come on Grime, say something!" she shouted, ears getting red at Grime's blank expression.
"I think you smacked your head when we felt from the sky." Grime slouched over and rubbed his temples. There he goes, shifting into 'adult' mode. "Let me get this straight. Your plan is to grab a town of farmers —farmer frogs, I might add— and turn them into a militia strong enough to invade and rally the entire Valley into joining our lost cause against Andrias. Then you want to use this amazing army to strong-arm the Toad Lords into lending us what's left of their armies, combining toad and frogs into one a mixed force, something that haven't happened in , you're gonna use this giant, mixed army to assault a flying fortress lead by, I might remind you, the KING of this stinky world."
Sasha made like a turtle, hiding her reddening face inside her hood. "Well, if you gonna say it like that, every plan will sound crazy."
"It is crazy!" shouted Grime. "Your whole 'plan' falls into the assumption that Wartwood is going to help us, but they hate our guts."
"I know."
"And WE hate them."
"I KNOW!" Sasha dragged her hood down her face until it was ripped out. She threw the rag to the ground; it's her second cape in a week.
"But they loved Anne. They would do anything for her," Sasha retorted.
"But she's not coming back."
Sasha's lip quivered. It wasn't too funny for her to use the name of her friend to rally an army. Pretty sure Anne would actually chew her for it. But Anne wasn't around anymore to stop Sasha.
"They don't need to know that," said Sasha.
"Not what I meant." Grime's wrinkled expression softened. "I mean your friend's back on your world. And until we get the box back, you ain't going to see her again. Or your home."
Just when she thought she couldn't get any redder, Sasha turned into a tomato. It wasn't just the implication that Sasha was stuck in Amphibia for a long time; she'd made peace with that. It was the tone, the stupid expression. Compassion had never done anything for Sasha. Sympathy was not a thing she wanted. She just needed… help. From a friend.
"So what? There's nothing for me there," Sasha spat, evading Grime's paternal look. "Where would I even go, if I ever went back? Marcy is dead. Anne probably wants to see me dead. Do you want me to go back to being the head cheerleader while I home jump and wait 'till I turn eighteen to finally be my own boss?" She chuckled with no humor. Everything was so pointless now.
"No. For what matters, I'm stuck in here. Amphibia is my home now." She opened her arms wider, as if she could grab the whole Amphibia with them. "And I have zero intention on letting that tyrannical, friend-killer, piece of shit newt rule it all. Because if there is one thing I hate, that's bullies. And I never give up!"
Sasha stopped to catch her breath, anger melting way to determination. She folded the map and extended it forward. "But I can't do it on my own."
And as easy as that, it was out. The dreaded words. Sasha had opened her chest and showed all the ugly bits, letting her heart guide her to an abyss she couldn't cross. Her only hope was there was someone on the other side to catch her. And the only one left was Grime.
When he picked the other end of the map, Sasha began to live again.
"You've got to be the biggest bitch this world has ever seen to make this plan work," said Grime, smile growing wild. "Oh, what the Hell! The slow death isn't for us, right? We'll rally this whole land against that newt and give him an asskicking to remember.
"And should we fail and wake up in the Underworld, look out for me." Grime shoved his thumb in his chest. "You'll dinner with my Ancestors."
Yes! This is exactly what she'd needed. No tears, no kind words. Just someone to lean on. Someone to carry her by the shoulders, give her a shake and push her forward. And perhaps this is what Grime needed too. He was still beaten up and grey looking, but a fire had been lit in his eyes. Let's hope it'll be enough.
"It's decided then?" Sasha dared to ask. "Grime and Sasha again?"
"Sasha and Grime. Again and forever."
There was no words. Or none that Sasha could say. As soon she opened her mouth a gasp came out, and she panicked. Better to pull out now, before she did something she would regret. But as soon as she moved to escape, Grime grabbed her wrist and pulled her down. She landed on the toad chest, his strong arms surrounding her. Anguish took as the silence turned into noise once again.
Whatever! Who cares? Tomorrow, Sasha might meet her end at a frobot hands, or face an even crueler fate. But today, she was alive! So alive it hurt. And she wanted to cry.
She hid her face in her captains' neck and wept.
"And I… I'll never abandon you," Grime tightened his grip around the small girl. "It's a promise."
And that's it. Only one chapter left.
Today have been weird too. Job-hunting sucks.
Anyway, see you guys tomorrow for the last part.