When Sprig attempts to get along with Leo better, he decides to join the boy on one of his few hunting trips, getting the two of them stuck in much more dangerous situation.

P.S. I would also really appreciate some reviews on this story, mainly because I just want to know people's thought on it and this original chapter.

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It was another humid day in Wartwood, much to no one's surprise. Anne was busy giving herself a much-needed makeover and spa day, Polly seemed to have some kind of nefarious plot planned to terrorize the town for the good half of the day.

Leo was planning to complete his lengthy list of chores that Hop Pop had originally provided the entire Plantar household with, but had begrudgingly tasked him with dealing with them all. He didn't find anyone else incompetent; it was just that Leo was much more efficient at finishing the job.

Sprig, on the other hand was sinking into both his couch and boredom. No one wanted to go on any fulfilling, life-lesson adventures and he wasn't sure what to do. That was until he spotted Leo effortlessly working on the crops, chopping away at any pests or weeds inhabiting them.

That was when the pink skinned frog thought back on it, for the week and half that Leo had spent with them all they hadn't gotten up too much if any escapades. Not to mention the fact that he had seemingly kept to himself for the majority of his stay, and even when he was involved it usually just felt like he was hanging out with Anne.

'Maybe because there both humans they get along better?'

Even still, it was in Sprig's nature to try and get along with whoever was in front of him. Sure, it hadn't worked out all too well in the past with other frogs his age, but he'd managed to became quick friends with Anne so why not another human.

He just had to find something that the two of them could connect with.

That was easier said than done however, as Leo seemed awfully distant; even towards Anne, only cracking the occasionally joke which was still flat in both emotion and tone, so Sprig couldn't really tell if he had warmed up to anyone.

What he did know though, was that Leo enjoyed hunting, fieldwork and...well that was pretty much it to be honest, he was kind of boring in retrospect. That wouldn't deter him however, if the two of them had nothing in common then Sprig would just make Leo enjoy something he did, there had to be something under that dull exterior of his.

Wiping the continuing sweat off his brow, Leo caught another snake-like worm from out of the ground stopping it just before it could gnaw into the freshly grown carrots that had just come in. He had grown quite accustomed to the sharpened beetle leg scythe, and was fond of using it to chip away at the creatures of this world whilst also performing farm work all the same.

It was all he really knew how to do at the moment, especially with his worse for wear memory at the moment. He didn't know who he was, and what he even liked beforehand; was he the type of person to follow orders? Or had his personality differed at all and was it just his memories that were blurry, Leo honestly didn't know.

As he dug into another layer of dirt, backing up slowly forming another line for Hop Pop to plant some seeds later down the line, Leo glanced to the side to see the young frog of the Plantar family hopping over to him a little too suspiciously.

In no matter of the words did he distrust the frog, but he'd heard some stories of the trouble he and Anne and had gotten into, and Leo wasn't exactly the type of person at the moment to want to delve straight into a deadly misadventure.

"Heyyyy Leo! What'cha up to? Finishing up your chores?" Sprig questioned attentively, pushing his body upwards with his feet an all too smug grin on his face.

"Yes. You're acting a little too suspicion for my tastes, is there something you need?" Leo got to straight to point, as he usually did. Raising a not to confident brow to him.

Sprig's eyes bugged out a little, letting an awkward laugh slip out of his mouth, "Whatttt, I don't need anything for you. I just wanted to know.."

"So, you do need something?" Leo pressed even further, not meaning to seem intimidating but with his deep red eyes it was inevitable that it was going to come across that way. Sprig only let out another dry laugh, fixing his jacket slightly.

"I just wanted to ask if you..." Sprig briefly paused, glancing around the farm trying to search for any kind of excuse for himself, "...Play tongue tag!"

"Tongue wha-"

Leo didn't get the chance to finish his sentence as he was wacked in the face with Sprigs oversized tongue, slurring his saliva all over the only clothes he had that were wearable, "Wait stop!" Once again, the yellow tongue slobbered over his clothing knocked him back.

"C'mon Leo! At least try to play the game, you gotta last a minute without me hitting you with my tongue!" Sprig explained the rules, his words a little incoherent with his tongue currently hanging from his mouth.

The white-haired boy really wasn't in the mood, he was wet enough and wanted to at least complete the field work he'd set out, something about leaving it unfinished bothered him. But he was also unsure as to why Sprig was suddenly so determined to play a game with him, wasn't he Anne's best friend? Is that not how it worked.

Sighed, Leo was about to reluctantly agree, until he was slapped in the face yet again this time stumbling him back into the multiple of vegetable laid out squashing them all in the process, landing his arm in an awkward position.

"Ah, dammit!" Leo winced in pain upon impact, bringing his possible sprained arm over his knee allowing it to rest.

Stopping, Sprig immediately stopped what he was doing at the suddenly escalating situation, "Leo! I'm really sorry, I didn't mean to honest!" Sprig said with a weary frown, helping him up to Leo's own annoyance.

"Look. It's fine Sprig, I know you didn't mean anything by it. Just leave me alone for now, I'll get this done and then I'll sort this out.."

Even Sprig could tell that he was irritated by what he'd done, it made sense. No matter how much of a robot Leo might have seen, of course he would've gotten annoyed by his actions, and it only served to make him feel more guilty.

He'd gotten to restless and impatient and had ended up hurting Leo, "Sorry, I just wanted to show you one of my hobbies, I thought you'd enjoy it," Sprig apologized, not saying anything else as he hobbled back over to the Plantar household, disappearing from Leo's eyesight.

Observing his stinging hand, Leo didn't bother to shake off how annoyed he felt at the moment. As bad as he felt that he'd so quickly shaken off Sprig's encouragement so quickly, the pain in his right hand reminded him of otherwise.

Shaking his head, Leo ignored it for now fixing up the destroyed produce. He had to hurry after all, he'd be going hunting soon.


"Uhhhh! I messed everything up!" Sprig groaned, covering his face in hat slumping onto Anne's temporary bed startling the Thai girl somewhat.

"What did you do? You didn't set fire to the town again, did you?" Anne's face darkened as she remembered back to the last time the tragedy had occurred, shuddering at the memory, "One of the worst three days of my life."

"No, it's not that. It's Leo! I wanted to get him to open a little you know, make him less distant towards all of us, he might be here but he's not exactly here," Sprig did the best to get his point across sulking into the bed even more.

"But all I did was pushing him over during tongue tag, he's athletic like you Anne so I thought he'd enjoy something like that, yet he wasn't even interested and now he definitely won't want to talk to me!"

Anne sat beside him, sympathetically patting him on the head, "Well, even if I haven't known him that long. I can tell that Leo's the kind of guy that won't open up that quickly, I can barely even get him to crack a joke half the time, but when it counts, like with the toads and helping Hop Pop he was there. So, your gonna have to appeal to what he likes.."

Sprig took a moment to think about it, he'd already thought about it before. He knew that much, "Hunting! You said that you found him hunting and since then he's gone on two trips alone, I could go with him on one of his trips!"

"Ehhh, I don't know if that's the right idea. It might be his hobby, but are you sure you can handle that? From the weird bugs Leo brings back, it might be a little too...extreme for you," She didn't know what the right wording was, but she could see by the meticulous look Sprig had on his face that it had worked at all.

'Why do I even try...'

"Why are you suddenly so set on getting closer to Leo anyway?" Anne brought up, snapping the frog out of his train of thought.

"Oh...well, it's kind of embarrassing," Sprig scratched his cheek a little nervously, hiding his face away from Anne.

Said girl nudged him slightly, pressing even further to speak up, "Come on dude! Do you think it'll matter to me? We've practically seen each other in every embarrassing situation imaginable!"

"Fine, it's because...Leo's the first boy that I've actually talked to properly, and apart from Hop Pop who doesn't exactly count considering he's, you know my grandparent and he looks after me...I kind of wanted a friend who's a boy, like me.." Sprig admitted, once again hiding his face inside of his hat.

Anne couldn't help but smile at the boy's sheepishness, pulling him into a tight hug, "Awww Sprig! That's so wholesome! You know what, screw it I'm in full backing with your plan! Do it, for bromance!"

"I have no idea what that is but alright!" Sprig cheered, leaping a little too high up and crashing against the basement roof.

"You okay.."


Safe to say, Leo wasn't exactly thrilled about what had transpired. For some inexplicable reason, Sprig had decided to join him on his hunting trip; it wasn't much of a bother as it was an inconvenience. Hunting, trapping and then killing some of the certain creatures in this world was a lot more taxing than it seemed.

And he wasn't sure if the teen frog could handle it.

There was no reason to dwell on it for much longer, they were here now; and it was best for Leo to teach Sprig the ropes and get him started on his own.

Handing out some supplies and tools from the relatively normal sized satchel he had brought with him, Leo held a small, weirdly shape pocket knife he'd purchased from Wartwood and laid it out in front of the frog.

"Alright, this is mostly what we'll need, I'll let you handle the rope as you probably have a good idea how to tie something, given your tongue," Leo gave his reasoning rather poorly, but Sprig got the gist of what he was saying.

As he was handed it however, he noticed Leo's now bandaged up hand frowning at it, 'I have to do this perfectly, to make it up to him!'

Unfortunately, he was having a terrible time attempting to even get the rope into a simple cross-patched knot, simply choosing to fold the frayed string over itself again and again, until it mostly resembled a normal trap.

Leo didn't have the ability to pay attention to him at the moment, he was aware of the creature making a path towards them, so he couldn't focus on whatever Sprig was doing. With a swing of the blade and the bending of some leaves, he had prepared the perfect bait, being an assortment of fruits and vegetation.

Whilst collecting food, Leo couldn't help but think back on his thoughts earlier. On whether this was something the him before his memory loss would've enjoyed, he had very sporadic patches of his past and he may have been totally different.

But if this is what he enjoyed to do right now, he truthfully didn't think it mattered. Even if he was still having some large doubts about his identity.

"Sprig." Leo stated stone cold, turning around to already see the pink amphibian already there, the rope slung around the sturdy oak tree and the circular hole prepped for whatever beast that would fall prey to it.

"Oh, you already finished. Are you sure its secure?" Leo questioned tugging with minimal weight put in.

"Yep! I've captured creatures before as well so I at least have some understanding of how to do it!" He announced rather confidently, surprising Leo somewhat.

He knew Sprig often explored these woods alone and now with Anne, so it was entirely possible that he'd come across his fair share of wild bugs, even more than him considering this was actually his home.

"I...didn't know you could that. I don't know much about you really," Leo admitted, a distinct spot of miniscule redness on his face.

"Of course, I mean I do live here. We have to deal with things like this on the daily, you could've asked but your always off doing some kind of fieldwork," Sprig joked, getting a humorous nod from the boy.

"It relaxes me. Kind of? I guess I just like doing a task that can his hard and rewarding. You could help as well you know?" He teased sarcastically, laying some leaves of the trap making it less obvious.

Sprig brushed it off, blowing a raspberry with his lips, "I do it most of the time, you just take all of them too quickly, you could take a break every now and then...maybe even play tongue tag, if you're up for it I mean."

"Sure, you could actually show me the rules first before we start," Leo said another snide comment, earning a small chuckle from Sprig.

"Alright, still won't help you though."

All of a sudden, Leo didn't respond. Squinting his eyes and changing his demeanor, grabbing Sprig and pulling him into the nearby bush, where they watched a hulking creature claw closer towards them.

"It's bigger than I expected, it doesn't matter though. As long as you tied the ropes properly, they should hold for long enough.." Leo whispered lowly, watching the haired bug/beastly monster observe and then begin to eat the food he'd put out.

"..Hehe, right," Sprig choked out awkwardly, his words going unheard by the human, he was waiting intently for the chance to strike.

"Now," He murmured, streaking out of the brambles and at the creature, watching one of its four legs be ensnared by the rope, pulling it up and almost around the giant tree.

Just as he stabbed his knife forward and cut into the beast's flesh, it rightly began to struggle. What Leo didn't expect however was for the rope around the main bulk of the tree to become loose and drop the creature right before him, no bleeding and more furious than ever.

To stunned to move, Leo was helpless to the giant claw slapping down onto him, "LEO!" Sprig yelled, wrapping his tongue around the blood-eyed teen pulling him away from the danger.

"What...what happened!?" Leo actually exclaimed, actually raising his voice for one of the first times.

"I'm sorry!" Sprig shouted back, clenching his shaky fist with an absurd amount of regret, "I couldn't do it, but if I told you I thought you'd think I'm useless and just tell me to go home, even though I wanted to spend time with you."

Ignoring his own confusion and anger, Leo focused in on the last part of Sprig's sentence, "What do you mean, 'spend time with me' I don't get it!" He retorted yet again, flailing his arms about.

"Because your cool, and your another boy. I don't get to hang out with kids my age, let alone boys. I just thought that, now there was someone here that maybe I could connect with them, but it isn't working at all!" Sprig whined, crumpling up the grass in his own annoyance, "I just don't get you!"

Leo's face scrunched up in a whole content of emotions, mainly wondering what the pink frog really saw in him as a friend, and also angry that he hadn't just told him outright, he just didn't understand why he bottled up his feelings and didn't just tell him.

Now with the beast towering over them all, Leo clutched his knife preparing to fight it with almost no hesitation, "Look...I don't get what you really see in me as a friend. Even I know that there isn't much to me, guessing by how Anne is, I'm not like a usual teenage human. Or why you couldn't just tell me this but, if there's one thing that I do know you can do, it's facing a giant monster and escaping with your life!"

Sprig couldn't help but smile at his claim, cupping a few pebbles in his hand, raising his trusty slingshot upwards, "That's right, I do it almost every day!"

Leo wasn't lost on how morbid his words were, "Then let's do this!" He declared, rushing forward with Sprig in tow.


Bounding off every tree, Sprig let several rocks fire off from his slingshot, only distracting the creature for enough of the time for Leo to approach from the side, snipping at its legs and getting it to kneel.

It let out a howl of horrendous anguish, baring its snarling fangs at Leo, once again attempting to get back up, thrusting its claws about actually managing to land a swipe on him, blood seeping down his arm.

"Gah..." He groaned, clutching his arm slightly, "How does Anne get away unscathed so many times.."

"Leo!" Sprig called out once more, bawling up a blob of mud in between in his hand, spraying it at the monster, perfectly covering its eyes and blinding its vision. In the very same process, he smacked his feet back down onto its head, leaping down to where Leo was, "We can't beat it, I don't know what else to do though."

Whirling his head back and forth, Leo caught sight of the slumped over rope, grabbing it and wrapping it up in his hand, "Sprig, want me to actually teach you how to tie a rope?"

Sprig struggled to hold back his own internal squealing; despite the dire situation he was still excited about finally getting to work together with the teen, "I'm in!"

Sprinting in unison, Leo only narrowly avoided the ferocious bug as it whipped its mantis like claws at him, hoping to wound him once more. Sprig did most of the heavy lifting, jumping over top the creature and around some of the tree, wrapping it around the sturdiest ones.

Leo did the opposite, slipping underneath the beast spreading his legs in a singular moment just scraping by to avoid another mantis claw piercing straight through them. The end of the rope was beginning to appear, so he managed to pick himself up and tightly knot it around his arm beginning to pull around the closest tree in the vicinity.

"Sprig now!"

From above the treetops, Sprig remembered what Leo had quickly explained to him, tying it around the highest reaches of the canopy – together they both began to tug on it; tightening the original loose it once had around the bug, throwing it high up into the air now leaving it dangling far up above them both.

"RAAAHGGGGGGGHHHHHH!" It growled, flailing it's clawed limbs about.

Once Sprig returned beside Leo, the two of them collapsed onto the floor from exhaustion, too tired and relieved to attempt to stand.

"Well, looks like we won't be coming back with food huh...sorry about that Leo, I know you like you hunting trips," Sprig apologized, feeling genially guilty.

"I just wish that you'd told me about it, I might've been annoyed about earlier but I still would've showed you how to do it. Although I guess I should apologize for being such a...what did Anne call it? A stick in the mud, I'm trying to figure some stuff about the me right now, farm work and hunting is all I know."

The two stayed silent for a while, simply collecting the rest of the hunting supplies preparing to head back home, Sprig still felt a little solemn. Sure, him and Leo had talked it out and had gone through a life-threatening fight, but he doubted on whether or not the boy would even talk to him again.

As they began the trek back home, he was surprised to hear Leo speaking back up, "In a couple days, I'm planning to head over to the swamp on the other side of town, you can join me if you want," He spoke meekly, putting his hand through his somewhat soft white hair.

He couldn't believe what he was hearing, and was still ecstatic that he had, not hiding his own excitement throwing himself up into the air, "Yes! When are we going! We'll have to pack right!?"

"Yeah.." Leo didn't say much else, simply enjoying the frog's company as they made their way back. The two of them taking their time as they did, not much closer than before, but they were now at least making the effort.

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I hope you enjoyed this chapter; I think it was a nice one for Leo and Sprig's relationship. I'm planning to have at least one chapter for Leo and each member of the Plantar family, just because I want to establish that there actually closer since the beginning of the story. We'll be back to the show's episodes next chapter starting with Civil-Wart so until then, see yah.