Of Frog Princes And Chancellors

"Noct! Hey, Noct, buddy!"

When Noctis came to, he found himself lying face-down on the cold, damp earth in some forest. He rolled onto his back, feeling dizzy, disoriented at first, but the sensation quickly faded away. Past the dark canopy of trees, stars twinkled in the night sky. A faint glow from the horizon heralded the break of dawn.

Prompto leaned into his field of view. His friend had crouched down beside him.
"You okay?" he asked.

Noctis pushed himself up into a sitting position. "I think so." He did not feel hurt, at least not more than he usually did after a day of hiking and hunting monsters. A few scratches and bruises were nothing out of the ordinary.

Looking around, Noctis discovered that Gladio, too, was only just standing up. Whatever had hit them must have hit them pretty hard, to knock out even him.
The only one on his feet was Ignis. He stood in the clearing behind Prompto and was apparently trying to figure out where they were and what had gotten them into this situation.

The latter was something Noctis would have liked to know as well. Thinking back to the previous day, he remembered their encounter with the scientific researcher Sania Yeagre, who had hired them to find some peculiarly coloured frogs. They had spent the whole evening trying to catch the damn things, only to be ambushed by a Nagarani daemon just as they had decided to return to Old Lestallum for the night. In hindsight, they really should have paid more attention to nightfall instead of shrugging it off, thinking "no worries, we can handle daemons".
The Nagarani had turned out to be one of the toughest opponents Noctis and his retinue had faced thus far. None of the daemons they had encountered, not even the similar looking Naga, possessed as strange abilities as this one. Noctis explicitly recalled the Nagarani's ability to petrify his companions with its gaze.
With the chancellor's help the fight might have been a lot easier, but Ardyn had refused to help them, saying that they had to learn not to rely on him for every little thing. Which no one really did, because he could not be bothered to help them with the little things most the time, anyway. He had probably just meant to teach them a lesson for dragging him along on this most unnecessary side quest. Apparently frog-catching simply did not have enough dramatic flair to interest him.

"Last thing I remember is us fighting a daemon," Noctis told Prompto. "But nothing after that. What happened?"

His friend turned around to Ignis, seemingly waiting for an explanation himself.

Sighing, Ignis adjusted his glasses. "It is rather embarrassing to say, but I am afraid the daemon has turned all of us into frogs."

"Uh, what?" Noctis uttered, unable to believe what he just heard.

"You're kidding," Gladio said. "Right?"

"The daemon got the two of you first," Ignis continued. "That's how I saw it happen."

"I don't mean to complain, but …" Prompto said and got up. "Why are we still alive then? That thing could've eaten us easily."

"Don't tell me …" Gladio started and Ignis nodded affirmingly.

"We can safely assume that Ardyn saved our sorry behinds."

Noctis finally rose from the ground as well. His clothes were filthy from rolling through the mud, dodging the Nagarani's bites and tail swipes. The sooner they returned to civilisation, the better. He adjusted the clip-on light on his jacket to illuminate his surroundings. The approaching dawn also helped to shed some light on the wilderness.
"Speaking of the chancellor … Where is he?" he asked.

"Well, about that …" Iggy stepped aside to reveal a bright red frog sitting on the ground behind him.

Prompto gasped. "No way!"

The amphibian looked surprisingly calm, but then again, the frogs they had caught for Sania had not been disturbed by human presence in their territory, either.

"Nah, I don't believe it." Noctis crossed his arms in front of his chest. "Ardyn's part daemon. He's not gonna fall victim to a spell like that."

"It seems to be the only logical conclusion to explain his absence," Ignis argued, bending down to examine the frog more closely.

Prompto looked from him to Noctis and back, obviously unsure of who could be right.

"Could be that he ditched us for boring him to death," Noctis said.

Gladio walked over to him and Prompto. "Then I'd like to know how he plans on returning to Old Lestallum without us."

As usual, Ignis was the first to come up with a plan. "I suggest we head back and see if he's waiting at the Regalia."

"But just in case …" Prompto crouched down and gently scooped the red frog up into his hands. It made no attempt to hop away. "Let's take this little buddy with us."

They quickly regained their bearings and made their way out of the forest, into the direction of the nearest road.

"It can't be Ardyn," Noctis continued to argue as Prompto walked beside him with the red frog in his hands. "It makes no sense. If that was him, why didn't he turn back when we did?" For some reason, the more he thought about it, the less certain he got. The classical symptom of overthinking a problem.

Iggy's attempt to find an answer to that question did not help, either. "We know he possesses all sorts of strange powers. It stands to reason that the spell works slightly different on him than it did on us."

One by one they emerged out of the bushes and arrived back at the side of the road. The Regalia stood there, still parked as they had left it, but the Niff chancellor was nowhere to be seen.
Smirking ominously, Gladio looked back at the frog in Prompto's hands. "There's one surefire way to find out if it's him."

"How?" the young gunner asked cluelessly.

"Let's try to kill it. If it's Ardyn, it can't die."

Shocked by his suggestion, Prompto jerked his hands away. "What? No! I won't let you hurt him!"

"Look who got attached so quickly."

Prompto held the frog close to his chest, but actually found the guts to step up to Gladio. "It's just not right." he argued, nodding sharply.

"Yeah, killing's out of the question," Noctis agreed. He did not think Ardyn would like to wake up with a dagger in his chest, though it was far more likely they just ended up killing a frog for no reason whatsoever. Just then, he thought he heard a familiar sounding chuckle coming from somewhere nearby, but when he turned to look at the Regalia again, its seats were still empty.

"Alright, then what do we do?" Gladio asked.

"We can always ask Miss Yeagre about the frog," Ignis suggested. "And if it isn't him, I suspect he'll show up by himself."

"Fair enough," Noctis said and glanced over his shoulder. He had a feeling that Ardyn was indeed not too far away. "I bet Prompto'll take good care of him until then. So, what do we call him?"

"Seriously?" Gladio gave him a strange look as though he was questioning his sanity.

In no time at all, Prompto had come up with name suggestions. "The Frog Chancellor? Frog Ardyn? Frardyn?"

"I think that's quite enough."
They all turned to their car to see a cloud of miasma gathering in the passenger seat, revealing the chancellor sitting there with his elbow resting on the closed door.

"Well, who have we got here?" Gladio said.

"Ardyn!" Prompto exclaimed in relief.

Noctis felt rather smug knowing that he had been right all along. Putting his hands on his hips, he flashed a confident smile.
"'Fraid you're too late. We already named it. It's part of the team now."

Ardyn chuckled in response. He seemed to have taken no offence at having been replaced by a frog, possibly because he knew Noctis had not been serious about it.
"Well, haven't we all had fun tonight? But everything must come to an end eventually. I say it's past time we returned to town."

"Gotta agree on that," Noctis replied and opened the back door of the Regalia. There was a lot of sleep he had to catch up on after that all-nighter. Being unconscious did not make up for the loss of sleep. Not for him, anyway.

Gladio and Prompto walked over to the other side of the Regalia.

"I think you can leave the frog, Prompto," Ignis said as he saw him stepping into the car still with the amphibian in his hands.

Noct's friend paused for a moment. "I thought, seeing how I brought … Frardyn with us already, we might as well give him to Sania. Actually, do you think I could put him into the armiger?"

"Sure, go ahead," Ardyn replied instantly, not even turning around to spare him a glance.

"What? No!" Noctis spat out, surprised by Ardyn's lie. "You can't put living things into the armiger. They'd die."

"O-okay!" Gasping, Prompto let himself fall onto the middle of the back seat.

Noctis sat down next to him and leaned forward to grab the chancellor's attention. "You just want to live down that prank, don't you?"

"Oh, do I, now?"

"In all seriousness, though; Thanks for saving our hides back there."

"You can return the favour by bringing my fedora to the nearest laundry, to wash off the spot of mucus you left." Ardyn replied nonchalantly.

Noctis felt his calm expression fall apart as he was hit by a sudden twinge of disgust and confusion. "I left what?"

#-#-#

When the Nagarani blew green mist on Noctis and his companions, Ardyn had known what would happen. In fact, he had been looking forward to watching the four of them desperately trying to undo the spell. What he had not anticipated, however, was for all of them to fall under its effect at the same time.
Out of the mist hopped four, bright green, croaking frogs.

Talk about a let-down. They would not even know what had hit them by the time they returned to their original forms.

He turned his attention from the frogs to the Nagarani. The snake-like daemon reared up, readying itself to devour the bite-sized prince and his friends. Something he obviously could not let happen. Just as the daemon's head shot down, Ardyn shadow-stepped in front of his companions and delivered a dark-magic powered punch to its face. The Nagarani recoiled.
"No! Bad daemon," Ardyn said, earning only a hiss from the creature in return. He shook out one hand and summoned the Rakshasa Blade in the other.

Judging by the look on the Nagarani's all-too-human face, it was annoyed, angry, but most importantly, unafraid. It belonged to those daemons that were too powerful to be impressed by Ardyn's mere presence.

"Allow me to put this into words even you will understand:" he announced as he tilted his head up to meet the daemon's cold-eyed stare and made a display of his powers by letting the scourge spill from his eyes. "This is my prey."

The Nagarani's head shot down at him, with jaws split wider than a human mouth would allow. Its bright yellow eyes emitted a glare in an attempt to petrify him, but Ardyn barely even felt the spell grazing him. He stepped aside to avoid the Nagarani's bite, then brought his sword around in a long arc for a devastating strike that cut the woman's head clean from the snake's body. It convulsed one last time before dispersing into particles.
Well, at the very least the boys had been able to deliver a fair amount of damage to the daemon or even Ardyn might have needed a few more strikes to take it down.

He turned around to his charges and found three of them hopping away, each into a different direction.

Ardyn sighed deeply. What a mess. If they were to blame him, he was not going to object this time. After all, they considered him to be the daemon expert of their mismatched group, and even he was cursing himself now for not having warned them of the Nagarani's spell.

Ardyn dropped his hat onto Noctis. – The lazy frog had to be Noctis, right? They were pretty much indistinguishable from one another.
Anyway, he dropped his hat onto that one to keep it still, then rushed over to the frog that was about to hop into the underbrush and disappear from his sight. Prompto, probably, if the sheer amount of energy in those legs was anything to go by.
He did not resist as Ardyn grabbed him, but it took him several attempts to actually lift him off the ground. Those amphibians were more slippery than he had thought. And covered in a thin layer of slime. His coat would be due for a dry cleaning after this. Keeping one frog pressed to his chest, he swiftly rounded up the other two before returning to collect Noctis. Apparently, the frog prince had chosen to make his escape too by then.
Ardyn's fedora was hopping about in a circle.

Seriously, the boys had no idea how lucky they were to have him looking after them. Or how well-disposed he was towards them in general, given what fate originally had in store.

With three frogs in his arms and another sitting a little too comfortably in his upside-down hat, Ardyn walked away from where they had fought the Nagarani. He did not want to lose them in the nearby pond, among the other frogs Miss Yeagre had asked them to collect. The spell lasted only for a minute or two, but even frogs could get far in that time. Of course, he could have used a Maiden's Kiss on them, but why bother wasting precious resources when there was no immediate danger around?

One frog kept trying to bite into his sleeve as Ardyn made his way deeper into the forest.
So that one had to be Gladio. How typical for him to show no appreciation for Ardyn's help whatsoever.

A full three seconds after he had put the four of them down on the ground, he lost track of who was who again. Perhaps he should have cast an illusion on them showing their ridiculous hairstyles to keep them apart.
He spent another couple of seconds herding the frogs together until, with a puff of green smoke, Ignis and Prompto reverted to their original forms. The rest of them scattered, but they could only be seconds away from turning back as well.

Ignis immediately lost consciousness. Unlike him, Prompto was awake, but so dizzy and confused that he could barely stand. Ardyn grabbed him by his sleeve to keep him upright, but to no avail. The poor lad collapsed to his feet.

Ah, well. It was their first time getting hit by such a powerful spell. Ardyn decided to let them rest for now. Smirking, he looked down upon Prompto's innocent face. There was still enough time to surprise them with a little prank when they got to.

Ardyn quickly shadow-stepped to the pond and back, returning with one of the red frogs Miss Yeagre had asked for. In the meantime, Noctis and Gladio had turned back as expected and were lying not too far from Prompto and Ignis.
He placed the red frog where they would find it easily upon waking, then let himself dissolve into miasma and drift atop the trees to watch and wait.

Please take note that this chapter was added retroactively.

I don't know who had the genius idea to include the "Frog" status effect in FFXV.
It feels a bit out of place, like it's only there for comedic effect.
And then you have to consider that "Virus" did not make a re-appearance despite of the Max HP stat being of greater importance than ever, and there actually being an illness that's relevant in terms of lore.