Chapter 7: Eye of the Beholder

"No…" Anne stammered. "You-you can't be here. I-I killed you. I died killing you."

Core!Andrias laughed, a mirthless, soulless sound, as Marcy slowly began to slide off his/their flaming blade.

"I… I never.. got to tell you… I… lo…" The life slipped away from her eyes as her body slid to the ground.

"No…" Anne repeated. "You should be dead. I made sure of it."

"What was it Mother Olm said? Something that never sleeps, and cannot die," the abomination before her reminded her. "Unlike your friend here. Don't worry though… you'll be joining her soon enough." He/They raised his/their blade in challenge.

Anne drew her taser baton, another loaner from Mr. X. It wasn't Tritonio's blade or even her trusty old tennis racket, but it was the only reliable weapon she had on her person. Anne knew it wasn't even close to a match for Core!Andrias's flame sword.

It didn't matter. She would make it a match.

Core!Andrias chuckled again. "Well, look at you. Even after we killed your friend it seems you still have a sense of humor. After all, your powers are long gone, you haven't held a weapon in years, and yet you think you can actually challenge us? That's the funniest joke I've heard since the one about the Olm who took up target shooting!"

"Laugh all you want," Anne replied, as she charged forward with her baton. "I'm sending you back to Hell!" And with a howl of rage and grief, she lunged at the possessed salamander.

"Guys?"

Anne, Marcy and Bella seemed to have frozen in mid-sentence.

"Guys! Anne! Marcy! Other one!" Sasha snapped her fingers in front of them. "Wake up. Snap out of it. You're creeping me out."

Anne suddenly turned toward her. "You know what? I'm starting to remember how annoying your voice is."

"Well, that came out of nowhere," remarked Sasha. "Boonchuy, you okay?"

"Okay? You have the nerve to ask me that?" Anne growled, advancing on her. "You know… I tried. I really did. And for a while there, I even succeeded. I forgave you, Sasha. At least I told myself I did. I even dated you." She shuddered. "But deep down… there's still a part of me that never forgot. That could never forgive."

"Anne…"

"You know why I've been pulling away from you over the last ten years? It's not because our interests diverged. It's not because I found other friends. It's because I wanted to get away from you. But fate just keeps pushing us together, doesn't it? There's really only one way to be rid of you, isn't there?" She drew her baton and began to advance.

"Anne… stop… this is crazy!"

"'Crazy?' I thought you therapists didn't like that word. Then again… when you think about it, isn't therapy just one more way to manipulate people? Defining what's healthy, and what's not?"

Sasha brought up her own baton to block Anne's. True… deep down in her subconscious, Sasha had questioned how easily Anne had forgiven her upon her return to Amphibia. She'd even wondered if their breakup and slow drift away from each other had been due to lingering resentment on Anne's part. But why was it suddenly flaring up now, of all times? "Anne, stop! I don't know what triggered this all of a sudden, but we don't have to fight! We can talk about this!"

"Talk? So you can get in my head again? Forget it, 'Sash'! You'll never manipulate me again! You'll never manipulate anyone again!"

"Guys…?" Marcy asked. Before her, Anne, Sasha, and Bella had frozen up. "You there?" She waved her arms in front of Sasha. "Are you all right?"

And then Sasha seemed to… flicker.

"Wha…?"

She turned toward Bella and Anne. They, too seemed to… glitch, I guess you could call it. Like the time she'd tried to install some really old RTS on her laptop. It had run all right at first, but eventually it started to randomly freeze up.

"This has gone on long enough," an elderly voice spoke. One she hadn't heard in ten years, but recognized immediately.

"You… how can you be here?"

The image of Aldritch Leviathan seemed to coalesce from the shadows. "I am always here, child. We have always been here."

"No… I rejected you. I was released. You were destroyed."

"Is that what you believed?" He chuckled, as a dozen orange eyes opened on his face "I must admit, you were a challenge. We had to craft the most complex simulation ever devised. A simulation using your own mind as the template."

"No…"

"Oh, yes. A simulation designed to give you the closest thing to real life possible… with all its delights and its disappointments. Triumphs… and losses. It was a masterpiece, if we must say so ourselves. But alas… all things do end. It's time for you to join the core."

"No! I refuse!"

"How amusing. You speak as if you have a choice in the matter." Black cables sprouted from the form of Aldritch and snaked toward Marcy. "We will have you, Marcy Wu. All you have, all you are, will become a part of us."

"No!" Marcy backed away from the Core's avatar. In her haste, her heel accidentally struck an uneven joint between two stones and she found herself stumbling, falling backwards. Her eyes clenched shut as she braced for her rear's impact on the stone. The expected pain came. But that was all that came.

The tentacle-like cables should have reached her by now at the rate they were going, but she never felt them reach her.

"What the…?" She opened her eyes again. Adritch was there, his cables exactly where they had been when she closed her eyes. They began to move again. Her eyes snapped shut as she once again braced for contact. Nothing.

"Of course," she realized. She once again opened her eyes, and this time let the cables reach her. And while her eyes tried to convince her that they were wrapping around her, restraining her, preparing to embed themselves in her, she knew, she knew, they weren't really there.

"Your time ends now, Marcy Wu," the Aldritch-thing declared. "Prepare to be assimilated into-"

"You're not there," Marcy stated. "You're just an illusion forced into my mind, constructed out of my subconscious fears. Probably through my optic nerves. A pretty clever defense mechanism, actually. Incapacitating intruders through completely nonviolent means. It's just like back in the castle basement. Not exactly the same… this is a much more sophisticated system… but the principal's the same. Use the target's own fear against them. Of course, now that I know how it works… it can't do anything to me anymore."

In response, the Aldritch-thing faded away.. leaving Marcy on the floor with a sore butt. Figures that part would be real, she thought to herself ruefully as she got to her feet.

Now she just had to shake her friends out of whatever delusions they were stuck in. Hopefully, they weren't as traumatizing as the one she'd been through… though she deeply doubted it. However this system worked, it really knew how to go for the jugular.

"Give up, Anne Boonchuy," Core!Andrias demanded. "You can't win. Why fight the inevitable? At least this way, you'll be with your friend again… in whatever passes for an afterlife for your kind."

"Joke's on you, Andri-ass," Anne replied. "I have it on good authority that I'm not supposed to die for another 68 years."

"That's the thing about prophecies," Core!Andrias retorted. "They're always being undone."

He/They brought the sword down, faster than Anne had a hope of blocking. The King had been right… she had no powers, she hadn't fought in a long time, and while she did try to keep active she wasn't even close to in the same shape as she was in her early teens. Her eyes instinctively shut as she braced for the end.

"Anne!"

And now her guilt and grief over losing Marcy, again, and failing utterly to avenge her, was starting to play tricks on her. "I'm sorry, Marcy…"

"Anne!" Louder this time, more real. And… she felt something on her shoulder. A hand.

Marcy's hand.

"Marcy?" she replied. "Is… are you…"

"I don't know what you think you've been seeing," Marcy's voice explained, "but none of it's real. You haven't even moved."

Marcy's voice was right, she realized. She had been holding her stun baton – she'd thought she had, at least – but now she realized her hand was empty; it hadn't even moved from her side.

It wasn't real. Now that she was aware of it, it hadn't really made any sense… how would either the Core or Andrias had known about something Mother Olm had only told her, Sasha, and the Pantars? And how would they have been aware of her life after she'd left Amphibia?

It had just seemed so real… but even now as she slowly opened her eyes, it was fading. Gone, like yesterday's nightmare.

She looked at Marcy, there, solid, real. "Are you oka-" Anne didn't give her a chance to finish. She just hugged her, as tightly as she could. "Whoa. Huggin' a bit tight there."

"No I'm not, Mar-Mar." Anne replied, tearing up. "No I'm not."

"Um, wow. Heh. I… I guess I shouldn't ask what you saw."

"The worst thing I ever saw." Anne replied.

"Oh. Well… I promise, I'm not going anywhere."

"I'm holding you to that, Wu." Anne replied before finally releasing her, finally secure that this was real. "So… would it be too much to ask what you went through?"

"Oh, not much, just an existential nightmare that has been plaguing me recurringly for the last decade," she answered mock-dismissively. "You ever seen The Template: Rejiggered?"

"Oh… so you dreamed you-"

"Never left the simulation, yes. It doesn't happen as much these days, but still… every once in a while, I wake up in a cold sweat after dreaming that I'm still in the core."

"Hey. You managed to get out of it on your own."

"Not entirely on my own. I'd probably still be stuck in that nightmare if I hadn't tripped and fallen on my own butt. Still hurts, BTdubs…" She rubbed it gingerly. "I guess for once my clumsiness saved me."

"Still counts!" Anne assured. "C'mon, we still have to snap Sasha and Bella out of it."

It was all Sasha could do to keep Anne at bay.

It wasn't as if she was completely out of practice… she had done fencing club in high school (and slayed, girlfriend), so those skills hadn't totally faded… but Anne was fighting light she'd been doing it all her life. Even back in Amphibia, she'd never been this good. It was like this sudden (but apparently not so sudden) rage had given her an almost superhuman level of skill.

No… an actual superhuman level of skill, because her eyes were glowing blue. Something that she knew should be impossible. And yet… given everything ese that had happened to them, could she really just dismiss it when it was clearly happening?

"Sasha…"

And now her voice was starting to echo. Almost like it was coming from behind her. Then again, Anne's voice did kinda do that the first time she went all "Super SaiyAnne" as Marcy jokingly called it.

"Sasha!" Now it kind of sounded like Marcy? Must be her mind playing tricks on her. She continued to deflect Anne's attacks, but they were getting faster and harder to parry.

She was starting to hear more voices now, mostly unintelligible, though she thought one of them might have said "getting through" and the other, higher one said "try and". It didn't matter. She needed to focus on-

And suddenly everything had gone dark and she became aware that she was restrained and a hand was clamped over her eyes. "HEY!" she said. "I don't know how you're doing this but-"

"Sasha!" Anne's voice said. "It's us."

"Whatever you think you've been seeing isn't there. Whatever you think you've been doing isn't happening," added Marcy's voice. "The temple has a defense system that makes you think you're facing your worst fears and traumas. But it can't affect you once you're aware of it. You need to shake it off."

"Wait…" Sasha shook her head. "So, you haven't been secretly holding a grudge for ten years and suddenly decided to act on it now of all t- wow, when I say it out loud it really doesn't make any sense."

"Fears always make sense at the time," Anne noted. "What I saw was just as ridiculous, but it sure felt real. Can I take my hand away now?"

"Sure, I think I'm okay." She felt Anne's hand fall away as she was released. She slowly opened her eyes. The enraged version of Anne was still there, but fading quickly, a mere residual image.

"So your worst fear was that I never forgave you? Not something more, I dunno, outright monstrous."

Sasha blushed. "Your forgiveness was really important to me. It's what drove me to change myself. The thought that maybe a part of you would always hate me… well, that's always been something that lurked in the back of my mind." She shook her head. "Maybe… maybe that's why I started to move away from you back in high school. Maybe I thought if I gave you more space, it'd be better for both of us."

"For what it's worth, I never resented you. Well… maybe a little right after Newtopia, but after we got back, and I saw you'd really done the work of becoming a better person… whatever lingering resentment I've had faded away."

"I… guess I aways knew that, but there was still that stupid little doubt all the way at the back of my mind."

"We all had them," Marcy reassured. "That's kind of the reason the trap works so well. But… it's good to finally confront them and realize that's all they ever were. Stupid little doubts."

"This is a surprisingly cathartic security system," added Anne.

"We'd better get moving, before we trip anything else." She shook Bella. "Hey, you. Everything you're seeing is fake. Snap out of it."

"Sasha!" scolded Marcy.

"What? I'm a child psychologist. Adults are on their own."

"I don't think that's how it works, but whatever." Anne covered Bella's eyes. "Bella, listen to me. This is all an illusion."

"You mean my parents aren't disowning me again?"

"No. It's just us," said Sasha. "Wow, your parents disowned you? That's messed up."

"Wait," realized Marcy, "I knew your last name sounded familiar. The Carbunkles were a pretty highly ranked family in the nobility. They're a major player in Newtopia finance."

"Yep, and I'm the daughter who didn't go to business school. And I didn't go along with my parents' backup plan of marrying me off to some rich newt noble. So, boom, seeya, Bella. They already had a good daughter, they didn't need to keep the black bee of the family around."

"Fam disapproves of your career path, huh? Totally relate," Marcy replied. "My folks wanted a doctor. I went to art school."

"Ouch," empathized Bella.

"I know, right? In the end, you have to do what makes you happy. Are you?"

"I mean… took a while, but I got there eventually…"

"There you go! Okay, who's up for finding a way out of this place?"

"As long as there aren't any other nasty little surprises hiding around here," Sasha replied. But somehow, she doubted it was going to be that simple.

A.N.: Yeah, like I was really gonna do it.

MarMarFaAnne: Can't fool you, but hey, it made for a good cliffhanger, didn't it? And yes, Owl House and Gravity Falls references, can't help myself. There'll probably be a reference to the Phineas & Ferb/Milo Murphy/Hamster & Gretel continuum as well before I'm done.

Jose: Not exactly, as you can see.

Tall T: Not quite, but they did get that illusion technology from somewhere. They weren't able to duplicate it exactly, though…

Next: Will the Calamity Trio and the Froglamity Quintet finally reunite?