Chapter 74: The Dinner

So, for the time being, we've managed to get Sasha and Grime set up at Felicia's. It took a lot of convincing… and possibly a month of indentured servitude at the tea shop for Sprig (he's not too broken up about that since it gives him more time with Ivy, d'awwww). I realize I'm mortgaging a lot of the goodwill I've stored up with the town by asking them to put up with a literal tyrant for a couple of days, but I feel I owe it to Sasha to give he a chance to prove herself, and she swears she'll be able to keep Grime in line.

As you can imagine, things have been… tense. We are well past the elephant and have reached beluga-whale-in-the-room status. I feel like if you could somehow harness the tension, you would be able to power the Western Seaboard for a thousand years.

We need to do something to break the ice. I'm thinking maybe a dinner party. You know, a nice, low-pressure night of good food, good conversation, maybe a few games… something to get us all to stop walking on eggshells.

I brought up the idea to Sasha and Marcy and they're all for it! Sasha in particular has been to a ton of fancy dinner parties and knows all the tricks of the trade. With her advice, we should be able to plan something pleasant and non-confrontational. She said she'd talk to Grime while I make arrangements with Hop Pop.

The dinner is on! It took some persuading, but Hop Pop agreed to it, and is even going to do the cooking! He's gotten a lot better since he stopped using that frogawful cookbook and started using actual fresh ingredients. He's even found a way to make turnips taste like something other than sadness and broken dreams. Sasha says that Grime is totally on board and even promised to bring dessert. Which is hopefully dessert and not some sort of veiled reference to some sort of nefarious trap he plans to cap the evening off with. Sasha wouldn't let him do that, right?

And so, we get to… the dinner.

Honestly, it could have gone a lot worse.

Oh, don't get me wrong, it was a disaster, but I was expecting a catastrophe.

It started off in the more "innocently awkward" phase. Some seating misunderstandings, a couple of "innocently racist grandpa" comments from Grime and Hop Pop. We… are gonna have to work on that. A lot.

But besides that, Grime and HP were actually getting along a lot better than I expected. Call me crazy, but when he's not oppressing the valley, Grime can be almost… dare I say it? …charming. And he really did bring desert! He calls it a vol-cake-no… so, like, the local equivalent of a chocolate lava cake, maybe? Whatever it is, it's huge. Can't wait to dig into it!

The real friction has been between Sasha and Sprig. It's pretty clear to me that Sasha's jealous over how close Sprig and I have gotten, and it's also pretty clear that Sprig has not forgotten how Sasha, well… almost bisected his face. That's… kind of a lot and I honestly can't blame him one bit for that. As much as I want him to do his best to forgive and forget, I know that forgiveness takes time. And mostly it takes willingness. And not everyone is always willing, and a lot of the time they have a very good reason for it. I should be telling him not to give her such a hard time, but honestly, I don't have the moral standing to make him just forget what she did. And as much as I believe that Sasha really is trying to turn over a new leaf, the truth is she's very much the one to blame, and if anyone should be making concessions, it's her.

Maybe what we need here is some kind of fun activity to crank that tension back down. HP suggested "Drawz-a-Doodle" (or as they call it back home, Pictureapedia). Mybe that'll do it, although Sasha does tend to get really competitive during games…

…huh, is it me, or is that cake bigger than it was when Grime wheeled it in? Probably my imagination.

Well, the game didn't exactly defuse the situation. Oh, it was going all right… until it was Sasha's turn. She drew what I guess was supposed to be a tree (poor girl never could draw worth a darn), which the Plantars interpreted as… the fall of Toad Tower.

Yeah. Talk about bringing up more bad blood than a Taylor Swift breakup song. Sasha just about exploded, and it only got worse when she was told to take a time out for talking out of turn. Marcy, Grime and I all took turns trying to talk her down, but it wasn't going well.

And then dessert interrupted us. Yeah, remember how I thought the cake was getting bigger? Turns out I wasn't crazy!

[Drawing of Vol-cake-no spewing lava and wasps]

It is a chocolate lava cake… as in red-hot molten chocolate lava that comes gushing out of it like a firehouse and fills up the room so you're stuck in a very literal game of "the floor is lava" – because the floor really is lava.

But the lava by itself probably wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't for the hornets. Big ones that shoot paralyzing stingers. Can you believe the toads do this every meal? No wonder they're all so aggro.

Any argument we had was on hold as we all worked together to take out the hornets (well, except for Grime, who got taken out by the first stinger). Turns out the stingers were the best weapon we had… they were the only thing strong enough to pierce the hornets' shells, so we had to lure them into firing at us, dodge the stingers, and have Marcy use her crossbow tor fire them back. The last one fell into the lava just as it hardened.

Did you know that chocolate and wasp meat are absolutely delicious together? Somehow, not only does the sweetness of the chocolate compliment the savory, slightly salty taste of the meat, but the heat from the chocolate lava actually cooks the wasp to perfection. Not too rare, not too well-done.

And the cake itself wasn't bad either.

So, during dessert, Sash and I had a conversation that was a long time coming. I have accepted that Sasha is, deep down, very much a girlboss. She is always going to be that to some extent, and she doesn't feel that that's a bad thing. If anything, coming to Amphiba has only made her into more of one, and she's happy with the person she's become. And I can't control that. Which is a good thing! Being controlling is Sasha's thing, and I do not want to be her. But here's the thing… I don't want to be controlled, either. I think that, up until now, Sasha hadn't accepted that I'm not so easy to manipulate any more. I made it clear that if this friendship is going to continue, Sasha has to accept that Marcy and I aren't going to just roll over for her anymore. And I think it's starting to sink in.

I look forward to what tomorrow will bring… although not the part where we spend most of it cleaning up. This place is… kinda wrecked.

Heckuva party though.

A.N.: One more chapter, and then an epilogue. What a ride, huh?

Gloyd: Actually, Marcy probably could have used it right then and there, given how she was able to activate it at the end of True Colors.

Also, have you noticed Hailey's teacher's resemblance to a certain secret agent? My headcanon's that Mr. X is undercover investigating the time anomalies and the reports of chaos-causing robots. :)

Jose: "I remember seeing this in theaters!"

Next: Battle of the Bands