"What happened?"
Anne woke up face down on the ground dazed at what had just happened. The ground under her felt soft and moist, nothing like the hard dirt of the playground she was just in. She slowly started to sit up, only then noticing that she was in a puddle of mud. Looking around her she was in some sort of forest, but not like any forest she had ever seen, there were giant lily pad-type plants and giant cattails everywhere, almost like a giant swamp.
"What the heck! What is this place" she yelled out into the forest before quickly covering her mouth with her hand. Anne had no idea what this place was or what kind of creatures lived here. So, she definitely didn't want to alert them to her presence.
The teenage girl started to look herself over to see if she had any injuries when she noticed a light blue aura surrounding her body. After noticing this she quickly grabbed her phone out of her bag, went to her camera app, and finally saw herself.
Anne's entire body was surrounded by the light blue aura, from the tips of her shoes to the top of her hair. Her hair was crazy, almost all of it was sticking up as if there was a fan beneath it. There were also quite a lot of sticks and leaves sitting in it, almost as if they were fused to her hair but the most shocking thing was that Anne's hair was completely blue. Her eye color had also changed from her normal deep brown to the very same vibrant blue of her hair.
"W-what's happening to me? Why am I glowing blue? Why is my hair blue? Where am I?" Anne stammered out super-fast. While Anne was normally a pretty chill person, not knowing what was happening to her was making her start to panic, her breathing accelerated, and she curled up hugging her backpack, and started to cry. She was terrified.
Anne spent a long time curled up hugging her backpack for comfort, but as she started to calm down a new feeling started to replace her fear. It started small but quickly grew, a feeling of power, like she could do anything. It felt like it was urging her to do something, she stood up and tried the first thing that came to her mind, she closed her eyes and tried to fly.
Anne felt the ground beneath her disappear, she slightly opened her eye to peek and see what had happened. To her surprise, she was a few feet off the ground hovering in the air. A huge smile appeared on her face and the last few tears in her eyes dried up. It was an incredible feeling to be able to fly, she started moving left and right to try to get a feel for this new form of movement, once she understood how to move only one thought came to her, to go higher.
She took a deep breath in and then out as she started to rise higher until she was well above the treetops. From this vantage point, she could see that the trees, lily pads, and cattails went on for miles in each direction. Far in the distance, she could see mountains going in a ring around, she was in some sort of valley. A large swarm of dragonflies suddenly flew right past her, it wasn't the number of dragonflies that made the swarm large, it was the fact that each dragonfly was twice her size.
"I'm dreaming, there's no other explanation. I must have passed out as I opened the box, of course, none of this is real, I'm flying humans can't do that. Since this isn't real, let's have some fun."
Anne shot off into the distance eager to test out what she could do. She spent a long time flying around in the air having fun doing whatever she could think of from seeing how fast she could fly to trying to ride one of the dragonflies, that didn't end well as she had to fly back down to the ground to hide from its rage.
"This… has been… really fun… but I'm... gonna... take a… break now." Anne said between deep breaths. She was running low on stamina, so she started heading back toward the ground. Once she was just below the tree line her exhaustion fully caught up to her and she passed out. The blue aura that was surrounding her disappeared and her hair and eyes went back to their normal color as she fell to the ground below. She hit the ground head-first and started to roll before skidding to a stop in front of an archway that led to a small town of frogs.
A few frogs heard something coming from the front gate of their town that was aptly named Wartwood. As they got to the front gate, they saw some sort of creature lying down in a small crater that had not been there earlier in the day, it wasn't moving besides its breathing, so they assumed it was asleep. Slowly but surely more and more frogs came to look at what the big commotion was about.
"Simmer down people, what's going on here." A large pompous toad asked the crowd. He was clearly an authoritative figure in the village by the way he dressed with his frilly clothes and multiple rings on his hands.
"A monster is sleeping at the front gate!" a random brow frog told him.
"A monster! Well, let's go drive it out of town, let it be someone else's problem."
"But what if it tastes good? We can capture it while it's asleep." A turquoise frog with only one eye asked. Almost everybody in the crowd seemed to agree with this one-eyed frog.
"Well as your mayor, it's my job to listen to the people. Grab the cage." The pompous toad now known as the mayor commanded. A few frogs ran off before coming back with a cage. The frogs gently lifted Anne being careful not to wake her and put her in the cage before carrying the cage and her back to the center of town.
"That was a really weird dream, I was blue and fly…ing." Anne said out loud as she woke up. As she opened her eyes and looked around her, she realized that she was still very much in the same world she had been in when she was flying around.
"…That wasn't a dream." Anne's eyes went wide at that realization and her mind went into overdrive. "Where am I?! How did I get here? It must have been the music box! Sasha and Marcy were with me when I opened it! Where are they?!" Out of the corner of her eye, she spotted a large group of bipedal frogs watching her in confusion and fear. That drew her out of her thoughts now also noticing that she was in a cage, realizing that they must have put her into it she became fearful of what the frogs were planning to do with her. A small, brave pink frog suddenly started to walk toward her.
"Hiya monster I'm Sprig Planter!"
"I'm Anne Boonchuy… where am I?" Anne softly said.
"This is Wartwood in Frog Valley, so uh… WHAT ARE YOU AND WHERE DID YOU COME FROM?!"
Anne moved slightly back in shock at the sudden yelling but answered regardless. "I'm uh... human. And I think I'm from another world."
"WHOA, THAT'S SUPER COOL. WANT TO BE FRIENDS?! We can hang out every day you can even stay at my house."
An older orange frog walked up behind Sprig "Slow down boy, you can't just invite it to our house, we don't know anything about it, it might eat frogs for all we know."
"I don't." Anne quickly replied.
"But Hop Pop can't you see, she's terrified, alone, and needs our help."
The orange frog Named Hop Pop sighed. "Alright Sprig you make a good point."
"I don't like this Hopediah Planter, what if it destroys the town?" the toad mayor asked stepping forward and out of the crowd.
"I'll keep an eye on 'em, both of 'em."
"Suit yourself, here's the key." the mayor said handing Hop Pop. The old frog slowly walked over to the door of the cage and unlocked it allowing Anne to step out.
"Thanks." Anne said. She was still a little unsure about everything but thanks to Sprig and Hop Pop's kindness she was starting to gain some of her confidence back. Once Anne was fully out of the cage Sprig grabbed onto her hand and started dragging her off into the distance presumably back to his house.
The sun had just begun to set by the time the Planters, whom she learned also included a little purple polliwog named Polly, and Anne had gotten back to their house. Their house was quite large built out of what appeared to be a giant stump. Out front of the house, there were many large fields with a multitude of different crops growing, from turnips and radishes to corn. Behind the house, there was a small pond that went off into a river that flowed far into the distance.
"Welcome to the planter farm! Come on I'll show you around" Sprig said enthusiastically grabbing Anne's hand and dragging her into the house.
Inside the house was very spacious, the entrance, living room, and kitchen were basically one giant room. The only other room on the first floor was Hop Pop's study. Upstairs was where everybody's rooms were, and then there was the basement.
"This is where you'll be staying, kitchens upstairs, breakfast at sunrise." Hop Pop told her. He handed her a small mattress to sleep on before making his way back up the stairs to the first floor. The basement was dug into the ground, some walls being made of dirt, it looked like it was rarely used besides storage. Anne walked over to a corner of the room and set down the mattress and her bag before sitting down herself.
"Hey, gettin' comfy" Sprig asked poking his head through the entrance.
"Yeah, I guess I am. Thanks for letting me stay here."
"No problem, I'm glad you're living with us monster. Goodnight, sleep tight, don't let the bed bugs bite. Seriously they can drain a body in seconds." He said before leaving her in the basement with that slightly terrifying information.
Sitting in her bed, her mind wandered back to earlier in the day. "If today wasn't a dream, then what was that blue power I had that allowed me to fly? I wonder if I can use it again?" she asked herself in a low whisper. Anne tries to will that power back through her body to see if she could use it again. Her few attempts ended mostly in failure, although on her last attempt, she managed to make a faint aura of blue around her hand for a few seconds before it fizzles out again.
"So, I can use it again. I'll try to do more tomorrow." Anne whispered to herself before she falls over onto her pillow and drifts off to sleep.
Earlier that same day under the castle of Newtopia, a large machine said to house Amphibia's greatest minds detected a large energy source that lasted for a few hours in the direction of frog valley. This energy source had the same signature as the calamity box once did one thousand years ago.