Chapter 2:

Nightmare on Two Fronts

"Where am I…?"

That was the first question that Anne asked herself after she was awoken to the sight of complete darkness as far as the eyes could see, surrounded by fog.

The last thing that she remembered was that she was returning home after having stayed out for some time, contemplating about the events that occurred in the past. The next thing that she knew, she was standing inside of a dark void, in the middle of frog knows where, with not even a shred of light to be seen.

"Sprig?! Hop Pop?! Polly?!" she tried calling out to her adopted family, to see if they were nearby. She received no reply after a few seconds. "Anyone here?! Hello!" she tried calling out anybody else, but the result was the same.

Anne concluded that she was alone in the darkness.

Seeing as standing around and doing nothing would not help her in the slightest, and it would most likely invite danger to herself, she decided move forward, in hopes of finding a way out of the darkness.

But as soon as she took the first step forward, the floor underneath her suddenly glowed in a bright, ominous light that engulfed the young girl entirely, nearly blinding her if she did not shut her eyes closed and shielded her face with her hands.

When the light seemed to have subsided, Anne slowly opened her eyes, and she gasped at what she saw next.

She suddenly found herself standing on top of tall, stone tower with large horns located on both sides. A red flag with what resembled a toad's face imprinted on it was raised on a tall pole on one corner of the floor. It was night time, but the sky had a red hue due to the red moon being full and large.

"This is… Toad Tower?" Anne recognized the place. It was the very last place that she ever wanted to be at.

Looking down at herself, she was shocked that a chest armour and a left shoulder pad was currently on her person, as well a sword being held in her hand. She was certain that she never had any of those a moment ago.

"What's going on…?"

Before she had time to ponder on the mystery, she heard a battle cry coming from behind. She quickly turned around and was met with the sight of another human girl with blond hair tied into a ponytail, lunging forward to strike Anne with her crimson sword.

"Sasha?!"

Her shock at seeing her former best friend alive and well did not last long, as her survival instincts forced her to intercept Sasha's sword with her own, resulting in the two blades clashing against one another.

"Sasha, wait!" Anne exclaimed as she struggled to maintain her guard against the blond girl.

"What's the matter, Anne? Afraid of fighting back?!" Sasha yelled as she pulled her sword back and swung it once more at Anne who blocked the attack.

"Stop, Sasha!" Anne shouted as she pushed Sasha off of her, actively seeking a peaceful resolution between them. "I don't want to fight you!"

Sasha seemingly ignored her plea as she launched a series of sword slash from every possible angle. Anne was barely able to block every single one of them, scared of moving onto the offensive out of concern for her friend's safety.

"If you want me to stop," Sasha said as the two girls entered another sword struggle. "Then you know what to do. Be the good little obedient girl that you really are and listen to the one gal who's always sticking up for you whenever you're in a jam, starting by dropping your sword down for me."

The two girls jumped back a good distance from each other. Sasha was determined to keep on fighting, as evident when she still maintained her fighting stance. Anne, on the other hand, simply wanted to stop fighting her dear friend, and was considering her proposal.

The brown-haired girl slowly lowered her sword down.

"There you go! Now that's more like it!" Sasha congratulated her, as she flashed a satisfied smile. "See, Anne? I knew you care too much about me to keep fighting."

"I… I don't want to hurt you…" Anne stated her reason, as she shut her eyes closed and averted her face slightly to the side. "You're my best friend… I never, ever want us to fight each other again…"

"Oh Anne… You're always so considerate for others. Especially me."

Anne listened as Sasha presumably approached her, according to the sound of her footsteps getting closer and closer. She winced as she felt a hand cupping her chin, as her head was being turned slightly so it was facing her friend once more.

As Anne slowly opened her eyes again to look at the blond girl, she was presented with a smile that should have been familiar and reassuring, but was in reality sinister and sadistic.

"In fact, you're so considerate that you're willing to sacrifice an old frog for my sake."

"What…?"

"Lieutenant!" A new, gruff voice was heard, causing Anne to turn her head towards the source of the voice.

Standing on the pointed end of one of the stone horns was a large, fierce-looking toad with a scarred right eye, grinning menacingly as he held an orange, elderly frog by the collar and had him dangled over the abyss down below.

"I believe it's time for us to end this, don't you think?!" Captain Grime shouted.

"Help me, Anne!" screamed the old frog.

"Hop Pop?!" Anne was shocked that she never noticed that Hop Pop was there with them all along and his life was in grave danger. When she shifted her gaze back at Sasha, the latter was still staring at her with a wicked smile on her face that never seemed to go away.

"Just stay put while I go over there and kill Hopediah right in front of your very eyes." Sasha told her. "And then we can be BFFs again. Just like you wanted, Anne…"

Her declaration triggered something within Anne.

"NO!" Anne screamed as she threw a surprised slash at Sasha.

SLASH!

"ARGH!" Sasha yelped in pain as she stumbled back until she was at the edge of the tower, holding her cheek where the Thai-American girl managed to cut across.

Anne gasped in horror, realizing what she had done. "Oh my gosh! Sasha!" She immediately dropped her sword. "I… I didn't mean to-!"

BOOM!

Suddenly, the entire tower shook violently, as an explosion had occurred from the inside. Parts of the floor started to crumble as the result of the quake.

Anne struggled to keep a steady hold of the ground as everything vibrated underneath her. When she gazed over to where Sasha was, still standing on the edge of the tower and grasping on her injured cheek, the floor under her feet started to crack.

"Sasha!" Anne quickly rushed towards her friend, just as the floor collapsed.

She dove forward and slid across the floor to reach Sasha, barely managing to catch her hand before she dropped down into the foggy abyss below.

"Hold on, Sasha!" Anne yelled as she tried to pull Sasha up with as much strength as she could possible muster, determined to save her this time around. "Just hold on!"

"… Don't bother, Anne…"

Anne gazed down at Sasha and was met with the sight of her staring up at Anne with a sad look on her face, her right cheek bleeding from the wound created by the Thai-American girl.

"You've already made your choice…" Sasha said. "You saved an old man that you barely knew. And in exchange… You killed me…"

Sasha let go of her hand.

"SASHA!" Anne cried out for her, as Sasha was falling down freely towards the deep void below, disappearing into the ominous fog.

She was in the state of complete shock, her hand still reaching out for her fallen friend. Some time passed and she slowly sat up on the floor, looking at her hand that failed to rescue a dear friend once again.

"I… This isn't supposed to be like this…!" Anne choked as she wrapped her arms around herself, her body trembling due to the intense emotion bubbling within her. "I… All I wanted was to…! Why, Sasha…?!" She closed her eyes shut as she breathed sharply, on the verge of crying for the fallen blond girl.

"… Anne?"

Anne was taken out of her shocked state when she heard a very familiar voice. Turning herself around, her eyes encountered the sight of another young girl with short, black hair equipped with a green hair clip who wasn't supposed to be there at all, standing on the opposite end of the tower with a terrified look on her face.

"Marcy?!" Anne shouted as she quickly rose up from the floor. "H-how did you get here?!"

"Anne… What have you done?" Marcy asked, as she slowly backed away in fear.

"Marcy…?" Anne was confused as to why the Taiwanese girl was behaving strangely. it only took her a second to realize that Marcy might have watched her fight against Sasha, up to the point where the latter fell to her death. "Wait, no! Marcy, this isn't what it looks like!"

"Sasha was our friend..." Marcy said, never stopping her slow, backwards pacing towards the edge. "She was always here for us… Always taking care of us… How could you have hurt her, Anne? Why didn't you save her?"

"I didn't want to hurt her at all!" Anne explained. "I tried to save her, but she… She…!"

As Anne stumbled on her words in a vain attempt to explain her case to the black-haired girl, she noticed that Marcy was moving too close to the edge, just one step away from falling off the tower.

"Marcy, look out behind you!" she yelled as she ran towards Marcy in an attempt to save her from dropping to her doom.

Only to notice that, no matter how fast she ran, no matter how hard she tried, she could not seem to close the gap between them.

"You've changed, Anne…" Marcy said as tears fell from her eyes. "You couldn't save Sasha… And you can't save me…"

Anne watched helplessly, as the Taiwanese girl took another step back, resulting in her falling back and joining their friend down below.

"NOOOOOOO!"

Anne screamed as she thrusted her arm forward in a desperate attempt to reach Marcy.

Only to notice that the scenery around her had changed.

She found herself staring up at the ceiling with her back resting on a soft mattress and her hand reaching out for nobody in particular. Unsure of where she was currently, she began to look at her surroundings.

She spotted a set of stairs leading up to a wooden hatch separating the living room from the basement. Next to the stairs was a furnace. Underneath the stairs was a barrel resting sideways on a wooden rack. A couple of pipes were placed along the walls and ceiling of the room, alongside some tree roots.

She was back inside of her room.

She slowly sat up from the bed and lowered her hand down. She stared at her shaking hand that failed to save her best friends from their doom in her nightmare, scenes of how it transpired replaying on loop in her head over and over.

"You've already made your choice… You saved an old man that you barely knew. And in exchange… You killed me…"

"You've changed, Anne… You couldn't save Sasha… And you can't save me…"

Tears fell on her blankets. She did not noticed until now that she was crying.

"Sasha… Marcy…" Anne placed her hands over her face, as she cried in her lonesome.

"Anne!" Her crying state was cut short when she heard the voice of her frog friend suddenly calling out to her, followed by the sounds of him tumbling down the staircase and crashing flat on the ground with an audible thud. "Ouch…!"

"Sprig?!" she exclaimed, not expecting him to show up around this time of the night. Though she suspected that it was because she woke up screaming, which anyone would wake up to, especially when the walls of the house are surprisingly thin.

She quickly wiped away the tears from her eyes and attempted to recompose herself before turning her gaze towards a vague, shadowy silhouette of Sprig in the darkness of her room.

"W-what're you doing here?"

"I heard you scream!" Sprig replied as he stood up from the floor, rubbing the injury on the back of his head. "Are you in trouble?!"

"N-no, no! It's nothing, Sprig!" Anne said as she waved both of her hands to show that she was okay. "I… I just had a nightmare. That's all."

"A nightmare?" Sprig approached the bed, apparently still worried. "If that's the case, then it must've been a really horrifying one."

"Y-yeah… It was…" She felt really bad for startling her friend awake like that. She could not help it, however, as the subject of her nightmare really was horrifying, just as he said.

Sprig sat down on the corner of her bed, on the opposite end of where she was sitting. "Do you wanna talk about it?"

Anne stared at him for a moment, her eyes red from crying.

Should she tell him about what she had experienced in her nightmare? About how she dreamt about that one dreadful night at Toad Tower, where everyone in Wartwood was basically taken hostage because Hop Pop was mistakenly believed to be a revolutionist against toads? Where Sprig and Hop Pop almost lost their lives if she didn't step in and confront Sasha and the toad army?

She doubt that Sprig would want to hear about that again. No one in Wartwood would, anyway.

She tried her best to give him a convincing, reassuring smile, as she shook her head. "It's fine, buddy. It's just a stupid nightmare."

"Are you sure?" he asked, sounding unconvinced. "Remember what I said earlier? If there's anything that gets you down, I'm always here to help you out. You sure you don't wanna talk about it?"

Anne shifted her gaze away from him for a moment. She felt guilty. Sprig really wanted to help her out during her time of need, because that was what being a friend was supposed to be, in the truest definition of the term.

But no matter how much she wanted to accept his offer, talking about her issues would only complicate things and he would not understand them. Especially since she was crying for Sasha, the same person who almost got Hop Pop executed and almost killed Sprig for standing up for Anne.

She looked back to him and attempted to reassure him once again with a smile. "I really appreciate it, Sprig." she said. "But like I said. It's just a stupid nightmare anyway. No reason why we should waste our time talking about it."

"Well… Okay." Sprig still sounded unconvinced, but it looked like he was going to leave it alone this time.

Perhaps one day, when things settle down for a bit and the night at Toad Tower becomes somewhat of a distant memory, she could come back to him about it. It was the least that she could do for turning down his help this time.

Regardless, the fact that Sprig came to her aid and tried his hardest to help her by having her talk about her worries made her happy. She thought back to when he stood up for her at Toad Tower, looking resolute as he claimed to know more about her being a friend than Sasha by listing a few aspects that makes her great. If that was what being best friends was supposed to be, then she was glad to have him as her best friend.

"But thanks anyway, dude." Anne said, as she rubbed her eyes when they started to sting for a bit. "You coming for my help when you thought that I was in trouble really cheered me up…"

"Hehe… Anything for my best friend, Anne." Sprig chuckled.

After she rubbed off the sting in her eyes, she looked at the shadow silhouette of her friend once more.

It was then that she noticed that something seemed different about Sprig. Namely, the shape of his silhouette did not correspond to how she remembered his body looking like basically.

"… Sprig?"

"Yeah?"

"Is… Is that really you?"

"Uh, yeah? Why wouldn't I be me?"

"Um, well… It's just that you look… taller?"

"Uh… You lost me there, Anne. What do you mean?"

In order to confirm her suspicions, Anne proceeded to turn around and reach for the lightshroom next to her bed. When she turned it on and shifted herself back towards Sprig, she gasped in shock. "Holy…!"

"What? What is it, Anne?" Sprig asked.

"Sprig! You… You're…!"

Anne was startled that, once the lightshroom shined upon them and the room around them, the appearance of her friend was completely different than normal.

The person sitting on the corner of her bed was not a small, young pink frog, but a tall, full-fledged human with light skin, as well as short, messy, orange hair with bangs hanging down on one side of his face.

If she was being hasty in her conclusion, she would believe that the person in front of her was not Sprig, if it weren't for two things:

1. As far as she knew, only three humans, being her, Sasha and Marcy, are supposed to be in Amphibia.

2. The human was wearing Sprig's clothes, which looked way too small for his tall body.

Words failed to escape from her mouth, preventing her from properly explaining to Sprig. After a few seconds of her failing to speak out, she decided to go for the next best thing to explain.

She grabbed her smartphone next to her, turned it on, tapped and swiped on the screen a few times until she activated the camera app with the camera flipped so that it was looking at her, and finally turned the phone around to show him the screen.

"Huh? What am I supposed to look at?" Sprig asked, as he took a look at the screen of her phone.

Anne stared intently at Sprig for some kind of reaction from him. For the first few seconds, Sprig was looking confused, but didn't seemed alarmed.

"Anne, who is…?"

Then, his eyes began to widen, as it seemed that realization was starting to sink in. He looked down on his hands for a moment, then he looked down on his own body, then back at the phone screen.

His expression changed into horror, as he fully realized what he was looking at.

"AAAAAAAAAAHHHH!"

As Sprig screamed in absolute horror, an alarmed, elderly, orange frog showed up at the top of the stairs. "Kids! What the heck is going on down there?!" A worried Hop Pop exclaimed.

"Hop Pop?!" Sprig was startled by his grandfather's sudden appearance. It only fuelled his horror as the thought of Hop Pop being freakout by his terrifying look came into mind. He jumped out of Anne's bed, as he swiftly moved to the corner of the room and got into a fetal position, while desperately trying to hide himself. "No! Don't look at me, Hop Pop! Don't look at meeeee!"

Then a pink tadpole with a yellow bow on her head hopped into scene, joining their grandpa by his side before letting out a disgruntled groan as she lifted her sleep mask that revealed her very annoyed and tired face. "Urgh… Alright, which one of you had the brilliant idea of screaming like a maniac in the middle of the night?! Some of us are trying to sleep up here!" Polly yelled.

As Polly glared down at her suspected culprits in the basement, her attention was shifted towards the person that she never saw before, crouching at the corner of the room.

Her tiredness was replaced by a sense of alarm. "INTRUDER!" she shouted as she suddenly pulled out a rolling pin from out of nowhere before jumping at the strange creature and bashing the pin against him.

"Ow! Ow! Polly, stop!" Sprig yelped out in pain, as he tried to shield himself against his sister's assault with his arms.

"What are you?! Who sent you?! Why are you in a girl's room?! Tell me everything and I'll beat you up until you see stars!"

"Oww! Don't you mean 'tell me everything OR I'll beat you up'?!"

"I know what I said!"

Polly continued her relentless attack on her unfamiliar brother until she was grabbed by Anne who pulled her off of him. "Cut it out, Polly! That's your bro right here!" Anne said.

"Wait, come again?" Hop Pop raised a confused eyebrow at what Anne said, as he climbed down to the bottom of the stairs.

"Anne, what're you talking about?!" Polly asked as she stopped flailing her pin around to look at the brown-haired human with a facial expression that showed disbelief. "Sprig doesn't look anything like this guy!" She pointed the rolling pin at him. "My brother is obviously a frog, and this one is… I dunno what he is! Kinda looks like you, now that I look at him close enough!"

"Look, I know it sounds crazy, but I really think that this guy is Sprig." Anne explained, as she looked over the orange-haired human, more than certain that he is her best friend. "I don't know how, but… He got turned into a human being."

"A human being? Like what you are, Anne?" Hop Pop asked Anne.

She nodded in confirmation.

The elderly frog looked over the horrified human boy who moved himself closer to the corner in response. He slowly approached him in order to take a closer look, trying to find out for himself if what Anne said about him being his grandson is true.

"Sprig?"

"Y… Yeah, Hop Pop…" Sprig replied, his face hidden by his hands.

"Is it really you?"

Sprig nodded his head as he whimpered.

"Move your hands down, boy. I want to see your face for a bit."

Sprig hesitated, unsure if he wanted to show his grandfather his horrifying face. But eventually, he did what Hop Pop told him and slowly lowered his hands, revealing his human-like face, face bump and all.

Hop Pop examined his grandson's face closely, trying to spot anything that might show that he is what he said he is. Everything about the boy was completely different, so a regular person would assume that he is a different person. But one deep look in Sprig's eyes told the elderly frog everything that he needed to know.

"Hmm… You certainly have gone through a lot of big changes, boy." Hop Pop said. "But I can definitely say for certain that you're my grandson."

"Y-you really think so?" Sprig asked.

"Of course." Hop Pop smiled.

"B-but I'm not a cute, adorable pink frog anymore! I-I'm a monster! An ugly, ugly, ugly monster!"

Anne felt offended by Sprig's description of his transformed self.

"True, true." Hop Pop agreed. "But I wouldn't call myself your grandpa if I didn't recognize my own grandchildren beyond just their looks, right?"

His grandfather's comment gave the former frog boy a small amount of relief, as he managed to smile.

"Well, I ain't buying it!" Polly exclaimed. "He's definitely not Sprig! You can't just say that's him just by looking at him, Hop Pop! That goes for you too, Anne!"

"Well, why don't you find out for yourself, Polly?" Hop Pop asked his granddaughter.

"Okay, fine! If that's what it takes to prove all of you wrong!" Polly nudged herself out of Anne's hold as she hopped towards the human stranger. "Ok, you weirdo! Do something that only the real Sprig can do!" she threatened him as she tapped her rolling pin against her hand in rhythm.

"Um…" Sprig searched through his head of the many ways that he could do to convince his young sister that it is really him. After a few seconds of mind-searching, he settled for one thing.

He cleared his throat for a bit and spoke in a completely different voice, sounding identical to Polly. "Hi! I'm Polly, the little pink and cute tadpole who's gonna beat the snot outta you if you even look at me funny!"

"Oh my frog, you really are Sprig." Polly said in a deadpanned tone, completely convinced.

"Well, now that we've solved this piece of the mystery," Hop Pop turned his attention back at his now-human grandson. "What in the world happened to you, Sprig?"

"I-I don't know!" said the panicked Sprig as he looked down at his human hands again. "I-I think I just woke up like this! I didn't know that I got turned into a human until Anne pointed it out to me!"

"Do you know anything about this, Anne?" Hop Pop asked Anne.

Anne shook her head. "He showed up in my room looking like this already, Hop Pop. I don't know much more than he does."

"I'm really freaking out here, guys!" Sprig shouted. "How could I have been transformed from my small, lovable frog body into a tall, hideous human one overnight?! I just don't get it!"

"Sprig…" Anne glared at Sprig as he unknowingly offended her kind once more.

Polly shrugged. "I dunno. Sounds to me that you just got cursed. Again."

Sprig gasped. "That's it, Polly! That's gotta be the only explanation!"

"Now hold on there, Sprig." Hop Pop said. "I took a good look at you and, unfortunately, there's nothing on you that indicates that you've been cursed. Sure, your whole body has completely changed, but you lack the obvious signs of a curse."

"B-but if it's not a curse, then what is it, then?!"

"While it may not have been a curse, I'm fairly certain that magic is involved, at the very least. The only question is, what kind of magic is it?"

At the mention of magic being involved, Anne gasped, as she remembered what happened to Sprig earlier. "Sprig! Remember what you told me a few hours ago? How you got Maddie's potions spilled all over you?"

"Maddie's potions?" it took Sprig a few seconds before he too remembered what happened to him back at the main square. All of the sudden, everything clicked inside of his head. "Oh, you're right! That explains everything!"

"Wait, what is it about Maddie's potions?" Hop Pop asked, feeling that he was out of loop from what happened between Anne and Sprig.

"Well, the thing is, last night, I accidentally bumped into Maddie while she was carrying a lot of potions, and she ended up spilling all of them all over me. I dunno what kind of potions those are, but that's the only explanation that we could think of that might explain why I don't look like my usual cute self."

"Well, if you're absolutely certain that Maddie is at least involved in this, then I'll have to take your word for it, boy."

"Alright! Now that we got a good idea, we'll need Maddie's help! Let's go, Anne!" Determined to fix his human magic problem, Sprig was about to leave to find the local witch frog, starting by hopping over his grandfather to make his way towards the wooden door leading to the outside.

However, since he was not accustomed to his taller form yet, his legs ended up bumping Hop Pop along the way, and thus the both of them fell down on the floor together. "Ouch…! Sorry, Hop Pop!" Sprig apologized, as he quickly stood up from the floor and helped his grandfather up in the process.

"Now wait just a moment, Sprig." Hop Pop said, stopping his grandson from leaving. "I know how important it is for you to return back to normal, but in case that you've forgotten, it's still the middle of the night here. People are still sleeping around this time."

"Especially me…" Polly said, as she slammed her rolling pin on her hand once more to make it clear how frustrated she was to be woken up like that.

"B-but Hop Pop, I-"

"Calm down and think this through, Sprig." Hop Pop instructed. "You think it's a good idea for you go out in the middle of the night and have everyone see you as you are now? Remember what happened to Anne the first time that she came to Wartwood?"

"Ohh… Now that you mention it…"

"Yeah, that's pretty dumb what you're trying to do, Sprig." Polly said, not missing her chance on dissing her brother. "Especially since we just dealt with Sasha and the toad army, and none of us want to go through that again."

Anne winced at the mention of Sasha and the incident at Toad Tower, as she turned her head away from the family. Sprig and Hop Pop were the only people who noticed her reaction, Sprig especially.

After considering his situation and Hop Pop's warning, Sprig decided that his grandfather was speaking sense about his predicament, even though he was feeling impatient to resolve it. "You're right, Hop Pop… Now that I think about it, I don't want people to find out that I'm no longer the cute frog that everybody loves anymore. This is as bad as people freaking out about me turned into this…"

Hop Pop nodded. "I'm glad to hear it. Now, don't you worry about going out and risk having people see you like this. You can always wait inside the house while I send a letter to Maddie explaining your situation so that she can come to us herself. It'll be the first thing that I'll do in the morning."

"Okay, Hop Pop…"

Polly yawned. "We're done here, right? Good. Then let me get my beauty sleep already!" she exclaimed as she began to jump up the stairs, step by step, intending to go back to sleep. "If I stay up for another minute, I'ma lose it! Seriously! So don't you dare, alright?!"

"Polly's got a point. We all still need a bit more sleep." Hop Pop said before he yawned in his turn. "We'll settle this matter in the morning as soon as possible, Sprig. Get some shuteye until then."

Sprig sighed. "Yeah, you're right… Good night, Hop Pop. Sorry for waking you up like this." he said as he waved his grandfather goodnight, as the latter started to climb up the stairs.

"Good night, Sprig." Hop Pop returned his wave with his own. He then turned his attention at Anne, who still had her forlorn gaze averted from the family for a good while. "Good night to you too, Anne."

That brought Anne back to reality, as she looked at Hop Pop and realized that he was leaving, with Polly already gone to sleep, presumably. "Oh… Good night, Hop Pop."

With a nod, the orange, elderly frog climbed back up the living room, leaving the wooden hatch open for Sprig to leave in his turn.

Sprig once again let out a sigh, as he looked down at his new human body once more, disgusted at the idea that he would have to stay like this until later in the morning. "This really sucks…"

"Hey, it's gonna be okay." Anne tried to reassure her best friend with a smile. "Maddie's gonna solve everything in the morning. You just have to wait a few hours more."

"Yeah, I guess…" Sprig said. Although his predicament could be resolved in the morning, he could not help but think about the worst possible scenario. "But… But what if Maddie can't fix my problem? What if I'm stuck like this forever?!"

"Come on, dude. Let's not think like that. Maddie is an expert when it comes to magic, right? She'll definitely turn you back to normal, no problem."

"I mean, even if she can fix this, what if it'll take a long time before I turn back into a normal frog?"

"Well… I guess when the time comes, you'll have to stick with me, another human in Wartwood." She approached the human Sprig and gave him a friendly slap on the back. "It'll be fine, dude. I'll vouch for you, if anybody looks at you funny."

Sprig smiled at Anne's attempt at alleviating his worries. "I guess… Thanks, Anne. I know I can count on you."

"Anytime, dude. Now let's go back to sleep, alright?"

"Sure, Anne." Sprig nodded as he stretched his back, although he felt weirded out by how his human back felt as the result. "See you in the morning."

"Right back at ya." Anne replied as she sat back down on her bed, watching her best friend climb up on the stairs.

Sprig stopped midway through his climb, as if something came into mind. The Thai-American human raised an eyebrow as she wondered why the former frog boy paused in the middle of his climb.

"You… You sure you don't wanna talk?" Sprig asked as he turned his head back towards his friend. "About, you know… Anything?"

Anne knew what Sprig was trying to do. Still unwilling to divulge her own worries to him, she simply shook her head. "Nah, it's fine. Just get some sleep already, buddy."

"Well… Okay. Good night then." Sprig smiled at her as he resumed his climb up the stairs.

As soon as he turned his head from Anne, his smile turned into a frown.

He felt useless. It was really clear that a certain event involving a dear friend of hers was bothering Anne a lot, which would explain why he heard her wake up screaming and why he found her crying on her bed. But no matter how much he tried to help her out with her problems, she always declined his help, pretending that everything is fine. While the whole time, she was helping out with his problems instead. It felt unfair, but trying to force the issue would do them no good either.

He wondered if it was because she was human that she didn't want to accept any help with her issues. If that was the case, then humans must be complicated to understand.

Speaking of which, he had a more pressing issue at hand: Turning himself from a human being back to his precious frog form.

"Well… One thing at a time, I suppose…" Sprig sighed, as he was about to climb the stairs leading to the second floor, where his room was located, trying very careful not to miss his step due to his taller form.

Until Maddie arrives to turn him back to normal, he had hoped that everything would go smoothly and that he would not encounter any more problems.

He then stretched his arms back to shrug off the stress on his bones.

RIIIIIIP!

He widened his eyes in shock, as he realized what caused that ripping sound.

"… This really, really sucks…"

End of Chapter