Disclaimer: Amphibia is owned by Matt Brady and Disney. This is a fan-based story purely for fun.

Chapter 19:

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The entrance of the museum got kicked open, allowing Hop Pop, Polly and Frog Soos to enter the building with haste.

"I don't see Anne and Sprig anywhere in here. Do you?" Polly asked as they all looked around in search for the two humans in the lobby, but came up with nothing.

"Dang it! They could be anywhere in this confounded place!" Hop Pop said.

"Maybe we should split up! We can cover more ground and find them faster this way!" Frog Soos suggested.

The elderly frog nodded. "Good idea! Let's go, everyone!"

Hop Pop and Frog Soos both dashed ahead to search through the whole building to find the two missing humans.

As for Polly, she only managed to take a few hops forward, until she stopped when she looked up to see a certain, large statue that brought nothing but fear since she came there the first time.

The immobile, two-legged monster statue standing on top of one of the doors had its eyes looking forward, staring at nothing because that was how it was made. But Polly knew better. There was more than meets the eye with that statue. And she refused to think otherwise.

"I know what you are…" Polly glared at the statue, expressing her desire to expose it for what it truly was.

"Dudes! Come here! I found them!" Frog Soos suddenly shouted out.

The large frog was standing right next to the doorway with the red curtains and beads, having took a peek inside of the room to find at least one of the two people that they were looking for.

Hop Pop came running towards Frog Soos, nearly slipping when he stepped on the brown puddle on the floor in front of the doorway.

"Whoa! Polly, mind where you're hopping!" The elderly frog warned the purple tadpole, pointing at the puddle.

Once Polly joined them, they all looked into the room after Frog Soos pushed the red curtains and beads apart just a tiny bit.

Hop Pop gasped. "You're right! Anne's right there, standing on that stage!" he said. "And the Curator is in there too! But… There's no sign of Sprig anywhere."

"What's with that brown stuff on Anne's body?" Polly pointed out. "It kinda makes her look like all those statues here."

"Wait… Gwendy's with them!" Frog Soos said, having noticed that a familiar third person was also standing in the same room as Anne and the Curator. "What is going on?"

Inside of the room, the long-haired frog stood next to the wax machine with her hand on one of the two levers that was used to free Anne from her glass prison. She had a determined look on her face that also bore sadness, as she crossed gaze with her boss.

"Gwendy! You gotta help me, dude!" Anne cried out for help, visible struggling to move her body below her neck that was petrified by wax. "The Curator's gone nuts! He's trying to turn me into a living wax statue!"

"Yeah, I heard everything." Gwendy said to the frozen girl before shifting her attention back to Stan. "So this is what you've been up to. I didn't want to believe it, but…"

"Tch! Last I checked, you're not the kind of kid who gets curious and snoop around other people's stuff, Gwendy!" the Curator said, angry at his employee. "That goes for touching my stuff! Get off of there already, will ya?"

"Stan… What in the world were you thinking?" she asked, removing her hand from the lever, but still remained next to the machine. "You brought monsters here in Stony Gulch. Not fakes, but real ones that could rip anyone in Stony Gulch apart. Right under our noses even! Everyone's gonna freak if they find out about it, you know!"

"Ok, fine! You're right about the monsters being the real deal." Stan admitted, not bothering to hide the fact from her at that point. "But it's all worth the risk if they pull in loads of money for us! Besides, they're all frozen in wax! They aren't in any position to be causing trouble in town!"

"That's not the real issue here, and you know it!" Gwendy pointed out. She then gestured her hand over to the helpless human girl. "You're just about to turn a chill girl like Anne into a wax statue! That's just messed up, man!"

"So you think letting this amazingly dangerous piece of work roam around town is better than keeping her in here with all the rest? Now who's the messed-up one around here?" Stan countered with a smirk.

Gwendy frowned as her boss continued to display a behaviour that went against everything that she knew about him.

"Besides," he continued. "If you were listening in like you said, then you'd know that everything that I do here is for the sake of making the Curiosity Hut go big! So what if a creature who may or may not be innocent gets sacrificed for the greater good? They'd help me rake in loads of money from customers, while keeping them entertained for as long as possible! When you think about it, everybody wins!"

"Everybody wins, my foot!" Anne called him out on leaving her out from the equation. "That's a load of crud!"

"Okay, you trying get more money by doing stunts like this sounds like something that you would do, I'll give you that." Gwendy commented. "But… What's up with the whole 'going big' with the Curiosity Hut? You never mentioned anything like that the whole time that I know you."

"What, you saying that I wasn't planning on expanding the museum across the world at all? You think that I'm perfectly fine keeping it all in this small, worthless town? Get real, Gwendy! That's not how business works!" Stan said.

"This isn't like you, Stan!" Gwendy exclaimed, her tone expressing concern. "Everything that you're doing right now, like bringing dangerous monsters in town, basically taking an innocent person hostage, and the whole stuff about bringing the Curiosity Hut to the whole world… You're acting like a completely different person! If Flipper and Schmabel were here right now, they would-"

"Oh geez Louise, will everyone just shut up and stop bringing up those two little traitors?!" Stan yelled, stomping his foot forward in frustration.

Gwendy widened her eyes in shock. It was the second time that the eyepatch-wearing frog had reacted that way at the mention of the Ponds Twins. He was definitely acting unlike the person that she got to know for some time.

"Stan… You keep calling Flipper and Schmabel traitors or backstabbers." she pointed out. "Is this what it's all about? Are you doing all of this sleazy behind-the-scene stuff because they ticked you off somehow? But that doesn't make any sense…"

"Didn't I tell you to shut up about those two?!" Stan shouted.

"No! I wanna know what's going on!" Gwendy shouted back with a single step forward towards her boss, unwilling to drop the subject in favour of getting to the bottom of it. "You haven't been the same since they left! What happened between you guys? To think that you would hate them after all you've been through is just insane!"

"Stop acting like you know everything about me, Gwendy! Instead of wasting time trying to figure me out, why not help me get the museum off the ground by making our little star over here our main attraction!" he said as he pointed at Anne who continued to struggle fruitlessly against the frozen wax on her body.

"What makes you think I'll help you?" Gwendy asked while narrowing her eyes at him.

"Think about it for a second." Stan said as he was about to explain himself. "Our usual schtick that we had going for years just ain't doing it for tourists anymore. They think that they've already seen the oddities that the world has to offer, so by extension, visiting the Curiosity Hut is just a waste of time and money. At the rate that it's going, the museum will go down under!"

He briefly threw a glance at Anne's way, as he continued his explanation. "I came up with the whole scheme of bringing the strangest creatures that the world has ever seen here, freeze them in wax and put them all up in display right here to pull the museum out of the gutter! But it's not gonna happen if you're going to go against me, Gwendy."

He extended an offering hand to his cashier, trying to win her support with what he was about to say next.

"Listen, kid. I know how much you love Stony Gulch. Lots of fond memories to be had here and whatnot. If the museum is finished, your dad is going to make you work at a logging camp somewhere far away from here. Meaning, you'll have to say goodbye to this little town."

The long-haired frog gasped, realizing that there was some truth in her boss' words.

Seeing her reaction caused Stan to smirk, as he was one step closer to pulling her to his side.

"If you don't wanna leave town, then you know what to do." he said as he pointed at the wax machine. "Pull the levers down and finish the job for me, will ya? Once our superstar here becomes a statue, everything will be right as rain."

"Hey! Don't do this, Gwendy!" Anne shouted in alarm, looking at the tall frog out of fear that the Curator's words might have convinced her. "He's just talking out of his butt! Turning me into a living statue won't save the museum!"

"Quit your yapping!" Stan glared at the nearly-frozen girl. "You're the one talking out of your butt, being a visiting tourist here! Don't pretend that you know what's best for everybody!"

Anne growled at the Curator as she kept trying to break herself free to no avail. Stan paid her no mind from that point forward, focusing his attention back on Gwendy.

"Whaddaya say, Gwendy? Wanna make more memories in Stony Gulch? Then just do what I say."

Gwendy stared at her boss for a long time, looking like what he had just told her had an effect on her. She then shifted her gaze at the human girl whose eyes were pleading for her not to go through with it.

Some more time had passed, and the long-haired frog slowly turned towards the wax machine.

Anne looked on in horror, while Stan had a huge grin on his face, both being led to think that Gwendy was going to do it.

Meanwhile, Hop Pop, Polly and Frog Soos were listening in on their conversation up to that point, in which they recognized that the situation became extremely dire.

"Anne's in serious trouble! We gotta help her!" Polly said.

"You're right, Polly! It's now or never!" Hop Pop stated as he and his granddaughter were about to jump in to save the human girl at last.

However, Frog Soos stopped them from taking action by wrapping his arms around them from behind.

"What the…! Frog Soos?!" the elderly frog exclaimed in shock.

"What're you doing?! Let us go!" Polly yelled as she tried to free herself from the large frog's hold. "Don't tell me you believe that crazy psycho?!"

"It's not like that, dudes!" Frog Soos defended. "I-I think we should trust Gwendy on this one!"

"Trust her?! She's going to turn Anne into a statue at the Curator's behest!" Hop Pop shouted. "What makes you think that she won't do it?!"

"Because I know Gwendy! It's not her style to be doing stuff like this!" Frog Soos explained, as he looked at his coworker from afar. "At least, I hope…"

Gwendy remained still in front of the machine for an uncomfortable amount of time, fuelling the anxiety of everyone present in the museum. The Curator even began to tap his foot on the floor, waiting for his employee to do the deed.

After a while, Gwendy closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She then turned her head towards the brown-haired girl while opening her eyes and gave her a smile.

"It's cool, Anne." she said. "I got this."

As Anne wondered what she meant by it, she was caught by surprise when Gwendy pulled out a hatchet from her person and swung it down on the machine, cracking it open.

"WHAT?! GWENDY?!" Stan screamed as he witnessed her cleaving the machine before his eyes. "What are you doing?!"

Gwendy turned her head towards him with a determined look on her face.

"Like I said earlier. I'm stopping this."

She proceeded to perform several swings of her hatchet on the machine, smashing them glass chambers, spilling the wax liquid all over, severing numerous components including the levers, and sending bits and pieces flying.

Once she damaged the machine enough, sparks formed around the broken areas before the wax machine exploded before her, ensuring its complete destruction. Despite being at close proximity of the exploding machine, she was left unharmed.

"WHAT THE HECK!"

Stan thought that he managed to sway his employee to his cause, but her actions proved the opposite. And now, he was left seething in rage, glaring at her intensively.

"What is wrong with you?! Do you know how much the wax machine costed me?!" he yelled at her. "I mean, sure, I bought that stupid contraption for cheap, and it came with all the inconvenience of being a cheap machine, but I still spent money on that thing! And you went and destroyed it! What about the museum?! About staying in Stony Gulch?!"

"Oh come on, Stan!" Gwendy said as she turned her head to look at her boss right in the eye. "As if I'd ever believe whatever load of frogspit that you're trying to sell me here!"

"What, you think I'm lying? Did you forget that business hasn't been stellar lately? Maybe you sitting behind the counter all day made you forget how many customers we were getting in the past month or so!" Stan retorted. "Because of what you just did, unless I find another cheap machine to replace within a day or two, the museum is going to rot!"

"It's not." Gwendy argued, taking a few steps towards Stan. "The hut is still going to be around, as long as the town still stands."

Stan gritted his teeth in anger.

"Wait, what do you mean by that, Gwendy?" Anne asked, wondering what led the tall frog to that conclusion.

"The townsfolk love the Curiosity Hut." Gwendy replied. "It's a part of what makes the town so unique. If there's any problem with it, I bet they'd drop everything and pitch in to help. Frog Soos always said that the hut is where people's dreams become reality, even when the attractions are fake. If the hut shuts down for any reason, so are people's dreams."

"Wow… Is the museum really that special to everyone here?"

Gwendy nodded to Anne.

"The same goes for me too. After all, it's where I met Flipper and Schmabel." she said, smiling as she recalled the adventures that she had with the twins, which all began at the hut.

When she switched her gaze back towards Stan, her smile was replaced with a frown.

"Stan, I don't believe for a second that you're doing all of this shady stuff just to save the museum. You already knew that it didn't need saving in the first place, didn't you?"

"What are you implying?" Stan asked.

"There's obviously a bigger reason why you're doing this." Gwendy stated. "And it all has to do with what went on between you, Flipper and Schmabel-"

"Shut up." the fez-wearing frog simply said with his head lowered, the tone of his voice rendered suspiciously quiet. "I warned you stupid kids many times to not ever mention those two, or any of my family. This is the last thing that I wanna hear."

Gwendy's facial expression softened.

"Stan, we're all just worried about you." she explained, as she climbed up the stage and slowly approached her boss. "I don't know what really went on between you guys, but I hate seeing you being the shell of your former self."

Once she was at arms' length of him, she extended a helping hand to him, determined to help him with his troubles.

"You're our boss, man. We're always here for you, no matter what." she smiled. "The first thing that you need to do is talk to us. That's it."

Stan looked down at the long-haired girl's offering hand, contemplating what he should do about it.

Gwendy observed his reaction closely, almost sure of herself that she had gotten through to him.

Then the Curator let out a bitter chuckle.

"You kidding? After everything you did to me so far?" he said.

Gwendy dropped her smile, worried about what he meant by that.

"You just proved my belief. That the only person that I can rely on is myself."

He caught her off-guard by suddenly pulling out a smoke bomb and threw it to the ground, creating a cloud of smoke that engulfed the two frogs.

Gwendy coughed as she covered her mouth with one hand and used the other to fan the smoke away from her face. Once the smoke became clear enough for her to see, she noticed that both Stan and the still-frozen Anne had disappeared from their spots.

"Gwendy! Help!" She heard the human girl crying for help.

Turning her head towards the direction of the cry, she found her boss running off towards the exit starting from the middle of the room, carrying the helpless Anne over his shoulder.

"Stan! Stop!" Gwendy shouted as she bolted after them.

"To heck with this place! To heck with Stony Gulch! To heck with everything!" the Curator yelled, using a huge amount of his energy to run as fast as he could while carrying Anne along. "I'm making history with the Curiosity Hut! This freak is the only ticket out of this dump! There's no way I'm letting dumb kids like you put a stop to this!"

Just as he was about to reach the doorway of the room, two individuals suddenly jumped in the way, causing Stan to stop in his tracks.

"We're not letting you take Anne away, you despicable fiend!" Hop Pop shouted as he spread his body wide to block as much of the doorway as he could, with Polly standing in front of him.

"Hop Pop! Polly!" Anne shouted in relief from seeing the rest of the family coming to her aid.

"Really?! Now I have to deal with you two morons?!" the Curator said exasperatedly, recognizing the elderly frog and the baby tadpole.

"Put her down right now!" Polly yelled, shooting a defiant look at him while hopping forward. "Or else, you're gonna feel my wrath when I gnaw your feet to shreds! Seriously! I'll do it!"

"Heh! You wanna try your luck with my feet, huh?" Stan smirked, as he pulled a leg back with the intent of striking the purple tadpole. "Let's see if you can handle me kicking you across the building!"

Before he could fulfill his promise, he was suddenly tackled from the side which resulted in him dropping Anne in front of the Plantar family.

The two opposing individuals rolled around until they collided hard against a wall, leading to a bunch of picture frames to fall off as a result.

"Stan! Just drop it already!" Gwendy yelled as she tried to keep her boss pinned by pressing his shoulders against the wall with her hands.

"Get off of me, you ungrateful runt!" Stan yelled back before he launched his tongue out and hit her face with it, stunning her just enough for him to kick her off easily.

He began to charge towards the Plantars, only to be jumped from behind by the long-haired frog who sent them both crashing to the floor.

She raised her head up towards the family.

"Get out of here! Run!" Gwendy told them urgently while keeping the fez-wearing frog pinned down as much as she could.

"We're already on it!" Hop Pop said as he and Polly tried to lift Anne off the floor from opposite ends, with Hop Pop positioned at her feet, and Polly standing at her head.

The elderly frog managed to lift her up on his end, but Polly was less successful due to her small stature. When they tried dragging her away, they moved frustratingly slow. The task proved to be more difficult than they expected.

"Ngghh! Frog dangit!" Hop Pop cursed. "We can't get anywhere like this!"

"Where the heck is Sprig anyway?!" Polly said in frustration. "This would be a really good time for him to show up and make use of his big human body!"

"He's actually trapped in the storage room over there!" Anne informed them while gesturing her head towards the room in question. "The Curator locked him inside! You gotta get him outta there!"

"Polly! Hurry and free Sprig so that we can all leave as fast as possible!" Hop Pop told the purple tadpole.

"You got it!" Polly nodded as she hopped towards the door leading to the storage room.

Stan kicked Gwendy off of him once more and quickly stood up from the floor. Before he could resume his run at the family, Gwendy hopped in front of him and blocked his path.

"Stop getting in my way!" he yelled as he charged into her with the intent of shoving her off.

Gwendy stopped his charge by pushing her hands against his shoulders, locking both of them in a power struggle.

"Darn it, Stan! Stop being so stubborn!" she shouted. "Why are you so obsessed with expanding the hut?! To get back at Flipper and Schmabel?! That doesn't make a lick of sense!"

"You think I'm doing all of this because of a couple of ungrateful brats?!" he said as he pushed the long-haired frog back a bit in a burst of superior strength. "Nice detective work! What was your second guess? That I'm being possessed by a triangle, one-eyed demon with a top hat that I summoned from the depths of the abyss?"

"Just tell me already!"

"I ain't telling you nothing!"

While the conflict between Stan and Gwendy was going on, Polly reached the locked door. When she got there, the door was being banged from the other side, and it had been that way for some time already.

"Hey, Sprig! You in there?!" she shouted as loud as she could.

"Polly?! Is that you?!" She heard her brother's voice from inside the locked room.

"Hold on! I'm getting you outta here!"

She jumped up to grab hold of the doorknob and attempted to turn it around. However, the doorknob would not budge, making it clear that the door was truly locked. She dropped herself back down on the floor and looked around, trying to see if there was anything that she could use to force the door open.

Meanwhile, as the power struggle between Stan and Gwendy continued, the former was slowly getting the upper hand, managing to push the latter back bit by bit with each burst of strength.

Realizing that she could not hold him off for much longer, Gwendy grabbed his shoulders, spun themselves around and tossed him towards the other side of the room.

Stan crashed into the wall and fell down on the floor. While he was recovering, his eyes came across a mace that was lying on the floor next to him.

Having grown tired of wasting time on Gwendy, he grabbed up the mace in his hand, slowly stood up from the floor, and with the weapon raised, he let out a battle cry and charged at his cashier.

Gwendy gasped upon seeing him running at her with a dangerous weapon. Instinctively, she drew out her hatchet and blocked his attack the moment that he swung the mace down at her.

Stan raised the mace back up, then swung it down again, only for Gwendy to block the second attack as well. He repeated the same steps with the intent of overpowering her. However, Gwendy kept her footing no matter how many times he struck at her.

He once again raised the mace up, with Gwendy still keeping her hatchet up to block the next attack.

But she was caught off-guard when Stan moved the weapon around towards the bottom, then swiped up, disarming his employee as the hatchet slipped out of her hands upon impact.

The hatchet flew up towards the ceiling, then fell back down before it struck into the floor next to Polly.

Polly yelped and jumped when the hatchet very nearly split her in two, but the sight of it gave her an idea.

"This could work!" she said as she grabbed the handle with both hands and pulled the hatchet off the floor. "Get back, Sprig! I'm gonna smash the door into pieces!"

She jumped towards the door with the hatchet raised high up and struck the door, creating a slit into it. She then removed the hatchet from the door, dropped down and repeated the process until she could destroy the door completely to free her big brother.

Meanwhile, after being disarmed, Gwendy took a few steps back with her hands up in front of her, looking fearfully at her boss who was all too willing to continue his assault.

"Heh! You were a good kid, Gwendy." he said, as he slowly approached the retreating tall frog. "Too bad you had to go up against me! Time to pay the price!"

Stan lifted the mace up once more, while Gwendy shielded herself with her arms in a vain attempt to protect herself. Just as he was about to throw the weapon down on her…

"MR. PONDS! STOP!"

Frog Soos suddenly jumped out from the doorway and put himself in between Stan and Gwendy, spreading his arms wide to protect his fellow coworker behind him.

Stan paused his attack upon seeing his handyman making a sudden appearance before him.

"Frog Soos?! You're here too?!" he shouted.

"Don't do this, Mr. Ponds!" Frog Soos pleaded. "Do you realize what you're about to do?!"

"Of course I do! I'm punishing this disobedient piece of trash for getting in my way!" Stan replied. "Move aside, Frog Soos! Gwendy caused enough problems for all of us as is!"

"Mr. Ponds, that's crazy talk!" The large frog said, unwilling to move from his current spot. "Are you really gonna hurt Gwendy?! She's been our friend since she started working here a few years ago!"

"Who said that she's a friend? She's nothing more than someone who works for me!"

"Think about it, dude!" Frog Soos implored him. "You're gonna make the twins sad if you hurt her! She's Flipper's love of his life! Schmabel's cool, rebellious role model!"

Stan screamed at the top of his lungs in frustration, bringing his mace down to the side.

"Why does everyone keep bringing up those two?!"

"You know why, Stan!" Gwendy replied, leaning her head to the side to look at their boss past the large frog. "You loved Flipper and Schmabel! You cherished them like they were your own kids! Why do you suddenly hate them now?!"

"Snooping piece of…! You wanna know why so badly, huh? Well, all you need to know is that those two turned on me the moment that they left town last summer!" Stan answered. "After everything that I've done for them, they just upped and left me in the dust!"

"But Mr. Ponds, they were only staying here for the whole summer! They were always meant to leave when summer's over!" Frog Soos argued, pointing out the contradiction of the fez-wearing frog's explanation. "Everyone knew that! You're telling us that you didn't know?"

"'Course he knew, Frog Soos! He was their caretaker, after all!" Gwendy said. "It would've been nuts if he wasn't being told about that! He's just not telling us the whole story!"

"Aargh! What more do I have to tell you?! What part of them being backstabbing twerps do you not get?!" Stan yelled, getting more frustrated at his employees by the second.

"Why can't you just give it to us straight?" Gwendy asked, unable to comprehend why he was being increasingly stubborn about the whole issue.

"… His twin brother!"

Everyone in the room all turned towards the curly-haired girl, whose frozen legs were still being lifted by Hop Pop.

"Frog Soos, you told me that this guy changed ever since the twins left with his twin brother, right?" Anne asked for clarification. "His brother had to be involved in all of this somehow!"

"Ah! That's right!" Frog Soos exclaimed, having forgotten about that important detail amidst the conflict that was currently at play. "Not just when his twin bro left with the twins! Mr. Ponds had been acting weird ever since he showed up in town!"

Stan widened his eyes in panic, as it seemed like his reasons behind his actions were about to be unfold for everyone to hear.

"Now that you mentioned it," Gwendy spoke, after she thought more about the involvement of their boss' twin brother. "He and his brother were being jerks to each other the whole time that he was here. And… Didn't Flipper and Schmabel took a liking to him almost as soon as he got here?"

"Yeah!" Frog Soos nodded in confirmation. "Because Ford showed them lots of stuff that they were excited about. His research about the land's oddities for Flipper, and the weird, fun and silly stuff that he found while traveling for Schmabel. Now that I think about it, they were pretty happy to leave town with Ford! At least, I think…"

"So… That's it, isn't it?" Gwendy asked, directing her attention back at Stan, once new information came into light.

"Stan… It's not Flipper and Schmabel that you're mad at. It's your twin brother Ford." she guessed. "It all adds up. He showed up out of nowhere, got the twins to like him 'cause of all the cool stuff that he had when he was traveling around the world, so much that they were perfectly fine with leaving town with him at the end of last summer. So everything that you did since then… It's all to get back at Ford, right?"

Stan did not say anything. He had his head lowered towards the ground with his eyes closed, in an attempt to hide whatever emotion that he was exhibiting.

"So if I understand this correctly," Hop Pop said. "The whole reason why we're in this mess, it's because the Curator is jealous of his brother? Well, it almost makes sense in a way, as far as sibling rivalry goes…"

"Dude, that's just messed up!" Anne exclaimed. "You're telling me that you caught and turned all those monsters into statues, and almost turned me into one too, just because your brother was cooler than you? I might just be an only child, but I think you're being pretty petty about it, with all things considered!"

"Shut up, shut up, shut up, shut up, SHUT UP!"

In a fit a rage, Stan threw the mace at Hop Pop and Anne. With a yelp, the elderly frog barely dodged the thrown weapon by ducking down and pulling the nearly-petrified human with him, as the mace flew right over their heads.

"You keep your noses out of other people's business! You're nothing but stupid tourists who know squat!" Stan yelled, glaring intensively at the two of them.

He then shifted his rage towards his employees, throwing an accusing finger at them in the process.

"And you two! You had to keep prying into my life, just because you don't like how I do things around here, huh?! You take pleasure from family dramas or something?! Who's the insane guy around here now?!"

"Mr. Ponds, calm down for a second!" Frog Soos implored, gesturing his hands up and down in an attempt to assuage the situation. "We just wanna know why you're doing all of this!"

"You don't need to know anything!" Stan shouted, throwing his arms down. "Now you all think that I did this whole thing just because of those stupid brats and my twin brother who came out of nowhere after being gone from my life for who knows how many years and went and showed me up in front of everybody!"

With gritted teeth, he lowered his head and had both hands gripping against his scalp, as he was forced to recall how he got to that point.

"We were supposed to be a team, he and I, from the moment that we were born… But just because of one, tiny mistake, he and the rest of my family turned on me and left me for dead! I would've been a goner, if I hadn't found the Curiosity Hut out of sheer luck! Things were looking up for me, for a change…"

He lifted his eyes up to look at the people in front of him.

"You two bozos started working for me 'cause you were desperate, then I had to take care of Flipper and Schmabel 'cause their parents asked me to. I thought that I finally had people that I could rely on, and vice versa. I was finally given a second chance on life…"

He strengthened his grip on his head, as he remembered the point where everything fell apart.

"Then he showed up out of nowhere, claimed that it's because their parents finally reached out to him, and stole the whole show! It took me almost the whole summer to bond with Flipper and Schmabel, while it took him just a few days! And then he went and put the idea that I was no good to them in their heads! And they happily went along with it!"

He once again pointed fiercely at Gwendy and Frog Soos, accusing them for some wrongdoings that they had no way of knowing.

"And now you two hopped on the same wagon as them! You couldn't just let slide the fact that I'm doing all of this for the sake of the museum! Now you think I was just being petty about my family!"

"Dude, that's not what we were thinking at all!" Gwendy said.

"Well, I have had it with you lot…"

Stan started to approach the group menacingly, his eyes glaring at them with the intensity of a thousand suns.

"You all proved to me that the only person that I can rely on is myself." he repeated what he said to Gwendy a while ago. "I'm gonna have to turn you all into special, opening attractions for my newly-built Curiosity Hut. Folks are gonna eat it all up when they see you."

"No, Mr. Ponds! Don't do this!" Frog Soos pleaded. "Think about what you're doing! Think about the people who love you! Think about Flipper and Schmabel!"

"To heck with all of you!" Stan yelled, stomping his foot in the middle of his approach.

Frog Soos reacted by taking a step back and spreading his arms as wide as possible to protect Gwendy and the others behind him from their boss' wrath.

"You know, I've got the perfect name for you jerks." Stan said as he cracked the knuckles of each hand in preparation for what he had in store for them. "It's called 'The Pathetic Ballad of Moronic Children and their Gramps Searching for a Nonexisting Meaning of a Person's Li-!"

POW!

Before he could finish his words, a fist flew right into his face, sending him crashing into a wall, next to the doorway.

Everyone was surprised when the Curator got punched in the face so suddenly. When they turned to see who threw the punch, they were met with the sight of a green-clad boy sporting a right black eye, accompanied by a purple tadpole who hopped to his side.

"Payback!" Sprig declared with satisfaction, pulling his fist back.

"Sprig!" Hop Pop shouted, relieved to see his grandson safe and sound. "Are you okay?"

"Could've been better." The boy replied while caressing his black eye with his hand. "Thanks for getting me outta there, Polly."

"No problem, big brother!" Polly said.

A groan escaped from the Curator's lips, attracting the attention of everyone in the room. He tried to stand up from the floor, pressing his back against the wall as support. However, he failed to keep himself up, as he slipped back down. He tried again a second time, only to fall back down once again.

It would seem that Sprig's punch dazed him a lot more than anyone could have expected.

Gwendy and Frog Soos watched their boss out of pity, thinking back to what led to their current predicament.

"Poor Stan…" Gwendy spoke. "All of this just because of a sibling rivalry…"

"Not to mention how Flipper and Schmabel supposedly hated him thanks to Ford." Frog Soos said, turning his head towards his coworker. "But… That can't be true, right?"

"'Course not." she replied. "… At least, I don't think so. Either way, Stan needs some serious help. This whole thing did a number on him, and we can't leave him hanging like this."

"I'm with you, dude."

Gwendy and Frog Soos walked towards the eyepatch-wearing frog with the intent of giving him some much needed support.

"You really feeling alright, Sprig?" Anne asked the orange-haired boy, visibly wincing at the sight of his throbbing black eye. "That looked like it really hurt."

"Yeah, I'm fine, Anne." Sprig replied, as he and Polly joined Anne and Hop Pop at their side. "But I should be asking you if you're doing okay. You know, 'cause you're almost covered in wax and all."

"Honestly, not really." Anne answered with annoyance. "Not being able to move my body is a real pain in the neck. Would be really nice if we could get the wax off of me."

"But how exactly can we do that?" Polly asked, as the Plantar family had no clue how to remove the wax, safe for pulling it off bit by bit which might prove to be a gruelling task on its own.

"I dunno. Maybe try melting it off or something?" Anne suggested the first thing that came into mind.

"Yo!"

The family heard the long-haired frog calling out to them. They turned themselves towards her just in time to see her tossing a torch in their way. Hop Pop managed to catch the torch in his hands.

"If you're looking for something to get rid of the wax, this should come in handy." Gwendy said with a smile. "Pretty sure that the heat's gonna melt it clean off."

"Thank you kindly, Miss Gwendy." Hop Pop expressed his gratitude. He then moved the burning torch near Anne's body. "Hold still, Anne. It'll only take a minute or three."

"Oh sure! It's not like I can go anywhere or whatever." Anne said sarcastically while rolling her eyes, pointing out her nearly-frozen state.

She then sighed, as she thought about everything leading up until now.

"I'm really sorry, fam." she apologized while looking down. "None of this would've happened if I just listen to you. I let myself get carried away with trying to get the Skipman…"

"You're darn right about that." Hop Pop harshly agreed, giving the human girl an irritated look. A second later, irritation was replaced with relief. "But the important thing is that we're all okay. Besides, there is an upside to this."

He shifted his gaze towards the long-haired frog and the large frog attending to their boss. The rest of the family followed suite.

"If we didn't get ourselves involved, things would've gone very poorly for these good folks here."

"I guess you're right." Anne said. "Thanks for coming to my rescue, guys."

She turned her head towards Sprig, giving him a warm smile of gratitude.

"You especially, Sprig."

Sprig reacted with a smile of his own, as well as a light blush appearing on his face.

"Hey, Sprig!" Polly handed her brother a rolled-up scroll in front of him, bringing his attention to it. "You dropped this back in the other room."

"Oh! Maddie's list!" Sprig exclaimed, as he took the scroll from Polly's hands. "Thanks, Polly! I didn't even realize that I lost it back there!"

He opened up the scroll and looked over its content to make sure that nothing that was written on it was damaged from the scuffle that he had a while ago.

While examining the state of the list, his eyes rested upon a section that, for reasons yet unknown to him, seemed to be important.

The Gill-Beast's Scale

Gill-Beasts are large, bipedal aquatic creatures with a huge head, hilariously small arms and ridiculously big legs. They are reported to be found in the depths of the ocean south of Amphibia. According to my research, their scales that make up the entirety of their skin have protective properties that can withstand most attacks for a time.

You might be wondering why we need to collect their scales. To be fair, the scale is actually a substitute ingredient for something else entirely. The actual ingredient is frog epidermis, as in a frog's skin. But you might think that removing a poor frog's skin is really morbid, so I'm not going to ask you to do it… This time.

Joking aside, a Gill-Beast kind of resembles a frog in a way, just more than twice the size of a regular frog and having exaggerated proportions for their body parts. Once I made the comparison, I thought it would be best to use their scale as an ingredient instead. On a plus side, with the protective properties of the scale, theoretically, your body will become much more durable than before when you turn back into a frog.

There's one more thing that I want to add. There are rumours of an exceptionally odd Gill-Beast known as the Gill-Behemoth, who is said to be abnormally huge compared to a regular Gill-Beast. It is also said that its scales are even more tougher than usual, so in theory, they are more potent as an ingredient. I have no way of proving that the rumours are true, but if you do come across the Gill-Behemoth, it would be great if you can extract its scales for me.

Here's my best drawing of the Gill-Beast, for visual sake.

A crude drawing of the creature in question can be found underneath the section.

"… Wait a minute… I think I've seen that thing before…" Sprig commented after looking at Maddie's drawing of the Gill-Beast. "And pretty recently too. But where could I've seen it…?"

"Urgh…! Keep your hands off of me…!" Stan groaned as he pushed aside the helping hands of his employees standing next to him.

"Come on, Mr. Ponds." Frog Soos said sadly. "We're just trying to help you."

"I don't need your help…" Stan retorted, as he tried to get up on his own once more. "Not after you turned against me a moment ago…"

"Don't say it like that, sir…"

Stan inched himself up bit by bit, trying to fight through his dizziness. However, his body failed him once more, causing him to fall to the side and hit his face in a strange puddle in front of the doorway

He lifted his face up and spat out the liquid that came in his mouth. He looked down at the puddle, wondering what it was.

Until he noticed that the colour of the puddle was brown. And when he inspected it with his fingers, he noted the thickness in its viscosity.

"Wait… This is wax." Stan said, recognizing what it was.

He looked at where the puddle originated from and noticed that it was seeping through the doorway from the lobby.

"But I thought I already put all the wax in the machine. Where did this come from?"

RROOOOOOAAARRR!

Everyone got startled by the sound of a ferocious roar that vibrated across the whole building. As they all wondered where the roar came from, the wall separating the lobby and the room that they were in shook violently, as if someone or something from the other room was banging against it.

"What the heck is going on?!" Gwendy exclaimed.

"Uh, whoever's in the other room, you probably shouldn't bang on the wall so much!" Frog Soos said, as he was about to check and see who was causing racket from the lobby.

But just as he was going to the doorway, a huge eye suddenly appeared in view from the other side.

"AAAAHHH!" Frog Soos fell on his butt in fright.

Then, the wall was completely smashed through by whatever was in the lobby. When the smoke cleared, everyone had a look at whatever was responsible, and everyone all recognized what it was.

It was the statue of the huge, two-legged aquatic behemoth with two large fangs, one being broken, a huge head and a pair of small arms. The one that was standing over the doorway in the main lobby. They remembered that its body was brown in colour, but its feet and knees were green, looking like they had broken out of some kind of coating.

The statue began to shake violently, causing cracks to appear all over. Then, pieces of wax fell off its body bit by bit, until its true, green form was liberated from its bind.

The behemoth slowly raised itself up towards the ceiling by extending its large legs, easily towering over the group in front of it. It looked down at the feeble creatures who looked up at it in fear, before letting out a loud, monstrous cry.

Seeing the source of her terror being brought to life before her, Polly had only this to say.

"… I KNEW IT!"

End of Chapter

Hey, everyone. HiddenKurogawa here with more than just cipher-related info.

First things first, I apologize that it took me over a month to update the story. I had a hard time trying to write this one due to a combination of things, such as a lack of inspiration, making sure that the story flows naturally, and keeping the characters true to the source material as much as possible. The last one is exceptionally important because I was trying to figure out how to make Mr. Ponds a more sympathetic character with depth, and paying respects to his inspiration, especially when compared to how he was portrayed in the original show. I would like to say that I did a good job, but I would be lying to myself because I'm always hard on myself when writing my stories.

Second, as promised, I'll decode to you the title of the last chapter. The cipher that I used for it is the Atbash cipher. Basically, you mirror the alphabet. So with that in mind, when you decipher the title, this is what you get:

Secret of the Wax

For the title of this chapter, just like the previous, I won't tell you what cipher that I used. The only hint that I can give you is that I already used that cipher in one of the previous chapters.

Rest assure, this is the last time that I'll be doing stuff like this. Starting next chapter, we'll go back to normal with the chapter titles.

That's all from me. As always, feel free to comment, criticize, follow and/or fave this fanfic, though I would appreciate these very much. Until next time.