Chapter Six: Welcome to Amphibia

 

Chapter Six: Welcome to Amphibia

            The two-week journey from Wartwood to Newtopia was a long, dull, and sometimes dangerous one for Anne Boonchuy and the Plantars, a family of frogs that she met and started living with since the day she was transported away from her world and into theirs. The whole purpose of the trip was for Anne to finally get the answers she needed in finding a way back to Earth. It was the music box that brought her there, which – for the time being – was kept in safe care with Hop Pop, the elder Plantar and grandfather of Sprig and Polly.

            With nothing other than her phone to entertain them in the family wagon (“Fwagon” for short), Anne decided to treat her adopted frog family with a song she came up with, during her time in Amphibia. She got Sprig to play a jovial tune on his fiddle that accompanied her lyrics:

Anne:
Now I find myself
in the wild unknown,
with the frogs and toads,
and I’m far from home.

But there’s so much here to discover,
one leap after another.
Hop into the adventure.
Gotta…

Sprig, Hop Pop, and Polly:
Ribbit, ribbit, ribbit!

Anne:
Welcome to Amphibia!
Life don’t get much crazier.
When you’re a normal girl,
living in another world.
What you gonna do?
You gotta…

Sprig, Hip Hop, and Polly:
Ribbit, ribbit! Jump on it!

Anne and the Plantars:
Welcome to Amphibia!
Life don’t get much crazier!
So ribbit, ribbit, live it in Amphibia!

            The family shared a laugh after the song; it was just what they needed to lighten the mood. “That’s a great song, Anne,” Sprig approved. “You came up with all that in the last three months?”

            “Sure did,” said Anne, her pride showing. “I’m a natural-born lyricist.”

            “Do one about me!” Polly spurred her, repeatedly bouncing her small, round pollywog body onto Anne’s messy, auburn-haired head.

            Anne chuckled at Polly’s eagerness. “Oh, I got the perfect one for you, Polly.”

            She took a deep breath, on the verge of singing her song for Polly, until the Fwagon came to a sudden stop. Anne, Sprig, and Polly were nearly thrown off from the reverberating jolt of the halted wagon. The three youths immediately complained to the driver (Hop Pop), who yanked on the reins attached to Bessie, the family’s giant snail and usual mode of transportation.

            “Sorry, kids,” Hop Pop told them. “I got distracted by that.” He pointed off-road to where a large mansion resided in the middle of a foggy, boggy region of land. “That shouldn’t even be there.” Hop Pop would know that for certain, since he carried a map that charted their route to Newtopia.

            Anne’s curiosity got the best of her. “Hmm. Whaddya say we investigate it?”

            “I’m in!” Sprig volunteered, without a second thought.

            “Ditto!” Polly corresponded with her brother.

            The only hesitant one was Hop Pop. “I dunno, kids. Somethin’ about that place just ain’t sittin’ right with me.”

            “Aw, c’mon, Hop Pop,” Sprig pleaded. “Aren’t ya just a little bit curious to find out what’s inside that big ol’ house?”

            “No,” the snarky Hop Pop replied. “That’s why it ain’t sittin’ right with me.”

            “Well, you can sit right here with Bessie, while we take a look,” Anne defied, leaping off the Fwagon afterwards and running towards the mansion, with Sprig and Polly following her.

            The teenage girl’s defiance was a constant annoyance with Hop Pop. “Anne! Get back here!” he yelled, but Anne wasn’t listening, nor were Sprig or Polly. With no other choice, he jumped off the Fwagon and chased after the kids. He hated to leave the family wagon or Bessie especially, unattended out in the middle of nowhere. His only hope was that this strange, foreboding mansion would turn out boring to his grandchildren and adopted granddaughter.

            That seemed impossible as soon as they laid eyes on the most bizarre machine Hop Pop had ever seen. It was a bright white color, had all sorts of machinery sitting on top of it, and was parked right outside the mansion. “What in the name of frog is that thing?!”

            Anne knew the answer right away, tears flooding her eyes. “It’s the Ectomobile!”

            “The what-now?” a baffled Polly questioned.

            “It’s the car of the Ghostbusters!” Anne elaborated, though the Plantars were still confused. “They’re heroes back where I’m from. They’ve saved the world hundreds of times – once from a giant marshmallow man!”

            “A giant marshmallow man? Really, Anne?” Hop Pop remarked, disbelievingly.

            “You gotta be makin’ this all up,” Sprig surmised with the same skepticism.

            Even Polly expressed her own doubt: “And you say our world is weird.”

            “I’m not jokin’,” Anne reassured the frogs, prior to taking out her phone. “Just look.” She showed them footage recorded in 2004 that had recirculated across social media ever since. The Plantars watched with an overwhelming sense of wonder at all the other “Annes” running in panic from a hundred-foot marshmallow man that climbed atop a skyscraper before it was hit by four colorful beams of light from the rooftop of the building.

            “Whoa,” Sprig gasped. “And you say they’ve saved your world hundreds of times from things like that?”

            “Yup,” Anne verified. “I don’t think I’d even be born, if it weren’t for them!”

            “They must be the greatest heroes ever,” the awestruck Polly said.

            “And they’re scientists, too!” Anne exclaimed. “If they’re here in Amphibia, then I finally have a way back home! Now I really gotta check out this house!” In her increasing feelings of hope and excitement, Anne rushed inside the mansion, accompanied by the Plantars, who were anxious to meet these remarkable “Ghostbusters.”

            Upon entering, they almost stumbled over a litter of unconscious bodies sprawled over the floor of the foyer. Anne recognized the ones that were the Ghostbusters. “I can’t believe I’m seeing real people again,” she beamed.

            “Uh…yeah…‘real’ being the irrelative term there, Anne,” Hop Pop said, as he gestured to three of the Ghostbusters that were each of their own species. “What the heck are these guys? Is that one supposed to be a mouse?!”

            “And why’re these Annes yellow?” Polly queried, pointing to two other Ghostbusters, as well as a family that looked just as bumpkin as the Plantars.

            Of the bumpkin family specifically, even Sprig questioned, “Why do these Annes not have their noses?”

            “Alright, alright!” Anne groaned, exhausted by all the questions. “So my world’s a little more diverse than I remember. The point is that these people are from it.” She then paused as she noticed a woman with pointed ears and wearing a weird, skirted blue uniform. “Except for that one. I don’t know where she’s from.”

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            Cricket felt groggier than most other times he woke from a long rest. Only he didn’t fall asleep all on his own – he was knocked out. The last thing he recalled was a bright light coming towards him, his family, the Ghostbusters, and their friends. He thought it was the light to heaven, and they had all passed on to the other side.

            However, when his eyes opened for the first time since the strange occurrence, he wondered what sort of heaven he was sent to, with a giant frog staring right at his face within an uncomfortable proximity.

            “Hey, there. My name’s Sprig.”

            And it talked as well!

            Cricket let out a scream of terror that awakened the other unconscious group members. They were just as startled to see the anthropomorphic frogs and the teenage human girl with one shoe, inside the manor.

            “What just happened?!” Venkman asked (in her colorful way).

            “Please tell me you guys are here to take me home!” the one-shoed teenager implored of the Ghostbusters.

            “Who are you?” J.G. addressed her.

            “My name’s Anne Boonchuy,” the teen answered before introducing her frog companions. “And these are the Plantars: Sprig, Polly, and Hop Pop. I’ve been staying with them, ever since I arrived in this world.”

            “Sure, Anne, just go ahead and tell them our whole life story,” Hop Pop snipped.

            “Wait…did you just say ‘this world’?” Marco noticed. “As in ‘another world’?”

            “Yeah,” Anne confirmed. “Welcome to Amphibia!”

            In spite of Anne’s gleeful welcoming, it wasn’t exactly welcoming news for Marco, Star, T’Eve, the Greens, or the Ghostbusters. Clary made sure of Anne’s claim when she stepped out through the front door and saw the swamp-like atmosphere and wildlife much larger in size than that on Earth.

            “It’s true,” she gasped.

            Her eyes aflame with fury, Venkman centered it on Star and Marco and asked them, “What did you two do?!”

            Star felt like she was talking to her mother, the way Natalie spoke to her in that near-identical stern voice. It made it that much harder for her to confess, “We may have prematurely used the Necronomicon and the Calamity Box to try and summon the chainsaw warrior.”

            “May have?!” Venkman stuck on those words. “Clearly, you did!”

            Hop Pop, in the meanwhile, stuck on another couple of words Star uttered. Did she just say “Calamity Box”?!

            The elder frog almost didn’t see the black cat that ran near his feet and actually spoke to Star in a belittling tone. “You should’ve used the spellbook, if you wanted to summon Ash Williams,” it said.

            Hop Pop was surprised as it was to see and hear the talking cat, but he apparently wasn’t the only one. Everyone else, from the Ghostbusters to the Greens (mostly Tilly), was thrown off by the unique black cat.

            “Mm’kay, that’s new,” Jacqueline uttered.

            “Tilly, did you know that cat talked when you found it?” Cricket asked his sister.

            Tilly was unsure of her feelings on the phenomenon. “I am just as flabbergasted as you, brother,” she said.

            Alice – ever the superstitious one – detached the particle thrower of Homer Simpson’s Proton Pack and aimed it at the cat. “Be gone, demon!” she threatened. “We ain’t lettin’ you have our souls!”

            “Ma, what’re you doing?!” Bill exclaimed. “Put that thing down!”

            “I assure you, madam, that I am no demon,” the cat told Alice. “My name is Thackery Binx. I was once a boy whose form was changed into what you all see before you now, due to the witchcraft orchestrated by the Sanderson sisters.”

            “The witches of Salem?” J.G. reacted with interest.

            “And of New Orleans, Gravity Falls, or wherever else they were conjured through their spellbook,” Binx said. “Though I have no idea where they are now. 38 years ago, I thought I’d finally rid them of our world when I used the Necronomicon to send them through a portal. Unfortunately, Ash Williams – or the ‘chainsaw warrior’ as you referred her – was sent along with them. I’ve blamed myself every day for damning her to such a fate. She could be anyplace or anywhere, considering whether she’s alive or not.”

            “Could she be here in Amphibia?” Sprig asked, prompting all eyes to suddenly fixate on him. All the attention made him feel slightly embarrassed. “Well, I mean, it’s how Anne got here, isn’t it?”

            “Sprig, I got here through a magic box, remember?” Anne corrected him.

            “You mean a magic box like this?” Marco asked while presenting her with the Calamity Box that he, Star, and T’Eve had been keeping possession of.

            Anne was shocked by how very similar it was to the box she came to Amphibia with. “That’s exactly the one! Where did you find it?”

            “It was given to us by a guy named Yen Sid,” Marco explained. “He told us we would need it, the Necronomicon, and a spellbook to summon the chainsaw warrior…whose name is now ‘Ash Williams’ from what the cat just told us.”

            “And my name is Binx,” Thackery begrudgingly reminded Marco. “And Ash is not in this world, I can assure you. The spell I conjured was meant to send the Sandersons to a time on Earth much earlier than even our own… somewhere that they would’ve shriveled and died, without their magic or their book to save them. As for Ash…well, if you two hadn’t committed to your premature conjuring of her and done the process by the steps as your ‘Yen Sid’ instructed, she would’ve come to us, instead of us needing to go to her!”

            “What?!” Star exclaimed. “How would she have come to us?!”

            “I believe I can explain what Binx means,” Spengler said. “The Necronomicon and the Sandersons’ spellbook work by two separate magical representations of time and space, while the Calamity Box works as itself an entity of the two elements.”

            “That is correct, Dr. Spengler,” T’Eve concurred. “The Necronomicon’s ability to summon time counteracts with that of the Sandersons’ spellbook to manipulate space, and both together cancel out the Calamity Box’s portal to its designated dimension: this world known as ‘Amphibia’.”

            “Without all the relics working against each other, one will overwhelm the other, as proven by Star and Marco’s failed attempt,” Spengler concluded.

            “Alright, we get it,” Star moaned in infuriation. “We screwed up!”

            “Binx, do you have any idea where the Sandersons’ spellbook is?” J.G. asked.

            “I left it buried in Gravity Falls, Oregon,” Binx stated.

            This displeased both Star and Marco. “Are you kidding me?!” the latter blurted. “Freaky wood gnomes or not, we should’ve gone there instead of New York!”

            “I hate to make matters even worse,” T’Eve said, “but without the Sandersons’ spellbook, we have no direct line back to your world and time.”

            Anne huffed in discouragement. “So much for getting home.”

            “But we do have this mansion,” Binx offered a beacon of hope. “I had cursed this entire residence with the Necronomicon, permanently linking them both. The haunting of the mansion itself was how it arrived in this alien world. It can jump again at the same incantation that brought it here.”

            Venkman shrugged. “It’s worth a shot. But, this time, the cat’s doing it.”

            At her instruction, Star set the Necronomicon down for Binx to read.

            As Binx recited the incantation, Hop Pop came to a sudden realization: “Uh, maybe Sprig, Polly, and I should leave, since we’re actually supposed to be—” Unfortunately, he was all too late in his warning.

            The spell instantaneously worked, transporting the entire mansion (and the Ectomobile) out of Amphibia and into another time and place.