Five Times Marcy Reminisced Her Time in A Shounen Anime

1.

The first thing the doctors tell her is: “It’s a miracle that you are alive.”

You can feel it, this miracle. You don’t remember much of… all of this, but you do remember the parts where you were there. You remember the feeling of a foreign body intruding your back, the sharp smell of burnt meat, the sight as you looked down of a burst of fire where your chest should me. You remember falling asleep, fading, dying, your senses dimming and your legs failing and then-

Nothing. 

It is a miracle, that you are alive.

“ Dude!” Anne hisses at you. “Stop playing spades! Sasha has no spades! She’ll get rid of all her hearts this way!”

Sasha laughs, already preparing her card for this turn. “Git gud, Boonchuy,” she says, though the end of her word dissolves into a coughing fit.

Her crutches rest on the side of the table. It’s a miracle that she is alive, too. You did not ask about that gash on her back. You did not need to. You saw the red on your fingers when you woke up. You saw the green in your veins at the hospital.

Anne rolls her eyes and sets her own card down. Anne is… fine. Physically. Her skin is discolored in some places, thin lines like cracks on a wall, but in the end it’s still just that. Skin.

(She crumbled in your arms. You held her and felt the cold set in her fingers and saw the fatigue dawn in her eyes and she crumbled in your arms, you knew intimately what dying felt like but she’s the one who showed you what it was like from the survivor’s side, she crumbled in your arms and that is an image you will never be able to scrub from your eyelids.)

Anne wins the round, which really means she loses it since the point of the Black Lady is to gather as few hearts as possible. Card games can be surprisingly confusing to talk about. The three of you will probably have to stop soon anyways, since it’s getting late. Anne will probably insist to come with you, in case you grow tired and need someone to push your wheelchair.

It’s very nice of her. It’s also incredibly frustrating. You just got your body back. Even if the core fucked it up in ways you cannot even begin to imagine it’s still your body, and you got it back, you are in it and you are in control and you just want any sort of autonomy over it. Even if it’s just being the one to drive your wheelchair around. But some days you don’t even manage that.

You remember when you used your calamity powers. You’d felt terrible afterwards, hurt and exhausted and (Anne, Anne, Anne, she crumbled into your arms,) but at the time? You’d felt grand, you’d felt powerful, you’d felt divine.

You don’t even want all of this back, really. But if you could, if you had one wish- you’d like to be able to fly again. To be able to move on your own again, to not have to worry about the bumps on the road or the angle of a slope. You’d make your wheelchair into a throne, or a cool rocket or something. This would be enough.

But it’s already a miracle than any of you are alive, and it would be greedy to ask for more.

---

2.

The doctors tell you “We are unsure of how Amphibian technology affected your body,” which is about the most tactful we know fuck-all you’ve ever heard from a grown-up.

There is something. Festering in your body. You can feel it at night, when everything is quiet save for your own heartbeat. There is something inside your body, a thousand little ants crawling crawling crawling in the space between your flesh and your skin.

It’s not the core. You don’t think. It’s not the core as you’ve known it, brimming with too many lives and feelings and desires. But here is something that feasts on its bones, you think, something that tear apart the ones and zeroes still in your blood to make them into- something else. Your body is a precarious hunting ground, wrong on so many levels that it ends up mostly cancelling itself out until you are left with something somewhat functional.

There is something inside of Sasha, too.

“There, there.” You rub her back in circles while Anne holds her hair behind her hair. Even through her clothing, you can tell how abnormally warm she is. She’s running a fever. She’s been running this fever for months, now.

Sasha hunches over as she coughs. With every spasm of her chest, thick, black smoke escapes her mouth. She would look like a smoker if you didn’t know any better. But you do. This is coming from inside her body. There is something festering, in her throat, in her lungs, and it’s hurting her.

You wish she still had her gem. You wish you still had your gem. With unlimited power- you could heal this, surely? This disease she brought back from another world. With unlimited power- you could get rid of it, you could reset her lungs to their healthy state, you could, you could, you could,

But you cannot. So you whisper comforting and empty words as she aches, and hope that your presence is enough.

Eventually, her body seizes a final time; her breathing pauses, for a second, two; and at last, a heavy cough rakes through her whole body, and a burst of flames comes out.

“… Thanks,” she whispers, panting. The first time it had happened, she’d set fire to her room. Even now, she still frequently singes her hair or her shoes. “I should be good for a while now.”

Anne lets go of her hair- though she keeps a lock twirled around a finger. “Maybe you should get it cut.” She muses out loud. “To avoid unfortunate accidents.”

Anne has been discharged from the hospital a while ago. It’s a bit funny, that she’s the healthiest of the three, considering she’s died (except it’s not funny at all, she was dead she was dead she crumbled in your arms. ) You’ve just started to move from wheelchair to crutches, Sasha from crutches to cane, and here she is, Anne, physically safe and sound safe for her crackled skin.

Something festers inside of you, inside of Sasha, and whatever it is it takes death to uproot it.

---

3.

The doctors tell you “We don’t know if your spine will ever fully heal,” which is a perfectly reasonable thing to say considering the sheer amount of bizarre (derogatory) and bizarre (affectionate) afflictions that has plagued the three of you since Amphibia.

Personally, though, you wouldn’t bet on that.

You’re fine with that, actually. Perhaps you’ll always need crutches, but autonomy is autonomy, even if it’s not the one you’ve grown used to. Sometimes, you like to imagine yourself as some dual-wielding warrior, or maybe some sage old woman with one eye and a cane. It makes you feel pretty badass. Sasha and Anne have helped decorating your crutches with stickers and doodles, too. When you look down, it reminds you of them, and it makes you smile.

You don’t mind, really, that your legs are weak and don’t quite respond right. But it makes you a little angry, at times.

Not. The crutches specifically, mind you. But everything around it. There is a lot in the world you never noticed, because you were young and able-bodied and you never had to consider it. But now that you’ve spent months in a wheelchair, you can’t not see it- that the C2 bus does not have any way to board wheelchairs, or that he bakery down the street has three steps in front of its door for no foreseeable reason, and- and- a hundred other things, a thousand tiny details that do not matter to the majority of the population but which means the world for the few who needs it, and-

It makes you angry.

(You’re angry a lot, these days. Not at anything in particular. Just in general. It’s a trauma response, says your therapist, born from the loss of agency over your own life. She says a lot of things which make a lot of sense, but that does not make it any less tedious to work on your issues.)

Sometimes, when you are alone with your thoughts and your rage, you remember the power you held. If you had it again- you could make people care. You could get them to see the inconvenience they cause, you could make them understand. Or at the very least, you could make them fear you enough to try to change on their own.

You always dismiss those thoughts quickly. Historically, you have not always been the best of humans. You know what fear and control leads to, have held it inside your belly as it puppeteered you like an empty doll. You refuse to become the kind of god the core wished to be.

---

4.

Naruto is not your favorite anime. It’s not even in the top ten, in fact. You’d even go as far as to say that it is an embarrassment to shounens as a whole, and anyone who got into it instead of Hunter x Hunter is a sucker who got scammed of their time.

That being said, it is a classic, and that is why you’re sitting on the edge of Anne’s bed to watch it with your friends.

“You know,” Anne says, her head on your laps, “if nothing else, I do appreciate that they gave frogs to the protagonist. They could have gone with wolves or bears or any other animal people usually consider cooler, and instead they went with frogs. I respect that.”

Sasha snorts, though you can tell she agrees. She’s leaning against you, shoulder to shoulder, and her skin is so warm it feels like she’s keeping the sun beneath it. “Finally, justice for amphibians.”

On the screen, Naruto does a complex serie of hand signs, and a handful of clones pop next to him.

“I feel like we were cooler.” Says Sasha. “This kid has nothing on Anne going full super saiyan. Now that was an awakening.”

“Of course we were cooler.” You reply. “We were real, for a start.”

“Wish we could have gotten some fox ears or something, though.” Anne muses. “That would have ruled.”

… “Anne,” you say carefully, “are you… a furry?”

“What? No.” She glares at you. “ Anyone would want to be a bit of a kitty cat. That’s not a furry thing, that’s just common sense.”

“… Remember that time you showed me a picture of Mrs Croaker when she was younger, and told me she was, and I quote, pretty hot? ” Responds Sasha, which, okay, what? You were not privy to this specific adventure.

Anne flushes, crossing her arms. “Oh, so you want to lecture me, Mrs Super-Saiyan-Anne-Was-An-Awakening.”

“You’re taking this out of context!” Sasha honest-to-god squeaks, and oh, she’s blushing too. Oh ho ho! Ho ho ho! “An awakening as in I’d been fucking around and I was just finding out! Good lord!”

She sends you a pleading look. It is extremely tempting, to keep teasing her like this, but you decide to throw her a bone. You’re sure she’ll figure out she’s attracted to girl sooner or later. “It’s a bit unfair that we only got to use our anime powers once.”

It’s a pretty blatant attempt to divert he conversation, but Anne doesn’t point it out. “Being impatient! It pays off.” And the three of you are laughing again, and just like that you fall back into the show.

---

5.

Back Before with a capital B, you bought three set of dice; one for each of you, for the day you’d finally convince your friends to play Creatures and Cavern with you.

Unfortunately, moving means your first game will have to be over discord; and as you never got around giving them their own set, the rolls will be dealt by the server bot.

“Don’t be too harsh on us, okay?” Anne speaks up as her character sheets load in. “It’s our first game, remember.”

“Pfft.” You roll a d20 between your fingers. You remember your last fight in Amphibia, remember the massive dice you got to throw around with the power of a cannonball. You’ve been thinking about it less over the years; but at times, like this one, you can’t help but reminisce. “You guys are seasoned real-life adventurers. You will get no mercy from this dungeon master, no ma’am!”

“Fine by me!” Sasha roars into her mic. “Get ready to face the full stubbornness of Grime’s lieutenant!”

You hear the familiar ping of a new message, and you open up your friends’ character sheets. Anne’s is about what you expected: a jock ranger with an emphasis on charisma. Sasha’s, however… “you’re playing a mage?”

“Sure am! It’s a fantasy world, might as well play something I wouldn’t be in real life.” A short cough. “Also, mages are op here. They don’t even get magic withdrawal!”

(This is what the three of you have come to call it, this illness in Sasha’s lungs. Divinity withdrawal. Your body is too much of a mess for the gem remnants to do any more damages, and Anne is… Anne, but Sasha is the only one among you who still has a normal, human, living body. It’s quite fragile, flesh and bones. Too fragile for calamities condensed into three little rocks.)  

“You’d be surprised by mage weaknesses.” You grin. That’s not quite what you’d expected from your campaign, but you can definitely work with that. “Alright! You are currently in a small village by the lakeside…”

---

+1

“To Marcy’s return!” 

The three of you clink your glasses. It’s become something of a tradition; anytime you drop by Los Angeles, they act like you haven’t seen each other in decades. It’s pretty funny in your opinion.

“So!” Anne takes the lead. “Anything you particularly wanna do while you’re back, or should we just drag you around and hang out?”

“Well, I want to see how much Sprig Jr has grown, obviously.” That is another tradition of yours, visiting the aquarium when you drop by. You don’t yearn for Amphibia, not the way Anne very obviously does (you’ve brought too much of it back inside your body already) but the exhibit she built is still… soothing. You like it there. “But I’ve got no plan other than that, so I’m open to suggestions.”

“Alright!” Anne nods, taking a sip of her drink. Her tone is perfectly even, her body language casual, her face neutral, and that’s why you’re completely unprepared when she follows up with: “You two wanna go on a date?”

Sasha chokes. 

You would too, had you been drinking. For the next few seconds, you can do nothing but stare, the surprise overwhelming your every thought, while Sasha furiously coughs smog into her fist. Thank frog, you think dully, that we sat outside. We’d be in trouble in a no smoking area.

“As in,” Sasha manages to wheeze out, “you’re setting us up with each other??”

“No! I mean… you can? If you want?” Anne does a great job at keeping her composure, but you notice. Her hands are clenches into fists. There is tension in her shoulders. “Mostly I meant… with me? If you want? Totally okay if not, though!”

For a second, no one speaks. You glance at Sasha. She’s staring with wide eyes, still trying to regain her composure. Her face is a wonderful shade of red. You have no doubt yours is also tinted green.

“Anne,” you want to clarify, “you are asking us out. The both of us.”

“Yes.” Her voice is- tight. That’s the only word you can come up with. Tight.

“For a date.”

“ Yes. ”

“Presumably with romantic intentions.”

“Yes!” Anne throws her hands in the air. “So is that a yes, or a no, or- or- do you need time to think about it? I can give time! Just- tell me something, I’m dying here!”

“Romantic-“ and Sasha is choking on her own coughs again. “Anne, do you, are you, are you saying you-“

And because you are still reeling on the surprise, your brain-to-mouth filter isn’t back on yet, and you blurt out: “Oh frog. We went from shounen anime to harem anime.”

There is a beat.

And Anne bursts out laughing, all her nervousness bleeding through her voice.

“Gods, Marce.” She’s still catching her breath when she looks at you, and her eyes are so soft and her words are warm and fond and she says “This is why I love you.”

You’ve discovered that, in retrospect, you probably had a bit of a crush on your friends when you were younger. That feeling had faded a bit over time, turned to background noise, but it had never truly left. You were content, loving, being loved, without any active need to pursue this relationship.

But here, right now, with these words, it feels like Anne brought out a pickaxe and just forcefully unearthed all the love you’ve kept in a corner for years.

“You know what? Sure. I’ll go on a date with you.” You’re unsure about a full relationship- you’d rather fall back into a comfortable friendship than pursue a romance that might end in fire. But you can do one date, yes. See how it goes. If it’s too awkward, you’ll just go back to what you have now, and if it works… it’d be a shame not to see it.

You extend a hand, graze your fingers over Anne’s. She flips her own hand over to present you her palm. You take her hand, and turn to Sasha. “What about you? Wanna go on a date with Anne?” You pause. “And with me?”

Sasha makes an incomprehensible noise, and covers her face with her hands, which makes Anne and you laugh. This sounds like a yes to you.  

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