She REALLY doesn't want to go home...
This fanfic goes to portray what Marcy's "betrayal" would've been like if she had not been just a manipulated pawn but rather a willing cooperator. None of it is pretty...
As per Nightmare Fuel policy, all spoilers are unmarked!
- At the beginning of A Moth to a Flame, a tinge of jealousy that Marcy feels at Anne leaving her with the Plantar family to go back to Wartwood is almost an omen for what is to follow. She doesn't allow her envy to cloud her judgement, yet, but the feeling is still there, and the fact that it is there is something that King Andrias and his master are going to prey on. When King Andrias introduces Marcy to the Core, Marcy's initial Tears of Fear turn into Tears of Joy and is jarring implied her being Brainwashed is at play, making it questionable if Marcy is truly responsible for her following actions.Marcy: You're beautiful.The Core: I know. We've gotta lot to talk about, Marcy. And I have a feeling... You and I are gonna become the best of friends.
- In Chapter 2, the mural Sasha and Grime find depicting King Andrias standing over the bones of his enemies with his master in the background shows the plans he has for other worlds, and it isn't pretty, just like in the show. In story, it also includes human beings that used to live in Amphibia, the inscriptions were engraved along the bottom foreshadowing Marcy's role in the story, something Sasha figures out.These great beings of magic and might. Traveled from beyond to serve the night. Bow before these children of man. Or know the wrath of the Wu Clan.
- Just like in canon, King Andrias' castle is powerful enough to blow up Toad Tower with one shot, but unlike the show, there's no indication that anyone escaped in time, which makes Grime's Big "NO!" even more impactful as he believes many of his people were just vaporized. Even Marcy is aghast by this cruel act and calls out King Andrias for killing them instead of trying to convince them with a We Can Rule Together deal first.His fingers shook and he threatened to fall to his knees in despair. He thought of all the toads still there that were likely gone. All of his loyal soldiers, his officers, his sister...
- Marcy in Chapter 5 reveals that she planned to trap Anne, Sasha, and herself in Amphibia so that they could have adventures together forever, something even Sasha and Grimes didn't figure out despite knowing her to be a traitor to her race. All the time Anne and Sasha spent away from their parents, all the horrible violent deaths that could've befallen them in the Death World known as Amphibia, were all thanks to their Adorkable, Entitled to Have You friend and expected them to be grateful for it.
- When telling her Motive Rant in Chapter 5, Marcy becomes increasingly erratic and unhinged with a Broken Smile and Broken Tears the more she explains what she did and why, sounding more like a Brainwashed zealot with delusions of grandeur than a heartfelt plea. While in the show, Marcy was desperately trying to justify her actions, here she's attempting to justify something even more horrific and is steadily coming apart in front of everyone. This leads Sasha to ponder if she's an Evil Knockoff and Anne to believe she never knew Marcy at all. Hell, even King Andrias admitted he found it hard to watch despite pressuring her to reveal her true feelings in the first place.
- Giving her Motive Rant, Marcy creepily describes the "fun" they had and how she gave them everything. After all this time, she's even more of a Manipulative Bastard and possessive as Sasha, if not more so. It is terrifying how Marcy's desperation to keep her friends and please her ancestors has consumed her so much, there's almost nothing left of the kind teenage Lovable Nerd of the show, who loved and cared for her friends. It turns into a Tear Jerker as she drops to her knees and sobs when her friends turn away and Anne calls her evil.
- As the throne room fight goes on, Marcy crosses more and more lines. Exemplified by her blowing up Frobo on King Andrias's orders and not batting an eye as the mad king nearly crushes Polly, the young tadpole girl who she once considered a friend, underneath his fist.
- Sprig gets grabbed by Marcy in this story and is used as a hostage to force Polly to put back the Calamity Box once she successfully grabs it, and King Andrias makes it clear his Dragon will drop her former frog friend out the window of the Ominous Floating Castle if they don't immediately comply.
- Despite surrendering, when Anne mentions that Sprig is her 'best friend', this inadvertently triggers Marcy's rage, and King Andrias decides to let Marcy have the go-ahead to drop him anyway just to make Anne feel what it's like to lose a good friend and monopolize Marcy's loyalty. This all goes down right in front of Hop Pop and Polly, who can only futilely reach for Sprig when he vanishes from sight, whilst Anne is so overcome with grief from witnessing her Evil Former Friend seemly kill her new friend and despair that she shuts down, tears leaking from her eyes without a single sound to vocalize her sorrow. And this was all done on a mad king's whim and a teenage girl's jealousy, a spur-of-the-moment decision that they carelessly made just for the sake of hurting others out of malice for standing in their way.
- After going Super Mode and taking down King Andrias, Marcy fears for a moment that Anne will kill her for her seemingly murdering Sprig.
- During her fight with Sasha, Marcy goes as far as to try and strangle her admitting to enjoying it, mentally reflecting on how she's always hated playing second fiddle to her for Anne's friendship and disregarding her hobbies and interests. Before the beginning of the fight, Marcy was willing to overlook the attempted coup earlier and Take Over the World alongside her, now she all but admits to resenting Sasha throughout the time she knows her enough to want to inflict physical harm on her.
- Marcy ends her fight with her now former friend Sasha by viciously stabbing her in the leg with a Slasher Smile and kicking her to the side as her now former friend screams in agony.
- Seeing Sprig's survival fills Marcy with jealous rage, declaring that she's going to kill the whole Plantar family personally for "stealing" Anne from her.
- In the climax of the throne room fight in Chapter 7, Marcy gets her bloodied hands on the Calamity Box to stop Anne and the Planters from escaping to Earth giving the bad guys a Near-Villain Victory. Marcy, suffering from a total Villainous Breakdown, has a Madness Makeover in full display. She is described to have Messy Hair and bloodshot eyes, her cape torn apart, smashed armor, a bruised face, and a Slasher Smile, while Laughing Mad and being Limp and Livid, showing how far she's fallen into insanity. The picture above gives you an idea.Marcy: You're not going anywhere...
- Marcy is ''still'' run through with King Andrias's fire sword like in the show (although in this case, it was an honest accident on King Andrias' part). Despite her doing a Face–Heel Turn just moments ago, everyone present is shocked and horrified seeing the young teen mortally wounded. In the show, Marcy apologizes to Anne for her actions. In this story, however, with what she believes are her Last Words, Marcy tells Anne she hates her, showing just how far she's fallen.
- Back on Earth, Anne suffers from sporadic mental episodes due to Marcy's betrayal. After suffering from a severe lack of sleep when trying to find a way back to Amphibia, she regularly hallucinates Marcy with her Madness Makeover taunting her and threatening her family. In one chapter, this results in her having imaginary fights in her head which results in her having very real injuries.
- Marcy trying to kill him has resulted in Sprig having recurring nightmares of his near-death. One version has the Boonchuys (including Anne) kill the Plantars for dinner. Discovering the Chili Curry Frog dish in the menu when working at Thai Go didn't help at all and he tries to run away.
- The author goes in-depth into the deep-seated jealousy and anger that existed in Marcy, something that is only amplified by her time in the Healing Vat with the Core molding her into fully accepting the darkness after she aligned herself with King Andrias.
- When Marcy rages at the Core for making her go through one of her worst memories and refuses to listen to them explain why, their human avatar temporarily takes the form of a tar monster resembling their Mechanical Abomination form to do a Neck Lift on the teen to silence her outburst. It's a big reminder to the readers that, despite being more Affably Evil in the story, the Core is still the Big Bad and not to be taken lightly.
The Core: Do not forget who you are talking to, girl.- In Chapter 13, Marcy is given her own perfect world inside her mindscape, complete with copies of Anne and Sasha who mindlessly adore her. However, as her final test, the Core creates an army designed to destroy it, driving Marcy to kill the entire army in various brutal ways, from hand-to-hand combat with Super-Strength to impaling them with rock spikes and killing the last one with a Finishing Stomp. She does this with no mercy, feeling proud of it, going so far as to give an Evil Laugh in triumph, and fully cementing her descent into evil, to the Core's approval.
The Core: (Gives Marcy a Headbutt of Love) You're ready. - When Marcy wakes up in Chapter 14, even King Andrias is cautious around her unhinged demeanor, blaming her former friends for her near-fatal injuries for not joining her in conquest and vowing Revenge.
- Lady Olivia tries to plead for Marcy to pull a Heel–Face Turn, Marcy gently brushing her hand off out of remaining fondness for her Newt friend... Then she spitefully tells her and Yunan that the Marcy they knew is dead. Yunan considers the teen Beyond Redemption after hearing this from her.Marcy: Oh, Olivia. (Quizzical Tilt) Don't you get it? (A malicious scowl forms) The Marcy you knew... is dead.
- When the Core finally arrives and reveals itself to the four, Gernal Yunan tries to attack it. An angry Marcy goes to its defense Suddenly Shouting at her to get away from her master. Her Madness Makeover is described as having discolored skin with sunken cheeks and eyes, along with an Angry Animalistic Growl and a Death Glare. Backing off, Yunan calls it a sight more haunting than the Core.
- When the Core decides to take Marcy as its host, the young teen is overjoyed by the prospect to the point of shedding Tears of Joy while bowing down to it with a Broken Smile, shown by the way she not only welcomes the process but practically begs the Core on her hands and knees to merge with her. This shows she's all but too far gone to come back from insanity. Even knowing the merge would be agonizing, she still wanted to reunite with the monstrosity (that was planning to pull a Villain Override on her if she refused) because how good it feels, which is even more horrifying than getting simply possessed!Marcy: Please, I'm here. Take me.
- What immediately follows is just as bad. Marcy's body slumps over making a tearful Lady Olivia believe she's just died, and then she jerks herself upright panting heavily for air, hearing all the Core's voices in her head with Sickening Crunches from her bones as she gets up. And then she starts speaking...
King Andrias: Marcy? Ar— are you there?Darcy: (With a sick Slasher Smile) Yes, Andrias. - Marcy's Sanity Slippage may very well be hereditary, as in Chapter 16, her mother is perfectly willing to assault Anne and brutally beat answers about Marcy's location out of her, doubly so when she doesn't believe the honest response she gets. Not even her loving husband's efforts to calm her down can bring her back to her senses, and ends up breaking Oum's nose, too.
- Anne and the Plantars are terrified of Grace Wu's Madness Makeover, especially Sprig, who is reminded too much of Marcy's insane demeanor when she tried to personally murder him.
- Before this, when the Boonchuys are playing with the toys, Mrs. Boonchuy pretends to stab Anne In the Back with a blade that looks a lot like the one King Andrias used to stab Marcy. Unlike the show, this triggers Anne's PTSD causing her to have a panic attack, run away in terror, much to her mother's concern. The girl almost Stress Vomits as she hallucinates Marcy in her Madness Makeover doing this to her, remembering her former friend's Last Words that she hates her.
- By the end of the chapter, both the Boonchuys and the Plantars are captured by both the LAPD and the FBI respectively. Mr. X is clearly planning on having the Plantars experimented on, believing them to be malicious invaders from another world, but this time Anne and her parents are in a worse position to mount a rescue attempt, while in police custody led by Sasha's mother.
- Chapter 17 provides a look at Marcy's journal, giving us a look at her descent into corruption and madness in her own words, detailing how she goes from a cheerful child overjoyed at her Isekai adventure to an insane would-be Multiversal Conqueror, much to her parents' horror. The early journal entries give way to unhinged, unpunctuated scrawls once the Core gets involved, especially when Marcy to starts madly ranting about things that aren't going her way. In hindsight, it seems Lady Olivia was right about Marcy wearing a Mask of Sanity for the past month that came off in the throne room.
- In particular, her hideous drawing of the Core which Grace described as looking like an Eldritch Abomination. It gives similar vibes to the darker and more crude pages of Gravity Falls: Journal 3, except instead of being terrified of the Big Bad of the story, Marcy seems to be addicted to its influence and doesn't want the wonderful feeling it gives her to stop.
- If Marcy was this arrogant, cold hearted and ruthless before the throne room fight, imagine what she's going to be like now as Darcy, who has been Gaining the Will to Kill. Anne's own realization (alongside the Wus') that Marcy might be too far gone to fix and may have to put her down for good to protect The Multiverse.
Anne: I don't know if this... thing she calls her 'master' brainwashed her, or it just made her worse, but all I know is that the Marcy we knew... it isn't her anymore.
