Vestiges

Just before the brawl, gonna take a look at the events leading up to the end of the previous chapter.

L: Part One

Loathing & Leaves | Lies in (Location?)

27.

=X=X=

Loathing

"I see. So, if I understand correctly, you wanted to know if the shards in the shard mines are pieces of tramorfidian crystals," the woman said.

"Yeah." Higgs struggled to keep her composure in the tiny room but was unable to do so because her head kept banging against the low ceiling; it cost her some face when speaking to the secretary-type looking pixie on the other side of the table. "I want a whole crystal. You should have a few lying around. Isn't this the dimension that makes them? You harvest or mine the shards or whatever it is that you do, and then you process them and condense them into tramorfidian crystals. That's why I came to the source – didn't know anywhere else to go. Could you just give me one? Please?"

The pixie looked at the girl with growing interest. She looked strong, strong enough to work. Besides, some of the other 'workers' trying to pay off their bills were slowing down. A small earthquake rumbled on through; the pixie paid little attention to the quakes at this point but the girl was the opposite, having grown more apprehensive with its passing. No matter. She'd get right to the point.

"Tramorfidian crystals don't come cheap, and it takes over a thousand compressed shards to make one…. In case you're not aware, that's a whole lot of labor days down under in the mines and it's getting dangerous with these earthquakes nowadays. If you can't pay for it, you'll have to work for it." The pixie took off her glasses and wiped it clean with her blouse tails, making the girl standing painfully aware that her speech-spittle had landed on the pixie's spectacles, and she blushed in embarrassment.

"How much for a crystal then?" In response to her question, the pixie only pointed at a sign to her right with a thumb saying: 'Only Gold and Jewels accepted', all in bold letters. The girl was stupefied. No wonder stealing the crystals had long since been the more logical option. However, she had nowhere else to turn and nowhere else to look. She needed one more for the journey, knowing that Marco claimed that he would need three in all. "Do you take credit?" Higgs asked sarcastically. "Do I look like I'm toting a damn treasure chest around in my pocket?"

The pixie, her eyebrow twitching in annoyance, decided to make the girl's choice for her. Flipping open a panel on her desk and pressing a button beneath, a large trapdoor opened up beneath her latest client. In the brief moment that she hovered in midair, Higgs realized that if she fell into the shard mines, filled with the very stuff that was basically anti-magic, she would never be able to leave using her dimensional scissors.

"Fuuuuuuccck!" she screamed on her way down. Already withdrawing her scissors and trying to open a portal, Sienna wasn't surprised to see that the anti-magic had already taken effect, and she was powerless to escape. Seconds before she belly-flopped the ground below, she grabbed at a nearby inexplicable ladder and nearly yanked her arm out of joint. Yelling bitterly from the pain, she tried climbing back up the ladder which would have led to the trap door, but it only went up halfway. A ladder was redundant to flying pixies, but a short ladder… that was nothing but a sick joke. With a sigh, she returned her scissors to its holster.

Fine. If since there was a way in-… there had to be a way out, even if it wasn't the way out she came. Seeing a nearby guard pixie whipping at some workers, bellowing at them to get to work, Higgs wondered if she could get him to scream just as loud about where the exit was.

With that in mind, she stalked up to him from behind, her loudest action being the barely audible sound of her steel knife sliding out of its leather sheath. For the barest of moments, she recalled the few times she'd once snuck up like this on her targets for assassination back in Dimension X-103. Briefly, she questioned herself whether or not if Marco knew about the acts she'd committed and how it would affect her relationship with him.

'What relationship?' she thought bitterly when she recalled how Hekapoo had chased her off with fireballs earlier that morning for criticizing her drunkenness. 'He loves her more than me. What does he see in her that I don't have? A big rack and ten pounds of ass? Gotta be that, 'cause I'm not seeing anything personality-wise. Can't even open a portal… At this point with no magic, she's a washed-up legend.'

She must've been more disgruntled than she thought because, by the time her knife was lunging forward at the pixie and slicing off his wings, Sienna was nearly mad enough to take out her feelings on the creature that was only doing his job, no matter how despicable it was. Professionals, nonetheless, had standards; Higgs adjusted her mentality to keep her emotions out of her work.

The pixie fell to the ground and began yelling in pain over the loss of his wings, and Higgs smothered more than half his body to the ground with just the palm of her hand, pinning him down before holding the knife to his neck. At his size, the long knife might as well have been a thin, bladed building hovering at his throat. "Tell me how to get out."

She was calm and serious-… she neither asked nor ordered him to answer. Nonetheless, she came off as thoroughly intimidating with her lack of emotion, and her cold green stare sent a shiver down his spine. He still tried his luck, however, taking for granted that she didn't know he was stronger than he looked, strong enough to throw her off. The second he tried, though, she swiftly moved the knife and stabbed it clean through his arm into the ground, cutting it off with almost no effort, blue blood squirting out of his elbow stump.

"Uaagghhh!" Ignoring his screams, she deftly shifted the knife back to his neck and asked the same question again, her only difference was that her hand had shifted slightly upwards to expose more of his lower torso, letting him know that if he tried anything else, he'd lose his legs. "You bitch! You cut my arm off!" Moving the knife to his knees, he started to beg. "Wait, wait! It's out the way you fell in!"

Higgs nearly smiled. "You lot are really funny. Am I supposed to sprout wings and fly up, right after dropping me in here without warning?"

She left him there, deciding it'd be useless to finish him off. He'd bleed out or he would get help but either way, she didn't care about him anymore. Looking around, she spied what looked like a mine car that was stationed close to a horizontal shaft that was labeled 'EXIT' with a large, blinking red neon sign.

Her eye twitched at the absurdity of the situation.

…

As she sped along in the cart, Sienna was still plagued by her thoughts that encircled the idea of Marco ending up with Hekapoo. Sure, she considered the demigoddess a friend but it was fair to admit that she considered her a rival too. "Maybe there's something I can do?" she mumbled. The idea of trying to seduce Marco came to her again and she decided that it only failed because she was in her 'girl' form. Sienna would readily admit that she felt more at home in her young body, even though it could be argued that her older form should've felt more natural. There were more advantages to be had: better body weight balance and fluidity of movement, strength, legal drinking age, being sexier…

All things that would be welcomed by Marco, no doubt. Marco, nonetheless, was in his younger body. He probably felt the same way she did about feeling at home in their teenaged forms.

The girl had additional reasons for wanting her state to match Marco's own. It was the one that had fallen in love with Marco in the first place, and the one that had persisted it no matter how old she got. And with an older body like that, it was a reminder of how she spent almost two decades without him.

Then again, if she had been in her older form, she wouldn't have even suffered a scrape back at her Knighting Ceremony; her disadvantaged younger form had allowed her to be injured that much more easily, and led to the cause and effect of Marco getting captured.

Higgs didn't even stop to consider how Marco would have fared off in that battle if he was in his older body too. She knew the man he would grow up into; he could fend off whatever she could, and more. The powerful strides that left no vulnerabilities. The lean muscles that boasted of superhuman strength and agility. His rugged look with his survivalist skills that had been well earned in his years hunting Hekapoo down.

She'd seen him shower before in his adult state. Her photographic memory served her well here, and her mind didn't even exaggerate anything. There was no need to – he was hung almost like a beast.

Sienna opened her eyes to close off her imagination. She hadn't fallen for him just because of his body; those would be additional perks. Rather, she'd been attracted to his boyish and friendly charms since they ran into each other all those years ago. Back when they were still young by her standards. He never knew how she felt, and she never got a chance to tell him before he was exiled back to the Earth. She'd pined for him all this time.

And now Hekapoo had a claim over him.

In all honesty, Higgs felt that the woman had muscled in all of a sudden and Marco loved her without even dropping a clue why, and it irked her. From all indications and her perspective on things, it was as if Hekapoo had done something to beguile him; Higgs was familiar with love-related magic from her own experiences. Or simple fornication, whichever numbed his mind and flooded him with flared up lust. What good was simply being there for Marco when Hekapoo was probably fucking him when she wasn't around?

In that same respect, Higgs thought sadly to herself as she watched the shards in the tunnel blur by as she traveled in the cart, what had she done to make Marco fall for her?

She and Marco were equals now. He said so. She believed him. She'd kissed him. She found something in him and just knew that a part of him returned some of her feelings.

"Maybe after we save the multiverse and we're hiding out from everyone who's after us, we'll get together and then we'll see where it goes," Sienna mumbled to herself. She didn't believe herself at the least, but somehow when she said it, she felt better.

That's all she needed from all the loathing she was going through.

Finally, the cart started to rise, and Higgs saw a light at the end. The exit was coming up. It rushed closer to meet her, and culminated in the cart making a sudden stop by a gold statue of a pixie ('their actual life-size,' she thought to herself) If the cart hadn't lost most of its velocity by rising upwards, Higgs would've ended up with her head being bashed against the inside of the cart. Looking around, she took note that she was in some sort of throne room; this was made obvious from all of the stateliness all around her, including stray jewels and gold spilling from chests, royal flags that hung from posts and the ceiling, and a queen pixie on a throne with a large crown atop her head, .

'Huh, so this is where the mined stuff ends up? Makes no sense, yet perfect sense all at the same time.'

That was when a sword was poked into her face by a flying pixie guard. As if on his cue, everyone else committed the same, including one brandishing a goddamned chainsaw close to her chest.

Yes, security was an issue. Maybe it wasn't even the first time people had escaped the mines by using the cart. Well damn, what did they expect if it was a liable escape route? 'Fuck,' Higgs thought to herself, of course, there wouldn't be such an easy escape route for the oppressed workers to use.

The blades inched closer, ever more threateningly. "Yeah, that's really cute," Sienna remarked boredly as she tapped her finger on one of the swords and lowered it from out of her face. "Could we not do this? Instead, mind showing me the way out of here? I'd rather just leave without ending the day in pixie genocide. Or possible pixie regicide," she grumbled the last under her breath. What she said wasn't meant to irritate the pixies who were a single command away from killing her (it did, however), but it was only the girl's mental exhaustion clouding her common sense. The queen pixie gazed at the large interloper in her castle and took note of how clean they were; she obviously wasn't one of their slaves or wasn't one for more than a few minutes because her appearance wasn't that weathered.

She had a sheathed weapon on her hip. The queen pixie perceived that the sheath was unbuttoned and ready to be drawn at any time. Worse yet, the girl already seemed poised for a fight, yet giving the false appearance that she was at ease.

Pity, it wasn't a man. She wanted a husband. In any case, she needed to sort out this newcomer.

"I say," the Queen said as she stood up before hovering in flight above her throne, "it's common intelligence for one to exit the same way they enter. Unless… you're a person of rare intelligence? Is it rare when you demonstrate having any?"

"You calling me retarded?" Sienna asked in disbelief. "Your mine guard expected me to fly back up through a trapdoor. I got dumped into a pit with a bunch of slaves and you've got a mine-cart that goes directly to your throne room. So far as I'm concerned, you're the ones with an IQ that's even shorter than your friggin' height."

"Mm…hmm?" The Pixie Queen said with a smile. "Guards?"

Higgs' hand reached dangerously close to her knife, tensing as much as the royal pixie security.

"… Lower your weapons." Everyone looked up at the queen in surprise at the extreme adverse order she'd given, including Sienna. Instead, the queen smirked like she knew a secret. "I can well imagine you came here intending to purchase a tramorfidian crystal, didn't you? Perhaps we could help one another. I could give you one, with a fair exchange for a job."

The girl didn't reply.

"Care for some refreshments?"

…

"This is a change of pace." Higgs looked down at the table with the spread of food ranging from fresh fruits to perfectly cooked meats then back again at the Queen Pixie on the other side. "It's too much for just refreshments."

"Hmm." The queen motioned for one of the servants to pour some wine into the girl's glass before she stopped them from tying a bib around her neck, telling them that she didn't want it. "What do you mean?"

Higgs chose her words carefully for the first time since coming to the pixie dimension. Not just because she could avoid conflict, but she was wondering if the Pixie Queen was possibly stupid and she needed to explain properly. "You and I couldn't possibly eat all this, even if I were hungry."

"You're not? I'd presumed you were. You're rather skinny, speaking frankly. Could use some more meat on your bones, pardon the euphemism, albeit the fact it fits the setting, you know?" At that, a servant nudged a plate of barbecued … something… closer to the ginger-headed girl.

Just like that, some of the old Higgs resurfaced. "A lot of people know that pixie royalties sometimes eat their mates. You looking to fatten me up? Is that what this is?"

The queen wasn't shocked to hear the girl call her out on this and her expression remained much the same. "I might've entertained the idea courting you, but sadly, there's no such thing as having two queens. Besides, speaking candidly to someone who's not amongst my subjects… males are my preference… they have a unique part that's both functional and is the tastiest-"

Sienna started to get up. "I think we've both wasted my time."

The queen cut an ample slice of her meat and took a bite. "Oh, don't make me inconvenience you. Please reseat yourself. As I see it, we're both old enough to speak on these matters, so what's the harm?"

"I mean the crystal," Sienna lied, though still wanting to get to the point; "you said that you're going to give me one."

"You will get it, in time. It's being prepared. In the meantime, I thought we'd pass the time."

"Thanks for looking out for my welfare." Higgs looked down at the food but continued to keep her stance about not partaking of it. It was an obvious unspoken rule to not eat strange food from strangers for fear of poison, and it didn't help much that she couldn't even identify it. "Still, talking about literally eating a guy's dick isn't my idea of fun times."

"No. No." The queen laughed cheerfully. "I meant the testicles, but I digress. I enjoy conversing with others from different cultures, particularly Mewmans. Their bluntness is rather refreshing. Speaking of Mewmans… I heard that their royalty was murdered. I believe that the suspects were stated to be Marco Diaz from the Earth, Queen Eclipsa and a former squire named Higgs."

The girl kept her cool. She could tell that the queen was extremely relaxed, too relaxed; she'd had enough alarm bells ringing in her mind when she'd been invited to the queen's chambers instead of being executed on the spot. The pixie clearly wanted something from her, as no one was this cordial and friendly for no good reason. She looked down at the food before her and was glad she hadn't eaten any; it could've been drugged. Trying to get a sense of her spatial awareness, she noted that there were three others in the room with them, two being servants and the last being a guard. Dimensional scissors in use so close to the queen was likely out of the question, so she'd have to fight her way out, and there was probably a small army outside the door. The closest servant was unarmed but extremely muscular. The guard was the much same and more, armed with a large sword. She'd already planned out how to kill them all except for the queen and hold her as a hostage, Outside of her mind, a second after the pixie had inadvertently said the girl's name, Higgs answered.

"They are. I heard they got to the royalties with dimensional scissors, so I'm looking to protect me and mine with a warding crystal. I tried to come to buy one, but your secretary dropped me into your slave pit." The lie was effortless when it was layered with the truth. It was still futile.

"I came to this understanding as well…. That is if your pretense was real. You gave yourself away very easily… Higgs."

Sienna wasn't surprised to hear the woman say her name. Of course, she knew. Now, there were two reasons why she'd now be suddenly engaged in conflict; either Crystal Larceny for the tramorfidians that Marco had tasked her to get, or for murdering the King and Queen of Mewni, probably the latter. Everyone on Mewni knew her name now. Who knows, what if most of the magic affiliated multiverse did? The queen of the Pixies did, so who could dare to think otherwise?

No one made any sudden moves. Sienna appreciated the second to mentally prepare herself for a fight.

"You're one of those who killed the Royals of Mewni." It was framed almost as a question, but it was said as a matter of fact. "Allied with Marco, who supposedly declared war on the Magic High Commission? The crystals… you've been using them to have an advantage in combat against them, weren't you?"

More or less, that was originally a part of the plan and still was. Conversely, they hadn't even used the crystals yet. That was up to Marco, who had them in his grand design.

"And now you're here to get another one? If you wish, you can just leave… we wouldn't hold you. Or rather, you could continue to wait and hear out my proposition until we have a tramorfidian brought to you." Sienna's eyes widened in surprise, and the guard begged the Queen's pardon before asking her why she was abetting a criminal with such a horrible transgression such as regicide to their name. "I would rather avoid a confrontation, for one thing. It's clear she is no ordinary Mewman child. Executing her, if we were successful enough, we'd have ended up throwing more than a third of her army at her before everything was said and done." She turned back to face Higgs, smiling slyly. "Furthermore, I could tell that what you said earlier – despite how outlandish and inappropriate – is no mere bluff, and you're well capable. Besides, why not assist her? We're not allied to them. Besides, tongue in cheek… it's going to be good for business soon."

So, back to business. Sienna calmed down. Right. That was what the woman had wanted. She wanted to talk about business. Regardless, she asked the woman how she knew her identity. If there were posters in a whole slew of dimensions, then there was obviously going to be a huge problem after the Wellspring was dealt with.

"If you're worried about facial recognition," the queen said with her seeming uncanny ability to know what the Knight was thinking, "there isn't any, not that I know of. You only gave yourself away as a capable murderer and suspect when earlier you confidently said what you did. One capable as such that could've killed two people as powerful as they are, although you gave off the air as a common mercenary. However, the second thing – what struck me as odd was that you didn't just simply say that you didn't want any food, you insisted that it was a 'bit too much'."

"… And…?"

"Taking into account your brusque side of the conversation, you either have problems dealing with authority figures, or you detest the lavish lifestyles that royalties lead." Seeing Sienna's surprised reaction, the pixie queen smirked. "Is it primarily the latter? You went hungry as a poor child, perhaps? Did taxes leave your plate empty? Starving to death when there was plenty in the castle?"

The answers were broad and ostensible; two out of three was a pass, but this queen was scary good when it came to making guesses. Her meat was rare, and a bit of blood ran down her chin before she patted it away with a napkin. Just plain creepy, in fact, seeing her now grin bloodily like an animal in Sienna's opinion.

"So you want me to kill more royalties? I'm not going on a regicide spree. I only didn't like the Mewni nobles."

"That's well enough. Now, there's a spike in sales for tramorfidian crystals all over the multiverse. Everyone is fearful of being assassinated now, as the most powerful being killed in such a manner shows them how much more vulnerable they are. We've even been able to sell some of the premium stuff; it doesn't break free of ward towers because of improved manufacturing— we can attribute that to your thefts, oh I know that was you! Security can be expensive, especially when the cost of replacements comes directly out of the client's pockets. However, the princess of Mewni, one of the said nobles you don't like, will demonstrate how vulnerable she is by not having tramorfidian ward with her on Earth."

"I see where you're going with this." Truthfully, she wouldn't have minded killing Star, and if she could, then fine. If not, Marco would deal with her, and it would still end the same. The jarring news, though, was finding out that the princess was in the Earth dimension. "So, that's why I'm here? You giving me a job to kill Star Butterfly? And what's the pay? The crystal you promised?"

"Yes, it is. Additionally, I thought I'd further encourage and assist you by offering a larger crystal that not only wards dimensional scissor portals, but also magic. It's not very popular because many people only want to secure themselves against teleportation and NOT the other benefits of magic within their domain. But for the person targeting someone who uses magic, wouldn't you agree that it's more useful like this? In this situation, it would be more assurance of success against the princess, don't you think? It's a double win… for each of us."

Sienna wasn't going to lie. It would be. This wasn't quite what she was expecting but it was fair to say that her excursion was turning out even better than originally planned. For the first time, Sienna helped herself to some of the food, having established that the queen across the table had only laid out such a buffet to help coerce her into helping. Making a point, she asked her elder how she knew where Star was.

"Oh, her? Well, despite her shirking her bill and switching calling networks from us, we were the ones who made her Call Mirror and her Compact Mirror Phone. It was easily tracked to earth. Care to see a monitor? Want to know where she is and what she's doing?"

Sienna didn't pause for a second. "Sure. It'd help."

The queen nodded, before gesturing to one of the servants who brought a platter over which doubled as some sort of magic tracker. It soon turned into a screen which she showed to Higgs, and the girl's jaw dropped when she saw where Star Butterfly was.

She was at Marco's house, knocking on the front door.

"Put a rush on that crystal." Higgs stood up quickly. "I need it right NOW."

Her loathing, self and otherwise, would have to wait too.

=X=X=

Leaves

"Hi Mr. Diaz, Mrs. Diaz!"

"Oh my… Star? It's you!" Rafael grabbed up the girl in a glomping hug, squeezing her tightly. Star's own wasn't that enthusiastic at first, but something soon changed in the princess, leading her to return the embrace so much more that she nearly snapped the man in two before she released him. "Ai, ai! "

"Oh, sorry!" Star giggled as Angie's act was much the same as Rafael's, only she returned the hug with similar force. It was if both the females were trying to out-hug the other, but both had different reasons. For one, they were simply trying to confirm that the other was real, and the other, trying to glean some happiness from her quasi-parents from Earth. "It's great to see you two again! I've missed you so much."

That was the unanimity amongst them, they were all feeling the same issue. Star's own, however, was much more complex than she'd care to admit.

"Come in, come in!" the man invited, "we were just about to have lunch." Angie reminded the girl to wipe her feet before coming inside, and she followed them to the kitchen. "So how have you been?"

"Ah, you know, Same old, same old. Could be better but – as always – I'm trying to make the most of it." They made it to the kitchen, where they continued to the talk as they sat down. "It's been rough."

"Rough? Were you on an adventure? It looks like it was very exciting."

At the man's choice of words, Star looked down at her clothes, muddied in some areas and tattered in the others. There was a large splotch of dried blood under her armpit from where she'd lugged the upper half of her father's corpse to his casket. She discretely lowered her hand to help hide it. "Mm… yeah. Yeah! It was an adventure. You know me, can't get enough of those. Gonna get as much of them as I can before I'm Queen of Mewni."

She was already the queen. She was Queen of Mewni, she supposed, as she laid her mother's nearly de-winged bloodless body into another coffin next to her father's own.

"I suppose I'd do the same thing if I were in your shoes," Rafael continued to say as he walked behind her to the kitchen. "Or make some sort of decree that I could go on adventures whenever I felt like it. You and Marco did all the time. It made things a lot more interesting."

"It did, didn't it?" Angie agreed as she finished making the sandwiches once she got back into the kitchen. "Oh, you can wash your hands in the sink, Star." Making sure to keep her bloodied side away from the woman's viewpoint as they stood next to each other, she washed her hands carefully, hoping that she got all the blood and dirt from under her fingertips, scrubbing harder than the norm but despondently believing that they'd never be clean. "Um… Star?"

"Yeah?" The girl looked up.

"You kinda smell like smoke too. Maybe you'd just like to shower first?" The girl insisted that she was famished, and refused to shower first, asserting that she wouldn't have anything to change into anyway.

"Smoke? Was it a barbecue?" Rafael jumped in. Against her volition, the Butterfly recalled her screams of anguish as she watched the burning pyres of her parents, the proximity of the fires being the only thing keeping her warm from the chills of the night.

"No. Forest fire; a big one. I got it put out, though," Star lied. It was getting harder and harder to lie about these things, to play them off as they didn't matter. She didn't want to bring down the Diazes' mood by sharing her turmoil… instead, she was looking for some familial comfort from them, to get back some sense of normalcy. Despite this, in the grand scheme of things, Star hated knowing that her parents' death was barely insignificant. Worse yet, knowing that she could've brought them back to life but had to choose not to was only making her feel worse.

Being the God of Life sucked. She'd rather just be the Queen of Mewni any day.

"Wow!"

And worse yet, she knew that they were already well aware of what was going on. Jackie had been here earlier and explained what was taking place on Mewni. She wasn't fooling any of them. They were keeping up the façade as well as she did, not wanting to pry if she didn't let them in.

It was also why they didn't ask where and how Marco was. They were probably afraid to find out something even worse.

"Guys, this isn't right. I need to confess something. My parents… they…" Star slumped against the sink weakly, her mouth quivering while hot tears ran down her hearts and dripped off her chin, disappearing with the running water. Bawling quietly, Angie was the first to notice the girl's misery and dropped what she was doing to hold her by the shoulders. She could easily guess that something terrible had happened to the girl's family, as she wasn't one to cry so easily. Rafael came to the same conclusion, and both flanked the girl to embrace on each side. In doing so, the man noticed the dark discoloration of the girl's dress, resembling heavy bloodstains.

"What… what happened to your parents?" Rafael asked, scared to find out. Yet, he could assume the worst and his empathetic nature lead to his crying as well. "They will be all right, yes? Yes?"

"They're dead," the weeping girl choked out, trying to unburden herself of the secrets as she waggled a finger and granted a wish. Someone else, somewhere, was now far happier and she was left utterly miserable. A tiny leaf wilted and fell off the Tree and turned into ashes. "They're dead, they're dead!"

Angie gasped in her shock. "Oh my god." Strangely enough, Star looked up at her questioningly when she said this and it put the woman off, yet it didn't detract from the fact that the girl was still bawling her eyes out. Falling into a heap beside the cabinets built into the sink, the princess huddled against it, drawing her legs up close against her body. Mrs. Diaz knelt beside the girl and hugged her, trying to console her despite her bumbling words made it clear that she didn't know what to say. Rafael, on the other hand, while still on the girl's alternate side, was still fearful.

"Did Marco…" He tried to rephrase the question as he stared at the bloodstains. "Does Marco know about this? I thought he went to find you."

Star was fully aware of what was happening, thanks to her newly discovered sense of omniscience of what was going on in the multiverse. She knew what had happened to her parents, what was happening and a good deal of what was about to take place thanks to her acquired clairvoyance. All from Glossaryck.

She knew who killed her parents. She knew why they did it. She knew who helped them.

"Marco knows what happened, but I'm not going to hold it against him." She knew that she was about to tarnish Marco in his own family's views and wondered if she should tell them. Let alone all the facts, how could she even bring herself to mention that'd he had finished off her mother by nearly cutting her mother's head halfway off?

Regardless, this wasn't going to be an easy conversation. Her grieving spell almost over, she wiped away her tears as best as she could before going back to the dining area and sat down. She heard another wish somewhere and instead of ignoring it, she wagged her finger again and granted it. This time, a few more tiny leaves fell off of the Tree and turned to ashes. Followed by the adults, the girl's sudden change in emotion disturbed them as she helped herself to one of the sandwiches. "He's going to know the same things I know pretty soon, but he's still not on my level. I can't see too far, but he's Death. Sooner or later, no matter what or who you are, he'll catch up. That's his power. You can dodge death all you want, eat healthily, watch your weight and exercise, but he'll just keep getting stronger and stronger and faster and faster until he finally catches up and grabs you by the throat."

"Excuse me?"

"I'm the God of Life," the Butterfly said simply. "Or Goddess, 'cause I'm a girl. I prefer Goddess. I guess I would've liked to NOT be a god. I just wish that things could go back to the way they were, or at least, me not replacing Glossaryck. It hadn't even been a full hour before I got sick of it. I can't even kill myself because that'll only kill someone else!"

"You're not making any sense. What's with this morbid topic?" Rafael asked worriedly. "Are you depressed because of what happened to your parents? Star, are you all right?"

"I'm okay. And believe me when I say that I'm the God of Life, just like how Marco is the new God of Death."

The two parents shared a look of confusion. Even they had a limit on what they could understand, believe and accept.

"Jackie came here already. She told you that Marco wasn't coming back. You know about Janna, too. Marco was the one who killed her."

"Oh my god." Star looked at Angela again pointedly as if silently asking the woman what she wanted, and this behavior was starting to scare the Diazes. "Star, please tell me that you're not serious."

The girl propped up her head with her hands in melancholy. "It's hard to accept, I know. I can't even fully understand this myself, and I think I know almost everything, I guess. Death is… a part of life. It's a part of me, just like I'm a part of him. Death has to happen to give meaning to life. It has to happen… and that's okay. In the same way, I have to accept that my parents aren't coming back, no matter how much I don't want them to die… I have to let them go. Looking back, I keep thinking… if we had destroyed the Wellspring all those months ago, none of this would've happened. Glossaryck and Appendaxuz would still be alive and in charge of things. Or this could be Glossaryck's fault for not working with his brother instead of against him. I don't know. I'm stuck with this until Marco eventually kills me, and who knows how long before that happens. But I can't allow that to happen, not until I know for sure what's up there in the Dimension of Magic. I can't quite…" Star reached forward clumsily as if trying to grab something that wasn't there, "…I just can't see it yet. Maybe there was a good reason why Glossaryck didn't work with him?" She ate a bite of the sandwich and felt a bit saddened as she thought more about the food. She wondered if that was how her own story started… with a sandwich. It'd be ironic. She gazed back at Marco's parents, who were still trying to process the news but still finding it too thick to swallow. "It's a lot to take in, I know."

Another wish came in, a stupid one. She ignored it.

"Say we believe you…" Rafael mumbled lowly, "you said that our Marco – our son – is the god… of death?"

"Murder is one thing. That's horrible. But it's excusable since it's his job now. A knight goes to war and kills his enemy… it's his job, no matter the methods… he has to fight and kill and win, and you have to excuse him. That's the same thing, but on a big scale for Marco, a HUGE SCALE. In the same way, it just like it's my job to decide who's born from who doesn't – I have to control who gets to be born. In my opinion, that's even worse. Even when we're gods, I envy Marco because he's always going to be fair; everyone has to die at some point. But for me? I mean, I don't know who to allow to be born and live. I can't see the specifics of their lives unless I really try, and that'd take FOREVER to sift through especially when wishes are coming in every second. Everyone deserves a fair chance! Could be a good person. Or a serial rapist. Or a rich guy who helps people. Or a murderer. Most of the time, I then gotta use that same life from that baby in order to use magic and grant wishes all over the multiverse. Wait. Hold on."

She waved her finger again, creating a bumper crop just as the harvest was about to fail in a small farming village; around three miniscule leaves withered from the Tree and burned to ashes on their way down. She finished her sandwich and moved on to another one and took her time to swallow.

"Where was I? Oh yeah. Wishes, prayers, hopes, dreams... But at the end of it all, as you can imagine from ever since, Marco has to be the one cleaning up my messes when things don't work out." Star noticed when an aged, normal-sized leaf fell from the tree, and Star looked up. "Oh shoot, praedial larceny… and that bastard killed the old lady! Well, that as a waste of three baby lives, but what can I do about it? Maybe I should tell Marco, and sic him on that no-good lowlife." Star looked down. "Ugh. Feels like I'm talking too much. I'm sorry, are you still getting all this?"

"So… you're saying… our son is the god of death… so that means he'll also kill us one day?" Angie remarked almost with casual acceptance.

"Well, yeah, either he does it or he allows it to happen. It's his job. The two of us will more or less control everything."

The rest of their lunch was very quiet and uneventful, though Star was the only one eating. She looked up at last to the couple who had seated themselves adjacent from her at the table. She felt guilty for bringing this kind of dreadful news to them, but she was still faring off better than how Jackie had to report to them about their son on Mewni. It did justify his killings by just a tiny bit, but it still didn't go over well with the Diazes. She wondered if she could turn back time to redo this conversation, but shivered as she thought about how many leaves it would cost to achieve such a feat. She decided not to.

"I have a question. Tell me which you think is worse. Killing someone, or knowing that you can bring a dead person back to life but you know that if you do, a thousand people have to die in exchange?"

They had no answer.

"You don't have to say anything, and I don't think mom and dad would've wanted me to do it. Anyway, someone's here to try to kill me. One of you might end up dying because of how my leaves work. I thought you should know, in case you want to get out of here. Or if you want, I could go."

"What… leaves… who?" Angie sputtered.

There was a sudden rapid set of knocks on the door.

"She's here."

The couple looked at each other in apprehension before staring at Star, who'd helped herself to another sandwich, apparently not finished yet at complete calm despite her now bizarre claims, waving her finger yet again. Having understood that there was now at least some credibility to what Star was saying (if she could predict that someone was about to arrive) but he still wanted to chalk it up to coincidence.

That would mean that his son was nothing but a common murderer.

It was hard, accepting that his son was a killer. Jackie, fortunately, had only spoken to them about the matter, and the Diazes had elected not to say anything about Marco to their community (or to Janna's parents, who'd found their daughter dead in her bedroom) because of how little they believed they knew.

Now they knew too much, Raf chuckled sadly to himself as he slowly approached the door.

"My son is the god of death. Star is the god of life."

Saying it out loud made it a bit easier for him to believe. They still understood very little; Star had unloaded so much on them, so fast. It still didn't detract from the fact that someone was outside, as Star said, here to attempt to kill her.

Rafael deliberated on whether or not he should call the police. For arresting someone for attempted murder, sure, but what Jackie had told them last night was still on their minds, they couldn't even sleep. Marco, their own son, was on Mewni leading an insurgency and killing people. Barely for any sort of cause and no justifiable reason. And Janna, his own friend? He murdered one of his closest friends!

The man's broad shoulders sagged hopelessly as he reached the door at last; he was very tired. "Yes, who is it?"

"It's me, Sienna. Marco's friend?" the muffled voice came from the other side. Everyone in the interior heard it and was unsure of how to react. Both Rafael and Angie easily recognized the name and the slight voice notwithstanding the slight distortion, and the man more eagerly reached to open the door. He hesitated once more, realizing that if Star was correct about this, then the girl waiting to be let in would try to kill her… and he or his wife would be the ones to perish instead.

How far would he go to learn the truth, or to believe it? Could he risk Star's safety? Could he accept dying just to fully grasp that his son was now the grim reaper? Could he allow his wife to die just to prove Star's point? The princess could be whimsical sometimes, maybe even stretch the truth on occasion but this was certainly too much. However, he was afraid to test the waters.

In spite of his feelings, he opened the door, almost unconsciously from his better nature. Sure enough, Higgs was standing outside, waiting on the doorstep. "Oh, hey Mr. Diaz. Can I come in?" He didn't answer right away, and Higgs noticed the strange grim look on his face. "Is something wrong?"

"No, no!" Angie called from the kitchen. "Come on inside! It's good to see you, Sienna!" The girl smiled appreciatively, glad to see the familiar good nature of the Diazes coming through, though the male of the two was obviously upset about something. Knowing that Star was here, Sienna had started to worry that she had done something to them out of reprisal for the death of her parents. She entered in and as she passed Rafael, the man stared at the weapon that hung from her hip. "Anyway, guess who's here? It's Star! What a coincidence, isn't it?"

"Really? She's here?" Sienna made it to the dining area, staring at Star who had yet to turn and face her. "Hey, princess. Fancy running into you here."

"Mm-hmm," Star mumbled between bites, still granting wishes every now and again. Pausing to swallow what was in her mouth, she thought about how much she was going to miss times like this, a time when she still had family, her own family as well as Marco's own. She turned her head sideways to look at the girl who was gazing hard at her, cocking it in faux curiosity and astonishment. "Higgs? I haven't seen you since the Knighting Ceremony. What'cha got there?"

Sienna shifted the messenger style bag that hung across her lower back uncomfortably, already aware of why the girl had stressed where she was last seen. "It's… um… treasure. Gonna sell it."

"Nah, you won't. You're gonna need it for the Wellspring. Right…?" The Knight was caught off guard at how the girl was aware of what she had and couldn't for the life of her figure out why she would even say it, much less in front of Marco's parents.

'She's trying to psych me out. What if she's using magic to see through the bag?' Her teeth gritted together in her uneasiness. 'Or worse, reading my mind? What if she knew I killed-… no, if you really can read my mind, stay the fuck out-!'

"Treasure? Mind if I see it?" Angie asked, curiosity playing over her features. Higgs acquiesced to the woman's demand without even hinting how much she wanted to refuse it, taking out the crystal to show Angie. The woman admired what she thought was a gigantic off-colored emerald and tried to make something out of what Star had said. "Didn't Marco say something about a 'Wellspring' a couple of months ago, honey?"

"I'm not so sure," he said quietly. By now, Sienna was absolutely sure that something was wrong. The man, from how Marco had described his parents, much less her interactions with them when she'd once slept over, was never this quiet. Angie was much the same as usual, she could admit, but altogether, they were much less vivacious and jovial. She retrieved the warding crystal from the woman and returned it to her bag, just as the man asked her why she'd stopped by.

Sienna froze. She hadn't thought of making up an excuse before coming. In fact, she'd rushed over because she believed that Star had come to get revenge or something of the like. Clearly, something had happened but she didn't know what. Even more to the point, Star seemed… aware. She was not someone to be underestimated.

"Marco's a little tied up, and I was free so he thought that I should check up on you," she lied.

"No, he didn't." Star's statement was calm and quiescent, "you're just worried that I was going to do something to the Diazes because of what happened to my parents." With that said, she went back to eating, the platter of food nearly all gone.

Angie's smile faded, almost as if it had been fabricated the whole time. "Is that true?" she asked the Knight, whose concern and fear about the entire situation was growing by the second. "Star didn't come here do anything to us. All she did was cry. In fact, between her and Jackie, we know everything."

Sienna's jaw dropped as she looked to each of them in turn.

"And the reason why my husband let you in, or why I welcomed you was because we didn't want to believe her. Did you come here to hurt Star?"

"No…" Higgs breathed, trying to find the right words. It was the hardest thing she'd done all day, knowing that Marco's parents were finding out everything that they had been doing on Mewni. "I came just in case she planned on doing something to any of you. Because her parents passed on and she might've thought Marco did it… and take revenge or something."

"You're not lying for worrying, but you should know that I'd never hurt the Diazes… they're like my own family. Besides, I know that you were the one who killed them," Star commented as if what she said didn't matter. "You, Marco, Hekapoo, Toffee, and Eclipsa killed nearly everyone in the castle. Just left me to bury or burn all the bodies you left behind."

To say that Rafael and Angie were horrified would be a massive understatement. More than anything else, seeing their reactions and solemn faces, Higgs wanted to leave and never come back and yet, she found herself still rooted to the spot. Why was Star even acting like this, saying all these things to the last people who should never have found out? Her nonchalance was extremely disheveling.

"We had just cause. We're trying to save the entire multiverse. Mewni's army got in the way."

"And my parents were in the way?"

"They had to go. You Butterflies suck up and use magic like damn sponges!" Higgs yelled.

"There can't be any possible good reason to kill someone!" Rafael shouted at the Knight, making her flinch. The man never raised his voice, particularly against anyone and it showed; even his wife was openmouthed even when she felt much the same. "Never!"

'Don't be stupid, Mr. Diaz. Sooner or later, there'll always be a good reason.' Higgs wisely kept that thought to herself as she didn't want to raise his ire. Much more to the point, she didn't want to upset the family anymore; she knew that they were good people at heart, and she cursed Star and Jackie in her mind for bringing the news to them. 'Couldn't they have kept their goddamn mouths shut?'

"So we used magic." Star shrugged her shoulders with indifference. "Don't get me wrong, magic isn't a good subject to talk about. But it's just like fire. You hurt people when you don't use it right, your campfire can burn down a woodland and yet still we need it to cook or keep ourselves warm… but for a fire to exist in the first place, something has to burn. In that same line, magic is about as useful as the person who wields it. I know you agree with me because you like using dimensional scissors, don't you?"

Higgs thought it through carefully. That was true. Despite wanting to change how magic worked and the fact that she now self-sustained her usage of dimensional scissors, she couldn't refute the princess's point.

"Regardless, the reason why you killed my parents wasn't because of magic. It was more personal."

"Your entire family are pigs. They ruled the kingdom; I get that. You gotta eat after an honest day's work? I get that. You rule a kingdom, you get more food than everyone else, I GET THAT." Sienna hissed with impending violence. "But when you can sit high and mighty in a castle, safe from all the dirt and starvation and thieves and cutthroats and killer creatures and don't do a single thing to stop it from happening, then yeah I've got a goddamn problem!" Her hand twitched as it swayed dangerously close to her knife. "Your father wasted food during the damned three-year corn famine and I had to watch my parents waste away right in front of me!"

"I'm sad to hear this, but-"

"If you can rule Mewni better than them, then fucking be my guest. You keep using magic at the expense of everything and everyone else, I'll cut you down too!"

So she had a reason, and in the Diazes' opinion, it still wasn't a respectable one. They'd have enough and just as they were about to ask Higgs to leave, she turned around and did so herself. The girl could honestly emphasize with them. They were was no need to bring the war in the multiverse to their doorstep. After everything had been revealed, she believed that she could see what the parents were feeling. They were distraught, depressed, exhausted. Angie had been crying nonstop. Rafael looked sleep-starved. Their son was a murderer.

It wasn't easy for them to accept, and looking back for the past five minutes of utter stress, she knew they never will.

"…" She sighed. Turning back, she faced the Diazes. "I'm sorry that you've found about all this. More than that, I'm sorry that it had to happen. You're both good people, and I see you two in Marco every day. He's confused. He's upset. He knows that what he's doing is wrong but he has to convince himself all the time that it's for a good cause – we're the good guys. I know that you've felt the earthquakes. Everywhere has, and I can see the cracks in your house; it's not a coincidence! We're trying to stop the multiverse from ending, and that means the people who continue abusing magic…" Higgs pointed at Star accusingly, "…they need to be stopped, one way or another."

They didn't say anything.

"I can tell that she knows even more than she lets on, and I dare her to tell me that I'm wrong."

"You're right," Star admitted as if it was the easiest thing to acknowledge. "So far as I can tell, at least. Wait… hold on… a farmer's wishing for rain in Dimension Y-508. Oh geez. That's like two or three unborn people. Wait, make that only two people and one person being born with a deformity. I think that's okay, right?" She waggled a finger with some exaggeration; a few leaves fell off of the Tree, though one withered on its twig and remained. "Alright, done. Not gonna use names… I don't like getting to know the baby names so it doesn't hurt my conscience as much… but that farm might've gotten more rain that way… More people fed, probably?"

"Wait, hold on, you said that Sienna is right?" Angie asked in disbelief.

"I'm actually more focused on that rain bit," Rafael mumbled as he recalled the girl saying that she was the God of Life and was granting wishes. Higgs was in the same boat, trying to figure out the girl's prattle.

"Are you making fun of me?" she demanded. "Are you even taking this seriously?!"

"With all that's happening, I think I'm gonna go mad until I get bored of that too," the Butterfly commented with a smile before her expression faltered into something more dejected as she made her reply to Higgs. "I'm serious. And you being the good guy? Please. Have you thought through about what happened during the famine? Using your own words, your parents were the actual cutthroats, and they were thieves. We had just enough security to bar them out of the storehouses. And let me guess? They were among the only people who starved because they didn't have official jobs in the census. Food was rationed out to every honest person, and every honest person lived. Everyone who died? Let's just say that 'Bandit' isn't something that pays honest taxes."

In an instant, Higgs's knife was in her hand. "My parents weren't thieves, you fucking bitch! You need to get your facts straight!"

Star finally got out of her seat, the entire platter of sandwiches now gone. "Higgs, I don't hold a single thing against you for killing my parents. Being immortal, I would have had to watch them die at some point. Right now…" Star's cheek marks glowed brightly and warningly. The image of an immensely foliaged tree of leaves of differently aged colors and sizes glimmered into existence behind her, with a yellow and purple luminescence radiance. Higgs stared in amazement before it all faded away like a mirage and brought back to what the God of Life was saying. "I'm the only person in here who truly knows how BIG the multiverse is and I can't deal with the dead when there's so much else I have to be responsible for. The lives of every man, woman, child, and FETAL UNBORN are riding on ME!"

As her cheek marks faded, the Butterfly stared at Higgs as if she was hardly anyone or anything consequential. She waved her finger to the side, giving Sienna the impression that her adversary wasn't entirely there in the conversation and was still doing whatever responsibilities she claimed to have.

"I still know your parents better than you do, and you don't know what I know. Although they sacrificed to feed you, well-intentioned and all, it still came down to one thing. You ate stolen food, taken from a curio shop owner who was going to feed his two-year-old son. So you can spare me your righteous act."

What happened next, however, was just as well expected by Star as she watched Sienna approached her slowly. The two girls stood across from each other, the Black Knight opposite the White King. The Diazes were more or less beside Star, worried for her safety against the girl who gripped a huge knife in her hand and had a glare like green arctic.

One had every advantage over the other, regardless of who moved first. Star was undaunted as she looked Higgs in the eyes and said:

"I don't want to kill you. Marco needs you and will even more, more than you can imagine. You're a warfighter, Higgs, but fighting me means going up against THE ENTIRE MULTIVERSE, and that's a war you can't win. Leave."

She was Marco's knight, his sword. She was first into the fray, as fearless as the best. Undeterred, Sienna Higgs took on the multiverse, but still came up short.

=X=X=

Lies

They had been walking for a long time along a lengthy road towards the east, Toffee guessed if the sun rose in the same way it normally did on most dimensions. "This place is starting to look more and more familiar. Design-wise, I mean." Toffee looked around at his surroundings, a hint of a smile teasing his mouth. "I never would've imagined that Hekapoo would send us here? It makes sense."

"You know this dimension?" Eclipsa queried strangely.

"I've been here before," Toffee said vaguely as he shifted the poleaxes on his back, "and these people resemble Mewmans. Trouble is, I think my form here is sabotaging your assignment. How to put it simply… my appearance is monstrous to them, and we can't find anyone decent if they're so judgmental." A woman who was walking on the road towards them seemed to have noticed Toffee for what he really was, and ran away in the opposite direction, screaming 'monster' at the top of her lungs as she went.

"I don't care what you look like and you don't care you look like, so why care about what they think?"

"That is true. Let's allow them to continue seeing me. As long as they scream when they see me, we'll know that they're doomed as a species."

"On second thought," Eclipsa contended with growing uncertainty, "you should hide. Give them a fair chance, you think?"

"How about we go tell her to destroy Mewni instead?" Toffee questioned, his small smile now growing to something akin to a snarl as he watched the woman's expression begin to sour. "It's my own home as well and I can easily make such a paltry sacrifice. Mewni is an atrocious dimension and you know that I speak the truth. It also goes to show how you've been so easily given to watch as we nearly decimated the kingdom of bigots you belonged to, all in the hopes of freeing your husband from his crystal when the Wellspring is destroyed."

"You have your own selfish reasons for helping this cause. You want to die."

"I would have been fine just being a spectator mind in all of this, yet you dragged me back into it. I could've let the multiverse burn for all I care… but I would've helped you for old time's sake so long as you guaranteed I'd finally die. Yet – you of all people who knew my circumstances – you added incentive to ensure I would co-operate."

"I have no idea what you mean," Eclipsa replied, looking up and down the road that seemed to be populated with large houses. As far as she could tell, many homes meant having a higher chance of finding even ten people worthy of allowing the dimension to be spared. "Now will you watch over me from a distance or not?"

Toffee chewed savagely on his lower lip until he drew blood, before spitting it at the ground. The dark purplish blood landed on a rock and sizzled there before its corrosive properties began to eat through it. He waited until the silence between him and the queen grow uncomfortable, wanting to see if she would comment on the state of his blood.

She didn't.

"You had to make every second I live… even worse. That's your way of guaranteeing my further collaboration. By torturing me."

"I'm aware of the state of your blood, and you have my sympathies. As I've said before, it's a side effect from the spell of recreating your body."

"Of course it is," he stated calmly in one of his bizarre demeanor changes. "Forgive my baseless accusation." Carrying out her request from earlier, much like the reptile he was, he started to scale a building and stood on top, before giving her a mock-friendly wave. Feeling ill at ease now, the Black Queen turned and started walking down the street. As he watched her proceed about her objectives, he wondered if it would be right to hope to see her fail. "Then again, I wonder if Marco would approve of this if he found out that we're going to destroy a dimension."

It made little sense, yet it was perfect at the same time. The idea of sacrificing an entire dimension just to save the rest of the multiverse was basically the same as amputating a sick limb… only, this time, they were cutting off one of liveliest dimensions to save the rest of the sickly body.

Hekapoo had a sick sense of morals sometimes but then again, all of the commission used to do this dimensional cleansing, for a lack of being able to coin it differently. It'd been thousands of years between some of the dimensional purges. Regardless, it caused Toffee to think through all of this a lot more clearly. Back then, the deaths of so many wouldn't really faze them when the multiverse was so large.

But he still had one question that he couldn't quite figure out. As was explained, lives and magic were practically the same thing. Lives came from the dimension of Magic, and the Wellspring was just a siphon that redirected some (or most) of that selfsame energy to provide the means for people to perform magic.

Now there's a thought. And it would answer a lot of other, smaller questions. It would explain why dimensional cleansing would return lives (magic) to the wellspring, ready to be recycled, so to speak… It would also explain that whenever they killed something or someone of great magical importance, such as when Rhombulus died, Mewni stabilized after endless quakes had rocked it for days, and probably was the same throughout the multiverse, and one particular dimension would shake a bit whenever someone performed magic on it.

Perhaps Hekapoo should die.

"If she were to die, her immortal parasitic life would return to the dimension of magic. Regardless if it's used for magic or simply helping to hold everything together, a massive amount of magical life-force like hers should still be enough for the rest of us to use to open portals normally through No Man's Land. No, that's why we're doing this. We need her to navigate through it, so that's why we're destroying a dimension to provide a lot of magic that the Wellspring would have available for her to use without further repercussions."

Toffee leaped to another building, taking care to keep out of sight while still watching over Eclipsa below. "But why would she choose this dimension? Wouldn't it make more sense to destroy Mewni instead? We would end a lot of magic users and a decently populated dimension at the same time." His thoughts came and went in confusion. He hadn't heard enough, and he wasn't aware of all the details. One thing was certain, however, was that things weren't adding up.

He tried to calm himself down. His heightened blood pressure made his corrosive innards hurt worse.

…

He followed after Eclipsa from moving from rooftop to rooftop. They had been at this for two hours, and at some point, a small boy had ended up following after her in the shade of her umbrella to shelter from the heat as they basically interviewed people; Toffee would've laughed if the matter wasn't so convoluted. Regardless, more than once he had to step in to defend the Queen and the boy from thieves and others who tried to assault them. "Why would Hekapoo send us here? It makes no sense." He headed to the largest building close by and looked out into the distance. Even if it was just a bit, there was just the tiniest bit of sand in his nostrils. They were either close to a beach or a desert, likely the latter. The heat would make more sense if that was the case, as it would mean that they were in a town built close to the desert.

It makes absolutely no sense, he thought, especially since Marco was so adverse to Mewni and for good reason… why not finish putting that dimension to the sword? It would further Hekapoo herself into his good graces, so… why not?

Even worse, he couldn't tell if Eclipsa knew which dimension she was on.

Then again, as the opposite, she probably knew exactly which dimension she wasn't on.

Just perfect. Simply perfect. Either way, Hekapoo hadn't told Marco, and Eclipsa hadn't told him either. Someone – or everyone – was up to something.

And just like that, he figured it out. Having thought it through, he wasn't surprised to see Omnitraxus Prime a few minutes later, either, having somehow become aware of their presence in this dimension and was searching for them in his large sole-head state. Leaping down to join Eclipsa in the road, he looked the woman dead in the face as serious as a judge. "Have you found the people?"

Eclipsa shook her head.

No surprise. It was a ridiculous tactic to begin with.

"Then let's get Hekapoo. She'll help us kill Omnitraxus, and can destroy this dimension at the same time. I wonder how she even knew Omni was here, to begin with?" Eclipsa didn't reply. Instead, she cautioned the boy to hide until she came back for him, and was about to attempt to open the portal when the Septarian stopped her. "Since you might've been drained earlier and that you might need everything you've got left to throw at this behemoth…"

"THERE YOU ARE!" Omnitraxus said as he finally saw the pair on the street, noticeable as the only people standing still when everyone else running away from him screaming in hysterics while a few others seemed to be trying to hurt him somehow. They ran in the opposite direction and turned down another street, and the lizard absentmindedly spotted a sort of sign that he idly read 'E Bonanza' just as they did. They continued to run until they found a hiding spot behind one of the large houses, and Toffee continued where he left off.

"… Let me open the portal."

The queen gave in to his demands easily, and the lizard ripped a blood-red portal open. As he did so, he smirked, just the tiniest bit.

=X=X=

Location(?)

The demigoddess cursed to herself bitterly when she saw them, figuring out why Eclipsa had returned. Hekapoo had thought that she had more time. They were too early. Much too early.

"We were unsuccessful," Toffee stated as he stared at both her, wondering why Sienna looked so beat up and Marco in a state of shock, "and Omnitraxus Prime found us there."

There was lengthy suspense, and Hekapoo could tell that Marco was struggling to choose between Star and her brother. But this was so goddamn strange to her too. Why was the portal so red? An anomaly because of how magic was getting limited in the universe?

Marco was staring too, trying to puzzle out what was going on with Hekapoo, the strange portal and the others having been gone on some expedition but he felt that Star was the most important thing to deal with. "Maybe we should all focus on Star-…"

"You go with Higgs!" Hekapoo yelled, making his choice for him by slightly pushing him towards his knight while turning to head in the other direction. "I'll go with those two to deal with my brother!" Without any further hesitation, she went to the Queen and Bishop and entered the portal, making their departure quickly. They'd come out of and soon, they too also made their exit through it before it ultimately closed. On the other side, the trio re-emerged and Hekapoo looked at the surrounding in confusion. "This isn't Mewni. I know I sent you there!" Hekapoo folded her arms, furious. "Did you override the scissors? At a time like this?!"

Toffee nearly laughed; he figured just as much when he used the scissors without any clear destination in mind, and yet they still brought him back to No Man's Land where their camp was. Eclipsa looked very guilty as she stuttered, "Does it matter? I didn't find anyone worth saving in a place like this, save for one boy who took a liking to me! I've lost count of how many times these barbarians have tried to rob me or carry me off! I can't even talk to them for a few minutes before they conclude that I'm insane."

Toffee got the feeling that she had intentionally sabotaged her own attempts, and deliberately put him at a distance so he couldn't see what she had been up to.

"That so?" Hekapoo grumbled. "Doesn't look familiar, so I'm not sure I've ever been here before. Well, not in recent times, at least." Hekapoo peeked around a corner to see Omnitraxus tearing the place apart, and people screaming. Some people appeared to be fighting back, but it didn't bother the demigod much, tanking right through them. Most were blown to bloody bits, aged regressed to infants or simply teleported into the far depths of space. At his expenditure of magic, the quakes started to begin anew and Hekapoo growled, wondering if he had the same goal as she did. "Poor bastards look like Mewmans."

"I thought that too-"

"Doesn't excuse what you did!" Hekapoo shouted down the queen, upset. "I sent you to Mewni! The only reason I haven't left yet is 'cause I'm still trying to figure out what to fucking do!"

"You mean how to kill him?"

"He's got a few chinks in his invulnerability, so I know how to kill him."

"Then there's no issue," Eclipsa said, butting in. "The place is a den of thieves, the dimension is probably densely populated and that means lives that go back into stabilizing the multiverse, not to mention Omni's life as well. If and when he dies, his life and powers alone should be enough to stabilize everything and you…" the queen laughed nervously, yet in a way that implied that she knew exactly what she was doing, "won't have to swear yourself to Diaz, just like you originally wanted! It will work out. So if you're going to kill Omnitraxus, then do it here."

"Preferably with a lot of collateral damage," Toffee whispered as he looked down, though they barely heard him clearly. 'So long as it's not Mewni, right Eclipsa? That's where your husband is, as well as most of the other monsters. It's the one sacrifice you refused to make. You didn't want Hekapoo to destroy Mewni at the risk of losing your dear old hubby. So you brought her… like an idiot… to EARTH.'

He knew from the minute he came that he was in the Earth Dimension, but didn't let it on to his partner. Eclipsa had no idea how they dressed, how they traveled, how they talked, how they lived. Sure, most of them were violent, but which dimension didn't have its fair share of lowlifes? She only knew for certain that it wasn't Mewni, and that was good enough for her. Always preaching that evil was necessary and yet couldn't forfeit the things she held dear. He had to die and resume living in an acidic body when it wasn't even fucking necessary. Sienna had to abandon her home and killed her fellow squires and mentors. Hekapoo was fighting her kin and Mewni. Marco had to fight and kill his friends. And when it was Eclipsa's turn, she couldn't do the same.

He really ought to tell Hekapoo, but he wasn't sure if it would be the worst option in the long run. He was aware that Earth had a lot of people, so it stood to reason that the whole dimension would be brimming with lives that would return to the Dimension of Magic. Not speaking was his sacrifice. The death of the size shifter they both witnessed was messing with the queen's ability to make intelligent decisions. When the fallout came from those poor choices, from her lies and unwillingness to make sacrifices just like everyone else, Marco's potential wrath against her, it'd be her comeuppance for recreating him the way he was. Who knew how far she was back-plotting to save her husband from dimensional annihilation? When he first saw Omnitraxus Prime here, he had suspected that the queen had somehow brought him to the dimension in an effort to keep the battle away from the dimension where Globgor's immovable crystal prison was.

Maybe he should warn the demigoddess. Both Hekapoo and Marco were in a relationship… and the latter wouldn't take too kindly to the fact that his woman would end up obliterating his home dimension, especially since they weren't magic-inclined and Mewni was the bigger liability. He looked up at last, about to ask Hekapoo whether she truly knew the dimension or not, but he didn't see her. She already left the hiding place to go fight her brother, apparently having made up her mind. He left the alley with Eclipsa behind him, and they gazed at the scene.

The Bishop shook his head to himself in astonishment. The demigoddess really didn't know-... she probably didn't recognize it at all. Eclipsa was smiling in satisfaction. He would have been impressed at her scheming, but he wasn't. The woman was far too selfish and stupid. She could've instead worked out a way to retrieve her husband from Mewni, or even the other monsters she was partial to that she was trying to save, but instead accidentally chose to burn the Earth.

'I wonder where Marco's fighting Star…? Maybe it's on Mewni. As for these two's intents and purposes, they hope he'll never find out about this until at least when everything is over.'

As Toffee looked up at the skyline, he could see dozens of Hekapoos standing on buildings, some in the streets, all muttering spells of some sort while holding up their left hands to the sky. Tilting his head back to gaze further into the sky when he thought they were pointing, he could see multiple suns looming in through the clouds overhead, he didn't know whether to smile or frown.

Marco wasn't going to be happy.

Toffee solemnly watched as the fires began to rain down from the sky on Las Vegas.

End of Part One:
Loathing & Leaves | Lies in Las Vegas

Longest chapter for this story so far, and I had to break it to start the fights next chapter.

If any of you have any idea about that setup, I guess E Bonanza road was probably a giveaway hint almost at the end about the dimension, state, and city. The place is notorious, too. Haven't been there me'self, but to hear people talk about that street and the surrounding neighborhood, it almost sounds as if people are deliberately trying to drive down rent prices on purpose – interpret that as you will. Also, if you know the significance of Nellis Air Force Base that's basically in the same vicinity in the desert to the North-East, then you can be sure even the Earth is getting involved in the fights too. I mean, fuck, we sure as hell aren't gonna take what looks like a fiery purification apocalypse from a bunch of aliens.

Gonna be a three-way fight between a warfighter, a Queen, an immortal lizard, a couple of demigods, actual GODS, and Earth. Go get religion.

Anyway, review what you thought.