New schedule up on the tumblr! Chapter synopses for the rest of s2, available now! One chapter a month, effective immediately! More art! We're reediting the story, and it's on AO3 now! More info at the bottom! Enjoy!

March rolled around at the speed of a bullet for Janna and company. Between the ever present forces of the Janitor's attacks, Glossaryck's training, and the usual waterboarding of schoolwork, hours transformed to days faster than she could track.

Now that she was more-or-less adept at personality spells, Glossaryck had moved her onto the next section of the book that he'd deemed appropriate: summoning. Or, as Janna quickly understood, creating apparitions.

Thus far, the lessons had been utterly boring. Janna never thought she'd catch herself wishing for "the good ol' days" of spending entire afternoons suspended in magically-induced melancholy, and yet, compared to the current alternative, nothing seemed more appealing.

She'd been excited at first, as the idea of portalling in lions or maybe a dragon or two to fight for her sounded amazing. But Glossaryck had been quick to squash her dreams.

First, the summoning was a conjuration. She wasn't willing an animal into existence, and the few times she'd been able to succeed at the spell, it had been closer to a ghostly apparition than a real beast. But even in the drawings in the book, the animals were little more than magical manifestations - bright and glowing, yes, but short-lived.

Then came the exhaustion. Each time Janna attempted the spell, she had to pour her magic into the being, trying to form it into what she wanted. She was literally fabricating a creature from her magical strength, after all—and when she got it wrong, or broke her concentration, that effort was all for naught and she was left tired anyways.

On top of that, according to Glossaryck, a magic-user had to "understand the creature to its smallest details" in order to correctly picture and summon it. That little nugget meant that all they'd been practicing on was flies. Thanks to the rapid, unexplainable overgrowth of Janna's backyard, they were everywhere - all they had to do was catch one, and she had all the information she needed.

And finally, there was the problem of control. The bigger and more unwieldy the creature, according to the book, the more difficult it was to control, but Janna was having trouble controlling anything at all. Even the smallest of insects had proven too much for her, buzzing off before dissipating into puffs of magic mist.

In short, it wasn't a great time.

And yet still they tried. They tried and tried, until Janna could hardly stand, as dozens of attempts each evening left her leaning on Marco when the sun went down, heading inside to scribble down answers from his "borrowed" homework, then collapse into bed with hardly a thought towards anything but rest.

But despite it all, Janna kept at it, if for no other reason than the sheer need to prove that she could. No other type of magic had yet given her so much trouble, and she was determined to show that she had what it took.

So, despite her general fatigue and frustration, she'd dedicated the first week of the month to nothing-but, and spent the last six hours of her day in the backyard, saying the incantation over and over, studying every tiny detail of the fly that Glossaryck had caught in his magic box, and doling only smidgens of magic into each attempt—she wasn't going to tire herself out until she knew she could get it.

And she was finally seeing results.

"Good, now, concentrate on the individual pieces of the creature, and how it comes together. Consider how it acts. Envision it in your mind, and imagine it floating out of your head and into the world." Glossaryck instructed her for probably the thousandth time. "You're almost there. You've almost got it! Now, say the words."

"Expellius Fornum." Janna muttered, and imagined the fly. A tiny little speck of life, buzzing around in her brain, made up of the components she'd memorized, the behaviors that had annoyed her for as long as she could remember.

Though she couldn't see with her eyes shut, a little wisp of magical fog peeled away from her forehead and condensed into the air. Wings were defined, then attached to a tiny, multi legged body, and then there was a fly suspended in the air.

Janna opened her eyes and the wisp snapped, letting the fly buzz away.

"Quickly!" Glossaryck commanded urgently. "Like I instructed, before it gets too far away!"

Janna felt around in her head until she found it - the little prickling feeling of the fly, draining away tiny amounts of magic. It was like she had a little patch of goosebumps on her brain.

She scrunched up her features and concentrated on that little prick of feeling, on subduing it, making it bend to her will. She'd summoned the fly before, and was actually getting better at it, but controlling it was something else.

Suddenly, it clicked. She couldn't describe what it was she actually had needed to do, or, rather, what she'd needed to make herself feel, but she suddenly understood. In that moment, the fly stopped just short of ten feet away, turned around, and, slowly, landed on her outstretched palm.

"Excellent, Janna! Great progress!" Glossaryck grinned. "You finally understand."

Janna let out a gasp, as she'd picked up the bad habit of holding her breath while she went through the process. Then she, too, grinned. With her thoughts, she told the fly to buzz up near the roof, then down to the grass, then onto her hat.

"Now, I didn't have you summon this just for some pointless magic," Glossaryck continued. "If you do it right, you can enclose a message within the creature, then send it on its way to deliver it. Very useful on a battlefield, or if your friend, uh, doesn't… have a phone. Let's try it now…"

Marco was having a downright pleasant afternoon at home at the time. With an afternoon plate of nachos in his hand, he was contemplating how best to spend the remainder of the day. Homework was done, and karate practice was a thing of the past. Janna was busy, and despite having spoken several complete sentences to Jackie at Creek-Con (a feat for which he was still congratulating himself), Marco wasn't quite ready to make the jump to hanging out with her just yet.

On another day, he might contemplate needing a new hobby, or maybe making more friends. As it was, though, he saw an afternoon of TV movies in his future, followed (or possibly interrupted) by a late-day nap.

He opened a window to tempt the balmy March breeze and dug the remote out of the couch. With a plate of cheesy chips on his lap, he'd just started surfing when, to his greatest annoyance, a fly buzzed in through the open window and onto his snack.

He shooed at it but it didn't budge. And something about it was off. Flies were black. This one was glowing. And it didn't quite seem to behave like a…

"HEY MARCO!"

The chips went flying when Janna's voice shouted from in front of him, and the fly disappeared along with the plate. He looked around for her frantically, thinking she'd decided to sneak into the house again.

Nope. Magic.

It was unrealistic to imagine that Janna could hear Marco's roar of frustration from several city blocks away, but it made Janna chuckle to imagine.

She was taking a well deserved rest. Suddenly, the summoning spell didn't seem so daunting, and a large troupe of magical flies was currently in the process of bringing her a pudding cup from the fridge.

It landed in her lap, and they dissolved. She laid back on the grass and looked up at the clouds, enjoying the snack.

Glossaryck borrowed a dolloup, then said Janna's new favorite words: "ready to try something else?"

She nodded earnestly, sitting back up.

Glossaryck's gem glowed and a glowing purple box materialized, just like the ones he'd produced for Janna to study flies.

Inside was a single bug, different from what she'd seen. It was like someone had crossed a wasp with an ant, then made it twice the size and subtracted the wings.

"One of the simplest, but most effective creatures that you can summon for battle is this," Glossaryck explained. "The Mewnian Super-Termite. A few of these will eat through anything. Weapons, armor, battlements - the only thing they don't eat is, uh, people! So it's great for us."

The box landed in Janna's lap, and she looked at it's bizarre content with a mix of disgust and fascination. She'd never exactly shied away from the ugly or putrid—indeed, several of her escapades prior to finding the book involved procuring rat organs and the like. Still, the creature inside was as nasty as a bug came. It seemed to even be gnawing at the side of the magic box it was being kept in, as if it could eat its way out of a forcefield.

"Seems easy enough," Janna said. She was still feeling cocky from the flies - suddenly, the weeks of practice that had led up to the event didn't seem so bad.

"Wait! A quick warning:" Glossaryck swooped in and took the remainder of her pudding cup, then produced another magic box. "The creature's nature sometimes comes through in the spell. The flies were easy to summon as a swarm. A dog will be affectionate, and a cat will be lazy. The termites, too, tend to come in swarms. Make sure to put them into the box, or who knows what will happen."

Janna nodded, then pictured the termite in her mind like she had the fly. It was bizarre, alien, but in a way, easier too—making it bigger made the bug a lot easier to figure out. It was a bug, it was hungry, it ate things. Easy enough.

She opened her mouth to say the incantation, when Glossaryck interrupted once again.

"Actually, it might be better if we do this away from the house."

Obliging, Janna got up and moved to the far fence, placing her a good 30 feet away from the back door.

Once again, she concentrated on the strange insect before her. She shut her eyes, opened her mouth, and…

"Actually, you know, I think we might want to hold off on—"

"I'm doing it, stop interrupting."

With a resigned glance, Janna's mentor shrugged and settled into a pose of marked interest. "Well, then it'll be interesting."

For the third time, Janna focused herself onto the being in front of her. She could picture it in her mind's eye - every little detail down to the tiny incisors it had in its head.

"Expellus Fornum."

This time, she put a bit more oomph into the spell, since the creature was bigger. Once the stream of magic had left her forehead, she held the magic box in front of her. She focused down upon it, willing the being into existence inside of it.

The magic folded and spun inside the box, condensed, and then, suddenly, there it was.

The presence was just a little bit bigger on Janna's mind, the creature itself just a little more complex. It was ethereal, but otherwise an exact duplicate of the specimen Glossaryck had provided.

"Well done, Janna!" Glossaryck beamed. "Now, focus on -"

He broke off as the termite began gnawing at the side of the box, just as the other one had, but this one was able to actually make an impact. Hairline cracks appeared where it was biting, and more worryingly, the magic that the box itself was made from seemed to dissipate into the air inside.

Just as when Janna had attempted the spell herself, it condensed, then suddenly a second termite appeared and set to work, same as the first.

"Okay, well, that's not supposed to happen." Glossaryck raised an eyebrow as bugs number three and four popped into existence, soon followed by number five. "Janna, if you could…"

Janna shut her eyes and went through the same mental gymnastics that worked for the flies. For a moment, the chewing slowed.

But the termites were trickier. They were bigger, more complex, and magically-inclined creatures to begin with. And they were hungry. She'd definitely gotten that part right.

After only a moment of respite, they resumed their attack on the prison. The walls were dissolving around them, and more and more were appearing all the time. Janna went from trying to control them to trying to keep track in moments - even though she wasn't sustaining all of them, she could still feel the presence of every single one in her mind. And there were a lot.

There was a crackling noise, like a piece of ice under pressure, and then the bottom fell out of the box.

The magic termites scattered, consuming the other box in moments to free their comrade, before scurrying in waves all over the yard, then focusing on the house.

"Okay that's definitely not good." Glossaryck had a mild tone of worry to his voice, now. "Janna, if you could -"

Janna concentrated on shutting the bugs off. For anything she'd summoned thus far, all she'd had to do was tell it to stop existing, and it did just that. But these creatures didn't like playing by the rules.

The termites were on the patio, a wave of them scurrying towards the house and eager to continue eating. Janna could hardly slow them down. A few (presumably the ones that were still subsisting off of her own magic) vanished in puffs of mist, but dozens more were still on the move.

An enormous purple barrier slammed down hard enough to crack the concrete, only a few feet from the house, and the termites swarmed against it. Glossaryck had put up a wall.

"That's just making it worse!" Janna shouted. Sure enough, the termites attacked with gusto.

"Well excuse me Princess, I don't see you doing much." Glossaryck said sarcastically. "It's your house, after all."

Deciding that more practical measures would be appropriate, Janna concentrated on summoning the biggest stream of water she could - enough to flood the entire yard.

"Hydro-oralysis pepto!"

It flowed forward from her fingertips, splashing towards the back of the house. The surge was enormous, like a dam had busted in the fence and the entire pond beyond was draining at once.

It wasn't enough. The termites, further duplicating from the wall, managed to burrow through moments before the torrent hit. They scurried forward, into the foundations of the house.

"Okay, that's bad. Janna, fly."

Glossaryck zipped into her pocket and Janna took to the skies in moments, not daring to look behind her. Unless she tried for otherwise, the spell had a distance limit on it - probably, she now realized, to stop this exact thing from happening.

It only took a few yards at most for the limit to take effect. Janna shot a few hundred feet into the air anyways - just to be safe.

Sure enough, the prickly presence of the bugs in her mind subsided, and she returned to Earth after a short grace period. The water was trickling out of the backyard, and coated her shoes when she set down on the back porch.

Glossaryck emerged and looked around. "Well, the neighborhood's still intact!" He said, as if congratulating his pupil for not levelling a city block. "That could have been—"

With a mighty crackling and a groan, Janna's home swayed, crumbled, and then collapsed under its own weight, sending a cloud of dust up as it did.

The termites, it seemed, had eaten through everything but the drywall and the roof in the few seconds they'd been in the house. For creatures of war, Janna wasn't exactly surprised. And yet, she suspected that this was one problem that a spell or a pair of dimensional scissors wasn't going to fix.

Joleen, clutching her terrified imp, appeared at the back door as the house broke down behind her. Both were covered in white plaster. Joey was biting at Joleen's hands in terror, and the youngest Russo's expression made the now-destroyed house look like the least of Janna's problems.

"JANNA!" She screamed.

Over a mile away, Marco's ears perked up as he finished picking up the last of his spoiled snack. He shrugged. Must've been the television.

Mrs. Florica Russo, otherwise known as Mom, was a hard woman to crack.

She'd run away from an abusive, traditional family when they wanted to marry her off, and never finished high school. So, she got a job and supported herself. The work was tough, but she'd always remember her father telling her leave and not to come back.

She'd gotten pregnant soon afterward from a man who was who-knew-where, and had to find time for a baby while working as a high school dropout. Raising a little girl by herself was tough, but she'd always remember when her true love had left, and not come back.

Then he had come back, and for awhile, things seemed better. He'd bought her a house, helped raise Janna for a few months, and she'd gotten pregnant with her second daughter before he'd left again. Raising two children by herself was tough, but she'd always remember when the man who'd promised better had left, and, once again, not come back.

She was a hard worker—consistent 60 hour work weeks had kept her away from her family, but had always put food on the table. Her managers had always given her glowing praise. After years, she'd even managed the role of assistant manager, the best she could hope for without a GED.

Then, corporate downturns meant that her Shop-Mart had closed. Whatever came next, she'd never forget being given an hour's notice to pack her desk before being told to leave, and not come back.

She had no job, she had no future, and her daughters… well, her own teenage years had ended with her abandoning home and getting pregnant with Janna. She desperately hoped that theirs would maybe be a bit more tame.

All she had was her beat up Kidyota four-door, the food that was in the fridge, a bag of junk food she'd stolen on her way out the door, and the house that was left above her head. And after ten years, she didn't expect that Dad was going to be back in the picture to save her from drowning, this time.

When she turned the corner to her street and what little she had left without her job, she was so distracted that she drove straight past the driveway on the first pass. Only, turning around, she was forced to stop in the street and gape at what terrible, awful thing she must have done to deserve such a practical joke of a ruined life.

The house wasn't just leaning, like it had since a bad storm had knocked it sideways, 5 years ago. It wasn't just damaged, like when (according to Janna, anyways) a gang of monsters had put a hole in her bedroom wall to steal a book.

The house was gone.

The front door was lying flat against the concrete front steps, with the entire foundation and lawn covered in white powder. She could see the skeletal remains of appliances sitting among the rubble, covered by the shingles from the roof and dusty drywall fragments It was as if someone had decided to just come in and crush the house down to rubble.

All she could think of was where her daughters had disappeared to.

She piled out of the car without bothering to set the brake, and ran up the lawn towards the front door. "JANNA!" She screamed. "JOLEEN!"

The damage wasn't any prettier up close. Hills of plaster covered entire rooms, topped by peaks of shingles. Floricia took a single step into the devastated frame, and for a single, terrifying moment, contemplated having to dig her children out of the rubble.

"Mooom!" Joleen's distinct voice carried from what sounded like the backyard. "Janna destroyed the house!"

"Joleen?" Relief surged into her chest. "Stay right there honey, I'm coming!"

She picked her way through the ruins as fast as she could, and could hear her two daughters quabbling as she got closer.

"I did not!" Janna said, but her tone made it clear that even she didn't believe herself.

"Oh, so the house just collapsed all by itself!" Joleen demanded. "Nothing to do with the magic training, nothing to do with the - OW, Joey, stop it!"

The girl's strange pet (Floricia had long since stopped trying to figure out what it actually was) gave a squawk that was quickly muffled—probably stuffed into a pocket.

In another moment, the two came into view just past where the sliding-glass back door had been (it was lying shattered on the patio). Joleen was covered head-to-toe in white drywall dust. Janna hardly looked any worse for wear, but for an ugly expression that said she'd just been forced to swallow wet cement.

"Girls!" The mom stumbled onto the back patio and caught them both in a hug before either could protest, squeezing quite a bit too hard as she let out her relief. "You're okay! What happened?!"

"Janna's weird magic broke the house!" Joleen accused, safely deposited back onto the ground.

"No, I didn't." Janna said glumly, and her mother examined her.

Janna knew she was lying. Joleen, obviously, knew Janna was lying. And, giving her daughter an intense look, Mom Russo was fairly sure that her oldest daughter was lying.

She pursed her lips. "Well, we'll talk about that later. The important thing is you're all okay."

And it was true—losing the job, losing the house, none of it really seemed that important now. Her girls were safe, and, after all, they were her whole world.

(Even if one of them destroyed the house and the other had an imp).

While the Russo siblings picked through the remnants of their rooms and Mom tried to scavage what she could from the closets and kitchen, Glossaryck quietly assessed the situation from the safety of his pocket.

No comfortable stay was forthcoming - that much had been clearly obvious when Florica hadn't been able to provide a plan except "stuff the car."

And it was definitely best that the Russos stay on Earth, that much was certain.

So while Janna was distractedly trying to find her backpack in the remnants of her desk, Glossaryck made a call. Metaphorically, anyway.

Literally, he opened a portal to a certain latino's residence, and passed through.

Marco, it seemed, couldn't catch a break. Chipless, he was at least able to enjoy a nice few minutes of television, and was just beginning to head towards a nap when his least favorite person in the world appeared through a portal behind his head.

He was in the middle of a wide yawn when Glossaryck made his presence unexpectedly known.

"Hello!" He called.

Marco nearly bit off the end of his tongue, and he scrambled before falling off the couch entirely.

"You! What do you want?" He asked. "Was that Janna's prank earlier? Tell her to knock it off!" He'd taken a pillow from the couch and was holding it as if Glossaryck was suddenly going to breathe fire.

"Janna probably needs your help and won't ask for it," Glossaryck explained shortly.

"And?" Marco asked. He followed up by tossing the pillow back onto the couch and climbing back up himself, before reaching for the remote. "If she wants help she can come ask herself."

"Her house is gone." Glossaryck stated.

This gave the boy pause. "Like, gone-gone?"

"Gone-gone." The genie confirmed.

"What happened?"

"Oh, you know, super-termites."

"Gross."

"Yep."

There was a moment of silence. Then, Marco sighed heavily. "I'll go get my parents…"

"Come on girls, HEAVE!"

As their mother had protested leaving what they could scavenge in the middle of nowhere in some alternate dimension (and put her foot down on simply moving to one themselves), and no one could think of a good place to stuff it in their own, Janna was currently putting some good-ol elbow grease into shoving as much of their house's salvage into the back of the family Kidyota as possible.

In total, they'd managed enough food for a couple days from the kitchen (and quickly gobbled down anything that couldn't fit in a cooler), a few very dusty changes of clothes apiece from the bedrooms, the television that had somehow miraculously survived underneath the living room's rubble (and had even still been on), the family safe, and some rather tattered camping supplies from the garage.

In total, they'd just barely managed to get the trunk closed, and were currently working hard to try and fit both the television and the camping equipment into the back seat.

With the back of the car completely stuffed, Janna and Joleen would have to squeeze into the passenger seat. Janna insisted she could just fly overhead (along with most of the supplies), but her mother was having none of it.

But, for that matter, there wasn't much word on where they were going, either. They didn't exactly have a plan-B stored away for "Janna accidentally levelling the house." Their mom hadn't been specific, but the camping equipment didn't inspire the greatest of confidence.

Janna, for her part, was doing her best to squash what she imagined she'd someday describe as "immense, soul-crushing guilt."

Sure, it had been bound to happen at some point. She kept reassuring herself, over and over, that it had only technically been her fault.

Really, she rationalized, it had been Glossaryck's box, so it was actually mostly his fault. And the little man must have realized the same, as he hadn't emerged from her pocket since the backyard.

She was contemplating several options. First and foremost, of course, there were presumably spells to magically generate structures. But she wasn't exactly practiced, and she broadly suspected that they were one of those "wand-only" things—she hardly wanted to imagine how taxing it would be to generate an entire house.

She was deliberating tracking down King and Queen Butterfly, as well. Surely, they had some kind of wealth stored away that could be "borrowed?" But she hadn't heard from them since after the wand incident, and Moon's tone at the time had made it more than clear that they were going to be very busy.

Trust Glossaryck, she'd said. You have to continue to train.

She snorted, which, from her odd position next to Joleen as they heaved supplies into the car, attracted a strange glance.

So, really, it was Moon's fault too.

The only thing she absolutely hadn't considered was imposing on her friends. She didn't know much about Jackie's family, and living with Marco… well, she liked the guy, but actually living with him sounded like an absolute nightmare. Probably.

She was shaken from her thoughts by a honk from the street, and looked up to see Marco and his parents, getting out of their car and walking up the driveway. For the briefest flash of a moment, she wondered if she'd summoned them with her thoughts, like another magic apparition.

"Oh, look!" Glossaryck had emerged from Janna's pocket, and was examining the incoming party with interest. "That's convenient."

After the standard courtesies were exchanged (an offer, followed by a gracious decline, followed by an insistence, followed by a gracious acceptance), and a short ride later, Janna found herself apprehensively on the doorstep of the Diaz household. Her gracious hosts had already shown her mother and sister inside and up the stairs while dragging along their clothing. But Janna lingered.

This is a really bad idea, she thought to herself, over and over again. This is a really, really bad idea.

Farbeit that she was considering the consequences of also destroying the Diaz household—there were quite a few public parks she could use to make sure that probably wouldn't happen. But just the idea of living with Marco bothered her, and what was worse, she couldn't pin down a single reason why. The compulsive neatness of the household, the organized tendencies of Marco himself, the idea of having him around, every minute of every hour of every day... those were all factors, but they were smaller pieces of a bigger pie. She didn't like that she didn't know the flavor.

Mind made up, she'd just turned on her heel and started heading back to the car when Marco found his way back downstairs.

"Janna!" He called. "Are you coming?"

Janna's mind spun through possibilities and landed somewhere between "nope!" and "just forgot something in the car." Though the only thing to come out of her mouth was "Didn't forget anything in the car!" and she chastised herself, before playing it off as a cool point of pride.

"Well that's… good?" Marco approached, and she turned back around to meet him.

Well I'm in too deep now, she thought, and stepped past him into the living room.

Marco shut the door behind her, and she had just set her effects down next to the sofa when the rest of the crowd came back down the stairs.

"Well, it's all set up," Janna's mom told her, while the Diazes smiled happily. "There's room for two in the spare room at the top of the house. So Joleen and I will stay in there, while you and Marco -"

She swallowed the end of that statement, and Marco blanched as any 15-year-old would at such a prospect. The Diazes, for their parts, had smiles now frozen in place, as if trying to decide if they could allow such a thing.

Janna could only repress a chuckle at Marco's expression. This was familiar ground! Maybe it wouldn't be so bad.

"Well, actually," Janna's mom made the save. "I can… sleep on the couch! And you and Joleen can -"

"No." Both sisters said at once. Or maybe it might be the worst!

"Um, okay, then… well, I suppose Joleen and Marco could -"

Marco only had to glance at the younger sister's pure, innocent face before vetoing that idea. "Not happening."

Janna's mom looked defeated, and Janna could only keep up her smirk. "It's fine, mom. I'll sleep on the couch."

Relief flashed across her face that she wouldn't have to take some other sort of measure. "Thanks, hon."

"Well, then that's all settled!" Angie gave a wide smile to the room. "Normally dinner is later, but I think, given the circumstances, we can make an exception. I hope you all are hungry~!" She sang, and everyone save for Janna followed her into the kitchen.

Janna made to do so as well, when Marco turned and stopped her.

"So, uhm-" He began, but Janna cut him off.

"Knock before entering anywhere. No magic near the house. And," she almost gagged saying it, "I'll try to keep everything clean."

Marco looked at her appraisingly, then nodded in approval. "Good. Dinnertime!"

Janna learned on Saturday that the Diazes were the worst type of people—the type to get up early on weekends.

She awoke, disheveled and bleary-eyed, at the disgustingly pre-dawn hour of 8:30 AM. She snapped at Marco's finger as he attempted to poke her face.

"It's cleaning day," he said. For some horrible reason, he looked as if he'd somehow awoken, dressed, and was already ready for the day, a feat which shouldn't have been possible on a weekend. "Mom's running the vacuum."

Janna glared at him, then turned over, covered her head with the blanket and tried to get back to sleep.

The rest of the world was having none of it, as the vacuum started a moment later. Then the door slammed with a hurried "bye, Janna!" as her mother presumably left to job-hunt.

After twenty minutes, she finally begrudgingly accepted the inevitable. The vaccuum was screaming underneath the legs of the couch, and Janna stuck her head out of the covers to find Mrs. Diaz humming cheerily while she worked.

"Rise and shine, sleepyhead!" She beamed at Janna when she noticed. Janna gave her best attempt at a disgruntled glare, then tossed the blanket to the floor, stretched, and went to investigate the smells of breakfast wafting from the kitchen.

Marco was flipping pancakes. Seeing that there might be some redemption to her morning, she crept up behind him, waited until he was mid flip, then shouted.

"GOOD MORNING!"

"YEAGH!" She ducked as the frying pan was reflexively shunted towards her face. The pancake that had been mid-flip fell onto the stovetop with a splat. "JANNA!"

The girl grinned wide like the Cheshire Cat. "That's for waking me up early." She said.

Her friend grumpily began to scrape bits of rapidly-cooking pancake from the stove. "8:30 is not early!" He contested. Janna only shrugged, so he continued. "And you're better off taking notes, anyway, since you're the one cooking tomorrow.

Janna helped herself to a glass of orange juice and stood at the counter next to him. "I mean, that's a bad idea for everyone involved."

Marco gave her a lethal stare before pouring far too much batter onto the pan for the next flapjack. Janna watched and her smile only widened further.

"Don't smile," Marco smirked back. "This one is yours."

As it turned out, a pan-sized superpancake was pretty difficult to flip. The result was it being burned on one side, doughy and undercooked in the middle, and all around one of the more disappointing breakfasts Janna had ever had—which was an achievement in itself.

Still, with that out of the way, she was more than happy to trod back to the living room, step over her discarded blanket, and join Joleen in front of the television.

Janna learned on Sunday that Marco was the worst type of teenager—the type that actually showered every morning.

She only woke thanks to her mom tapping her on the way out the door to an early interview. Hardly conscious but needing facilities, she found out the hard way when she failed to realize that the bathroom door might have been closed for a reason, or remember her promise to knock.

Suffice to say, the discovery's reaction left her quite a bit more awake. What was the big deal, anyway—he'd even had a towel on!

Heading back downstairs, she remembered that she was expected to make breakfast and reluctantly trudged to the kitchen. Less than 10 minutes earlier, she'd already burned her first pancake. The second one, a moment later, was as undercooked as the first one was blackened.

The third one ended up on the stove as she realized that flipping them was not as easy as Marco had made it out to be.

By the time Joleen and Marco entered the kitchen (the latter deliberately avoiding Janna's eyes), the stack of burnt, broken, undercooked or otherwise inedible breakfast food was nearly 14 layers high.

Janna had gone from cooking to trying to avoid catching anything on fire, as the pan was now approximately the temperature of the sun and burnt batter was covering the stove. A layer of smoke hovered on the ceiling.

She finally resigned herself to defeat, extinguishing the stove and dumping the pan under tap water in a cloud of steam.

She pulled out her phone instead, Glossaryck appearing with his beard in curlers and a face mask on. "Good morning, Janna. Spa day! What do you need?"

Janna purposefully turned away from the table so Marco and Joleen couldn't see, then gestured to the stack of burnt food with her eyes.

"Ah, breakfast on the fritz. Well, hmm…" he scrolled through the book's digital pages. "This ought to do the trick. Back to it!"

With that he disappeared into the phone. The spell he'd pulled up had a label: "create the food that you desire most in the world."

When Marco's parents entered the kitchen a few minutes later, they saw open windows to help clear the smoke, and found the three younger members of the house chowing down on a pile of blueberry muffin-tops.

"Screw cooking," Janna said, her voice muffled as she piled another into her mouth.

Later that day, she'd folded her blanket (per request) and even scrubbed up the kitchen of any traces of the pancake fiasco. Her homework was done (courtesy of some more "borrowed" answers from Marco's) and she was contemplating magic practice.

For obvious reasons, the backyard was out—she wasn't exactly looking for a repeat incident.

So instead, she was up in the air and zooming around town in the springtime air, contemplating other locations. Parks were too busy, and back-alleys weren't very appealing. She was just considering the eternally dry creek bed that ran through town, when her phone started to rumble. She withdrew it, surprised, and Glossaryck emerged a moment later, acting quite a bit more peculiar than usual.

"Janna," he said calmly, "-mom, calling!- I think your -mom, calling!- phone is - mom, calling!- ringing."

Janna paused in her flight to retrieve it, as Glossaryck continued his recital. Receiving the call, fortunately, put an end to it. Somehow, in the months that she'd had the book on there, this was the first time anyone had actually called her.

"Janna? I need you to come home, right now."

Immediately, she ran down the laundry-list of things that she might have done. She'd accidentially walked in on Marco, yes, but she'd folded her blanket, her laundry was stashed in the couch cushions, and she'd even cleaned up the pancake mess.

Like any good teenager did when confronted with an angered parent, she proceeded with a yellow light. "...why?"

"Trouble with your sister."

The line clicked, and Janna let out a sigh of relief. Their mom had a lot of bottled stress and knew exactly how to hit where it hurt with her punishments—not to mention that she'd rather fight the wand-monster than endure her mom's rage. If it was Joleen's fault, whatever she'd done, it was about a million times better than the alternative no matter what.

Glossaryck zipped back into her pocket with her phone as she turned to home.

As she arrived, the first thing she noticed were the police cars. Two of them were parked outside of the Diaz home, their lights still flashing. Janna landed on the doorstep and listened carefully—she couldn't hear her mom screaming. The Diaz house was either much more soundproof than her own had been (likely regardless, seeing as the door didn't need propped closed) or the cops hadn't finished whatever they were doing.

She took a deep breath and hoped that whatever Joleen had done wouldn't somehow come back to be blamed on her. She opened the door and stepped inside.

Four officers, two men and two women, were standing in a semicircle. In front of them was a defeated Mom Russo, who was clutching at a terrified Joleen's wrist in a vice-grip. There was a portal open nearby, and a fifth officer was walking into and out of it with a confused look on his face.

"And how many times before have you attempted… this?" The other four officers were presumably just as confused, and the one speaking had a notebook out with a pencil ready.

"Just this once," Joleen replied, and Janna met her mom's eyes. They both instinctively knew when Joleen was lying, especially when under duress. But Janna kept her mouth shut.

Seemingly at a loss, the officer put away his pad and turned to his comrades. "Well, shucks. I'm at a loss here, fellas. How do we report this?"

"Has anyone tried to rob a bank this way before?" One of the women, hispanic and taller than the man, replied.

The cop walking through the portal reemerged. "Houdini tried something like it, once, I think?"

"Did it work?"

Portal-cop shrugged and then stepped over to his compatriots. The portal closed behind him.

The officer with the notepad let out a long sigh. "Well, ma'am, anything to add?"

Their mother gave her youngest daughter a death-glare before replying. "I lost my job and our house was destroyed yesterday. Unrelated. I'm sure Joleen was just trying to do the right thing, but rest assured—I'll be making sure it does not happen again."

The officer scratched his head. "Alright, well, given the… extraordinary circumstances, and that we can't exactly submit 'portal-into-a-bank-vault' as evidence, I'm willing to let you off with a warning and make our lives all easier. But listen, missy."

He kneeled down to Joleen's eye level. "Just because you can do something doesn't mean you should. If I get word that it happened again, I will personally come down here and drag you to juvenile detention with all the other kids that want to rob banks. Do you understand?"

Joleen nodded slowly, and looked close to tears—though whether it was from fear of the imminent or pain from her mom's pincer-grip on her wrist remained to be seen. Joey stuck his head out of her sweater's collar and glanced at the officer before burying himself again. The policeman raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

"Good." He stood back up, and nodded to Janna's mom. "We have your number if there's any follow up. Have a pleasant day, ma'am."

The doors opened and the officers filed out. Janna overheard the fifth policeman start; "hey, my car's still at the bank-" before the door shut behind him.

There was silence as they listened to the five pad down to the street. Then two engines rolled to life, and the two cop cars, lights still flashing, sped away down the street.

Once they'd rounded the corner, Janna's mom stared her in the face. "Go wait in the kitchen."

Turning, a little wide-eyed at seeing her mother so livid, Janna did as she was told.

The Diaz kitchen was not actually separated from the living room by much more than an archway half a wall to house cupboards and appliances. The kitchen itself formed an L shape behind said wall, with an island inhabiting the nook, and the dining table at its far end. The result was that, though someone sitting at the dining table couldn't see the front door, they'd be able to hear it just fine.

Janna entered to find Marco at the table, re-completing a homework assignment that Janna knew for a fact he'd already finished, as she'd already copied off of it. His father was at the end of the table, doing his best to read a technical manual while it rested upside down in his hands.

Mrs. Diaz was making a sandwich. Janna watched as it was finished, before she summarily disassembled it and began again.

Rather than comment on any of this odd behavior, Janna sat opposite Marco, opened her phone, and did her best to ignore the screaming that had started in the other room. It didn't help.

"JOLEEN RUSSO WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!"

"I'm sorry!"

"OUT OF ALL MY TIME ON EARTH, HOW WOULD - I CAN'T BELIEVE YOU - I RAISED - ROBBED A BANK!"

"Mom, I'm sorry!" Joleen really was crying now.

"YOU WILL BE SORRY! YOU WILL NOT LEAVE OUR ROOM EXCEPT FOR SCHOOL AND MEALS UNTIL WE MOVE OUT! GIVE ME YOUR PHONE! NO TELEVISION! AND WHERE ARE THOSE, THOSE—GIVE THEM!"

"Please, mo—JOEY NO!"

There was a crash as the imp, presumably terrified by all of the shouting, flew into the kitchen and smacked into a closed window, with Joleen's dimensional scissors clutched in its grasp. It plummeted to the floor in a daze and the scissors skittered away. Mrs. Diaz quietly bent down to retrieve them, and set them both on the counter.

"NOW GO TO YOUR ROOM, AND DON'T EVEN THINK WE'RE DONE!"

There was a ruckus as Joleen sprinted up the stairs, desperate to get away from her mother. As Janna laid eyes on her for herself, it was easy to see why.

Floricia Russo, when angry, attacked her own hair and tore at her own clothes. Her face reddened to the point of a tomato, and her eyes went very, very wide. The result looked quite like a caricature, and might've been funnier if it hadn't been so very, very horrifying.

Janna gulped as her mother snatched the scissors from the counter and stalked over to the table. Their eyes met, and Janna braced herself while her mother took several deep breaths.

"Did. You. Know." She asked as she pointed the scissors at her eldest.

It was a unique kind of relief that Janna could afford to look at her mother honestly. "No."

Her mother paused. "I know you use these too." She said, before handing the scissors over. "We'll work that out. Later. Not. Right. Now."

Taking several more deep breaths, she stomped back out of the kitchen and after her younger daughter.

The door to the spare bedroom slammed, and they could hear more shouting from upstairs.

It was at this point that Janna took a deep breath as well, as she hadn't realized she'd stopped breathing. She surveyed the kitchen.

Mr. Diaz was clutching his reading material so tightly that it had torn. Marco was continuing to scribble away as though his life depended on it. Mrs. Diaz had shifted tracks from remaking the same single sandwich, to making as many as possible. She was on her seventh, and showed no signs of slowing down.

Joey came free of his daze and, perhaps recognizing a friendly face, zoomed into Janna's sweater to hide. She could feel him trembling in her inner pocket.

A moment later, the upper bedroom door slammed again, and Janna heard her mother storm to the front exit before slamming that behind her too. Outside, their four-door creaked in protest as she got into it, but showed no signs of going anywhere. More than likely, her mother was simply trying to calm down.

Standing up, Janna grabbed a pair of Mrs. Diaz's sandwiches and went upstairs to find her sister.

She gave a gentle knock at the topmost door in the Diaz house before entering. The room itself was bare except for a pair of single-wide beds, a dresser, and a simple wooden desk and chair.

Joleen was lying on what was presumably 'her' bed, head covered by her pillow, and crying.

Janna sat gingerly on the edge of the mattress. Their mother had a certain… effect on them. Janna, even with several extra years of experience in such matters, still probably would've had trouble keeping herself together. And when she'd been 11 like her sister, well…

"Go away." Joleen's muffled voice sounded stuffy, and miserable.

"Brought you food," Janna set a sandwich next to her sister. "And a friend."

Reaching into her pocket, she extracted Joey, who was now quite a bit calmer. He zoomed down and chittered, entering and exiting Joleen's jacket before taking a munch on the turkey-and-cheese.

Joleen sniffled, and uncovered her head. Her eyes were puffy and her nose was running—overall, she was about the most pathetic thing Janna had ever seen.

"Sorry," she said tonelessly, and Janna shrugged.

"Remember when mom caught me running that underground betting ring a couple years ago?"

Joleen gave half a smile. "Yeah. And when you got suspended for spray-painting the opossum statue?"

Janna cracked a grin. "She shouted herself hoarse."

Joleen looked down at her sandwich, which Joey had peeled apart to get at the cold-cut inside. "I was trying to help. I'd done it before, to pay for lunches and stuff, and I thought—" her eyes widened. "Don't tell her that."

Janna shook her head. "Tell her what?"

Joleen looked at her gratefully. "And I just thought, y'know, if I could just take enough so that we could get a new house…"

Joey, presumably content, climbed into her lap and began to snore almost immediately. Joleen poked at the remains of the sandwich and eyed the one Janna had, which she handed over. Janna herself could only offer a shrug.

"A couple months ago I accidentally summoned a giant monster that almost blew up Mewni." She admitted. Joleen took a big bite of bread in response. "Mistakes happen."

Joleen nodded, and they sat in silence while she finished eating. "And you deleted the internet." She said. "And caused a police-chase."

Janna smirked as she recalled the adventures. Compared to what she'd gotten up to lately, her sister robbing a bank suddenly didn't seem so extreme.

Carefully setting Joey on the bedspread, Joleen turned on her side. "I'm going to take a nap. Thanks, Janna."

Janna gave a rare, genuine smile and quietly exited the room as her sister, too, began to snore.

But on the foyer, she considered that maybe it was time for her to contribute, herself.

Magic was right-out. That much Glossaryck had made clear immediately. Something about summoning big stuff (like a house) without a wand being too draining, even for her.

The Butterflies, too, were of no help. Visiting their former residence, she was informed by an obviously relieved front desk attendant that they'd moved out several weeks ago.

She still couldn't reach Mewni by scissors, and a job flipping burgers didn't sound particularly appealing—not to mention a lot of legwork, considering that the internet no longer existed for such matters. So, with one last option available, she found herself standing on the oppressively hot, dimly lit plains of the Underworld.

"Prince Tom's out of the castle," the bored demon on the intercom shared when she asked. "Overseeing work on the prison. Head back down the road, past the big lava lake, and make a left. Just follow the signs."

"Prison?" Janna had asked, but received no response.

Thanks to a quick bout of air travel, she soon saw exactly what prison the demon had been talking about.

Troops of ghouls and skeletons lined the edges of an enormous pit, large enough to house the Empire State Building and then some. Accompanying them was enough construction equipment to build the Empire State, and then some. Down in the darkness, there was a ground-shaking, unsettlingly familiar scream. Her wand-monster.

Janna flew a once-over before spotting her target. Tom was standing at the edge of the pit, and periodically shooting gouts of flame at steel girders as they passed on the backs of workers. Each time he did, runes and other intricate symbols appeared on the sides.

Apparently, she'd arrived at a good time—a work-horn sounded somewhere nearby and the rhythmic action of the undead took a pause. Most of the skeletons and ghouls sat down immediately, and a few even fell apart on the spot.

"Tom!" Janna intercepted the prince as he was headed to a nearby cooler.

"Janna!" Tom glared at her, and she recoiled. "Here to summon another unkillable monster for me to deal with?"

Janna felt a twang of guilt at that. "Sorry," she said, and for once, she meant it. Tom only took the moment to fill a cup from the cooler. Janna cast a glance and found it was the same bloodlike grape-tomato soda that she'd tried on his carriage, months ago. Pass.

"I'm here because… well, I need help." She explained. Tom raised an eyebrow at her and drank deeply.

"Oh, well that's new," he said sarcastically, and went for a refill. "Can't say you've ever just popped by. 'Hey Tom! How's it going? We should go bowling!'"

"You don't want me bowling." Janna deadpanned. "Look, Tom, I kinda blew up my house."

Janna explained the whole thing, omitting only what her sister had done, and perhaps weighing a bit more on the Glossaryck side of things when it came to what had caused the problem. Tom's expression softened a bit as she did.

"And this Marco guy," he said at the conclusion. "He's okay with it all?"

"He's fine," Janna said, and remembered just how (relatively) patient her friend had been. "He's been great so far, actually. But I don't want to live there forever, and I don't want to go rob a bank. So I was hoping—"

"For a small loan of a million dollars?" Tom asked. Janna nodded, and managed to keep herself looking unabashed. Tom smirked. "Well, it wouldn't have been a problem a few decades ago, but I've been locked out of the royal treasury since I overdrafted it for a party, what, 30 years ago?"

Janna's expression shifted to one of disappointment. "So you can't help?" She asked.

"I didn't say that!" Tom corrected. "We've got lots of spare rooms in the Palace. You get used to the smell, promise."

Janna thought about her mom's immediate turn-down when she'd suggested something similar to her. "I don't think they'd go for it."

Tom shrugged. "Suit yourself. So, how about a job. The Union's been on my back for weeks now about these working conditions, but I can't do much about it—they're the only one big enough to handle a job like this. But since you can do magic, you might be able to take over for a bit. It'd help me out a lot, and take some of the strain off of them."

Janna nodded. "What do you need?" She asked.

Tom smiled. "Oh, just lifting beams, reinforcing walls, that kind of thing. Walking to the edge of the pit, he shouted down in. "Hey, Union, you're on break! Found you another shift!"

There was a pounding from below, and Janna watched as a gigantic hand clawed its way up out of the pit. She braced herself for a fight, before remembering that her wand-monster was black and oily - nothing like the creature that was hauling itself up.

The Union, as it turned out, was not a workers collective, but a literal collective worker. Hundreds upon hundreds of skeletons and other, far grosser creatures made up its body, and every eye on every head turned to face Janna as it stood up. "You sure she's up to it?" It asked. Over a thousand clattering voices issued forth the same question at once, in all manner of accents and dialects. Janna winced.

"Oh, sure, she's got magic. Why don't you show her the ropes?"

As it turned out, Janna was up to the task, though only barely.

The wand monster was suspended in a cage constructed like metal origami, and constantly screamed and beat at its holdings. Every inch of the cage itself was covered in Tom's runes and markings, but Janna couldn't be sure they were actually doing anything.

The oil that the monster endlessly gave off (presumably the reason for the seemingly bottomless pit) came off in rivers and streams, trickling down from between enormous folds and petals in the metal before falling into the void.

The work itself was hot, dangerous, and exhausting. It alternated between back-breaking (or, in her own case, mind-breaking) labor, bouts of extreme panic, and a resulting reprieve as a new repair was completed.

And calling it repair was generous. Janna pushed herself to her limits and past them, even in the magically-charged environment of the underworld, and still could hardly keep up. In the absence of the Union (who'd apparently been responsible for most of the heavy lifting), she was facing down one crisis after the next without end.

She'd return to a foreman's platform, and the skeleton or ghoul tending to it would point her to a pile of supplies. "Breach in zone Bones-Seven!" It would say. "Workers down in quadrant Reaper-Four!"

She would pick up as much of the enchanted construction material as she could, and head to the site. It was usually pretty obvious where it was. The wand monster inside would pound and bang and shake the cage, once every few minutes. And then it'd manage to bend a bar out of shape, or get a hand through, or ram its head into an important support. Another set of workers (there seemed to be an endless supply) would go in to confront it and keep it busy, while Janna helped set the materials into place. A team would weld them up, and she would nearly collapse from exhaustion.

Then, she'd take a quick dip in one of the oily streams coming off of the elaborate cage, and zoom off to the next disaster.

At first, she was able to keep count of the problems under the false hope that they would stay solved. She'd abandoned the notion after a couple of hours, when one of her earlier repairs had been busted apart like it was made of aluminum foil.

Before long, she'd lost track of the time completely. She was drenched in sweat and soot, and soon found that only most of the oil absorbed into her, resulting in a greasy sheen that only made the heat worse. Each time she drained herself, it was a little harder to recover. Each time she took an oil-bath, her muscles ached a little worse afterwords, and her headache throbbed a little harder.

She was concentrating on fitting yet another beam into place when Tom's voice finally penetrated her consciousness.

"Janna!"

He was floating right next to her, she realized, and she blinked at him.

"The Union's off their break. They're… impressed. Why don't you come topside?"

She was too exhausted to reply.

She returned to Earth, exhausted, aching, and ready for sleep a few minutes later. A small sack of gold was clenched in her hand: payment for the day's work. The sun was already down, everyone else already in bed, and the only reason she was able to make it through a shower was that the alternative was so absolutely unthinkable.

She collapsed on the couch and set the gold aside. She had no idea what it was worth. Probably a lot, since Earth treated gold differently. That was a problem for tomorrow her.

Still, she thought—her last thought before embracing her exhaustion. At least with that, Joleen might not feel like she needed to rob a bank. Her mom could put gas in the car. And hopefully things would be better tomorrow.

This episode was... interesting. Janna's mom's got a lot going on. Not in the Fountains of Wayne type way, I mean, just in the general sense. We've got a lot of context for her that we've yet to reveal.

Leave ideas for roommate-antics for Janna and Marco to get up to. They'll make good subplots.

Announcements!

First: we are re-upping the story on Archive Of Our Own (AO3)! We're taking the opportunity to put polish on the early chapters, as well as provide a little bit more detail and context on what's going on. The updated version of things will NOT be reupped to , though I will continue to update both sites with new content where appropriate. AO3 has cool things like image support, links, the ability to make edits without REUPLOADING THE ENTIRE CHAPTER, and comment responses! You can find a link to it on the tumblr (therussohouseholddottumblrdotcom). If you've enjoyed the story, go check up that version - I've got the revised fourth chapter going up just after I post this, and more on the way!

Second: JVTFOE is going to be its own book series! I'm going to be working hard to continue editing it into something entirely new, though still familiar to those who have read. If you've ever enjoyed Gravity Falls, Star Vs., Steven Universe, or any other show with a mix of humor, slice-of-life and deepest lore, drop a comment or a PM. I'm building an advanced reader list so I have people to reach before final publication, and I want YOU!

Third: New art! It's great. See tumblr.

Fourth: New schedule and chapter synopses through season 2 available as well! See tumblr.

Finally, comment response!

Guest: I think Jackie and Janna are just like sisters, yes. Except without the annoying parts of having a sibling, like them stealing your toys and tattling. The Second-Hand Crusade is just a cartoon like any other. Starfire's skirt and Raven's leotard don't seem indecent in Teen Titans, but if you spotted a real person wearing them... yeah.

Some Random Guy: Thank you for the compliment! That is just what we were going for, and part of the reason I made the push to AO3 - at least there, it's easier to filter such things out. Sorry for what grammar mistakes still slip through. I catch more every time I reread the story, and trying to edit them out is a pain in the butt. Yet another reason for AO3. Glad we're keeping true to our goals!

Mr. Ursine: The official current pairing for this story is Janna/Glossaryck and Marco/a plate of nachos. Yeah. Good luck getting those mental images out of your head.

On the next episode of The Russo Family Vs. The Housing Market: With Janna having mastered her personality magic, Marco's tired of being tongue-tied around his crush. Unfortunately, a spell to help remove that filter ends up going a little bit too far. Still, a date with Jackie can only be a good thing, right? Find out next time on the next episode: Unfiltered!

