(See the end of the chapter for more notes .)

This one has a ton of OCs, hope y'all are cool with that ;)

In which we meet new faces, old acquaintances, fiends from hell, and a traitor.

Chapter Text

The tension inside the cramped tiny tent was thick enough you could have cut it with a sword. Lavabo and his colleague glanced at each other uneasily, even as they knelt towards the center of the small enclosure. They were both ostensibly focused in preparative meditation, but they seemed ill at ease inside the confined space.

Meanwhile, Marco just sat there, hunched over, carefully double-checking the long twin shopping lists that he had hastily scribbled on the way here. He was still reeling from his initial encounter with Higgs, and from his unfortunate introduction to most of his fellow squires.

The last person occupying the reduced space was a blond boy around Marco’s own age, who was busy fidgeting with some wooden boxes full of strange metal bits. Every so often he would glance at Marco, but the human boy just avoided his gaze. He focused instead on the item lists, and on a somewhat questionable “customer’s map” of Quest Buy he had managed to grab shortly after they all portaled into the store. The Blowout Sale was going to start soon, and Marco had to make sure he was ready.

“Ah, well, thank you again, Lady Jaya, for letting us camp with you and young Nicholas until the start of the night’s event,” Lavabo said, breaking the ice.

In all honesty, not that Marco was ungrateful or anything, but he actually would have preferred waiting outside on their own somewhere. The last thing he wanted was to be around people right now and, anyways, what was the point of a camping tent indoors? Quest Buy was huge, granted, and the ceilings were stupid-high, but it was still a building in the end, with a roof already over their heads.

Then again, the outside of the tent was probably pretty crowded as well, if the dozens of rowdy conversations that could be heard from inside were any indication. It seemed all the knights and squires had ended up camping close together, so, if Marco went out there, he might run again into Higgs...

“Anything for an old friend, I suppose,” replied the lady knight, coldly. “And please, Lavabo, drop the formalities, Jaya is fine enough a name on its own.”

An old friend seemed about right, thought Marco, not entirely kindly. The woman looked about the same age as Lavabo, if not older. Yet, she seemed anything but frail. She was clad in the full chainmail armor that Marco had begun to associate with the knights of Mewni, and the relaxed posture with which she carried that weight already betrayed significant physical strength. Yet that itself was nothing compared to the fire in those hawkish eyes, which glanced back at the human from atop her wrinkled elderly face.

“Right, um, Jaya, allow me to introduce my squire, Marco Diaz,” announced the Knight of the Wash, clearly struggling to keep the conversation going. “He is an honorable lad, brave of spirit and kind of heart…”

“Is that so?” The other knight glanced at Lavabo uncertainly. She looked up and down at the human boy, sizing him up. “Have you noticed, however, that in the half-hour we have been here, neither of our charges have introduced themselves to one another?”

Marco felt that was his cue to explain himself. Or to at least join the awkward discussion. But for a long painful moment, he was at a loss for what exactly to say. Eventually, his mentor spoke for him.

“Well, I do believe the boy had a less than stellar first meeting with the rest of his fellow squires,” Lavabo explained. “But I assure you, he is a dedicated, bright…”

“Right,” she interrupted him, raising a hand to shut the other knight up, presumably before he went into another of his famous long rants. “Dedicated. Honorable. Kind. And utterly incapable of dealing with others. Sounds disturbingly familiar, don’t you think?”

Lavabo raised an eyebrow, displaying no further emotion.

For his part, Marco felt his own cheeks glow red as the two knights talked about him as if he wasn’t even there. He glanced at the blond-haired boy besides him, who had lifted his light blue eyes from the boxes he was playing with, and looked up back at the human, similarly flustered. Marco was about to finally say something, when Jaya once again interrupted.

“Look, it’s been a while, and we both know we need to talk.” She motioned for Lavabo to follow her outside the tent. “There is the whole embarrassing business with the Avarius child. That and, well, you are a great knight, I ain’t sayin you ain’t, Eyebrows, but this is your first squire. I am sure you wouldn’t mind a few pointers on that as well.”

“Ah, of course, Lady Jaya,” Lavabo agreed. She cringed at the honorific. “I’ll be glad to listen to any such wisdom as you feel your experience has…”

Jaya stopped him again with a gesture from her hand. Then she turned towards her own charge.

“Introduce yourself, squire. That’s an order.”

“Y...Yes, ma’am!” the boy spoke, flinching a little.

Both grown ups left them alone then, and the next few seconds were spent in one of the most uncomfortable silences Marco had ever experienced. He glanced between the other squire and his double shopping lists, while the other boy’s eyes darted between his wooden boxes and Marco.

“Um, hi, my name is Nicholas Archytas, I am Lady Jaya’s squire,” the other squire broke the ice first, probably because he had been commanded to. “Pleased to meet you…?” He sounded uncertain.

“Yeah, mmmh, hey, pleased to meet you, Nick. I am Marco. Obviously I am Sir Lavabo’s squire…”

“... and a friend of princess Star,” completed the other boy.

Marco frowned.

Of course. Nick must have seen him trip down back there, and heard him argue with Higgs, or rather, get yelled at by the redhead. At least he hadn’t called him ‘prince’, or said he was Star’s ex, but Marco was still annoyed he would bring that up at all.

“Yeah, sure, I suppose,” he said sourly.

“Wait, no, I didn’t mean…” the other boy stammered. “Look, what Higgs did, what she said, it was uncalled for, alright?”

“Yeah, whatever,” Marco shrugged. “It doesn’t matter that much.”

He tried to affect an air of detached indifference. Frankly, he was half-expecting this kid to also try to play him like the other girl had. Pretend to be friendly, wait for Marco to open up and, bam, trip him head first into the ground! Metaphorically speaking, of course.

Well, he wasn’t going to give any of these kids the chance of doing that to him a second time. He would uphold all his duties as a squire, prove himself with his actions, not his words and, at the same time, keep clear of trusting these backstabbing assholes ever again!

“So… these are self-screwing screws, by the way,” the other squire said, interrupting his train of thought. Clearly, he was fishing for a different topic to make conversation. He pulled out three of his tiny wooden boxes, which all fit inside his open palms, and was thrusting them towards Marco, so that he could get a better look. “You see, I like making things. It’s a hobby I’ve had ever since I was a kid. Lady Jaya says it’s a waste of time for a squire, or a knight, but I just can’t help it. Look, aren’t they neat?”

The human stared confused at the boxes. They looked like normal wooden cubes, except there was a small tip of a screw protruding from a hole in one of the sides, and a metal latch fixed on the other. It also looked like you could maybe open one of the sides, if you really tried. He waited for an explanation.

“You only need to release the latch, and that sets free the first pre-tensed spring, which contracts and pulls on a chain around the screw, while also freeing the second spring, and that pulls another latch and frees the third…” Nick’s voice grew louder and faster the more he spoke, the words carried a note of honest excitement.

He had indeed completely done a one-eighty in his demeanor, but not quite in the way Marco had initially expected. Instead of turning mean, he seemed to be going from quiet and reserved, to an unstoppable chatterbox. The earthling wasn’t quite able to keep up with the torrent of words, so he missed most of the explanation, simply nodding until…

“Look, I’ll show you!” said the other squire. He put two of the boxes on the ground. Then he leaped towards Marco as if he himself was propelled by an uncoiling spring, positioning himself besides the human boy. “Here, pay attention, I am going to do this only once. You can reset the mechanism, of course, but it takes a while… so… um, here we go…”

He flipped the release with his thumb, and the box begun trembling. From within it, came strange sounds, clank and sprong, mostly. Meanwhile, the screw tip at the end of the box began rapidly rotating and propelling itself forward, and in a second or two it was fully out, pointing up towards Marco’s face.

“You see, if you actually press it against something that needs to be screwed before you release the hatch, then you can save a lot of time compared to using a screwdriver. And they are pretty portable too…”

“Woah, that’s actually pretty cool,” Marco was forced to admit, the surprise taking him out from his detached caution.

It wasn’t like he could imagine a good use for those things, given that they probably took longer to reset, let alone build one of those boxes, than simply screwing something normally. But he had to admit it was pretty creative.

“You think so?” Nicholas asked, his eyes filled with proud enthusiasm. “Most people, especially Lady Jaya, just think my inventions are weird. I mean, they aren’t anything practical, like, you know, weapons… or magic.”

Marco smiled. Of course, in Mewni, magic was considered the practical common sense way of doing things, and mechanical technology, no matter how ingenious, was not generally seen in such light. Then again, that gave Marco an idea.

“Hey, Nick, how about I show you something?” asked Marco with a wink. Then, he pulled out his cell phone from his pocket. It was a pretty cheap smartphone model, but by Mewni’s standards, Marco was sure it would blow his freaking mind: “Tada!”

“Oh, wow! Is that a magic compact mirror?” the other squire asked. He seemed a bit nervous. “Those things are super rare! ...but, um, I guess you really are friends with the princess. Well, now I feel dumb. Of course you are not really impressed by screws and springs if you are used to carrying around magical gear…”

Marco smiled. “It’s not magic, actually. And Star didn’t give this to me. This is from Earth. It is like your boxes, a… gadget, I guess you can call them both, just made of many more smaller pieces…”

“Wait, so, there is no magic in it?” Nick looked at Marco wide-eyed. “You swear?”

“Well, not the kind of magic you find in Mewni, or Quest Buy, at least,” Marco grinned. “But there is always the magic that is Flappy Bird…”

----

Jaya and Lavabo were out for well over an hour, while Marco proceeded to destroy Nick at every game his phone had. This must be what Tom felt like whenever the two of them hung out! Marco had to admit it felt good, and the other boy was a pretty good sport about it. Normally, he would have worried about his battery but, unlike Butterfly Castle and Lavabo’s estate, Quest Buy had power outlets!

“Well, glad to see you two are capable of interacting with each other,” chuckled Lady Jaya as she and the other knight came back into the tent. “Still, enough is enough, there are other squires to meet before the competition. Nicholas… do I make myself sufficiently clear?”

“Of course, ma’am,” the blond boy nodded. “Marco, want to head out and meet the others?”

The human’s smile fell down at that question. He was happy to have made a friend today, but, well, after what had happened earlier in the day, he was not looking forward to running into any of the other squires. Least of all Higgs.

“Um, eh, you go ahead, ok? I… I still have to recheck the list of things we need. See you at the Blowout?” he offered.

Nicholas seemed disappointed by this, but nodded in understanding. His knight glanced pointedly at the tent’s door, and the would-be-inventor headed out through it.

Marco was allowed only a few minutes of silence to stare at his lists, however, until the lady knight addressed him directly for the first time.

“Squire, your knight described you to me as brave,” she pointed out. “You shame him by staying in here like a coward.”

Marco looked up and blinked in shock. Well, the old woman definitely wasn’t one for mincing her words. But still, she was mistaken, he was not a coward. That wasn’t the reason at all. Or, well, not entirely.

“Bravery has nothing to do with it, uh… ma’am,” Marco retorted, following Nick’s lead on how he addressed her, but looking directly at the knight’s piercing black eyes. “Look, they don’t like me. They have no reason to like me. It’s not like they are wrong about Star giving me this job…”

“Did she, now?” Jaya interrupted him. “Last I heard, the crown princess didn’t determine who became a squire of the Order of the Wash. The trial of the Lint Catcher did. Lavabo, has this somehow changed?”

“Not since the reign of Skywynne, Queen of Hours. Nor it shall, for generations of knights, and generations of queens, to come,” swore the old knight solemnly.

“That’s what I thought,” she continued, rolling her eyes. “Besides, Nicholas certainly doesn’t dislike you, boy. If anything, you started up unfairly disliking him. But he overcame that and managed to get you to regard him as what he should be to you, a fellow in arms and a potential friend.”

Well, when you put it that way…

“That’s not the same,” countered Marco. “I was just guarded. Some of them actually hate me!”

“Fine, so they hate you,” Jaya shrugged. “That’s the way the world is. Nobody is obligated to like you from the start. You won’t be the first or the last squire to be unfairly singled out due to how they ended up here. What are you going to do about it?”

She wasn’t suggesting that he… no, no way, “I mean, I’m not going to get into an unnecessary fight with the other squires. That’s not going to make them hate me any less…”

“Perhaps,” she admitted, “But it would make them respect you.”

Lavabo looked like he wanted to start saying something, but Jaya quieted him with a knowing glance, and he simply nodded.

Well, too bad for her, because Marco knew exactly what his knight was going to say. “I don’t care if they respect me or not. I will do my duty as a squire, and eventually as a knight, and I’ll do it well. Then I can respect myself. Honor is not about how others see you, it’s about how you see yourself…”

“And pray tell, boy, how do you see yourself?” she interjected. “If you have your own respect, then why do you look so miserable? Is this the best your honor can manage? Do you honestly think it is going to get better if you just leave things the way they are? Or do you plan to spend the rest of your life apart of your fellow squires, and eventually your fellow knights?”

“Well, I, I mean, I am planning to return to Earth so…”

“So? A year alone, then? In the Wash, like Old Goat over here?” she motioned to Lavabo. “You don’t seem the type.”

Marco looked at his mentor, who seemed to shuffle nervously.

“Look, Lavabo is an excellent knight, one of the best, there is no doubt about that,” she added, solemnly. “But he has a reputation for not working well with others. No one really trusts Lavabo, because he never made an attempt to make himself known, and he has never trusted anyone in return. Even during his days as a squire, and then as a young knight, he was always that weird guy who spent all his time in the Wash. Back then, I tried to get him to come out of his shell, but he always chose the Wash over anyone else, and he always will. It… took me awhile to come to that conclusion…”

Marco’s jaw literally dropped as he put two and two together. Old friends indeed! It was so obvious when you thought about it. This stern old lady had to have been Lavabo’s ex-girlfriend!

“Marco Diaz,” his own knight interjected. “I do not regret the path my life took…”

“Of course you don’t,” grumbled Jaya with a sigh and a bitter laugh.

“... but I cannot in good conscience suggest it to you,” Lavabo continued. “It is possible to balance the exigencies of duty with a healthy relationship with your peers. Lady Jaya here is an excellent example!”

“A passable example,” she corrected him. “At any rate, squire: there is dedication to your work, and then there is using that dedication as an excuse to avoid everything else. Like it or not, those children who now shun you are your comrades for the foreseeable future. There will be times of crisis outside the Wash that require all of you to work together. Your very duty to the kingdom may one day depend on being able to trust them with your life… would your honor allow you to fail then because you couldn’t face them now as children?”

“Ok, fine,” admitted Marco. “But what should I do? They hate me, remember? I don’t think fighting back is going to make them like me, trust me, or even respect me. How can I ever change that?”

“That’s up to you to figure out,” she replied with a shrug. “I am certainly not advising you to run headfirst into a fight. A violent temper gets you no more respect than a timid one. But so long as we agree there is something worth changing, then I can safely say it is not something you’ll get done from inside here. Do I make myself sufficiently clear, squire?”

Marco smiled, and for a moment the older woman was smiling back at him. “Yes, ma’am!”

As he hurried out of the tent, she added, “I do have a suggestion, Marco, and that’s to show them a person worth respecting.”

----

As soon as Marco left the tent, his eyes were immediately assaulted by Quest Buy’s bizarre lighting structure. The impossibly high ceiling seemed to reflect back down beams of green and yellow light projected upwards from innumerable unseen sources hidden inside the literal labyrinth of stonewall shelves. This same light filtered back down through layered clouds of smoke rising up from a few dozen bonfires. Tightly clumped around the flames, was the encampment of squires and knights waiting for the midnight sale to start.

The fog-filtered unnatural light made the sea of multicolored tents look positively phantasmal. A look that wasn’t at all helped by the rows of medieval weaponry stocked into nearby shelves, or by the crackling static of a barely functional PA system.

Every so often, the pervading electrical noise was cut by one of Quest Buy’s sloths reminding them all, in an utterly bored monotone, that any knight or squire caught outside the starting area before the sale started would be “forcibly ejected from the premises”. Which didn’t sound that bad, except for the pre-recorded message which followed:

“Quest Buy would like to remind you that as the sole owner of the whole surrounding intra-dimensional real estate, ejection from the premises might result in retroactive existential failure for those affected. Quest Buy, its employees, and its subsidiaries are in no way responsible for any damages or inconvenience this might cause.”

God, he hated Quest Buy so much!

It took Marco a while to adjust to the fog and the weird lightning, and when he finally did, he found himself staring directly at a surreal scene: two mewmans, their backs turned towards the human boy, seemed to be facing off against some sort of demon.

The creature’s face was all white bone, a goat skull surrounded by shivering red flames. It was somehow joined by a thick neck to a large gargoyle-like body, which seemed to still have its flesh and crimson red fuzzy skin fully attached. On the back of the broad inhuman torso, were a pair of bat-like wings, probably about equivalent in their outstretched span to Marco’s own arms. Right now, however, they clung tightly to the rest of the creature’s body.

Marco would have run to help his fellow squires against the creature, had he not noticed the look in the fiend’s face. The demon had no eyes per se, but rather two tiny yellow flames floating in the middle of two empty eye sockets. Yet those strange fire pupils, flickering weakly inside empty dark holes, somehow managed to look pleading, rather than menacing. It’s whole body language also gave the impression that it was trying, quite futilely, to make itself small and invisible.

Marco remembered then that he had seen the demon before. It had been among the squires and knights back in Mewni, listening to Manfred’s instructions. It was a hard image to forget, actually, even if he had been immediately distracted from it by Sir Stabby’s appearance.

He also noticed that the monster was wearing the standard linen pseudo-uniform he had seen in more than half the assembled squires before. As were the two other guys standing in front of him, with their backs facing Marco.

“So, do you, like, eat babies and stuff?” asked the tallest of the two in a deep dull voice. He was the huge squire that had been assisting Lady Whosits before, the one with the baby face and the body of a gorilla. “O.G., do you think she eats babies?”

“I don’t know, Baby Man,” replied the huge squire’s companion. He was this tiny old guy, who stroked his long white beard as he spoke. “Maybe you should be careful,” he added, sarcastically.

“Ha ha. I don’t think so,” commented the first one. “I am not an actual baby. Remember? They call me that ‘cause me face.”

“Yes, I am aware,” the smaller squire said dryly. “So, demon, do you eat babies?”

“N...no, of course not…” the demon struggled to respond in a surprisingly soft, very clearly feminine, voice. “I mean, some demons do, I guess. But not most of us. It’s not a common trait. And well, me… I am…” she whispered the last word to where Marco, further away from the group, couldn’t quite make it out.

“Ugh. Buh...gan? What’s that?” asked the large squire.

“It means she doesn’t eat meat,” explained the old guy.

“But, O.G., babies are meat, and demons are like… like monsters, no? I thought monsters ate babies!” the other protested, clearly exhausting his full faculties of deduction in one go.

“Yes, I have heard the same,” admitted his companion. “So… uh… Tamara, was it? Are you a monster?”

“My name is Timore…” she pointed out, still clearly uncomfortable with the attention, and with the question. “And… well… mmm… the other thing… it’s kind of a complicated question… so…”

“Because, Tamara,” said the old guy, clearly not paying attention to her protests. “I don’t think monsters can be squires of Mewni. Monsters are monsters. They don’t belong in the kingdom. They are evil, dumb, stinking brutes… no offense, Baby Man.”

“Uh?” exclaimed the alluded squire. The fact that the apology was the insult clearly flew well over his head.

“Then I am not a monster!” exclaimed Timore. Then, timidly, she added “... I mean, I am a squire, or… um… an exchange squire… you know?”

“Hey, O.G., I heard demons are tougher than mewmans!” pointed out the bigger squire, who had apparently grown bored with the existing line of inquiry.

“I wouldn’t doubt it, with such a bulky body like that,” remarked the old guy, making a face like he was smelling something bad. “So, are you?”

“I… uh… I’m not sure…” replied Timore, evasively.

“I suggest we test it, then,” he replied, coldly. “Baby Man?” .

“Yeah, let’s try it out!” exclaimed his larger companion, gleefully pulling a huge iron mace from a nearby shelf.

Timore’s flame-eyes crackled in horror, as her whole body flinched away from the other two. “I… um… ah…”

“Come on, it probably won’t even hurt that much for you, right?” pointed out the older squire.

“Ah… mmm… m-maybe… but, still… I...” she managed to stammer out.

“I am not hearing a ‘no’. Baby Man...”

“... STOP!” shouted Marco, jumping between the demon girl and the two mewmans, arms raised at the ready, poised for combat. “What the hell is wrong with you guys!?”

“Uh...”

“Eh, what’s it to you?” asked the more eloquent of the two, without waiting for his friend to expand his shocked grunt into a full sentence. “Hey, wait a moment, aren’t you the kid who tripped all over the place trying to do Higgs’ work? The guy who only got a squire job because his ex is the princess or something?”

Marco blushed. He considered pointing out once more that Star was not his ex. But, well, that wasn’t the point. “At least I am not the one trying to beat up my fellow squires!”

“She’s not mewman, doesn’t count,” protested the older squire. “Besides, she is a demon, it’s not like she is actually going to get hurt from it.”

Marco had to admit that might not be a completely invalid point. The first time he had met Tom, he had cut off his hand with a karate chop, and the demon prince had simply attached it right back.

“We are just having fun,” the smaller squire continued.

That, however, was utter bullcrap. “Doesn’t look to me like she is having fun. So, well… I suggest you two go have fun on your own, elsewhere.”

The old guy raised an eyebrow, and his companion seemed to stare down at his mace, thinking. Marco put his fiercest face forward and tensed for battle. He had fought Toffee, and the Lint Catcher Monster. He had led a princess revolution, and spent sixteen years hunting down Hekapoo. If this pair of bullies thought they could intimidate him, they had a big surprise coming.

“Whatever,” the old guy shrugged. “We’ll go. See you at the blowout. But, fair warning, you are not making any friends by doing this… prince.”

Well, Marco had to disagree with that one. After making sure those two were indeed walking away, he turned back towards Timore and extended out a hand.

“Hi, my name is Marco, I am Lavabo’s squire, are you ok?”

“I… um… yeah, I am.” She hesitated, then responded to the gesture by wrapping a huge red hand around his. “My name is Timore. You… you do know I am a demon, right?”

“Um, yeah, that’s kind of obvious. So?” Marco shrugged.

“Well, I think most people tend to react to me… ah…”

“Like those two?” he asked.

“... at best.” she admitted, sullenly.

“Well,” Marco rubbed the back of his head uncomfortably. “Honestly, the first time I met a demon I overreacted too. Now we are good friends… I think.” He realized something then. “Actually, I thought mewmans were more used to demons than that. I mean, it seems like Tom is able to walk around Butterfly castle without much trouble.”

“Tom?” she asked surprised. “You know Prince Thomas Lucitor!?”

“... yeah.” Marco said slowly. Boy, he wasn’t helping his case about being here because of the people he knew. Was he?

“You’re friends with Prince Thomas. I’m sorry, but… that’s so warm! The warmest thing I have ever heard!” Timore said excitedly. The flames around her skull were now roaring to reflect her enthusiasm.

“Uh, yeah. We haven’t hung out in awhile, but now that I’m in Mewni hopefully that will change soon.” Marco tried thinking of a way to change the subject. “So… Timore, was it? I didn't know there were other exchange squires besides me. I sort of assumed I created the concept just last week.”

“Ah… yes. It is a very common practice, actually. The kingdoms of Mewni show their good will towards each other by offering one of their own to serve somewhere else for an entire year... so that we can all work together and learn each other’s culture...”

“That’s pretty neat actually.” Marco said. In a way, he had already participated in this by showing Nick his smartphone.

“...This year is a bit different though…” Timore said, in a more quiet tone. “It seems we are the only squires to come from other kingdoms this time. I have yet to see a single Johansen, waterfolk, or spider-bite among our ranks.”

Huh, that did seem strange. River did mention how Star and her mother were traveling to other kingdoms to literally beg for help in fixing Mewni. Perhaps the yearly squire in addition to all that support would be asking too much?

“To be honest… and… not that I don't appreciate the opportunity to represent my domain, but…” The demon hesitated. “I don't really compare to the fiends they have sent the years before… don't tell anyone, but I’m actually, well...” her voice dropped to a whisper “...very timid.”

“Um… your secret is safe with me,” Marco said, half sarcastically. Then, he thought of something, “Wait, if the squire exchanges are a common tradition, then how come those guys were being such jerks to you?”

“Well, you see, um, exchanges involve at most one or two squires from each kingdom to each other in any given year, and don’t happen every year between every two kingdoms. Chances are, your knights...” she stopped herself. She glanced at Marco, unsure for a moment. “Sorry, I… you are not mewman either, right? Chances are, mewman knights have interacted with demons before, but not so their squires… Also, full disclosure, I think it's fair to say we don’t always treat their exchange squires all that great down there either…”

Marco nodded. “Regardless, I hope those two didn’t give you a bad first impression. There are some nice people here too. You just… have to look for them.”

“It’s not a big deal, really…” Timore said. “My father warned me that I would have trouble fitting in here, but the potential for conflict would do me good. He’s hoping I become more… ruthless by the end of this. He said if I don’t have at least a hundred kills by next year, I’ll be dead to him…”

Marco’s eyes widened. “Holy crap! That’s a little intense, don’t you think?”

“Well… I’m already well over one hundred, so I think I’ll be fine.” Timore said with a tinge of pride. “Oh! Speaking of which, you have a little dirt on you. Allow me.”

“Wait. What?” How exactly did those statements transition into one another?

Without warning, Timore put her hand inside her front pocket and pulled out a white cloth. She grabbed Marco by the arm with freakish demon strength and began rubbing it on his face.

Conditioned by TV and movies since a young age, Marco instinctively held his breath, assuming the worst. The wetness of the cloth didn’t help his imagination either. After a few seconds, though, he realized that the familiar sensation was not from a fabric laced with chloroform, but just a simple disinfectant wipe.

“There...” Timore said, letting go of Marco’s arm and placing the wipe back in her pocket.. “They say that these kill 99.9% of germs… Such frightening accuracy, wouldn’t you agree?”

The glowing ember inside the left socket of her fiery goat-like skull seemed to flicker. It took Marco about a second to realize that she was winking at him.

‘Kill’...

Marco snorted. Did she really think her father would accept such a technicality?

Before Marco could point out the flaws in Timore’s logic, the static of the PA system began filling the huge mall, followed by the depressed sighs of a sloth.

“Attention Quest Buy shoppers. The Squire Blowout Sale is about to begin. All squires must meet their knight and head towards the starting line, or whatever. You have ten minutes.”

“Oh dear. I forgot that Quest Buy is on a different time zone than Mewni. It’s already close to midnight here. We better get going...” Timore said.

Marco checked his phone, which read 2:48 p.m. The knights and squires had been here for only a few hours, so in Mewni the sun was still shining. While Marco felt a little dumb for not thinking about the differences in time, in his defense, the lack of windows in Quest Buy made it hard to tell what time it was, assuming ‘outside’ was even a concept in this dimension.

“I’ll meet you by the starting line…” Timore said. “I wish you luck, Marco.”

Oh crap, he almost forgot! “Wait, Timore! I need to ask you a favor.”

Timore stopped walking and turned towards him. “A favor?”

Marco shuffled nervously. “Listen, that stuff about Tom and I being friends. Do you think you can keep that stuff to yourself?”

Timore’s expression changed to a look of disappointment. It was a little hard to tell with her face being a skull and all, but the subtle movements of her floating pupils told Marco everything. “Is it… because of Prince Thomas being a demon?”

“What!? No, that’s not it.” Marco didn’t want to give her the wrong idea. “It’s just, everyone thinks I’m here just because I was lucky enough to be friends with royalty. If they find out I’m also friends with Tom, in addition to Star, that’ll just make their opinion of me worse.”

“I… see…” Timore said, choosing her next words carefully. “Are you really so ashamed to be associated with them that you’d hide your friendship…?”

“It’s not like that. I’m not ashamed. I’m, well, I’m just trying to make things less difficult for me here,” Marco said.

“Being a demon in the Butterfly Kingdom is difficult...” Timore said. “But… I don’t try to deny that part of myself. The Underworld is my home, and I’m here to represent it to the best of my abilities.”

Well, that wasn’t fair, there was really nothing Marco could reasonably answer after that and not sound like a friend-denying coward. Was there?.

“I understand where you are coming from…” she continued, “but you shouldn't view your friendship that way. Instead of thinking of it as an undeserved advantage over others, you should think of it as a badge of honor.”

A badge of honor? How? It wasn’t like being friends with Star and Tom was something he had somehow earned, it had, well, it had just sort of happened.

“Think about it. Prince Tom and Princess Star could be friends with anyone. Literally everyone in Mewni would want to be close friends with royalty… well, almost everyone.” Something in the way Timore said that part, made Marco think she had heard Higgs’ speech from earlier. “But they chose to be friends with you, right? Don’t you think they have a reason…? I… I mean, I think I’ve seen at least one possible reason just now, actually, back there, when you stood up for me...”

“Well, Star sort of got assigned to me and my family, back when she did her own exchange stay on Earth,” Marco admitted.

“That doesn’t force her to like you as a friend, Marco, that was still her decision…” she pointed out.

Of course, she was right, Star and Marco weren’t besties because she had happened to live with him for a year. Sure, that’s what led to the two of them interacting in the beginning, but it’s what happened after that that made them go from forced housemates to besties. It was fighting Ludo’s monsters together, and helping each other, and going on adventures. It was discovering all the things he admired in Star and, he… hoped, all the good qualities she, as his best friend, saw in him.

“Also, tell me, did Prince Tom also get ‘assigned’ to you?” Timore pressed on. “How did you two meet?”

“Um, I got between him and Star and... cut off his hand,” Marco finished in a self-conscious whisper.

Timore looked at him incredulously. “You became friends after that?”

“Oh, no. Honestly, we hated each other for months. He tried to kill me, twice!” In retrospect, it was almost funny to think about it. Marco smiled. “Eventually, though, we found out that we like the same teen pop band, and became good friends soon after.”

“Uh… that’s... good…” the demon girl struggled to match Marco’s story to the point she was trying to make.

Marco chuckled.

“No, you’re right, though. Star and Tom didn’t become my friends because they had to or because I was some big deal back on Earth. And, well, I wasn’t trying to become friends with them because they were royalty. Despite what everyone is saying, I was never aiming to be a prince. I’m just… Marco Diaz. And I know Star and Tom are a big deal but, to me, they’re just my friends. I don’t know if there truly is anything in particular about me that makes me ‘deserving’ of their friendship, or anything like that,” Marco shrugged. “But they are my best friends, and I am not going to go around denying that fact.”

“Glad to hear, Marco,” Timore cheered, “and I… and I… and I also won’t be ashamed of calling you my friend!”

Marco blinked at her, confused. Wait, was it shameful for her to have him as a friend? Was his situation with the other squires really so bad that…

His thoughts were interrupted when he noticed a crackling sound coming from the mane of flames around Timore’s skull. It took the boy a few seconds to realize it was a suppressed chuckle.

“Timore, you are pretty cool, you know?” he noted.

“W… what!? Why? Did I do something wrong?” she asked, shocked.

“Oh, ah, sorry, I guess I meant you are pretty warm,” Marco corrected himself.

Timore’s eyes flickered in recognition of the small cultural misunderstanding. She begun to say something, but then immediately shut up. Her eye-flames seemed to glance towards something behind Marco himself.

He turned around, and saw a tall dark-haired knight with a short thin pointed black beard. He was dressed in full gray armor, helmet in hand, and stomping furiously towards them. He glared angrily at Timore.

“There you are, squire,” he spat. “The blowout is about to start. We and that idiot you are chatting with are the only ones not yet at the starting line. Am I the only one who sees a problem with that?”

“N… No, Sir Thorncloak,” Timore replied, standing to attention.

“Good. Now, you don’t want me to regret having agreed to take in the Underworld’s exchange squire, do you?”

Without waiting for a reply, and without addressing Marco, the knight turned around and begun hurriedly walking back the way he came.

“N… No, Sir Thorncloak,” Timore replied, to the empty air, before deciding to start jogging after the tall thin man. “Sorry, Marco...“

The Squire of the Wash stood there surprised for about a single second, before he remembered that his own knight was probably waiting for him as well.

He ran after the two of them, soon finding himself viewing a really strange scene: a row of shopping carts, each with a huge toy wooden wheeled horse in front. Atop the horses were each of the knights, including Lavabo, all the way on the far end. Behind the carts, were their corresponding squires, ready to push cart, horse, and knight, one and all, at a moment’s notice. All of them in their marks and ready, except for Marco himself.

There was a short beep and a dull bored voice filled the huge room through the PA system. “Attention, Quest Buy shoppers, the ten thousandth annual Squire Blowout is starting in… now minutes”

What? Oh, crap!

Marco raced towards Lavabo’s cart and gripped the handles just as every other cart began speeding off away from them.

“Ah, Marco Diaz, just in time, after all,” Lavabo nodded at him.

“Sorry, Sir,” he apologized, as he pushed with all his might. “Didn’t mean to be late.”

“And you weren’t. Nor were you early. You were, indeed, just in time,” the old knight remarked. “Did you manage to make some friends after all?”

“Look, Sir Lavabo, I don’t see how now is the time to talk about something like that…”

Marco pushed, and something gave out. The entire cart seemed to jerk and shudder, and there was a horrible scratching sound. The human boy stopped and looked at the floor. Two wooden wheels had fell off of the toy horse in front of the shopping cart, and now the wooden stumps were dragging against the floor, the friction causing the cart to slow down dramatically and shake uncontrollably.

The human looked up to see a grinning old guy, one of the two squires who had been tormenting Timore before, holding up a wrench triumphantly, proud of his sabotage. He raced ahead of Marco and Lavabo, pushing his surprisingly handsome knight. Besides him, the huge baby-faced squire laughed raucously as he effortlessly pushed Lady Whosits and her cart. Marco could also see Higgs, grinning victoriously at him, even as she and Stabby raced past her two compatriots, leaving him far behind.

Then, Marco saw that another of the carts had stopped ahead of him but behind the others. It was Jaya’s and Nicholas’ cart. The blond boy looked back at him, winked, and threw two small wooden cubes in Marco’s general direction. Without further delay, he then resumed pushing his own knight ahead.

Marco looked down at the cubes, and suddenly he understood.

He raced around the cart, collecting the two fallen wheels and Nick’s two boxes. One by one, he pushed the wheels between the horse’s legs and the self-screwing portable mechanism, and released the automatic latch. Within thirty seconds, his ride was ready to go again. Thanks to Nick’s special screws, they were still in the race!

“So, Marco Diaz,” Lavabo repeated. “Did you manage to make some friends after all?”

“Yes, I did, Sir.”