In which a mystery about missing socks is resolved, the Wash is under attack, and a familiar yet unwelcome guest troubles our hero.

Chapter Text

When Marco first heard Lavabo warn him about garment goblins, laughing jovially as he did, on his first day squiring for the Wash, he had thought the old knight was making a joke. After a few weeks down here though, he really - really - ought to have reevaluated that assessment.

It all had begun, as most things did, with socks. Ugh. Speaking about getting used to thinking like Lavabo! But no, seriously, it had really started with socks. Or, rather, it had started when the squire of the Wash noticed a tiny furry creature dragging a single sock out of washing machine number forty-three-O-five.

The furry critter looked like a cross between a miniature person and a normal size bat, except that the fuzzy fur covering its body was olive green, not black. It had seemed non-threatening enough, at first. Marco, again, should have known better. It wore a tiny red cap, and appeared to be exerting itself just to haul even a single sock. It stuck its minuscule tongue out to one side and up, maneuvering it around an even tinier fang, a frown of concentration on its diminutive face.

No sooner had Marco noticed the first creature, however, that another just like it emerged from the very same place, carrying a second sock. A second unmatching sock, to be precise.

Then he saw a third, fourth, and fifth sock-carrying lilliputian, all emerging from that same washer and heading away from it in the same direction.

“Sir Lavabo,” called out Marco, as he began taking away the socks from the would be sock burglars. “I think you might want to see this!”

No sooner did the squire call out that the machine to the left of that first one burst open, and then the machine two doors to the right, and another further away, and another, and another. Soon, entire armies of the green furry critters were marching out of washing machines. All carrying socks, not two of them alike.

“Marco Diaz!” Sir Lavabo shouted back. “It seems we have become the target of an infestation of sock silkies. An abundant and vile type of garment goblin, dedicated to the loathsome infamy of stealing always but one sock out of a pair!”

Marco wondered, for a second, if they didn’t have some of these back on Earth as well.

“Not to worry, however, for they are easily dissuaded,” the knight continued. “Go fetch a spray bottle or two of a one-eight solution of B.C.T., a wet mop, and the bucket of holding, if you please.”

As he said that, Sir Lavabo came out running towards the aisle his squire was in, just as Marco himself raced the other way to fetch the detergent solution bottles. In lieu of the spray, the old knight began grabbing the tiny creatures by the legs, one by one, carefully removing the sock, twirling their small bodies in the air three times around his head, and tossing them to the ground.

“Makes the fell things lose their sense of direction,” he explained.

The old knight was followed around by the newest member of the Wash, Artax Ed Diaz, who enthusiastically, albeit rather ineffectively, pranced at the tiny goblins. Once in a while, however, the young colt would help its master out, using its teeth to tug a sock away from the invaders’ grasp.

As Marco returned with the requested supplies, it transpired that the standard countermeasure to sock silkies was to spray them with the diluted B.C.T. - that is, the Beholder’s Cleansing Tears (™) detergent - which caused them to either pass out or wander around in a confused daze. After that, it was easy enough to mop the little guys up into the bucket of holding. Then, after making sure to retrieve any stolen socks, a whole bucket-load of silkies could be thrown out of the Wash at once.

“Um, Sir Lavabo, thrown out where, though?” asked Marco, somewhat unsure if simply tossing the critters out of the pick up window would do much good. What happened after they recovered from the effects of the magical cleansing agent?

“Ah, Marco Diaz, you may, of course, flush them down into the sewers below,” suggested the old man, as he ran around spraying the never ending armies of tiny sock burglars.

“Wouldn’t that, you know… drown them?” Marco asked. Whatever these things were, they didn’t look like a threat, not in the same way that, say, the lint monster had been. Plus, Marco had the vague impression of having heard them communicate with one another, in a sort of high pitched unintelligible chatter. “They seem kind of, I dunno... intelligent.”

“Marco Diaz, these are monsters, monsters that steal socks,” Lavabo noted, as if that alone justified killing them.

Monsters? Like ‘lint catcher monster’ monsters? Or like Buff Frog and Katrina monsters? Marco wondered. Nah, it couldn’t be the second one. Could it? Would Lavabo really flush sentient beings down the toilet for the mere act of stealing socks?

Of course, mewmans didn’t generally think much of monsters. And Lavabo, well, Lavabo was a good man, one of the best, but he certainly had a blind spot or two when it came to prioritizing anything above his job in the Wash…

“Sir Lavabo, may I ask, where do sock silkies usually live?” Marco asked, firmly. Maybe he was worrying about nothing, and perhaps these creatures weren’t any more human - or mewman - than a poltergown or a dust ghoul. But, just in case, he wasn’t about to go waterboarding a bunch of intelligent creatures over the crime of stealing clothing!

“Ah, well, Marco Diaz, although I appreciate your curiosity, perhaps this is not the best time,” the knight replied. He swiped a prodigious strike with his mop, throwing a dozen of the tiny goblins up into the air and directly into Marco’s bucket of holding, while snatching the socks out of them in mid air with his other hand. “If you must know, however, these creatures hail from the Forest of Probable Itchiness.”

Marco nodded. Unlike the Forest of Certain Death, the Forest of Probable Itchiness was not a place he had been to before. But Star had shown him a map of Mewni more than once, back on Earth, and so, he thought he knew enough about its location to make this work.

He took out his dimensional scissors and focused on the image of the map of Mewni. He pictured the river running from the mountains south of the Butterfly Kingdom, towards the Pigeon Kingdom. He thought of the forest along that river, and opened a portal in the air. He threw the bucketful of sock silkies through the twirling vortex.

That was when things took a turn for the worse.

Before he had a chance to close the portal, three motorbikes came flying out, knocking Marco back onto the floor. The motorbikes, thankfully, were roughly the size of an Earth tricycle, and, atop each, rode a fat short wrinkled humanoid creature with a bushy red beard, wearing sunglasses. They laughed raucously as they raced pass him and into the halls of the Wash.

“Leatherjacket leprechauns!” exclaimed Lavabo.

Behind them, through the portal, jumped in a dozen or so black furry creatures, similar to the sock silkies but five times the size. This meant, more specifically, that they reached up to just below Marco’s waist. They were completely naked and seemed very high strung.

After those, came another crowd of what looked to be gnomes - as in, actual garden gnomes - but obviously feral. They crawled on all fours and sniffed around, grunting vaguely and scratching their red caps with their hind legs. And, just like the black furry creatures, the gnomes were also completely buck naked! Behind them, followed even more of the green sock silkies.

“Breeches boggarts! Knickers gnomes!” shouted Lavabo. “Marco Diaz, what have you done? Sound the alarm, the Wash is under invasion!”

What followed was pure pandemonium. Marco was barely able to close the portal in time, before the three biker leprechauns, now wearing one hydra hide coat and two separate leather armor cuirasses, made off with their ill gotten garments. In all fairness to the creatures, those outfits looked pretty damn cool as biker jackets - even when worn by a creature as tall as Marco’s knees - but, more importantly, they most certainly didn’t belong to them!

He and Lavabo found themselves running all over the Wash, pursuing the biker leprechauns, trying to spray B.C.T. on the rest of the gobbling rabble before they made off with any other stolen clothes.

The breeches boggarts mostly got themselves inside the legs of pants, one on each side, and began jumping in perfect synchronized movements. It was a bizarre sight, to see pairs of pants walking all by themselves, looking full only three quarters of the way up through the legs, and slack after that. More than once, Marco turned around to fight another one of the annoying monsters, only to have a boggart-filled pair of pants kick him in the, well, breech, and then flee in the opposite direction.

Not to speak of the knickers gnomes! Those were the worst! Not because they were fast, or aggressive. But because the sight of a tiny naked elderly man, running away on all fours, carrying a pair of panties in its mouth, and smiling lecherously, was something Marco hadn’t ever wanted to see, even once. Now he was forced to see the pervy dwarfs constantly, as he fought them over pair after pair of unmentionables.

After an hour of running around, brandishing a mop and the spray bottle, Marco was feeling exhausted. Artax Ed, the Wash’s noble steed, was being chased around by one of the biker leprechauns, which, mounted atop its signature ride, easily towered over the baby horse. Sir Lavabo, for his part, had been taken prisoner by vastly superior numbers of sock silkies and breeches boggarts, and was now tied to a drier machine by multiple woven scarfs.

Marco had made multiple attempts to reach his mentor already, but the area was swarming with the various furry creatures. They danced around their captive, waving socks, pants, and even shirts, shouting wildly. Whenever the human boy tried charging in, the annoying silkies would try to trip him down, as the boggarts attempted to tie him up as well. The squire was having a hard enough time keeping himself free of their clutches, let alone helping the old knight.

“Sir, I can’t reach you! Are you sure you can’t just break free!?” Marco shouted, finally.

“Alas, I cannot, Marco Diaz!” Sir Lavabo shouted in return. “It would damage the stitching!”

The human boy was retreating now, slowly, mop in hand, back to the Wash’s service closet. Sweat ran down his forehead, and the bottle of Beholder Tears solution, just like the squire, was all but depleted.

Well, that’s what he got for trying to help the tiny creatures out, for trying to be humane. Fine! No more mister nice guy!

Marco doubled back into the supplies closet. When he emerged, he was holding a bright golden and red bag, and a fistful of shimmering gold powder. “Alright, garment goblins! Can you understand me?”

The bizarre tiny monsters didn’t seem to even hear him. They kept at it, running around, stealing clothes, and misplacing them around the Wash. Without the portal, and with all the entrances long closed by Sir Lavabo and his squire, they had nowhere to go, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t make a mess.

Marco frowned, and threw the fistful of powder right in front of him, careful not to actually hit any of the goblins.

A bright crimson bonfire exploded before him, with a thunderous roar of flames. The sock silkies looked up from their socks. The breeches boggarts peeked out of their pants. The knickers gnomes opened their mouths in surprise, letting the knickers they were masticating fall to the ground. Even the leatherjacket leprechauns stopped their bikes in place and silently gawked at the squire.

“So. Do. You. All. Understand me?!” Marco asked, furiously.

He saw a sea of tiny faces nod in response.

“Good. Look, I’d rather not have to use these today. But I will, if I have to!” he threatened, shaking another fistful of Phoenix Flakes their way. “Drop the clothes, form an orderly file, and get the hell out of our washroom!”

As he spoke, he cut another portal besides him. This time, the portal opened up above the Forest of Probable Itchiness. Low enough that the light creatures shouldn’t get hurt by the fall, but high enough that no more of them should be able to cross back into the Wash through it. One by one, with some prodding, the tiny pests started marching out.

“No, no, drop the sock,” he hit a silkie with his mop on the way out.

“That’s not yours! Out of the bike, out of the jacket. Walk. Slowly.” he threatened a leprechaun with the Phoenix Flakes detergent until it took the cuirass off and stepped into the portal, guiding its empty bike by the handle.

“No pants, no furnace,” he threatened a boggart sternly. Internally, however, he felt quite proud of his own pun, even if it was a bit too dark for his usual taste.

Fortunately, it seemed he had managed to get rid of the goblin army, without actually having to go ahead and murder any of them. Marco exhaled a breath of relief. He had, in the end, solved the problem… that he himself had created.

He looked back at his mentor, sheepishly. “Sorry about the mess, Sir. If I had just flushed out that first batch of goblins, none of this would have happened.” he apologized.

Sir Lavabo, however, was beaming at his squire from within his woven bind.

“On the contrary, Marco Diaz, your resourcefulness in dealing with the consequences of your own choices is only to be commended. Your compassion, too, speaks volumes of your nobility,” the old knight insisted. “A creature that can be cowed by the fear of death is one that deserves an opportunity to repent, and thus avoid such fate. Even one so vile as to steal socks! I’ll keep that lesson in mind in my interactions with the fiends in the future. However… I am afraid the job is not quite finished…”

It was just then that Marco noticed what Sir Lavabo was talking about. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a tiny naked old man make a break for it. The lone knicker gnome was galloping towards the portal, on all fours, holding a pair of panties in its mouth. Not just any pair. These were small green cotton panties, with a bright cartoony yellow star in the middle. They could be literally anyone’s! Marco thought, as he blushed.

The squire of the Wash dropped the bag of detergent, grabbed hold of his mop with both hands and placed himself directly between the racing gnome and the portal. “Oh no, you don’t!”

He swung at the creature, but it jumped high into the air, avoiding the mop entirely. Marco then struck the ground with the wooden handle, using it as a vaulting pole to propel his own body to the thief’s altitude.

“Ky-ya!” he shouted, as he reached out and grabbed the undergarment.

Despite the squire’s triumph in seizing back the stolen item, the creepy gnome’s mouth remained firmly attached to it, biting furiously into the fabric. After landing back on his feet, Marco swung the piece of underwear around his head three times. On the final spin, the gnome let go. Marco swung around a kicked the tiny old man straight into the portal.

“Yes!” he shouted, triumphantly. “Sir Lavabo, look! I got them!”

“Woah, Marco, didn’t know you were into that sort of thing,” came a mocking voice behind him.

For a split second, Marco had assumed there was yet another garment goblin, one that was capable of speech. In all honesty, after he had a second to recognize the voice, he would have much preferred that to be the case.

The squire turned around and confirmed his fears. The brown boots, the olive green beanie, the yellow skirt, the turquoise jacket. Several articles of clothing that seemed very normal and nonthreatening in isolation. But when those things combined together, they formed a creature more fearsome than anything the Wash had thrown at Marco up until now.

That creature of course being: Janna Freaking Ordonia.

The Earth girl stood there expectantly, wearing a cocky smile and waiting for Marco to respond to her comment. Of course, there wasn’t a single thing the squire could say in response to her sneering remark that wouldn’t make him look like an idiot, a klutz, a pervert, or a combination of the three.

Thankfully, Janna was kind enough to continue the conversation herself, although not exactly in a way that let the poor boy off the hook. “Look, Marco, holding that around like it’s your trophy is just creepy. I mean, I don’t go around stealing your underwear. Diary? Sure. Wallet? I am not saying I don’t. Toenails? Once or twice. But, underwear? That’s plain gross, man.”

The squire gently placed the underwear on the ground. “Janna, this is seriously not what it looks like, I was just fighting a bunch of underpants-stealing gnomes and… wait… toenails!?”

Before the conversation could go any further, Lavabo forced a cough.

“Marco Diaz, I am not sure what kind of long and perplexing relationship you have with this young lady, so perhaps introductions are in order?” the old knight said, still stuck to the drier.

“Yeah, um, alright. But first let’s get you out of those scarfs, Sir.” Marco walked over to his mentor and began meticulously unraveling the knots that bound him to the machine.

Every few seconds the squire would glance over at Janna, who’d give him a devilish grin in return. It didn’t take more than a minute or two before Lavabo was set free. What was more surprising, however, was that their visitor behaved herself, for at least that long.

“Ah, thank you Marco Diaz.” Lavabo collected the several scarfs. “Thanks to you, these irreplaceable mufflers remain unharmed, although with your very delicate fingers, I’d expect nothing less.”

Janna snorted. “Well, a soldier’s most important attribute is the delicateness of his tiny fingers, so I’m glad our knight Marco here has that covered in spades.”

Lavabo lifted an eyebrow at the girl, quizzically, before smiling at her. “Marco here is indeed an impressive young lad, but I would not say he is knight material quite yet. He still has many trials ahead of him before such a promotion is even considered!”

“Oh, really…?” Janna said in an exaggerated tone, before giving Marco a look. She clearly saw the squire make an X-shape with his arms, cluing her to shut the hell up. But, well, when did the girl ever shut up when she needed to? “Cause I remember Marco saying he was this great knight of Mewni for the entire summer. Could that have been-” she faked a gasp. “-a lie!”

Lavabo laughed heartily. “Perish the thought. The Marco I know would never resort to such boastful bragging. I believe the more logical explanation is that you simply misheard him the entire summer,” he said without an ounce of sarcasm.

Marco wanted to hide in his hoodie. The slightest reminder of how he acted that summer already put him on edge, but the fact that Lavabo’s opinion of him was so high that he refused to believe Janna’s story somehow made him feel even worse.

“Riiiight,” Janna said. “Of course Marco would never lie about something like that. Just like he'd never ditch his girlfriend to go hang out for the summer with the girl who just confessed to him, only to then never even acknowledge that confession. That's definitely not a series of things Marco would do,” she declared, keeping a straight face throughout.

Okay, that last part was plainly unfair! That had nothing to do with being a knight, or anything else they had been talking about, for that matter!

“I’m not sure I follow…” Lavabo said.

Before Janna could elaborate, Marco got in between the two of them. “Janna, this was a fantastic surprise and all, and I’d love to catch up with you, really, but we’re going to have to put a rain check on it. The Wash is a complete mess right now and we’re way behind schedule. I really shouldn’t waste any more time.” It was the best excuse he could come up with.

Marco then felt a strong hand grab his shoulder from behind. Lavabo’s hand, to be exact. “Urgent the situation may be, Marco Diaz, but no amount of work ahead of us should strip us of a hard-earned meal. Why don’t you take an early lunch today? That should give you two an adequate amount of time to catch up, while I get started on this mess.”

“Ugh, sure, why not?” the squire said in surrender, having a hard time hiding his annoyance. Though to be fair, this at least meant that Janna would be away from Lavabo, so it should be fine, right?

“Yeah, that works for me,” Janna said. “Although, before we go, one of us should close that portal, right?”

She pointed at the single portal connecting the Wash to the Forest of Probable Itchiness. Marco had forgotten all about it due to Janna’s intrusion.

The squire walked over and pinched the bottom tip of the portal. Then, like a zipper, he pulled his hand across it and closed it shut. It wasn’t the only way to close a dimensional portal, but Marco kinda liked the sensation of closing it physically every now and then. It felt like putting your hand in a stream.

“Star told me that if you let portals linger for too long, a crazy red-head will come and close it for you. Haven’t tested it myself, but is it true?” Janna asked.

Marco was about to ask how Janna knew about Higgs, until he realized that she must have been referring to the other crazy red-headed girl he knew who disliked lingering portals. “Yeah, pretty much. But what do you mean by ‘testing it’ yourself?”

The girl wasted no time answering his question. She held out her own pair of dimensional scissors for Marco, and even Lavabo, to gawk at.

Marco recognized the design immediately. The scissors had jaggy blades and pure white handles set in the shape of a skull. There was a name inscribed on them, but it was written in some Monster language the squire couldn't translate. Marco highly doubted it spelled the previous owner’s name.

Lavabo whistled. “My, the new generation is a formidable one indeed.”

“It’s not what you think, Sir,” Marco said defensively, not wanting him to think that just anyone could complete one of Hekapoo’s quests. “Those scissors used to belong to Ludo, but he’s gone now, so Star must have given them to Janna.” That or she stole them from the princess...

“Yup,” Janna confirmed. “She said something about ‘wanting to be a better princess,’ which I guess is whimsical talk for ‘I need to lose all personal freedom and stay chained to my kingdom.’ Not that I mind, of course. I mean, dimensional travel and they look badass? Gonna be hard to top that gift.”

Marco had to admit, the scissors’ design complimented Janna’s general interest in the occult pretty well, though it peeved him a little that she got her pair so easily while Marco had to invest sixteen years of hard work to get his. Such was life, he supposed.

“We should get going,” Marco said. He turned to Lavabo. “I’ll be back in a half hour, Sir.”

“Very well, Marco Diaz. Enjoy your lunch and company, but do be punctual. We’ll need to reorganize everything and clean it all over again. We can’t leave anything undone after six,” Lavabo said.

Marco nodded at the old knight and soon the two teenagers made their way towards the Wash’s entrance/exit. Said entrance would usually be blocked off by the villager’s pile of dirty laundry at this hour, but the morning’s chaos had left the clothes sprawled everywhere but the entrance. In this one instance, Marco was grateful for the mess.

“Wait. Why are we taking the stairs? We were just talking about dimensional scissors.” Janna said, annoyed.

“And you sound just like a new scissors user. It’s nice to use your legs every now and then, you know?” Marco said. “Now come on, there’s this cool garden a few floors up where we can enjoy our lunch.”

Janna sighed, but she didn’t protest any further. They both started walking up the daunting flight of stairs out of the castle’s sub-basement, following it as it curved around a central pillar.

In truth, Marco only wanted to kill time by getting to their destination the long way. He was gonna stay true to Lavabo’s time limit, and the less time he had to spend actually conversing with Janna, the better. The squire snickered to himself. Even he could be sneaky sometimes.

Marco and Janna kept climbing the stairs for what was probably this day’s longest five minutes. An awkward silence loomed over them, but Janna didn’t feel like initiating a conversation. It even seemed like she was having trouble keeping up with his pace, though she tried to hide it, clumsily dissimulating her heavy panting and her attempts to support herself on the rail-less pillar. Either way, this was a lot less grueling and uncomfortable for the boy than when he first came down these stairs with Star...

Before too long they arrived at the Royal Garden on the first floor. It was quite a sight to behold. There were all the varieties of flowers you’d see on Earth: roses, daisies, tulips, azaleas, etc. Then there were the ones that Marco wasn’t familiar with, and which he was pretty sure were exclusive to Mewni.

There were, for example, bubble-gum blue carnations atop a lilac shrub, with neon pink blossoms right besides. There were clusters of leaves as red as rose petals sprouting reversed green buds in turn. There were tiny yellow bells that sprouted and shriveled and grew back again in an instant, like sparks out of a burning flame. Yet, somehow, that din of color didn’t take away from the sheer beauty and majesty of this place. Quite the opposite, actually.

Plus, none of the flowers seemed capable of eating people, a feature the young squire had learned to appreciate when it came to inter-dimensional vegetation.

As the two sat together on a marble bench, Marco realized he’d forgotten to bring his lunch with him. That is, he pretended to just realize that.

“Oops, looks like I left my corn back down there,” Marco said, trying to act surprised while peeping at his watch. Twenty-two minutes left. “Sorry Janna, I’ll hop back there with the scissors real quick, but who knows how long it’ll take for me to find it in that mess...”

Janna rolled her eyes. “Leave the fibbing to the professionals, Marco. Luckily, I got you covered.”

The girl made a small incision in the air with her scissors. She reached inside and grabbed two brown bags that had a familiar logo on them. The sight of them made Marco, momentarily, forget all about his plan to ditch his otherwise unwelcome guest.

“Oh God! You got me Britta’s?” The squire’s mouth was already watering.

Janna gave Marco his bag and he tore it open with unrestrained primal force. He couldn’t help it. The squire hadn’t had normal Earth food in so long that he forgot how much he missed it. He got even more excited once he saw the meal: A Guacamelee Steak and Eggs Britta-rito(™)! He wasted no time biting into it.

“Janna, this was actually really awesome of you. Thank you!” Marco managed to say between bites of burrito, chunks of it still in his mouth as he spoke.

Janna smiled nonchalantly. “No problem.”

It took Marco a while before he was even able to continue the conversation, lost as he was in waking dreams of cheese, steak, and soft wheat flour. Janna sat there, silent, without even opening her own lunch, staring amused at the voracious squire, as he gulped down huge bites of meat, egg, and beans.

Normally, he’d be a lot more self-conscious about something like that, specially around company. But, hey, it was just Janna, after all. Besides, it had been weeks since he last had a meal that was anything less than three-quarters corn. He hadn’t realized just how much he had missed Earth cuisine, and its broad diversity of non-corn flavors!

Eventually, though, Marco figured he might as well ask. Better get it done and over with and all that. He covered his burrito-filled mouth as he spoke. “Ok, so, uhm… what’s the catch?”

“The catch?” Janna asked innocently.

“Yes, the catch,” Marco repeated. “Look, you show up here, out of nowhere, and are actually being, well… less of a pain than you usually are, no offence…”

“None taken,” she shrugged.

“...my point is, Janna,” Marco continued. “What do you want?”

The girl made a whole show out of thinking through, or pretending to think through, her answer to the question. Finally, she placed her left thumb under her own chin and added, “Nothing comes to mind.”

Marco rolled his eyes. “Don’t give me that. You’re always after something.”

Janna blinked. “Fine, I’ll admit it: I was a bit curious about how you were doing, Marco. Beats sitting in class with an unused pair of dimensional scissors. Besides, I would have thought you’d like to know how everyone else is doing,” she pointed out. “You know, back home?”

She had a good point, actually. Marco did wonder, sometimes, how his friends and family were all doing back at Echo Creek. Not to mention, well… Jackie.

“Um, ok, Janna, you’re right, of course. I’m sorry for accusing you of having ulterior motives, when you really just wanted to catch up,” he apologized.

The sentiment went wholly unacknowledged. Instead, the troublemaker looked boredly at her own lunch bag, poking it without having even taken out the food.

“Ok, so…” Marco finally continued. “How is everyone?”

“Everyone who?” Janna asked, like she had forgotten the entirety of the conversation so far.

“Everyone back in Echo Creek!” Marco replied, irritated.

“You’ll have to be more specific,” she shrugged.

“Fine,” Marco grumbled. “How about Ferguson and Alfonzo?”

“Out of the closet. They are a thing now. Not that anybody at school was surprised by that news,” she replied, without lifting her eyes from the closed lunch bag.

Marco looked shocked at the girl. Well, ok, it was not exactly implausible, now that he thought about it. Still, he had the feeling that she was pulling his leg. He most certainly would’ve heard about something as big as that, from either of his two friends.

“Um. StarFan?” he continued.

“Starting therapy,” she explained. “Been doing her some good, she is even back to using her real name now. I honestly thought she was going to jump off of a bridge or something after Star left Earth.”

Well, that was morbid! Leave it to Janna to turn a positive development into an unsettling thought. There was no way it was that bad! StarFan was just a quirky kid. Maybe a bit of talking to Mr. Candle, or whatever, was not a bad idea, sure, but that didn’t mean she was going to kill herself over her idol leaving school. Still, good to know StarFan, or, uh, Pauline, was doing better.

“Oskar?”

“Still awful at music, but suddenly seems to be taking classes seriously. No idea why.”

“Brittney?”

“Planning her birthday party for this week, but freaking out because everyone is expecting Star to be there like last year.”

“Miss Skullnick?”

“New boyfriend.”

“My parents?”

“Well, Angie is pregnant,” she said, detachedly.

Ok, now Marco was sure she was pulling his leg! Likely, every single thing she had said so far had been a complete fabrication, designed to get a laugh at his expense. But, come on, he was not that gullible!

Still, he had to ask. Didn’t he? He took a deep breath, and… “Jackie?”

There was a beat of silence, in which Janna didn’t say a word, she didn’t even keep poking her lunch bag. Instead, she straightened up, looked at Marco in the eyes, and then, completely avoiding the topic, said, “so, I think the real question is: why are you still here?”

“Uh?” Marco was taken aback by the non sequitur. “What do you mean?”

“Well, I thought the whole reason you wanted to come back to Mewni was so that you could enjoy that sweet, sweet knighthood life you thought you had earned. Which I totally get, by the way,” she observed. “But, since it turns out you were never a knight to begin with, and Star’s dad was just banking on you to never take his offer of knighthood seriously, and you don’t even get to hang out with Star any more, and you have other squires bullying you six ways to Sunday…”

“Wait a second” Marco protested. “How do you even know all that!? Did Star tell you?” If that had been the case, then he was actually a bit annoyed at his best friend. Sure, he’d been writing her letters about his struggles down in the Wash, and about what had happened at the Squire Blowout. But, well, Marco thought she understood that stuff was supposed to be private!

“Look, Marco, that doesn’t matter,” remarked Janna. “What matters is that I am bored out of my skull without the two of you back home! Meanwhile you are stuck here, being a laundry squire, and getting crap from people who aren’t me. Fortunately, I can think of one way to fix both issues!”

Uh oh, here it came. So much for not having ulterior motives. Marco mentally rescinded his apology!

Janna took out her ugly, twisted, dimensional scissors, and pointed at them. She then raised an eyebrow and shot him a conspiratorial smile.

“We can go anywhere in the multiverse now, we can go adventuring, like you used to do with Star,” she explained. “We both have scissors, and it’s not like I have stayed on Earth all this time, but, still, safety in numbers and all that. Plus, you must know a few interesting places by now, ‘Safe Kid’.”

That was a pretty tempting offer, actually, even if it would entail hanging out with Janna a lot more often. Marco would have been lying if he said that he didn’t miss going on inter-dimensional adventures. It wasn’t like that was really more dangerous than working at the Wash, and it certainly provided more of a change of scenery, not to mention far less in the way of repetitive and arduous labor. So, well…

“No.”

The girl seemed genuinely surprised at his response. “No?”

“I mean, thanks for the offer Janna, but, well, I think Sir Lavabo needs me down here, today especially,” he said, thinking about the mess he had caused. “But, more than that, I think I need this. This place isn’t always easy, and it is pretty thankless sometimes, and maybe it’s not what I would have picked for myself, if I had known… but, I think it’s genuinely making me a better person.”

“Ugh. You sound like Star,” Janna huffed.

She had probably meant it as a complaint, but Marco smiled at the compliment.

“Okay, then how about we only go somewhere during nights?” Janna suggested. “I’ll head here after school, and once you’re done with all that thankless Wash business, we can go crazy and let loose in some bacon dimension.”

“I’d be willing to do that, say, once a month, and it’d probably have to be during one of my days off, but there’s no way I could do that every night,” Marco protested. “Also, we couldn’t go anywhere that is too dangerous. If I accidentally break a bone or something, I wouldn’t be able to do my job well.”

Marco had thought he had come up with a decent compromise, but his words only made the girl give him an even greater look of disappointment. She then looked at her Britta’s bag in contemplation.

“Fine. Let’s do this the hard way then.” She rummaged through her bag and pulled out several papers. The girl had still not eaten anything, and Marco was beginning to suspect that she had never packed lunch for herself to begin with. She held the documents out for him to see.

“Hey! Those are my foreign exchange student papers!” the squire exclaimed in recognition. “How did you get those?”

The frown Janna had been slowly developing turned, briefly, into a smile. “You know, Marco? No matter how many times you say those exact five words to me, it somehow never gets old.”

The girl scooted over to the far side of the bench, most likely to prevent Marco from simply grabbing the papers from her. She took her time flipping through the documents.

“I gotta say, even for a first attempt at forgery, this is pretty sloppy craftsmanship. You literally just took Star’s papers from last year and replaced all the names. Even the signatures from the involved parties have the same handwriting. Only in Echo Creek Academy could you get away with this…”

“W-what are you going to do with those?” Marco asked cautiously.

“I’m not sure. Maybe I’ll perform a good deed and go over these a bit more carefully with Principal Skeeves. That would be quite... honorable, wouldn’t it? Unless you’re able to convince me not to,” Janna explained.

“What!? You’re blackmailing me!? This is a new low, even for you, Janna!”

“Actually,” Janna pointed out. “It really isn’t. So what will it be, Marco? Is prolonging this lame attempt at an ego-boost really worth the possibility of expulsion? Think of all the fun we could be having instead.”

“Fine!” Marco yelled. He stood up, but made no motion towards the papers. He did wonder if, after weeks in the Wash, and many more months of experience with dimensional scissors than Janna, perhaps he would be able to take those from her this time. He found out that, on the whole, he didn’t care. “Go ahead. Tell him.”

“What!?” Janna asked, shocked.

“Yes, Janna, just, tell him. Tell everyone if you want to,” Marco sighed. “Like you said, it would be the honorable thing to do. I shouldn’t have lied to come here in the first place.”

“So, does that mean you are coming back?” asked the girl, uncertain. She was giving him the strangest look, like he had turned into another person right before her eyes.

“No, I am staying here until the year is done,” Marco clarified. “I’ll go back next summer, and deal then with the consequences of my actions. If you are telling my parents too, please also tell them that I am very sorry about what I did.”

“Why!?” Janna spat in response, visibly frustrated. “Star has already moved on from Earth, why can’t you move on from Mewni?”

That hit hard. For a second, the squire wondered if she was right, after all. Did he really belong here? Or was he still just living his fantasies, albeit in a scaled down form, escaping Earth for Mewni the same way she was inviting him to escape across the multiverse with their scissors. He thought about Higgs, about how she had told him he was just an entitled brat playing squire. But, then again, that’s not how Sir Lavabo saw him, or Lady Jaya, or Nicholas, or Timore. Marco thought of them and decided that he wasn’t going to disappoint the people that did believe in him, just to appease those who didn’t.

“That’s not the same,” Marco pointed out. “I mean, my transfer papers might be a fake, but my job here is very real. I have a responsibility to deal with the consequences of that too. It’s not about living those fantasies of being a knight, or about going back to adventuring with Star. I have moved on from that. That’s the stuff that brought me here, sure, but now, well… I have stuff that I signed up to do, and I’m gonna see it through.”

Janna seemed, for once, at a loss for words.

“Whoa,” she exclaimed, eventually. “Marco, um, I think… this is the first time you ever stood up to me.”

There was a long moment of silence after that, as Marco just calmly sat back to finish the last few bites of his lunch. He didn’t exactly know how to take the girl’s comment. Janna herself only looked back and forth between him and the transfer papers, seemingly unsure of what to do as well.

She sighed, took the documents up with both hands, and ripped them in half. She kept shredding them into smaller and smaller pieces, while Marco looked on, somewhat surprised. Then she opened a portal, threw the pieces out, and closed the vortex behind them.

“Those do me no good if you are not coming back anyways,” she offered, by way of an explanation. “Well, fine, Marco, you win. Stay, if that’s what you really want. But if you are not letting me give you crap, then you better not let anyone else do that either, alright? Particularly not some dumb boring squires.”

As she said that, she took an envelope out of her lunch bag. Apparently, there was indeed no actual lunch in there. Marco recognized the stationery on it immediately: it was Star’s letter! No wonder he hadn’t found it in the mail today!

Janna threw the envelope at Marco. It was already opened.

“Hey!” the boy began to protest. But, by the time he looked up, the girl had cut open a full size portal and was halfway through it.

Marco was left alone, to yell at the rose bushes, if he so chose. He sighed once more. He and Janna had known each other since childhood but, to this day, he didn’t know what to make of her. On the plus side, his secret back in Echo Creek was safe, for now. Which meant that he would be able to come clean about that on his own time.

He walked up to the still open portal, and attempted to zip it away with his hand. Apparently Janna wasn’t bothering to close this one, probably because she knew he would do it for her. After all, Star had apparently told her about Hekapoo, and not even Janna would be reckless enough to want to provoke her like that. Would she?

The gesture didn’t work. Marco’s fingers went right through the portal. He tried again, and again, and again. Eventually, he realized he looked like an idiot swiping at the dimensional vortex like a cat pawing at a curtain. Maybe different scissors worked differently? Or, maybe, you could only close your own portals that way? That would make sense, actually. Otherwise, if anyone could just close a portal while you were going through it, that would be an unbelievably dangerous flaw. Now that he thought about it, maybe he ought to get someone to help him test that out with his own portals, just in case.

Still, there was another thing he could try: Marco took out his own scissors, carefully wedged the blades at the upper tip of the portal, and cut down. The offending vortex collapsed as he did that, closing with a satisfying ‘pop!’. So there was a danger of someone else closing your portals, then? But only if that person had dimensional scissors of their own? Well, if nothing else had come out of that strange visit, at least he had learned something new just now.

He sat back down, took out Star’s letter, and began to read. He didn’t have much time left for his lunch break, but, well, he could always take the quick way down.

Marco! You’ll NEVER believe what happened to me yesterday! I’m positive that once you read these words that I’m about to write, you’ll pass out from the shock! So as a disclaimer, please read this while sitting down or while standing next to a pile of dirty laundry. Don’t worry, I’ll wait. ……………………………………. Geez, Marco, calm down! It’s not really that amazing. Why do you have to take things so literally? Forget it, just stay where you are, seriously, you’ll be fine. I am sure you’ve wasted enough time looking for ‘the perfect spot’ as it is. So yesterday started out like any other day. My mom and I went to the Southern District and had a few homes left to rebuild. We’ve had supplies delivered to us from the Rich Pigeon kingdom, because for some reason wood is a very difficult element to produce with the wand (I mean, remember that tree I made for Baby? That took A LOT out of me!). I’ve also been helping the Mewni carpenters build everything from scratch, because I also stink at making stable structures with the wand (Hard Work: 1, Star: 0). Somehow it works when it’s my own room, but everything else… well, it’s not quite as bad as what happened to your room, back when I arrived on Earth. Remember that one? Yeah, um, sorry about that, again. But, well, let’s just say it never ends well. Or rather, it HADN’T been ending well. Then, out of the blue, Mom asked me to try making the next house out with magic. I was like, “Mama, you do not want to see that!” I was serious too, but she just chuckled and said I should have more faith in myself. All the villagers were looking at me and I was so worried I’d mess it all up. But, the unthinkable happened: it worked! I shouted ‘Cozy Home Creation Beam’ and aimed it at several stacks of wood, and a two story house manifested from it! Everyone looked so happy, Mom especially. And then, during dinner, she kept bragging about it to Dad and my aunts. It felt like the first time I did something right in her eyes. And, I don’t know, it felt nice to make a spell that actually helped people for a change. Don’t get me wrong, I love my spells, and they were great for self-defense for when I was on Earth, but after making so many spells that were made to destroy, it was neat to make something that could create for once. I think I might be onto something here. Of course, next time I make a house, I should probably make it without eyes and a tendency to burst into song. Old habits die hard, I guess. And don’t worry, I also really, really want to hang out with you one of these days too. Soon, I promise. Things are just really busy right now, today especially… and, well, tomorrow, and… ugh. But, well, what about your day, Marco? I feel like you don’t talk about the Wash enough in these letters. I hope it isn’t boring! At the very least I hope those mean squires aren’t giving you any more trouble! I know you told me not to get involved. And I am sure Mom would say the same. But, if you want me to narwhal someone, I’ll do it! Guess it’s kinda bad form to narwhal my own subjects, but, um… Anyways, you were saying that you felt it was better to take the high road, and be honorable. I guess you’re right. Is that really the kind of stuff you’ve been learning from Lavabo? I guess I never really gave him enough credit, if I am being honest, at least not until fairly recently. Growing up, he was always that strange man that did the laundry, not that doing laundry is bad, or unimportant, or… um, Marco, would you help me move my foot? I think it just got stuck in my mouth. Wait! OH SHOOT! There’s a portal in my room right now! DOUBLE SHOOT!! It’s Janna! WWWWHHHHHHAAAAAATTTT! And now she’s giving me a weird look because I’m still writing this instead of talking to her. Alright, I think I should stop before I offend her. Talk to you later Marco! Star Butterf…

The signature just ended there, in a long hasty scratch that dragged from the ‘f’ all the way to the edge of the page. Surely, it was at that moment that Janna had swiped the letter away from Star.

Well, that explained how the other girl knew so much about the squire’s job and his interactions with his peers. Marco shook his head, annoyed. Janna really got on his nerves sometimes, particularly with how she always treated his privacy like it was a joke.

On the other hand, Janna notwithstanding, Marco was quite happy to learn that Star was doing well. She was using her magic to help people in a non-martial capacity for once, and even getting some recognition from her mom, finally!

Moon and Star certainly had very different personalities, and the queen was someone who had the highest expectations for herself and others, which meant she was always quicker to put demands on the princess than to give out praise. Despite this, Moon cared deeply for her daughter, always had. Marco understood that, and he knew that his bestie did too. But, still, he sometimes felt the queen didn’t quite appreciate how amazing Star was.

Sure, she was a little hyper. What with all the instructions to sit down before reading the rest of the letter? And the blank space left accordingly? Well, joke was on her, of course, Marco was already sitting when he started reading the letter! Ha!

Eh. Right. Not the point.

The point was: Star was pretty darn unconventional, and that obviously clashed with prim and proper Queen Moon, but, at the same time, they both cared about their people, and they both had different ways of doing what ultimately was the right thing. Now that they were spending more time together, perhaps they’d realize that they really weren’t all that different to begin with, or at least Marco hoped they would.

Of course, that didn’t mean Marco didn’t miss having the chance to spend time with his bestie! He really, really hoped she was serious about her promise to hang out together sometime soon.

Well, in the meantime, he had his own job to do, and a heck of a mess to clean up after the whole incident with the garment goblins! Like he had told Janna, coming to Mewni, working under Lavabo, might have been the best thing that had happened to Marco since meeting Star, almost a year ago. Sure, it was hard, but, like Star’s own duties, it was making him a more responsible person.

Marco took out his dimensional scissors, cut a portal in the middle of the garden, and stepped back into the Wash.

“Ah, yes, Marco Diaz, welcome back,” he heard Sir Lavabo exclaim as he rushed pass him carrying a few sacks full of already clean clothes. “There has been, somewhat of a… change in plans.”

There was a clear note of concern in the old knight’s words. Not only that, but it seemed like almost a quarter of the morning’s disaster had already been cleaned up, without Marco’s involvement. Had he really spent that long with Janna?

“Um, Sir Lavabo, did I take too long for my lunch break?” he asked, apologetically. “I thought we were going to clean this mess together. I mean, it was my fault that…”

“Ah, yes, yes,” the knight confirmed Marco’s guilt. No, actually, that wasn’t it! Rather, he seemed to ignore the specifics of what his squire had just said, proceeding instead to explain his own actions. “I decided to forgo my own lunch break, and my dinner break, and perhaps half of tonight’s sleep if I must. Seeing as how I must now get all these clothes ready by myself.”

As Lavabo moved about erratically, the squire noticed Artax Ed sitting by the corner, munching on a cob of corn (or at least what was left of it). Clearly, the old knight was serious about skipping his lunch.

Did that mean Marco wasn’t actually needed down here, after all? His whole argument to Janna had banked on the fact that he wasn’t here on vacation, that Sir Lavabo actually needed him, that the Wash needed him. But, then again, the old knight had actually been running this place for years - decades, probably, now that Marco thought about it. Had he been overestimating how much he had been contributing? Still, he certainly expected he could be of some help, after spending almost an entire month learning the ropes.

“But, Sir Lavabo, I am here now,” Marco reasoned. “Surely it will all go faster if I assist you?”

“Oh, indeed it would, Marco Diaz,” the knight agreed, as he rushed to throw a wheelbarrow of shirts down washbucket sixty-seven. “That, however, will not be possible now.”

Wait! What? Was Lavabo saying he shouldn’t help? Was he… firing him? Had the knight perhaps decided, after either Janna’s stories or Marco’s own mistakes this morning, that he would be better off without a squire? Marco felt himself begin to hyperventilate.

“Sir Lavabo, I am really sorry about…” the human boy began. Only to be silenced by the impact of a bag full of clean laundry falling squarely in his reflexively raised arms.

“Marco Diaz, it’s I who am sorry, to ask this of you,” Sir Lavabo interrupted him. “I am afraid that the royal delivery mewman has apparently suffered an encounter with a dangerous deranged outlaw, while out on their last assignment. The man has now barricaded himself at home, and is indisposed to fulfill his duties. This means that all delivery services for the kingdom are, to put it bluntly, out of commission. Thus, it falls on the honor of the Order of the Wash to keep our vows, and deliver on our own all the home service orders due tonight!”

Wait, the Mewni delivery man was out of commission? Wait, there was a single delivery man, for all of Mewni!? That explained why the mail sometimes took so corndamn long around here!

“Normally, I’d just speed up the day’s work, close early, and then spend the evening handling all the deliveries myself,” the knight continued. “However, given the morning’s events, I am afraid that is impossible. In fact, it’s now possible that, for the first time in four decades, the Wash shall go into overtime. Thus, with my deepest regret, I must place that burden onto your young shoulders. It is already a grievous failing that today the closing time of the Wash may be violated, but we must not allow the deliveries to be delayed as well. Here is a list, then, with nearly all the deliveries due for the day, omitting only those few that absolutely require my personal attention. Squire Diaz, the Order of the Wash looks upon you, may it do so with favor!”

He then threw the delivery list in Marco’s general direction, and without saying another word, returned to his knightly obligations.

Marco felt then, at the same time, a deep rousing pride, and the crushing weight of a sacred duty.