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

Disclaimer: This chapter happens after Chapter 21, not our Christmas special. Just putting that out there so no one gets confused.

Chapter Text

'Look where your fucking optimism got us, Diaz, ’ Kar thought.

Marco ignored Kar as he made his way through the warzone that was once his living room. He was trying to find a chair under all the rubble, like everyone else.

‘Well, I didn’t expect them to open fire before we could even explain ourselves…’ Marco thought. He noticed a knocked-over bar stool next to pieces of shattered window. His mom was sweeping the pieces into a dustpan.

'Marco, have we ever introduced me without someone trying to kill us?’

‘Yes. Last night. With Jackie and Star. That’s kind of why I was optimistic.’

Marco looked over and saw that Star’s parents had already found two seats and were quietly waiting. Queen Moon kept trying to sneak some stares at Kar without being noticed, while King River rocked on his chair back and forth like an impatient child.

'We’re lucky Star was there to stop them. We wouldn’t have stood a chance in our younger bodies. They were seriously going to kill me.'

'I know… ’ Marco looked away from the various wounds on Kar’s body. He felt stupid for thinking the ‘nonchalantly introducing my demon arm’ method would work. If anything, it only made him look possessed. King River shoving his hand in Marco’s mouth during their confrontation made a little more sense now that he thought about it.

Queen Moon turned towards Marco’s parents and broke the awkward silence that was dominating the room. “I’m... terribly sorry about the mess. I’ll make sure to send some servants to clean it up once we get back to Mewni. You don’t need to trouble yourselves.”

“O-oh, it’s no problem,” Marco’s dad said, picking up a picture frame. “This is nothing too unusual. It’s not like this is the first time the living room has been destroyed.” He chuckled.

Queen Moon gave Star a look, who quickly turned away to clean up more debris. Marco did remember the numerous times her spells caused collateral damage to his home. Hell, just a few nights ago the damn place was on fire, but that was more Tom’s fault than anything.

“Although we will take you up on that offer,” Marco’s mom said. “I guess once the broken glass is put away, we can stop cleaning and sit down to talk about Marco’s problem like adults.” She winked at her son. Hah.

King River got up from his chair. “Well, in that case, I’m gonna head to the kitchen for a quick breakfast before we start. I’m positively famished after that grueling journey.” He walked to the other side the living room, stepping on broken shards of glass as if trying to avoid them took too much effort. The Queen held her head in embarrassment.

Marco groaned. ‘ I can’t believe it. One minute they try to kill us and the next they act like nothing happened. They’re not even helping to clean this up, just offering to let someone else do the work for them. And then they take our food without asking. ’

'Did you expect anything more from royalty?' Kar stretched himself across the room and picked up a vase and placed it gently on the mantle.

Marco saw Star helping his dad with the garbage bags. ‘ I guess I expected more from her folks. My parents must have rubbed off on Star a little. Her dad has the mind of a savage and her Mom’s just another pampered royal. She’s nothing like them.’

'I wouldn’t say that. Moon’s been watching me since the fight, and she might be sitting down, but she’s ready to hop right back in and kill me. She’s just waiting for the moment I reveal my true nature and attempt to bite your head off, which I honestly wouldn't mind doing right now. I always wondered if there was a brain in there.'

Marco sighed. 'I get it. I should have taken Star’s concern over her parents more seriously, and I put you in danger because of my recklessness. I’m sorry.’

'Hmph. Whatever. I’m going back inside.'

“Wait! You’re leaving me here? Just like that?” Everyone in the room looked over at Marco.

Kar grinned at him. “Yeah. I’m taking a nap. Enjoy your awkward conversion. I know you’ll mess it up.” Kar’s body started to shrink. “I believe in you,” he said, and the purple of his body faded away completely as Marco’s right arm returned to normal.

Okay, so not exactly normal. Pain shot up through Marco’s arm. The wounds Kar took were Marco’s now, and the pain from those wounds had transferred over to him as well. Fantastic.

“Marco! Are you okay?” Star asked.

“Yeah,” Marco gripped his arm. “Don’t worry about it. Kar does this to me every time I drag him into an unnecessary battle. I kinda deserve it.” Marco tried examining his wounds, but since his suit’s right sleeve was tailor-made for Kar’s large body, it was too big and getting in the way.

Star took out her wand. “Do you want me to readjust the suit?”

“Nah. Suits aren’t very comfortable anyway. I’ll just go shirtless.” Marco removed his suit jacket and unbuttoned the shirt underneath. Or what was left of it. Then he wrapped the shirt tight around his wounded arm, in case it started to bleed.

Star gasped and whispered into Marco’s ear, “What are you doing? You can’t go up to my mom half-naked like that!”

Marco whispered, “Star, your dad’s wearing nothing but a loincloth.”

Her jaw snapped shut. Yeah, Star wasn't going to win this argument. Plus, Marco preferred being shirtless. It didn’t take him long in Heckapoo's dimension to realize just how inconvenient those damn hoodies were.

“Is your arm going to be alright?” his dad asked. “King River did bite pretty hard on Kar’Margorach. It might be infected.”

“Don’t worry about it.” Marco turned to his parents. “Remember what Dr. Singer said? Kar can take care of anything bad in my arm. The only thing we need to do is let it heal naturally.”

“Wait…” Queen Moon frowned. “Exactly how long have you had that thing? Have you been keeping it around as a pet?”

“Excuse me? Kar isn’t a pet,” Marco said.

“I’m sorry,” Moon said unapologetically. “What would you prefer I call it? A misfired spell?”

‘I wouldn’t say it was a misfire,' Kar thought. ‘That spell did exactly what it was supposed to do.’

‘I thought you were taking a nap.’ Marco thought.

‘Yeah, there was no way I was gonna miss this trainwreck in slow motion. I just didn’t wanna be in the spotlight.’

Marco frowned. ‘Whatever, chicken-shit.’

Marco turned back to Moon “I’d prefer you call him by his name,”

“I fail to see why you named a contamination like that.”

“He named himself , and he isn’t a mistake or a disease. He is a sentient and offended person who’s saved my life more times than I can count.”

‘I’m not offended. She hasn’t said anything I haven’t heard before.’

‘Shut up, I’m making a point.’

“Yeah, Marco and Kar are partners in crime!” Star said.

Instead of actually responding to them, Moon turned to Star and said, “Star, why didn’t you come straight to me when this happened? You were so ashamed of getting a spell wrong that you went to an Earth doctor to fix it instead of me?”

“Actually, we went to the doctor because Marco passed out,” Marco’s mom said. “He happened to find out about Kar’Margorach after some tests he ran.”

“Also, if I’m remembering correctly-” and if Kar wasn’t talking out his ass- “Star didn’t mess any spell up. She just casted the wrong spell.”

“What is that supposed to mean?” Moon asked.

“I’m just saying Star cast the spell exactly the way she was supposed to, it was just explained terribly in the book.”

“Is this true, Star?” Moon said.

“Yeah, Marco broke his arm and I was looking for a spell to heal it, and the spell did fix it, but it also gave him Kar’Mariachi.”

“I highly doubt something like that would be in the Book of Spells,” Moon said. “You most likely pronounced it wrong.” Wow, she really was trying to prove that her daughter was a fuck-up.

“Actually, that spell was there,” Star said. “It had really misleading wording, and it just had the bad side effects in teenie tiny text. I followed it word-for-word though, I swear.”

“That’s impossible,” Moon said, like Star hadn’t said anything of worth. “That spell clearly has demonic origins. Why would it be in the book?”

“Wasn’t that book written by generations of moody teenagers?” Marco said. “Who hasn’t dabbled in dark magic in their youth?” Hell, even up into his late twenties he’d made more than a few demonic slip-ups, and he wasn’t given some all-powerful wand as soon as he hit puberty.

Moon looked like she had a response, but it got caught in her throat.

“Marco has a point, Mom,” Star said. “I mean, there are some really sketchy spells in that book. Is a demon curse that farfetched? What if one of the past queens dated a Lucitor like I did?”

Moon glared at Star, who flinched in response. “The only 'sketchy’ spells would be the ones in the forbidden chapter. Nowhere else.”

What?

“Wait, wait, wait, wait,” Marco said, trying to wrap his head around such a ridiculous concept. “You’re telling me that there’s a 'forbidden chapter’ in that book, which I assuming contains really dangerous magic, and you left it on the lap of a curious teenage girl?”

Moon’s eye twitched. Marco was bringing up good points, but she still looked at him like a child who didn’t know better.

She was more condescending than Singer.

“I don’t see how this any of this your business, Marco, but that particular chapter is sealed with powerful magic. Glossaryck is the only being who can unlock those pages.”

“Oh, well, I guess it’s a good thing that both Glossaryck and the book were stolen by the same person. I’m sure that will end well. Great security measure,” Marco said.

‘Tone it down, Marco.’

‘Make me.’

Moon got up from her chair, and opened her mouth to reply, but then River walked in with a tall pile of meat on a silver plate and interrupted her.

“Alright everyone! I brought breakfast! Who wants some!”

“Me!” Marco’s dad said, probably desperate to change the subject. River threw him a gigantic drumstick. He caught it, but it knocked him onto his ass.

“Where did you get that from?” Marco’s mom asked. “I don’t think there’s even enough room in our fridge for all that.”

“Oh! I just popped over to our kitchen and picked it up!” River said, tossing another drumstick to her. She squeaked and dodged it. “Oh yes, that reminds me. Marco! Catch!”

River held up Marco’s scissors and threw them at him. He caught them and put them into his pocket. He had forgotten Star gave them to River while he‘d been unconscious.

“What was that?“ Moon said, looking between River and Marco.

Completely ignoring her question, River said, “I see your arm is back to normal. Shame. It was right fun tasseling with that freaky monster thing!”

“Am I a freak?” Katriena asked. In the darkness, he could see her beady eyes looking up at Marco, or at least most of them.

Marco didn’t know how to tell her that, to the rest of the world, she was.

“Hey, am I a freak?” Kar asked. He wrapped around her, and wiggled under her top left leg. She burst into giggles and tried to get away from him by running around Marco’s legs.

“Nooooo, stooop!” she said between her laughs. Kar pulled back and smiled down at her.

"If I’m not a freak, you’re definitely not a freak."

Katriena looked down at the ground and frowned. “But, the arrow man called me a freak…”

“The arrow men call everyone a freak. Don’t let it bother you,” Marco said. “Once we get out of here, they won’t even be there to call you anything.”

“Okay!” The legs on her head twitched in excitement. “When are we going?”

They still had three more targets...

"We’ll be out of here soon, Spider Child. And then we can-“

...

“What in the world was that?” River said, ripping a chunk of meat off a rack of ribs.

Marco blinked a few times and looked around the room. Star was slowly lowering her wand, and everyone else was watching him with wide eyes.

“Uh, sorry about that,” Marco said.

‘Damn, once we get the ones I like, we can’t actually finish them,’ Kar thought.

‘I don’t think you actually wanted to see the end of that one, Kar.’

'Yeah… you’re right.'

“See, this is the spell I need your help with, not Kar,” Star said.

“What even is this?” Moon asked.

“Flashbacks,” Marco said. River’s eyes went wide, but Moon just raised her eyebrows slightly.

“Really?” she said.

“Yeah, Star wanted to help me remember Earth’s culture after I beat Heckapoo’s quest, but her spell went a little overboard.”

Moon frowned. “What kind of story is that?”

Marco blinked. “Well, I was thinking of putting a ‘once upon a time’ in there, but it didn’t really fit,” he said, probably a little too hostile.

“No, I mean you should tell the truth. If we’re going to fix the spell, I have to know everything and how it actually happened,” Moon said.

Marco’s eye twitched. “Are you insinuating that I’m lying to you?”

“Heckapoo doesn’t offer quests to humans. Next time you want to put yourself on a pedestal, I suggest doing some research first.”

Marco was so going to punch that cocky smile off her dainty little queen face.

‘Don’t do it, Marco. She-’

‘I don’t care who she is.’

“With all due respect , Moon,” Marco said, spitting out the word ‘respect’, “Heckapoo offers quests to whoever the fuck she wants, and one of those people happened to be me.”

“You can’t possibly be serious. Am I supposed to believe a mere child-”

“Mom!” Star said. “He’s telling the truth.”

“Star, not you too. You can’t believe everything people tell you.”

“He isn’t lying, Queen Moon,” Marco’s dad said. “He really went through that quest thing.”

“We can tell that our own son grew up,” his mom said. “You may not have spoken to Marco much before, but you have to admit how different he is now.”

“I sincerely doubt this boy could come even close to finishing a Heckapoo Quest without dying. Great warriors take on the quest only when their bodies are at peak physique, well into their twenties, and most of them still don’t make it.”

“I didn’t say it was easy!” Marco said.

“What would even possess Marco to take on such a task? Star found a pair of scissors, he could just use those,” Moon said, to all the people backing Marco up, and not to Marco himself.

“Those scissors I had weren’t mine. They were stolen, Mom,” Star said. “I mean, I didn’t know that at the time, but that’s why Heckapoo went up to Marco when he borrowed them. He did that whole quest to get a new pair for me.”

River clasped his hands together. “Awe! How adorable! Reminds me of when I was a kid!”

“It’s my fault Marco went on the quest,” Star said.

“No, it’s not,” Marco said. “I chose to go on the quest. I wanted to prove myself, I wanted to beat her at her own game. And I succeeded.”

Moon didn’t say anything, but looked wholly unconvinced.

“Mom! He has a new pair of scissors now, see?” Star said, reaching into Marco’s pocket with the grace of a handless pickpocket and pulling out the scissors to show her mom.

“Star, there are countless counterfeits in the Mewni Black Market-”

“Counterfeit?” Marco said, standing and clenching his fists. “You think I went to a shady underground market and bought a piece of shit pair of scissors just so I could impress Star?”

“It’s not a very uncommon event,” Moon said, not even reacting to Marco’s anger. “I wouldn’t be surprised if Star’s pair was hidden in his room right now.”

Marco’s parents gasped and a speechless silence fell across the room.

“Yeah, you know, I think you’re right,” Marco said bitterly. “I definitely just made the whole thing up. I made up the quest, I made up the deaths, I made up the mistakes, the whole thing!”

“Marco-”

“I never actually went through any of it! It was all just a bad dream! I wanted some sympathy so I made up holding my fiance in my arms as she bled out onto a cold stone floor! I wanted some pride, so I made up fighting to save starving families from bandits and murderers! I wanted some intrigue, so I made up going back over and over and over again , losing more of myself each time, trying to stop millions of deaths! I wanted to impress Star, so I made up the grueling pain I went through, the whole lifetime I spent, trying to get those stupid counterfeit scissors!”

Marco snatched the scissors from Star’s hand.

‘Marco, what the fuck-’

“Look at these lies!” Marco said, before cutting through the air beneath him and falling through to another dimension.

Marco fell onto a hard ground, and the portal closed above him. He took a moment to dust himself off and look around at the barren plateau. He’d wanted to get the hell away from everyone, and the scissors definitely listened. A purple ocean splashed against the sides of the plateau and a couple of birds flew ahead that looked like they were made of glass.

And then a fist collided with Marco’s face and knocked him back to the ground.

Marco’s fist.

“What the fuck, Kar!”

“No, what the fuck, you!” Kar said, reforming to his full stature. “That was the worst first impression you could have given!”

“What, did you want me to suck up and let her walk all over me?” Marco said.

“Yes!” Kar said, loud enough that it echoed across the ocean. “We can’t go the rest of our life worried about passing out randomly! She was going to fix us!”

Kar wrapped around Marco’s leg and started squeezing. Hard. Marco started punching Kar with his free hand.

“But no ! Your constant need to be validated got in the way yet again and we’re back at square one!”

“Fuck you, Kar!” Marco punched at one of the almost-healed bite wounds on Kar’s side, and he hissed in pain. “Do you know how humiliating it is to be treated like a goddamn kid all the time?”

“Do you know what it’s like to be treated like a disease? A scourge on humanity?” There was a crack from where Kar was wrapped around his leg. “I always have to take it in strides but as soon as your precious pride is on the line, it’s all hands on deck!”

Marco bit down on one of the wounds River had left and Kar let go, yelping in pain.

“I get that you want them to respect you, but you have to fucking chill!” Kar said, falling to the side in defeat.

Marco laid his head back against the ground and groaned.

Then, he punched the ground with his free hand.

“Ugh, I’m such a fucking idiot!”

“You said it, not me.”

They both laughed a little.

“You really gotta control your temper, dude.”

“Yeah, I’m kind of an egomaniac. Sorry.”

“I mean, besides that, you’re practically perfect, so…”

“Ha, funny,” Marco said, looking up at the orange-tinted sky. “God, I fucked up bad.”

“Yeah, you did. You wanna go back and apologise?”

“No,” Marco said. “I mean, yes, but not yet. I’ll just get pissed again. I need a break.”

“Well we can’t stay here. If we pass out, who knows what creature will come and eat us. We’re pretty vulnerable without Star there to wake us up.”

Marco smiled. “I have an idea,” he said, before getting up and opening a portal with the scissors.

They stepped through into the busy streets of Echo Creek.

A car screeched to a halt. Everyone turned to face Marco, the shirtless kid with a giant purple tentacle arm, and stared.

“Well, this oughta be interesting.”