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

Chapter Text

Marco flipped a body over and pulled the scraps it had been protecting into his satchel. There wasn’t much on this one, just some tattered clothes and shoes. Actually, now that he looked at it, the shoes still had soles this time! It was a nice catch.

“I-is it really okay to be doing that?” a man with a few extra eyeballs said.

“You must be new,” Kar said, rummaging through another corpse. The trampling had left a good four or five today.

“I’ve been here a few days, actually,” the man said, not taking most of his eyes off the corpse.

“Oh, it’s a miracle you’ve survived this long, then,” Marco said nonchalantly.

The man seemed timid and lost. It wasn’t an odd sight, but it was usually the mark of the kind of people who got trampled at meal time and murdered for the little meat they had on their bones.

Speaking of which, Marco had to finish his looting before the Carvals came. He really didn’t want to deal with them today.

“So, um,” the man said, “you seem pretty not-psycho.” That was a loose definition, considering Marco was digging through a pile of corpses while not batting an eye. “C-could I ask you something?”

“I guess,” Marco said. Oh, shit, another body with a sharpened stone! Marco smiled. He needed another knife to cook with. He couldn’t just use his stabbing knife. A man of culture always separated the two. “If you’re asking for a bodyguard, though, I’ll have to decline.” He had too many people to look after as it was.

“It's a gold mine out here,” Kar mumbled to himself.

Ignoring Kar, the man continued. “What’s with the weird walled-off area in the middle of the courtyard?”

“I heard some crazy guy lives in there,” another man, who had begun looting beside them, said. Marco spared a glance and noticed the bear claws the man had. Oh, he had seen him help a child several weeks ago. It was nice to see he was still alive. The kid probably wasn’t, but...

“Well, almost everyone is crazy here. What makes him so special?” The multi-eyed man asked.

“No, I didn’t hear he was crazy, just crazy strong!” yet another prisoner said through his large tusks. “Word is that at the darkest hour, the wall opens for him and he comes out, lurking in the shadows, and steals the newest prisoners to eat for the day.”

The new guy shivered. “R-really?”

“Yeah, you’re probably next,” Kar said.

Marco eyed Kar and then looked back at the others. “I’ve heard he doesn’t even wait till night. He just appears, takes what he wants, and then disappears.”

“I’ve heard he takes people like that too!” one of the looters said. “Someone I know once saw someone stare at the wall too long, and they just vanished, taken by the monster inside.”

The newbie glanced back at the stone walls and swallowed uncomfortably.

Marco looked down at the corpses. They had nothing left of value to him. “What’s your name?” Marco asked.

“Withinos of Meligram,” the man said. Marco frowned. Meligram. That was a good distance away. He was probably just visiting Mirria and got hit with the worst luck in the world.

“Marco. Nice to meet you,” Marco said.

The man smiled. “Yes, you too.”

Marco stood up and stretched. “Kar, let’s go.”

Kar made an annoyed grumble and returned to Marco’s arm.

His current audience gasped and watched as he bent his fingers into a well-practiced position.

And then, with the quick recitement of the correct words, he felt the barrier wash over him and, to them, he vanished.

He basked in the gasps of horror and panic that arose behind him as he walked back to his home. He walked through the three feet of solid stone that his personal walled fortress consisted of and then let his barrier down.

He stepped across the soft dirt and, before stepping inside, took the the time to examine the inner wall. Partly to look for any large cracks, but mostly to admire his handiwork.

The wall was about twenty feet high, and Marco had spent a large chunk of last week painting a mural, covering every last inch of space. Finding the materials to create paint was a pain in the ass, and Marco was no artist, but he still took great pride in it.

It depicted the most he could remember from his old neighborhood. The green grass, the blue sky, the single sun shining on it all, and dozens of tiny houses on the hills. Marco was surprised at the small details he managed to remember, even after all these years.

Of course, he gave the excuse that painting the walls would help calm Katriena, to help her ignore the fact that they were still in a prison, but he felt like he needed this just as much as she did.

Kar materialized from his arm. “God this whole thing is hideous and amateur. If I had eyes, I'd gouge them,” he said.

“Alright, I can take a hint. Let's go inside.” Marco made his way towards the lone house inside the wall, made of scraps, stone, and trash. Home sweet home.

Marco went in through the door and placed his satchel on a table. He would be quiet, since it was before dawn and everyone was most likely asleep. Slowly, he pulled the food he’d found and separated it from the other scraps and supplies. It would be enough to feed Katriena for the day, and that was enough. If it came down to it, he could go to the next meal drop for himself and Kar.

“Marco?” a tired voice said. Marco turned around and smiled.

“Good morning, Katriena,” he said.

“Good morning, Marco,” she said with a small smile.

“Spider Child! How did you sleep?” Kar said, wrapping around her and squeezing her in a hug.

The child screamed as she tried to escape the creature’s grasp. The tiny legs on her head instinctually poked at his skin to stop, which was always cute. “Kaaaaaaaaarrrrrrr! You’re too slimy! I’ll have to take another bath again!”

“Ha! That’s a sacrifice I am willing to take!” Kar said gleefully.

“That’s not how that works!” Katriena protested.

Marco laughed. “She does have a point, Kar. We only have so much water in here. That well will eventually dry up if we don’t conserve it.”

“Stop acting like moving the house would be anything resembling a challenge.” Kar huffed. “And you humans put too much stake in nebulous concepts like ‘cleanliness’. Your ancestors used to do everything naked for crying out loud!”

Marco sighed. “Kar, we couldn’t just move a few feet over and make a new well. That’s not how wells work.”

Katriena rubbed one of her fangs in confusion. “Um, what’s a human?”

Oh, right. “It’s kinda the same as a ruman. Where I’m from, everyone is a human, but over here, you’re all ruman.”

“If they’re the same, then why are they called different things?” Katriena seemed genuinely perplexed by this.

Marco was gonna hand wave the question, since he didn’t want to go into explaining the concept of different dimensions to her, but it got him wondering, was there a difference between humans and rumans?

The people outside weren’t a good point of reference, but he had seen Allion’s naked body plenty of times, and had shot curious glances at his Zonst comrades as they disrobed from their blood-soaked clothes for the day. Marco was no expert in biology, but there wasn’t anything different in body structure that he could see. The men had men parts, and the girls (well, at least the one) had girl parts, and they could all pass as humans.

And what about Star? She was mewman, and was definitely different from everyone else. She had wings and glowing cheek marks, was crazy strong, and went through a abridged version of puberty known as mewberty, that temporarily turned her into a monster. But were those average mewman traits, or just the result of overexposure to magic? Marco racked his brain to see if Star ever told him these details, but he ended up with nothing.

Could a human and a ruman make a baby together? What about a mewman with either of the two? Were they all incompatible, or, somehow, were they all the same species to begin with and were only separated by the names their ancestors assigned them when they decided to label everything?

“Marco?” Katriena said.

Kar flicked Marco’s forehead.

“Ow! Kar, I was thinking!” Marco said.

“Strange, I didn’t see any smoke coming out your ears,” Heckapoo said, coming out into the kitchen.

Marco was about come up with a *fantastic* comeback, but Katriena laughed and said, “I asked Marco about the difference between Humans and Rumans and he spaced out.”

“Ah, I see,” Heckapoo said with a smile. “Not much difference, huh?”

“Well, probably not? I haven’t found a difference yet,” Marco said. “They’re pretty much the same…”

Marco frowned. Wait...

All of a sudden, his brain was going at a million miles an hour. Was there actually a way to save these people?

“There’s the smoke,” Heckapoo said.

Ignoring her, Marco said, “Katriena, why don’t you go play in the bedroom for a few minutes. We have boring adult things to talk about.”

Katriena frowned. “Do I have to? All the toys in there have already disappeared.”

Marco knelt down. “I promise I’ll make you something new when we’re done here. Why don’t you go back to practicing your Riradesh. I really like the stories you've been writing, but you keep ending them on cliffhangers.”

“That’s because she’s a child and has the patience of a feral hydra, Marco.” Kar said.

“We’ll be quick,” Marco added.

Katriena huffed. “Super quick?”

“Super duper quick. I promise.”

Katriena sighed and walked to the makeshift door. “Okay, but Kar has to play with me afterward.”

“Sure, I’m up for that.”

Katriena smiled and closed the door behind her.

There was a short moment of silence, and then Heckapoo said, “Okay, what’s up?”

Marco turned to Heckapoo. “I need to know. Is there an actual difference between me and rumans?”

“Wow, you’re really curious about this, huh? Shouldn’t you have been thinking this stuff, say, about a decade ago? When you first started the quest?”

“I was a dumb teenager back then who was fixated with the idea of beating a sorceress at her own game. But now I’m a dumb adult, and am finally starting to see the bigger picture with these multiple dimensions. Plus, it didn’t really matter at all back then. I just saw everyone as my fellow comrades and enemies respectively.”

“So why does it matter now?” she asked. “What, suddenly you need to know because the five year old asked?”

“She’s seven, and no, it’s not just because of that,” Marco said. “But you still didn’t answer my question. Are there any differences?”

Heckapoo stared him down in annoyance, before sighing to herself. “Fine, I’ll admit it. I’m not sure what makes you different from rumans.”

“What!? But aren’t you like, trillions of years old!?”

“Actually, I’m nine years old, you moron. You have to remember that I’m not ‘the’ Heckapoo, I’m a clone.”

“A clone of an all-knowing demi-god...” Marco added.

“Ha! That’s rich! When you become as well-traveled as her, the first thing you realize is that you don’t really know anything, let alone everything. Even with an eternity to experience all facets of life, and the option of multiplying that experience tenfold by living through clones, you’ll never have the time to study it all in a meaningful way. There’s simply too much of it. The most you can do is quickly determine if it’s a danger or not, and then go from there.”

Huh. Marco wondered if this was how the real Heckapoo viewed it. It was either that or just another outside perspective he was being fed. He supposed, though, that even being alive for that long didn’t mean you knew absolutely everything. A dumbass was still a dumbass no matter how long they’d been a dumbass.

Heckapoo continued. “Though if I had to make an educated guess, maybe you’re all like dogs, you know? Dogs have all sorts of different breeds, and the differences usually depend on the environment that breed was raised in. So, there are most definitely differences, but they’re probably really subtle.”

“What the fuck is a dog?” Kar asked.

“Oh. Right. I forgot they went extinct in this dimension a long-ass time ago. And you were only ever conscious on Earth for a few days, Kar?” Hekapoo asked.

“Yeah, Marco and Star did not care for my presence, which to be fair, was slightly justified with the whole ‘wanting to eat everyone’ thing…”

“You’ve seen dogs before, Kar,” Marco said. “I had an entire litter of them. You tried to strangle them before you could talk, but because they were magic, they didn’t have much trouble defending themselves.”

“Ah, so that’s what that was,” Kar said. “Wait, why are we even having this conversation!?”

“Good question. What *are* we even talking about?” Heckapoo asked.

Marco looked at Heckapoo in the eyes. “Okay, this may sound crazy and far-fetched, but just hear me out.”

“Oh this will be good.” That honestly made Marco more worried with how they’d take this, but here goes nothing.

“We’ve been in this prison for months now. We obviously all came here with different intentions. You came here to hide from us, Heckapoo, and I came here to extinguish your flame because it was the quickest way to contact the real Heckapoo, and Kar here just wanted easy food in the form of scummy murderers no one would miss. But here we are now, living as a makeshift family and operating as a single unit, all because of one unifying cause.”

“Spider Child…”

“Yeah, Katriena. We’ve been doing everything we can for her, but this isn’t the type of environment a child should be living in.” Marco said.

“This is better than being dead,” Heckapoo said bluntly. “When you compare her position to the fates of every other child that was thrown into this prison, I’d say she won the lottery. She gets fed, gets to play with Kar, wears clean clothes, and is even getting an education from us.”

“But what good is an education here? And yeah, she gets plenty of activity, but in a stuffy house that she isn’t allowed to leave for fear of getting shot at. She’s no different than a caged animal.”

Heckapoo sighed. “We’ve talked about this, Marco. Escaping wouldn’t be impossible, but she’d have nowhere to go.”

“And like hell we’re going to risk trying to bust out of here,” Kar said. “The people on top probably aren’t too happy about the wall we built. They have dozens of eyes on us to make sure we don’t try anything. There’s too much potential danger with her being in such a spotlight.”

“It’ll be fine, Kar, but more to the point,” Marco continued, ignoring his concern. “There’s nowhere in this dimension that’s safe enough for Katriena, which is why we need to expand our options. And do that, we’ll need a pair of dimensional scissors.”

“Scissors?” Heckapoo said, stepping away from Marco, as if out of instinct.

“The quest is still technically going. If we can find the real Heckapoo and blow out her flame, we can use the scissors I earned to get everyone out of Ennio.”

“And where do you suppose we bring hundreds of mutated freaks?” Kar asked.

“Well… how about we take them to Star?” Marco suggested.

“Star?” Heckapoo said. “What does she have to do with this?”

“Her wand’s the most powerful magic artifact in existence. If there’s something that can cure them, it’s that.”

“Star’s not even that good at magic, Marco,” Heckapoo said. “You of all people should know that.”

Marco raised an eyebrow at her. “And last I saw her, I wasn’t really good at anything . It’s been nine years, Heckapoo. I’m sure she’s practically a master of magic by now.”

Heckapoo made an odd face, and seemed to consider something.

“So, assuming Star can bring these people back to normal, they could live out the rest of their lives on Mewni or Earth, and if they really are just like humans, it wouldn’t be that big of a deal. Just regular old refugees.”

“So, what, we’re gonna take all the psychos in Ennio and dump them in other dimension?”

“Well not the crazy ones, obviously,” Marco said.

Heckapoo scoffed. “And how will you determine a person’s level of saneness, Doctor Diaz?”

“I have the Truth Ritual. It’ll basically let me look into anyone’s heart. We can separate the good from the bad using that.”

“And you’re on the moral high ground to determine who’s good and who’s evil amongst them? No offense, Marco but you aren’t exactly an angel.”

“Hey! Come on now, don’t paint me like that. I’ve only ever killed people in self-defense.” Okay, there were also the magic users he had murdered while under the Elesh Court's mind control, but no one could really fault him for that!

“Self defense?” Kar said. “Yeah, so have they. Plenty of people within these walls have killed for the sake of self-preservation, and none of them will admit that it was their fault. The truth ritual will only reveal what they think of themselves deep down. Most crazy people don’t actually think they’re crazy. They will just think that they did what they had to in order to survive. Even the rapists and cannibals could just hand-wave their actions off as beastly urges due to their new physiology, and for all we know they could be right. There are too many variables with going about it this way.”

“Not to mention, how are we going to shove dozens of these people through dimensional portals without the guards on top noticing? Or the ‘crazy’ ones who will be pissed that they’re not allowed to leave with them. There would be chaos and bloodshed everywhere.” Heckapoo added.

“Well, damn. Screw me for trying to come up with a solution, I suppose. Maybe it is a bad idea, but it seemed a hell of a lot more productive than just waiting here!” Marco wanted to punch the wall, but he stopped himself for fear of alerting Katriena in the other room, though at this point she was probably eavesdropping on them anyway. It wasn’t like these flimsy walls were soundproof.

There was a long bout of silence where no one said anything. The only thing that could be heard was the ambiance from outside. The muffled sounds of people shanking each other for the last bits of food for the morning, that is.

Heckapoo walked up to Marco and Kar. “This isn’t just about Katriena, right?”

“No,” Marco said, with a pang of guilt in his stomach, or rather what was left of his stomach.

“It’s pretty obvious. He went from ‘let’s save Katriena’ to ‘let’s liberate the entire fucking monster prison’ in a matter of seconds.”

“Yeah, I guess I'm pretty transparent.” Marco looked down. “I’m sorry for using her like that, guys. It’s just... every day I have to walk out of this house and see all the lives that I ruined. Mirria was once the most advanced civilization in this dimension, and now it’s been reduced to a giant pit, and the unlucky survivors get to spend the rest of their lives deformed and detained in this hellhole.”

Marco felt Heckapoo’s hand on his shoulder. “You saved these people, dude. They were gonna die anyway once they were caught in the blast radius, but you were able to counter the pure annihilation that would have ended them. Like, yeah, I know it still sucks, but you prevented a lot of collateral damage. This whole dimension would be void of life if you two didn’t intervene.”

He had heard her say those exact words countless times, but they still failed to comfort him. There had to have been another alternative. Why didn’t he keep going back to try again? Why was he so content with that first solution? Marco pondered these questions for months now, but he already knew the answer.

It was because that every time he went back, he lost a part of himself. It was a crazy gamble just doing it one time, but Marco, so desperate to stop the impending doom, repeated those enchanted words more times than any other soul had.

He chanced his life every time, and the first time he made any headway, he lost the will to gamble it all again. The first time that not everyone died, the first time he stopped Galdos in any capacity, he just kept that timeline. He didn’t want to risk losing the little progress he’d made, but also, he didn’t want to die for nothing. A part of him still wanted to complete this quest and go back home. He missed everyone. It was selfish... or maybe it was just self-preservation.

But that was at the risk of all of these people. The people who became monstrous creatures, the people trampled to death in a vain attempt to protect their children, the people separated from their homes and families just because they’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time, the people who had to turn to cannibalism to survive, the people unwilling to and starving when they didn’t have the strength to get to the food crate, the children whose parents were killed in front of them and had to live with a broken family in a house made of trash…

“Marco are you okay?”

Marco sucked in an uneven breath. There were hundreds of people in the prison. What would they do if they knew it was his fault? It was his fault that their lives were destroyed, that they were in hell.

“Marco, breathe.”

He tried to suck another breath in, but it got stuck in his throat. It was like the air itself blamed him for the millions of deaths he could’ve prevented, if he’d just had the balls to go another round. It was choking him on purpose, as retribution for the sins he’d committed.

“Marco, calm down, you’re freaking out Spider Child.”

Spider Child. Katriena was living in a beyond-shitty home with a trio of strangers who kidnapped her. She should already be freaked out by that. Hell, she should be freaked out just for looking in the mirror. She was probably a really pretty girl back in Mirria, and Marco destroyed her face.

Would she forgive him? If she knew what he was responsible for?

He felt a pair of tiny little arms wrap around his neck, and coarse fur rub against his face.

It pulled him out of his own head, for just a moment.

It grounded him.

Katriena was hugging him with all her might. He felt her hair sticking to his face, where a stream of tears had fallen in his haze.

“Marco, it’s okay to be sad, but you should feel better soon so we can play,” Katriena said, nuzzling her face into his shoulder.

Before he could respond, something wrapped around his torso and started constricting him.

Kar was hugging him. Or, at least, it was an attempt at a hug.

All of the feelings that had rocketed through his head, all the emotions he’d been holding in, they all just burst out in fit of sobs and tears.

And they just kept hugging him, not moving other than to slowly rub his back.

Then, eventually, his cries died down into quiet breaths, and while he felt exhausted and completely spent of all his energy, he simultaneously felt a million times better.

“Thank you,” Marco rasped, his voice cracking from the strain of all that crying.

“Don’t expect me to ever do it again,” Kar said. “But… you’re welcome, I guess.”

Katriena smiled wide. “Yay! Marco’s better!”

“Thank you, Katriena,” Marco said.

Everything in his being wanted to explain to her how her life had been ruined and how it was his fault, but she was too young to understand The Reckoning. It would only confuse her more if Marco tried to honestly apologize to her, so he was probably better off leaving it be, and trying to make her life better the best he could instead.

Heckapoo got his attention with cough and awkwardly handed him a cup of water, which marco graciously took. “Sorry for not joining the hug. Didn’t want that kind of waterworks that close to my head.”

Oh right. Her flame. Marco laughed a little. “It’s fine. I feel a lot better now anyway.”

He took a big swig of water and swished it in his mouth a little.

And then there was a knock on the door.

And Marco promptly started choking on the water and spewed it out onto the floor.

“I didn’t hear the wall breaking,” Heckapoo said, eyes wide at the door.

“Unless someone with wings managed to get over it…”

“Not without the guards shooting them down,” Heckapoo said.

There was another knock.

“I’ll get it!” Katriena said excitedly. She ran to the door, and Marco was barely able to get up and beat her to the knob.

Pushing her behind him, he opened it up, his whole body tense and ready to fight.

And standing there was a nervous-looking woman, who didn’t appear to have any deformities and was wearing armor and holding a staff.

“Uh…” Marco said, kind of in shock. He recognized the crest of her armor. She was one of the wizards Ennio hired to lift down the giant food crate with magic.

“Hello,” she said very slowly. “Can. You. Understand. Me?”

Before Marco could fathom what was going on, Katriena ran around him and smiled up at the woman.

“Hi! I’m Katriena! What’s your name?” she said, like it was a normal encounter and like they weren’t getting a strange visitor inside a nearly impenetrable fortress.

The woman stared, wide-eyed, at Katriena, and said, “You… have a name?’

Marco opened his eyes and pulled his head up from his desk. The teacher, Miss Skullnick, was still lecturing about some guy who figured out how to find triangle sides, though it seemed she was more preoccupied with the chalk piece that kept breaking on her.

With a quick glance around, Marco realized that no one in the room had noticed his brief lapse in consciousness. Both Jackie and Janna were writing something down in their notebooks (most likely the things Skullnick had written while Marco was unconscious), and judging by the fact that he finished his flashback, they were too wrapped up in note-taking to ever look up and check on him.

He wasn’t upset over it, really. They couldn’t babysit him at all hours of the day, and it didn’t look like he had missed that much of the class, so maybe it wouldn’t take too long to catch himself up? That, and he was almost out of pink hedgehogs, so he didn’t want to waste them anymore.

Marco looked back down at his notes, haphazard Riradesh scattered about with intermingled English phonetics, and sighed. This was going to take forever to relearn.

He quickly copied the words from the chalkboard onto the bottom of the page and stared at them. It was gibberish now, but maybe later it would be useful?

“Marco,” Miss Skullnick said, ripping Marco out of his head, “Do you think you can answer this one?” Despite her harsh voice, she seemed to understand that it was very possible that he couldn’t.

Marco looked to the equation that she had written down and frowned. “Could you, uh, read it out loud for me?”

“Certainly,” she said, without a second’s hesitation. “X squared plus four squared equals five squared.”

“Squared is when its multiplying itself?” Marco clarified. He’d gotten a deep rundown already, but it was a lot to take in.

“Yes, and you’re solving for X,” she said, somehow with all the patience in the world and simultaneously no patience at all.

“Uh, okay, um.” Marco wrote the equation down on his paper in Riradesh and started solving it.

“It’s three,” Kar said, bored.

“Kar, shut the fuck up,” Marco said. He noted the minor twitch Skullnick did at the F-bomb. Right. No swearing.

“I’m right, though.”

“I know you’re right!” Marco groaned. “But how the hell am I supposed to learn this shit if you keep giving me the answers?”

“Dude, it’s okay,” Jackie said from across the room. “You’ll get it eventually.”

“Mister Karmargorach,” Miss Skullnick said, kind of butchering Kar’s name, “I did not call on you , I called on Marco. ”

“But we’re the same body!” Kar said.

“You can’t insist on your own desk and then say you’re not separate,” Miss Skullnick said, gesturing to the desk that had been pushed up against Marco’s so that Kar could “sit” in it. “You don’t get to have both.”

Kar frowned. Marco felt a little better in a vindictive kind of way.

“Now, next time you talk out of turn, you’re going to to get more than a warning,” Skullnick said.

‘Fuck, if she was just a human I would...’ Kar thought.

‘You should listen to her because she’s an authority figure, not because she can beat you in an arm-wrestle,’ Marco thought.

“Alright, fine,” Kar said, both to the teacher and Marco.

Skullnick sighed at the lame attempt at an apology. “It looks like we’re just about done for the day. Class, please have your homework assignments complete and ready to turn in on Monday. Marco, I’m going to have to modify the assignment to make it suitable for your, er, condition. I’ll have it emailed to your parents tonight and they can help you through it.”

Marco had no idea what email was, but chose not to embarrass himself by asking about it. “Thank you.”

“So… in other words,” a student from one of the back rows began. “Marco gets an easier version of our homework. Isn’t that, like, unfair?”

“You wanna know what’s unfair?” Kar said. “Imagine if today, right now even, you got kidnapped to a crazy fantasy world filled with war and bloodshed, and you had to survive it all on your own.”

“Kar,” Marco said. He didn’t want to make more of a scene than they already were just by existing.

Ignoring him, Kar continued. “It sounds pretty shitty already, right? But there’s so much more to it. You spend years there, learning the way of the land. Years turn to decades. You’ve loved, lost, ruled and ran.”

Marco tried to hide his head under his arm. ‘Can you not ?’

“Then, you find a way back home to Earth, only to find out no time has passed and you have to go to fucking school again, and it doesn’t matter if you could kill everyone in the room with your bare hands, because you need to know how to do fucking algebra. ”

The kid gulped awkwardly.

“And, for the record,” Miss Skullnick added. “It isn’t easier homework. it's more homework, because he has to relearn everything.”

Then, to top off the conversation, the bell rang throughout the halls.

“Marco, Karmargorach, please stay behind for a moment,” Skullnick said.

Marco took a deep breath as the people around him stood up and shuffled out of the classroom. He slowly gathered up his things, so that he could at least leave once she was done with him.

“Marco, Karmargorach,” she said, walking up to his desk.

“Just call me Kar, please .”

“ Kar ,” she corrected. “I know what you’re going through is rough. I get it.”

Marco frowned. “Do you?”

“To a point, yes. You’ve been molested by magic, and now you’re completely different. Everything around you feels new, you’re a godforsaken teenager again, and you’ve got some intense new strength and monster-parts,” she said. “I’ve been there, trust me.”

What she said, did kind of describe him…

“And I know it seems like way too much at once, and everything is hard to do, and you keep breaking glasses -” She frowned. “Maybe not that last part, but it seems like all bad stuff, and I promise it’s not.”

Marco kept silent, but something was telling him she still had the glass-breaking problem.

“Think of it this way. You’re getting a fresh start. Whatever mistakes you made, the time you lost, it doesn’t matter anymore. Right now you’re just a student with a tentacle arm, trying to get through school, and you have all the knowledge you’ve accrued through adulthood to help you. Do you know how many people would kill for that opportunity?”

“You mean the opportunity to forget how to write and relearn math?” Kar asked.

“Well, no, I meant more with the social aspect. You might not be able to read English, but I bet you can read people better now. Teens are notorious for making bad decisions because of peer pressure or trusting people who just want to use them. You’ve probably already had those experiences as an adult, so you’re not going to just jump into a drug pit because some cool kids said it was fun.”



Yeah, probably not. He’d already been down that route.

“And anyway, would you really have rather come back as an adult?” she said. “No education, no literary skills, and a fish out of water. At least here, you can learn everything all over again, and I will do whatever is in my power to help you do that.”

Marco couldn’t help but smile. “Yeah, I guess I am kind of better off as a teen right now…”

“Not to mention the fact that half my students are damn-near-illiterate anyway, so you’re really only a step or two behind them,” she said with a shrug.

“Heh, hearing that actually makes me feel better,” Marco said, a little surprised.

“Yeah, thanks. You just made my job easier, Skullnick,” Kar said.

“No problem,” she said with a handwave. “We already lost Star, so we don’t want you quitting on us and leaving too.”

Marco frowned. “I mean, it’s not like she’s dead or anything. She just went back to her home dimension,”

“You’re right. The class just isn’t the same without her, though,” Skullnick said with a sigh. “But I’ll let you get to your next class. You’re behind enough as it is.”

She pushed Marco’s back out the door and into the crowd of people rushing through the halls.

“You know, I think I like her now. I might actually listen to her because she’s wise *and* a troll that could beat me up,” Kar thought.

Marco was about to respond, but got knocked in the shoulder by a running kid. He balanced himself and groaned. Right, this again. The treacherous halls of highschool. He’d better get to his class sooner rather than later.

He reached into his pocket and pulled out a map, written in both English and Riradesh, of the school. He pinpointed the room he’d just come from and figured out that the next class was approximately 8 classrooms down, then a left turn, and then another 11 classrooms. Then it was on the right-hand side.

He took a deep breath and started weaving through the ever-thinning crowd.

He had made it 3 classrooms down when suddenly everyone was out of his way, and the hall rang out with the bell that meant he was late. Galdos damn it!

“Don’t even worry about it, just get to class.”

Marco nodded and started counting classrooms again. He reached the turn and then counted.

The silence of the halls made it ten times easier to follow his map, so at least there was that.

“Ten… eleven,” Marco said, punctuating the final two classrooms.

He quickly glanced in through the window to double check and-

“Shit. Wrong room,” he said in dismay.

“You got that right,” someone said from behind Marco.

Marco looked behind himself and then up at origin of the voice. It was a six-and-a-half-foot tall guy, who was doing his best to look imposing.

“Uh, hello?” Marco said, as politely as possible.

“Hall pass?” he said with a cocky smirk.

“What’s that?” Kar asked.

The man was taken aback briefly, but then regained his composure. “You think you’re funny?”

Marco could tell he was a hustler from miles away, but he played dumb anyway. “No, we legitimately don’t know what a hall pass is.”

The guy frowned and scrutinized him for a moment before saying, “You’re Marco Diaz, aren’t you?”

“Yep,” Marco said. “I didn’t realize I was famous.”

“How would telling the whole school you went on a fantasy journey not make you the talk of the halls?” The guy laughed. “I guess I’ll have to educate you.”

“Oh, please do,” Kar said.

The guy took a threatening step forward. Marco calmly held his stance, though it was going to hurt his neck if he had to keep looking up at this guy.

“Did you actually want something from me?” Marco asked, bored. “Or did you just happen to choose me to fulfill your violence quota for the day?”

The guy’s eye twitched. “What the fuck did you just say to me?”

“Oh, you know, low self esteem often leads to bouts of violence to assert dominance,” Marco explained. “It’s a really shitty temporary fix, but if it makes you feel manly for an hour or two, why wouldn’t you?”

The guy angrily grabbed the collar of Marco’s shirt.

Marco calmly and gracefully grabbed the guy’s arm. “Of course, if you’re the one who gets beat up instead, you have nothing to value your worth with.” He pressed his finger into a pressure point on the guys arm, forcing his hand to seize up and let go.

“Ah, what the fuck!”

Marco let go of his arm and smiled. “Which is why I won’t fight you. Besides, I really need to find my next class…”

Marco had probably miscounted rooms. Either that, or there had been a mistranslation at some point and they had actually meant el and not eleven .

Lost in his own thoughts, Marco had almost missed the fist coming at him.

He dipped back, letting the punch drift past his nose, and then swiped his foot into the guy’s shin, causing him to lose balance and fall with the momentum of his fist.

“I don’t want to fight you,” Marco said. “I just want to have a peaceful high school experience. Is that so much to ask?”

The guy stood back up and was seething with anger. “Fuck. You.”

“I guess so,” Kar said.

Marco sighed. “Alright, so I guess we’re doing this the hard way.”

The bell rung out through the halls, startling Marco ever-so-slightly. He hadn’t kept track of time.

“Lunch time,” Frankie said, stretching his arms up into the air. “Need help finding the cafeteria?”

Marco smiled. “I think I’ve got it. It’s three down, a left, and then all the way to the end.”

“And that’s three in my numbers, not your numbers,” he clarified.

“There’s only a difference after nine,” Marco said, standing up.

“Yeah, I still don’t get it. Math really isn’t my forte…”

Marco laughed. “Same here.”

“Awe man, that’s gotta suck. You escaped math and now you gotta go back to it for four years.”

“You’re telling me.” Marco heard the stampede of people in the halls outside get louder and louder. “I guess I should go out there, huh?”

“Yeah, probably. You could always skip lunch,” Frankie offered with a shrug.

“My friends would probably kill me if I kept disappearing on them like that though,” Marco said.

Frankie nodded in understanding. “Gotcha. How’s your nose doing? Need another tissue before you head out?”

“Naw, I think it stopped bleeding,” Marco said, pulling the blood-encrusted tissues from his nostrils. “How about you?”

“I think my whole body’s gonna be sore for a few days,” he said with a chuckle. “But I’ll be fine. A few bruises never killed me.”

“And they never will,” Marco said, shooting him a look, “Right?”

“Yeah, I’m pretty sure my dad won’t know what hit him.”

Marco frowned. “Don’t... actually hit him.”

“Yeah. I know. It was rhetorical.”

“Metaphorical,” Marco corrected. He felt a little better about his english now.

“Same thing,” Frankie said. “Just get out there before your girlfriends think I killed you.”

“Yeah. See ya.” Marco walked over to the bathroom exit.

“Thanks for the talk, Diaz,” Frankie said, gesturing one final wave and then pulling a lighter out of his pocket.

Marco hoped he was allowed to smoke in school…

“Marco! There you are!” Jackie yelled as soon as he popped out of the bathroom. How desperately had they been searching for him?

“Uh, hi!” Marco said, a little awkwardly.

“Oh my god, what happened to your nose?” Jackie asked.

“Nothing really-“

“He got in a fight with Frankie Orteeze,” Janna said, seeming to appear out of nowhere. “Or so I heard.”

Jackie’s eyes went wide. “You what? !”

“It wasn’t really a fight,” Marco said, kind of feeling like he was explaining himself to his parents.

“That doesn’t matter! You could’ve passed out !”

“Yeah, but it’s not like I just walked around picking fights with people!” Marco said. “He targeted me.”

“I really want those details,” Janna said, a curious glint in her eyes.

Ignoring her, Marco said, “Look, the point is that it’s handled, everyone’s alright, and he won’t be bothering anyone anymore.”

Janna’s eyes went wide. “You killed him?!”

“I- what- no!” Marco said, a little taken aback that she had immediately went to that conclusion. “I just talked to him!”

“Oh, so you threatened to kill him, and he ran like a pussy?” Janna said.

“Ugh, no.” Marco groaned. “I just helped him get over his issues and self-reflect upon why he was bullying people in the first place.”

Janna frowned. “Uh, what?”

Jackie smiled. “Holy crap, really?”

“Yeah. I mean, I’ve done it a million times.” Talking a teenager out of his funk was way easier than trying to stop someone’s heartfelt revenge or convince a broken slave that they could actually rebel against their owner.

“Impressive,” Janna said with a smirk. “I didn’t think the guy actually had a conscience.”

“Everyone does,” Marco said with confidence. “Some are just a little harder to find than others.”

“This is really cool and all,” Jackie said, “but you still skipped class.”

“Actually, it was two classes I skipped,” Marco corrected. “Frankie had a lot to unload to me.”

“That’s even worse.” Jackie sighed. “If you keep missing class, you’re gonna get held back, Marco.”

Marco thought about it. “Is that really such a big deal?” he asked.

“Well, a lot less colleges will accept you,” Janna said.

“And we’d be in different classes,” Jackie said.

“Okay, but if I don’t even know if I’m going to college if the first place, and if we can still see each other outside of school or during lunch, does it matter?” Marco asked.

Jackie frowned.

“I guess not,” Janna said. “That’s your call to make, Diaz. Though we still want to be in the same classes as you next year.”

“I know, but the chances of me being able to pass this year are really low. I’ll still try to relearn everything before summer, but I know that may not be possible, I’ve come to accept that possibility and realize it wouldn’t be the end of the world. When I first got back, I was so worried about disappointing everyone, but I know that’s not gonna happen, even if I do stay back. Hell, even if I can’t complete high school at all, I’ll find another avenue to succeed in this dimension, and if I can’t, I’ll just make one.”

Jackie and Janna looked at each other before bringing their attention back to Marco. Jackie spoke first. “Trust me, dude, the only way you’d disappoint us is if you gave up entirely. You’re right, being held back a year wouldn’t be the worst thing ever, but I don’t want to hear you talk like that while there’s still a chance. At the very least, you should finish High School before deciding what you want to do with the rest of your life. So, no more skipping classes, even if it’s to help another student, okay?”

“Yeah, alright, I will admit, part of me talking to Frankie was because he was a nice distraction from school, but I should probably worry about myself for the time being. You have my word, I won’t skip anymore classes.”

Jackie gave Marco a soft punch on the shoulder. “That’s what I like to hear! And if your parents are too busy this weekend, I could always come over and help you through the homework.”

Marco smiled. “Yeah, that would be pretty cool.”

Janna elbowed Jackie. “Look at you, inviting yourself over to his house like it’s no big deal. Though I have to wonder, are you really gonna study with him, or do you just want to put those extra years of ‘experience’ Marco’s had to good use?” She winked at the two of them.

“Oh my god, Janna, you are the worst,” Jackie said, blushing. “Don’t start giving people the wrong impression about us. Marco’s been dealing with enough rumors about him already.”

Marco found himself blushing as well, but also at a loss for words. Suddenly, the idea of being alone with Jackie was beginning to make him feel self-conscious again.

Why wouldn’t it? He just invited a fourteen year old girl to his house. In his defense, Marco wasn’t really an adult anymore, but how did everyone else in the school see him?

People like Frankie had no trouble treating Marco as if he were another vulnerable teenager. Then again, Frankie had his own biases against the adults in his life, and perhaps went after Marco specifically because of what he really was on the inside: a jackass adult who thought he had every kid figured out.

It would be a long time before Marco felt ready to start dating again anyway, but should he be seeing someone his own physical age? Would everyone, knowing what they know, be okay with that? Would someone like, I don’t know, Jackie, be able to look past that part of him?

Ah screw it, thinking about this stuff was already making him feel like a creep. If Kar was awake for this, he’d would be giving Marco so much shit right now.

Right, he needed to focus on passing his classes first, and, of course, teaching his friends fucking magic!

“Guys, we should get going to lunch, there’s actually a lot I wanted to talk about,” Marco said, interrupting the mild argument the girls were already in the middle of. They didn’t seem to mind the sudden intrusion, though, and guided Marco to the lunch room.

The cafeteria (which was conveniently labeled with a drawing of a poultry leg) felt a lot different than the last time Marco was there. The room was now bustling with about eighty or so kids, and Marco no longer felt his entire world was crumbling.

As he waited in line for food, ignoring the various conversations around him about TV, drugs, video games, and sex, he kept looking back at the table he sat in several days ago.

It was near that table where Star learned the severity of Marco's problem, and realized just how long Marco had been away from Earth culture. But before any of the guilt for her involvement hit her, she was so determined to reteach him English.

The gesture seemed down right hyperbolic at first, especially for someone as cynical as Marco, but she was genuinely serious and started giving him the basics right then and there. She probably had no idea how much that meant to him.

She’d been so determined to help him that when the basics didn’t stick, she attempted to revitalize his memory with magic. If teaching wouldn’t work, she’d make him just remember English and fix it that way.

The spell might have been a little too potent, in all in all the wrong ways, but it was the intense effort to fix him that hit Marco the most.

And even when it wasn’t about his culture shock, Star stayed with him through the thick and thin. When he’d admitted to killing Toza, she was the only one who believed that there was more to it...

God, he missed Star.

He reminded himself that this was for the best. The Magic High Commission weren’t too concerned with general Earth activity to begin with, and now that Star was back on Mewni, they had even less of a reason to monitor it on a large scale. The Powers That Be would continue to ignore the insignificant dimension, and Marco would use that low profile to his advantage.

First he’d start with a small group of friends. Then when he taught them the basics they’d use his scissors to explore other dimensions’ magic. Then his friends would teach their friends, and so on and so on. Soon enough magic would spread across Echo Creek and then eventually the whole country.

And once it was that widespread, once it was big enough to catch the attention of the commission, it would be too big for them to do anything about. Their science experiment would be tainted, and the only thing left would be to see how magic would effect a technologically-advanced dimension.

And then maybe Star could come back and visit and-

“Pizza or chicken patty?” a lunch lady asked, pulling him back to reality.

“Oh, uh, pizza, I guess,” Marco said.

The lady slapped a brick of bread, with barely any sauce and cheese on it, onto a plastic tray and handed it to Marco.

“Thank you,” Marco said, taking the tray. It looked unappetizing compared to most of the Earth food he’d had recently, but it was still better than most of the food he’d eaten on his quest.

He slowly made his way back to the table with his friends and placed his mostly-empty tray down in front of him.

“Marco! How’s your day been?” Ferguson said enthusiastically. His tray was already devoid of food. Alfonzo, on the other hand, was cutting his chicken patty into smaller pieces using utensils. Marco could only assume that he gave the buns to Ferguson.

“Going okay, I suppose,” Marco said. “By the way, guys, even though it went against my own wishes, I do appreciate you telling everyone about how I was gone for sixteen years. Everything is a lot easier than if my stubborn ass had tried to keep it a secret from the school.”

Alfonzo cleaned his mouth with a napkin. “No problem, Marco. We knew everyone would be cool with it and try to help you! And now you’re more popular than ever before. I recommend basking in the attention before you’re brought down to our level of relevance again.”

Marco looked around and saw many kids passing looks at him, only to turn around as soon as eye contact was made. ‘Popular’ was one way to put it, he supposed.

“Alfonzo, you do know that most of the kids don’t even believe Marco went through any of that in the first place?” Janna said while finishing the crust of her pizza.

“Is that true?” Marco said. “But… the signs in the hallways...”

“It was mostly the school staff who were ordered by Principal Skeeves,” Jackie said. “He was pretty skeptical about it, but didn’t want to risk getting sued by your parents for not taking it seriously.”

So, everyone was only doing anything to help him because they had to. Most of them thought he was some troubled kid looking for attention. Well, except for Skullnick, that is.

“It makes sense. Who would actually believe you went to another dimension for that long when you look the same to them?” Kar said, coming out of Marco’s arm to join the conversation. Jackie jumped a little at the intrusion, and Marco noted several students glancing his way.

“But wait,” Marco said. “What about Kar? Doesn’t that kind of prove that I’m not making everything up?”

“Oh, not even a little,” Janna said with a handwave. “You had him as a monster arm months ago, and everyone thought it was a weird disease or something. You getting it again just makes it seem like a relapse of whatever you had before.”

Yeesh, people were way more likely to go to science as an explanation than assume it was magic…

“So… um, where’s Julie? I was expecting her to sit with us.” She was honestly the first person Marco thought of when deciding he would teach magic to humans.

Everyone stared at Marco blankly.

“Julie who?” Ferguson asked.

“He’s talking about Starfan,” Janna said, resting her chin on her open palm. “She only ever comes to school if Star does, so who knows if she’ll ever be here again...”

“Oh! Yeah…” Alfonzo looked down.

Well, that brought the mood down a little. After some silence and awkward coughs, everyone looked at Marco expectantly. He had been vague the entire morning as to why Star was forced by Moon to come back to Mewni. They could tell it was still a sore subject for Marco, so they had given him the space he needed until he was ready to retell what exactly happened yesterday. Marco sighed.

‘I still can’t believe you choose this stupid ambition of yours over your best friend,’ Kar thought.

‘If I could take back what I said, I would, but there’s no way we can convince Moon that we wouldn’t try to bring magic to Earth at this point. Besides, at least this way, Star is 100% safe in case this all backfires in our faces. Isn’t that for the best?’ Marco thought.

‘But Star finally accepted me, and she was gonna make me a body…’

‘There’s a chance we can make you a body without Star, and if we go through with this, we could help a lot of people here. We’re going to prove that to Moon and the High Commission. Besides, since when are we the type to put others’ needs over our own?’

“Heh, point taken.” Kar said. “Alright, I guess it’s about time we got their opinions on your little plan. Go ahead.”

“Kar? What the heck were you responding to?” Ferguson asked. “No one said anything.”

“They can communicate telepathically,” Jackie said. “That’s what they’re usually doing when staring intently into each other’s eyes. At least I hope that’s the case…”

“I don’t have eyes,” Kar said.

“Whatever,” Janna said. “So what’s this plan you’re talking about?”

Well, Kar really forced his hand on that conversation.

‘You’re welcome.’

Marco took a deep breath. “Okay, so... I want to teach you all magic.”

Jackie raised an eyebrow at him. “To rescue Star?”

“No, Star doesn’t need to be rescued. Her mom just took her home because she decided it wasn’t safe on Earth anymore.”

“What?” Ferguson said. “Why? No offense, but I’ve been to other dimensions, and Earth was never as dangerous as those places.”

“Star’s mom took her back because she thinks my plans to introduce magic to Earth does make it dangerous,” Marco said, “and she’s right.”

Janna frowned. “So she got taken because you want to teach us all magic?”

Jackie added, “And what do you mean, ‘she’s right’?”

“The Queen of Mewni works under the Magic High Commission, an organization that controls a lot of dimensions, including ours. They have a strict rule against magic on Earth and she doesn’t want Star in the crossfire if they were to find out what I was doing. I don’t want her in the crossfire, either.”

“Then why are you going through with it?” Janna said. “It sounds like Star’s getting grounded for a stupid reason and you’re the only person okay with it.”

“Oh, he’s definitely not okay with it, no matter how much he tries to convince himself,” Kar said.

“I’m not okay with it, but what’s done is done. Star would’ve been in trouble anyway if she stayed, especially because she’s royalty and she has more to lose,” Marco said. “But, without her around, no one will notice the magic until its too big of a problem for them to squash.”

“I’m a little confused. Who exactly are these high commission people?” Alfonzo said, trying his best to grasp the impossible concepts Marco was throwing at him.

“Simply put, they are powerful and immortal demigods who have been enforcing this idea that we are too stupid and weak to handle magic, despite the benefits it could do for our society.”

Everyone took a moment to consider what he was saying.

“Marco,” Jackie began. “Star was talking to me about the Magic High Commission when you were passed out two days ago. She’d described them as ‘scientists for magic.’ If they are centuries old and seem to really know their stuff in regards to magic, then maybe they have a point?”

Marco blinked. “Umm, what?”

Janna, Ferguson, and Alfonzo looked intently at Jackie, as if she was speaking out the exact same concerns they had.

“Let’s be real here, magic as a concept is pretty terrifying. To be able to summon creatures to do your bidding, conjuring energies that could tear a building into two, and sketchy stuff like spying on people. Do we really want those powers in the hands of a normal person? Isn’t there a lot of inherent risks with everyone on Earth having those powers?”

“That’s why I’m starting with a small group, Jackie. Together we’ll learn magic that can only be productive to society, and then teach it to everyone else. It’s not my intention to give new ways for dictators to win at warfare.”

“Still though, I’m not sure if we could handle it,” Jackie looked down. “When Star and I went inside her wand to find her Book of Spells, it was one of the most terrifying things I ever went through. I wanted to cry because of how helpless I felt, but Star was able to hold her own just fine, even without her wand. I’m just, not sure.”

“Star was able to hold her own because she’d been through crazy adventures a million times before, not because of some inherent ability to handle it better,” Marco said. “I was terrified the first time Star took me to another dimension, but by the time I’d been on a few dozen adventures, I was able to take on a crazy quest and do something that people train their whole lives to accomplish.”

“Yeah, but that’s you ,” Jackie said.

“It doesn’t matter who it is! Anyone can adapt to a new society. How fast did people stop travelling on horseback after cars were invented? How fast did everyone have a TV after they became easy to make?” Those were the only two examples his brain could think of that applied to Earth, so hopefully his point would get across. “Just think of it as us inventing a new technology, and working to get it to everyone to improve their way of life.”

Jackie frowned and seemed to think on it.

“And I’ve seen what magic can do to improve life in Heckapoo’s dimension,” Marco said.

“No offense, Marco, but that place seemed like a hellhole,” Janna said.

“Well, yeah,” Marco said. “But that had little to do with magic and more to do with the crazy environment. When everything in the world is trying to kill you, and there’s constant threat of famine or disease, there’s a little more stress on people’s shoulders and it makes them,” he tried to think of a good word, “more asshole-y.”

Janna shrugged, seemingly fine with that answer.

“But there was a place in Heckapoo’s Dimension without the famine and disease, and where most of the inhabitants lived comfortably. It was guarded from predators on the outside by mages, and the farmland was enriched with enchanted soil.” Marco said. “It was as close to a utopia that world could have and the most densely-populated kingdom. All because of the free trade and open use of magic in its infrastructure.”

“Wow,” Jackie said. “I didn’t think that place had anywhere like that. Why didn’t you just live there?”

Marco frowned. “It, uh, got corrupted by an anti-magic cult and eventually got destroyed from within.”

Jackie frowned.

“But that isn’t the point. The point is that magic created a utopia in Heckapoo’s Dimension . Imagine what it could do on Earth!”

Everyone seemed to consider that for a moment.

“So,” Marco said, a nervous little tickle in his stomach, “who’s in?”

Jackie and Janna both raised their hands. Ferguson and Alfonso, who had been silent the whole time, did not.

“Sorry, Marco,” Alfonso said, “but I almost died because of magic.”

“Yeah, we’re not gonna play with fire when we were already burned,” Ferguson said. “I mean, we’ve been on adventures with you guys before, but almost being possessed by a vengeful demon for the rest of my life made me reconsider things.”

Marco nodded. “Okay, I get it.” He wasn’t gonna force them. “Do you mind if I teach Jackie and Janna around you?”

“Oh, be our guest,” Ferguson said.

“I’m actually a little uncomfortable with it, so is it okay if I just go?” Alfonso asked.

“Yeah, sure,” Marco said with a shrug.

“Awesome. Have fun with your magic,” Alfonso said. He stood up with his tray, and then started walking off.

Ferguson had a moment of hesitation and then got up and ran after him. “Wait up!”

They were both out of the cafeteria within a minute, and then Marco, Kar Janna, and Jackie were sitting by themselves.

“So, this is the first testing group, huh?” Janna said.

“I guess so,” Marco said. “Are you guys ready for your first session?”

“Right here in the cafeteria?” Jackie asked.

“Yeah, why not? We have like a half hour left of our lunch,” Janna said.

Marco pushed his tray aside and took a deep breath. “Then it’s settled. The first lesson starts now.”