Yikes. A month. Didn't expect it to take that long, but alas, school got in the way.
Anyway, so so sorry for the wait. I really wanted to make this chapter longer (and better) but I had to cut it off somewhere. But it's still longer than the norm so hopefully that's something.
Oh! One last thing. Kudos to The Forbidden Bond by cococomb16! It's the sister fic to this series and its focus is on Blood Moon Ball instead of Mewberty XD It's really amazing and it's packed with angst and Starco so give it a read!
A monster prompting Star to get out or be assaulted in a compact room was quite new. Even the latino had never thought Ludo and his army would strategize in this hiatuses between each battle. They were always the type who popped up in Marco's backyard and screamed war cries reaching the windows of Marco's house.
Marco liked innovation, but not when it flowered in the minds of behemoths from other dimensions.
He made out a bag beside Star's desk, a remnant of her short retreat from class.
Marco quickly sped there to gather up the indigo bag with neon spikes his friend had chosen to carry around in the academy. It was a lightweight, bereft of the textbooks and notebooks that were mandatory for all attending students. There was no use in criticizing on that, really.
The teenager ran out once again after bidding his teacher a lackluster farewell.
The hordes of students had cleared and he was alone once more.
He briskly walked to the school's wide entrance with a body pumped with wary adrenaline.
Star was missing and it was his fault for wandering outside of class while she had left. A collusion of sheer panic and disappointment scolded him for not being more attentive of the potentials dangers to her.
He was to blame for her absence.
Flimsy bits of logic in his mind did remonstrate that she was likely back at home, safe and sound, and that she had forgotten her things was all. Mewberty wasn't a physical altercation that happened twice, he was certain, and she would've told her if there was a chance she'd start an uproar again.
But until he saw with his very eyes that she was unharmed, he couldn't relax the heaviness weighing down his shoulders.
A raven-haired girl hauled an enormous, cinder sack from her closest to the patch of floor beneath her bed. It would've been unwieldy if it had been anyone else moving the massive spell book around, but this was a special girl.
Heat curled off like tides from outside and through the windows, hitting every corner and crevice imaginable. The bag was harder to cling to than it was before, gleaning perspiration that came off of her palm and making her grip rather slippery.
Janna swiped her other hand across a forehead ridden with sweat. The temperature was augmenting to higher degrees, which was the only thing that was making this harder than it had to be. The mornings were chilling and one could make out his or her own breath interchanging with the cold air, while afternoons drenched everyone in mugginess.
But she liked living in California because, although there wasn't a predictable balance between hot and cold, it was still much more bearable than other states she'd visited or lived in.
Janna pushed the edge of the bag again so it would disappear under her mattress.
She got up from her crouched position, satisfied that her mission to hide the big old thing from her parents was complete. They weren't easily stupefied by her foolery as people who had dealt with her ever since she'd been born, but Janna wasn't about to find out if a mystical book of spells was pushing it.
Janna took off her beanie to tame her unkempt hair with a few strokes of her fingers. She covered her head up with the hat again afterwards.
She whistled a tune with a jovial ring to it as she left the book alone to bask in the dust bunnies and old toys she had dropped on the floor as a kid.
He stumbled to the clustered parking lot, where only the staff vehicles remained. He scanned the panorama of the area perfunctorily, until he saw Star Butterfly struggling to push something into a black antique carriage.
"Star!" He ignored the embarrassing, prepubescent crack of voice that had slipped out of his larynx.
The princess of Mewni turned her head back at the call of her name and she broke into an eager grin. "Marco!"
The world blurred around him as he rushed to her.
He was panting when he was next to her, gassed from bolting so fast, and rested a hand on the old carriage. Something told him that he wasn't just physically tired from the sprinting.
"Oh, jeez, you're fast." Star laughed good-naturedly. Marco savored the twinkly, music-like quality of her chuckling. "What's the hurry, Marco?"
He steadied the flurry of heartbeats and recovered enough to say, "Where were you?" He snapped his head up, vexed. "I was looking for you! You left class after I went. . . " His words died when he noticed a scurrilous demon with sharp horns was encased in a hunk of ice. The effigy was horrifying and instilled fear inside of him.
He let out a strangled gasp that sounded like a fusion of a cat dying and a parrot squawking. He sputtered, "What-What the heck is that?!"
It had clearly been rubbed the wrong way and planning to attack Star mercilessly.
Star awkwardly coughed, as if unsure what to say. But then she said, "Erm, well Marco, this. . . is Tom." She finished off her introduction to the devil-esque being tentatively.
Something clicked into place, spreading unwonted understanding throughout Marco's body. "Demon Ex-Boyfriend Tom?"
"Demon Ex-Boyfriend Tom." She repeated, confirming his guess.
Marco stared into the abysses that were Tom's eyes. They were void of distinct pupils and had emitted what he supposed to be an unearthly glow before being suspended by Star's magic. A surge of legitimate distress for Star led him to jump into drastic action, by grabbing his friend's shoulders and shaking them. "Are you okay?! Did he hurt you?!"
"I'm fine, I'm fine Marco!" Her echelon of voice rose so Marco would stop. "He wasn't any trouble. He just wanted to ask me to the Blood Moon Ball is all, and he got-" she tensed, "-mad when I declined his invitation."
Her reluctance didn't help. "He really did not harm you? In any way? No burns or-" Marco tried to check her arms and hands but Star tugged them away with a stern expression.
"Marco, he didn't lay a finger on me, I swear." She insisted. "It's nice that you care." With that, a sincere smile crept into her features. "But I can handle him. I dated him, after all."
A thrill pulsated within towards her observation of him, but it was hard to cease his fretting.
Tom wasn't a bad guy from what he heard, but a demon with the power to burn everyone on target was an unsettling enemy that Marco didn't want confronting Star.
Also. . .
I wasn't here when I should've been.
God, he hated himself.
". . Okay." He mumbled, contradicting his own notions. "I was just looking all over for you and I panicked, I guess."
He was dying to ask more questions regarding her welfare but then he'd never find the motivation to cut himself off.
"I'm so sorry, Marco! I hope you can forgive me for wandering off like that." Star apologized, abashed.
"It's fine." His lip turned upward unconsciously, outside of his range of control. It wasn't really her fault for being interrupted by a demon who had a nasty penchant for getting riled up.
The princess of Mewni rocked back and forth on her heels, all of a sudden looking coy. "So, um, you were kind of acting weird today. Yesterday too. " Her eyebrows creased. "You haven't told me what's been going on, Marco."
Shoot. He hadn't been thrown off-guard by the induction, but he'd hoped they'd veered far from that subject.
What do I say, what do I say. .
"Um, I've just been really. . " He could feel sweat gleaning on his forehead just from being put on the spot. He had absolutely no clue what pretext to tell her.
Sensing his discontent, Star probed him for answers anew. "Really what?"
For a moment, Marco mulled over replying to her question truthfully. It wasn't like she would mock him for how distraught he was during the sickening silence following her departure into the sky. She continuously briefed him with the fact that they would always have each other's backs; certainly the trust to speak what was on their minds to one another fell in the category somewhere as well.
They were close friends by now, and he could feel a telepathic glare emanating from Star towards his pertinacious will to keep his mouth shut.
—
Star was anticipating his answer, which she had spent quite a bit of time waiting on as he formulated it.
Marco lifted his chin. "Do you remember anything that happened during Mewberty?" He presented her with a question rather than an explanation.
Concluding that he was building up to one, Star placed her back against the carriage, not wasting another moment to say, "No, I don't."
It had been a blackout for her. There were fuzzy chips of what happened, but that was all. Consciousness returned to her when she had awoken in a pile of perfectly-shaped violet hearts. "After a few guys walked by, I felt dizzy and I think that's when the boy-craziness took over. . " she trailed off just as an odd (and dark) thought struck her. "Did something happen to you, Marco?"
Marco fiddled with the strings of his hoodie rather aimlessly, rubbing them between his left thumb and forefinger. "No, but you scared all of the boys in the school. That includes me." He admitted. "You were attacking people and caging them in lockers."
Disturbing tremors tingled in her arms as she shook her head self-deprecatingly. She'd learned from her parents years ago that Mewberty could send a Mewman spiraling out of control, but she could tell from Marco that the side-effects of "growing up" had been more than a little destructive.
"I should've done a better job of staying away from lockers." She said somberly.
Mewberty was a necessary stage for adolescents of Mewni, so her phase had been inevitable, but she couldn't help but wish it didn't whip up an unfulfillable hunger for boys. Wrecking the school and inculcating fear inside of everyone wasn't worth it.
"Star, it's okay. That Glossaryck guy cleaned it all up, so there's really no harm done." Marco spoke up to reassure. The conspicuous damage of school property and short-lived trepidation of the students didn't faze him that much anymore, since it had been solved without repercussions. "What I'm trying to say is that. . " he propped himself on the coach alongside her. His shoulder coincidently brushed against hers. ". . I've been thinking about you."
"Me?" Star felt slightly uncomfortable (and flattered?), for reasons she wasn't sure of.
"Y-Your flying, I mean!" Marco amended hastily. "You almost left me back there, and I thought you were gone for good." A displeasing burn ached under his skin now that he'd heard himself speak the truth with his own ears.
"You thought I'd leave you?"
"Yeah." He said dumbly.
To his ultimate confusion, Star smiled compassionately.
"Look, Marco," Star took hold of his forearms, clutching them firmly in her hands. "Mewberty can be a bit "destroy-the-school-weird" like I said, but it's just a phase. I'm just maturing into an older princess with wings is all." Her smile morphed into a beam. "It doesn't have any negative impact on me, so there's no need to go freak out, okay? I'm perfectly fine. I won't leave you again, I promise." She finished off with conviction.
An impromptu, cozy heat blanketed Marco's tension at this. But a substantial twinge of worry persevered and fueled him to protest, "But Glossaryck said-"
"Don't listen to him." The princess said. "He's not always helpful. He just asks for pudding whenever a magical princess is desperate for something."
"So you would've returned anyway?" Marco demeaned himself for even spending time on Glossaryck. It hadn't been worth it if he had purposely fed him lies all along for poorly-made pudding.
"Yep! And I did, so isn't that what matters?" Star said encouragingly. "Let's not think too much about the what-if's. I'm here, you're here, and we are always ready to have a fun time."
Marco found himself watching her too closely. There was nothing fabricated about the way she acted or articulated her promise. She was so sure; there wasn't a flicker of self-doubt in her irises or a voice that fell flat in delivery. She really believed herself.
A teeny, pessimistic whisper murmured, How does she know? She's too certain. Anything can happen. Just because she's a princess with a powerful wand doesn't mean she's invulnerable to everything the world throws at her.
. . . . So?
He ground his teeth.
Marco Diaz could be silly sometimes. If one could say Star wasn't strong then neither was Marco. He couldn't surpass a wand that could blast narwhals at monsters in the face. Heck, he hardly rivaled a wand that could discharge a nuclear combustion with butterflies.
Without a wand, Star had battled neck and neck with monsters since her childhood.
He knew this all very well. Yet, he'd gone and pretended like Star was some damsel in distress and he'd played the stereotypical role of a knight in shining armor.
Marco Diaz could be foolish.
"You're right." He said lastly. "You're still here, and you're more than capable of taking care of yourself. It was dumb of me to not trust you."
"Oh, you're not dumb, Marco." Star said tenderly. "Your heart was in the right place."
She spread her arms in a ubiquitous gesture. "Hugs?"
He wrapped his arms around her, tacitly complying. Marco loosened in their hug, finally calming down after two days of hyperactive-safe-kid mode.