Star stared into her hot chocolate, contemplating what Marco had just told her. Time loops weren't uncommon on Mewnie. Chances were that at some point in your lifetime you would get stuck in one. But they were pretty simple to get out of. You just had to figure out what went wrong in the local temporal field and fix it. It could be as simple as saying the right thing to the right person at the right time or it could be as complex as getting the perfect set of events down pat.

But everyone on Mewnie knew that if you died your time loop stopped. It was one of the leading causes of suicide unfortunately. But Mewnians had far more internal magic than humans did. The discharge of magic when someone from Mewnie died was always enough to kick start the events necessary to jump out of the time loop.

Marco, being a human, had very little magical energy within him. Human mages had to rely on the ambient magic of their home dimension, which was sparse. So instead of breaking out of the time loop Marco's death just reset it.

But when Marco killed her and her wand exploded the time loop should have been fixed. She and her wand together should have been able to get out of any time loop.

"Wait. Take me through the first one. What, exactly, happened?"

Marco looked up at her, a small whipped cream mustache adorning his upper lip. He seemed much brighter than he had been this morning. "Oh! Yeah, the first one. It's was pretty meh. Toffee kidnapped me, stuck me in a crystal thing. You showed up to save me, kicked but, and used a super spell to shatter the crystal cage I was in. But one of the crystal shards went right into my skull. Killed me pretty much instantly. Then I woke up in my bed, like I do every time."

"Oh," Star said, "Oops."

"Oops? You did something, didn't you." Marco gave Star a look.

"Well, you are my best friend, after all." Star ran her finger across the lip of the mug, looking sheepish, "And I would have been really, really sad and mad if you died. Especially if I had done it." Star paused, smoothing her hair and looking away.

Marco sat silently, he had all the time in the world, literally.

"And, uh, well, there is a spell that could have, maybe, sorta, linked your life force with mine, twining out consciousnesses together into a single being and then trapped us inside of a time bubble until we either untangled ourselves or found an ending that left us both alive and well?"

"I see."

"Ahem. Well. It makes it easy to escape, if you want. All I would have to do is reverse the twining spell and things would go on their merry way." Star glanced around, "I could do it right now, easy peasy."

"Star," Marco said seriously, "I've lived the next four days hundreds of times. One of us dies every. Single. Time. There is no happy ending."

"Oh." Star's head slumped, "But what about that last time. We were both alive, all the monsters were gone, the castle blew up, I had my wand. Everything was hunky dory!"

"Poison gas." Marco replied, "We were already dying. It takes a couple of minutes to take effect, but then you go down choking. You can't use your wand when you're choking to death. It's... unpleasant. So I put you out of your misery."

"Oh, well, I guess that's why I can remember everything this time."

"What?"

"The mind twining spell is really, really morbid. The more strongly we feel about each other the more strongly we become entwined. You can do it the easy way. Y'know, love and rainbows and all that. But then you can also do it the hard way, hating each other, hurting each other. It's not exactly a spell that many people use."

"Sounds hardcore. And you did it for me?"

"Well, yeah," Star smiled at him, "You're my bestie."

"Your bestie that shot you in the back of the head."

Star scoffed at that, "I didn't even feel it. I was just mad that you did it in the first place. You didn't exactly use friendliness pellets."

"Yeah," Marco sighed, "So, what's the plan?"

Star shrugged, "Well, all we have to do is to still be alive after, what, 2AM Monday?"

"Easier said than done. If we just skedaddle then Toffee stars killing out classmates until we show up to defend them. Your mom was no help, she just stuck you in your room at the palace and hoped that it would blow over. Glossaryck wasn't any help, even when we gave him pudding, and Toffee is very, very good at getting me killed. I think the guy has a grudge or something."

"Well," Star said, "We have all the time in the world to figure out the perfect solution. We'll get through this Marco."

"Thanks, Star." Marco said, "I was going crazy doing all this by myself."

Star reached over and grabbed his hand. "Well, Marco, now that I'm here, let's have fun with it!"

"Star," Marco replied, "I've done just about everything."

"But now you get to do everything with me!" Star delighted, "Let's go, I want to start early!"