"Ok guys, is everybody ready?" Heckapoo asked everyone behind her; Rhombulus, Omnatrixus Prime in his crystal ball, River, Bonibell, Helsinki, and Prince Ponyhead nodded in agreement.
"Excellent, because here comes Moon." Moon was walking past their position to a deeper part of the maze.
It had been 6 weeks since the Butterfly and associates family reunion and much had changed for Moon but not in a good way. Yes she had introduced all her friends to each other on her first day off of studies; also getting Helsinki a pair of inter dimensional scissors so she could see Moon more often and not having her father throw a hissy fit at the expenses. But after that for some reason Moon's mom began bringing in suitors for Moon's hand in marriage on an almost daily basis. On the few occasions Moon did manage to get away she told her friends "Mom claims if I have free time to "Galavante" then I have time to consider a future king of Mewni." This was unusual even by Willow's standards; Helsinki assumed that Willow would only have gotten to this point if Moon was only months away from her 17th birthday, the age she could legally ascend as queen if Willow decided to step down.
So maybe that was why it seemed Moon was sneaking out with regularity almost like clockwork even though she didn't contact any of her friends, especially late at night. Heckapoo brought this up with everyone and Bonibell said "Maybe she doesn't want to leave a trail so her mom will find out." Which did make sense the more everyone thought about it but it did bring up the question, where was she going? When Rhombulus said maybe Heckapoo could use her spying spell she said that she disabled it and could only get a general reading of Moon's location now. This of course brought up the spying incident during Moon's Mewberty and Helsinki was pretty sure she knew why Heckapoo had disabled it in the end.
As Moon went further in the group of friends went deeper as well following her silently. They all knew they could've tried asking Moon but considering she was trying to keep it a secret she was probably not going to tell them. As they went further Moon stopped at a false arch and looked around scanning with her wand for followers. Fortunately Omnatrixus Prime had a spell they could use to block the sensing spell allowing them to catch Moon pull some vines back and go through a secret passage through the hedge maze wall. They of course followed her at a safe distance and when they came out beneath a slightly cloudy sky they saw Moon with a warnicorn who had red socks and a red spot around its horn.
"Hey Red Star, how's it going." The warnicorn nuzzled Moon affectionately as she gave it some corn and leapt on its back.
'Wow, I wish I had a wild warnicorn as my friend.' Helsinki thought in envy as they followed them through the forest. The Warnicorn could have easily outpaced them but fortunately Moon was taking her time and slowly trotting through the forest in the warnicorn's strange amble like gait that made it look like it was just walking at twice the speed it normally would. As they pushed further into the forest Helsinki noticed something, they were going very deep into monster territory, like so deep Mewman knight patrols wouldn't even come this far. She then saw various stone head statues plated in the ground indicating they were near an old monster shrine; the last place a Mewman wished to go to. 'Ok, now I'm worried.' But still she and Moon's other friends pushed forward.
They finally saw the glow of what appeared to be a campfire ahead and sounds of revelry. As Moon urged Red star on faster everyone else looked at each other in confusion and followed her wondering what the bloody hell she wanted here. As they looked over a small hillock they saw what appeared to be a small party of monsters numbering about 2 or 3 dozen strong at the center of the shrine. They all look up at Moon and silence fell across the grove for a few seconds.
"Hey its Moon."
"We were wondering when you would get here."
"How have you been?"
"Did you bring the corn?"
A babble of voices emerged as the monsters came up to Moon welcoming her as their own. Moon took off her over cloak to reveal grunge clothes with custom made rips and holes in them revealing various bits of arms and torso. Helsinki also caught glimpses of what appeared to be Monster iconography tattoos on parts of Moon's body showing twisting serpents on her arms and a hippogriff's wings spread on her back.
"Fine and yes to those questions. I'm just glad to see you all. LET'S GET THIS PARTY STARTED!" Moon pulled out two bags of corn meal and a jug of something delicious but she was not quite sure what. But all of them were flabbergasted when Moon began doing what appeared to be strange monster tribal dances but done in a strange fashion that matched what seemed to be rock music from earth played by one of the Monsters, a humanoid hyena like figure that stood a good 7 feet tall and was covered in a thin layer of brownish fur with black spots with clothes similar to Moon's current outfit. He also appeared to be blind as he had cloth tied over his eyes but that did not impede the guitar music he played. They watched the revelry commence once again with Moon appearing to hang out with two other Monsters that Helsinki couldn't get a good look at. As it moved on for several minutes Heckapoo signaled them to fall back but Bonibell for some reason had left and was dancing among the monsters.
"Oh shit, Heckapoo get her back now!" River whispered in fear. Even if they could probably beat the Monsters fighting was not the problem they would be facing this day. Heckapoo tried opening a portal discreetly to get her back but every time she reached through Bonibell had gone somewhere else. She did this for a few minutes before…
"Guys, I think I got something."
Moon was talking with her monster friends when her friend Lucy yelled out suddenly "Hello. Who the bloody ell is groping my tucas." With that Lucy reached over grabbed a hand that was coming out of an orangish red portal and pulled… 'wait a minute' thought Moon. As Lucy began pulling Moon came over and pulled the arm through with magic.
"Arm of extreme wrestling!" The arm and Lucy pulled out Heckapoo, River, Helsinki, Rhombulus, Prince Ponyhead, and Omnitraxus Prime making them all collapse in the middle of the party making everyone go silent. Before anyone could react Moon decide to take preemptive action.
"There you guys are, I was wondering when you would get here." The group of friends looked up at Moon in confusion but some of them began to catch on quickly when Moon added on "I thought I gave you directions to meet me at the forked tree an hour ago."
The first one to respond was, strangely enough, Rhombulus. "Well if you hadn't put it in such a complicated way we could have found you sooner."
"Yeah I know you like codes but that was ridiculous." Prince Ponyhead added on.
"Do you know how long I was opening random portals looking for your hiding spot? We didn't even find the hiding spot and what's more lost Bonibell along the way." Heckapoo caught on very quickly also.
She then saw Bonibell go up and began deeply apologizing to them "I'm so sorry guys, I knew I shouldn't have left my Meat muffin's side for an instant."
"Don't worry sugar wings, its ok." River went up and hugged Bonibell looking absolutely adorable making some of the monsters go "AWWWWWWW."
"Well what are we waiting for? Let's get this party restarted." Said the guitarist and began playing getting the party restarted. As attention was diverted away for the moment as the monsters wanted Moon to get them acquainted with what was going on and Moon talked to them, but for different reasons.
"What are you guys doing here?"
"We got worried about you leaving into the woods at night and not making contact with us and since Heckapoo couldn't use her spy spell on you anymore we decided to follow you to see what was up." Omnitraxus Prime explained to Moon.
"And we thought that if we just asked you directly you would have tried hiding it because honestly even if there were no monsters involved your mother would have thrown a hissy fit." Helsinki pointing out the obvious here.
Moon wanted to be mad at them for following her but they were just doing what good friends did. "True enough, just if you are concerned about me come forward and talk to me. I promise to be truthful with you guys if you don't drag me in front of my mother; we do need to trust each other right?"
"What if the right thing is to drag you in front of your mother?" River was always the one to ask questions like that.
"Then don't do it." It was Helsinki who said that, beating Moon to the punch.
"Now that that is dealt with, let me show you around." And with that Moon lead them away into the party.
Naturally the Monsters were nervous around the newcomers, but they were quickly integrated into the party; especially Prince Ponyhead who was accepted as one of their own within 5 minutes due to partying hard. Rhombulus and Heckapoo were also integrated very well, especially Heckapoo after they all heard she controlled her own dimension and began handing out dimensional scissors simply because she wanted to mess with the law that Monsters could not own dimensional scissors. Omnitraxus Prime had a hard time because he was communicating via crystal ball and was on a rolling stand, 'How did they manage to get that into the woods anyways?', but he helped as a DJ of all things; didn't know he could do that especially through a crystal ball. River and Helsinki had the hardest time since they were Mewmans but River was introduced via his girlfriend Bonibell and Helsinki's rebellious attitude helped earn her a place; although all her friends were still treated with some suspicion. 'Not surprising as they were not anticipated and for a Monster a surprise is often a bad thing.' Thought Moon.
As the party wound down Moon's friends began coming back up to her as Moon wanted to introduce them to some other friends.
"Guys I want you to meet these three guys: Fulntrut, Boarin, and Lucy O' Mally." Fulntrut was the guitarist who took off the cloth covering his eyes to reveal he could see and had dull amber eyes. Boarin was revealed to be humanoid from the neck down but very muscular with thick brown fur and have a boars head with bluish-grey eyes and was very short at about 4 feet tall; and he had no shirt simply because he couldn't get them over his head instead wearing a leather bikers jacket. Lucy O' Mally, known as Lucy, was around 5 feet tall and humanoid with green skin, 3 eyes with one of them on her forehead, a pair of twisting horns surrounded by long purplish-black hair, and bats wings on her back.
"Twas a bit upset about the groppin ya gave me, but I'm fine considering what a sweet lookin Lass you are." Lucy was not holding back on the compliments for Heckapoo all night long with everyone just brushing it off or laughing at it good natured. And what's more, Moon couldn't tell if Heckapoo was being polite about it or actually reciprocating them. Which made Moon wonder 'Has Heckapoo hit on me in the past and I was simply not aware of it?'
"We know you guys were not invited by Moon as she would have told us ahead of time to get approval, but you guys seem nice enough so it's all good." Boarin had heard the explanation for why they had come into the woods and actually liked them even more for it. As he would put it "The best friends are those that help you when you neither ask for it or when you don't know you need it."
"How long has this been going on anyways?" River was the one to ask that question.
Moon gave the back story, "For several years actually. I was out in the woods fighting Monsters encroaching on Mewman farm land and found Fulntrut wounded behind several bushes. Instead of trying to fight me he asked for my help which I gave to him so he could get back home to his family. Afterwards I began seeing him and his friends slowly getting acquainted with them until they trusted me. Now I bring them supplies at times and party with them."
"It's thanks to her that we are now growing a hidden corn field after she gave us smuggled seed corn several months ago." Fulntrut added on to the tale.
"Say, do you mind if we come on over at times to join you guys. I can't bring anything as my dad won't let anything worth money out of his sight unfortunately." It was just like Helsinki to want to join the rebellious festivities.
"Why not? Ye seem to be able to come easily and you'd fit right in." Lucy of course would welcome her, any chance for Lucy to get another girl or boy to roll in the hay with her as far as Moon could tell.
After some finishing conversation the groups split and went their separate ways with Monsters going into the forest and Moon with her friends going back to the castle.
"Say, don't you have that pair of dimensional scissors I gave you so you could just step into the party?" Heckapoo did have a point there.
"I do, but I prefer to ride Red Star there." Moon saying that as she got onto the warnicorn who was looking suspiciously at Moon's friends. "Don't worry Red Star, they're friends." Moon comforted him and while he didn't stop looking at them suspiciously he did seem calm around them. As they headed back Moon thought 'Even though I have boys to slog through that my mom keeps on piling up, at least I have these nights to myself and my friends.'
"She is partying with Monsters?" The third cloaked figure spoke in a gravelly voice.
"It seems that way, but I can't approach her mother without prove. And if I got any it would expose us." The non-mirror cloaked figure replied in a young man's voice.
"Don't focus on that, your task is upcoming. This is the best chance we have so don't blow it me boy. And failing it don't expose us." The second figure replied in an old man's voice.
"I shall not fail you." He waved his hand in front of the mirror to signal that his time was up.
"We work as darkness to keep stability, for without order all shall fall. As the shadow clause we shall protect Mewni." And with that the figures faded and he packed up his mirrors. 'Well, tomorrow I shall final get acquainted with this Moon, time to pull out the charm.' He thought in silence.
