Here's the second half of last week's work. I recommend you reread C4 for better context.
Shoutout to anon for some ninja-proofing a couple days ago. You the man.
Marco was rapidly growing to dislike what he'd privately come to call "the Janna experience."
The Janna experience went something like this: he'd tag along with Janna as she went to do something, because (although he didn't admit it), he enjoyed her company, had nothing better going on, and wanted to keep her out of trouble.
Then something would happen. Maybe it was according to plan, maybe not, but something would happen and he'd end up fighting for his life in a set of extremely dubious circumstances, wind up exhausting himself as he tried to confront an enemy he was totally under-qualified to be dealing with, and either escape by a hair, or be rescued by some other, much-more-capable person. Like Janna, who could do magic. Or Kelly, who fought monsters all the time - and was currently running in front of him, going through the exact same experience.
Except that, even though he didn't like admitting it to himself, Marco actually loved doing this stuff. The action, the adventure, the excitement - for someone who'd done nothing but train in a strip-mall dojo and ace tests for 10 years, the part that he chose not to tell himself was just how addicting the experience was, and just how much he looked forward to repeating it.
Ahead of him, Kelly's bushy green head of hair was leading its way down the craggy, pine-covered slopes of a Mewnian mountaintop as they tried, desperately, to understand why her dimensional scissors weren't working.
They paused behind a massive pine trunk, gasping for breath, and Kelly snipped the scissors through the air again.
"Nothing." She said, and the two shared a disappointed look.
At Queen Moon's request, Marco had followed up on a lead she'd thought of - while Moon and Glossaryck were training Janna in a field, somewhere, Marco and Kelly had portalled away as soon as they'd arrived on Mewni, seeking a magical mountaintop clock-maker in the hopes of unravelling even a small part of what they'd taken to calling "Star's Riddle."
Unfortunately, they quickly learned the old man was as cuckoo as some of his clocks. They'd watched as he'd gone from a toddler to an old man in the space of a minute, then back again. Then he'd gotten mad at their mention of stopping a clock and started throwing his creations at them - not that he'd been particularly coherent to begin with.
As soon as the two had caught their breath, they heard the crazy old man shout somewhere behind their hiding place. Something shattered against a nearby trunk, and they watched it shrink from a thousand-year-old behemoth to a tiny sapling. Then, slowly, it started to thicken and shoot back up.
"So now what?" Marco asked as they took off again. They could hear rushing and crashing only a few meters behind them.
Kelly gave him a glance. "I donno," she said, "maybe he'll get struck by lightning."
On cue, the cloudy sky above them broke open in a torrent of rain, and they were both immediately drenched to the bone.
"Why aren't your scissors working?" Marco shouted over the noise.
"What?!" Kelly replied. They could hear a crack of thunder, and a toddler started to scream in the woods behind them. Remarkably, they could then hear him as he started to head back up towards the peak.
The two kept running, though, until their lungs were fit to burst, and took what shelter they could beneath the spindly boughs of the pine trees around them. Kelly's vibrant hair had deflated from its normal bush and instead formed a solid drapery around her body. She withdrew the scissors before they could slide completely out of it, and ran them through the air again.
"Earth's gone!" Kelly shouted over the rain.
"Gone?" Marco roared back.
"Scissors only stop working if the place you're trying to get to doesn't exist or you don't know where it is!" she explained.
"Could your scissors just be broken?" Marco asked, and Kelly shook her head. The effect was spectacular as curtains of water flew away from her. Then, she ran the scissors through the air one more time, and, miraculously, a teal portal appeared in front of them. They both stumbled through immediately and it zipped shut behind them.
They'd reappeared in what seemed to be a rather comfy-looking one room apartment.
"Why didn't you do that in the first place?" Marco detached his drenched hoodie and placed it on a coat rack next to the front door.
"You said 'we should go back to Earth,'" Kelly explained, "so I tried to take us back to Earth. And now we're dripping all over my house."
A sofa, armchair and set of small tables dominated the room, with a Kelly-sized bed pushed off in a corner. A little kitchenette lined the back wall. Although the floor and walls were bare, cobbled stone, the clashing furniture looked fairly modern. A small side-door even showed a stock-standard Earthen bathroom.
Kelly snatched a pair of towels from it and tossed one to Marco before grabbing a bucket from next to the door and wringing out her hair. "This happens pretty often," she explained as Marco dried himself off.
"It's a nice place," he observed, and Kelly smiled at him.
"Bought it with those fight proceeds," she replied. Tying back her now-slightly-less-wet-hair into a ponytail, she walked over to the back wall and produced what were unmistakably a pair of very Earthly water bottles from the kitchen. She handed one to Marco before draining the other and flopping down on the couch.
Marco took a glance out one of the hut's small windows. The town outside was a lot like what he imagined 12th century Europe looked like.
"Sure beats livin' in a cave." Kelly kicked her feet up onto a table and sighed as she relaxed. "Earth-stuff knows how to kick it."
A pair of monsters was passing by outside, shepherding a cart drawn by a giant lizard. Marco wrenched his thoughts from this and turned himself back to the problem at hand. Kelly's scissors were now lying on the table next to her feet, and he ran them through the air to no effect.
"Not good." He muttered and began pacing. "Seriously not good! The Earth can't be gone, I have school tomorrow! What about my parents? What about Janna's parents? What about Jackie?"
The scissors flashed through the air again, still to no effect, and Marco sped up.
Kelly cracked an eyelid. "Dude, y'gotta relax. This stuff works itself out! She yawned. "Usually."
Marco wasn't listening. "Janna," he punched his open hand defiantly. "It's always Janna! She must've done something, but she can fix it. Let's go get her."
He snapped the scissors again and remembered the plains where Moon had portalled everyone in. A portal appeared immediately.
Kelly stood up and stretched, wishing very much they could've stuck around her apartment and relaxed for a bit, before Marco grabbed her wrist (and his hoodie from next to the door) and pulled her through.
Only, when they stepped out on the other side, all they found was a grassy field swaying in the breeze.
"Great!" Marco stormed. "And she's not here! Now what?" He fell on his back, defeated.
Kelly shrugged and enjoyed the feeling of the breeze as it dried her hair. "Donno dude. Guess the Earth is gone forever."
Marco moaned pathetically, and Kelly shook her head before offering a hand up.
"Fine… c'mon, I know a place where we can go."
Stepping out of the portal, the two were immediately pulled apart by an angry throng of Mewmans and monsters aslike. Marco could just make out the name of the run-down looking building in front of them: "The Interdimensional Scissor Rental and Licensing Agency."
Marco saw Kelly's unmistakable bush of hair bobbing through the crowd towards it, and he threaded his way along behind her.
"Oops! Ow! Excuse me! Coming thorough! Watch the eyestalks!" The crowd's roar around Marco was incoherent, but he got the distinct impression that he and Kelly weren't the only ones having problems with their scissors.
Kelly's hair forced its way inside the building's tilted front doors, and Marco squeezed past the final few burly monsters and followed.
Inside, a sitting area was packed with more residents, but in stark contrast to the raging crowd outside, everyone was completely silent. Some were even sleeping. It wasn't hard to see why - a pair of 10 foot tall security trolls were walking around holding billyclubs, glaring at anyone who so much as whispered.
At the front wall, a set of narrow booths manned by turtle-like creatures was seeing to the lobby's inhabitants. A sign on the wall next to them read, "Please be quiet and courteous!" Below it, a bloated toad perched on a ticker: "Please take a number! You will be #947. Now Serving #185."
One of the Mewmans at the desks forced his way past Marco and outside with a very disgruntled look on his face, and the toad gave its sign a languid lick: "Now Serving #186."
Marco spotted Kelly surveying the lobby and gave her a tap on the shoulder, and she pressed a finger to her lips and gestured at the trolls. Making to lead him back outside, she evidently saw the shouting mob and thought better of it - instead diverting them to a side door for what was unmistakably a women's restroom.
Marco did his very best to avoid looking around, but couldn't help noticing that, like at Kelly's house, the restroom was very Earthlike, and unmistakably the most modern part of the building.
"Well, this place is packed." Kelly chose to point out the obvious - though, Marco noticed, the same could not be said of the restroom, which seemed to be nearly empty. "So there goes my idea. And the turtles are new. Must be Ludo's "Monster Worker" initiative." She made air quotes and rolled her eyes. "And I thought this place was slow before…"
Marco started pacing in the entryway, and a mewman woman gave him a dirty look as she hurried out past him.
"You didn't flush!" He shouted after her, before resuming his pacing. "I don't get it," he mused. "Everyone's scissors stopped working. But only to get off Mewni. They still work to get around. Has anything like this ever happened before?"
Kelly shook her head, and he continued.
"Well there's no way everyone is trying to get to Earth, so it must be everywhere…Kelly, is there some way someone could've isolated Mewni from everywhere else?"
Kelly shrugged, and behind her, the door opened again. The same woman was standing there, one of the security trolls bending down to look into the doorway behind her. "Excuse me," he said in a deep voice. "This is the women's restroom."
Kelly pulled on Marco's arm and pushed out past the troll and the triumphant-looking Mewman woman, and behind her, they heard the troll say "now go flush."
Kelly giggled, then leaned in next to Marco's ear to whisper when the other troll looked over at them. "I have no idea. But I think there's a way we can find out…"
When Kelly had told Marco they were going to the "deepest, most ancientest source of magic on all of Mewni," he'd envisioned some kind of glimmering, glowing pool, or a glowing magic orb, or a fountain spraying liquid gold, or maybe an ancient creature that slept most of the time.
What he hadn't expected was a long-abandoned, spider-adorned mineshaft in an otherwise-unremarkable forest. And yet, when he stepped out of the portal that Kelly had made for them, that was exactly where they were.
"Are we in the right place?" He asked her, and she nodded.
"I came here with Star a couple of years ago. The closer we get, the harder it is to get the scissors to work right. And believe me, we do not want to get lost down here."
She pushed aside some cobwebs and a cluster of spiders fell down from the ceiling before skittering off along the forest floor. Then she lifted the metal barricade that barred the entrance, and gestured Marco inside before slamming it shut behind them.
Immediately, they found themselves in pitch-black darkness, and Marco wished for the millionth time that he'd bit the bullet and asked his parents for a new phone.
"Oh, hang on." Kelly's voice was somewhere off to his left, and he heard her rummaging through her hair. "There we go." There was a click, and she appeared, holding a little pen-light. It wasn't much, but it was just enough to see by. She handed another to Marco.
"This way," she led the way down, and into the mine they went.
For an abandoned mineshaft, there wasn't much in the way of equipment. A few times, Marco stumbled over the ancient head of a shovel or a pickaxe, but he didn't see much in the way of the other stereotypical equipment. No minecart that they could ride to the center of the Earth, or rickety tracks leading over massive pits in the ground. It was just a long, dark, smooth tunnel, leading down.
"Mewmans discovered this place thousands of years ago." Kelly narrated. "The royal heirs go on pilgrimage here when they get old enough. That's how I know about it. Last time we were here there were giant spiders all over the place -" Marco froze in his tracks and looked around frantically. "-but it looks like they're all gone now, so that's cool."
"Is it this dark all the way down?" Marco stumbled again when his foot hit a loose rock.
"Well, yeah, but usually you've got a wand," Kelly mentioned, "so it's not too bad. Probably should've brought some better lights though…"
On this thought, they continued their downward trek, and Marco started to see signs of spiders - tattered webs hung from the ceiling, and crisscrossed the catacomb-like tunnels. Fortunately, most of them looked almost as old as the decaying scraps of equipment - once or twice they even found a skeleton, bleached yellow with age and long-since decayed.
The mine tunnels twisted and turned off on every side, and every few minutes the two were faced with a new fork, but Kelly led confidently, and hummed to herself as she walked. "There's an old Mewman nursery rhyme they tell the heirs, so they don't get lost." She explained. They'd come across an intersection with no less than four different tunnels branching off in front of them, and Kelly had chosen without hesitation.
"How far down is this place, anyway?" Marco asked. It felt like they'd been walking for miles, and although his eyes had adjusted to the dark, he didn't feel like they were approaching anywhere particularly magical - rather, he was expecting at any moment to run into a dead end, enormous cavern or even lava lake.
"Deep." Kelly said. "The Mewmans dug for decades before they found it. They were mining iron, I think? Or maybe it was corn-salts..."
Ahead, the passageway started to get lighter - not by much, but Marco was so used to the dark that it may as well have been a spotlight. Kelly, though, frowned. "Well that's not right, we're not there yet…"
Instead, they emerged into the biggest cave they'd yet found. It wasn't much larger than Marco's house, but after the claustrophobic tunnels, that was still pretty impressive.
Then they saw what was making the light, and Kelly jumped behind a rock. Marco, however, wasn't so lucky.
A wooden fort stood against one of the walls of the cavern, presumably blocking the pair's progression forward, and monsters of all shapes and sizes were on guard duty. A few torches were interspersed among some bare yellow light bulbs, and Marco cast a shadow ten times his height. A guard saw him immediately.
There was a shout, an alarm clanged, and the gates opened instantly as armored soldiers all marshalled out of it. Behind Marco, a door in the ceiling boomed shut. Marco backed up behind Kelly's rock as the monsters approached, only to find she was gone.
Disregarding this point, Marco took stock of the platoon approaching him. Every monster was clad in metal armor and carrying a weapon, and moved like a trained unit. If he fought, it wasn't going to be a brawl like he was used to. He'd literally be taking on a small army.
So instead, he raised his hands and bowed his head. The unit surrounded him, and cold shackles were placed on his wrists without so much as a question. Then he was marched back into the camp.
Freaking Janna Experiences.
The gates rolled open, and Marco kept a careful eye out for Kelly, but she was nowhere to be found. He suspected that she was waiting for the right moment - there was no way she could've disappeared back up the tunnel before the door shut behind them.
The camp itself was quite impressive, if also incredibly cluttered, and Marco took a keen look around. He spotted a barracks and armory, and a smaller, fresh tunnel was dug straight up at one of the edges to make room for a primitive elevator. It seemed the monsters were fully embracing whatever technology they could get their hands on.
More bizarrely, though, were the various instruments and devices that presumably the camp was serving to guard. Each one was wheeled as though it moved regularly, and shared the sprockets and containers that Marco remembered from when they'd rescued Queen Moon. Something to do with capturing magic.
He didn't have time to get a closer look, though. His hands were fastened above his head at the back wall of the cave, and he was left to stand there, staring at the side of a tent, a burly-looking rat-creature standing careful watch.
And that was it. No interrogation, no attention, no real interest at all. He just stood there while his legs started to hurt and his arms started to go numb. There was still no sign of Kelly, and he couldn't even see the camp proper with the tent in the way.
For lack of anything better to do, he started to count cracks in the floor, memorize the tufts of hair on his guard, or imagine what Janna was up to, up on the surface. They hadn't told anyone they were coming down here, and he wondered if anyone else who could help him even knew the camp existed. Maybe Kelly had found a way out, and was going to find help.
Once, he requested water, and the guard summarily ignored him as if he hadn't asked.
After what Marco estimated was over an hour, there was a bustle in the camp and he looked up from where he'd been examining a particularly interesting clump of gravel at his feet. The monster that was guarding him suddenly stiffened, and an extra pair of sentries rounded the tent and stood at attention. Striding in behind them was the creature that Marco had seen leading them a few times before. Ludo. Or maybe Toffee? He'd have to ask Moon what this guy's deal was, later. Or Kelly.
The boss's eyes were glowing green, and he seemed taller than the last time Marco had fought him. Although his head and left shoulder's arm were much like what Marco remembered, the rest of him was overgrown in scaly hide. His legs were longer than the last time Marco had seen him, and his right arm was as oddly proportioned as ever. There was a faint glimmer in the creature's longer hand, and Marco caught a glimpse of the piece of wand. The middle finger on the hand was still missing. Overall, he gave the impression of something in the middle of metamorphosis - still changing and growing, but almost complete.
He was wearing a tiny little three-piece suit, which only added to his ridiculousness - though he'd at least shaved the beard.
"Hello." Toffee's dry voice came out of Ludo's beak, which still seemed so wrong compared to what the creature looked like. "You're Marco, right? I don't believe we've formally met. I am Toffee." He offered his wand-hand, and Marco glared at him, his own wrists still bound above his head.
"Oh, yes, of course." Toffee nodded to Marco's guard, and it immediately jumped up onto Marco's shoulder (as it was less than a third of his height) and unbound his shackles from the wall.
Marco's hands dropped down in front of him, completely free, and began to tingle. He made no move to run - he probably would've made it 3 meters at most. Toffee stretched out his hand again, but Marco still just glared at it. Toffee sighed in resignation and snapped his fingers to his sentries, who fetched a pair of stools from the tent behind them.
Toffee sat upon one as it was placed behind him, which looked ridiculous. Although the stool hardly went to Marco's knees, Ludo's feet - even with the extensions offered by Toffee's metamorphosis - still didn't touch the floor.
He gestured for Marco to do the same, and Marco begrudgingly obliged, though only because his legs were hurting from standing for so long.
"I think we got off on the wrong foot, Marco." Toffee said. "You'll have to forgive Ludo, he may have been a bit... overzealous in chasing down his magic book. Your friend just happened to get caught in the crossfire. Janna, right?"
Marco said nothing and stared straight ahead. Toffee sighed again.
"Marco, I apologize for whatever damage my men may have caused you, but I'm ready to make amends! We don't need to be enemies. This has been a rather… embarrassing misunderstanding."
He paused, waiting for a response, but Marco said nothing and continued to stare straight ahead. Undeterred, Toffee continued.
"I'll be honest Marco, I was very surprised to learn that you, of all people, had found your way down here. And alone at that. Fortunately, a few of the guards recognized you from our last, ah, 'meeting.' Frederick here was the first." He nodded to Marco's rat guard. "You broke his jaw the last time you saw him. I believe he now experiences quite a bit of pain when he opens his mouth."
Marco spared a glance at the rat-thing with a pang of remorse, and now saw that the scowl on its face might not have been entirely due to attitude - rather, its jaw didn't seem to have quite healed properly.
"Sorry." Marco said shortly. "He hit first."
Toffee nodded. "Following orders, like a good soldier." The rat stood a little straighter.
"So, Marco, I think you'll find me very agreeable. All I need to know is how you knew how to find this place. Then you can leave." Toffee stated. Marco said nothing and resumed staring straight ahead. "You know, I don't have any reason to keep you here." The creature prodded. "I'll send you home with my own scissors if you like."
At this, Marco did finally respond. "Your scissors are working?"
Toffee raised an eyebrow. "So it's not just mine, then?" He shook his head and rolled his eyes. "Of course. My enemies continue to prove that they'll thwart me no matter the consequences. I apologize. I haven't been to the surface in several days."
"So, that's why you're here, then." He continued. "You were on Mewni, your scissors stopped working, and now you can't get home. So you decided to come see what was going on. Well if it's any comfort, everyone should have their scissors back in another couple of weeks, and I doubt she will have the strength to try something so foolish again. So, that only leaves one question. Marco, how did you find me?"
Marco said nothing before finally setting on a plausible-sounding lie. "The Mewni Library of Knowledge." He remembered a few weeks ago, when they'd visited looking for a lead on Star, among other things. Kelly had said there were an infinite number of libraries in the building - surely one of them would've mentioned this place?
Toffee smiled. "I see." He said. The silence lingered in the air for a bit.
"You know, I think you have the wrong idea of me." Toffee said. "You think that I'm a 'big bad monster,' out to destroy the world. You probably don't actually know that much about me. So let me clarify.
"The Queen you, ehm, 'rescued.' Moon Butterfly. She's not what she seems to be. She is a tyrant.
"A few years ago, mewmans lived in dirt and squalor, and monsters lived in fear and starvation. Royal magic made sure that we couldn't do, well, anything - we lived on the edges of a land that mewmans had conquered by force, watching them use it to grow food we weren't allowed to eat.
"Monster governments were crushed. Any time we tried to talk to the royal family, we were laughed at and thrown into dungeons. We had less say than the mewman peasants, and they had no say at all. They lived in squalor as well. Dimensional travel was highly regulated. Monsters had done so freely, thousands of years ago, but now, we couldn't even leave."
Marco said nothing, and stared straight ahead.
"I changed that." Toffee continued. "I overthrew the royal family and now, everyone is able to eat. I even offered to speak to the princess of the kingdom, to negotiate, but when we met," he examined the cleaved star in his hand idly. "She attacked me. Foolish, and shortsighted. She was reckless and blind, and paid the price. Unfortunately, so did I. I assure you, I normally look far less ridiculous."
At this, he stared down his beak and at his body distastefully. Marco still said nothing.
"But things are better now." Toffee continued. "Monsters and Mewmans live as equals. We've learned from other dimensions, instead of ignoring them, and now we have clean water, bathrooms, elevators, and roads." He gestured to the elevator which stretched up to the ceiling behind him. "Everything I do is for the betterment of the people. I am not the villain in this story."
Marco remembered the destroyed village he and Janna had visited, months ago. 'Living as equals' indeed.
"Well I told you where I found out, so can I go?" He finally asked.
"No." Toffee said shortly. "That would've been an excellent lie if I hadn't personally made sure it was impossible. A very large collection of books is currently on loan from the library, and sitting in my office. No other references exist."
"How do you store all the knowledge from an infinite number of libraries?" Marco asked.
Toffee looked a bit taken aback at this. "An infinite number? I suggest you check your facts, Marco. The library of knowledge consists of only three separate libraries." He pulled back the sleeve on his wand arm and checked his watch. "Now, will you tell me how you really found this place? If not, then I'm afraid this conversation is getting us nowhere."
"Nope." seeing as he'd already been caught in a lie, Marco doubted he would have a shot at another.
"Well then, perhaps you'll be more prone to talking when you start to get hungry. Everyone in my kingdom eats. But only because I allow it."
He stood up and snapped his fingers, and the two sentries rushed forward. They pulled Marco off of his seat and back up onto the wall, where they refastened his shackles. "I meant what I said, by the way. All I need to know is how you know about this place. After that you're free to go. Call me when you're ready to talk."
With that, he turned and left, his guards following, and a few minutes later, Marco saw the elevator slowly begin to rise up and out of the cave.
He'd just resigned himself to another few hours of boredom while he waited for Kelly to make her move (assuming she hadn't simply abandoned him like the back of his mind suspected), when there was a loud "PSST! Frederick!" From the far end of the tent.
The rat thing turned towards it, and caught a fist-sized rock to the nose through the face-gap in his helmet. He stumbled back towards Marco but still didn't say anything, and Marco planted a kick to the back of his helmet, which connected with a clang. Frederick crumpled immediately.
Kelly emerged around the side of the tent, coated in dust. She looked filthy and rather uncomfortable, but it had also dulled her hair color somewhat - a primitive, but effective camouflage. She searched the rat for its keys, and they heard a voice from around the other side of the tent. "Hey, Frederick, was that you?"
Fortunately, Kelly found the key the monster had used rather quickly, and in moments Marco's hands were free once again.
"Thanks," Marco whispered. Kelly nodded and gestured back towards where she'd appeared, and they crept around the corner.
They'd made it about 30 feet towards the passage down to Mewni's core before someone gave out a shout. "Hey, I need some help! Monster down, the prisoner's gone!"
Everyone in the camp looked up from what they were doing simultaneously, and though none of them spotted the pair immediately, Marco suspected they had about five seconds.
"Run." Kelly said, and took the lead as they both sprinted towards the tunnel down.
Alarm bells sounded behind them, and they sprinted past the tunnel's guards before they could stop them. But the monster army was hot on their heels in moments, alarms ringing above them, and roaring for blood.
"Open to ideas!" Marco shouted as they ran. His legs had hurt just from standing all day - another full-sprint wasn't helping matters.
"Uhhhh… here!" The tunnel had been reinforced recently, and wooden beams were running floor-to-ceiling every few feet. Kelly planted her shoulder into one of them at a full-tilt run and bounced off, but it shifted as well - just slightly.
Marco followed suit, throwing himself into it, and felt his arm scream in pain. The wood might as well have been concrete for how hard it was to move - but it shifted once again, just a bit more this time.
The monsters were only a few dozen meters behind them, and they could hear the clanging of weapons and armor as they rushed down the tunnel. Kelly gave the beam one last enormous tackle, and it budged just a few more inches - but they were out of time.
Suddenly, the ground shook beneath their feet, and the entire tunnel rumbled around them. Kelly and Marco dived out of the way as the support they were working on splintered under the force of the earthquake, and a pile of boulders crashed down between them and the first of Toffee's forces.
They scrambled back and watched the dust settle over what had moments ago been their only way in. They couldn't even hear the monsters on the other side.
Once their ears stopped ringing, Marco got to his feet and offered Kelly a hand up. "There's another way out, right?" He asked as she dusted herself off.
Kelly shrugged. "Guess we'll find out. Worst-case scenario the monsters dig us out, though, so I wouldn't worry about it."
Marco couldn't help but think that meeting an army of trained monsters was only slightly preferable to starving in a cave at the bottom of the world, but with little other option, he followed her as she continued their trek downwards.
The final cave, it seemed, was quite a bit brighter than their previous experiences. Lines of forked white energy crisscrossed the walls every few meters, providing a sparkling light that rather reminded Marco of a lightning storm. Kelly was similarly in awe, and they walked in silence for a few minutes.
Finally, Marco broke it with a nagging thought. "Hey Kelly, weird question."
"Mm?"
"Did you lie to us about how big the Mewni library was?"
Kelly looked at him, confused. "No, why?"
"Something Toffee said. That there were only three libraries."
She arched an eyebrow. "We talking about the same place?" She asked. "The tour guide said there was an infinite number of them."
"And you didn't feel the need to fact check because…" Marco trailed on.
"Why would he lie about something like that?" She asked.
They kept walking in silence for a few minutes, punctuated occasionally by another quake.
"Can I ask you something else?" Marco asked quietly.
Kelly looked at him curiously.
"Was Toffee telling the truth?" He asked, and Kelly let out a tight breath.
"Part of it." She said. "In order to get Star to 'negotiate,' he kidnapped a squire. She didn't even come find us before going after him."
Marco filed this information away. "What about what he said, about things being better now?"
Kelly shrugged. "Things are always better when you look in the bright spots." She gave a pause, then added a begrudging thought. "But yeah. I like Queen Moon. None of what he said was her fault. But if she was still in power, I'd probably still be living in a cave."
They didn't have much more time to continue that line of thought, since at that moment, several things happened at once. First, they heard a couple of familiar voices from a well-lit cave below them. Then there was another earthquake, an otherworldly scream that lingered in their ears, and they both fell on their butts. Then they slid and rolled down the cave floor, completely missed the ladder that the monsters had presumably installed, and fell nearly fifteen feet down into Mewni's magical nexus, landing with a splash in a waist-deep lake of oily liquid. They looked up, gasping and clearing their eyes of the stuff, and saw a very familiar, very panicked-looking pair of faces above them.
"Marco? Kelly?" Janna asked in disbelief.
Marco gave a feeble wave as he spat out a mouthful of oil. He was glad that the pool had been there so they hadn't broken themselves on the floor, but it tasted disgusting.
They were both on their feet in moments, and had as much trouble processing everything around them as Janna had - probably more, considering they had no idea what was going on.
"Look, I'll explain everything later," Janna said, "but the important thing is we stop that thing from hitting that thing." She pointed to the wand-monster and the iced-over magic nexus, respectively.
Kelly reached into her hair and withdrew a sword that didn't seem to stop. The same broadsword she'd used to dispatch the giant worm, the first time they'd met. "Alright," she said, "I've fought things for less. CHARGE!"
She splashed forward for a moment before Janna picked her up and flew them both over to the creature, and Marco could hear her shouting as the monster screamed and batted at them.
Marco felt a bit lost, for more reasons than one. Aside from the fact that he'd completely lost touch with the situation, Kelly had a sword, and a lot of experience fighting big monsters. He doubted a few punches and kicks would help deal with a 30-foot-tall death-giant. Especially when he saw Kelly run her sword through one of its shoulders to absolutely no effect. Janna was circling, fire billowing from her hands - more than Marco had ever seen her make at once, and yet, she didn't seem affected. Unfortunately, neither did the monster.
At a loss for purpose, he instead helped the obviously-exhausted Queen Moon to a rock that sat just above the level of the oil, where she gratefully sat down. For lack of anything better, he made to splash over to the monster and join his friends, when Moon grabbed his wrist.
"A true warrior knows when they can win."
Begrudgingly, he stood back and watched.
Although her attacks didn't seem to be having an effect, Janna felt amazing. Her incendio spell was so, so far beyond anything she'd tried to do before - and yet, any time she felt her exhaustion start to creep up on her, she just allowed the monster to swat at her, and she was back to 150%!
Unfortunately, all she seemed to be doing was annoying the thing. Neither water, fire, nor lightning had seemed to have much of an effect on it - if anything, it was more ferocious than ever.
The same could be said of Kelly, who was periodically having Janna toss her at the monster. She sunk her sword deep into it with every swing, and yet, the wounds healed in an instant - she couldn't even tell she'd been fighting it.
And all the while, the monster was still getting a swing or two in at the pool. How could they beat something they couldn't figure out how to hurt?
"Janna, throw me at its face!" Kelly shouted in a burst of inspiration, and Janna let up on her fiery barrage. Kelly had been hanging from the thing's back, doing her best to stay where it couldn't reach her, and Janna plucked her away before circling up over the thing's head.
She released her companion and, with a whooping cry, Kelly plummeted towards the overlarge skull with her sword outstretched. It found its mark - she sank it up to the hilt in its magic eye, and there it stuck, embedded.
For the first time, the fiend stumbled. It careened backwards and its hands went to its face, forcing Kelly to madly jump out into open air. The creature crashed into the wall of the room, causing another great rumble, and Janna caught Kelly out of the air.
"That worked!" Janna shouted. "Do it again!"
But there was no again. Everyone watched as the monster pinched the sword from its skull and tossed it aside. It clanged against a wall, and sank into the muck at the bottom of the cave - but not before Kelly saw its blade. Melted, battered, and bent: completely destroyed.
"Well, I'm out of ideas!" Janna shouted, and the monster swatted unusually ferociously at the pair. Although Janna only winced as she absorbed part of its fingers, Kelly caught the full brunt of the blow - she shot towards the lake below her like a rocket and skipped off its surface several times before lying still.
"Kelly!" Janna kept up her attack as the wand-thing stumbled back towards the nexus - another couple of hits, and the icy pool was done for.
Marco splashed over to his cyan-haired friend, and grabbed her under her arms as he hauled her back to Moon's rock. He couldn't tell if she was breathing amidst the cacophony of battle, but she didn't seem to be bleeding at all - that was good, right?
He looked up towards where Janna was futilely trying to stop the monster as it resumed pounding against the ice, and there was a monumental crack as it finally started to completely give. It raised its fists in the air for a final, triumphant strike, and Marco barely processed Moon next to him, waving her scissors at him and shouting something about "getting away."
Then, several things happened at once, none of which Marco was remotely prepared for.
A purple portal appeared exactly where the monster's fists would have connected to the pool, and they instead crashed through harmlessly. Several more appeared around it from all directions, and the oily sheen of the creature began to vacuum into them. It wasn't having much of an effect, but the monster screamed all the same.
With an enormous wave of heat, a moment later pillars of flame erupted around the edges of the room. Demons, skeletons and underworld monsters of every type appeared in full war regalia - and if Marco thought that the monster army had been intimidating, it was nothing compared to suddenly seeing a hundred nightmares appear wearing everything from spikey chrome chestplates to kevlar and combat-camo.
As one, each of them withdrew what was unmistakably a harpoon gun, and fired it into the creature's flanks. Flaming chains connected the barbed points as they sunk into the wand-thing's oily hide, and it screamed again, swatting at them futilely as more snared its arms.
Tom and a pale, angry-looking demoness who could only be his mother appeared a moment later, hovering next to the thing's head, arms raised and chanting. Fiery runes appeared around the creature's body and began to sear themselves onto it, while it writhed and twisted away from them.
Then, with a war cry, the monsters that had followed Marco and Kelly down from the encampment began to jump down into the lake out of the same hole that the pair had arrived from. Toffee's forces had apparently made good time while digging out the cave-in. Carried atop an enormous minotaur was Toffee himself, watching with interest through Ludo's eyes as his monsters charged the underworld's centurions, seeming to understand the situation in an instant. "Don't let them stop it!" He shouted to his army, and they gave a renewed roar as they charged forward.
Finally, Marco saw as an enormous portal - this one a fiery orange - cut itself open at the monster's feet, concealing the frozen nexus entirely and sucking in everything around it. A red-haired demoness appeared out of it, a crown of fire atop her head, with Glossaryck next to her.
The wand-creature collapsed. Between the portals siphoning away its power, and the enormous one which was currently pulling at its feet, it didn't matter that the monster army was overwhelming the demons - with a mighty bellow, the creature was sucked into the portal, breaking the chains that bound it as it, along with most of the oil pooled on the floor, disappeared.
Then the real battle began. With the demonic forces no longer preoccupied with holding the creature down, they drew swords, spears and axes, marshalled in front of Tom and his mother, and the fight for the nexus began.
Marco was wondering if he should join in. He had Kelly and Moon to take care of, but he suspected that the glassy nexus was the reason his scissors had stopped working, and that he was no closer to being able to get back to Earth than he had been earlier in the day.
Moon made up his mind for him, though - waving the scissors through the air, a portal appeared at her side. She shouted "let's go!" over the roar of the battle.
Marco grabbed Kelly and hoisted her up as best he could, and stepped through.
Emerging through the other side, he found himself in a semi-familiar hotel room. King River was sleeping on the bed, snoring away without a care while the television quietly oozed fragments of sound from wrestling reruns. It was dark outside, and for the first time all day, Marco wondered if his parents were worried about him.
Marco dumped Kelly unceremoniously onto the bed, and River woke with a start before looking around groggily. His eyes fixed on Marco's face, then he glanced at Kelly.
"Quite unbecoming," he slurred proudly, before slumping back over and resuming his slumber.
Queen Moon stepped through the portal only a moment later, and it snapped shut behind her. Janna (and Glossaryck) were conspicuously absent from her side, and Marco stood up immediately.
"I'm going back to get them," he said immediately, but there was no need. A moment later a purple portal opened on the other side of the room and Janna flew through with a crash, piling up on the floor. Glossaryck followed a second later, and the portal closed - but not before a spear came sailing through, impaling the television with a smash. River grunted and turned over in his sleep.
"Who's winning?" Queen Moon asked at once.
Glossaryck laid down peacefully on the floor next to Janna, who was already fast asleep. He moaned. "Ooooooh, the underworld, I think?" he said into the carpet. "But if Toffee doesn't break open the nexus eventually, Ishtar will. I have an awful headache, can we discuss this tomorrow?"
Moon bit her lip and stood up before rapidly thinking better of the practice. Marco could understand why - by the looks of things he'd had the easy day, and he was about ready to curl up next to River.
But not before he figured out what was going on.
"Okay, so." He re-ordered his thoughts, and commanded them to get in line. Like questions on a test, all of them would get answers in time. "What was that thing?"
"Oh, we tried to make a wand for Janna." Moon said as she laid back on the bed between River and Kelly. Her blouse and jeans were still soaked with the oil from the creature and it quickly stained the bed, but she didn't notice. "It didn't work."
Marco debated telling her that this didn't explain anything (rather, he was now possibly more confused), but as Moon was about to fall asleep, he plowed forward.
"Alright, so why did everyone's scissors stop working?" He asked.
"People's scissors aren't working?" Moon asked dimly. "Well that makes sense, with the ice…"
"So why did -" Marco began, and Moon began to snore as loudly as her husband.
He sighed. He wanted nothing more than to pass out next to Janna on the floor, but he suspected that, as the last-remaining conscious person in the room, the responsible thing to do was try and get everything sorted out.
So, borrowing Janna's phone from her pocket, he made some calls.
When Janna awoke the following day, she was immediately hit by a few realizations. First, her bed felt amazing. Second, she was probably missing school. Third, she needed more sleep.
She awoke again a few hours later, and through her window saw that it was either dawn or dusk - though judging by the sounds of television coming from the living room, she guessed the latter. She was wearing pajamas, and wrapped snugly in her blankets Someone had even come in and straightened her room a bit, although that wasn't saying much - her clothes were just folded in a corner instead of strewn around the room.
Although she wanted nothing more than to once again go back to sleep, her mind had started to buzz with the previous day's events. Begrudgingly, she instead trudged out of her room.
Sitting in front of the television was an ensemble that, one year ago, would've been the strangest thing she'd ever seen. Her mom, frazzled and tired, was watching a Derrick rerun with Joleen, with Glossaryck hovering in-between.
"Wait, so why doesn't he just teleport out of the car?" Janna's mom asked, and Joleen gave an annoyed sigh.
"Because that would ruin the story mom, jeez!"
"It's actually quite cohesive once you get into it." Glossaryck stated.
Janna cleared her throat, and all three of them looked around. Joleen returned to watching the tube, but Janna's mom broke out in a wide smile and hurried around for a hug. "You're awake! I was so worried!"
"Yeah, she even took two days off work." Joleen said.
"It's Thursday, by the way." Her mom said, and Janna reeled. So she'd missed two days of school instead of one. How time flew by when you were unconscious. She was wondering if she could get Queen Moon to write her a note. Janna was not able to come to school - too busy breaking and then saving an entire dimension from a magic monster.
Her mom kept her arms on her shoulders, and pursed her lips while she looked at her. "So," she said. "I've been talking with Glossaryck."
Dimly, Janna recognized that this meant her mom now probably knew about everything that she'd been doing, and braced herself for the incoming lecture.
Instead, she was surprised. "I'm sorry I'm not around more," her mom said. "This darn job. But, I want you to know, I got into a lot worse when I was your age - well, not a lot worse… but, I had my own adventures. Just promise me that you'll be safe, and that you'll stay close to Marco, okay?"
Janna nodded, relieved that she wasn't about to be told "no more magic" or "stop accidentally almost ending the world." Her mom gave her a tight hug, then gestured towards the kitchen.
"Well, we have pizza in the kitchen. I'm really sorry, but I have to get back to work -" she checked her watch and jumped. "As a matter of fact, I might not be home until tomorrow morning. Stay out of trouble okay?"
She scrambled out towards the driveway, and a moment later, she was gone. Janna realized that she was starving (and that she felt like she hadn't had a decent drink in three days, which was probably true), and hurried to the kitchen to rectify the situation.
One pizza later (along with about a gallon of soda), and she joined Joleen on the couch, thoroughly ready to never leave it again.
"Marco's been coming by a few times a day." Her sister told her. "You sure he's not your boyfriend?"
Janna grunted.
Marco, for his part, had lived the past two days in excruciating anticipation. After calling Janna's mom to come pick her up, he'd called his own parents, and with their help, taken Kelly to the emergency room. Apparently she had quite a concussion. But he'd gone to school the next day anyways, more out of habit than anything.
Like Janna's mom, Marco's parents had been so relieved to see him that they'd spared him a real lecture (though they had made him promise to come home before 11:00 from then-on, and made him get checked out at the ER).
Considering all that had happened, his life had returned to a frustrating sense of normalcy. He'd visited Moon the following day to find that she'd gone away, and River only told him that she'd be back to explain everything, later. When he'd pressed Glossaryck for answers, sitting next to Janna's bed, the genie had refused to say anything. Kelly's scissors (which Marco had nabbed before giving her to the ER docs) still weren't working.
Janna was out cold, though Kelly was awake when he'd gone to see her. She'd snuck out that night (what with her neither having a social security number nor the ability to pay for medical bills, she and Marco both assumed it would be better if she didn't hang around the hospital) and had spent the following day at Marco's house.
He'd bounced between her, Moon's hotel and Janna's house for most of the following day (skipping school for the first time ever). Although Kelly was obviously just as frustrated at the radio-silence as Marco was, his parents insisted that she was a wonderful guest.
By the second evening, he popped by Janna's house to say good night (he'd been slightly alarmed by how long she was sleeping, although Glossaryck had insisted she'd be fine), he was happy to see she was finally awake. He gave her a quick hug and went home to inform Kelly.
The following day, Friday, both he and Janna returned to school. Although Marco was as bored as ever, the Janitor was stepping up his efforts in his war against Janna - it seemed she couldn't go an hour without something going wrong in increasingly creative ways, and the day concluded with her accidentally lighting a textbook on fire in frustration.
That afternoon, the three of them went to see if Moon had returned, and were delighted to find her in her room when they knocked. River was nowhere to be seen.
"I found some things out," she shared. "The dimensional keeper, Hekapoo, was the one who isolated Mewni. The only people that can come and go are myself, her, Glossaryck, and a few others by special exception."
Janna remembered when she'd rescued her sister, the previous weekend, and realized that she'd helped Hekapoo put the spell in place.
The fact that the dimensional scissors weren't working to get back there came as a shock - Moon had portalled them all in and out - but apparently it had put Marco into quite a panic when he realized he'd been trapped there.
"We're not sure why Toffee is after so much magic, but whatever the reason, it can't be good." Moon said. "Draining my soldiers was one thing, but with access to a nexus, I can't imagine what he'd be able to do."
"Now listen to me, all of you." She said, and it was obvious that whatever she was about to say was the entire reason she'd allowed them in to begin with. "River and I are going to be working hard to organize whatever resistance we can against Toffee. It is absolutely imperative that you complete your missions."
She looked at Marco and Kelly. "Star is at the center of all this - finding her will give us all answers." Then, she turned to Janna. "And I know you might be tempted to go help me, or take your own initiative, but I implore you - trust Glossaryck. He knows what he's doing. You have to continue to train."
Janna snorted. "Yeah, remember when he helped us make a wand? That worked out great."
Moon pursed her lips but said nothing.
On this thought, Marco and Janna left the hotel. Moon had sent Kelly home, and asked her to keep her eyes open, but all three of them felt they were entitled to at least a bit of a break before running back into the fray.
With a weekend ahead of them to recuperate, suffice to say, they were both looking forward to sleeping in.
So, Toffee's trying to use the magic nexus for something and it seems Marco and Janna haven't quite been given the whole truth about things. Hm. Interesting.
Comment response!
Guest: You're right on the nose with Joey's transformation. The idea was that, with him being a magical creature, he obviously does better in magical dimensions. Not sure if it'll ever be relevant again, but it was fun to write.
We've been giving thought to giving her some friends - and I'm not saying that she's in the same class as Jeremy Burnbaum, I'm just saying that they are the same age…
Other guest: "No more Tom."
Counterpoint: How about many more Tom. All of the Tom, really. I'm actually going to just change the story. Now it's JanTom vs the Forces Of Evil.
Allusion-collusion: Thanks for the thoughts.
Writing the scissor-chapter was interesting. It's not that the place wasn't dangerous - to the contrary, it's pretty inhospitable. But we decided to place focus more on the "survival-y" elements instead of the various monster brands. Coming up with new and exciting monster threats is tough!
The Earth-wand is lost. Sometimes when you lose your keys it's easier to just cut losses and make a new set ;)
Next Time On JVTFOE: After the action-packed events of the previous week, Janna decides to start working on some smaller, personality-based magic, while Marco broods over how thoroughly non-magical his fighting skills are. But when Marco's parents get the wrong idea about him and Janna and they all end up at dinner, a spell gone awry turns her life Marco-less! Can she deal with being hated by her former best friend? Will things ever be the same again?
Yeah, probably. It's just one episode. Tune in for next week's fluff, Date Night!
(And yeah, that one's done already too. Cruising right along!)