Aflame

Chapter 21

Code Grey

Hidden from view, hidden from sight, and remarkably hard to find, there lay a place in Earthni whose location was only known to a special few. This, as most things were, was no accident. That special place was a house. Small, cozy, and the two residents that lived there preferred to live in permanent peace and quiet without anyone disturbing them. (Well, really, only one of those residents wanted to live like that, and the other didn't argue simply because there was a river nearby stocked with plenty of fresh fish, ripe for the taking.)

These residents were Moon and River Butterfly. Former rulers of Mewni and the parents of Star Butterfly, local celebrity. Emphasis on the former however. Because things had been quite different once. The two of them were caring rulers while Mewni was still under their control, ruling out justice accordingly and raising their mess of a daughter. Yes, with her around, things occasionally...exploded…(Moon still wondered how she managed to acquire two tons of cooking oil that one time), but other than that, life was good and simple. The Kingdoms got along, the monsters stayed where they were supposed to, which was far, far away from the Mewmans and preferably in graves, and the two of them were happy with their lives.

For a time.

So what changed?

That day, of course. That day was when it all changed. When they had handed off the Royal magic wand to Star and she caused half the Kingdom to be set ablaze. Not good, the MHC ruled. She has to be sent away. She has to be disciplined. So, Star was taken to Earth, met Marco Diaz, the boy who Moon was sure would be her son-in-law one day, and that kicked off a several years-long adventure which effectively caused the death of her most hated enemy, her losing all her power to Eclipsa, the destruction of magic, and the merging of Earth and Mewni. Which was an event that no one could have predicted. And caused problems that Moon wanted no part of.

So yeah. "That day" brought quite the chain of events with it.

And sure, she went to those bothersome meetings when it was necessary and occasionally contributed to them, but like the other Royals, she was perfectly content with leaving as soon as possible and going home. Moon avoided everyone on the path, never looking back. What she wanted some days was to reach her house and be done with it. With all of it. Some Mewmans tried to talk to her, but she paid them no mind. She was no longer their Queen. Technically, she wasn't even a Butterfly anymore, after the reveal of her family's true heritage at Eclipsa's trial.

Now, Moon was...just Moon.

And she didn't bother denying it when her daughter, the Duumvirate, and everyone else said that she had become a recluse. Because she was a recluse. She loathed hearing people outside her house, even if they were just curious humans investigating the strange structure in the middle of the woods. She didn't hate them exactly, but she hated the off grace that she might have to interact with them. Because a part of her felt that if they knew who she was, what she had done with Mina and the Solarians, humanity might grow to hate her like some of the others.

Then all three species would have members that saw her as a menace. And the last time that happened, the person who was seen as the danger to society was burned alive. For totally different reasons by a totally different person, but still. Things wouldn't end well if she allowed her enemies to get the better of her. So Moon wasn't about to risk meeting new people only to have them betray her in the end.

Therefore she shied away from everyone else, always telling any people that stumbled upon the house to leave and never come back. But every now and then she got real visitors. Star came to see her every once in a while, greatly missing her parents. She spent exponentially more time with Marco's parents than her own nowadays, and the way she talked to the former Queen showed that she wanted to try and change that. After six months of happiness with her boyfriend, it seemed she had forgiven her mother for trying to overthrow Eclipsa and for giving power to Mina. (Something that Marco no doubt had a role. He never did seem to hold any animosity toward Moon for her actions.)

Then Moon invited her in, got a cup of tea for herself, sat down, and the two started a conversation. It was the same thing for each visit, like a cycle. Star always spoke first, and she talked about...normal things, so to speak. How her and Marco's relationship was doing, what was going on with her other friends and around town, and every now and then she made a comment on how Moon should really come back and reunite with the rest of her family. The former Queen always had the same response. "I'll think about it Star." And then she gave her daughter a pre-baked piece of pie to take her mind off the topic. With the butterfly symbol on it and everything.

The pies tasted stale and empty though, like they were created without love, without care. Star knew. It was like having a bowl of plain vanilla ice cream, only to then slather it in chocolate and caramel sauce and erase any previous flavor it had. That was the pie. Even if they were not as good when made without magic, Star could see that Moon wasn't really trying to make it as a show of love. It only served as a distraction.

She was growing even more distant as this went on, and Star, along with everyone else, feared that one day she might pack everything up, desert Earthni, and set out to find a new life somewhere else. There were plenty of places on Earth much more secluded than the forest she resided in after all. Moon was fully aware of this, and had no doubt made plans for where to go if she really chose to up and leave. And they all knew that when Moon finally did this, she wasn't coming back. The fact that it hasn't happened already was due to lack of proper transport, not motivation.

On the other hand however, River was much more amicable and open, taking occasional walks around town or heading to the grocery store for various meats. A new one every week is what he said. He was still slightly reserved, no doubt his wife rubbing off him, but tried to make an effort when the townsfolk talked to him. When Star came over, he made sure to ask every question about what was going on in the outside world to her, as a television with cable news was not something that Moon had been reluctant to buy. (After all, it would require a stranger coming into her house for an extended period of time to install it, a thought that made her shudder in place.)

Moon didn't dissuade River's activities nor did she approve of them. As long as he wasn't going around yelling out to the world where they lived or causing any trouble, she had a mostly unbiased stance on the whole thing. He went out, got meat, sparked conversations with people, rinse and repeat. Literally rinse and repeat. River always made sure he took a shower when he got home, believing that the exhaust from the human's metal vehicles, which were called cars and trucks according to Star, would dirty his Johansen blood for whatever reason.

Not that Moon complained. Because frankly, he always needed a shower no matter what time of the day it was. Although it had taken quite a while for her to convince River to install it (it was self-installed), mostly due to the fact that he preferred to bathe in the nearby lake, and if the rumor that all toilets in the town led there was true, then this was extremely unsanitary at best. River eventually consented to this after Moon used the old "I gave birth to our child" excuse, something that she was quite fond of doing. Even if the excuse didn't make sense for said situation, River agreed to it nonetheless.

However, going back to the real visitors thing, Star was far from the only one. Eclipsa, for example, had come to visit approximately three times. She didn't seem to hold any kind of grudge against Moon for what she did either, and even appeared to be much more forgiving than Star about it. Although Moon still suspected for a while that Eclipsa secretly hated her for it, and that her daughter and Marco had made her come over and quote in quote "bury the hatchet."

But it had worked, somehow. The two of them became friends again after these visits, and Moon had even agreed to something for Eclipsa. Something that required her to go outside (Eugh! Disgusting…), scout around for anything out of the ordinary, and then call her later to tell her about what she saw. Most days it was nothing. A few times she spotted Ludo wandering around by the river and catching some fish, a skill that he was an expert at, something that surprised Moon. And once she even managed to catch Mina herself in the early days, stomping around and destroying random plants like she was having a temper tantrum. She reported it to Eclipsa, who said she'd take care of it. And that was that. She didn't know why Eclipsa requested she do this, but she didn't care. That part didn't matter.

It was a very boring job. (If it could even be called one, it's not like Moon got paid.) But it gave her something to do besides sit around all day and it also expanded her relationship with the monster Queen, something Star would most certainly appreciate. But Eclipsa had practically begged her to never tell anyone else about this, and Moon obeyed, suspecting that there was likely more behind these little scouting missions than initially thought.

But besides Eclipsa and Star, she saw a bunch more of her former friends from time to time. Buff Frog came to visit, asking for some parenting tips. Marco came by and asked for her blessing to date Star early on, something that she happily gave him. He had proven himself by this point. And she had felt that he'd always be the one for her daughter anyways. Also, Star might come over and throw a hissy fit if she had said no, and Moon was not equipped to repair relations with her again.

Even if she had hardly done anything herself in the "repairing" department...

And then there were the Mewnian royals knights that one time, who had come by blind drunk, asking for orders because Eclipsa had apparently forgotten about them. She sent them off (shoved, really) after Sir Stabby vomited all over the floor and then asked River for more beer. Somehow it burned through the floor like it was made of wet cardboard, and because she was not and never would be in the mood to repair it, Moon simply filled the hole up with dirt and tossed a throw rug over it. God knows how they found her, and afterwards Moon told River to listen to random people's conversations very carefully while he was out, just in case someone had leaked the location of their dwelling.

But Star, Eclipsa, Marco, Buff Frog, and the knights were basically it. Sure, Marco's parents had come by once, as the Diazes needed to be made a Royal family in order for Marco to marry Star one day, so she told them that she'd pass a note on to Eclipsa telling her to abolish that rule to avoid any hassle. She also gave them permission to go around announcing to the world that they had been made Royals anyways in case Eclipsa refused, so nobody else got any ideas and started tainting Royal bloodlines. (Even if the family line she and Star belonged to was fake, but most days it seemed everyone had forgotten about that and pretended it never happened.) Not that Moon cared about all those "precious" bloodlines, but some of her peers might, and never in a million years was she going to deal with the backlash from that.

So all this has now brought us to where we currently are. Moon is sitting in her bedroom, reading an article about Earth monarchies on the phone Star bought her (unlimited WiFi), and sipping a corn shake. Perfectly and completely carefre-

"MOONPIE!" River cried out, sounding like a wounded animal that was being skinned alive. Moon's eyes went wide and she leaped out of her chair and grabbed the twin swords hanging on the fireplace mantle as her warriors instinct kicked in. Without skipping a beat, she dashed into the kitchen and took up a fighting stance, ready to slay whatever foolish adversary that had decided to attack her husband.

"What is it? What's wrong?!" She yelled, gripping the sword handles so tightly her knuckles were turning white.

River was standing by the pantry, tears in his eyes and looking like he had just been forced to watch everyone he knew and loved die right in front of him.

"We...are out...of MEAT!" He wailed, screaming at the heavens. The look on his face was one of terror, while the look on Moon's face was now one of pure and utter irritation. She groaned and let the tips of her swords clink against the ground, while River began pacing about, furiously mumbling to himself.

"How could this happen?!" He muttered. "I always make sure that there is at least fifty pounds of meat in here at all times! And considering I eat only twenty five a day, even if I forgot to restock, there should still be twenty five left!" He turned towards his wife. "Moon-pie, you didn't eat our surplus of meat, did you? Without it, we'll starve!"

Moon sighed. "No River, I didn't eat any of it. Are you sure you weren't sleep-eating again?"

River looked at his wife in confusion. "Sleep-what now?"

"Sleep-eating." Moon repeated. "Every now and then, I've seen you wake up in the middle of the night and raid the pantry for meat. One time you came back to bed with a live trout in your hand. I don't even know where you got it from, considering that you never left the house to catch it."

"Sleep-eating…" River mumbled, rubbing his beard in thought. "I can't believe my subconscious self has betrayed me like this! Although, it does explain why I woke up covered in barbecue sauce that one time. And that other time when I woke up covered in deer fur. And then fish scales...and water...and rabbit blood...and-"

"I was there for all of them, I don't need a recap." Moon reminded him, reminiscing about the many hours she spent cleaning the bed because of River's late night cravings. "I'd put a lock on the pantry door, but I knew that wouldn't have stopped you anyway, so I didn't bother."

"Moon-pie." River said seriously. "I request that you now chain me to the bed each night to prevent this dastardly deed from occurring again. I will not allow myself to consume our meat if I do not get to taste it! If we didn't take care of this, it could ruin everything…"

"..."

"..."

"Are you going to go out to catch something else now?" Moon asked, suspecting that her husband might go through withdrawal symptoms if she didn't get something to eat soon.

"Yes, I think I will." River replied. "I heard there are bears in certain parts of the forest. A good hunt, if I do say so myself-"

Before River could start anything else, a bright light suddenly filled up the room, making him freeze mid-syllable. Mom glanced over to the window, the source of the light, and saw a bright fireball appearing through the tree lines and rising over the horizon, nearly blinding her with its intensity. River merely looked on in bewilderment at the rapidly growing light, and as Moon realized that he was standing right in front of the window, she knew that she only had a second to react.

She didn't hesitate.

Moving faster than she ever had in years, Moon threw her two swords to the ground before tackling her husband, sending them both flying towards the cold kitchen floor. A loud roaring sound like a freight train passing overhead was then heard and the window exploded inwards as a shockwave slammed into the house, sending hundreds of small but razor sharp glass fragments into the spot where River had been standing only a moment earlier. Moon hung on to her husband as the debris from the forest came flying through the window afterwards. Twigs, bark, and even a bird or two, all moving fast enough to punch giant holes in the kitchen wall.

Moon, however, suspected that they were far from done, even after the wave of debris stopped coming. The shockwave was only the start. She had heard of these kinds of things before. Things the humans built called nukes that could level entire cities and wipe countries out of existence. If her knowledge of the bombs was right, then they had maybe a few seconds before that fireball reached them and incinerated everything in view. She had no time to decide if she was acting rashly or even if the explosion was a nuke in the first place. The fear had triggered her fight or flight response, and what could she possibly do to fight against this?

"COME ON!" She yelled, grabbing her husband's arm and yanking him upwards. He started asking her what was going on, but Moon ignored this and forced him to run with him. River was completely ignorant of the nukes, having fallen asleep during the meeting where Eclipsa talked about Earth weaponry and why it would be a very bad idea to attempt to make war with the world they had merged with. And after being shown some footage and pictures of the aftermath of Earth wars, with lush landscapes turned into fields of dead men and twisted metal, all done without the use of magic, the Royals were more than happy to agree with this sentiment.

But he didn't argue. He wasn't sure what was going on, but this was a side of Moon he rarely saw, so it had to be serious. The two of them got to their feet and Moon practically dragged River over to the basement, her mind flooding with thoughts as the fear of an inescapable demise clouded her vision and made the world and all the sounds around her fade away.

'Why wasn't there a warning!?' She thought frantically. 'Didn't Eclipsa say that sirens would start blaring if something like this happened? And who bombed us?! Was it Bren?! Some other Earth government?! A-and what about Star and…' She shook her head. 'NO! Head to the basement. Think about that later. It doesn't matter right now. It can't matter right.'

With no time to lose, Moon reached the basement door, flung it open, threw River down the stairs, and then slammed it shut as she hopped in herself. The two of them sprinted over to the "sub-basement" they had, a simple crawl space surrounded by pure bedrock. At any moment Moon expected the flames from the bomb to come bursting in through the door and scorch them alive, but they didn't. But Moon wasn't anymore relieved, as they likely still only had seconds more to spare. Ever since the merge, she had a habit of assuming the worst.

Once inside the crawl space, she closed the steel door that covered it and secured its five locks, their last line of protection. Then finally, finally, the two of them caught a breath. Moon panted heavily like she was hyperventilating and rested her head against the rock wall, praying that this would be enough. River was sweating like a pig, having no idea what was going on but still fully aware of the fact that it was bad.

"Don't relax yet." Moon wheezed, expecting the house to start shaking at any moment upon impact with the fireball. "It's not over."

"What's going on?!" River asked, finally getting a proper word in. "What was that explosion?!"

"If my assumptions are correct, then that explosion was the result of a bomb that may have destroyed most of not all of Earthni." Moon explained as River's eyes grew even wider. "You wouldn't know because you fell asleep during the meeting where Eclipsa explained this kind of thing."

"But who would do that?" River asked, shrinking away from Moon as if she was a camp counselor telling a scary story around a campfire to a bunch of children. "Why would anyone want to destroy….wait. You don't think...that it was that little white-haired brat who crashed the last meeting, did you?"

"I'm not sure, but I honestly hope not." Moon said. "Because if he has the resources to build or steal a weapon like that, then I think we never had a chance to begin with."

"T-then what do we do now?"

"We sit and we wait for a while until the fireball disperses." Moon said, having planned everything out already. "After that we leave and get as far away from the radiation zone as possible. There's obviously no food or water in here, so we can't stay. If we're lucky, we might be able to escape in time."

River didn't know what radiation was, and was about to query his wife on it, until he realized that her plan had overlooked something important to them both.

"What about Star?" He put forward. "She's still somewhere out there! We got no warning beforehand, so I doubt she did either! We have to go back and search for her. And everyone else!"

"I'm not sure we can." Moon claimed, even though it hurt her to say it. "Like I was saying, we have to get away from the radiation. It's probably dangerous for us to be anywhere near the town, even underground like this. I only built this structure to withstand blasts like that after seeing all the civil unrest on Earth, but I never made it to be radiation proof. In fact, we should get going right about now. The flames should have died down to a point where they're not covering everything."

"We're surrounded by a forest Moon! Everything's going to be on fire!" River pointed out. "Going outside will surely be a death sentence, and I'm not going to lose you to this!"

"We have no other choice." Moon said. "We either go, and possibly die by the forest fire, or stay, and die a slow, agonizing death by radiation sickness. Which is it going to be?"

River was briefly taken aback by this. Normally his wife was always so level-headed, taking a long time to decisions that made sense. He personally couldn't see much sense in this plan, but was also aware that Moon wasn't going to back out. His wife was leaving, and would drag him along with her if she had to. The former king sighed and accepted that she was likely right. There was no better option, and he'd rather not die to this "radiation," if her brief description was what she said it was.

"Very well." He mumbled. "Let us be off."

"Good. Because if you said no, I'd have knocked you out and carried you on my back." Moon said, before reaching her hand over and unlocking the metal door in front of her. She slowly swung it open, and prepared to shield River just in case a wave of fire came rushing in. But nothing of the sort appeared. In fact, as far as she could see, the entire basement was fine. Untouched and looking like it had been when they first ran down the stairs. Almost like a city ending bomb hadn't been set off. Moon was briefly confounded by this but shook it off. Obviously either the basement was sturdier than it looked or she had just been overestimating the bombs power.

"Come on." She almost whispered, and the two of them crawled out and took a few deep breaths, the air as fresh as could be. Outside, they could hear faint screaming in the distance and helicopters flying overhead, no doubt investigating the scene of the-

"Hold on." She said aloud, stopping in place and holding River back with her hand.

"What is it now?" River asked. "Didn't you say we have to hurry because of the...radiation, or whatever it was called?"

"Yes, but…" Moon paused. "I-give me a minute. Something's not right." She rubbed her forehead as she struggled to remember something else that Eclipsa had mentioned at the meeting. Wasn't there something called EMP that was set off whenever a nuclear weapon was detonated? Because of electromagnetic radiation and some other odd Earth science words that nobody really understood but accepted as truth? Moon and the other Royals hadn't bothered to try and learn more about it after the meeting, as the footage scared them enough to believe it.

But she did know that whenever this "EMP" was set off, it fried all electronic devices for a good few miles, depending on the altitude and size of the bomb. So those helicopters shouldn't be casually flying around like that. Unless electronics that were already shut off weren't affected as bad…?

Either way, Moon knew that something was up. She cautiously took a step towards the stairs and started to ascend them while River followed, the creaking of their feet against the wood sounding like thunder despite all the noise going on outside. Once Moon reached the top, she grabbed the handle with her hand, expecting it to be burning hot or at least warm from all the heat the bomb must have caused.

It was still cold. Colder than usual, if anything, and Moon began to get a feeling like the situation wasn't as bad as initially surmised. She took the handle in her hand and cautiously opened the door, peeking out from the crack as if there was a giant monster on the other side ready to tear her limb from limb if it spotted her.

There was no giant monster. There was no surprise waiting for her, besides the one that the house was mostly intact except for a few fallen plates in the kitchen and a dozen or so shattered windows. But other than that, it was all fine. And even more suspicious, when Moon looked out said windows, she saw that the forest was not on fire. The only sign outside that anything had blown up in the first place was a thick column of smoke rising up in the distance, from the spot where they had seen the earlier light.

Moon almost facepalmed as she realized that it had not in fact been a nuke. It was just a regular bomb, EMP-free and with a blast radius far too small to reach them. She had been overreacting for nothing, except for the tackling part. That was totally justified.

Although River seemed to have trouble understanding it at first.

"What happened?" He asked again. "Shouldn't the house be destroyed right now? I thought you said-"

"Yes, I did say that, but I was wrong." Moon admitted. "This was no nuke. Something just blew up and I assumed the worst a little too quickly. But…" She gulped and clenched her fists. "...that doesn't make this any less worse."

Moon walked over to the door to put on her boots and the hooded cape she usually wore whenever she went outside. She didn't know why this had happened, but she wasn't going to find out by standing around. Even she knew that there were times when she had to act like a Queen again and help her people through a crisis. She wasn't sure what exactly she was going to do to help, but whatever it was, it was better than staying home.

"I'm going out to see what happened." She told River, who glanced at her in surprise. "You stay here and clean up all the glass and anything else that's broken. Try not to cut yourself, and don't get distracted by anything. Hopefully I won't be long, but if I am, don't come looking to me."

Before River could say anything, Moon was already out the door, leaving him standing there alone, confused as to why she left so quickly instead of staying there and helping him clean up. Because letting River clean something up by himself was something she almost never did. He now knew that it was probably for the better if he left this to his wife, considering her mood. He rummaged around a nearby closet for a few minutes before finding an old dustpan and a broom, and then gazed at the kitchen and living room floors which were practically carpeted with glass. So much glass that stepping anywhere might be deadly, regardless of foot placement.

"I just wanted some meat." He grumbled, and before long, he got to work, as Moon took one last look at him from outside the nearest window as she ran from the house and into the woods.

"How long until we get to see her?"

"Visiting hours start in five minutes. So...five minutes. Maybe six or seven considering both of you will have to fill out our visitor form."

"Seven minutes? I refuse to wait that long! Do you know what we've-"

"River, stop. Complaining like that will only get us kicked out."

"I...fine. But no more than five minutes, or I'm barging in there regardless of who tries to stop me!"

"If you say so." The desk attendant said, who then went back to filling out more forms on their desk, of which there were about a million of. The stacks practically encompassed the entire surface like some kind of makeshift wall. The attendant looked like they were having a migraine, but simply grit their teeth and wrote things down as fast as they could, keenly aware of how much there was left to do.

Everything was going wrong.

And not just for the desk attendant. For Moon and River, ever since they had seen that light and their window and been blown in, the two of them felt like they were living in their own personal hell, much like every single person in Earthni at the moment. For some, it was a grievous injury to their being, causing pain that had the capacity to last for months on end. For others, it was a dead friend or family member. And for Moon and River, their daughter Star was in the hospital, put there by her boyfriend that had been possessed by an ancient fire-god, according to Eclipsa.

Oh, and all their windows had been blown out, which made a terrible mess. And River's job of cleaning was...not satisfactory, to put things lightly.

So to sum things up, they got off pretty easy compared to the rest of the town. Because most people were outside that day, and well...we all know what happened with that. But this didn't dissuade them from feeling any better than the rest. Because again, their daughter was in a hospital bed, beaten into unconsciousness by literal divine power. After discovering what had happened to the town, Moon made an effort to find Star as fast as possible. But the road to the Diazes house was blocked off by a fallen building, and Moon didn't know the human side of town well enough to find another way around. (She had never paid attention to the part of the meeting where they discussed maps, primarily because she hardly ever went outside her house in the first place.)

So then she tried to find Eclipsa, (who knew every side of town very well), but that didn't go so well. Mobs of civilians ran around, begging for help, looking for loved ones, none of them in any state that could be called "alive." But after what seemed like forever, Moon found what she was looking for. She could still remember the face she made when she finally caught up with Eclipsa hours later, after pushing her way through a giant throng of people at town hall, most of whom weren't even going for Eclipsa but just running around frantically, trying to sort things out. It was pure and utter chaos.

And the current Queen had certainly seen better days. Her eyes were bloodshot, her dress was covered in dust and ash that she hadn't bothered to wipe off, and her signature hat was missing, having fallen off and been trampled by a crowd a few hours ago while she was trying to get to the explosion crater. And the look on her face...Moon didn't even know how to describe it. She looked shell-shocked, same as everyone else. But there was something else in there too. Dread. A deep, endless dread. Because Eclipsa was fully aware of what this all meant. This wasn't something they could recover from in a day, a week, a month, or even a year. The townsfolk would spend the rest of their lives trying to get over what happened, but never would. When the next day came, nothing was going to change. The night only brought darkness, but the explosion took care of everything else.

And when Moon looked directly into her eyes, she knew that Eclipsa saw the end of Earthni over the horizon. The end of all they had worked for. Possibly the end of her as well. Only time could tell. And time was something they did not have on their side.

This didn't mean that Moon simply walked away however. Bottomless dread or not, she had been fearing the worst for Star for a good few hours, and was worried that she had been hurt, or even worse, killed. After basically bombarding Eclipsa with questions, the Queen took a deep breath, said "she's in the hospital, and she's alive", and then walked away to deal with other matters that were far more important. It took Moon every bit of self-restraint she had to not run after her and forced Eclipsa tell her everything, but reason won after she saw the environment that the poor and exhausted woman had been forced to work in, and was going to work in throughout the entire night.

So Moon straightened herself and left the Mayor's office, with the only thing she gained from the wild goose chase being a small tidbit of information. It was enough however. Star was alright. Injured, obviously, due to her location, but alive. Moon tried to get down to the hospital, but halfway there she realized that it might not be the best place to be right now. She could only imagine hundreds of wounded and dying people all trying to get in at the same time, and in a situation like that, her authority as the former Queen meant bupkis.

So she headed back home, where River was waiting for her. She had to haul him away from the door after telling him what Eclipsa told her, something that River rather badly too. Moon eventually had to resort to tying him to a chair to call him down. She struggled for what felt like hours before suddenly fell asleep, suffering from meat withdrawal. He was still shaking even now, although it might be because of both the meat and Star.

Moon didn't sleep that night, instead keep an eye on him to make sure he didn't wake up and try to escape again. That and swatting the various bugs that had flown into the house due to the lack of windows. River has covered most of them up with some thick plywood sheets he found in the basement while she was gone, but enough had already gotten inside that everywhere Moon looked, there was always another insect in her sight. She must have received at least twenty bites, and those were just the ones she could feel.

It was a bad night. The first of many to come.

But in the morning, she had called Eclipsa the second the sun appeared over the horizon, who thankfully answered after about fifteen rings or so. The Queen already knew who it was and what they wanted, so she babbled out a quick explanation about how and why Star was in the hospital, making sure to include the fact that no, this was not Marco's fault, he was possessed. Also the fact that Bren killed him and then he was resurrected shortly afterwards, which may or may not have turned him into an emotionless husk of a person. Then he told her the room number that Star was in and hung up. And like the information she received last night, it was enough for Moon. Short and quick, but it was what she needed to ease her fears about Star's situation.

This wasn't to say it didn't disturb her however.

With this, both her, Eclipsa, Marco, Star, and likely several other people now knew that there was a god going against them. Even if Eclipsa had mentioned the fact that it wouldn't be taking over Marco again, it still made Moon very uneasy. What consequences did this bring with it? Did they have any chance at beating something like that? If it had been masterminding all of this from the beginning, and was on Bren's side...then what did this mean...for them? For all of them?

After this, these thoughts were the only thing she could keep her mind on. She now understood why Eclipsa had that expression on her face. Because she had been thinking about the same thing for hours and hours, and it clearly took a toll. Moon couldn't and wouldn't let herself fall into that same trap. She had to remain strong. Level-headed. For herself. For River. And most especially for Star.

After she woke River up, the two of them went down to the hospital, ignoring the call for an emergency meeting for the first time, and entered the ruin mess of a town. Moon had already seen it of course. As darkness came over the town and she walked back from the Mayor's office, she had her fair share of what the explosion brought with it. Things she did not wish to recount but would be forced to in her nightmares.

But the fact that this had an effect on her to begin with was certainly something. Because she hadn't had a nice, calm, cushion-filled stereotypical Queen life that Moon knew the humans were so fond of. Nowadays on Earth, Royals lived in complete luxury, were kept far away from the battlefield, and rarely saw any blood spilled in front of them. But of all the differences two dimensions had when they were still separate, perhaps none was greater than this. (Apart from one being magical and the other technological obviously.)

On Mewni, the Kings and Queens rode into the battlefield alongside their knights, slaying enemies left and right. They were given special protection, sure, but in the heat of a true battle, they were like any other soldier. Vulnerable. In the line of fire. One might even say disposable. When it came right down to it, the only differences on the battlefield between them and normal soldiers was that their bodies were usually retrieved first, and little else. But it was war, and war was something Mewni knew all too well. Moon had seen quite a few, and those few were enough to convince her that none should ever be fought again, not unless it was absolutely necessary.

So all this carnage should have assured that nothing the explosion brought with it would have even fazed her. But it did. Because for one thing...this was no war. It hadn't even been a battle. This was nothing but a slaughter. Nothing but a way for Bren to get revenge/amuse himself with their pain. (As far as Moon's knowledge of this went at least. If he had a motive for all this other than that, it was unknown to her.)

However, the slaughter itself, all the people who had been killed, that wasn't what really disturbed her about all this. It was the ones who were still alive. Because Moon had gotten a look into how they saw all of this. These people were the ones who turned their gaze away from the sight of blood for no other reason than the fact that it made them uncomfortable. And now these same people were now faced with the grueling task of having to slowly find and collect the individual pieces of their friends and family, unsure of how many of these pieces belonged to corpses that had nothing to do with them. It was possible that by the end of this, they'd just grab anything they saw and throw it all in a coffin, hoping that it belonged to someone they knew, as most of it was all too burned and scrambled (literally) to make any kind of accurate DNA analysis.

Those people would be scarred for the rest of their days. Their lives might never go back to normal. The way things were before the blast was only a memory now, one they could never get back to. Rebuilding wouldn't help. Neither would memorials or funerals or celebrations of their lives. Because in the end, it still happened. They had died brutally and cruelly, taken away much too fast and much too early. This was not death, this was…

was…

…...no. It was death. That's what it was and what it was always going to be. There was no other way to truly describe it. It was death, and he had arrived early, with some help. Nothing more. The townsfolk could tell themselves as much as they wanted that this wasn't real, that things like this didn't happen in real life. But they couldn't be more wrong. Because this was real life. Real life is people you love getting taken away in an instant, and being unable to do anything about it. Real life is people hating you to the point of wanting to take lives, hence Bren. Real life...is torture. And the only thing left to do was to endure it all, push through, and move on.

The ones trapped in the past make the most mistakes. And the ones looking too far at the future tend to overthink everything and drown themselves in anxiety. The ones that stay in the present...well, they're not perfect either.

But to Moon, she had trouble deciding which one of these three she was. Most of the townsfolk would be the past. Eclipsa and the Royals, who focused on nothing but what might happen because of this, were the future. So did that make her the present? Because she didn't care what happened next and wanted to forget everything that had happened?

No, of course not. She still cared about the future. Even if the future looked pretty...ahem...shitty at the moment. But she also didn't want to think about it overall. So in the end, Moon decided that she was neither of three, and she'd figure it out as she went along. Because there was already enough to think about at the moment without having to worry about that as well.

It all affected Moon pretty badly. But there was one person with her that night, one who had yet to get a glimpse of the aftermath. And when morning came, it was now River's turn to get a taste of what the night had brought with it. Because after all, he had stayed home, while his wife went out to investigate. He knew what happened, but at the same time, not really. Moon couldn't bring herself to describe in detail what had become of the town, only telling him that a lot of people were dead or dying, and most things were burning. That was literally it before she informed him of Star's condition. He was going into this practically blind. Granted, he saw plenty of horrors back on Mewni as well, but not nearly as much as his wife.

Being a Johansen, River was naturally warlike and bloodthirsty, but he usually put that part of his personality into hunting instead of fighting actual sentient beings. He had killed before, and fought in wars, but that whole thing was Moon's metier really. He preferred one-on-one brawls with opponents ten times stronger than him. Short fights. Duels. The like. Things that wouldn't prepare him for the aftermath of the blast.

So he was a bit underprepared for what the bomb had brought. The people dying were once again, not fighters, but just normal people trying to live out their lives. When someone got hurt, he was used to them getting right back on their feet and fighting on, not falling to the ground while howling in pain and pleading for the pain to cease. The face he made as he walked through it all visibly showed his shock at the sights, but he still managed to keep his cool. If only because the worst of it, the dozens of broken bodies and half-dead civilians littering the streets, some of them literally crying tears of blood, had already been taken away or left to go die elsewhere.

And now they were at the hospital. Which was just a complete mess. It reminded Moon of how the Mayor's office was last night, with doctors and nurses running around, wheeling patients from room to room, and digging up cases and cases of emergency supplies from the basement and storage rooms in order to keep up with the demand. Even though most of the injured had been taken to hospitals in neighboring towns under Eclipsa's orders, as she knew that there was no way theirs would be able to hold the literal thousands in need of medical attention. An estimated 65 percent of Earthni was dead or wounded. The explosion may have only taken up a small part of the town, but the rocks, the shockwave, and basically the shards of every single window in town being flung into people's face was the real kicker. It was a miracle that there were as few deaths as there was.

It could have gone so much worse.

And even the lobby was crowded. Moon and River sat quietly while several of the wounded, their injuries sloppily bandaged and cleaned, laid on the floor or on benches. Unfortunately, none of them were allowed to leave until the proper paperwork was filed out. But they were okay with that. Most were just happy to have a chance to finally relax. Accompanying all of them was one single doctor on standby, ready to help in case they started bleeding again.

Oh, and speaking of blood, the hospital was all out of that as well. It had been maybe thirty or forty minutes before they had completely used up the supply. An incredible feat, all things considered. Things looked more grim than ever as the announcement was made, at least until they started recycling the lost blood that patients lost. It was risky, but it seemed to be working for now. Still, twenty people had already bled to death since they arrived, and more were sure to follow. The doctors were crying. The patients were crying out. Everyone was crying in one way or another.

Everything...was going wrong.

But Moon drowned all of it out. She'd get to see Star soon after all. According to the desk attendant, her room had been locked and was being guarded so nobody tried to break in to take the pitiful amount of medical equipment that was inside. Because that was what it was coming to now. The hospital was turning into a city, a city where crime ran rampant. And the criminals were...effectively everybody.

And since Eclipsa claimed that most of the police department was either dead or dying, it's not like there was coming over to try and restore order. The two people guarding Star's rooms were one of the hospital's only remaining security guards. Most of the rest were running back and forth to the supply rooms and back, getting what was needed for the doctors to do their work. Obviously not a job they were accustomed too, but it's not like they had a choice.

Moon stood and leaned against a pillar (there were no open seats), while River brooded in a nearby corner like a child who had just been grounded. Unlike his wife, who had managed to keep herself calm and collected, River hadn't bothered hiding his emotions. His grumbling got louder and louder, although the sounds of the surrounding hospital were ten times louder, allowing him to complain about whatever he pleased. Moon overheard tidbits of it, mostly about how these "quacks" should let him see Star immediately because of his status as a Royal. Moon frowned at the thought of her husband going that low. He was actually considering the idea of pulling the Royal card. She was never particularly fond of doing it. It made the nobility look pushy and uptight.

And yes, most of them were just that, but in the old days, Moon preferred to keep her reputation as clean as possible compared to her fellow rulers. She didn't care as much now, considering that she never wanted to be in charge of the kingdom ever again, but if they saw River stomping about, they'd quickly associate him with her, and thus the outrage that the citizens once held towards her (and some still did) would resurface and cause an angry mob to descend upon her home. Once they found it of course.

Which might take a while…

But Moon would make sure to hold River back if he tried to do anything stupid. But if only the damn desk attendant-

"Hey!"

"Hm?" Moon hummed, glancing over to her right. There she saw the attendant out of their chair and standing right next to the swinging-door entrance of the main hospital, with one of the security guards that had been protecting Star's room by her side. Moon breathed a heavy sigh of relief upon realizing that the two of them were finally about to visit Star. "Yes?" She said, despite already knowing what this was about.

"I just got confirmation." The attendant said. "Visiting hours have started, and I filled out both your forms so your psycho husband doesn't go all ape on me. You now have permission to go and see your daughter." They pointed at the guard. "They'll escort you up there. You can take as long as you want, because frankly, I decided that visiting hours didn't matter right now."

"Then why did we have to wait?" River bellowed, his impatience with the whole state of affairs breaking through the surface.

"Because I had to fill out the forms to let you go in the first place. Visiting hours may not matter, but those certainly do." The attendant sighed. "Do you know how many patients and doctors we have in the building right now? I can't let you go in unless you're useful or in need of help. Obviously, you're not either of those, but we were worried that your daughter might try to break out again if she heard that you were here and she didn't get to see you."

"Break out?" Moon queried.

"Again?" River asked.

"Yeah. Again." The attendant deadpanned. "Now if you'll excuse me, I have a lot of work to do." They sat back down in their chair and then mumbled, "I'm never going to get to finish that game of solitaire…"

River and Moon exchanged glances but deduced that Star attempting to "break out" was something they could discuss with her personally. They walked up to the guard who did a 180 and pushed open the doors, while the two of them followed directly behind him. Because if it was done any other way, they'd immediately get seperated by the gigantic gaggle of people that were passing by every second. They had to stick to him like lint to a sweater, and even then it was difficult. But they managed, went down hallways, up stairs, then made it to another level which was just as chaotic as the one they came from. But Moon knew that Star had to be close. Almost like she had some sort of weird, nonsensical, and convenient psychic bond with her that allowed the former Queen to sense her presence.

And then she knew that they really made it when the trio approached a door that had another guard standing in front of it, obviously the one who had been chosen to stay behind to safeguard the room. He was glaring at anyone passing by with a deep expression of distrust, like a police officer eyeing someone they suspected was a thief.

"Your daughter is in there, and like the person at the front desk said, you can take as much time as you want." The guard explained, cutting straight to the point. "Just don't touch anything, and under no circumstances should you disconnect her from any of the machines in there." He sighed. "All mandatory stuff I've been required to tell you, sorry if I was rude."

"It's quite alright." Moon reassured him. "Now, River, we-"

"We're going in now!" River said, pushing past his wife and grabbing the doorknob. He twisted it, only for it to stop short and made a clicking noise.

"Oh. Sorry." The second guard second, motioning for River to move so he could unlock it. River begrudgingly stepped to the side and waited patiently for the guard to do his work, which took no more than a second. After the door was unlocked, he opened it for the two visitors and they entered, before the door closed behind them with a faint click.

Once she was satisfied that they were alone, Moon turned to looked at Star, and gasped at the sight of her daughter, sound asleep in the bed (the room was a soundproof one, at least towards any noises coming from the rest of the hospital), covered in bandages and hooked up to several large machines. One seemed to be a heart monitor, but the rest Moon couldn't make heads or tails of. She glanced over at River, who seemed to be boiling with rage at the sight of his child in this condition. Moon decided that it'd be best to wake up Star and kickstart a conversation. Hopefully it'd calm him down somewhat.

She slowly walked over to her, taking care not to bump into anything. Wires were all over the place, as well as a few chairs. Once Moon got closer, she sat down in one of them and clear her throat.

"Star…" She said. "We're here. Your father and I...we're here to see you."

"..."

"...Star…?"

Moon received no response at first, and was about to try for a third time, until Star groaned sleepily and started to open her eyes, loudly smacking her mouth like there was a bad taste inside of it she wanted to get rid of. Her groggy eyes fell upon her mother, but didn't open any further. Her next response was to start speaking, although her voice sounding like it had been thrown in a garbage disposal.

"Mom…?" She said weakly, still trying to wake herself up. "Is that...you? You're...really here?"

"Yes sweetheart, it's me." Moon answered happily, smiling at her while River seemed to perk up at the sound of his daughter's voice, distorted as it was. "Along with your father. We're both here to see you."

"...Why?" She asked, turning away from them.

"Because...we were worried?" Moon said, confused as to why she would have to give an answer to a question like that.

"Ah. That makes sense." Star said, letting her eyelids remain at half-mast, not fully opened nor fully closed. "Sorry. I'm just surprised to see you outside of your house. And in a place that has so many people in it. Unless...huh. Unless this is another dream."

"Dream?" Moon queried.

"I've been having some dreams lately...well, more like nightmares." Star revealed, turning further away and sinking into the bed. "Ever since I arrived. About you guys...and a bunch of other people coming to visit me. You're all so nice. All my friends...right there in front of me. And they bring me stuff...my favorite foods, my favorite games, everything. All for me."

River rubbed his beard. "Well, I certainly don't see why something like that is a nightmare! If I had dreams like that, I'd go to sleep earlier every night! Why-"

"The dreams don't end there." Star moaned. "I don't realize they're dreams until I spot something...off. It can be small, it can be big, but eventually something...some…" Star paused and then started coughing violently, before quickly grabbing an empty plastic bowl that was next to the bed in case she threw up. (It would have been the fourth time. The other three were during the night, usually right after she woke up from a nightmare.) Luckily, nothing came out, if only because her stomach was already completely hollow.

Moon rushed into action the second the first cough came out of her mouth, holding her shoulder and comforting her. "It's okay Star, it's okay. Take your time." She turned around. "River, go find a doctor, just in ca-"

"Don't bother." Star said, setting the bowl down and rubbing her throat. "None of them have any time to deal with me. This room may be soundproof, but I heard the explosion from outside." She looked down solemnly. "I'm betting the hospital is packed, right?"

"...That's exactly right." Moon admitted sadly. "It's chaos out there."

Star frowned and leaned back as far as her body could take her. "I suppose we can talk about that whole mess later. But...in those nightmares...something's always off. It can be anything. Dad's eating a vegetarian meat substitute-"

River retched in the background, causing Star to giggle slightly before continuing, the first time Moon had seen her smile since she woke up.

"...Or Janna's a little more talkative and friendly than she should be to other people. And then there was this one time…" Star then made a face that convinced Moon that she might need to grab the bowl again. "...Bren was there, and he called me his girlfriend. I woke up screaming as loud as I could from that one. And then I vomited everywhere. Again."

"Oh Star…" Moon said, leaning forward and carefully giving her daughter a hug, who returned it a moment later, even though her arms felt like overcooked noodles. "I'm so sorry this happened to you. I-I should have done something. I should have been there for you."

"It's okay." Star said. "But...you do know how this happened, right? Why I'm here like this?"

"I do." Moon said, nodding. "And before you ask, no, I'm not mad at Marco, nor do I blame him. Eclipsa filled me in on everything, especially his possession. He's not at fault for something like that." She disengaged from the hug and put her hands together. "I only wish I knew why it chose him…"

"Maybe to get close to me without me suspecting anything until it was too late." Star suggested. "I mean, it didn't work, I figured it out and then he beat the shit out of-"

"Please Star, language." Moon said.

"Sorry." Star apologized, still too tired to scoff about her mother's prissiness. "I figured it out and then he beat me up. I'm pretty sure I would have died if Marco hadn't come back in a small way and realized what he was doing. He sorta...ran off to the Sanctuary afterward, Angie found me, and I assume you know the rest."

"A heavily abridged version, but yes." Moon said. "But Star...Eclipsa told me that you were on your feet during that time. That you actually tried to fight off some doctors and refused care for hours. Then she also made a comment on how you jumped up while you were in this bed. But now you look like you're…" A small tear came to Moon's eye as she stopped herself from saying the word "dying", as the very concept of her child's death happening in a place like this saddened her to the point of bawling aloud. "What...what happened? Did the doctors give you something to calm you down?"

"Not really." Star mumbled. "Late last night, after another one of my nightmare and vomit sessions, I just started...hurting. Everywhere. Like my body was on fire. I called for a doctor, who arrived after like ten minutes, and he said that all the excess movement and resistance I did while I should have been getting treated for my injuries was finally taking effect. Kinda like how people who use adrenaline have super sore arms and legs the next day or something. They think it might have something to do with my Johansen blood. That my body was holding off the pain for as long as it could, but...it wasn't good enough."

"So now…"

"I'm weaker than a kitten." Star said, rolling her eyes. "I kinda regret trying to stab that doctor in the eye with a needle now. They're all just trying to help me, even if they don't have the time."

"I'm sorry, you tried to do what?"

"Nothing!" Star exclaimed, although using her voice at that level clearly pained her. "I was just...pissed about Marco getting killed like that. It was practically five seconds after I heard the news, and they tried to stop me from going to the Sanctuary to kill Bren."

"What did stop you?" River asked., finally inserting himself into the conversation.

"Marco coming back to life of course." Star said, as if she was stating the obvious. "Someone burst into the room screaming about how it was the zombie apocalypse or something, all because they had seen Marco rise from the dead. They were crazy."

"I think my mind would go to zombies as well, if I saw that happening." River stated. "Although...considering that magic is still no more-"

"Heh. Not for demon magic…" Star interjected.

"Demon what?" He asked.

"I'll explain in a bit. But no, they were totally crazy. You should have seen them. It's kinda hilarious now that I think back on it."

"If we're all done talking about zombies, I'd like to know more about your condition Star." Moon requested. "What did Marco do to you? Is there anything life-threatening about this?"

"I'll live. I know that for a fact." Star stated. "So don't worry about me too much, because soon I'll be back to one hundred percent...hopefully. But none of this is permanent. I just got tossed around a bit mom. No big deal!"

"Star…" Moon said softly, her tone indicating exactly what she meant.

"I know." The teen whispered, sounding almost like a child again. "I shouldn't be thinking about this like I just got a paper cut or something. Especially considering how much pain I'm in right now. But mom, I've been through way worse."

"Have you though?" Moon asked, looking at Star with a "don't give me all that" expression. "I remember almost every detail of your life before I sent you to Earth all those years ago. And no injury you had before then can possibly compare to this. Not even the ones you received during your combat training with the royal knights. And I'm sure that none you received afterwards can compare either."

Moon leaned forward. "Star...this is new. For you. For me. For all of us. You may not be able to tell, but the fact that this happened to you and I didn't do anything to stop it...it's filling me with more grief than you can imagine. Because I could have. If I opened up more and interacted with people like you wanted me too. I could have stopped Marco. I could have-"

"Mom, you would not have been anywhere near us when he beat me up." Star said, getting tired of her mother's rambling. "Trust me. It was after we had a beach day, at the Diazes house, as I'm sure you know. And besides, he attacked me in my bedroom, and the whole reason I was in there in the first place was for something that you would never have witnessed. If you were there, I'd totally asked you to leave beforehand, and then Marco would attack once I realized that he wasn't in charge. You being there wouldn't change anything, because I'd have made sure you were far, far away when it happened."

Moon paused, went over everything Star just said, and then shifted her gaze directly to her daughter's face while giving her a look of suspicion. "Star…" She hummed. "What "reason" were the two of you in your bedroom for before he turned on you? What was your plan exactly? And…" Moon leaned ever closer. "Why would you want me to be far, far away when "it" happened?"

"Uhh…" Star stuttered, not and never wanting to explain how she had been ready back then to have her first time with Marco, only for everything to fall flat on its face. She couldn't imagine how disappointed her mother might be if she told her about any of that, performing in such "shenanigans" before she was properly prepared to indulge in that sort of thing. And as for her father? Star didn't even want to think about it. They'd only be disappointed in her too, since anything that she claimed Marco said could be played off as the fault of his possession. She had to come up with a convincing lie. Fast.

"Marco asked me to eat a movie with him." Star said. "But he said it was really violent, so it'd be best if we watched it alone and with nobody else around. But obviously, things didn't turn out that way, and we never got around to doing that."

"A movie." Moon said, unconvinced. She put her hand over her face and glanced at her bedridden child in a way that let her know that she knew what Star was really hoping for. "You're a terrible liar when it comes to things like this." Moon claimed. "But Star, later on you and me are going to have a talk about this sort of thing, understand? You're much too young to be doing that sort of thing anyways."

"Pft, you wouldn't be saying that if we were back on Mewni…" Star mumbled, although her cheeks had already turned bright red out of embarrassment.

"Actually, I'd be saying it more." Moon said. "Because there you were still the heir to the throne."

"Okay, can we please talk about anything other than that?" Star asked. "This isn't something we should be talking about right now. It's not that important."

"Yes, and I agree." Moon said, straightening up. "But...once you're out of the hospital, I don't want to hear about you or Marco doing that sort of thing without us having a say in it. Plenty of Queens in the past have gotten pregnant too early, and-"

"No mom! Don't say anything more!" Star pleaded. "I'm not ever going to be Queen for one thing, because I rejected Eclipsa's proposal of wanting me to be Queen for a while until Meteora is ready, and for another, I don't know how much more of this I can take! Please don't go any further with that right now. And dad is still right there."

Moon glanced to her right and saw River rubbing his beard again, trying to decipher what the two in front of him were going on about. That or he was thinking about meat. He did seem to have a twinkle in his eyes after all, one that Moon recognized as the expression that he put on anytime he thought about food. So he made that expression quite a lot, especially nowadays.

"Fine." Moon said. She snapped her fingers in front of River's face to get his attention. "Now then, there was something you mentioned earlier I believe. Something called "Demon magic" after I commented on how all magic is destroyed. What exactly...is that?"

"Oh. That...that's complicated." Star understated, knowing this conversation was coming but still not looking forward to it. "It's the thing that helped us send Bren's demon back to the Underworld. The ritual we used was actually mentioned back at the meeting, although I guess nobody remembered considering all the other stuff that happened."

Moon scowled at the sudden memory influx of Bren crashing the Council meeting and generally just being an asshole. It was not a nice memory. Although really, could any of her recent memories be considered "nice?"

Definitely not.

But. Magic still being around. Rituals and stuff. Much more significant things to deal with right now.

"Are you saying that magic wasn't destroyed?" Moon asked. "That's it's still out there? Because if so, that means you, me, Eclipsa, and Meteora somehow failed. Was the whispering spell not permanent or was there still a small bit left after-"

"No, the whispering spell worked, and magic is dead." Star stated confidently. "But this is...Demon magic. And as Janna told me, Marco, and Eclipsa, it's not the same thing as whatever magic we blew up with the spell. They're different."

"How so?" River asked.

Star paused and tried to think of a satisfactory answer. It's not like she was completely ignorant in the matter, but she only remembered a small part of what Janna had explained to her about it. With everything that had happened since that little incident, she began to find it more and more difficult to keep up with how fast things were going.

That or Marco gave her brain damage. She'd have to ask one of the doctors to check up on that later on. Give her one of those weird scans in those giant machines she saw on that hospital show Ponyhead once tried to get her into. It didn't work, although it did provide an interesting (if factually incorrect) insight into Earth medicine.

But she was able to recall enough that she could come up with a good answer. One that'd satisfy her parents' curiosity. A little bit about a fire-god and some precautions it took to ensure that magic wasn't lost entirely. Something along those lines.

"Okay…" She sighed, before mumbling, "Um...something, something…...there's this fire-god somewhere out there in the multiverse, and it created Demon magic a long time ago. That type of magic is shoulder directly from that god. But it cut off Demon magic from the main dimension of magic after making it so that even if it was destroyed, Demon magic wouldn't be. And...that's basically it."

"..."

"..."

"..."

Moon placed her head in her hands. "Star, surely you can give us a better explanation than that." She groaned. "That might have been the short of it, but didn't tell me what we needed to know."

"Like…?"

"If it can be destroyed as well, how powerful it is compared to normal magic, and if it can be accessed by us. Because if we could use magic again, then I'm positive that whatever Bren throws at you and-" Moon caught herself and backtracked. "...Whatever he throws at us will amount to nothing if all it takes is to blow it up with a spell."

Star shook her head sadly. "It won't work. Because that's not how Demon magic works. It's more rituals and summonings and...demon stuff! We won't be able to use magic like we used to. That's gone forever. At least...I think. I'm kinda having trouble recalling everything Janna told me."

"Ah. Your little mysterious Earth friend. Of course she knew." Moon huffed. "Next time you see her Star, ask her why we weren't informed about this earlier. Because if we knew…" Moon suddenly put on this look, one Star hadn't seen for a long time but still recognized from somewhere. "...then it's possible Earthni could have turned into some better and empowered with that magic. Much more than it was before this whole revenge-plot started up."

"Empowered...hold on, why would we ever give magic to the public?" Star asked, unnerved by the expression her mother wore.. "And following that, why would you ever want to use magic again at all? After Mina, I thought you'd say that we should find the source of demon magic and destroy it, like we did with the last one."

"You mean the fire-god who could likely wipe the entire planet out of existence?" River commented, remembering every single word that Star had tossed at them. "If this god is the source of that magic, then I don't think that's very wise. Even I wouldn't think of going against something like that."

"Yes, you would." Moon and Star said simultaneously.

River was about to argue against this, but he stopped right as he opened his mouth and his gaze traveled to the floor as he grimly accepted this fact. "You're right. I'd do it in a heartbeat." He admitted. "But we have to try! Star made a good point! What if another Mina comes around? I already remember what she did to that poor man…"

"Who?" Star asked.

"Globgor." Moon deadpanned.

"Yes, Globgor!" River exclaimed. "A vegetarian, true, but still a fantastic eater and with a personality worthy of a Johansens! It's marvelous that the two of us became friends! If anything helped me permanently see monsters in a better light, it was him."

"Dad, Globgor is nothing like a Johansen." Star said. "Out of everyone I know, he might be one of the most pacifistic people around. I've only ever seen him raise a fist to protect Eclipsa or Meteora."

"Even so." River said, putting his right index finger in the air. "I think he is-"

"We can talk about that later!" Moon interrupted. "For now, we should focus on the main topic at hand. Demon magic, and what we can use it for. Star, didn't you ask me a question just now?"

"Yeah, and it was "why are you thinking like that?"" Star said, almost in a berating manner. "I get the idea behind using magic to help us beat Bren, because I'm sure with that explosion outside has got us pinned against a wall, but I don't think we should go any further than that."

"Why not?"

"Why no-because of what happened last time!" Star yelled, before doubling over and coughing again. Moon reached to grab her bowl, but Star swatted her hand away from it. "I'm fine." She growled. "I'm fine. But because of Mina and all that nonsense! What if someone uses it in the wrong way and it happens again? And even worse, I still hardly know anything about this, and so does basically everyone else besides Janna, Tom, and anyone from the Underworld. Which, may I remind you, is almost definitely under the control of you-know-who."

She glared at her mother with a look of pure disappointment. "Mom...we worked so hard and sacrificed so much in exchange for getting rid of magic. And now you, you, one of the people who helped cast that damn spell in the first place, want to make it mainstream again?!"

Moon didn't respond for a moment, shocked to silence by her daughter's furious outburst. Granted, she made several good points, but if she had only let the former Queen explain her plan, then she could see that it was for the better!

"Star, what we did back then...I did it out of necessity for the safety of everyone. To stop Mina. To save monsterkind, Globgor, River, your friends, everyone!" Moon enunciated. "But now that moment has passed, Mina is dead, and it's been months since that spell! Everything is in danger again so I don't see why not-"

"It's just like before." Star whispered.

"What?"

"It's just like before." She repeated. "You're making the exact same mistakes! Thinking like this is what caused Mina in the first place! Acting rashly and going about something too quickly because you believe it's for the greater good of the kingdom! But there isn't a kingdom anymore! We're nothing mom! We're frauds! Eclipsa is ruler, she should be making these decisions, you and me are nothing, and now-"

"I haven't forgotten Star!" Moon yelled, standing up and pushing her chair to the floor, causing Star to shrink back. "I still remember that we're fakes! I still remember what I did! I still remember what became of the kingdoms! I think about it every! Single! Day! But I can't keep going on like this. Yes, I hate seeing other people around. All I wanted is to be left by myself. You know it, I know it, all of my past friends know it. It's not a secret anymore."

Moon gulped and her face turned into a compassionate one. "But, with Bren and Thomas and that explosion and now this…" She put her hands together and brought them to her face. "I won't stand by and watch while people die and you get hurt like this! And I want to use this Demon magic to stop it all from happening because I'm aware everything else you've tried has failed. Don't think I don't pay attention in those meetings when it suits me! The demon being sent away was because Bren wanted it. You and Marco meeting him was because he wanted it. Everything from the start is because…...because…"

"He wanted it." Star whispered, pulling her blanket up to her face. She shivered slightly (although it wasn't from the cold), as she tried to figure out what to say next. Eventually she came up with a phrase that her mother had been quite fond of saying ever since the Solarian incident. "I'm sorry. I didn't-"

"No, no, you don't have to apologize. I should be the one doing that for blowing up at you." Moon admitted, taking her chair and sitting back down in it. "I'm sorry." She breathed. "And I get what you were saying. Magic isn't what caused Mina and the destruction of that dimension and even the merging of the two worlds to happen. Me acting impetuously is. If I hadn't given Mina's army their Solarian powers, none of this would have happened. We'd still be on Mewni, Eclipsa would be reigning in a better age, and you and Marco would be happy together without having to deal with Bren."

Star took all this in and let her eyes fall to the side, knowing that what her mother said was completely true but also feeling like what was coming next was going to be another excuse for her to use Demon magic.

"But…" Moon said, confirming Star's fears. "I want to change all that now. Make up for the damage I did. And that's why I want to use this magic. To stop Bren, save Thomas, and finally maybe redeem-"

"Redeem? Is that what all this is for then?" Star sneered. "Making a name for yourself? Wanting everyone to think that you're back to plain old Moon? The boring, helpful Queen that solved all the kingdom's problems and was beloved by the people? Is...is that what you really want out of this?"

Moon flinched and could hear the sorrow in Star's voice as she asked these questions. Each one hit like a punch to the face, filled with a tone of betrayal and anger for the former Queen. Star was turning on her again, and Moon couldn't let her think about her like that any longer.

"No, Star, that's not what I want." Moon claimed. "In fact, when we win-"

"If." Star corrected, brushing her hair out of her face. "It's more of an "if" at this point."

"...Right." Moon said, disturbed by the lack of confidence Star just displayed. "If we win, regardless of whether we do it with Demon magic or not, I'll go back to living in the same house in the woods. I don't want a reward for this. I just want to make up for what I did all those months ago."

"You've had plenty of time." Star pointed out. "More than you know. But you pushed everyone away, never actually contributing to fixing the town's problems. You ran away from those meetings and left the rest to all of us. Sure, we were more than capable of handling it, but even so...you had all those opportunities, and you took none of them."

"I understand that ." Moon said. "And I regret it now. But Star, none of what you said is the truth. I'm not going to do the same things all over again. I'm not even going to have magic available to the public! I wasn't even planning on..." Moon took a deep breath and calmed herself before continuing. "I wasn't even planning on controlling magic long term. I just thought that me, you, Eclipsa, and everyone we trust could use it to stop Bren, and then you could use it to better the town! Look outside Star! We would never use magic for war or fighting after dealing with Bren, but instead use it only for good! Like repairing the damage that blast made or healing the injuries of-"

"This is such a cliche." Star scoffed, before clearing her throat and putting on her best Moon impression. "We're not going to use it for evil after using it for evil! We're going to use it for good and make the world a better place for everyone, where we all live happily ever after and ride away on unicorns to candyland like real life is some kind of stupid fairy tale and not the place where everyone you know and love is constantly threatened with getting murdered!" Star crossed her arms and glared at her mother. "That's what I'm getting out of this mom."

Moon frowned, now even more irritated with Star's stubbornness. This wasn't really like her to…

to…

Actually, scratch that, because it definitely was. She had a tendency to be stubborn in situations like this, where a decision had already been made and now someone wanted to undo that decision. But that wasn't what Moon meant! The control of magic would be heavily policed if this came to pass. It's not like anyone off the street could grab a magic book and use it. And assuming this Demon magic was anything like normal magic, it'd take a while to learn anyways, and even if they did, they'd certainly lack the power to do anything that couldn't immediately be fixed. Only the most trusted and skilled former magic users would be allowed to do it in the first place, so the only ones with any of those abilities would be their allies!

She had to get through to Star and explain all this. Moon was in the right here!

'Right?' She thought, having a brief moment of doubt. 'Am I acting rashly again? Jumping aboard this train too early, as the humans say? Becoming obsessed with magic and the opportunities it presents? Do I really want to use this power to save the town, or am I simply longing for the way things were, when I didn't hide out in the middle of the woods with the only daily contact to the outside world being the phone call with Eclipsa and my scouting?'

"Nothing to say anymore?" Star asked, obviously unaware of her mother's private thoughts. "Alright mom. I think that's enough from you for now." She turned towards her father. "Dad, say something already. Spark up a conversation. Do something, anything so I didn't have to listen to any more of this."

River, who had almost become a complete bystander at this point, looked flustered and then inched his way towards the hospital bed as his gaze shifted from side to side.. "Uh, Listen Star." He sputtered, worried that Star would get angry at him if he said the wrong thing. "I know your mother has made a lot of mistakes in the past, but I have still been living with her for the past six months, and I can say with certainty that she is not the same person she was the day magic was-"

"Yeah, but she did become a recluse who pushed everyone away except for you." Star growled. "She never even wanted to see me! Every time I came over, I saw it in her eyes. She was waiting for me to leave the whole damn time so she could get to...whatever it is she does!" Star threw her hands up in the air again. "Actually, what does she even do in that house?! Sit around and wait for the end times?! Because spoilers, they're here, and now Mrs. Recluse is trying to find an excuse to go back to her old self, like I've been saying for this whole damn visit!" Star then shook her head and stared up at her father with pleading eyes. "You have to see that dad."

"I don't see it because it's not true!" River protested. "I know what this looks like. I understand why you're so angry. I would be too if I was thinking the same thing you were. But I'm not because then I'd be telling lies to myself Star! Throughout those six months, Moon didn't yearn for the days of magic. Not once." River pushed the chair Moon was sitting in to the side with his foot, to which the former Queen didn't even flinch in response. "But then I noticed something. Every now and then, I saw something in her. A piece that was missing that she seemed to lack. And eventually, I saw what it was."

"Yeah, magic." Star spat. "You-"

"No Star, it was the admiration of the people!" River blurted out. "Your mother missed the days when she could leave the castle and the Mewmans waved and smiled and praised her! Not the days when she left our house and most everyone ignored her. She wanted someone to care again." River sighed and took another step towards the bed. "Star, she doesn't want magic for power. She wants magic to end this threat for good and redeem herself. To prove that the old Moon is dead, and the old old Moon is well and truly alive!" He shouted, hoping that this would be enough to change Star's mind.

Unfortunately, her response to this boisterous claim this was to stare blankly at River, with a face that said "are you fucking kidding me?" She didn't actually say it, but River most definitely heard it.

"Really?" She asked. "So basically what I said five minutes ago? That this is all about her trying to redeem herself and better her public image? Yeah, I wasn't happy with that either dad. Try something else."

"Errr...well, it's much better than using it to take back power!" River pointed out. "Moon would never do that sort of thing now! She-"

"Both of you are wrong!" Moon suddenly screeched, almost making River jump out of his shoes and Star out of her gown. Moon glared at them both simultaneously, causing River to scooch away from her and for Star to lean as far back as she could. Now she was furious. "The main point of this is not to gain power or redeem myself. Those are secondary at best." She hissed. "I want to do this to stop Bren. To wipe out that little stain on Earthni's society for the good of everyone. As for afterwards, I think I could make some suggestions, just suggestions, about how we could use this Demon magic to better everything. I won't be in control of it at all after he dies, because I don't know the full capabilities of what this magic entails. Star, you said it was mostly rituals and summonings and things like that. But I-"

"It won't work." Star deadpanned.

"What?"

"Bettering the town with that magic. It won't work." She sighed and began to recount a tale. "Back when Me, Marco, Janna, and Eclipsa banished that demon, we couldn't just throw our hands in the air and send it back to the Underworld. We could only do it after we sacrificed a few things."

"Sacrifice?" River parroted. "What did you sacrifice?"

"A tennis ball, my plastic demon horns...and a vial of Marco's blood." Star enunciated.

"A vial of what?!"

"Blood. Marco's blood." Star repeated. "It's magic that literally originated in hell, so I think stuff like that is pretty commonplace."

"Good lord…" Moon said. "Did you seriously have to cut Marco open right there on the street-"

"No, Janna already had a vial of it." Star said. "And probably several still stored away somewhere. But that's beside the point. The point is that the ritual had to have a blood sacrifice, along with a few other things to make it work." Star tilted her head at Moon and leaned closer. "So Mom, how exactly are we going to better the town if the only way to do so is to use people's blood and personal belongings? Because that wasn't just some random tennis ball either! The criteria for what was needed was really specific. Not to mention personal."

"I…" Moon started, before her voice died in her throat.

"That's what I thought."'Star said, not giving her another chance to answer. "We don't. We could start a blood drive, but eventually we'll run out of things to burn. How much blood will it take? How many objects? I only learned about this stuff a few days ago, and now you know basically everything I do. But if a simple teleportation ritual took that much preparation, with the paint and the vial and those two objects, then who knows what's needed for something bigger. Like…" Her eyes met Moons. "Turning Earthni into something beautiful and empowered."

Moon bit her lip at Star throwing her own words back at her with disdain, and it became obvious to the former ruler that no matter how hard she tried to reason with Star, she wasn't going to agree with the plan. And she, once again, made a good point. Moon was still in the dark about most of this. Blood rituals and summonings…now that she thought about it, Star was likely to be seen in the right here by the townspeople. What would they do? Announce one day that everyone had to give up some of their blood and possessions to make everything better? Right after they had their homes and lives decimated? Ludicrous. There'd be another riot, if not worse. The pot was already boiling, and one more push was all it'd take for the lid to come flying off.

"So do you get it now?" Star asked. "Why your idea is a shitty one?"

Moon was about to scold Star again for her language, but decided that now was not the best time for that. She placed her hands in her lap and leaned forward again, causing Star to rear back again, obviously still not wanting to be anywhere near her mother.

"I think I'm starting to." She said. "But...I was telling the truth. I didn't want to do any of this for selfish reasons. Yes, I liked it better when I wasn't seen as an outcast, and yes, it'd have been nice to make amends for my past sins, but none of that was at the front of my mind! I wanted to help the town! Stop this madness and prevent more deaths."

"There's no stopping that." Star said, sounding defeated. "I have a feeling that more people are going to die in this fight no matter what we do. It's inevitable. Bren could probably level the entire town whenever he wants, and this whole thing with Avarius mansion…" She glanced at the window. "I'm sure it's only the start of what's coming. Heck, we shouldn't even be in this hospital right now. Destroying the building that has all the town's medical professionals in it, something that we're currently in short supply of?"

Star shrugged. "I couldn't think of a more perfect target. Not to mention just how crowded it is. If he leveled it, the death toll would rise to the thousands." She put her hand behind her head and lay flat on the bed. "But hey, at least by the end of it, there wouldn't be anybody left to riot about it."

Moon grimaced at Star's "joke", shaking her head at how unsure she seemed about all of this. Star was like a light switch right now, flipping on and off about what might happen and if they could even win this fight. This wasn't the same Star Moon had heard Eclipsa describing when the Queen first told her about Bren over the phone. Star was confident then. Sure that Bren was just another enemy to defeat that she and Marco would take down.

But, after yesterday, it was like Star had a complete change in personality. She seemed much less assured that Bren could be beaten. The beating from Marco...being put in the hospital...the explosion happening right outside her shatterproof window...it was getting to her. Making her wonder if they stood a chance. And Moon had to change that. If Star devolved to the point where she believed they'd never win, then they wouldn't. She was the most important person in all of this anyways. Bren hated her the most, and if Star lost hope then she'd be giving him exactly what he wanted. An opportunity.

This had to be taken care of now, before it got worse.

"Star." Moon said, repeating her daughter's name for the hundredth time as she took her hand in her own. "I know this is hard. I know you're angry at me. I know you're probably mourning inside for everyone that died and for what's coming next. But I also know what you're thinking."

"Then what am I thinking mom?" Star asked, tightly gripping a pillow. "Have you paid attention to a single thing I said from the past six months?"

"Every word of it."

The answer was not what Star was expecting, and she raised an eyebrow in response before pulling it back down and turning her face into a blank one. "I'm surprised." She said. "Then what did I say the last time we met? April 24?"

"You were talking about how your babysitting job with Meteora and Mariposa went surely after Meteora pounced and Marco and tried to hang him from a ceiling fan with his own hoodie." Moon said, remembering the conversation perfectly. Star perked up in surprise at the fact that her mother had managed to rescale the event so vividly, believing that she truly hadn't been paying attention.

"After that, you gave the babies their bottles and they both calmed down." Moon said. "Then you put them to bed, you and Marco had a make-out session, which I remembered as something you clearly regretted saying, and then Eclipsa came home and you got paid."

"..."

"Do you want me to keep going, or should I stop there?" Moon asked. "Because I think I've proven my point."

"...Okay, so maybe you were paying attention during all that." Star said. "Sorry for doubting you. It's just...like I was talking about earlier, you always made this face that told me that I was wasting and should just leave."

"If I was making a face like that, then I apologize." Moon said. "I didn't intend to do any of that."

"It's actually her normal face nowadays Star." River chimed in. "Trust me, I know which one you're talking about, and she makes it all the time! I call it her "default look". I've even seen her do it in private. There's absolutely nothing wrong with it Star. It's just the type of person your mother is now."

Star frowned. "Then why did you also act like you wanted me to leave?" She asked Moon. "You weren't exactly social…"

"Because I wanted to hear what you had to say." Moon replied. "I wanted to know about everything you've experienced in Earthni. How the town is doing. What it's people are doing. How it looks from the eyes of someone that's not a..." Moon was about to say "ruler", but caught herself before she inadvertently revealed her phone chats with Eclipsa. Moon actually didn't care that much if Star found out, but Eclipsa definitely would. "Someone that's not me." She finished. "It was all curiosity."

"If you were curious, then why didn't you even come to visit me at the Monster temple or Marco's house?" Star asked. "You could have come any time you wanted. After all those months of you avoiding us all, I'd have actually welcomed you if you wanted to come over. So why didn't you?"

"It's complicated." Moon said. "I was afraid of leaving. Afraid of interacting with people in a place that I didn't feel safe."

"Why would you not feel safe in Marco's house? You've been there before. Rafael and Angie aren't going to mind you coming over. Same with Marco. They all know what you did, but they don't care! They want to move past that. Literally a new world, and we all decided to bury the worst part of the old one." Star's haze turned forlorn and she chewed at her bottom lip. "Guess we couldn't stop the worst from coming back on its own though…"

"Technically, the worst from Earthni is gone now." Moon said. "What we have now is the worst from somewhere else. At least, assuming that Bren is the biggest problem from whatever dimension he came from that could cause trouble to us."

Star shuddered, utterly disturbed by the notion that there was something even more destructive than Bren lurking out there somewhere, waiting to attack. If that was true, then the entire planet, not just Earthni, was well and truly screwed.

"True, but that's not really the point, is it?" Star asked rhetorically. "You can come over to the Diazes or the Monster Temple whenever you want. I'm not going to

stop you. I'll stop anybody who tries to. What are you worried about? That someone will attack you on the street?"

"No, I'm not anxious about that. I can defend myself perfectly fine against those kinds of things." Moon claimed. "Star, I'm going to be honest, I don't truly know why I never left to go see any of you. Maybe I didn't want to go outside." (Moon knew this was a lie, her scouting missions were proof enough of that.) "Maybe I was afraid to see Eclipsa again after what I did to her, even if she forgave me." (Also a lie, due to the phone chats.) "Or maybe I didn't want to see how much the town and its people had gone on without me, like I was a forgotten piece of history." (Also a-oh screw it, who cares.) "It could be any of those, or none of them." (None.) "But the point is that I can't even figure it out myself. So no answer I give you will be satisfying, because I don't have any in the first place."

Star didn't know what to say anymore. If her mother was telling the truth, then there was no reason to get angry over it. But there was still reason to-

"BWEEEE! BWEEEE! BWEEEE!"

With a decibel count that was far too high for a normal person to endure, a sudden ear-splitting shriek ran out over the room and the rest of the hospital, making Moon and River jump nearly a foot in the air and giving Star a mini-heart attack. The noise was absolutely deafening, before it was suddenly turned down to a level that didn't make it feel like their ears were bleeding. But it was still loud enough to make them want to get as far away from the hospital as possible. They all looked around frantically, clueless as to what was going on.

"What the hell is happening?" Moon yelled.

"I don't know!" Star yelled back. "I...I think it's some kind of emergency alarm for dangerous intruders or bomb threats or whatever! But...I don't get why would they'd sound this alarm before announcing it over the loudspeaker! Did something happen?"

A moment later one of the guards that had been standing outside the room burst in, and they all caught a glimpse of panicked and running people in the hallway, moving much faster than they had earlier.

"What's going on?" River asked.

"Someone just forced their way into the hospital!" The guard yelled. "We're evacuating everyone we can as a precaution!"

"Do we have to leave right now?" Moon asked. "What about Star?"

"Uh...that's just it." The guard said, their voice barely audible over the din. He glanced over at Star. "They say they want to see her, and that they'll kill anybody who gets in their way! They already took out the guy who called in the emergency announcement, so we had to resort to the alarm! We don't know what-"

"Wait, Marco's forced his way into the hospital to see me? And he's killed someone?!" Star screeched. "I thought he wasn't possessed anymore! What the hell happened to him now?!"

"I don't know who Marco is, but that's definitely not the intruder!" The guard hollered.

The alarm cut out suddenly, like someone flipped a switch, allowing them to no longer have to scream to communicate. The sounds from the hallway were still frantic, but definitely preferable to the blaring from above.

"Then who's here to see me?" Star asked, smacking one of her ears with her hand like she had something stuck in it.

The guard took a deep breath and a nervous look crossed their eyes. "It's...um…"

"Okay, not waiting any longer!" A familiar voice said from outside the door, and Star's heart dropped into her stomach. It swung open (burst, really), revealing the last person she wanted to see today, along with his personal pet demon. Forcefully inserting himself into the story yet again.

"Hello Butterfly." They said, while Moon and River instinctively stepped in front of Star to protect her. Star inhaled deeply through her nostrils at the sight of her worst enemy now standing in front of her. When she was at her weakest, with no escape in sight, and the only thing protecting her being her parents, who Star wasn't sure could even stop him if they tried.

"You and I are going to have a discussion...about Demon magic.."


Far away from the hospital, on the other side of town inside a darkened and cold bedroom, Marco was hurting inside.

As per usual.

However, this time the pain was different. It was constant, fixed, instead of deviating at random intervals like it usually did. Ever since yesterday this had been the norm. He had been in a state of agony throughout the evening, into the night, and now even in the morning, despite his best attempts to make it vanish. The pain wasn't physically in any way, but Marco could feel it.

But any physical pain the world could deal out was a million times better than this.

However, the fact that it was now at a resting state confused him. When it was at its changing state, the pain raised or lowered itself depending on what he was thinking about at the time. If he was thinking of Star, the pain receded. If he was thinking about literally anything else...it grew stronger. Marco was too focused on trying not to throw up from it to realize this fact, but a part of him must have caught on subconsciously, because soon enough Star was all that occupied his mind. Although it still scarcely helped overall, mostly due to the fact that while all that was happening, his five senses were screwing him over at every second no matter what he thought about, screaming into his ears and making him feel like he was drowning.

But had gotten a bit of rest, happy rest, when he clutched the ring Star's parents had given him to his chest and fallen into dreamland with a smile on his face. It was a nice change. He only dreamt of her. Nothing else.

And then the explosion happened.

Loud enough for his eardrums to pop and his entire room to shake. The ring fell from Marco's hand and rolled underneath a nearby dresser, unbeknownst to him. Marco's only response other than reflexively opening said hand was to widen his eyes and wonder what the hell was going on, until his windows suddenly shattered and sent broken glass flying all over the opposite wall. He heard his mother and Eclipsa scream from downstairs as something large landed on his family's car, and only then did he casually get up from his bed and look outside the window.

It took him a few seconds to discern the giant cloud of smoke rising up from what was once Avarius mansion, but once he did his mind immediately drifted back to his girlfriend, only this time with the pain rising as his anxiety made him fear that the explosion might have hurt her. Because losing Star meant losing everything. If she had gotten hurt...

Angie came flying into his room a second later, and he only had time to turn his head at her before she embraced him in a hug, overjoyed that he was unharmed. He actually returned the hug, but only for his mother's sake. With his emotions still struggling to come back to him, Marco had trouble figuring out how to return affection without Star around, and the fact that he was able to express it at all after what he went through was his most admirable quality at the moment.

After several minutes of his mother crying, as well as his father who had come in a few seconds later, they let go of him and then stared out the window as he had, inspecting the damage for the first time. Marco figured that they checked on him before actually seeing what was going on, and it made him grateful that his parents still cared so much about his well being, despite the state he was in. He had assumed they wanted nothing to do with him anymore after Angie had apparently forgotten what he said earlier about "checking in on him to make sure he hadn't killed himself."

That really hadn't helped.

But after both his parents gasped at the ghastly sight, everyone saw Eclipsa run out the front door and down the street without even saying goodbye. Marco tried to call out for her, maybe to say thanks for driving him home and for taking care of him, but Eclipsa was too far away, and his cries went unheard. Angie and Rafael did hear his oddly specific and heartbreaking shouts however, and took him into another hug. He returned it without thinking, and slowly started to cry, a monotone expression still plastered on his face.

He wished he could show more of it. He really could. But again, Star wasn't there, and after the pain of the god-being forcefully entering his mind again and causing that massive nosebleed, it all grew to be a little too much. His eggshell mind was once again cracking, resulting in one or two vital pieces falling off and vanishing into his subconscious. And throughout all of this, he just wished that he was with her. With Star. Was that really so hard a request?

Apparently yes, as his mother put the news on later and practically dragged him downstairs so they could all watch it together. There he discovered that hundreds of people were wounded or dead, thus making every hospital in Earthni and the surrounding towns chock-full of panicked and injured people. Including the one Star was currently contained in. After hearing this, Marco went back upstairs without bothering to tell his parents, quickly assuming that getting to Star now was an impossibility at the moment and falling deeper into the black hole that consumed his thoughts and memories.

Bad ones, of course. The only types of memories Marco sometimes felt he had left. Because even with the way some of the pain he felt went away whenever Star filled the void, it was never enough.

Then a rather nefarious thought came to his mind: Would it ever be enough? Was he doomed to fall into a deeper and deeper depression, uncaring about what was happening to the world just like he did with that explosion, uncaring about his own physical health unless it meant seeing her, and uncaring about the people around him, except the ones that helped him most, and even then only occasionally?

Was that his ultimate fate? All that, because of one bad day?

It certainly felt like it to Marco. Although he did try to remind himself that these things weren't fixed in a day. Mental healing from traumatizing events (of which he had so, so many, not even counting the events of yesterday) took time. Therapy didn't work in a day, or a week, or even a month. Maybe there was still help for him out there. He just had to be patient, and let people help him.

But he didn't want to. Because there was always that dark part of him that whispered poison into his ear, telling him that they didn't care deep down, that they were only doing this for their own benefit, and that he never mattered to them. And since Marco was starting to become much more open to suggestion, saving him the mental strength of having to decide things for himself, these whispers became his forethought and made the situation even worse.

He tried to fall asleep again later on. But the sounds of the still-burning town from outside combined with his own nightmares, and the fact that he hadn't been able to find the ring, simply made him afraid of going to sleep and potentially waking up screaming like a lunatic. He had half a mind to just muzzle himself, as he was sure that he'd have to do eventually if he didn't want to bother half the neighborhood every time he had a nightmare. Which would of course be every night.

So instead Marco paced around his room, played a few repetitive games on his computer, and then shut it off so his parents would think he was snoozing when he heard them come upstairs. They were whispering to each other. About him. About what they could do to help him. He even thought he heard Angie mention that they had somehow "failed as parents" since they allowed him to get killed and fall into his whole tortured mind state. Rafael tried to console her, but Marco knew from the tone in his voice that he thought something similar. Both of them started crying, so Marco grabbed a pillow and placed it over his head to drown it out. He hated it. He hated the fact that his parents had to go through this because of his bullshit.

But it wasn't like he could help it. He knew that pretending that everything was okay and that he wasn't hurting inside might only make things worse, so Marco didn't bother doing any of that. He may be hiding from people, but that didn't mean he was going to hide how messed-up he felt. And besides, even if he tried, they'd figure it out eventually.

After his parents retreated back to their room, Marco started playing his game again, but shut it off after the light began to hurt his eyes. He groaned, practiced a few karate moves for the billionth time, and unsuccessfully tried to go to bed, not caring anymore about his nightmares. He just wanted to shut out the rest of the world, and if half the neighborhood had to be woken up in order for this to happen, then so be it.. And it's not like he could stay awake forever.

It didn't work.

He started grumbling and moved to Star's room instead, sick of staring at the same four boring old walls in the almost slapped himself for not thinking of doing this before. It reminded him of her. It smelled like her. And it almost looked like her, in a way. Seeing and smelling and feeling all that...

It helped.

He laid himself down on her bed, imagining that she was there, next to him, and not in a crowded hospital, likely feeling as love-starved as he did and bored out of her mind. But the image of Star like that, laying in her hospital bed overtook all other thoughts, and…

It didn't help.

Marco rolled off the bed and walked over to Star's balcony as his brain began to betray him again. The sun was starting to vanish over the horizon and the sky was turning a beautiful orange in response. But most of the orange, unfortunately, was covered by the smoke. But Marco pretended they weren't there. He pretended that he didn't hear the far off screams in the distance, people trapped underneath buildings, their rescuers too busy to help them at the moment. He pretended that one of the stones that made up the mansion wasn't currently on top of his family's car, which for some reason had dried blood stains covering one side. And most importantly, he pretended that none of this mattered, that the entire town would go back to normal in the morning, with no memory or recollection of what had occurred.

None of that was true obviously, but it helped in the moment. Made him feel better. Soon he had drowned it all out, knowing that the sounds had to return eventually but not caring in the moment, all the while he gripped the balcony's railing so tightly his knuckles had turned white.

He knew what he'd do the next day. Find some way to get into the hospital and see Star. It didn't matter if his parents didn't want him too. It didn't matter if the doctors wouldn't let him. He'd sneak in and see her, and that was final.

He straightened himself, walked away from the balcony, and clambered back into Star's bed, getting under the covers and wrapping her blanket around him.

It helped.

And a short while later, he thought he heard Ponyhead screaming in the distance, along with what sounded like the footsteps of several dozen angry people, interrupting his beauty sleep.

That...didn't help.


"Helloooooo?! Anybody home?! I need to speak with your boss!"

"..."

"..."

"..."

"Okay, I know you can hear me, and you have five minutes until I break this door down with my horn! And after that, everyone is going to feel the wrath of Ponyhead!"

"..."

"..."

"..."

"DAMN IT OPEN THIS DOOR I NEED TO SPEAK WITH YOU!"

"..."

"..."

"..."

Ponyhead was having a very bad day.

Although that's stating the obvious. Because everyone is having a pretty shitty day right now, yes?

Yes. But according to Ponyhead, her day had gone much worse than most people's, to the point where she claimed that it had become borderline asinine to her father. (Who didn't care.)

First things first, she got no sleep last night, much like all the rest. But unlike the rest, she kept on trying throughout the night, while the other Royals just stayed up the whole time, sitting and worrying. So by the time the sun creeped through her windows, it was apparent to Ponyhead that her attempts had been futile, leading her to trash her room in a fit of rage, cursing the people outside who had prevented her from sleeping.

And it's not like things got any better from there.

Three of her sisters hadn't come home the night before, and so she and the rest of her siblings had been sent out (forced) by their father to go look for them. And while all the others were crying and sobbing over the fact that three members of their family might have died, Ponyhead was grumbling about it the whole time while live-streaming the search on her phone. At no point did she have any viewers, but Ponyhead still did it anyways for "public image." Her three missing sisters were later found, trapped underneath some rubble covered in scratches and bruises, but otherwise unharmed. It was an absolute miracle, and it was clear to see that Ponyhead couldn't care less.

Then just as she was about to go back to her castle (she no longer called it the castle, only hers, due to the fact that she was going to be of age to take up the ruling position in a few years or so), the entire group got a simultaneous text message from their father, who said that all of them had to come home except for Ponyhead, who was to report to an emergency Council meeting. Groaning, whining, and loudly complaining for the second time that morning, Ponyhead flew towards the meeting at 1 kilometer per hour, acting like she was carrying a hundred-kilogram weight on her back.

And at the meeting, things just got shittier for her. She discovered that her best friend was in the hospital because of Earthturd, Earthni was likely all alone in dealing with the Bren problem, and Eclipsa had cruelly and unjustly cancelled her show.

Which led us to where she is now. Floating in front of Echo creek's television studio, responsible for all broadcasts. Sports, cartoons, news, whatever. The same studio that controlled Ponyhead's show. Right now they were airing a 24/7 news broadcast about the disaster that had befallen them all, so Ponyhead was of course the least of their concerns.

"OPEN UP!" She repeated, unsuccessfully trying to pick the front door lock with her horn. She knew they were ignoring her, and didn't care. She was getting in this television studio one way or another, and if she had to break down this door to accomplish that, then so be it.

"OKAY. YOU ASKED FOR IT!" She yelled, and without skipping a beat, Ponyhead floated backwards and charged forward with her horn, bellowing a war cry as she flew straight into the bulletproof glass that surrounded the studio, which had been installed a few months earlier due to scared monsters attacking it after finding out the structure was the source of the "magic moving pictures" that they claimed "haunted their nightmares."

All this was unbeknownst to the still-advancing Ponyhead, and with a loud CRACK, her horn snapped in half like a twig as the glass deflected the blow, causing the front of her nose to smack into the pane along with most of the right side of her face. Ponyhead dropped like a rock, smacking against the sidewalk. She moaned groggily and wondered why what she believed to be a brilliant plan had gone so poorly.

"Ugh...what the hell?!" She exclaimed. "Why did that not work? What's going on with that damn glass? And-hey, why does my horn feel weird?"

Ponyhead glanced skyward and saw her ruined horn, the broken half hanging off it like a piece of string. Meanwhile, the half that was still attached to her head was now embedded with deep cracks, which were growing larger by the second. Ponyhead let out a gasp as her voice died in her throat, and she floated upward and inspected the damage in front of the glass, just as the broken half fell off entirely and clattered to the pavement below.

"NO! NO AGAIN!" She wailed. "OH, THAT IS IT! FIRST MY STUPID MISSING SISTERS WASTE ALL MY TIME, THEN THAT ANNOYING MONSTER QUEEN TELLS ME SHE'S GOING TO CANCEL MY SHOW, AND NOW THIS?! THIS IS EASILY THE WORST DAY ANYONE HAD EVER HAD IN THE HISTORY OF THIS STUPID TOWN!"

"Hey. You."

"I WILL NOT STAND FOR THIS ANY LONGER! SOMEONE IS GOING TO PAY FOR THIS, AND I'M GOING TO MAKE SURE THAT THEIR LIVES ARE RUINED BECAUSE OF IT!"

"Hey!"

"PROBABLY EARTHTURD. THIS IS ALL HIS FAULT ANYWAYS. I TOLD THEM LAST MEETING THAT HE MIGHT BE WORKING FOR BREN, AND NOW LOOK WHERE WE ARE. HE GOT HIMSELF POSSESSED. AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO-"

"HEY!"

"Huh?" Ponyhead whipped her neck around at the sound of the obviously irritated voice, and standing in front of her was a random middle-aged human, which she recognized as the desk attendant for the studio. She put on a scowl and spoke in a tone of pure disdain. "Oh. It's you." She growled, gritting her teeth and identifying them from her earlier visits. "What do you want? I'm in the middle of something."

"What do I want? What are you doing?" The human asked, glaring at Ponyhead like she was nothing more than a nuisance.

"Well, I've been trying to get into your stupid studio, that's what I've been doing!" Ponyhead yelled, getting in their face. "For like...the past twenty minutes now! And look at the result! This is all the fault of that stupid window you installed!" She motioned her nose towards the ground, and the human gazed downwards and saw the snapped horn, lying on the sidewalk like a piece of litter. They then spotted Ponyhead's broken horn and connected the dots, although they didn't bother showing sympathy.

"Well, that wouldn't have happened if you hadn't tried to break in." They pointed out. "Why didn't you just open the front door? It's unlocked you know."

Ponyhead made a noise that was a mix between a squeal and a cry of pain, like someone had stabbed her with a knife. "Door?!" She exclaimed. "I don't have any hands you idiot! How do you expect me to open a door!"

"Use your mouth?" The human suggested.

"What, you want me to put my mouth on that thing? No thanks." Ponyhead seethed. "It's probably covered in who knows how many different types of Earth germs and diseases. I wouldn't even let my sister's touch that-hm, actually no, that's not true." She said, always searching for an opportunity to get back at her sisters. "But there was no way I was going near that. So then I tried to break in, and now my horn's broken! Why does this place even need that type of glass anyway?! What are you defending it against?!"

"Hundreds of scared and angry monsters, complaining about "magic moving pictures."" The human deadpanned. "It was a precaution we had to take."

"Is that so?" Ponyhead hissed at them. "Well, your "precaution" cost me my horn! I want to know what you're going to do about this!"

"Uh, nothing?" The human guessed. "I can promise you that the studio won't care. I don't either. Especially since we just got the order a few minutes ago to cancel your show, so there's really nothing you can do. And if you try to sue us over the horn…" The human pointed to a security camera hanging overhead, which had recorded everything. "That footage will clearly display that you were the only one at fault here."

Ponyhead growled again but did her best to calm herself down. As pissed off as she was about the horn, it could be dealt with later. She was here for her show after all, and Eclipsa had apparently just called them and had it cancelled. She had to try and convince them to undo that action. Bribery, perhaps...

"Okay, you know what, forget that for now. I'm here for something else anyways." Ponyhead stated, making the human tilt their head at her in surprise. "I'm here to uncancel my show. I don't care what Eclipsa said to you on that phone call or text or whatever she used, but I have better judgement, and I can say that-"

"Queen Eclipsa didn't tell us to do anything." The human said, staring at Ponyhead like she had a few screws loose, if not all of them.

"Huh?"

"It was King Ponyhead." The human revealed. "He called us a few minutes ago and ordered us to shut it down. And since he has authority much higher than yours, we did what he asked us. Plus, we wanted to get rid of it anyway. It was taking up valuable broadcasting time. I don't think we had a single viewer over the past couple of days…"

"Wha-my dad did this?!" Ponyhead shrieked. "Are you kidding me?! Why would he do that to me?! He loves me! More than my other sisters and everyone else in the entire world! When I find him, I am going to make him bring my show back with a marathon of all the old episodes and-"

"That's not possible."

"Not possible? What do you mean?!" Ponyhead asked.

"When we took your show off the air, we also deleted all the old episodes we had to clear some space. Not to mention the fact that your dad made us promise to never air it again, no matter what you said. He promised a very large sum of money if we complied, although I don't know how he's going to do that, considering we're all out of money, but whatever. Long story short, we don't have any episodes, and your show will never air on this network ever again."

"..."

"..."

"Move." Ponyhead ordered.

"What?"

"Get out of my way!" She screeched. "I want to speak to your boss about this, since I assume he's the one who got that phone call! I'm not leaving until I get my show back!"

"The boss can't speak to you right now. Heck, I shouldn't be talking to you either. We're all working full time right now to get the news out there, and I actually have a job to do right now. Goodbye."

They turned to leave, but Ponyhead shook her head and flew directly in front of them, her face now so close to theirs that their noses were almost touching. "We're not done yet!" She snarled. "I don't care if you have a job to do. I have something I came here to do, and I'm not leaving until I'm satisfied! And why is the news so important right now anyways! Everyone in town knows what happened! Is the news the main source of revenue now or what?"

The desk attendant made a face that showed they were struggling to not choke Ponyhead out right then and there. They grabbed what remained of her horn and casually threw her behind them in one swift motion, resulting in her hitting a street pole face-first and denting it in the process. She fell to the ground again, a few broken teeth falling out of her mouth. Ponyhead moaned and glanced upwards as the attendant approached and looked over her, looking at her like one might look at a literal pile of garbage.

"It's important because an estimated five percent of the town's population just died, and the outside world needs to know what happened here!" They exploded, refusing to tolerate her antics for any longer. "And we're still broadcasting it because people are still dying! It'll probably be closer to ten percent by the time all the bodies are counted up and everyone with a fatal wound succumbs to it. And we're the ones responsible for getting it out there. Everyone inside is busting their asses to get as much information to the people as fast as possible. I'm not even a desk attendant anymore! I'm working the cameras because one of the people who usually does is missing, probably caught in the blast and reduced to a pile of ash, and I have to say, after everything I heard you say right now, it's a real shame that you didn't take their place."

With that, the former desk attendant went back inside the building, slamming and locking the door behind them. Ponyhead gaped at this sight, shocked at the way she had just been treated. She felt the urge to attack the glass with her horn again rising, but stopped herself as she knew it would only serve to hurt her further. Instead she shook in place with fury, before flying up high in the sky as if to get a view of the whole town.

"LISTEN TO ME, ALL OF YOU!" She announced, cashing several nearby people to turn and look at her. "YOU ALL HAVE TO HELP ME! THIS TOWN NOW HAD A NEW CRISIS, AND I NEED YOUR HELP TO FIX IT! WE-"

"No shit it's in crisis!" Somebody on the street interjected, pushing a wheelbarrow full of bits of rubble and burned clothes. "Thanks for pointing out the obvious! And what do you think we've been doing all morning? We've been trying to help out! Why are you telling us to start now?"

"I'm not talking about the damages from that explosion!" Ponyhead enunciated. "You people are being plagued by the news in this town!"

"The news?"

"Yes, the news! They are greedy and lazy and aren't doing anything for anyone!" Ponyhead yelled, hoping to rile up the people on the street as much as possible. "I mean, just look! You guys are down there, picking up buildings and bodies, and they're sitting inside their fancy building, in their comfort chairs, and doing nothing but wasting everyone's time!"

"No…" Somebody said, putting their shovel in the ground and glaring at her. "They're reporting everything that's happening. I was up watching it all night at the town community center." They pointed towards the news building. "It's chaos in there! Even in the background, you could hear an ungodly amount of yelling. Sure, they might not be out here, but they're doing their fair share of work. Why did you think they're being lazy?"

"Uh…" Ponyhead stuttered, discovering that things were no longer going to plan. "Because I...snuck in! Yes! I snuck in earlier and saw that it was all just a ruse so you all would think that they were working! I even took a video!" She claimed, before immediately regretting it.

"Show us the video." Someone demanded.

"I...can't. They stole my phone." Ponyhead lied. "But trust me, I-"

"You're lying!" The person with the wheelbarrow spat at her. "You never snuck in! I saw you just a second ago, trying to break in! Then someone came out and yelled at you for a bit before going back inside! You haven't done anything! In fact, what are you doing to help besides serving your own self-interests?!"

"I've done plenty!" Ponyhead countered. "Earlier this morning, I helped look for my three sisters who went missing. I led the group that was searching for them and I found them myself, buried under-"

"That's also a lie!" Someone carrying a large shovel shouted. "I saw that group earlier, all those flying unicorn heads, and I remember you at the back of it, grumbling to yourself, and typing on that stupid little phone of yours with your teeth! And when I asked your group if you needed any help, you flew up to me and told me to scram before any of the others could respond!"

"Hmm, I don't remember doing that." Ponyhead said, actually being truthful for the first time since she arrived. "And also, if you knew who I was all along, why did you wait until now to speak up about it?"

The person carrying the shovel smiled slightly. "I was waiting until you started claiming that you did all the work, as I was sure you would." They said, pointing their tool at her in an almost accusatory manner.. I'm good at reading people that way. Or in this case...mistakes."

"Okay, I did make a bit of a mistake and exaggerated it a bit." Ponyhead admitted, not fully understanding that it was supposed to be an insult. "But I still helped, isn't that good enough?"

"No." Everyone in earshot said.

Ponyhead huffed. "Well screw all of you!" She yelled, flipping out her phone. "I'm going to sneak in for real and get some footage, and you'll see why those newshacks are a detriment to socie-"

"Hey! Didn't you say you left that thing at your house?" One of the bystanders asked.

"Ummm…well, here's the thing about that" Ponyhead started, cursing herself internally for forgetting she had mentioned that. "...that was also a total lie. But that doesn't matter. Trust me, I'm going to go in so that all of you can see the truth. I know that's what you humans like to do, finding out the truth and stuff. I think that-"

"Everyone of us are Mewmans." The one with the shovel growled, now looking ready to smack Ponyhead in the face with it. "Just because this is the human section of town doesn't mean we don't want to help clean it up. All of it is still Earthni. It doesn't matter what species you are, we're in the same boat you specist little shit...

"Oh. Okay. Then why are you all wearing Earth clothes?" Ponyhead asked, not caring a bit about their reasoning for being here.

"Because they were dirt-cheap and it's all we can afford."

"That's all you can afford? Every single one of you?" Ponyhead chuckled and they glowered at her. "Wow, either I came to the wrong part of town, or all the plebeians are coming out of their huts at the same time…"

"What did you just call us?!"

"Um, nothing! Gotta go!" Ponyhead yelled, sensing that now would be the best time to leave. She turned and started floating away in a hurry, no longer worried about the "newshacks" or the fate of her show.

All the people working on the street exchanged glances and then ran after her, tools high in the air like torches while they screamed in outrage. Ponyhead let out a shriek of her own after seeing what was following her and flew away faster, but just barely managed to stay out of their clutches all the while.

And eventually the chase led them all the way down to Marco's house, who groaned in agony after being disturbed by the rampaging mob…

End chapter 21

A/N: Well, a few things happened. Star and Moon are once again on arguing terms, everything about Marco's life still sucks, and Ponyhead is annoying everyone. You know who has inserted himself into other people's affairs to ruin things again, but he's not there to fight. Although that won't stop a king named after a certain body of water from trying to initiate one…

I hope the whole hospital scene was written well, especially the Moon and Star interaction. They had a lot to talk about. Most of it bad. And if anyone is confused about the title, just look up"code grey hospital" for an explanation.

Until next time.