Marco stood outside the house with a blank face. He'd offered to go out and look for supplies, but it was only so that he could see how Dipper, Mabel, and Star would act once they thought they were alone. Marco wasn't an idiot; he could tell when people were hiding things from him and Star was hiding something from him. It had to do with Dipper and Mabel. They told him that they only knew Star, and that they had met from some adventure that Star had gone on without him. But Star took him everywhere; they were nearly inseparable.

Or so he had thought.

But there was more than that. Something that had been on his mind ever since he came across the two kids in the burning castle. Mabel had recognized him when she first saw him in the Castle.

She called you by your name.

The voice whispered in his head and Marco froze. That wasn't something that you knew about someone just by being friends with Star. Marco had troubling remember people's names, even after meeting them multiple times. They weren't just hiding things from him; they were straight up lying to him.

Marco sighed. Maybe this was all in his head; maybe he was reading into things that weren't there. Ever since the worlds merged, he'd had horrific nightmares. They usually played on his emotional insecurities, but some of them were more… physical. One of Marco's worst nightmares was Star lying to him. She would tell him that none of it had been real and that she was just dating Marco to get Tom jealous. It wasn't something he ever imagined she would do to him, but part of his nightmare had become a reality. If she was lying about this, what else was she lying about? Did Star ever have feelings for Marco, or was he just being used?

He was supposed to be happy.

He was supposed to be happy.

The lines kept running through his head and it only made him angrier. He was supposed to be happy. Marco had helped Mewni defeat Mina and he finally managed to get the girl of his dreams, but now nothing felt real.

Marco couldn't stay here any longer. Not just because it was making his existential crisis worse, but because they would all be suspicious if he came back empty handed. There was sure to be plenty of empty houses with stocked pantries.

He passed three houses before deciding on the brick house at the end of a cul-de-sac. He could hear sounds from inside the first houses, human or monster he could not tell but he thought it best to avoid any confrontation in general.

The front door was slightly ajar and Marco carefully opened it all the way and stepped inside. He flipped the light switches, but the power must've been cut because nothing happened. Marco fingered the flash drive in his pocket that contained Star's speech. It wouldn't be very useful if no one had the ability to watch it.

Marco's hope for food quickly dwindled when he saw that people had obviously been here before him. In times of a global crisis, humans had a tendency to get chaotic. It looked like a tornado had gone through the living room. Even the couch was flipped over a shattered TV.

The kitchen wasn't in much better condition. It looked like there had been a fight here; there were small blood stains on one of the walls and cereal was scattered all across the floor. Marco checked the pantry and it was completely cleared out. Next, he checked out the refrigerator. An ungodly smell overwhelmed Marco and he shut the door as quickly as he could. It was too late though and he gagged as the acidic smell of rotten milk made his eyes water.

Whatever was in there was not safe anymore, Marco decided, this house must've lost power a long time ago for things to have gone that bad.

The next two houses that Marco checked yielded similar results; trashed rooms and empty kitchens. Marco's stomach growled. He could keep doing this for hours and never find anything edible. There wasn't much he could do about it, though, he'd been hiding away in the castle for days while everyone else stocked up on as much food as they could find.

His stomach growled again and Marco decided that it was time to take a risk. He walked up to a house where he could see the faint glow of candlelight from one of the windows. Steeling his nerves, Marco knocked on the door.

He could hear frantic footsteps from whoever was inside. After an eternity and a half, the front door slowly opened a few inches.

"What do you want?" A woman's voice said through the gap.

"I was… I was wondering if you had any spare food," Marco asked sheepishly, "My friends and I are mighty hungry and all of the empty houses have been picked clean."

There was a moment of silence and Marco could tell that the woman on the other side of the door was eying him up and down. He wondered what he looked like; his jeans were torn and there was still soot on his red jacket and in his hair. He wouldn't be surprised if she could still smell the smoke.

The door shut and Marco's heart dropped. He didn't have any other ideas; this had been his last hope. Turning around, he started making his ways down the steps when the door opened up behind him.

"We don't have much, but this should help you and your friends a little while longer until someone figures this mess out," She handed Marco a grocery bag that had several cans of Spaghetti-O's and corn. Marco was speechless. He hadn't thought anyone would've actually helped him.

"Wow," He finally said, "This means a lot to me, you have no idea. Thank you so much."

She nodded her head then went back inside her house. Marco could hear her talking to someone behind the door. Knowing that there were other people in the house and she was still willing to hand away something as valuable as food to a complete stranger brought a tear to his eye.

It was the exact opposite behavior of what he had been witnessing over the last couple days and it warmed his heart that good people were managing to survive these hard times with their soul intact.

Marco made it half way down the street before he heard an engine roar. Thinking quickly, he ran beside the nearest house and hid behind one of the bushes. A mustang came prowling down the road with the lights off.

As it passed Marco, he could see that someone had sawn off the canopy, turning the car into a Mad-Max apocalyptic convertible. Three men and two women were sitting inside the car. Unlike those that invaded the castle, these people were quiet. They didn't laugh, or scream, or make any nose to alert their presence except for the low rumbling of the engine.

One of them pointed out the faint glow of candles in the window that Marco had asked for food at, and his heart dropped. He watched, powerless, as they turned the car off and stealthily made their way around back.

It was silent for a few moments, then Marco heard the windows shattered followed by screams. The family, a mother, father, and a little child in each of their arms, came running out the front door and sprinted away. They passed by Marco's hiding spot without noticing him.

What could he have done? He couldn't have stopped those vile men without getting himself killed, and there wasn't enough time to alert the family before they raided their house. He also couldn't just give away the food he had received; without it, Star would starve. No matter what they were going through, she would always come first in his mind. even if it killed him.

Marco melted into the shadows in shame and made his way back to the others.

(Line Break)

They waited until night when Marco left to scavenge the surrounding houses for food before getting down to business.

"So, is all this your fault?" Dipper's voice was still raw from all the smoke he'd breathed in earlier today.

"Well… yes and no?" Star scratched the back the back of her head, she was going to say more but Mable jumped in.

"Can we please tell Marco everything that happened?" She blurted," I don't like lying to him. It doesn't feel right." From her experience, lying to others, especially your friends, was never a good thing. It could only make things worse.

"Do you want him to remember when he was alone with Bill?" Star asked, "Because I wouldn't. He was tortured, Mabel. Not just beaten or bruised, not like anything any of us have ever experienced. Bill was a madman without morals and I think it's best if everything he did stays in the past."

Mabel looked down and after a moment of battling with her consciousness, she nodded.

"There was a war on Mewni, the planet that has collided with Earth," Star picked up where she left off, "And things weren't looking good. The enemies were too powerful and I had to destroy the magic dimension to stop them."

"When that happened," She continued, "It set of a chain reaction that led to our worlds colliding. I'm not sure why our worlds merged, because magic never makes any sense, but it… may have been because I didn't want to live in a world without Marco"

Star rushed out the last sentence. It was the first time she'd said the thought out loud and the guilt had been crushing her ever since it first entered her head. The thought that all this suffering was because she'd refused to let Marco go.

"Awwwww," Mabel gushed, "That's so sweet!"

"No, it's not" Dipper countered, "People are dying out there."

"It's not like I intended for any of this to happen," Star pleaded, "Magic is so unpredictable. I would've never asked for any of this to happen. Do you think I enjoy watching innocent people die? That I take pleasure in it?"

"So do you have any way to reverse this?" Dipper asked once Star calmed down.

"Honestly, I've never thought about it," Star conceded, "But I don't think so. It was caused by magic and since there's no more magic anymore, I wouldn't even know where to start.

"But doesn't that sound like we're giving up? What if there's a silver lining that you're ignoring."

"We're not giving up," Dipper pinched his nose, "Because that's not our battle to fight. It's obvious that humans and… Mewmans, was it?, don't mix. If we allow the two groups to stay merged then their blood is on our hands."

"Humans used to not get along with other humans," Mabel jumped in, "But over time we've learned to look past the surface. Why couldn't that happen here as well? There are so many unique creatures we've never seen before and there's no telling how things will look once the dust has settled."

"Are you guys even listening to yourself?" Dipper questioned, "You're talking about people like their nothing more than pawns on a chessboard. Like it's no big deal if hundreds of people die for the slim chance that our world could become a little bit more diverse. No, our only option is to find a way to cleave (get) the two worlds apart and let everyone go back to living their own lives."

"But I don't know how!" Star was exasperated. Dipper's words cut deep and, honestly, she wanted to lie in a hole and never get out. "I already feel powerless without my wand. How am I supposed to save my people without magic because obviously using my words isn't working!"

They all fell silent after her outburst.

"Maybe we could find our Great Uncle Ford," Mabel spoke up, "I'm with Star for the most part. I think you're being too quick to dismiss any potential positivity in our situation, Dipper. But, if we do need to separate our worlds, he's the only other person I can think of that might be able to help."

"Almost all of his gear drew power from alternate dimensions; I doubt any of them work anymore" Dipper said, "And besides, we don't even know where they are. As far as we know they could still be in the heart of the ocean."

"In a time of crisis, Ford and Stan both gravitate towards the Mystery Shack," Mabel replied, "It's our best shot of finding them."

"…Fine," Star begrudgingly agreed. She didn't like that they were looking for someone else when this was all her fault. She also thought that there was still a chance that things could work out. People were just afraid; Star was once afraid of the monsters too. But over time, she realized that she had only seen them as she was taught to see them, not by how they actually were. Some of her best friends were monsters and she had managed to convince her fellow mewmans to give monsters a chance.

Or, she had until Mina decided to mess everything up.

But if humanity couldn't handle a little more diversity in their lives. If it came between xenocide and separating the worlds, then she would have to pick the latter of the two. And if that option was forced upon her, then she would need to know how to separate the worlds.

Star wasn't sure how a human could know more about the magic dimension than her, but he had apparently been studying magic anomalies for most of his life according to what Mabel and Dipper told her. And, of course, he'd dealt with Bill many times.

She shuddered; even thinking that name gave her the heebie-jeebies. Star had spent many late nights after that summer trying to find out how he had joined the Magic High Commission, and how he had been banished to the collapsing dimension. Unfortunately, there wasn't much. All records of that demon had 'mysteriously' gone missing. Just like the records of Meteora.

Magic corrupted people, and Star hated it.

"But how are we going to get there?" Star questioned, "I'm not exactly familiar with Earth geography, but I don't think we live close to Gravity Falls."

Mabel and Dipper looked at each other and nodded.

"Greyhounds are the Waffle Houses of the transportation industry."

Star looked between the two in confusion. She had absolutely no idea what they were talking about. But if it got them to the only human that could help them, then Star was on board.

Now all she needed to do was find a way to explain everything to Marco…

AN: Wow, it has been a long time. I feel bad making you guys wait so long and then bring this tiny chapter, but college went from zero to a hundred real fast. Like, I had a weekend to write an essay. Y'all don't know me, but I don't half-ass my essays; I staid up until five in the morning over the weekend working. And I've also had exams and other class work. and I'm also part of the college band! We don't practice a lot, but it still takes up a little bit of my time. I should have some more free time coming up where I can get some more chapters out, but I can't make any promises (although leaving reviews is scientifically proven to make me update faster…).

Okay, with the excuses out of the way, what'd you think of the chapter? The gap between Star and Marco and Marco personally witnessed just how cruel humans can be to one another. And for those who have no idea what I was referencing at the end of the chapter should look up the Waffle House Index. It's a truly American system and I couldn't be prouder of it.