Tom sat amidst the chatter of a group of friends. He was sitting on the couch like he was leading this, since it would be suspicious if the actual Star was doing it, but she was there, sitting with the others. At a wave of her hand, he cleared his throat, and when that didn't work, he did it again, louder.

They still didn't shut up, so Star did it, shouting "QUIET, EVERYONE!" and triggering the fiery rage. Then she put herself out, relaxed, and gestured for him to start.

Wow. That was useful. When he was himself again, he needed to learn how to do that.

"Right. Um, did you all bring your swords?" he asked awkwardly, and Star happily pulled out her Mewni one. He had one with him, too, a katana. Ideally, he would've brought a battle-axe, though apparently swords were more traditional, and since he was allegedly leading this, he should have a sword.

"Uh, what?" Marco asked.

Star scoffed. "It said on the invitation you're supposed to bring a sword."

"Y'know what, Tom," Tom said pointedly, "maybe you should come up here." She sighed and did so, dragging her massive Mewman sword with her. It left a scratch on the ground, which he fixed with a wave of the wand.

Alfonzo held up the invitation and said, "I was a little confused by your invitation." It was kind of difficult to understand, though he had added a little side-note in Demon.

. . . oh, fudge, nobody else could read Demon. He felt like face-palming.

The teacher, Miss Skullnick, grabbed the invitation and said, "I'm not confused. This is clearly a drawing of meat. I came for the meat."

Marco, staring at her in concern, said, "I think everyone's just wondering why they're here."

"Uh, it's the 37th of Grovnok," Star said, like it was obvious.

Tom cleared his throat, immediately realizing the discrepancy. They were the only two Mewmans in a room full of humans (or at least raised in human culture), who did not know about Mewnipendance Day. "It's a Mewman holiday, Mewnipendence Day, but, uh . . . I'm not really good at explaining . . ."

Star frowned, and reluctantly went and got a pop-up book. "Mewnipendence Day," she said, holding it up and half-heartedly started explaining. He knew the holiday, but since he was "Star", he figured he should listen, just in case.

"A long time ago, arrived the first settlers of Mewni. A modest people with noble pursuits, life, liberty, and corn." He nodded. Corn was very important. "But the wicked monsters rose up and attacked the innocent Mewmans to re-steal Mewni for themselves. So the queen used her magic to turn the simple peasants into a fearsome army.

"And then there was fighting. Fighting, fighting, fighting, fighting," she said, bored-ly skipping through the pages. "And the Mewmans won. Ta-da!"

Tom paused. That was . . . completely unhelpful.

Marco voiced his concern. "Wait. But you just blew past all the important stuff."

"When do we eat?" Miss Skullnick asked.

"We feast after we re-enact the Great Monster Massacre!" There was a violent look in all three of her eyes. "Now please split into two teams, monsters and Mewmans."

"Can I be a human?" Miss Skullnick asked.

Before she could even finish, Star deadpanned, "You are a monster. That's why you were invited."

Tom walked up and grabbed his katana with a grin and looked at her devilishly. "It's also why you were invited. Go over there, monster." He pointed, and Star glared at him before reluctantly going over there. Tom grabbed Marco by the hoodie. "And you're the general."

"Um, why?"

"'Cause Star said you had to be," he said in a hushed voice, and he bit his lip as he noticed Starfan15 looking at him interestedly. He coughed and looked over the teams. Miss Skullnick, Star, Ferguson, and Alfonzo were the monsters, and Janna, Starfan15, the sensei, and that one nerd he didn't know the name of were the Mewmans.

He nodded. "Yeah, that'll work. Now we need to make costumes, and after that, the bloody battle can start." Star would've said that in an unhinged way, but he just did it off-handedly. Marco raised a hand. "Yeah?"

"What's that?" He pointed at a floating eyeball behind him, with banners and a crest and stuff.

"Oh, I that's an all-seeing eye," he answered. "It'll be following me around all day. It's harmless, don't worry."

"It's staring at me," the human said, looking alarmed.

Tom gave him a look. "Didn't I just say not to worry? It's fine. It's not actually looking at you. That . . . that would be creepy."

(Another POV?! What?! Yeah, I know, I just feel like this is important. The earlier Toffee scenes did happen, this is just the first time something important happened with them. Maybe I'll do more POV switches in the future, but I don't know.)

Ludo was oddly excited by the fact they were spying on the girl. Toffee was having some difficulty tuning him out, though, because something was nagging at him.

"This is amazing!" the little bird-man exclaimed. He giggled. "She thinks it's the all-seeing eye, but it's not."

"It is the most efficient way to spy on your enemies," Toffee agreed, peering at the girl from over his book on the wand. What was off about her? She'd said her name, but in third person. What did that entail?

Ludo giggled again. "I can see her pores. What secrets lie beneath?"

"Yes, indeed?"

That one monster servant, Buff Frog, came up and did his customary salute. "Ludo, Master."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah . . ." Ludo said, annoyed, mimicking the salute. Toffee noted the action. "Look at this. Now we can watch Star wherever she goes. In the kitchen, bedroom, even in the bathroom." When the other two voiced their concerns, Ludo amended, "Maybe we don't keep the bathroom channel."

Buff Frog walked up to Ludo, and Toffee watched closely. "But Ludo, this eye only has one eye. My face has two. That's twice the number of the eyes." Ah, so he was upset about losing his job? Interesting. He started making plans. That one was a little too loyal to Ludo . . .

"Now that you don't have any spy stuff to do, you should get us some popcorn and milkshakes. I'm pretty sure we're gonna binge-watch this baby all night. You can join us if you want, as long as you keep quiet and sit in the back."

Toffee was back to looking at his book, so as not to arouse suspicion, but he didn't miss the suspicious way Buff Frog moved away. Hmm, yes. He would have to go.

Ludo giggled yet again. "She doesn't even know we're watching her."

"Sometimes your biggest threat is right under your nose," he told the bird-man. Maybe it was a mistake, saying such obvious things such as those, but Ludo was too dumb to understand anyway, and he couldn't help but brag just a tiny bit.

"My nose is in my beak."

"Mm-hmm." Like he said, dumb.

But as his eyes focused on the girl on-screen again, his suspicion was brought back in full force. Something strange was going on with her and that demon boy who seemed to know far too much, and he was going to find out what it was.

Tom had them all in outfits before long, because magic was awesome. He couldn't do the fancy up-do Star usually had to do, since he cut her hair and all, so he improvised with a couple braids in as good a knot he could make on the top of his head.

Star looked very upset at having to be a monster, but at least he'd given her a furry purple costume. And she was also upset about the fact he'd scaled down the Mewman armor just a tiny bit, because how it was "supposed to be" was ridiculously large and would actually put them at a disadvantage to the monsters.

Marco had voiced his concerns over the book, as the Mewman group was so much larger than the monsters, and Tom partially agreed, but that was how it'd always been done, so maybe that was how it was in actual history? A seed of doubt was already placed, though. It did look pretty unfair . . .

Well, this was Star's thing. He couldn't change it without her permission, could he?

Buff Frog had gone out to try and convince the other monsters not to trust him. He needed to get him out, as soon as possible. However, if he made himself seem competent enough, Ludo would certainly keep him closer.

He took a deep breath and walked outside, putting his hand on the monster's shoulder. The hand missing the finger. That still hurt, and he would forever curse her name for doing this to him. "Are you finished?" he asked. "Gentlemen, allow me to direct your attention to our new surveillance device. Princess Butterfly is re-enacting our favorite holiday, the Great Monster Massacre."

The monsters all pointed out how much they hated that holiday, which is exactly what he wanted.

"Don't worry, we can take advantage of this opportunity." He pulled out his special mace and clicked the button, opening the small portal inside. "Why send an army after the wand when it can be hand delivered?" He grabbed the remote from Ludo's hand, and the dumb bird didn't even notice until he had the portal giving it back to him.

He gasped. "Oh, isn't that a thing thing?"

He pulled his hand back out in a self-satisfied way. "And it's not like she's going to notice a real monster." But something about that felt . . . wrong to him. The girl had been acting odd. Even before coming to Ludo for an opportunity, he'd been watching her, and it was like she'd had a complete personality flip. Like . . . she was a different person.

Hmm. He needed to look further into that.

Ludo giggled and pointed at the humans dressed up as monsters. "Those aren't real?" Manipulating these idiots was so unbelievably easy . . .

"Okay," he said, trying to hide his frustration. Fortunately, he'd gotten good at that. "Now, who'd like to bring Ludo his wand?"

They all mumbled and made excuses, except for Buff Frog, who heroically stepped forward. Just as planned. "I will go," he said.

"I thought you might, you fat bag of garbage." He mumbled that last bit under his breath. At least, based on the monster's posture, he hadn't heard. Toffee handed the mace to him, and he determinedly grabbed the mace and walked away.

Toffee's eyes followed him the whole way.

They were finally ready. Star looked ready for blood, with two balls of fire in her hands, grinning like a madman. He idly thought about how she seemed to be having a lot more fun as him than he was having as her. Or maybe Star just made the best of every scenario.

"We ready to go, Tom?" Marco asked, standing on top of his armor and looking up at him. The armor was big, but not that big.

"Uh, yeah. I know Star definitely is." He gestured to the girl, who was already cackling and terrifying Ferguson, who was staring at her in horror. "Let's do this thing. It's always pretty fun."

"Okay." The human slipped down into his armor and put on the helmet, starting to walk away. "Here we go."

Tom took a deep breath, and read from the scroll Star had given him, trying not to look like he was reading from a scroll. "Knights of Mewni, take up your stabby weapons and drive out the evil monsters!" Um. That phrasing wasn't helping his 'unfair' thought.

They all charged at each other, and he was having a ton of fun watching Star laughing and chanting in Demon and lighting the knights on fire. Well, it certainly wouldn't've been unfair if she had actually been there. But, as he watched the others, he realized it was actually pretty unbalanced.

And it would've been more so if he hadn't thought about it earlier.

He gripped the wand tighter, and he heard something scuffling next to him. He frowned and peered over the edge, but nothing was there. He narrowed his eyes and watched a little more, but nothing changed. Cautiously, he looked away, pretending to watch the fight again, but every nerve was on fire.

He must've imagined it. What would he be hearing, anyway? It wasn't like anyone would . . . would climb up to him . . .

His eyes widened a little, and he held the wand closer to himself, watching everyone. He was scanning the crowd, trying to see if anyone was missing, when suddenly one of the knights must've lost their temper and slammed their sword into Star.

This time his eyes widened completely, and he dropped the wand and screamed, "STAR!" He reached out for her, watching her fall, practically leaning off the edge in fear. Then he remembered that he had a magic wand that could fix anything, and he reached back to grab it . . .

Only to see a monster.

He yelped. It was a frog monster, but it was definitely not Ferguson. He grabbed the wand and held it defensibly, only for one of the knights to knock it away. It sailed through the air, and then ran into the distance. He was too stunned to do anything.

The battle had stopped, and he suddenly remembered that Star had just fallen out of the sky. He used his parkour style blasting to get himself safely down, and he leaned over her. Please be okay, please be okay . . .

She groaned, opening her eyes slowly, the first two, and then the third one, since she was probably a little woozy and wasn't quite yet used to three eyes. ". . . Tom?" she asked, clearly confused.

Everyone was huddled around the two of them, and Starfan15 asked, "Wait, Star, why did you shout your own name?"

He froze. Then Miss Skullnick said, "You've got a lot of explaining to do."

Just as planned. Toffee sat on his own in front of the all-seeing eye camera, watching the girl. His plan had worked, and the frog was gone. A slight smirk was tugging at the edge of his lips, and he glared at her. More than that, he'd finally figured out what was wrong about her.

She wasn't a "her" at all.

Yes . . . he'd missed the original feed, but going back and re-watching it told him all he needed to know. Star had swapped bodies with a half-demon boy, Tom. Tom was a good deal more clever than Star had been, which was why their plans hadn't come so close to working.

He hummed slightly, and smirked to himself some more. The pieces were starting to fall together. His original plan . . .

. . . and the new one.

They were eating corn, delicious corn, though it wasn't as good as everyone else finally knowing. Starfan15 was sitting next to actual Star now, but she was sending enough glances his way that he guessed Tomfan15 was coming up next. He happened to glance out the window, and he noticed that frog monster from before sadly sitting in the tree, so he shrugged and put a plate on the windowsill.

He might as well start being a good person if he was racist, right?

Okay, the first episode we're skipping is . . . Banagic! When I skip episodes, it's partially gonna be because there's no plot relevance and partially because Tom would never actually do it.

Also, I unironically enjoyed writing Toffee. That cold, calculating stuff is so cool. If you guys wanna see more of that, just go ahead and tell me. If it was absolutely terrible, go ahead and tell me that, too (but, uh . . . please don't crush my very soul).