ATUHOR'S NOSE: 28 days. It's slower than 16, but it's not a cursed speed, it's just regular ordinary ADHD. I think I'm back... ish.

... And I suddenly remembered how Star vs. ended. (Well, I mean, it hadn't ended yet as of two chapters ago, but I write slow.) Let's say... something like Season 4 happened. But not actually that. I mean, it's AU already just because the two sentences I had already written about it contradict the whole (*mumbles indistinctly*) thing. You know the one. I could retcon it, or make up an excuse, but... I don't wanna.

"So! With that accomplished, what next?" It felt like I had been dicking around in Shibuya for almost a year and I couldn't remember a darn thing. (Of course we hadn't actually been there long at all, I just have a warped sense of time.)

Luke shrugged. "We sealed the Point, but we still need to rescue Roxas. The others haven't contacted us - maybe check if they need help?"

I nodded. "You know anything about Mewni?" Luke shook his head. "Probably you should go to the Pride Lands, then. Sora's been there before and can help you out. Which I guess leaves His Majesty to accompany me to Mewni."

Mickey nodded. "I have a passing familiarity with that world."

"... I can't decide whether I'm surprised or not." Because it's a Disney property, I didn't say. I still don't know if that fact even means anything anymore.

So I split the extra phones between me and Luke, he sent me another copy of that firmware update so I could get started distributing that to my half, and we all headed off.

Eventually Mickey and I arrived at Mewni. I dunno, I forget most of what happened in between; there was a lot of firmware-updating and other generic boring stuff.

Oh, one thing I do remember - I didn't just buy phones between chapters. I also bought some clothes and pins. Until now, I had only had two outfits - the clothes I had been wearing when my worlds fell to darkness, and another set borrowed from Yuffie. And the black cloak, I guess, if that counts.

My clothes from back home were very much function-over-style. To put it lightly, I had a very low BRV stat back then. Yuffie's borrowed outfit, on the other hand, was much more revealing than I was really comfortable with. And cycling between only two outfits was causing them to wear out much faster than they normally would - I had magic to repair them, of course, but it could only do so much.

So buying a bunch of sensible-yet-stylish Natural Puppy clothing in Shibuya was a perfectly logical decision fueled entirely by practical needs, got it?

... The pins, on the other hand, were entirely for fun. I mean, yes, they probably did have psychs, if I ever needed to fight in the UG again. But I didn't think about that when I got them.

If you're trans and played The World Ends with You, you probably noticed that the Natural Puppy logo color scheme is almost exactly the same as the trans pride flag. I checked, and it turns out that this is not a coincidence - the founder of the brand is, in fact, a trans woman. So that was cool to learn. And that's why they sell trans pride flag buttons in a mid-2000s-esque culture when trans rights aren't a thing people think about much yet.

I bought twenty of them. You never know, right?

But back to the present. (Or, well, the part of the recent past which I am treating as the present for the purposes of this narrative. Obviously I'm not writing these journals in real time, y'know.)

We landed on Mewni - well, we landed on Earth, in Echo Creek, but it's specifically the Earth that's in the Mewni Constellation and not one from my home... tree... thing.

"Say, Your Majesty, how does that work, anyway? Like, obviously this isn't the same Earth that I come from, but... it's the same, you know?"

Mickey actually looked uncomfortable at this question. "I'll explain that later. Right now, we should catch up with the others."

I decided not to press that. "Speaking of, who exactly did we send here, again? Yes, I know," I interjected at the look on his face, "I was there, but I was also dissociating. Refresh my memory."

"Kairi, Lea, and Aqua. And Naminé and Riku went to the Pride Lands."

I frowned. "Didn't we have... more people? Why did we split up unevenly like - you know what, never mind, it doesn't matter now." Suddenly, a bunch of Shadows sprung up around us. "... Really doesn't matter now," I said, summoning Voice of the Well.

A bunch of Floods appeared after them. "Unversed, too?!" Mickey exclaimed.

The really surprising part was when they started fighting each other. "Why are they...?" I trailed off. Take advantage! I thought to myself. Obviously, I retorted, but run or fight? Something in the back of my mind flipped a coin. "Doesn't matter why, they're still dangerous and we need to take' em out. Magnet!"

"Narwhal Blast!" A wave of narwhals blasted through the crowd of enemies, thinning them out greatly. I glanced towards the source of the blast to confirm - naturally, there stood Star Butterfly, one time Princess of Mewni.

I grinned. "Swirling Slicing Cyclone!" ("Isn't that just Aeroga...?" Mickey asked.)

"Mega Mushroom Destruction Blast!"

"Rising Rock Rectangle Ram!" ("That's definitely just Stonja.")

"Piledriver Panda Explosion!"

"Blinding Beneficent Bomb!" ("And that's Holy. Tempest, how long have you been thinking about Mewni-themed alternate names for all of your spells?" "Since chapter 12.")

Star smirked. "You're good, stranger. But can you beat... Spider with a Top Hat Blast!" The eponymous behatted spider coalesced into existence and blasted the remaining enemies away with its machine-gun top hat.

"Hmm... no, I don't think I have a spell of that level yet." But I've been meaning to research a Starlight Breaker copy. That'll compete for sure, if not knocking Spidey completely out of the water.

"Ordinary karate kick!" With a flying kick, Marco finished off a Shadow that we had somehow missed before it could backstab us. "Missed one."

"Hey, it's Princess Marco!" I said.

"Hey, it's... a fan!" Marco responded, obviously not knowing my name. "Star, these creatures just keep coming. If we can't figure out how to stop them, we'll be overwhelmed!"

"Well, you're in luck," I declared. "We're here specifically to handle that problem. Or rather, we're here specifically for something completely different, but also, problems like this are our responsibility anyway." I dismissed Voice of the Well. "Name's Tempest. Tempe for short, if you like."

"Star Butterfly!"

"Mickey Mouse."

"Marco Diaz. You, uh, know I'm not actually a princess, right?"

I nodded. "Yeah, I know, no royal authority or whatever. That's fine, monarchies are a terrible idea anyway." I carefully avoided looking at Star or Mickey when I said that.

"That's... definitely exactly what I meant when I said that," Marco said, in a tone that suggested otherwise. "... Nice pins."

"They are nice pins!" I said. "I especially like this one, the transgender pride flag. I've been meaning to pick one of those up for ages, but not many places sell 'em, you know?"

"That's... neat." Marco said. "The whole. Trans. Thing. Which exists. It's neat."

"It is!" I agreed. "I gotta say, pretending to be an ordinary cis dude was not fun for me, and I'm very glad that I realized I don't have to do any of that."

"Layin' it on kinda thick, there, Tempe." Star interjected.

"She is?" Marco asked.

"Maybe a little," I admitted.

"Wait, laying on what, anyway?" Marco added.

I tilted my head in thought. "... Star, what exactly is the situation in this department?"

Star thought about this for a moment. "Well, it's kinda like - heyyyy, wait just a minute! Why are we talking about this with you anyway? We've known you for, like, seven minutes! And also, we have shadow creatures to slay!"

"Oh, yeah, we should get on that! Umm, let's see, first things first, the probable culprit for this is an anime villain in a black hooded cloak. You seen any of those around?"

"We've seen a guy in a black hooded cloak," Marco said. "Blue hair, hangs out at the beach playing sitar. Doesn't seem that villainous, but I suppose he could just be biding his time."

"Demyx." Mickey and I said simultaneously.

"Oh," I finally remembered, "some of our friends should have arrived here first to handle this; have you seen them too?" I quickly described them.

Marco and Star frowned. "No," Marco said, "nobody like that has been around here."

"That's... weird." I turned to Mickey. "That is weird, right?"

"They should have been here for quite some time now. So, yes, that is weird."

I thought for a moment. "Would the time distortion thing cause this?"

Mickey tilted his head. "Not impossible, but unlikely. We've been gone about half a day -" (Mickey had explained earlier that almost every inhabited world had very nearly the same length of day, though nobody had yet figured out why.) "- and time distortions of that magnitude only happen every hundred days or so." (A flicker of confusion in the back of my mind, which faded so quickly I immediately forgot about it.) "Either something waylaid them, or... maybe they landed elsewhere in the world?"

I frowned. "There is a lot of elsewhere for them to have landed in, isn't there? Do we have..." I could just use the communicator. But I super didn't trust them now. I didn't want the Organization knowing our movements. "... some method of finding or contacting them?"

"Ooh! I could use the All-Seeing Eye!" Star exclaimed.

"Isn't that spell, like-" Marco almost asked.

"...unveil to me what is forbidden!" Star was already finishing.

"... super evil. Never mind."

A window opened in the air in front of Star, showing Kairi, Lea, and Aqua surrounded by Shadows.

"Well, that's bad," I said.

"You two hear something?" Lea asked.

I blinked. "Lea!" I shouted. "Can you hear me?" All three of them turned toward the window.

"Is that... supposed to happen?" Marco asked.

"Ehhh," Star equivocated. "It's not the first time it's happened..."

I summoned Voice of the Well and pointed it at the window. "Let's see if this works." Ironically, I hadn't actually used my Keyblade to unlock something before. But I knew how it was done. In theory.

A beam of light burst forth and a swirl of light engulfed the window as it gradually morphed into a door.

"Neat," Marco said. "Kinda complicated compared to dimensional scissors, but I couldn't have used those because I don't know where that is, so... it's a trade-off."

"All right," I said, "let's do this."

We kicked the door in and charged into the fray - I paused just a moment to note that there were no Unversed here, and then the seven of us blasted the Shadows back to Kingdom Hearts. Or wherever they go. I think that's correct.

I tossed a phone each to the three of them. "Here, these will let us communicate more securely than those... what are the other ones called, anyway? I've been calling them 'linkshells' in my head, but I don't think that's actually what they are."

"No, they are," Aqua said. "What are you doing here, anyway?"

"What, really?" I said, bewildered. "That's... kind of improbable. Whatever, I'll ask questions about that later. And what we're doing here is that we searched where we were gonna search and we didn't find what we hoped to find, so now we're helping out here. Also, did you see any Unversed since you landed here?"

"No, why?"

I frowned. "There were some where we landed. Weird that they'd be there but not here, but what's double weird is that they were fighting the Heartless."

"So these Unversed are good guys!" Star said.

"If they were good, it wouldn't be weird for them to fight the Heartless," Marco pointed out.

"Oh yeah..."

"Speaking of here and landing," I said, "where are we?" Looking around, I saw tall cliffs, gloomy forest, and glowing moss that suggested the day-night cycle was out of commission.

"Not sure," Naminé said. "We figured it didn't matter that much, though, as long as we followed the tracker."

"I don't recognize this dimension," Marco said, "and I've been to a lot of dimensions."

"Hmm. A multi-dimensional search space could cause troubles," I muttered. The All-Seeing Door was still open, so I decided to run a quick test.

Ninety seconds later, I re-entered the unknown dimension. "It's definitely - well, if it's not in this dimension, it's closer to it than to Echo Creek."

"So, hold up, how many dimensions are there?" Lea asked.

"Uhhh, wait, I know this," Star stammered.

"Dimensional researchers don't know for sure," Marco interrupted, "but definitely more than fifty and probably less than a hundred."

"Yes. What Marco said."

"Why is that lower bound so fuzzy?" I asked. "Shouldn't it just be something like 'we know of X number of dimensions and science math reasons suggests some range more'?"

"I asked that same question, actually," Marco said, "and it turns out that dimensions kinda... pop in and out of existence a lot."

"Oh, good, that means we can exclude any dimension newer than... uh, some date."

"Some date?" Star said. "Yeah, great job, that narrows it down to an amazing some amount of them."

"It's a known date!" I protested as I texted Luke. "I just... don't happen to know it myself. But I know who does." I frowned. "Sure hope we can account for the time distortion."

"Oh, don't get me started on time distortion," Marco said...

XXXXXXXXXX

Bzz bzz! Bzz bzz!

Finding the Point was taking a while, so we were camping out for the night, and normally I'd sleep right through a phone vibrating noise, but I had been kinda tensely waiting for Luke to respond. Of course, he had to contact DiZ (... why did we stop calling him Ansem, again?) and I had no idea what kind of schedule he was on, so it was taking a while.

This wasn't Luke, though. In fact, it wasn't any of our circle.

Is that the thanks I get for trying to help?

... That was annoyingly cryptic. Who outside of our circle was trying to help? I could just ask who they were, but that seemed too predictable, so instead...

How did you get this number?

You'll never guess.

And that... on second thought, was quite informative, actually. Out of everyone who might know this number even existed, only one of them didn't have an obvious method of getting it if they wanted to.

Which meant his opening text referred to...

So that was your doing.

Not very quick on the uptake, are ya?

:p
But seriously, I'll be more thoughtful next time.

You *say* that.

*shrugs loudly* Well, you'll see.

Shrugs loudly? How's that work?

Quite well, thank you. :p :p :p

He didn't respond after that, so I set the phone down and tried to sleep.

... If the Organization's plan was to use the Point as a shield, and it was probably in this dimension rather than Marco's, why was Demyx hanging around Echo Creek?