Vestiges

Note: 'Ere' means 'Before' (In time.)

It's been a few days.

My sister is an English teacher. We have tiffs… sigh… we have arguments about all things English. Vocabulary, grammar, spelling… whether or not a word/term is obsolete or superfluous, you get the idea. The most recent thing on my agenda is ambiguity. Of course, there is no such thing as everyone understanding everything the way you want them to (take politics, for instance), I still try to make sure that everyone's on the same page.

(Especially for this chapter.)

So I did a survey by sending out some PMs at random. From the answers, I determined that (broadly), the way I write or describe something is 'mostly' understandable. For those who answered, thanks for your feedback, and I endeavor to improve the way I express certain factors in the fic, and those to come.

Just before I begin-... Book of Eli, quit using your telepathic powers. I mean it! :)

13.

"…Teleport us to your room, and we'll just navigate through the castle from there to get to Eclipsa the long way."

"Sounds good enough. But why my room, nerd? Tryin' to seduce me?"

"Maybe later, Sienna." To this, the girl's eyes widened, making Marco grin.

"You countered it?"

"I gotta learn how to play the game at some point." His reply was mostly said as a joke, but he noticed that Higgs seemed somewhat disappointed that he called their teasing a 'game'. But wasn't it just that?

Marco shook his head. He had bigger things to worry about.

He watched as the squire opened up a new portal with her scissors, and while doing so, realized that she was the one who did all of the openings for new portals, and save for the few he closed with his own scissors, he hadn't really done much with his. It was mostly intentional, just in case there was some sort of magic detection which gave an alarm should his scissors be used; he hadn't been discovered yet, and he wanted to stay that way for as long as possible.

Although he had a nagging feeling that it was all about to change…

"Ladies first," he remarked while nudging her through the portal before stepping through himself. He re-emerged in Sienna's bedroom. Almost immediately, she complained about the fact that they were soaking wet, and they were tracking water over the floor.

"I can't help it. It was raining. Do you have a mop?"

"Nope. But I have something just as good." Sienna held up her dimensional scissors as if to show them off, before opening up a large horizontal portal low over the ground where they had gotten wet. Before he could even question what she was doing, he felt a tremendous amount of heat in the room and before long, the room was dried of all the water they had tracked in. In his confusion, he didn't even hear what she asked him to do and ask her what she had said.

"I said 'take off your clothes'," she ordered.

"Huh?" Marco felt his face redden with a deep blush. "What?"

Higgs sighed. "Damn it, I don't mean anything sexual. Take off your clothes. They're wet. You'll get 'em back dry in a few minutes."

"And how're you gonna do that?"

"Just drop them on the ground underneath the portal. The heat coming from it will dry it. But your shoes, though…" Sienna tapped her chin in thought before she opened another portal with her scissors. Reaching an arm inside, she seemed to feel around, before pulling a pair of sneakers from it and tossed it to him before closing the portal she withdrew the shoes from. Without even missing a beat, she herself began to strip out of her clothes and out of a sort of respect, Marco averted his eyes from her while removing his own. This went for naught, however, as by the time they had to place their clothes underneath the heating portal, they had to face each other.

For a long moment, they both tried to keep their eyes centered on each other's faces, although it was clear that they could still scrutinize one another simply because they were in each other's field of vision. He was only clad in his boxers, and while his companion wore a bra and tights, his imagination, despite his better nature, was already hard at work trying to fill in the blanks of what he wasn't seeing-

"What?" Higgs asked innocently, making Marco realize that he'd been staring. "Observing how much I've grown?"

"I wasn't talking about your breasts that time!" the Diaz protested. "Geez, I make one metaphorical comment…"

"It's good teasing material," Higgs said coyly. "Don't think I haven't noticed you checking me out. I've got game." Feeling the need to salvage some degree of normality of the situation, as well as his composure, Marco finally got his blushing under control and became more stoic.

"I've noticed you… growing…"

Higgs leaned forward expectantly, raising an eyebrow.

"…Crazier."

He earned a slugging on his shoulder, making him flinch. "Agh, geez. Can't take a joke. Makes me wonder how much harder you would've punched me back when you used to hate my guts."

Higgs tried to think back to the time of when he was describing but shook her head. "I've got a photographic memory, but I can't really remember much of that since it's so far back. Only that we were friends. I prefer it like that, anyway." Marco smiled and nodded. However, he made a grimace as soon as he realized something.

"Wait… you just gave me my sneakers… the pair that I had in my CLOSET at home."

"Yeah, I've been looking in there while we were still in the Earth Dimension. It's good to know places, especially when you've got dimensional scissors, am I right?"

"I'm not focused on that… You've been rooting through my closet?" Marco asked angrily. "Whatever happened to my privacy? Doesn't it exist anymore?"

"It's not that. I just normally go looking for places that would be useful to know. I just had a feeling that the little travel bag you had wouldn't be enough, so I looked in your closet and memorized it. This portal here close to the floor-" she pointed at the expansive magic gateway that was low to the ground, still radiating heat, "this portal is actually a little bit above a lava pit in Hekapoo's dimension."

"Feels like abuse. We could've just gotten a mop to dry it up. Although it's helping with the clothes…"

"I know. I'm sorry. I'm like a sellout because of this, but I gotta admit that I get a kick out of using these dimensional scissors. I bet it'd come in handy for a lot of things, in addition to what I've already learned about them. I might as well get some use out of it before we kill the magic, right?"

"I suppose…" Marco said begrudgingly. He too knew the joys that the tool could bring, and regardless of how much he wanted to deny her, he had to admit they that they could come in useful. Hell, he would still need to use them to get to the Wellspring anyway. "But don't abuse them, though. Hekapoo could just track us by how we use them, and she's not really on our side anymore. It's going to get complicated when she comes back to Mewni. We're running on limited time, 'cause if she comes back and catches us flat-footed, our goose is cooked."

"Was she ever on our side?"

"I wanted her to be…" Marco mumbled wistfully. It was a tone that made Higgs frown a bit, making her second-guess the relations between her crush and the demigoddess. It was undeniable that he had a soft spot for her, and wondered if it would be a major issue if they were to cross paths again.

She hoped not.

"Anyway, physics is out the window," she said in explanation, trying to take his mind off of Hekapoo. "The heat is coming up from the lava pit into the portal over there, and down through the portal here. Magic is super weird. I remember you describing how you fell through a portal going down, only to come out through the next portal in the street sideways. Like this…" Higgs opened a portal and pushed her hand down through it, only for it to emerge through the next portal sideways and grasp Marco's shoulder from behind. "Verticality and horizontality and diagonals make no difference."

Marco reached down and picked up his clothes from underneath the portal that had heat coming from it. It was now dry, and he began to put them on again. "It sounds like you've been doing a lot of experimenting."

"Mm-hmm… Anyway, have you ever felt the back of the portals, like behind where you normally enter through? They're completely impervious back there as far as I can tell."

"…No… I did NOT know that. Why are you telling me all this? Are you trying to get me to reconsider destroying the Wellspring?"

"No." Secretly, she was nearly overjoyed to see that a certain demigoddess was no longer riding his mind. "No, I'm not. Magic has its perks, I guess, but if it's to make sure that the multiverse doesn't come to an end, everything magic is and what it stands for has to take second place."

"Right. Now hurry up and put on your clothes. Time's wasting, and we need to get to Eclipsa." Higgs nodded and began to put on her clothes. Soon after, she finished up by pulling on a new dry pair of heel-boots and closed off the portal which had dried her floor.

"But what's the hurry?"

"You want to waste time? And have you forgotten about Hekapoo? She knows that we've got dimensional scissors and that we're in cahoots with each other. She'll come back, and I want to at least get to Eclipsa before that happens. Are you staying or coming?"

"No. I'm coming." Sienna approached the door and opened it for him, before poking her head outside. No one was about, and she beckoned him to follow her. "We're in the south wing of the castle. We've got a long way to go in order to get to Eclipsa in the west wing… Are you sure you don't want to at least wait until night? Maybe your ol' black bedsheet you like to wear will be a little more helpful then."

"The girl is right,"Appendaxuz agreed from the inner reaches of Marco's mind.

"Even without considering Hekapoo returning to Mewni soon, I wonder how much time the multiverse has?" Marco asked rhetorically. "I don't care. I've already been set back by six months and trained until my muscles tore and my bones cracked. I'll be damned if I just loll around and waste time and opportunities just because I finally made it back to Mewni. Let's go…" From his very tone of voice, Higgs could tell that Marco had become fully serious, and he began to give off an aura of strong intent. "Sienna? Are you with me or not?"

"You know that I'm with you." She began to walk towards the west wing of the castle as calmly as she could, whilst Marco already began to dart from corner to corner. Sometimes, he even leaped up to the rafter's beams and traversed there whenever possible to avoid knights several times as they walked below him. More than once, he was almost caught by knights traversing the hallways when he didn't have this particular factor, and Higgs had to distract them somewhat while he made his way past them in their blind-spots.

"Thanks," he mumbled as soon as they made it past another knight.

The squire nodded. 'Of course, this is the only way I can really help. He doesn't even need me for my scissors, 'cause he has his own. Just look at him…' She silently watched him as he crept through the hallways silently, avoiding a few more foolish knights that she herself walked past concurrently. 'If I hadn't honed my own skills in Hekapoo's dimension, I'd never even be able to keep track of him, even if I did know he was here. If it was night and he was out to kill people, no one would really see him and even be able to defend themselves, much less…'

"Are we in the west wing yet? Feels like we've been walking for a while," Marco complained. Every time he was forced to take extreme caution because of personnel who went about the hallways, it cost him quite a bit of time, and served to make him anxious.

"Just about there. We just need to get past the guidance hall, and we'd be officially in the west wing."

"Guidance hall?" Marco queried in confusion. "What's that?"

"I heard that it's where the princess is supervised while being taught to improve her abilities over magic." Hardly had she finished speaking was the Diaz already at the door, peering through the keyhole. "What're you doing?!" she hissed in a whisper. "After all we've done, you're actually trying to get caught?!"

"No one's in there," Marco stated nonchalantly as he backed away from the door to keep moving on. "Only an affront to nature."

"Hmm?" Sienna paused a while to peer into the room as well, only to see a cat-like creature with a gemstone affixed to its forehead, scribbling in a notebook. Every now and again, it would mumble 'interesting' to itself, making Sienna shake her head in indifference. She hastened after Marco, asking him about what he meant, but he wouldn't say anything more on the matter, although she did believe that she heard him mumble 'godmother' to himself.

They resumed making their way through the west wing of the castle, Marco in the lead. Before long, his own impatience had finally caught up with him as he blundered around a blind corner to come face to face with two knights; one was fully armored, but the other wasn't. Furthermore, the second was far more recognizable, given his handsomeness-… one would think that he went armorless just to show off his good looks.

Both the knights and Marco held each other's gaze for the barest of moments before the armored one spoke in realization. "Sir Dashing? Isn't that the Princess's squire? From six months ago?"

"He was banished!" Sir Dashing retorted angrily. "He's an interloper in the castle! Take him into custody!"

From where Higgs had arrived-… and from her vantage point…- peeked around the corner to help keep herself hidden, she could only watch as Marco reacted explosively and punched Sir Dashing in the gut so hard that he flew backwards unto his back. With only a cry for his companion's sake, the other knight barely even got to draw his sword in time before Marco turned on him as well. Heeding the fact that the knight was armored from head to toe, the Diaz grabbed the knight's own sword out of its scabbard in a reverse grip and slammed the handle into the man's helmet, making it ring terribly inside. With his head as the center for all the internal noise, he had lost his robust and without any hesitation, Marco dropped the captured sword and grabbed the knight by the back of his head as well as his arm. In a show of massive strength, Marco spun once and slammed the knight's head so hard into the wall that it made web-cracks, and the man's helmet dented inwards to a large degree.

The knight slumped-… it was unclear if he died from his helmet's compression or if he was just unconscious, but blood trickled from the eye-slits of his armored head-dress, clearly a bad sign. By this time, Sir Dashing had finally been able to pick himself up off the ground, spitting out a globule of blood that showed that he had severe internal hurt. As he begun to yell 'interloper', his warning cry died in his throat as Marco kicked him in his side, directly in the liver. The man collapsed like a ton of bricks onto his hands and knees.

"No one is going to keep me from my goal!" Marco nearly shouted through clenched teeth. "Not you, not Star, not the M.H.C.! NO ONE!"

Before Sir Dashing could even react, Marco drew back his foot for a kick and lashed with it savagely-… it scored on the man's face, the point of Marco's shoe destroying the Sir's eye and knocking him unconscious as his head snapped backward from the force. Falling flat, he didn't get up to move again.

Marco stood still for a little while longer before calling out to Higgs without even turning around. "You can come out now… they're done."

Sienna finally allowed herself to emerge from her hiding spot around the corner. "Holy… shit…! Couldn't you just stick to hiding?" the squire fumed to herself. "Damn, it's too late now. Can we just dump them outside the castle?"

"We're too close to wherever they have that Ward set up. We can't open any portals. Let's just hide them the old-fashioned way. I guess I've already botched things, but there are too many knights going around, so it was bound to happen." Marco tried a nearby door and to his thankfulness, was unlocked. Without any regard as to who could possibly be inside, he just walked in to check if he could hide the knights in there and observed that it was a bathroom. "Help me put them in here."

"Fine." Sienna walked over to Sir Dashing as Marco volunteered himself to pick up the armored (heavier) one, and to her disgust, saw that a clear, viscous liquid was running from the man's collapsed eye socket in trails alongside the rivulets in blood. "Don't you know how to knock someone out with a little more finesse?"

"Shit happens." No more words passed between them as they pulled and hefted the knights into the bathroom; they were both slung into the bathtub with the curtains hiding them, before the pair of insurgents moved on again. They passed even more knights in the hallways, and it began to get to be so much that Marco was getting fed up. Sienna could sense that in him; she noticed that he had, over time, become an efficient person and focused, but his patience was too volatile and he was quick to anger. It was obvious even more so that she could nearly feel his anger rolling off of him in waves, and just when she thought he was about to explode and just charge through the castle like a madman, she spotted something familiar.

"The Ward! There it is!" Higgs pointed at a chandelier, getting Marco's attention immediately. "It's that big green gem in the center." Marco looked up at the light centerpiece, following where his companion's finger was pointing. With nary a word, Marco leaped up and grabbed a hold of the horizontal beam to pull himself up. Sienna wasn't surprised to see him leap nearly seven feet this time, but she didn't really expect him to be able to do anything about the ward. "Just leave it alone! I worked over one of those for nearly a week with hammer and spike just to dig it out of the casing! You can't do anything about it right now…!"

Marco ignored her protest in favor of focusing on pulling out the Ward gem out of the casing in the chandelier powering it. "I can get it. But… has it ever crossed your mind that there might be some reason why these Ward gems are green?"

"It hasn't… Maybe it's a coincidence. Now come on! We can get it later." To this, Marco shook his head.

"Nah. If I get this now, we can just teleport straight to Eclipsa, and teleport out in the same way."

"Are you even listening to me? I said that it's too hard to just pull it out-!"

"Higgs?" A new voice asked unsurely. Taken by surprise, the teen spun around to see her fellow squire, Baby Man, staring at the robed figure grasping at the gem in the chandelier. "Who the hell are you talking to-… wait… that's Marco!"

Already, the stocky squire had pulled out his chained-mace and was swinging it. Sienna's body was already moving on autopilot without any sort of thinking; it was a culmination of years of learning combat in Hekapoo's dimension and her unconscious wants to safeguard her crush. To Baby Man's surprise, just as he was about to throw his mace at the formerly disgraced Marco, Higgs had thrown the strongest haymaker of her life and smashed him in his jaw.

"Agh!" Blood and spittle went flying as his head nearly spun hard enough to break his neck. He still kept his balance, though, and he was more than a little displeased to realize that he could feel one of his teeth had become loose. "Higgs? Oh, no…! You're working with him!"

"Better than being used by the knights!" she spat in disgust as she pulled out her tanto-style knife and pointed it threateningly at him. "If you had the sense, you'd understand!"

"You're a fool!" Gripping his mace, he wildly swung it again and this time, he was going on the offensive against his former associate. By now, Marco was preparing to intervene, but Higgs noticed.

"I've got this. You think you're so strong? Get that damn Ward crystal…!" She didn't stop to see if he was listening to her, but nonetheless, she remained focused on finding some way of incapacitating Baby Man.

Yet, there came the nagging thought that even if he was taken down, he'd only inform everyone later that she was an insurgent. When she narrowly had to dodge his chain-mace when he swung it at her again, she realized that she needed to pull herself together and end the fight. Baby Man, apparently, had the same inclination and stepped in closer to grab Higgs by the neck. "Higgs, stop this! We both know that I'm stronger!"

To some extent, it was his own fault for taking the fight to nearer proximity. But he had no idea that she had already grown up to be a master of close-quarters-combat. In an instant, Baby Man was so sure that he was winning… but it all changed when he felt cold steel slice into his gut. He could barely even voice his shock and pain, and he was suddenly afraid of dying. Struggling like an insect on a pin, he increased his crushing grip on Sienna's neck in an effort to get her to stop stabbing him, but it failed. Despite her own airways being cut off, her face was devoid of any pity as she begun to drag her razor-sharp knife through his gut like a vicious saw, even as his crimson lifeblood and innards began to spill out from him.

"Stronger," she said through clenched teeth, "but not very clever…! Don't try to fight me on the INSIDE…!"

It was almost a contest of sorts, as Baby Man was still trying to choke the life and resistance out of her, even during his own disembowelment. But just when Sienna felt like her neck would collapse in on itself, Baby Man's strength finally waned, and he released his grip to totter to his knees.

"Oh… Gods…" he cried weakly as even more of his bowels continued to slip out of him, the scarlet of his ropey intestines to the dark hues of the glands falling out of his belly and through his lax fingers. Silently, Higgs and Marco only stared as he finally collapsed on his side, seemingly still trying to keep most of his guts inside him, before his life finally escaped him.

Marco sighed deeply as he watched Higgs look down at the corpse of her former colleague. "You alright…?"

"This… was fucked up. Why didn't you just listen to me!" Higgs growled loudly. "If you had just stayed hidden, he wouldn't have seen you and I wouldn't have had to fight him!"

"I've already messed up by fighting the other knights. But thank you for defending me." He re-continued his efforts at pulling out the Ward crystal, and it served to make Sienna's frustration rise.

"I said that you can't pull it out-!"

Marco turned to glare at her, a glare harsh enough to make her wince. "Don't… doubt… me…" With that said, he finally made an almighty tug and the crystal came free in his hands, making Higgs gawk in surprise. Immediately, the green Ward crystal lost its glow from being severed from its power source, but the Diaz took that as a good thing before he jumped down from his perch. "Alright, I guess that's that. I could kill for something sweet to eat right now…" Seeing her look away, he facepalmed himself with his free hand at his lack of tact. "Sorry. That was a poor choice of words-"

"We're insurgents." Sienna interrupted. "We're actively fighting their govern in an effort to save the dimensions. If they're believers or practitioners of magic, doesn't that make them our enemies?" Seeing him nod, the girl ground her teeth a bit as her gaze averted to Baby Man's body. "Sure, it does. And we're probably gonna be doing a lot more of this in the future. Hell, we might even end up razing Mewni if it means that it'll save the rest of the multiverse. It's a small price to pay, but still…"

"Are you saying we can't pay it?"

Sienna looked down, almost afraid to look Marco in the eyes. "I can pay it. You can pay it. WE can pay it. I'd be lying to say that I didn't feel anything about killing him. But I feel for myself more. I feel for this crusade more. I feel for you more."

Marco's jaw became slack. "What do you mean-"

"I can't explain it. We got a mutual understanding, sure, but I know it wasn't all that. In the short space of time that we became friends before you left Mewni, all I realized afterwards is that somehow, for some reason, I'm drawn to you. For that same reason…" She finally brought herself to look him in the face, and their eyes locked with one another. It was in that moment that Marco had never yet seen someone that determined. "I am willing to spill as much blood as it takes to keep you safe and to ensure that you accomplish what you need to do." Sienna was now completely serious as she took her bloodied blade and wiped it off on Baby Man's clothes. "I'm willing. Because I'm not just your friend. I am your knight."

Marco wasn't quite sure how to respond to this, but he did his best. "I'll lead us to the realization."

Higgs smiled grimly in response. In experimentation, she took out her scissors and attempted to open a portal to her room. To her relief, she was successful, which showed that the Ward had been effectively neutralized, not to mention the fact that they had another one which would factor into their plans. It was still marginally a win. Looking down at herself, she grimaced in horrible realization. "Even if it was only my arm-warmer that got bloodied, I'm still gonna get caught…"

"You won't. No one on Mewni right now knows that you've been helping me, but when those knights wake up, they're gonna talk that I fought them. I'm not incognito anymore. But for your sake, I want you to make up a story… you saw me and Baby Man fighting. Get rid of both of your arm-warmers, then go 'attempt' to fetch a doctor. I know you're a good actor. At the least, it'll be a distraction that'll pull almost all the knights here. The guards must be thick around here just for security for Eclipsa."

"What'll you do?"

"I'm gonna go see Eclipsa by myself. If our dimensional scissors are working again, I might as well use mine to get straight to her room. Take this crystal, and I'll see you tomorrow at your ceremony. That is, if I'm not caught and or dead."

Sienna grinned stupidly as she took off her bloodied arm-warmer, then the other (clean) one for uniformity and threw them both into the portal to her room, then took the crystal from Marco. The Ward followed her arm-warmers into the portal before she closed it. "Yes, sir."

Marco smiled as his answer, before he opened up his own portal and went through, closing it on the other side. Now in Eclipsa's room, Marco took in the sight of the room, noting how up-kept it was. It mattered little; what mattered was the fact that he'd finally come into contact with the Butterfly. His entrance hadn't gone unnoticed-… he had the full attention of the fallen queen who sat around a table with, drinking a cup of tea while absently playing with the pawns on a chessboard.

"Oh…" Eclipsa smiled when she recognized the teen who had entered her room unannounced. "Hello… my King."

And scene. For some reason, I was torn between writing what happened in the aftermath, versus writing what felt like a flashback chapter to show what lead to Baby Man's demise. He's not really a character death, but I took this road as it shows Higgs and Marco, not just more character development, but to show that people really ought to pay more attention to the chessboard principle working behind the scenes. It's not a Red Herring; it's not something meant to mislead you.

The next chapter is gonna get gnarly as most of the show's characters are going to... no spoilers. But I can say it's gonna take a while to hammer out. Even if I have to make two back-to-back updates.

Valete omnes,

MRAY 4TW.