Vestiges

Marco can't be evil without being 'EVIL', that much is true. But there needs to be emotional conflict as well as physical… you'll see what happens.

19.

\Rook/

"And in all of this... the one who declared war on the Magic High Commission is the only person left. Soon, he won't be."

Marco's heart raced as he lifted his sword to defend himself. Already, he could feel the futility of doing so, but it wasn't in this feeling why his sword fell again. For some reason, other than his own innate feelings for the demigoddess before him, the tip of his sword lowered to point at the ground, and he was confused at this.

Wasn't he even willing to fight her? He'd even gone as far as to kill Janna, hadn't he? When the thought of her ran through his mind, it fully dawned on him that he'd killed one of his former friends, and had effectively beaten the others nearly to the same point. However, while he mused on all these things and tried to reason out why he felt no regret about it, Hekapoo had more than enough time to come charging at him with two clones at her sides, all armed with scissor-daggers. Instantly forcing him to go on the defensive, he was successful in deflecting her daggers but when he tried to unconsciously counterattack, his reflexes ground to a halt, allowing for Hekapoo to capitalize on it. Before Marco even realized what was happening, the blunt of the handle of her scissors slammed into his temple, knocking him to the floor in a daze.

"Get up, Marco." Hekapoo's tone allowed for no softness, no playful mischief. He thought of how she spoke in a tone befitting someone in the Magic High Commission-… no, a tone befitting a demigoddess.

Yeah, he was in deep shit this time.

'I can beat her… I can beat her,' he tried to console himself, to steel himself into thinking that he could even if he wanted to. As he tried to clear his mind to think of a strategy, he suddenly felt the earth beginning to shake violently. He instantly thought of the phenomenon as an earthquake, and quite a powerful one at that. Large cracks began forming in the ground and the walls, and the magnitude of the quake was enough to send Hekapoo and her clones off balance to the floor. Marco didn't quite suffer the same fate due to the fact that he was already on the ground, but he still fought against the quake in an effort to stand. "Alright… this is a bit much…" he mumbled as the shaking ceased as soon as it'd began. "Now earthquakes? What the hell is going on?"

"Omnitraxus is here…" Appendaxuz intoned in the boy's mind.

"Omnitraxus?!" Marco boggled. First Hekapoo, then Omnitraxus Prime? Stacking that with Rhombulus and the Queen who were outside fighting Toffee, notwithstanding what their fates were, the entire Magic High Commissionwas here. This was already far out of his control, and he was more than ready to call it quits for the time being. Eagerly looking around for his comrades, he called for their names. "Toffee?! Sienna?! We're leaving!"

Toffee was nowhere in sight-… Marco decided that he was out of earshot because he was still outside. However, his knight should've answered him. She had been in the hall with him the entire time.

There was no answer.

"Sienna?!" Whilst sliding his sword back into its scabbard, he eagerly looked to the podium where she'd been last, trying to spot her but couldn't. He realized that he hadn't heard anything from the podium for a while, and started to worry. "Maybe she teleported away," he tried to comfort himself. "Maybe I should too…" As he entertained the idea of his own suggestion, his eyes suddenly caught what he believed was a messy crop of ginger hair on one of the bodies on the stage. Taking one tentative step forward, then another, his stomach seemed to start tying itself in knots in dread as he began to worry that she had died-

His mind instantly broke away from the thought, although it was far too late as it had already been finished. His heart began racing; the increase in blood pressure made his some of his wounds bleed a little worse, but he didn't care. His slow trudging to the podium hastened a bit, despite his fearfulness of discovering the truth he didn't want to know.

"Sienna?" he called, his voice delicate. "Sienna?"

All around him, madness began anew; Toffee was suddenly blown through a damaged wall by some sort of explosive force and back into the ceremonial hall. He was a mess; his wounds healed quickly, though it could be said from the state of his clothing that he'd been on the wrong side of an ass-kicking. Omnitraxus Prime came thundering in through the remains of the wall after him, and the wrath of the demigod was heightened when he saw even more of the remains of the catastrophic battle. Believing that Toffee was the source of the destruction, he began to wield his space-time techniques violently at the Septarian, who'd already suffered having several body organs and limbs being instantly warped away out of him whenever he couldn't dodge fast enough and was at pains to keep on the evasive.

"Sienna?" Marco breathed, though the softness of his voice was lost in the insanity that broiled around him. At last, he made it to the podium and he clambered up on it at the location nearest to his knight. He neared her body now, and he was horrified to find her lying face down in a pool of her own blood. Finally getting to her side, as gently as he could, picked her up in his quiet strength. He could tell that she had numerous wounds, one in her leg (he hoped it wasn't her femoral artery), a clearly visible one in her gut that he prayed wasn't fatal, and who knew what else she was afflicted with. In light of these staggering wounds, he almost didn't notice as ever so slightly, the girl in his arms breathed in slowly before exhaling again. "Sienna?" he called louder, daring to hope now.

He didn't expect her to answer, but she did. Though inaudible in silent reaction, the girl's emeralds peeked out from behind heavy eyelids and smiled appreciatively at the boy in whose arms she rested. It was a quiet moment for the two, and for a moment, Marco believed that he could hear her ask him a question from her barely moving lips as she struggled to speak.

"You're a great Knight, Sienna. The best."

Then the audio in their world was suddenly heeded once more, and it was deafeningly loud. It was filled with the sound of Omnitraxus nearly trashing the entire place in an effort to kill Toffee, supported by the twin set of Hekapoo's clones. Over the noise, a voice spoke clearly in proximity to Marco; the boy found himself trying to tune it out, but he could not.

"So… you dragged that poor girl into your little war, hmm?"

His eyes rose from Sienna. Looking up, he saw Hekapoo standing before them-… he had not forgotten her, but her presence made it clear that he had to leave. Not only for his own sake, but especially for Sienna's. Her wounds itself weren't life-threatening, but her blood-loss was far worse than his and she would be likely to die from it unless properly treated as soon as possible. Trying to ignore Hekapoo's condemnation, he removed his scissors from his pants-pocket. This once, he was prepared to use magic in order to get his Knight to a safe place, and swallowed back his feelings of being a hypocrite. Opening it behind him, he then returned the scissors back to his pocket and picked up Higgs in a bridal carry as he stood up.

"We're leaving," he said quietly. That would have been the last word he had on the matter as he backpedaled to the portal to step backwards through it, but he might as well have walked through thin air. He passed through it without going anywhere, and as soon as he noticed this, the portal seemed to waft away and disappeared. He realized that this was due to the fact that Hekapoo had held out her arm at the portal and willed it to malfunction and cease.

"Did you think you can just come to Mewni, start an insurgency, kill people and get away with it?" Her voice was a mixture of rebuke and disappointment, though he tried his best to not let it faze him. "Hmm? Did you think that I'd allow you to leave, and using my own creation to do it?" She waved her hand in an arc, gesturing to the entire ceremonial hall with the dead, injured and the destroyed that lied therein as well as on the outside. "You're going to have to answer for all of this!"

"I'll answer to everything when it's said and done!" Marco yelled. Angered that his departure was easily sabotaged, he tried to think of a way that he could escape but short of actually running with Sienna in his arms, he was out of luck, not to mention the fact that Hekapoo was the swiftest of the M.H.C.

"Damn it…" Marco cursed bitterly under his breath. "Appendaxuz, any ideas?" he hissed.

"I have but two suggestions, but you'll like neither. Leave Higgs and flee with Toffee, as he's still capable of leaving under his own power."

"Of course not!" Marco retorted angrily out loud, his sudden outburst mildly confusing the two girls. "Why the hell would you suggest that?!"

"Then perhaps you'll heed the other proposition… Invoke your powers of the King and slay Hekapoo. She's far too troublesome to remain alive."

"…What?" Marco asked weakly. Looking down at Sienna who was still bleeding out in his arms, he could see her eyes seemingly begging him to act and though he couldn't hear what she wanted, he sensed that she was pleading for them to leave. In the same moment, Hekapoo took a step closer to Marco, and her movement attracted Marco's attention. Looking at the demigoddess, he could tell that any action he took, she was prepared to halt him in his tracks.

Although his chances of fighting or leaving increased without Higgs in tow, Marco grasped that he would never leave.

It was then that Marco was suddenly faced with his hardest decision to date… and made his choice. Gently resting Sienna on the ground again, he leaned his head down to her ear and whispered his farewell to her. In anguished understanding, tears began to well up in her eyes and burn their way down her cheeks. Trying her best to speak, the words were stuck in her throat, and her mouth curled uncontrollably in her grief. Weakly reaching up, her bloodied hand found his, and held on tightly despite her failing strength.

"No…" she wheezed as if her heart was about to break. "Don't… please."

It was of no use. As lightly as he could, he pried off her grip and allowed her hand to fall over her own chest. "It's only for a while…" he murmured tenderly, "and what kind of a King would I be if I allowed my precious Knight to die?"

"… What…? Don't leave me. Please…"

He couldn't block out her voice, even if he wanted to. Higgs didn't understand exactly what he meant, and he was fully conscious that she still wouldn't approve if she knew. Standing up again, he stepped around her body slowly to the side as if trying to flank Hekapoo from her blind-spot. Hekapoo herself didn't move, but Marco didn't dare underestimate her; he was fully aware that she was still probably attentive and ready to act on the fly. "Well, Hekapoo. I guess it's going to happen. We're going to fight one another. I really didn't want it to come to this…"

She did not respond. She was still quiet, as the lunacy continued to rage all around them in the hall.

Slowly removing his sword from its scabbard, Marco heard it grating as he did so. With the sword now out of its sheathe, he observed that there were a few cracks in the sword, particularly in the side of the blade that he had used to cut Janna's shield in two, before killing her-

He tried to shake his head free of the thought, but it still plagued him. He was suddenly painfully aware that he had no conscience and it bothered him. He'd actually gone as far as to kill one of his former friends and who knew who else, even when she presented no threat to him. Marco had the idea that Appendaxuz had something to do with that, and frowned. 'When this is over, you're going to have to answer for that!'

"Remember the time and place. Hekapoo is about to act. Whatever you're planning, execute it quickly."

Marco knew that he was right on that point, but that didn't detract from his feelings. He could tell that all of his feelings were there; his regret, his horror and his sadness for having done these actions, but perhaps there was some sort of wall that these feelings were stopped by, effectively barricading them from him. "I can't think too much about that now… Try to keep up, Hekapoo…" he mumbled. She seemed to have heard the small voice before he sprinted away from her, and took of after him. She was right there beside him every step of the way, side by side. Not surprised, he urged himself to move faster, and soon they were nothing more than blurs zipping around the hall.

Hekapoo, seemingly growing tired of the farcical running as if it were nothing more than a rival test of speed, lunged at him with her scissor-daggers. Marco easily batted them away each time she did so, and in reckless abandon, she ripped open a portal as she ran forward, and came through a portal that opened before him. Too fast to stop, he made a diving leap over her head, and as soon as he touched the ground arms-first past her, he fell into a perfect dive-roll. Exiting the roll, he then turned to run again at top speed. "You're gonna have to do better than that!"

"Are you fighting, or are you running?" With the question asked, four clones phased out of her, all armed as she was. "I don't intend to let you do either!" They all spoke in unison.

"Just five of you?" Marco said with a scoff, although hoping she wouldn't catch him off guard. "You're going to have to do better than that!" As if to answer to his taunt, they all began opening dimensional portals, through which all five disappeared through. Alarm bells went off in Marco's head as he made a mad dash to get out of his present location, before a Hekapoo clone nearly fell out of a portal right on top of him. Two more portals opened before him as he tried to escape, out of which lava poured from into his path. "Hot damn, is that lava from your dimension?!" Forced to make a detour, even from the last Hekapoo clone on the right, he turned left, only to encounter the real Hekapoo who waylaid him with her daggers in hand. At his current speed, he had no way of stopping quickly enough. He would've tried to jump overhead again, but in preparation for that, the flame atop her head flared up like a massive flamethrower as a deterrent.

It was then he dropped his sword as he started to skid his feet to a stop. Although confused by his action as if to question how he'd defend himself against her weapons, she didn't lower them, though the flame between her horns died down when she saw that he had no intentions of dodging her. In all things however, she had still underestimated him. The already small distance was concluded, Marco's hands darted past her guard even faster than she could attack him, and he grabbed her hands by the wrists to capture her hands. "Agh! Let go of me!"

"I'm not fighting you…" he said strangely. As if to add insult to injury, he started to squeeze her wrists painfully, forcing her to drop her daggers despite her efforts no to. Not finished yet, he swept them away from her, and quickly turned and had her face down on the ground faster than she could blink, already arresting both of her arms behind her on her back with only one hand.

"Bullshit!" she yelled. "You're fighting right now!" Though the arm-lock normally would've been painful, it was as if he was merely trying to pin her arms to the point of discomfort, but not enough to cause her any real pain. 'I shouldn't have taken it so easy on him!' she berated herself mentally. 'But why the hell is he taking it easy on me?'

"I'm only preventing you from stopping me!"

"From doing what? Killing the magic?!"

"That can wait 'till later. I've got other priorities right now." He looked around, only to see the lunacy continuing as the earlier pair of Hekapoo's clones, along with Omnitraxus, was trying to take down Toffee. Skilled or not, the Septarian was at pains to stay moving at all times, and Marco could tell that the Bishop's stamina was waning quickly. Omnitraxus Prime especially was using some sort of magic that instantly warped things and objects away whenever he blasted them with a blue force, and it was with this he was antagonizing Toffee. What was worse, the King, the Queen and Rhombulus was returning from the outside, and they both looked fairly well for people just coming out of a battle. "This is… not good," Marco mumbled as he took out his scissors. Hearing the sound of the metal of them sliding from the fabric of his pocket, Hekapoo angled her head to see it, and her lone visible eye widened at the sight of it. Though not sharp enough for multifunctional use, they were certainly sharp enough to harm people, leading the demigoddess to assume the worst.

"Hey… you're not gonna hold me hostage with that thing, are you?!"

"Of course not," he said sotto voce, before returning his attention to Toffee, flipping the scissors in his hands to hold it by the point. "I've got a better use for it. HEY TOFFEE!" he bellowed the last, grabbing the Lizard's notice. Unfortunately, he grabbed everyone else's awareness, but he didn't care. "CATCH!"

Hoping that he had better luck throwing a knife-like blade this time around, Marco threw the scissors as hard as he could to the Bishop. To his delight, Toffee caught the scissors easily and easily recognized them for what they were. Before he could shout as to why they were given to him, Marco continued.

"Grab Sienna and get her out of here!"

"Your knight?!" he exclaimed the question as if to reaffirm, though he didn't need it.

"Just go! And if she dies… I'LL KILL YOU, immortality or not!" Marco shouted at the top of his lungs.

"… I understand." Knowing his orders and not questioning them, Toffee dodged the last of Omnitraxus Prime's attacks and hurried to get to the Knight, whom he picked up after opening a portal. "You have my word that she'll live." Before Hekapoo could attempt to free one of her arms to close the portal as she did before, Marco tightened his grip on her just in case and watched as his two comrades made their departure without him. He was nearly at the point of tears when he saw that Sienna was still trying to reach out to him, and was carried away by Toffee against her wishes. Soon enough, the portal closed, leaving the royal couple and the M.H.C. frustrated that their main target had escaped. That only left Marco; he was all alone, unarmed with no way of escape.

Outmatched and outnumbered, but he wasn't overcome as yet. Seeing all of them now focusing his attention on him, Marco gritted his teeth. "Gods, huh?" he mumbled angrily. "Bring it!"

"Diaz… so you're the one responsible for this!" Omnitraxus roared. "You and your hubris will fall today!" Already sending a wave of blue magic at him, Marco quickly grabbed Hekapoo and got the hell out of dodge with her in tow, just before the blast caught up to them. Strangely enough in that moment, Marco took notice that the impact of the magic didn't have any particular amount of force, yet still the entire area seemed to tremble. The idea behind this rolled around in his mind, but it was Appendaxuz who explained the reason.

"He's using very potent magical abilities. While it is obvious that you need to stay clear of it, it's also clear that you need to stop him with haste; his current usage of magic is accelerating the degradation of the stability of the dimensions."

"He's speeding up the apocalypse?!" Marco yelled. In his realization, however, Hekapoo took advantage of his distraction and wrenched free of his grip. Leaping away from him to rejoin the others, she started to chew out Omnitraxus for his lack of tact for attacking both her and Marco the way he did.

"You could've warped me away to somewhere dangerous, you know! Take better care about what you do!"

"I'm sorry. But let's not focus on that." In the meantime, Rhombulus had found her scissor-daggers and returned them to her, which she took gratefully. "Alright, let's all take care of him right here and now! Queen Moon, we'd like your assistance as well-…" The gigantic demigod looked around for the woman, only to spot her kneeling by her daughter's side along with her husband. Before she could even begin grieving, she discovered that Star was still alive though she was severely injured, that apparent by her head injury and the blood that she coughed every now and again to keep her air passageways clear.

"She's alive…" River observed. "Omnitraxus, what you did before to heal Rhombulus outside… could you do it again?"

"It's not healing; I merely turned back his personal clock. However, my time powers are still on cool-down and once I have them in the next few minutes, I'll rewind time for all those in here by up to fifteen minutes. Hopefully that's enough time to at least undo some of the casualties."

"You… can rewind time for individual people…?" Marco asked dumbly to himself. "That sounds powerful… maybe that's what caused the extreme earthquake earlier…" Before he could continue thinking along this line, two Hekapoo clones had snuck up behind him and grabbed both of his arms to render him helpless. They didn't take his strength into account however, and he pulled them towards himself and blew out their flames before they could properly react. "Guess now's not the time!" Marco yelled as they began to attack him. His constant low anger rising again to rival that of everyone else's and climbing ever higher, he back-flipped away as Rhombulus' snakes hands spat out crystals like bullet-projectiles. "You'd all better quit using magic right this minute!"

"Perhaps…" the Queen said gravely as she focused on Marco, now in a no-nonsense mood, "you've drawn breath for too long, Marco."

"Doesn't surprise me to hear you say that." Finding his sword since dropping it, he pointed at each of them in the room. "Appendaxuz warned me since last year that friends could and would turn into enemies. I didn't believe him, but I guess I was too dumb to listen to him when he told me the first time."

"You're dumb for listening to him at all. Take a good look around, Marco!" Hekapoo shouted. "You're the one who's become the enemy. Look at all this destruction, all of this pain, all this pointless death!"

"I agree!" River added in his own fury. "Look at the knights! And even your own friends! To think a character like this resided in you… I would've never allowed you in the castle in the first place, much less Mewni!"

"I'm fighting the M.H.C., but Queen Moon ordered them to attack me," Marco grumbled heatedly. "But as for my deeds… I suppose I wish I never opened the Book of Spells to find Appendaxuz, and learning that the entire universe is in danger. I would've preferred to live in ignorance. But I guess this is just a burden that I'll have to carry."

"You think that you're noble in all of this?" Moon asked in contempt as she let loose a barrage of magical spells from her fingertips, conjuring hazards to throw Marco off guard, or pound him to a paste. "You think you're a hero?"

"You should be aware that I hate having to do this. I know I'm long gone from the rails… but I know that you're not heroes either." Entering his stance with his sword, he resolved that he needed to fight his way out of the situation if he were to escape. He needed to wield his powers as a King, the very same powers he gained from Appendaxuz. "I may kill those who get in my way of getting to the Wellspring, and if I'm stopped, then you won't. Your usage of magic is going to cause the annihilation of EVERYTHING, including yourselves! So you can call me Evil-Fucking-Marco this, and Evil-Fucking-Marco that… I don't intend to STOP!"

"M.H.C., take him down!" Omnitraxus hollered at the top of his lungs. Since his time powers hadn't recharged yet and he was saving it for the Queen's use, he resumed using his spatial powers, causing low-level explosions in the hall as Marco raced to dodge them all, including the shrapnel blown from the broken benches and the tiles of the floor. However, he could tell that he was slowing down; he had expected that he'd grow in a certain fashion as he usually did whenever he exerted himself in doing an action, but it was Appendaxuz who explained the truth as much as he didn't want to hear it.

"You've got enough stamina to outlast everyone, certainly, but your body can't take much more punishment. You're still wounded, suffering from hemorrhages and who knows what else. End this now, before they end YOU!"

Heeding the entity's warning, Marco stabbed his sword into the ground to prevent himself from sliding too far backwards, and charged the group of elite magic users as a surreal flame sprouted into existence on him, covering him and then the sword in his hand. "Before all else, Omnitraxus only speeds up the deadline! Quod inquit rex!" he yelled as he swung his sword in a vertical arc, aiming at Omnitraxus. "REND!"

He was still from Omnitraxus, so no one even thought for a second that anything would happen. Yet, the demigod, yea, even the entire ceremonial hall and the floor in front of Marco suddenly fell apart into two vertical halves in a shocking display of power. Everyone panicked for a second at sight of the wanton destruction (the very ground was nearly like a three-foot wide trench, and the ceiling and most of the upper part of the castle was no better), even the fact that the heaviest hitter appeared to be killed. This was their belief for a second but the two halves of the demigod rejoined one another, and Omnitraxus nearly sighed.

"It takes more than that to kill me, boy, but you're a far greater threat than I credited you for. Was that magic?! You hypocrite!"

"No…" Marco panted. He'd put nearly everything he had into using that much of Appendaxuz's power at once, and he felt like he himself was about to fall apart in shambles. "I may be a hypocrite for trying to use dimensional scissors, but that wasn't magic. Glossaryck is Lord of Magic, but to me, Appendaxuz is basically the Lord of Physics. Anything within his power of reason is doable. He can alter anything in reality, but Glossaryck's magic warps reality!"

"What's the difference?" Rhombulus asked the question that was on all their minds.

"Magic is as magic does-…" Marco said sternly. "Appendaxuz can superheat what's cold, split an atom or break the hardest of elements, convert one form of matter into another, maybe even move the sun from its place with a lot of effort. But magic does the outright impossible… it breathes life into the non-living, it can completely destroy matter and energy, divide a number by zero, undetonate a bomb, count to infinity and make something out of nothing. That's the power that threatens the universe; the abuse of it is causing instability!"

"Like we'd believe that!" Queen Moon snapped at the now exhausted boy as the green flames of his aura began to die down. "That has barely any logic, and I can still hardly see the difference between the two! You could even be using low-level magic and we wouldn't know the difference!"

"I'm… not… lying," Marco groaned as he tried to steady himself. Taking note of his sword, he could see that the cracks from before had become more prevalent, and he could tell that it was just like his own body-… they both couldn't take much more misuse. In own mind, Appendaxuz fumed at the poor luck of the present situation, but there was nothing more that could be done.

"Marco… it's over…"

"It's not over!" Marco cried. In his dizzying vision, he barely had the presence of mind to grasp that he was now in a fight he could not win; he was either that stubborn or persistent, Hekapoo couldn't tell which. "I'm not gonna stop! I can't!"

It was clear to the M.H.C. that he was on his last legs, but after seeing her daughter in the state she was in, Queen Moon was of no inclination to show mercy. She flew through a portal created by Hekapoo and entered the demigoddess' dimension, whereupon she flew for a mile at top speed. Reemerging through another portal in front of Marco a less than a split-second later in real time with extreme momentum, she landed three simultaneous powerful haymakers to the boy's face and chest and gut, pile-driving him into the ground with so much force that she made a crater with the boy at its epicenter. In his last moment of consciousness and his cry cut short, Marco wasn't focused on the agony, nor the ironic fact that Moon had repaid him with the same pain he'd inflicted on her daughter. Instead, he wondered if he had doomed the universe by failing to stop the M.H.C., and the guilts and suffering he'd put himself through had been all for nothing.

Then the Black King lost consciousness. It was over.

"I guess that's that," River monotoned as he stroked his beard. A nagging thought coming to mind, he reminded Omnitraxus about repeating what he did to Rhombulus to everyone else in the now-broken ceremonial hall, and the demigod nodded.

"Right. My powers over spatial time have recharged, and there's no time to waste mucking around. I can only use this ability twice a day." After intoning a few words under his breath to invoke his magic, white spheres (like bubbles) began forming over every person casualty in the hall, before phasing into them. Seeing this in effect, the Queen quickly flew over to her daughter and grasped her hand, wanting to see how the privy reversal of time would benefit her, if any. "Now for the dreadful part… we have to wait and see who'll be able to be saved by fifteen minutes."

"I hate the suspense too," Rhombulus agreed as he approached the small crater that Marco's body lied in, the only person who didn't have a time sphere in them to turn back his personal living clock. "I know you're not Lekmet, Omni, but you're almost as good."

"Is that supposed to be a compliment?"

"I guess we'll find out soon enough," the security enthusiast mumbled. Finally reaching Marco, he kicked him in the side. Marco flinched in his unconsciousness, and Hekapoo frowned deeply at Rhombulus' actions.

"Hey, quit it," she demanded.

"I'm not trying to punish him or anything," he protested, trying to defend himself. "Just checking if he's alive so that I can crystallize him."

"Even alive, he's not worth crystallizing, only oblivion…" Omnitraxus Prime stated in a severe tone. As if to conclude what he said, one of the knights stirred from unconsciousness, and River recognized that it was Lady Whosits. They all watched as the woman tried to stand up, still close to being unconscious, though her internal clock was being rewound.

"Wha-…? The M.H.C.? Wait… you're reinforcements! What happened to Diaz? Did we beat him?"

"He's beaten," Moon confirmed. "Rest assured that he'll be in chains soon, and afterwards, he'll-"

"With all due respect, Queen Moon," the woman interrupted, "but he has to be put to the sword as soon as possible. That boy is far too dangerous to allow alive for even another minute!"

Queen Moon tried to make the woman come to terms that the boy was now overpowered and defeated. "I understand that he uses special powers with his sword, as unremarkable the sword itself is-"

"I don't know which 'powers' you're speaking of," the knight interrupted again, which was rapidly becoming an annoyance to Moon as she couldn't even finish her sentences. "That boy is capable of becoming so powerful that I was beginning to doubt if the members of the M.H.C. could beat him."

"You don't seem to hold us in good faith as to our strength," Omnitraxus started to say, but once again, the knight interrupted in her hurry to explain.

"He grows stronger with every effort he puts out and every conflict he fights in!" the woman yelled, trying to make them understand. "For instance, when he and I fought, I held the battle in my favor in terms of strength, but over the course of it, his strength soon matched mine before he overpowered me!"

"But you're already so strong!" Moon turned to look at Marco's limp form, before returning her attention to the Lady. "While it's clear that he's in very good shape, he doesn't even have the same muscle mass that you do. How can he be stronger?"

"That's not all! The same factor applies to his injuries. The only reason we could hold him for so long was because the wounds he got from the start of the conflict had weakened him enough. After that, swords didn't even cut him as deeply-... One would think that after every cut, his skin would put on an extra layer of invisible armor."

It was silent for a while, but Omnitraxus soon broke it. "This is troubling. Perhaps not even a crystallizing from Rhombulus would hold him… and if he were to be executed, would a guillotine suffice in killing him?" Without even waiting for anyone's response to his rhetorical question, he blasted Marco with a magic spatial spell, warping him away in an instant. In immediate worry, Hekapoo winced as the thought that Marco, like many of Omnitraxus' opposers over a millennia, had been banished to somewhere fatal, like the No Man's Land group of dimensions.

"What the hell, Omnitraxus Prime?!" Hekapoo yelled in indignation. Omnitraxus eyed her strangely-… she never called him by his full name unless she was really pissed at him. This was one of the worst cases he'd ever seen of her; she looked angry enough to kill him where he stood just by looks alone. "Why did you do that?!" Already trying to open a portal to Marco, she found that the portal refused to open, leading her to believe with horrible realization that Marco was now outside of the dimensions, and was out in somewhere spatial. "YOU SENT HIM INTO SPACE?!"

"Only way to completely get rid of him. And you heard… he's too dangerous to leave alive."

She seemed to ignore this detail, and stepped forward to the demigod in a threatening manner. "Bring him back!"

"Tough. I can't, even if I wanted to. I can only warp away what I can see. I can't bring things back. I myself can't even teleport without your help."

"I vote he stays where he is," Lady Whosits offered. She was marginally ignored by everyone there as Hekapoo stepped forward, her daggers in hand. If there was ever a time that the usually good-humored demigoddess ever looked like a she-devil, it was now. She was completed wreathed in flames, and looked about ready to kill Omnitraxus.

"Then send me to where he is!"

"You want to die?" Omnitraxus retorted angrily as he gave her a death glare of his own. "You can die on your own time, not trying to save the person who's trying to kill ALL OF US!"

"I'm warning you, Omnitraxus Prime!" Her voice nearly boomed as much as his did, and it was downright horrifying to see her behave like this. "Send me to where he is, or you're not gonna like what I'm going to do if I'm still HERE!"

"Is that a threat?" he asked gravely.

The demigoddess bristled in her rage. "You're about three seconds away from wishing it's only a threat!" Time itself seemed to distort into minutes when she said this, but the Space-Time master actually counted the first two seconds. Just before he counted the third, he lost his nerve, and blasted Hekapoo with his warping magic, teleporting her away into oblivion.

Hekapoo had shut her eyes when the flash of the magic had temporarily blinded her. When she reopened her eyes a second later, she saw nothing except stars, and far off celestial bodies and assorted planets, each with their own features. Floating in the recesses of space, the demigoddess would've thought the sight of it pretty, but had much more imperative matters at hand right now-… that being saving the Diaz she'd come to rescue. As she looked around her for where he was, she saw him floating close by. Just before she could make an attempt to rescue him, however, she encountered the frightening fact that her flame had gone out… and she couldn't breathe.

It was frigid and airless in space.

Nothing topped her immediate panic, excepting her concern that Marco had been in this fatal environment for a little while before her. Rejoining her daggers to form scissors, she tried to open a portal to get to him, but made the horrible discovery that it wouldn't work. 'Oh no. I can't open portals to anywhere outside of the dimensions, but I can teleport back to the inside the multiverse. But my flame's gone out…!'

The need to breathe was always an urgent issue with her. Being a flame-oriented being, she had to be in an oxygen-rich environment to keep her flame burning, and it didn't burn for long when none was present… it was like an echo of her own life, and the only way to nurture it was by using oxygen from the environment, or oxygen from her lungs. She was already nearing empty already, and she hadn't even gotten closer to Marco as yet. Doubling her efforts, she tried to 'swim' towards him, but it was an awkward failed attempt, as she'd never even done anything of the sort before… no surprise why.

Already, her sense of self-preservation kicked in, but she fought against the want to save her own life by bailing early from the rescue attempt. In the wake of the moment, her anxious mind screamed for a solution and found one. Creating a clone that phased out of her, she kicked off the clone before it disappeared (due to its flame dying out abruptly) to quickly move towards Marco. Finally reaching him, she grabbed the teen in a tight hug in her fervent hope to preserve his life.

She'd caught up to him. Holding the cold youth in her arms, he unconsciously leaned forward into her as if to embrace more of the only comforting warmth in the entire universe-... a passionate heat, yet one that was familiar to him. Her own naturally fiery body temperature, though falling as the vacuum of space tried to steal it from her, she expended even more of her precious oxygen to flare up both her flame and her body heat for his sake in an effort to chase away the frigidity in his veins.

To save his life, she would never let him go.

Finally in the right position as they floated towards one constant direction, she urgently slashed open a one-way portal that they smoothly glided through. The second they made it through, they fell to the floor still tightly grasping one another. Hekapoo had the presence of mind to let him go promptly before the wrong kinds of questions were asked, though it could be said that he was a little grabby to her touch as they started to gasp in mouthfuls of air. With each breath she took to stave off asphyxiation, the flame atop her head blazed larger and larger, before Moon had to caution her to stop hyperventilating before she burned down the ceremonial hall.

"Damn it, Omnitraxus!" Hekapoo exclaimed as she slowly came down from her high. "You really send people to a merciless death like that?! I nearly died out there in goddamn SPACE!"

"For the record, you were the one who wanted to go there, all for the sake of this boy…" he pointed at the still-unconscious Diaz with a thumb. "He should've died alone. Given what he's capable of, how are we supposed to deal with a brat who gets stronger the way he does? Hmm? Put him under ball and chain and double the weight daily? I can't see that ever working out."

"Calm down. I may not look it, but I know a thing or two about how a body works." Kneeling down beside Marco whilst parting her scissors into daggers, she then started to open up tiny portals inside Marco's body, taking great care as she worked.

"What are you doing?" Rhombulus queried out of curiosity.

"I'm opening portals in his tendons to separate how they work from his muscles and his bones. It's the same as cutting them to cripple him, but with less pain and blood."

"His tendons…" Moon pondered on this for a bit. "I see! Despite his muscles, if his tendons don't work to support his limbs, he may as well have no strength at all. He's well and truly neutralized." Coming to a decision, she nodded in approval. "Very well, I'll allow it." Hardly had she said this did the earth begin to shake violently, forcing Hekapoo to stop before she snipped a portal in Marco where she didn't want it. She even had to brace herself on the floor just to keep herself from going off balance, waiting it out until it passed.

"Geez, where're all these earthquakes coming from?"

"They've been happening nonstop since Omnitraxus Prime's time-thingy started working for some people," River offered.

"Probably a coincidence," said demigod grumbled when everyone stared at him for a moment. "But in any case, it'll soon pass. Not to mention, Marco is now under control, right? Everything will work out." To this, Hekapoo did not answer. At last, she finished incapacitating Marco, and the demigoddess tried her best not to let her true emotions show.

The Black King was in check.

And that concludes the Pawn-fights. Feels like Marco took one step forward and two steps backward, am I right? But for all the reveals, especially in this chapter, it makes you start to wonder if Marco is still the bad guy. Some things were answered and confirmed, but now a whole bunch of other things are still unaccounted for.

About Omnitraxus… oh yeah, he's a really powerful guy. I guess that he is… given the fact that bad guys tend to target him first while he's still off guard, and that he can see into other universes, fix time loops… He's the SPACE-TIME GUY, according to his own words.

As per the fights, I tried my best. I hope it was good enough to help fulfill the adventure tag of the fic. Drama, doubly so. I guess that's it.

How was it?

Goodbye everyone/ Valete omnes,

MRAY 4TW.