Vestiges

20.

Castling

It had been two days. Throughout it all, Jackie had been somewhat ailing (a mild fever that lasted from before the ill-fated ceremony), but it could not possibly come close to the suffering that her friends and newfound companions were going through. All of them, at the very least, suffered multiple broken bones, be it torso, limbs or cracks in their skulls, and yet still, it paled in comparison to what had been done to Janna.

And to think that it was at the hands of Marco. Their friend.

Honestly, Jackie had always felt left out when it came to things like this. Whenever Marco and Star used to go adventuring with each other while they were still on Earth, Jackie could tell that she was never really suited for the lifestyle, and that was apparent on the few times it involved her, such as the field trip to another dimension, or even the sleepover where they had to make certain confessions…

When Marco returned from Mewni, (though his mind and heart had never left it), this case was even more of the same. Whenever Marco went through his changes, went through his life, made his own choices, Jackie had always felt like a foreigner. Sure, they got into a relationship together and despite their dates, the kisses that they shared, she felt almost as if they were boyfriend and girlfriend in name only.

Suffice to say, she almost felt sorry that she didn't get beaten up by Marco… just to fit in with everyone else who was. She could care for the matter, but she hated not being able to share empathy for those caught in the disaster. For Kelly whose vision was still crossed because of her knockout blow, and was still confined to her bed because of her broken ribs. For Tom, who had been buffeted and hurt all over, and was being nursed back to health in his home dimension in the underworld. For Pony Head, who had incurred aches and pains and the loss of her distinguishing pride of her royal family, only for it to be used as a common stabbing weapon. For Star, who had lapsed into a coma by her own weird biology…-her internal injuries and concussion were that severe. And for Janna…

Jackie didn't allow herself to cry. Nothing had been confirmed yet. As far as she had heard, Janna hung in limbo, in a state of being both alive and dead. The technicalities surrounding her fate was still unsolved, and she had to be crystallized in order to put her in indefinite stasis until her problem could be solved.

But Jackie's own foolishness aside for not being 'included' in the tragic affair, the teen was now walking aimlessly through around the damaged ceremonial hall, not truly belonging there, especially not since it's destruction and tragedy from a few days ago. She didn't really have anyone to speak or even related to. And how far would she have gotten simply by saying that she was the ex-girlfriend of a 'well-intentioned' villain and an acquaintance of the princess he nearly murdered?

Breaking her thoughts, a fiery portal opened in the wrecked ceremonial hall, just in front of one of the only benches that weren't entirely wrecked. An alabaster-complexioned woman of a relatively short and buxom build stepped out of it, but coupled with her description, the fact that she was dressed in clothes that looked like flames and had a fire constantly burning betwixt her horns, Jackie instantly recognized her as one of the members of the M.H.C.

Said M.H.C. member seemed absent-minded as if she didn't notice Jackie's presence in the hall, or she did not care. Jackie, however, merely continued to observe the woman as she casually took a seat on the bench, and closed the portal she had come out of. For a while, Jackie tried to figure out why the demigoddess would just come back to the scene of a battle just to sit on a busted bench, rather than doing something more productive like… anything else, actually.

So Jackie asked her. Just to pick her brains a little.

"Hey, you were here two days ago during the battle, right? Shouldn't you be out doing something else? Investigation or help relief or something?"

"Why? I should be out fixing the damage your boyfriend caused, right?"

"He's not my boyfriend," Jackie said as best as she could without making it sound as if she wanted Marco to be in a relationship with her.

"Whatever. Besides, there's nothing else to do besides being his warden. Now, what do you want human? Did you want someone or something to talk at?" Hekapoo asked in annoyance.

Jackie heard irritation, but despite her common sense, prattled on. "Don't you mean talk 'to', and not 'at'?"

"I certainly did not INTEND on having a conversation with you, that's what."

After that, she lapsed back into silence for a while, but Jackie didn't want to leave well enough alone. Perhaps it was because she still felt like an outsider and wanted to get more information on the recent state of affairs so that she could relate, or she just wanted to confirm a rumor that was running through the castle.

But to just rush to that topic would be tactical suicide. Especially when the person was liable to burn her to a crisp or eat her alive or something… who knew what these people were capable of?

Jackie took a seat on the bench beside Hekapoo taking care not to sit on splinters or upright nails. "Aren't you the one that yanked Marco from Earth and made him do a trial to get dimensional scissors?"

Hekapoo didn't say yes. More importantly, she didn't say no, and that's what Jackie was working with.

"For something that lasted for sixteen years as I've been told, I think that Marco should've at least disliked you or something. Instead, all I'm hearing from a few gossiping knights was that he didn't seem to be trying to fight you."

Hekapoo was still quiet.

"When I was on Earth, like, before Star showed up, I'll admit that he's never been close to me. Heck, even when we were dating, I doubt that we ever really got close. It's almost like eating food, and never really getting full… it just always felt kinda… hollow. Like I've never really belonged there beside him. Or maybe I'm giving him too much credit, and he's not the one who belonged beside ME." Hekapoo did not respond to this, but Jackie took notice that the demigoddess was now listening. It wasn't because she was forced to, but because it was obvious that she could've left at any time she wanted but hadn't.

"But I dunno. Maybe this is going to sound a little perverted or I'm just an idiot, but there were others who seemed to fit in with him a lot more than I ever could. Like Star, or that 'Higgs' girl that everyone seems to hate right now, or Kelly, even Janna. I'm even getting that same kind of vibe from you too."

"Hmm… I'd say that you're an idiot."

Jackie smiled to herself at the success of getting a reaction out of the woman, even if it was just an insult that Jackie herself had set up. "That's not the point. It's obvious that the two of you have some history for that to happen. He doesn't hate you, and you don't seem to hate him either. How'd that happen?"

"It's none of your business."

Almost at once, Jackie's usually laid-back attitude splintered and broke apart. "Oh, it's definitely my business when Marco almost kills his and MY friends, especially when one of them is in a coma and another one is stuck in a limbo of life and death-… something I can't even wrap my head around. You're a member of the group of people that he's against personally, and he showed you special treatment!"

"Because he's an idiot, a'right! Now leave me alone!"

"Then you're an idiot too because you chucked out into space to save him! Demigoddess or not, I will kick your ass if you don't tell me why right now!"

It was more than she could take. It was an insult, sure, and those were never really good for someone's wellbeing. But at a time when she was mentally exhausted like this, being harassed by human had to be the lowest point in her life. Ways of killing the annoyance by dropping her into a dangerous portal passed through her mind, each destination more horrific and self-gratifying than the last. And yet, Hekapoo felt like she would've lost something. She would've lost the argument by default, simply by killing Jackie.

Tempting. No witnesses. No one would know. But she'd know. From then on, she'd know that a human girl figured out that she was in love with a boy who passed her trial, and she had killed her because she stated something that even someone with the intelligence of a goldfish could figure out.

"It's… true. We're both idiots," Hekapoo admitted in a whisper. "I guess it just happened. And it didn't even mean much back then, either."

"Happened? What happened…?"

"I live in a dimension that's running on a different timescale than Earth's own. But as far as I can tell, it happened when he was twenty-four years old. For the first time in about…" Hekapoo started to count on her fingers, "I guess roughly five human centuries, give or take a couple of decades, I needed help. And it had to be from a human… a real indignity to me."

"You've got something against humans?"

"I don't hate humans… I just have a low opinion of 'em. That's all. If there was a food chain between all the beings in the dimensions, if humans were lucky, they would end up qualifying as grass. They multiply fairly quickly, they're weak, spineless, can hardly fend for themselves… and have some of the shortest lifespans I've ever seen."

"I don't exactly have a high opinion of you either."

"I know that." With a sigh, she tried to get comfortable on the bench. "I know that I'm not perfect. I can be cruel, heartless, vindictive and bitchy, all of those things. And that was exactly how I treated Marco. He had my stolen scissors in his possession, so I was really eager to put him down and be done with it. But that guy's like a weed or something-… he just kept coming back. I mean, he was so persistent that I could barely find the time to keep diverting him away from my workshop with the clones he was after. Finally, he got stranded in dimension X-105, the dimension known for its winter fourteen out of sixteen months of their year. It was really cold there… It was like the inside of an ice cube during midday, and don't get me started on how cold it was at night. I was the one trying to strand him there so that he'd die-… just so that I'd be rid of him. I had better things to do than being chased all over the multiverse by a human. But he held out in his cave for six months, and it was so cold outside that he couldn't even be away from a fire for even two hours before catching hypothermia. I know that he even nearly got frostbite a couple times."

"Are you usually like this to everyone who takes your quest? You know… unnecessarily cruel?" Jackie deadpanned.

"No. But I admit that I made it especially hard for him… I was getting really pissed at him during first few years. The whole time when he started the challenge, he's like 'I won't give up 'till I get back those scissors'," she said in a poor imitation of Marco's voice. "I even made a few portals that would send him home, but he never went through them. He didn't even peek-… it's as if he worried that if he even so much as look through, he'd only want to give up, and I know that he really wanted to go back to his loved ones. Eventually, I just stopped giving him those chances."

"Gee…" Jackie grumbled with a frown, "you really are heartless. What happened next?"

"He kinda disappeared for a few weeks without my clone catching a peep from the old abandoned castle she was watching him from. But in a tundra like that, it'd be impossible for my clone to stay alive outside for even a few seconds without a blizzard blowing out its flame. So… in my moment of stupidity, I decided to go check for myself if he really was dead. I have to confirm when people who're taking the quest die or give up so that I can accommodate newcomers. So… that's what I did..."

"Oi! Human! You alive?" Hekapoo yelled as she clambered up the slope with great difficulty. The level of snowfall was always at least more than just a few METERS high, not to mention the fact that blizzards kept coming right after the other. Luckily, Hekapoo was still warm due to her magical biology. However, she could tell that she was on a time limit, as the temperature was still falling. The last thing she wanted was to open a portal in his direct proximity only to be jumped in a surprise attack… well, that came second to actually dying in a place like this.

She knew that his main dwelling place was a cave close to the top of a hill where the mouth of it curved downwards so as to not allow snow to freely blow inside. It wasn't very high up a hill, but he only dwelled there in this dimension so as to avoid getting snowed in. Getting trapped by snow was certainly a great fear of his, Hekapoo decided with a shrug. Still climbing up the mountain, she finally took notice that there seemed to be quite a lot of handholds and footholds she could hold on to, or step on. Kicking away a bit of snow from the one she was standing on, she realized that it was the remains of a tree stump, hacked away almost to the roots. It was with a somewhat growing sense of guilt that she realized what had happened to the tree that that stood there, and she looked around only to see a few more of the very same stumps littering the side of the hill. Regardless, as if she didn't want to believe her own theories, she decided to inquire into the reasons.

Using her telepathy with her clones, she mentally reached out to the very one who had been observing Marco from the castle far away from the location. 'Hey, what happened to the trees around here?'

"Isn't it obvious?" The clone replied to her over the mental link, "the human must've chopped down the trees to burn just to keep himself warm in his cave. But he still can't find enough animals in the area to skin just to make himself a big fur coat that can keep him warm long enough to make it to the castle I'm in."

Looking around again at some of the stumps that weren't hidden by the immense amount of snow, she asked a slightly more specific question. 'So how many trees were there to begin with?'

'How many? Hold on, let me get the telescope…' Post this, it seemed that the clone had gone to get a telescope, and it wasn't too long before she came back again to speak over the mental link. 'Alright, I see you. Whoa… I guess I lost track of what was going on over there for a while, but there used to be a whole damn forest covering that hill where you're standing. Even the bottom of the hill too. A decent lot of trees around the area."

"A forest?" Hekapoo blurted out loud. "There's nothing here but a couple of stumps!"

"I'm not a conservationist. I'm just a friggin' clone that's stationed here just to have a human to blow my fire out. If you've got a problem with it, take it up with him."

Hekapoo cut the mental link immediately. "Smart-mouth." With a bit of urgency now, she went up the snow-covered hill faster now, trying to get to the cave that Marco was taking shelter in. She soon arrived at the entrance, and the natural sloping of the roof that half-covered the roof was low enough to make her duck her head just because of her horns. Sometimes, she just hated having the useless things. Was she designed to gore people like a bull or something?

"Thanks a lot, Glossaryck. Some sick imagination you have," she mumbled sarcastically and angrily.

Letting her exasperation pass, she entered the cave but found it almost pitch black, save for the flame that burned between her horns. Flaring it brighter and hotter, there was now enough light for her to see, and the first thing to attract her attention was the human who was sleeping on the dirt floor of the small cave like an animal. He was half-covered with the coat of small animal skins he was trying to make, but it was only enough to cover his back, just as the clone had informed her. In maintaining her distance from the man, she noted that he was shivering every now and again, and the animal skins didn't even come close to being enough to keep him warm.

In this area that the human challenger was been stranded in, there used to be a village close in design to Mewni's, until it was afflicted by a harsh winter brought on by a sudden and severe climate change. Although random by incident, it was still quite brutal; most weren't used to such weather, and most had died out waiting for the weather change to revert itself, before the rest decided to move on in search of a more appropriate climate before they too shared the same fate. Leaving their homes behind, it was well that they did, before the worst of the winter snowed them in and completely covered their homes that their roofs couldn't even be seen anymore. All that truly remained above the new-found snowy ground was the upper half of a castle that was too distant from the point that Marco had entered the dimension from, and he had to detour to the nearby cave he was now in before the blood froze in his veins.

For months upon months, he had lasted by using the cave as shelter, tending a fire from using the trees in the area. His water came from the ice and snow he melted in an old saucepan he had the good chance of finding earlier. His food came from the small critters that he managed to find and trapped whenever he emerged from the safety and warmth of the cave, and their skins he salvaged in an effort to make a coat that would keep him warm enough to get to the castle he knew the Hekapoo clone was taking shelter in.

This, however, was his mistake that Hekapoo realized that he had only just found out. Those small squirrel-like creatures were very few in number because they were the only ones who managed to adapt to their now permanent winter landscape, and they needed the trees to make their homes in and to get their food from. The human had cut down the trees for the fire he needed to keep surviving, trees that would not grow again for decades. He had done so, believing and hoping that he'd be able to make a coat before they ran out, but he had never counted on the fact that he'd run out of animals and skins to make the coat before he finally ran out of wood.

This was the person she found. The human was now in his final few hours of life; trying to clutch at the warmth of a coat was would never be enough, now in the depths of the slumber he was doomed to die in, sleeping next to the dying embers of the last fire that gave off even less heat than a matchstick.

"So this is the human who's going to get dimensional scissors, huh?" she asked boredly as she approached his shivering sleeping form, before sitting on the other side away from him with her back leaning against the wall of the cave. "You had the nerve to take on my challenge… only to die in your sleep. I guess I don't have to leave yet, only to come back later-… I can't end the quest until you kick the bucket, so I might as well wait it out."

Of course, he did not answer.

She waited like this for a while but soon found that she easily got bored listening to the human draw haggard breath after breath. It wasn't as if she wanted him to die. She just wanted him to hurry up and be done with it. Fifteen minutes passed before she quickly grew bored and started to wonder how much longer it would take for him to perish. Opening up a small portal back to a small bookcase in her workshop, she peered through and skimmed over the titles. Most of the bookcase was taken up by books of contemporary romance (the adult kind that she usually liked to read while drinking a glass of lava Chardonnay), though there were a few other miscellaneous books there as well. Hesitating in her choice, instead of picking her favorite novel, she picked out a medical book and started to skim the 'H' section, trying to find out more specifics about hypothermia. She blazed her flame brighter now so as to provide enough light to read with.

"Tch, you're a lot of trouble," Hekapoo mumbled. "Now, I'm gonna have to learn about something totally unnecessary. Alright, now how do I check for a pulse to find out how severe his hypothermia is. Oh? His neck?"

She got up to move across to sit next to him, and reached down to rest her hand on his neck, but before she could do this, she realized that he had stripped out of his shirt while she had been reading, and nearly started to dig into the ground as if he were a wild animal in his state of now half-consciousness. "What … the fuck…? When did you take off your clothes? As a matter of fact… why WOULD you?!" Turning back to her book, she skimmed through the headings of adverse side-effects of the illness. "Okay, here it is… paradoxical undressing when the victim becomes disoriented. Terminal burrowing into dark corners or into dirt when in the final stages of hypothermia is not uncommon. Guess you're not too long due for a pine box, right human?" Chuckling as she turned back to Marco, the laughter died in her throat when she realized that Marco had stripped out of his pants now, and the demigoddess stared.

She didn't stop staring.

Half-biting her bottom lip nervously, she almost reluctantly tore her eyes away from him and returned her attention back to the book. "There isn't anything about hypothermia affecting his size, is there?"

"You're a pervert, aren't you?" Jackie deadpanned when Hekapoo began to giggle at the memory somewhat perversely. It was even more apparent by the red tinting in her face, but being accused upset her a little, making her roll her eyes.

"You prude. It's not as if I took a picture or anything," she remarked, lying through her teeth. "I was purely about the medical aspect of his situation."

"I don't believe you." In order to prove her innocence (though she hardly was), Hekapoo opened up a small portal through which she reached her arm through and retrieved a pocket-sized book with a pen in its binding. After closing the portal, she handed the book to Jackie and motioned for her to read it. Turning to the first page, Jackie read the entry out loud.

"'Hour 1: I learned to check for his pulse, and I procured a thermometer so I can check how close the human is to bite the dust, but not literally. He's removed his clothes in his sleep, and is digging into the floor as if he's crazy. Temperature is 77 degrees, Heart rate is 32 beats per minute. He ought to buy the farm pretty soon.'" Turning back to Hekapoo, Jackie asked the most obvious question on her mind. "Is this a diary? A sick and twisted and psychotic diary?"

"Well… Kinda," Hekapoo said, taking the light insult in stride. "I was using it to note his progress to dying. A bit cold of me, but the opposite happened. Keep reading."

Nodding to the small obligation, Jackie did just that. "'Hour 2: I was getting a bit disturbed by the human's burrowing in the ground while naked, but I didn't interfere. TBH, I found it hilarious at first, but it was like a bad joke getting old. Temperature is still 77 degrees, but his heart rate is now 34 beats per minute. It must be because he's still half-digging the ground." Moving on, Jackie skipped the third and fourth entry, and read the fifth since she realized that the book could be full of these entries (since it was obvious that Marco survived the illness.) "Hour 5: It was taking this bastard even longer than I thought to die. I was getting uncomfortable reading my romances with this naked human in the cave with me and despite the logic that he should die faster without clothes, I decided to put them back on him. Temperature is now at 79.5 degrees, Heart rate increased to 36 beats per minute.' Alright." Jackie looked up. "So you had the heart to put his clothes back on, and he got better, but only accidentally because you were too stubborn to leave until he died."

"It did help his chances of surviving a little bit," Hekapoo agreed, "But he still should've frozen to death easily. The last ember of his puny fire went out completely in the third hour, and since he wasn't eating, his body had no way of generating warmth for him at all. He SHOULD have died. Skip to the eighth hour."

Jackie nodded. "Okay." She flipped to the entry and started to read it. 'Eighth hour: Things got weird…'"

Hekapoo felt something nudge against her side. Looking up from the romance she was reading, she was nearly horrified to see the human man next to her; he had been lying on his belly almost completely on the other side of the cave, but he had somehow crawled his way towards her in his weak and unconscious state. Recoiling away from him as if he had a contagious illness, with an air of confusion, she decided to retreat to the position that he was in first. However, hardly five minutes passed before the weak man was by her side again. In a violent fit, she kicked him away, hoping to keep him away from her permanently, but he persisted. Though ill-treated, he was beside her again, and the demigoddess felt her irritation grow.

"Damnit, leave me alone, human!" Kicking him even harder again, she then sat again but this time, now watched him carefully. After a few minutes, he was soon at it again, crawling towards her albeit even more slowly now that she had severely hurt his badly weakened body. To hurt him any more would be sure to kill him, and she exercised restraint. This became harder and harder to do as she watched him near her, and wondered why the hell he was so gravitated towards her.

That was when she realized the obvious.

"Oh, duh. The fire above my head!" She wondered out loud. "That's also why he seemed to be improving a little bit these last few hours. I've been increasing the flame a lot so I could use the light to see, but it's also increasing the temperature in the cave. If that's the case, if he's gonna die sooner rather than later, I just need to leave."

Before she could make do on this act, however, Marco had reached her again and much faster this time around, most likely because he was now fully conscious because of her kicking him. This time, instead of stopping at her side while lying still on the ground, he managed to rouse himself into sitting up and hugged the shocked demigoddess as tightly as he could, trying to salvage her excessive body heat in order to desperately warm himself.

"Please don't leave," he wheezed pathetically. "I need you…" After this, his low speech warbled and trailed off, leaving her to think that he was trying to 'come on' to her, unbelievable as it was. Having apparently expended what little energy he had left, he now sagged unconscious; his grip slacked a bit, and the main reason why he was still upright was that he was leaning against Hekapoo. The demigoddess herself was still shocked to even react properly and shift away from him, much less push him off.

"Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit, oh shit-"

"So you helped him live," Jackie smiled good-naturedly before it fell. "You were waiting around for him to die, and you accidentally saved his life. But that hardly explained why he's attached to you."

"That's because it didn't. After a few more minutes, I finally came to my senses and bucked him off before I teleported outta there," Hekapoo deadpanned. "I still didn't care for the guy. At least, I thought I didn't. I stayed at my workshop for the next day after that, wondering how long before I could go back to find his corpse. But my life dragged on after that… my work got more monotonous, my food seemed to have no taste, my hobbies, hell, my books just seemed to lose their entertainment value altogether. I'm not sure if it was because I was starting to pity him, but I had found a welcome change from my constant way of living just by associating with him. I didn't care if me being close to him saved his life, but I only wanted the distraction from the daily life I got when I was there. Like a sick hobby."

Flipping through the book until the entries ended halfway, Jacked asked a rhetorical question. "So you went back, huh?"

"Yep. I went back. He's lucky that I did. That was the closest he came to death's door in that cave… trembling like a leaf in the cold, and starving like a runaway mongrel."

"But the entries look like they last for a week, even more. Doesn't that mean you fed him and such in order to keep him around so long?"

"Uh huh," Hekapoo mumbled half-ashamedly, "I had to keep the distraction around as long as I could… so… I started to take care of him, but I didn't care ABOUT him as just I said, just as a crazy hobby. That was the case at first, but even when he was helpless, he just grew on me. You know, like getting too close to a stray puppy. I kept him at distance at first, visiting when I believed he was unconscious-… I would usually just make a fire for him once every few hours, leave food and water every now and again, and record his vital information each hour. In the end, instead of just being a weird habit, I actually started looking forward to doing it. Not just doing it because of him, but I started looking forward to doing it for him."

With a shaky sigh, Hekapoo tried to gather herself, and Jackie allowed her a moment so that she could continue her story.

"I liked helping him, and I liked him too. But for the quest's sake, I tried to keep up some caution and give him some distance. After he recovered a bit, he always tried to talk to me when he realized that it was the actual original Hekapoo who was helping him, but I never stuck around. I stopped visiting regularly, just so he couldn't predict when I'd show up. I cared about him, but I didn't want him to catch on-...I tried to make sure that he didn't know that. I tried to give the impression that I was doing it out of pity, but things started to go downhill with him after a while. He stopped eating the food I brought him, and the water went untouched. I don't think he even tried to sit close to the fire I would make for him. Sometimes, he'd just kick it out as soon as I'd light it. He was starting to weaken again, but he wouldn't take my help. I began to worry about him-… I didn't worry anymore about losing some side interest. I was just scared that he'd actually die."

"Is that so?" Going back a few pages, Jackie started to skim through the entries. In doing so, she noticed with great interest that somewhere along the line, Hekapoo's entries had stopped calling him 'Human', then soon started to refer to him with pronouns. Before long, she was soon using his proper name in the entries and called him 'Marco'. The girl realized that Hekapoo had indeed started caring for him as she nursed him carefully in the beginning, and this grew even more deeply during the latter period when she pretended to still try to keep him at arm's length. Though mostly done for herself (as she said before as a 'welcome distraction'), Hekapoo had long come to have affection for the human. Even without Hekapoo telling her the story now, it was still obvious to anyone who even read her book of entries. From the stout font in the beginning as she only wrote shorthand specifics and nowadays acronyms. Then there was a transition into an easier letter type that described Marco's condition that came later on, then the last set of entries that was filled with a flowing and loving cursive that carefully recorded Marco's detailed state of health, his actions, even the things he said in his sleep. She even wrote about the ways she could alleviate his suffering in the cave, such as bringing him warm bedding for him to sleep on. Things kept on like this in the final third of the book, before it seemed to come to an abrupt halt. At the 168th hour, the entry was what looked like a panicked, angry scrawl:

'Hour 168: MARCO'S GONE!'

Hekapoo dropped the entry book and looked around the small cave in search for Marco, almost mad enough to start turning over stones in her desperation, though she knew better. She didn't want to accept it, but it was glaringly obvious that Marco wasn't in the cave, and the only place he'd gone was into the frozen hell that was always just beyond the exit.

"Of all the dumb shit to pull…!" Already taking out her dimensional scissors, she focused on him in her mind before opening a portal to warp to his location instantly. She ended up opening a portal at his side just as he lumbered past, but despite the harsh blowing snow, she knew that he had seen her because their eyes met one another. She stayed from where she was at the portal, only allowing her head and upper torso to stick through. "Hey, human! Where are you going?! Why'd you leave the cave?"

He didn't answer. He either didn't hear, or he was pretending not to. Hekapoo was more than willing to bet that it was the latter, and she felt her annoyance with his behavior well up as she watched him continue to toil through the snow. It was a slow business; his snowshoes were merely improvised roof tilings, his usual tan-looking complexion was still looking sickly, and he didn't move with his usual level of high endurance, not to mention the fact that he still hadn't fully recovered from his hypothermia. He had long passed his body's tolerance for abuse and sickness, and it was taking a severe toll on him. It was like watching a disabled person attempt a task that was well out of their capability, yet wishing to persist anyway out of their sense of (sometimes foolish) pride and independence, and Hekapoo hated watching him go on like this.

"Oi! Answer me, human!"

Still no answer.

"Well, aren't we just bright, chipper and suicidal today, am I right?"

The second she mentioned the word 'suicidal', Hekapoo noticed a moment's hesitation in his movements, and eagerly pressed on when she thought she had discovered his weakness. "Is that it?! You wanna die? After all this time, after a full fucking DECADE, you want to DIE?!"

"Leave me alone!" he yelled back as best as he could, trying to make his voice carry through the perpetual snowstorm. "Don't you have someone else to make miserable?! Geez, why don't you go buy a fuckin' dog or goldfish or something?!"

"What?" By now, he had trudged on too far away from her, and she exited and closed the portal to go after him, taking care to walk in his footsteps. It made sense to her that since he was in this freezer of dimension for such a long time, it made him an expert of knowing where to walk. For the moment, the snow melted instantly under her shoe as if she was like a proverbial hot knife through butter. To her mild startle, she sunk a bit, melting through the snow, before she felt the ground beneath her feet. She didn't know that he was, in fact, walking on shallow snow at the moment, where the rooves of the houses were. She soon reverted her attention to him again, making her way after him quickly. "What do you mean, 'buy a dog or a goldfish'? Of all the stupid irrelevant things to come out of your mouth, you keep breaking your own record!"

"I mean to get yourself a damn animal to keep you company!" He yelled back, not turning around. "I… am… not… your… fuckin'... PET!"

"Huh?" It was more out of surprise and shock rather than feigned ignorance, and the man turned around and gave her a glare even worse than anything she could manage herself.

"You think I don't know what you've been doing? Treating me like I'm some dog you found by the roadside? Poking me, checking my temperature and pulse, giving me food on the ground, KICKING ME? God, I was fuckin' desperate, I admit it. But what am I supposed to do next? Wait around for Madam Veterinarian to decide to give me shots?"

"No," she protested weakly. "It wasn't like that-"

"Just keep your shitty observations to yourself! I don't need a goddamn vet, I only need to pass your damn challenge!"

"If that's how you damn well felt, then why haven't you blown out my flame, huh? I'm sure you had plenty of chances."

"You didn't give any chances! You kept your guard up, and every time you even come close, you just increase the size of your flame. You expect me to blow out a flamethrower?!"

'That's true,' she thought to herself. In her moment of silence, he stormed away from her and as if she was tugged by an invisible leash that bound them, she followed after him. "But you've got it wrong still. Even if I made it hard for you every time I came to the cave, you would've tried to blow out my flame anyway, or even steal my scissors, 'cause you've been trying your damndest until now. What happened to that guy? Huh? Did he turn into a pussy-?!"

Precisely at that moment, Hekapoo had finally left the shallow snow of the roof and essentially stepped off into the huge amount of snow which had covered the ground far below. For the first time in such a freezing environment, her normally fervent body temperature worked against her, and she sunk through the snow like a hot spear, the snow turning to steam instantly. Marco turned around just in time hear her fading yell as she burned through the snow. He had half-expected her melt through the snow in that fashion, but it wasn't intentional.

Though he thought it was a welcome riddance. At least now she'd get to experience at least part of his own sufferings in the frozen desert he'd been stranded in.

With hardly a second thought, Marco trudged on again, taking care to walk with a wide center of gravity using the roof tiles tied to the bottom of his feet. However, he heard what sounded like something cataclysmic was building, and he turned around to see a pillar of fire roar out of the hole she sank into. He watched in wonder for a moment, before it died down. Soon after, he heard what sounded like exertions, and he chanced to go back to the hole and lied down at the edge. Far below, he could see Hekapoo attempting to jump up, but failed as the hight of the hole eclipsed her limit by more than a few meters. She couldn't even touch the snow at the sides of the person-sized hole without destabilizing even more of the snow at the top bring it down to cover her completely.

"Quit messing around, Hekapoo," Marco called unconcernedly down into the hole. "Just your scissors and teleport. Isn't that what you have them for?"

"..." She said something that he didn't quite hear, but he still figured out what it was. He even began to laugh at this, mostly out of vindictiveness instead of humor.

"You lost them?! Can't you just make a portal without them? Oh, wait… if you could, you wouldn't need scissors in the first place. Oh man, that's just fuckin' great! You're caught like an animal in a trap! This is so ironic!"

And to her growing horror, his head disappeared from view from the top of the hole.

"Marco left you there?" Jackie asked in disbelief. "I don't believe you."

"He didn't," Hekapoo confirmed. "I just thought that he did. He had good reason too, cause it should stand to reason that I'd be able to get out of a mess like that. To any normal person, I'm fire incarnate. I should've been able to melt the snow in any direction I wanted in order to get to somewhere I could stand on. Hell, even make some clones I could stand on. But it all came down to the depth of that snow drift I'd sunk into."

Jackie raised a questioning eyebrow.

"When I first fell in, I could still jump, but not very far 'cause my legs kept melting through the snow… it's the equivalent of trying to jump out of quicksand for a normal person, so I decided to just melt everything at once with a burst of fire. By the time I did that and reached the actual ground far below, it was too high for even me to actually jump out of. To make matters worse, at that depth… I guess it was just a little bit better than being in space… sure, there was some thin air, but it wasn't enough, not to mention the fact that more snow kept falling down on me and putting out my goddamn flame. It was already hard just to keep it lit when I was still next to Marco, and it was almost impossible to do it in that freezer of a home. And… I was feeling kinda drained after creating the pillar of fire. I had basically dug my own grave, and I was gonna die down there."

"But you're here now, aren't you?"

"Well, duh. I said he never left. In fact, the idiot actually let himself fall into the hole with me. On purpose! He didn't really hurt himself, but I cussed him out for doing it, especially since he caused a lot of snow to fall in on top of me too. I mean, of all the dumb shit he could pull, he literally jumps into an effing grave with me when he knew I would need help getting out. But after chewing him out for a while, I remembered how he had reacted to when I called him 'suicidal'."

"It's been ten years, you know," he said, stamping his feet and rubbing his arms in an effort to try and warm himself by even one degree. "And you don't look even a day older since I last saw you."

"Don't you mean that last clone whose flame you blew out six months ago?"

"No. I mean you. The original."

"But what of it?"

"I wanted to go home. I still do. I'm not just homesick. I'm sick and tired of always being sick and tired. I hate having to chase you over the multiverse, and I can tell that you hate having me doing it too. So why the hell are we dragging this out?"

"I'm not dragging it out. It only lasts as long as long as you're alive, and haven't given up AND decided that you don't want d-scissors anymore."

Marco shivered violently as he clutched the too-small cloak closer to himself. "...I only meet one of those criteria."

"Huh?"

"Hekapoo. I'd already given up. I wanted you to send me home ever since I saw you in my cave. I was trying to tell you that, but I think I fell unconscious before I finished." In response to this, her mouth had the distinct 'oh' shape that she had only just understood what had happened. "But instead, all you've done was treat me like I'm nothing b-but an… animal!" He exclaimed in between chattering teeth. "I wanted to go home! I miss my family! I miss my friends! I miss Star! I miss having a good roof over my head, the people I rub shoulders with and who actually CARE about me! Who knows what they're doing… They've grown up. Maybe they've gone to college… raise families. Meanwhile, I'm here trying to chase down a demon who's just lengthening out my torture. Maybe they must've thought that I've died by now…"

After this, Marco petered out in his grief and rambled incoherently. However, somewhere along the line as Hekapoo could only listen to the man reduced to tears, she believed that he could hear his bawls for 'the quest to just be over and done with', and fully grasped that yes, the boy she'd watched grow up had been thoroughly broken, and he couldn't stand anymore.

He wanted to die.

So much had just been revealed to her. For starters, he'd never called her a 'demon' before, despite knowing her appearance might resemble one, she knew from the minds that she shared with her clones that had they had learned that he found her attractive, unbelievable to her as it were. Secondly, she had no idea that she had only made his plight worse by illtreating him when she first found him in the cave. That went further downhill when she had only kept him around merely for amusement and though her reasons changed over time, she never once tried to hear him out, and he was fully convinced that she just didn't want to give him what he wanted, no matter it was. He wished for scissors, he didn't get it. He wished to go home, he didn't get it. He wished to die, and she wouldn't let him.

Despite being called a demon, being the one accused for making his life miserable, she couldn't get angry. She had NO right to.

"I'm sorry for… um… treating you the way I did," Hekapoo apologized. In shock, Marco looked up at her and strained his ears to listen to her, as she found her admittance almost too great for her to bear. "And the fact of the matter is… I hate you from the bottom of my heart too… at least, I used to. I hated everything about you. Your smug look when you defeat my clones. Your damn superior attitude when you chase after them, ensnare them in your traps. I hated everything… but what I hated the most was the fact that one of the weakest species in the multiverse was running through my quest and my clones as if they were nothing but wet paper. So I stranded you out here on purpose."

"You left me in this shitty dimension because you're afraid of LOSING?!" Marco yelled in her face, though she was only a foot away from him, she didn't flinch. "What do you have to lose… a little reputation maybe. I've got my life on the line, and you left me out here to die! I've spent six fucking months battling this endless snow, going out every two hours to chop trees in the few minutes of calm I get, trap what little animals I can eat and skin their furs to make a coat that still hasn't even reached my lower back! I've been fighting off hypothermia every day until now, and if I oversleep by an hour without tending my fire, I'll die in my sleep...and you… and you were scared of LOSING?!" She had the decency to bow her head in shame now, but he missed it, as his head sagged and he said down the side of the hole onto his butt. He was close to unconscious given his earlier exhaustion and tempted to just rest his eyes for a moment. He knew that he was JUST FINE with doing that, but in the silence, he knew that she wanted to say something.

So he held out. Waiting.

His time was shortening, though, despite his new patience. In his mind, he thought that he couldn't hold out anymore and his eyes were beginning to close as much as he didn't want it to. Just as they did, he felt a weight on his legs. Upon opening his eyes again in surprise, he saw that Hekapoo had straddled his lap with both legs to either side and hugging him tightly. Instantly, he started to feel her contact heat radiate from her and seep into his cold bones, and the fire that burned in her core was shared with him when she pressed her bosom against his to warm his heart. He'd known her heat before, back when he hugged her in the cave, but this time it felt much different… she had seemingly lost a great deal of her fire, but she was far more willing to share what she had left with him. It as if the cold environment had vanished from all around him, and the freezing breath that had filled his lungs came out like steam that didn't hurt him, no doubt it was because of her magical background-… he felt as if he was being embraced by a living fire. They were like this for a while, but lest her actions were misinterpreted because of how shallow they usually were, she leaned forward even more against him and spoke softly into his ear.

"You want dimensional scissors but I cannot give them to you, not yet. I can't send you home and I refuse to, because I know you can pass my challenge no matter how unfair I've stacked the odds against you. Now please... forgive my selfishness…" she whispered, "but I want you to live."


"So how did you get out?" Jackie asked, eager to find out.

"Hold on, I'm starting to feel a little parched. Lava Chardonnay?" Hekapoo asked, offering to pour a glass of the volcanic brew, both items that she seemed to have pulled out of nowhere. Jackie politely refused when she saw that the 'wine' looked like something straight out of an active volcano.

"No thanks. I'm… underaged."

"Mm, okay. More for me, I guess. I'll pick up this story in a little while, 'cause it feels like I've gone over some kinda limit."