Vestiges: Suo Potentiale
Um… Hi… this is awkward. Gonna have to shave down update times. Thankfully, I have finally finished my binge-watch list. (I guess we ALL have because of the pandemic.)
Worse yet, and I'm gonna have to do this song bit (Acappella) to refresh the plot in your head for the last time until the story ends. When you see the song, you can read it like a normal poem, I guess, but it's basically a rewrite of Everybody Said (But Nobody Did). If you're inclined to, you can listen to the song real quick to get the rhythm in your head.
N.B.: There are four parts to this. It was going to be my largest chapter to date because I wanted to move on from 'L', and there are only three Alphabet Letters left. The chapter was getting WAY too goddamn long, so I broke it. The whole set of chapters is concurrent because a few fighters travel, so I broke the character perspectives like this:
Lives — Follows the encounter between Marco and Star.
Levis — (Fun fact, this word means 'Joined' or 'Attached'.) It's from the perspective of Higgs, Hekapoo, Toffee, and Eclipsa.
Loss — The fight from the Military's (A squad of Marines) perspective in reaction to the threat on East Bonanza Road/ North Pecos Road, Las Vegas.
Las Vegas — Climax.
29.
L: Part 2
[LIVES] and Levis | Loss in Las Vegas
LIVES
[Marco and Star: Opposing Kings Can't Kill Each Other]
The house was wrecked nearly beyond recognition. There were rocks and other such debris skewed everywhere, to the point that large bits and pieces of the porch had been thrown far into the street, forcing drivers of motor-vehicles to slow down to navigate around them. Nevertheless, their rubbernecking still caused more than just a few of them to fail in doing so as they gawked at the destroyed house and the happenings in the front yard. No bystanders picked through the house — what was left of it, at least — to loot what belonged to the Diazes. Instead, they were a part of the growing crowd in the front yard and the sidewalk, shoving and trying to wheedle the nucleus of those gathered in the middle of the walkway to get a better look.
"What happened?" a dog-walker asked as she trod on someone's foot in her curiosity of the incident. Her dog started to bark incessantly amidst the excitement of the murmurs of the gathered, adding to the growing noise level. "Is someone still trapped in the house?"
"Nah, I hear that no one's left in there," a man replied tersely, deciding not to bring up the fact that she had squarely stepped on his foot; it hardly ever went well trying to teach a teenager to be polite, especially when there wasn't a familial relation. "The man and wife are out here. The Diazes got out. Good thing or they would've been crushed."
"Don't think it was a clean escape." another man asked, trying to see over the heads of the others. "I saw some blood on the ground. And there was a blonde girl with them too."
"So… what's the problem? No house insurance or no health insurance?" The first man glared at the dog-walker, long enough to make the teen uncomfortable. "Sorry. Just some… uh, dark humor-…" She hesitated a while before speaking again, as the murmuring and mingled conversations were getting louder and louder because everyone wanted to make themselves heard. "A blonde girl? Was it Star? She used to live with them when she was going to my high school."
Her dog's barking paused for just a bit before starting up again, more agitated than before.
"This is bullshit, though," the middle-aged man grumbled, "I swear, these rolling earthquakes are getting worse and worse. End-time preachers are starting up again, even after all that June 2006 crap about the mark of the beast as if they haven't embarrassed themselves already. But it's still scary. I live upstairs in my apartment, and I keep seeing new cracks, and the old ones getting bigger. I gotta move out, 'cause I hear earthquakes are more dangerous the higher up you are."
"Nah," someone in front of the three said, one of the local burnouts, "I know and heard when the house came down, and there wasn't an earthquake at the time."
"The ground shook a little. Everyone said so," another person argued.
"It vibrated, kind of. Besides, the earthquake couldn't do that to the house; earthquakes bring things down, not send things flying out all over. It was like something just exploded, and that's what caused the little bit o' shaking. I always thought that this house always attracted crazy stuff when that princess-kid hung around. But this time, when I came out to see what happened," the burnout said, growing agitated, "all I could see was this big ass tree with all kinds of glowing leaves and the whole thing looked like it was growing out of the FUCKING house. Then it disappeared. I swear I wasn't on anything just now, but nobody believes me. Everything was hunky-dory when that princess left, but now that I'm seeing her again, I'm sure that this mess has something to with her."
"I believe you," the teenager said. She was always suspicious of this so-called magical princess and unconvinced about her origins. "Wasn't even at my school for a few hours before she nearly burned it down, and that was just the start."
In the center of it all, the jaded Star was being jostled by the dozens of feet of the curious and concerned that surrounded her and the Diazes from where they were kneeling on the ground, lying down and bleeding to death in Raphael's case. Almost more troubling than his mysterious wound in his chest was Star's seeming impassive face as she looked down at him and his wife, with three inches of a broken knife currently sticking out of her chest, with no blood or labored breathing in her countenance.
It was starting to terrify Raphael.
Straining, he raised a pointing finger at Star who continued to gaze at him. "Is… that mine?" the struggled to say. Angie held on to his other hand within a double grasp, hoping against the fear that she would lose him.
"Hush, mi esposo, don't try to talk. The ambulance is on its way."
"It's yours," the princess stated plainly, "I got stabbed and you're the one who got the wound. I can feel it though, so you're not alone in that." Angie's despondent stare averted to Star, suddenly recalling the girl's earlier warnings with horror. "I just left the knife in because my father used to say that you have to take the sword out of the prey to kill it faster. I think that means that you'll live longer if I leave it in. Sorry."
Angie didn't think she looked sorry. To her, it seemed that Star only said it because she was expected to, like an apologizing child caught stealing simply because it was the norm.
"Can you heal me?" Raphael asked desperately.
"I can do ANYTHING, guys. Healing you from scratch or even replacing your lung with someone else's is simple. The only problem is that I can't really do things for anyone just like that—" Star stopped, her discomfort had reached its limit. "I'm sorry, but could you people give us some space, please? And what's with all the pictures?!" Clasping her hands together, she slowly drew them apart; accompanying the act was some invisible force that pushed everyone away outwards from the center, sending most stumbling. In the same event, every phone transformed into butterflies in puffs of pink glittery smoke, which were immediately set upon by sparrows until there weren't any left. "Alright, that's better." Almost before she finished speaking, Star looked behind her, as if she was searching for something. "Just for me doing that, someone just lost three and a half years of their life. Thought you might've wanted to know. Nothing's free, because someone has to pay for it."
Angie stared at the girl incredulously; it had been almost ten minutes since Raphael had collapsed, and Star had not offered any solutions and all she did was stay close to them. Additionally, she only spoke to them when she was spoken to first. "Are you going to help him or not? Why aren't you doing anything to help?"
"Normally, I do things on impulse. Marco's the one who keeps me in line and is always having to clean up after me. Been happening for a long time, probably ever since we met." Their faces showed confusion and the unplacated tension of Raphael nearing death, yet the girl dawdled getting to the point — she was waiting on Marco to arrive. "It's easy to do things without thinking it through when you know that someone's got your back, but I'll heal the stab if you want me to."
"Of course, we want you to—"
"Wait," Raphael interrupted Angie. "Wait. You said that you could heal me, or give me someone else's lung. But I saw a tree, floating behind you like a mirage when you fought Sienna. Every time you did something, leaves died and fell off. Is that… is it the Tree of Life?"
"Yeah."
"Are those leaves… people?"
"Yes. The leaves are people. They represent everyone in the multiverse. Well, I guess there are a few exceptions to that rule, but they represent everybody."
"Your magic isn't like before."
Star shrugged. "It's always been like that… I think? If that's true, then… wouldn't that make ME the villain, and Marco would be the good guy because he's trying to stop me and destroy the Wellspring?"
"I don't know," Glossaryck replied, "does it?" Star turned to look at the blue magic man who had suddenly appeared next to her and glared at him.
"I thought you left after forcing me to take the tree."
"We never left. Can only watch 'till it ends. Before you ask again for the umpteenth time, I cannot take it back. You're stuck with the responsibility. It comes with job security too, but you either do your job or don't. I don't care."
"Beat it, or are you here to ruin the rest of my life too?"
"Looks like you prefer ignorance too, like Marco's parents. That's okay. Marco wanted to know more and take a look at how he ended up. You wish you knew less, and here you are. God of Life, hmm? No, I meant Goddess," the man said with a laugh. "Looks good on you… well, it would, if you'd just get out of those filthy clothes. But you do you, I suppose. It's kinda Chaotic, don't you think?"
"Um… Star?" Angie asked worriedly, looking at Star who seemed to be having a heated quarrel with an empty space, "who are you talking to?"
"You gonna tell her that you're hallucinating, or that you see me sometimes and you're still not sure if I'm really here?"
"Glossaryck," Star said plainly, ignoring the woman's concern of her mental health, "he could be here or he might not be. I'm not sure," she said angrily before turning to her side where the magic man was, "but I WISH he would leave me alone… HINT!" she screamed in his unfazed expressionless face. He'd just told her that she preferred ignorance, and winced. Removing a picture from her small star purse from her side, she stared as it seemingly portrayed a movie of sorts of an argument between herself and Marco. However, Star knew it was what had happened before she had rewound time, wanting to have a better sort of convincing case to get Marco to join her. Summoning a trash can, she dropped the picture inside and closed the lid. "Well, do-over time. Hope I get it right."
"Still got some time before he gets here. I'm here to help you sing, just a little song I just made up. I know it's been a long time since I took part in any sort of music-making… last time was that guy in his car who helped Marco catch up to you when you were on a runaway bike… Oscar, I think his name was? I believe we would sound great together, right? People sing better when they're grouped up. A shame that Marco and his joined Levi aren't here with us, but we can make do. In fact, I doubt they would've joined in singing it."
"Something we have in common. I'm not singing that song. Not again, anyway."
Glossaryck quickly tapped her on the forehead before she could react. "You know the words, and you can't forget anymore. C'mon, it'll be fun~."
"NO!"
By now, people were extremely upset about not having their phones for a candid video of what was happening.
Raphael struggled to speak. "You grant wishes and answer prayers. But you take from some in order to give to others," Raphael said to Star slowly and deliberately, trying to make his wife understand, "and if that's the case, I don't want Star to heal me. I'd rather wait for the ambulance. I would prefer medicine over magic."
"That's definitely Marco's way of thinking, trying to solve things without magic. You might not last long enough to get said medicine," Star mumbled, "and it might not work anyway." She noticed that the man's wife was looking at her again, her worry clearly rising. "I kinda understand what you're thinking. I know that I'm acting strange. It's just so hard to feel..." Star's face contorted as she searched for the right words, "it's hard to feel more concerned for you guys since my parents have been killed and…"
"Is it because Marco killed your parents and it'd be fair to let us die in return?" Angie said blandly.
"No, no!" Star exclaimed, "I don't hold that against you guys. That was all on Higgs. She was the one who killed the two of them. And Marco…" she thought of how she envisioned her best friend cutting her mother's throat to ensure that she died, even though she had already perished. More like adding insult to the dead, but it was still inhumane and barbaric. "He has nothing to do with whether I help you or not. I just said I can help. It's the least I can do for allowing Sienna to come here in the first place and causing all of this. But my lack of concern isn't just for you two. People are constantly dying as we speak and babies are constantly being born. The universe isn't going to pause for you two just because I know you personally, and it didn't stop for my parents either. Helping you just like that is giving you special treatment. If it sounds sensible, I help people when they pray, and make wishes. I'll help you if you ask me."
Angie tried to be empathetic but started to become blunt as this wasn't a matter of pride. All of religion had just been turned on its head by a single teenaged girl. "Does it make that much of a difference if you heal Raphael? Even if it's to you, I'll pray for you to heal him—"
"I said 'DON'T'." The man wheezed. "As I said before, there is never a good reason to kill someone." His voice was stronger despite the risk of the accumulated air outside of his lungs that threatened to destroy his insides. "I had a… a friend at work. She and her husband have been trying to have a baby for years, and they finally got one… It was a stillborn child, and she was heartbroken. I haven't seen her happy since. That was… around two years ago, and she took her life a few months ago. After the funeral, I asked her husband if she hadn't gone to therapy..." Raphael took yet another pause for breath, a labored painful one, "he said that it didn't work out, because she became even more depressed when she had early menopause."
"Oh, God." Star looked up at Angie, making the woman slightly annoyed. "What is it Star?"
"Goddess!" Star exclaimed in exasperation. "We already established this, with all the wishes and prayers I'm answering. Yes, Mrs. Diaz, I am."
"And I mean that you shouldn't play god with people's lives, Star," the dying man cried, a few tears in his eyes as he remembered his deceased friend. "She had so much ahead in her life, and a baby has even more to look forward to. The child could become anything he or she chooses to be. Even if it's an unfulfilling life, everyone deserves a chance to live one. How many of them race to be born, only for the winner to die before they get their chance? Even if they aren't conceived, how many families will have to grieve?" The man was being uncharacteristically sullen and yet wise, but he made an irrefutable point and wasn't going to change his mind.
She thought of reminding them that their son was the God of Death but didn't say anything. She needed Marco to join her. Even if it meant worsening her image in their eyes to make him look better, so be it.
"It's what I believe, and I won't ask for your help. If I die, then whoever would've died to heal me will get to live. That is fair enough. Besides… you warned us, but we let the both of you into our house, you and Sienna. We could've done things differently, you could've fought elsewhere or even turn her knife into a feather. We've made our choices. This is mine."
Angie let out a long exhale, understanding her husband's decision and being fortified by his stubbornness — it was a decision he made that she had to accept. "That's that, then. Star, we'll wait for the ambulance." Star barely registered what she heard; instead, all she listened to was the constant sound of a dog barking close by. She was going to use the dog's life to heal Raphael like she had done last time before rewinding time, but chose to respect the man's wishes. She'd done it last time without their awareness but hadn't known that they'd be so resolute against her powers and methods.
"I guess I'll sing after all," she said suddenly. "Might as well while I'm waiting for Marco to show up." Glossaryck appeared out of nowhere on her other side this time, his hands slightly larger than usual as if to augment his clapping. "There better not be any animals rushing up to help me sing, 'cause that barking dog is adding to my headache. Besides, it's kinda cliché."
"There won't be any singing animals," the mystic promised. As if he intentioned it, the dog stopped barking suddenly. It could be a coincidence, but Star didn't believe it.
Star cleared her throat and tried to tune herself. Thankfully it wasn't much, as it was nearly like spoken poetry. "Okay. I'm first, Glossaryck. I'm only taking the chorus 'cause I'm still not on board with this."
"With pleasure," he beamed.
"Everybody said that anybody could do,
The important things somebody should do,
Everybody knows that anybody could do,
All the good things that nobody did."
Glossaryck grinned so widely that he nearly tore his cheeks before he started.
"My brother went to him and told him what he ought to do,
He'd give him a purpose that is true,
He'd do it himself but was trapped inside his mind,
The Wellspring the Levi had to find."
Star sang the chorus again.
"Everybody said that anybody could do,
The important things somebody should do,
Everybody knows that anybody could do,
All the good things that nobody did."
"Green Marco preached to everyone who had an ear,
The source of magic they ought to fear,
'The Wellspring will be the death of us all,
The Source of Magic has to fall'."
Star sang the chorus again, amidst the stares of everyone there — she was the only one who heard the meat of the song, the damned verses from Glossaryck. It peeved her, but not even a fraction of how alarmed she was becoming. She'd gotten the words from before, but it somehow sounded like a happy tune of tragedy and foreshadowing of what had happened and what was going to happen soon. Worse yet… was Marco the one who was right? Despite his killings, how many more was she guilty of?
"Work together with leaves and sword's rend,
Doesn't matter if the other is foe or friend,
Or this will be a place you can't mend,
And everyone will die in the end."
Star was too horrified to sing the chorus anymore. With a frown to show that he was disgruntled, Glossaryck sung the chorus in her stead. "All in all, everyone has their role to play," he said after it was over, "It's like chess. Oh, never mind that, you don't play. But you get the idea, don't you? Here is a fun fact: did you know that Sienna is a Knight? Another fun fact — Knight's move in an 'L' design… she targeted you when you were right in front of her, and ironically, her move stabbed someone else who was beside you. Moves in an 'L', see? They… um… have a hard time getting what they want." Glossaryck dawdled, waiting for it to sink in, but it failed. "Ah, well. But you get the last line of the song, right? Gonna have to have both Kings around in a nice little stalement in order for things to work out. Or then again, this place could use an apocalypse every now and again — those things might start running through here soon. All four of them. Ugh," the mystic main cringed. "Especially that pale one. It gives me the willies."
"Star? Star?" Angie tried to get the girl's attention, only to be rebuffed until now that she had stopped singing, "what's that you kept singing? Star didn't even bother to look for Glossaryck. At least it'd pop his bubble if she didn't acknowledge him anymore, especially since he would probably have disappeared when she would want to question him about whatever the hell they just sang. "Were you in a trance?"
"It's just some bad news." She looked down at the ground, only to find that the bloodied man had passed out. "I've made up my mind. I'm going to heal him."
"No, don't! He said he'll wait! If you do, he won't just be upset. You heard him, he might even think that hurting himself will be the only way to restitute whatever life you used to heal him."
Now there was a troubling possibility. "Makes sense. That would be an issue. I just need him to last long enough for the what? The parademics? We just want him to last until they get here." Angie didn't correct the girl's mispronunciation. Now getting a bit anxious, Star tried to think of a way to save the dying man. Again, the dog started up another round of barking, and Star thought her head would explode. She needed some peace to think but the dog wouldn't let her. "Fine, gonna have to use the dog. I just need to heal Mr. Diaz a little bit, right…?"
She finally took Higgs' broken knife out of her chest and concentrated on the dog that soon fell silent.
=X=X=
"What happened on Earth?"
The girl shuddered when she recalled what had happened a bare dozen minutes before, holding her dislocated shoulder. "She straight up just destroyed me in a fight."
Admittedly, Marco was more worried about how Star had possibly hurt Higgs than the girl's current state of health. "I've seen how you fight. A group of people shouldn't be a problem so how Star can fight you?"
"I wouldn't say that she can fight," Higgs confessed ashamedly. "She's got magic." Marco grumbled to himself just long enough to put the girl ill at ease, making her feel more and more stupid about her futile actions. "I know I can't fight magic, but she pissed me off and I wasn't smart enough to let her insults slide."
"How did she use magic?" Marco demanded. "I get that she could find some scissors to get to Earth, but how did she fight with magic? She doesn't even have the wand-… Eclipsa does. Star should be easier to beat without it."
"She's different now," Sienna explained. "I saw this tree. I think she showed it to me to try to scare me off, but I still picked the fight. By the time she brought it out again, she started using magic, and she's a lot more powerful than she used to be." She winced as she held her injured arm close to her side. "She even blew me up into a dozen pieces and then jammed me back together just to show me how strong she was; had one eyeball staring up my crotch and my insides nearly touching the underside of my boot for almost a minute. Still stuck around, and I somehow managed to break my knife off in her chest. That's when she busted out the tree again, even bigger than it was before, and blew up your house. I had to bail after that… I got…" Her voice cracked suddenly, and the King immediately understood why. It was something that hurt her just by knowing, and would hurt her even more if she admitted it to him.
She was scared.
"It's alright."
"Is it really?" Her voice was tiny.
"Uh, I guess not," he confessed after a while. "Star's using magic, and I have to make ANOTHER detour to stop her before she pulls down the entire multiverse with her." He genuinely believed what he said and Higgs could tell, though something was bothering her.
"She said a lot of nonsense, but some things she said and did make SOME sense, Marco. And to be honest, it's got me thinking and I'm afraid."
Marco chose the easier subject, or so he thought. "Thinking of what?"
"I'm the shoulda-starved-in-a-ditch daughter of a couple of cutthroats. I'm a thief, a betrayer, a murderer. Being here with you suits me."
"I don't get it. I don't want you to be any of those things."
"But YOU are. YOU'RE all of those things!" she exclaimed at the top of her lungs, "and that's what scares me. You're not just the God of Order, are you? That's just one title — You're also the God of Death. Isn't that a bad thing?"
Marco felt his mood sliding down even further. "I want to think of it as a title, and not something I have to DO as a job."
Sienna pointed at him. "Supposing that it's a job… and you needed to surround yourself with undesirables to do that job? The whole lot of us are the same. Worst of the worst."
"Excuse me?" Marco became indignant. "What the hell do you mean, undesirables?"
She got up and heavily dropped her good arm on his shoulder and shook him as hard as she could. "Marco, you need to wake up out of your fucking hero fantasy! You're DEATH! You don't just bring order to things, you end them! You're the fucking kill-all for everything that exists! Magic spells, animals, people, everything that you see in the fucking MULTIVERSE is your duty to KILL! And you know what I goddamn mean, undesirables! I mean me, a murderer. A lizard who butchers people with axes. There's also Eclipsa, the Queen of Darkness. The only one…" she paused. "The only one I know who's halfway decent is Hekapoo. She's said she's helping you 'cause she thinks it's the right thing. But since she's here, who's to say that she's not doing it for some other reason? She's an immortal. She's been living for so long that I bet she must've done some fucked up things by now. WE'RE the undesirables-… it means that we're SCUM. Your personal squad of some of the worst people who are willing to back you."
Marco had been silent, afraid, growing horrified as her explanation made more and more sense.
"I just started to think that because… I killed Star's parents, and if what she said is true, then I killed them for no reason. My parents were just a set of thugs who were barred from eating the food brought in by honest work. It'd mean that I killed dozens of innocent people on Mewni for nothing."
"What do you mean, innocent?The use of Magic is destroying the multiverse, and they wouldn't stop! They were ALL using magic. I was warning all of them, and they wouldn't stop. Even if what you said is true, that doesn't excuse them from using magic, and they wouldn't stop. Do you think there's gonna be someone to apologize to when the apocalypse comes? We had just cause, and they had to die."
She was about to ask him if it made him feel better saying that but sensed it would cause more damage to his sensitive opinion of self. Instead of fighting it, she took his burden on herself, the lie he was telling himself. He'd stolen, killed his friends, murdered knights. "Yeah, yeah, they were all abusing magic."
He almost didn't notice that her fingers were slightly crossed, and interpreted it as what it meant. He was the God of Death, and they both knew it. He needed to stop denying it.
"But what I want to ask is… do you bring out the worst in people, or do you naturally attract the worst people?"
"Where's all of this coming from?"
"Straight from Star. Apparently, she's the God of Life. She's using leaves or something to do magic. I think they represent people. The way she said that she was 'taking care' of the multiverse implied that. She kept acting like she didn't want to use magic, but she did it anyway like it was a last resort. Did it ever occur to you, Marco, that you and Star are polar opposites? She's the God of Life and you're the God of Death? And if you've got order, then she's lording over chaos or mayhem or something. You think, she doesn't. You clean her messes. You're reliable, and she skips out. You're everywhere you need to be, and she's always in the worst place at a bad time."
"You're making me blush," Marco deadpanned.
Higgs sighed deeply, starting to seriously doubt Marco for the first time, wanting him to console her but he kept failing. "This is SERIOUS! Are we still right? Are we the good guys, Marco? Just tell me."
"We are. We're trying to stop the multiverse from ending. Every time magic is used, everything goes haywire. That's most of our proof. We plug up the source of magic, everything will be fixed. Glossaryck and Appendaxuz haven't been doing anything consequential so far as I know. One spent hundreds of years babysitting princesses and the other one was trapped in a book. I'm pretty sure that after we're done, we just walk away and live as normally as possible afterward. However that goes."
"Those two not being ACTIVE could've started this fuckery, so the apocalypse could happen again. Did you think about that? What a happy delusion you must live in."
"I think you mean 'hope'."
"It won't work like that. People in the dimensions know about us," she said, thinking of the pixie Queen. "And we'll be on the run for the rest of our lives. That's what I think will happen, and I don't want that." Marco was taken aback by what she was saying and raised a questioning eyebrow. "Yeah, excuse me for wanting a quiet life when this is over."
"And you'll have it. You can just walk now if you can't keep up. I won't hold it against you—"
"I never said I was gonna quit," she interrupted, looking wistful. "I just want you to tell me that we're doing the right thing. Please."
Marco sighed, readying himself up for a fight as he backpedaled away from her. Shaking his head while recalling how she had accepted his delusion earlier, he tried to muster a smile only for it to come out crooked. "Higgs, I know that we're not doing it the right way. We're both murderers and believe me, I never thought I'd end up like this, fighting and killing my friends. If it were possible, I'd have just kept asking people to stop using magic but it wasn't working at all. That's why Appendaxuz messed with my head to turn me into a killer. Talking wasn't working. It won't work. It'll never work."
"Killing works then?" she spat. "Fine. We'll kill everyone between us and the Wellspring… damn, we'll kill that too, tear its neck open if it has one, I don't care! But can you kill Star?"
Marco shook his head. "I don't know if I can."
"Is that a question of ability, or mentality?"
"Both. I gotta flip my anger switch or something. Not to mention that if she can wield magic like how you said, even rip you apart and jam you back together like Lego, then how am I supposed to fight that?" he asked rhetorically while waving around his broken sword with no small amount of unsureness. She stared at it intently, considering it for a while.
"Why are you still using that sword? It's gonna fall apart in your hands if you keep using it. At least replace it. Are you just using it just because I gave it to you?"
Marco laughed. "Nah. Well, partially. It's my way of showing up Star that I know how to appreciate a gift. Besides, it's like shoes. After you break it in and get used to it, it's comfortable. Even when it's falling apart."
"Okay. Then just give me the handle. I'll find a new blade to stick into it. I got a stash — I can find you something else to use in the meantime." He didn't relent, and Higgs sighed. "Okay. Forget the sword. I doubt it'll work anyway."
"It has to."
"I'm saying that you've got other options," Sienna advised, "you're like Star, but I'm not entirely that it's magic or anti-magic or whatever. You've got this thing behind you, like a shadow."
"What makes you say that?"
"I've seen Star's tree, and you have this shadow like it's your version of god-like power or something. I see it whenever I try to, ever since I swore myself to you." She stared hard behind him, then above his head, ignoring his distracting questions to sate his curiosity. "It looks like a fully black version of you, and it has glowing green eyes, with your cheek marks on it. It's huge, and I think it's bigger than when I last saw it. Could just be your strength, and it gets bigger every time you get stronger. It has a sword like yours too, all chipped up. Lots of cracks." He looked behind him in search for whatever being that she was describing, but found that he couldn't. With an apology, he excused himself, saying that he had to deal with Star. "Sure. Don't get yourself killed." She opened back the portal back to Earth and watched as he walked towards it.
"I'm the one responsible for that."
"You've got no taste, God of Death." He smiled at her appreciatively as he made his way through, and she shut the portal behind him. On the other side now, the Black King looked up and down his street, fairly populated with people (anxiously?) going about their daily lives, traveling, conversing, and whatnot. It was still very recognizable, though he could tell that there were some visible cracks. Seeing them made him frown deeply — sometimes, he wondered if he was the only one in Echo Creek who ever freaked out in the middle of the night simply because they were living on the infamous San Andreas fault-line. As he thought of the fault-line again, a sudden powerful earthquake rocked the area, sending most scrambling for support and others cowering away from creaking structures. Only he alone walked as if it was perfectly normal without a change in pace and balance. However, he paused when he saw his house up the road, or more like the standing rubble of what it used to be. It suddenly occurred to him that Higgs had encountered Star at his house, and he wondered if his parents were okay. She hadn't mentioned that his parents were injured, so he was sure that nothing had happened to them… nothing that Sienna was aware of, anyway.
What if Star had done something to them in reprisal? Did she kill them out of revenge? No, she wouldn't. Then again, if she was so powerful, nothing would be out of her reach; it was only a matter of wanting it.
"She's here on my street? At my house? With my parents? Holding them hostage? Telling them what's been going on? Killed them?"
Funny, he didn't feel as concerned as he should be. There was that same anger for Star; he wondered if he had already flipped his switch. Even in his death, Appendaxuz was right.
The previous God of Death and Order was right. The bluer side of emotions got in the way. The redder side was better suited for this. He needed anger.
Finally, with a growing stir of people on both sides who were marveling at his return and still reeling from the earthquake, he arrived at his house, only to find an even larger crowd flanking Star. Beside her, his parents. His mother was standing, and his father was leaning with some of his weight against her. They didn't seem bothered by Star's presence, hinting that she hadn't done anything that warranted fear of her.
"Hey Mom, Dad," he greeted as he looked at them in turn. "Hey Star. Fancy running into you here."
She had mimed what he had said with a yapping hand, an act that peeved him. "Your squire — sorry, I mean Knight — said the exact same thing. Is it so strange that I'd want to hang around the last family I have left? You should appreciate what you have, Marco. All of a sudden, sixty years doesn't seem like such a long time. Thousands of years are gonna drag on and on at this rate. You wanted to fight me, go right ahead." She hoped he wouldn't.
Angie noticed that Marco looked like he very badly wanted to fight the girl, but asked him what was going on. "Mom, no offense, but Star isn't who you think she is." He heaved a sigh, "and neither am I."
"You're the God of Death?" his mother asked quietly.
"That's my title," Marco insisted, "and my job is Order. Don't you know that makes Star the God of Chaos?"
"Goddess of Chaos," Star piped up, as if not caring about how damaging her second title sounded. Perhaps reasoning with Marco wouldn't have worked out, and maybe it never would. She tried something else. Seemed like a waste now, rewinding time if they were going to end up fighting anyway, but she ignored the fact. "What we're bantering now didn't go anywhere last time. My bad, I should say that it doesn't work. It doesn't work out because you're itching to kill me because of what I did to Higgs, for slighting you for so long, blaming me for how things have turned out, et cetera, et cetera. Feel free to do whatever you want… punch me, cut my throat! How about slicing me apart? Maybe drop a building on my face and stomp on whatever's left of my head? You want to splatter my insides all over the sidewalk, whatever. Get it all out of your system, and then we can discuss what we need to do to save the multiverse. Mr. and Mrs. Diaz? I need you to go back inside." No sooner had she said it and waved an index finger did all of the rubble reassemble on the house's site, everything coming together in a few seconds without even a sign to show that the house was destroyed only moments before. A telekinetic force ushered them into the house against their will through the front door which closed behind them, and Star smiled strangely. "Me and Marco need to hang out and do some god stuff. Are you mad enough?"
His eyes were green with fury as something came to mind, a realization from outside as a powerful sense of déjà vu. "I've done this before… and that earthquake earlier… Star, do you just do everything you please? You just messed with time, didn't you? Fucked with everyone's heads and expect that your actions don't have repercussions? What's your damage?! You trying to drag the multiverse down with you?!"
Star looked at him funnily; she hadn't expected him to find out that she'd turned back time. "I was just trying to help! Your parents were so upset about what we were talking about, and I wasn't sure if they wanted to know so much. Listen, Marco!" Star pleaded, still trying to entreat to Marco's better nature. "I only wanted to help so that you and I won't have any more disagreements. Glossaryck says we'll be better off if we co-operate. We have a pretty good shot at saving the multiverse if we work together."
Marco shook his head tightly. "It would've let them down but I was fine with them knowing I was a murderer. I WANTED Jackie to tell them what was happening in Mewni because once they knew, it would've made it easier for me to leave and never come back. Mom and Dad would've disowned me or something, or at least know how badly I messed up and wouldn't want me to be here anymore. It'd be easier to not want to come back, knowing that nobody would want anything to do with me."
"Because of…" she thought about what he had said before. "You wanted to exile yourself from the people you used to know —"
The boy interrupted her. "It's my way of showing remorse. But now I can see the leaves, all of the DEAD leaves around you. There's a lot more of them now. You used magic to try to fix your messes, and you just used a lot of it."
"It was OUR mess! So what if I turned back time to avoid that convo and wiped out what they know about what you've done?" Star asked rhetorically, not knowing she was only inveigling the boy's wrath.
Marco's glare worsened. "Whatever just happened, it didn't need fixing."
"Well, I for one wouldn't want my parents to know—"
"And you're glad they're dead so that they haven't seen what you've become and what you're doing. All the lives in the multiverse just exist for you to use, and they might as well be your playthings. You just talked about slaughtering a lot of them before you reversed time just now. Is that your idea of saving the multiverse? Dumping most of the load so that the ship doesn't sink?"
"As if everyone else isn't doing the same thing! The Commission's been doing this for as long as they've existed, just indiscriminatingly by taking out entire dimensions, good and evil. But I don't like using magic anymore." Marco snorted in disbelief, making Star stamp her foot in frustration, and gestured at her clothes in annoyance. "It's true! I haven't even used it to get out of these clothes, and you know that's something trivial. Just please hear me out, Marco—"
Marco shook his head. "I've already heard you out, and I remember what you said before you turned back time — I was starting to think that I was who was evil, but I wasn't. It's you! Using magic to get out of your problems, and then turning around and blaming your problems on magic when more of them crop up. You want me to listen to you, but you're the one who should've listened to me when I told you about the Wellspring. Appendaxuz was right! He was RIGHT! Everything he said was true! I should've killed you a long time ago… and I wasted so many chances! Everyone keeps thinking that you're the better of us… but that's not true at all. Even if I'm the God of Death and all I do is kill everyone and make them suffer, I won't cheat anyone, play around with their lives or mess with their heads. That's you."
Star looked decidedly guilty but wasn't willing to be made out to be the villain. "Are you kidding? I don't do any of that! I'm just asking for your help—"
"You don't need my help to kill everyone. You'd just do that if l let you go," he said heatedly as his hand rested on his sword, ready to draw it on a moment's notice.
"I don't like the idea any more than you do, Marco."
"You just want to keep magic around, and you'd sacrifice god knows how many people to do it."
What he said sounded amusing. "Ironically, I actually don't know how many people right now but if you give me a minute so I could do a quick headcount—"
"If it's a choice between keeping the magic and killing most of everyone, or destroying the magic and saving everyone, then it's an easy choice."
"It's an obvious choice," Star agreed, despite the glare he gave her, "but it's not the right one. There are only so many people who can fit on the boat, and this problem will happen again later on, just with more lives at stake."
Marco frowned, as Higgs had presumed that the apocalypse could happen again even if it was fixed this time. "Explain."
"Five people and a cow on a boat, at the max weight limit. Five more people in the water want to get on, and if they do, everyone will sink. YOU want to dump the cow to save the ten people."
Marco didn't even stop to think about it. "Of course."
"How will they eat when there's nothing to feed them? The food will help keep them in line, too. If not, they'll just starve, go mad, maybe cannibalize one another and everyone will die."
"What would you propose? Let the five outside die?"
"No. What if I said that it gets more complicated? Two of the ten people are old, one's a butcher, two are criminals, one's a child, and the last four are adult men and women? What would you do? Still try to save everyone? Some are more important than others, some have lived their lives and there are others who don't deserve to live, and even Higgs said so earlier to me AND your parents! But you want to save everyone, and it won't work."
Marco stared at the girl as if she was stupid, even while she had the same contempt for him. "What's wrong with that?!"
"Don't give me that crap, Marco. You killed everyone who was using or defending magic on Mewni, so that's already hypocrisy. You don't want to save me either, even if I promised to just sit in a hole forever and do nothing."
"I'll save everyone, and let them decide what to do with their own lives. People can form a society to govern themselves."
She approached him, her face reddening in anger, fed up with his stubbornness. "I don't want to do this anymore than you do, but we have to work together!" Star yelled at her fellow god, trying to convince him, to make him understand. "The best I can do is to save people who deserve to live, not those who don't deserve to. It'll maintain the balance! You said you can see the dead leaves around me. Those were children who were meant to be born and who were already here; my magic uses their lives as default. We can read the lines on my tree leaves to figure out what kind of person they are: their actions, thoughts, their past, and future, and it takes some time — two gods can share the work. When that's done, you kill the leaf, or I use them to bless other people. Simple. We evict the criminals off the boat, take off those who are too old and are taking up a spot that younger people can have… just think about it."
Marco sighed in regret. "We wouldn't even be in this predicament if you'd just listen to me when I came to you for help, and it's hard to think that things only started a year ago. None of this would've happened if you heard me out, and now you want me to help you with this brain-fart. Sudden deaths would cause nothing but anarchy. Everyone would just worship whoever's killing 'random' people. Maybe even the… undesirables…" He felt strange using Sienna's word to describe their group, and smiled grimly. "Everyone would just be subject to what you think, and you might even start killing people based on what foods they eat, or whose clothes don't match your likes and dislikes. And what about their children? They'd be innocent… if you killed their parents, how would they survive?"
"I wouldn't do anything as ridiculous as that! Wait, are you just thinking about Sienna? She's a murderer too, just like her parents. She nearly killed your father trying to stab me, and I was the one who healed him."
"You brought the war to my parents' house, but she's one of my examples. Think about your standards. When there aren't enough people dead, your standards will get higher. What about age? Could be age eighty at first. Then seventy. Then sixty. Then fifty. Everyone would be rushing to have kids and the more being born only means more for you to kill to use as blessings, and I'll be the one enabling you. Fuck that. I'll put you down right now and save everyone the trouble."
"You can't fight me. I'm stronger than you. You can't do what I can do."
Marco sneered at her as if she was something disgusting that he'd just stepped in. "Don't care how strong you are, 'cause I'll do anything to stop you, and you can't kill me. I'm the God of Death." Marco felt a hand on his shoulder and as he turned to face it, all he was met with was a black doppelganger of himself with eyes that burned a hotter green than his. Sienna's description flashed through his head, and he was overcome with a sense of acceptance as if he was meant to always become what he was now. He was the final person left to believe it, even if it was an act of necessity to willingly kill Star without a need of indoctrination. He finally accepted what everyone believed him to be.
He'd become Death.
The figure bowed at the waist and smiled like a shark when it lifted its head to face him again. It placed a pair of identical keys (on a keyring) in his hand, thickset green keys of the sort that would belong to an old-fashioned door. "Long Live the King, the God of Death and Order. The keys have been bequeathed to you, as is the Invoking — your word is Law, and judges all things." Marco nodded to him uneasily, wondering what was going to play out; it did seem like some sort of failsafe concocted by Appendaxuz that would be enacted once Marco achieved his current state of mind so he didn't ask any questions. Furthermore, the figure didn't even give a chance for him to ask them. Instead, it spoke its last as it stepped into the boy's afternoon shadow and sunk into it as if it was quicksand, its serrated grin growing ever wider. "The Horses have been permitted to roam for their riders. The Black forerunner wanted you to use all of these against the White once you ascended the throne."
Appendaxuz wanted horses to be released? What horses? Which riders? And the keys were to what?
Then again, he had an idea what they were the keys for. Like everything else, he decided to just acknowledge it and move. Just like that, the shadow was gone; Star finally found her voice and managed to speak. "Huh, it kinda went like that between me and Glossaryck… well, you know, minus that creepy shadow guy. Anyway, so I guess that means you're like fully god now? We could finally work together to save the multiverse—" Before she could continue, Marco swiftly pulled out his sword in a slashing up-down motion that belted out a long arc of green light. The result was a bisected Star and the six blocks behind her were cut in two, divided by a large trench that exposed even the stinking sewers.
"Die, Star. Just die."
...
It was funny, but he wasn't laughing.
"I wish your friends could see and hear us now."
"OUR friends, Marco," the God of Life corrected.
"I murdered the last one who stuck up for me," Marco stated as he swung his sword again, only for Star's separate pieces to instantly come together and heal again. Jackie was probably on the fence or just avoiding this whole mess by this point. Hopefully, she was far away from this fight, because an encounter would be awkward. He had his fears mixed up, didn't he? Then again, he was still Marco Diaz, despite all the blood on his shoulders. "The first time wasn't on purpose, but I had to stab her TWICE. F.Y.I., I hated it."
"You sure took your time cutting into my mom's neck, and you don't look that sorry about it," Star said sourly as she waved her hand. Instantly, all the leaves of the trees in the area turned into kitchen knives of all sorts that levitated into the air briefly before flying towards Marco and pummeled him against the walls of a house. Had it not been for his strengthened skin from his ever-increasing resilience, he would've ended up looking like… well, whatever a body mutilated by millions of knives looked like. He pushed his way out of the knife pile with an incredulous look on his face that yelled 'Really? Knives?' at the girl and she made up her face. "What?"
"Knives? You're capable of anything you want, and you use kitchen knives?"
"I know firsthand that knives hurt, so what's wrong if I use knives? Just because I can do anything doesn't mean that I'm above doing simple things. Even doing small favors as blessings is a part of my job description. Knives? What's wrong with it-…"
He allowed her to rant about her usage of magic, stalling for a bit of time. He was still trying to figure out a way to kill her, and bifurcation wasn't working. It was his favored attack because of how easy it was, but it was ineffective, not to mention the signs of severe collateral damage done to Echo Creek. By himself, he'd probably accidentally killed more than a dozen by now, and not that many buildings were still standing, much less undamaged. Additionally, Star's extensive and explosive use of magic would probably end up forcing people to wonder if it would be cheaper to just rebuild the town somewhere else from scratch.
'Too many people are dying around me. I have to move her. But I don't have my scissors, Eclipsa does.'
Strangely enough, he didn't feel as concerned about their deaths as he normally should have. It felt natural to him, like breathing. He felt bad about taking their lives but once it happened, it was as if he didn't care anymore; it was a part of a natural cycle and the right way of things. If one thing was certain, however, was his abhorrence of Star's magic, and it felt eerily reminiscent to when Star had mixed up their recycling once.
Despite this, he was still killing people. He was concerned that he was killing them, but he wasn't concerned once they died. They'd simply be recycled, and new people could be born. It was a bus. You could carry a lot of people, but the earlier people would have to get off at some point to let the latter people on.
Was his anger and apathy in effect right now, or was this his true feelings? Was this what it was like to be a God? To not care about these insignificant specks that were screaming for their lives as their houses crumbled on them?
Did she feel this way too? His former best friend who had hare-brained theories and thought that multiversal genocide was a good idea? How did she feel about them?
"Do you care about anybody, Star?" he asked, breaking her out of her rant about his irritation of her transmuted knives. "Like… care about anybody who isn't like us?"
"I do. Your parents, Tom, Kelly, Tad… I should probably heal them up," she added as an afterthought. "I think you killed everyone else. No, wait, I still have extended family on both sides."
"Huh. I bet you do." 'Pierce!' He thought as he stabbed his sword towards her, and a beam of the green light shot out like a laser and blew through her chest so fast and clean that she was left standing still. Her chest and the heart therein were obliterated as he hoped but everything regenerated quickly and he cursed. "Damn! If I'm the God of Death, why can't I kill you?!"
"I'm immortal, Marco," Star explained patiently as if Marco was only a toddler, "Anyways, I still need your help to save the multiverse. Before it looks like Echo Creek, at least. You're the one who did most of this damage. You've got some nerve to be judging me." She clapped her hands and colorful fireworks launched out of the manhole behind Marco. As he turned to look at it, they all imploded together and turned into a gigantic popsicle-stick man that towered over Marco hundreds of feet high.
"What the-"
"Field goal," Star interrupted as she snapped her fingers and a massive vertical football goalpost erupted out of the ground in the distance. "This is how you play, right? Looks pretty far. Ferguson once told me that it's risky to do them from far away., but don't worry, the good news is that this giant isn't going to miss the post. The bad news is…" Star shrugged, "he isn't going to miss the post."
Marco's eyes bulged in horror. "OH SHI-" The giant's foot swiftly kicked at an escaping Marco, and punted him like a speeding rocket, his yells fading out as he flew off.
"Yeah, but you wanna complain about knives, huh?" Star grumbled to herself as the giant exploded into small pink paper flowers and cabbage leaves. With a shrug, she opened a portal that brought her to the goalpost, just in time for Marco to pass directly through and violently slam into the asphalted road, sounding like raw meat hitting a floor when he landed. It cracked the ground only the slightest bit, and he skidded and tumbled along the road until the momentum caused him to crash through a house.
Recovering easily from the fall, he looked down at his shredded clothes with a huff. They were still on, despite the fact that they were revealing his space unicorn underpants. He stomped through the house he'd landed in and broke through the wall to get back outside. Once there, he saw a couch-sized orange polka-dotted dragon flying around in the air above him in an ouroboros circle, eating its own tail. Reaching for his sword, he realized that it had broken in his fall; only a third of the blade and the handle was still somewhat intact. He tried to ignore it and tried to cut down the dragon. "REND!" He flailed his sword in a cutting motion, and that was all it took for the blade to shatter into pieces, unable to channel his powers any longer. With its destruction, all the pieces formed varying-sized green arcs of antimagic that cleanly diced the dragon apart, which each transmuted into white storks with corkscrews for beaks. They started pecking him all over, and this only served to annoy him. He punched what he could and kicked at others until only one remained which had flown just out of reach.
Rising out of the ground a bit of a distance away was Star, spewing out the ground in her mouth as she did the backstroke around in the asphalted road as if it was water to her. "You know what everyone thinks about gods, Marco? They think we're in the wrong place."
He rushed up to her stomp her head, but she quickly ducked below before his foot reduced the ground to rubble around him. He was worrying a bit; it wasn't just her powers, but the random and chaotic nature of them impossible to predict and counter. Before he could react, he found that the ground below him had suddenly become a deep-bottomed trampoline and Star was tugging at the center from beneath it as if she wanted to use the thing like a slingshot. "What are you doing?!"
"I'm sending you to where everyone thinks that gods live. The SKY!" No sooner had she said this had she released the trampoline and shot Marco straight up high into the air so quickly that the wind tugged at his face and ripped through his hair and clothes. He was so high up that he'd just passed the clouds at his apex when most of them gathered beneath him and turned into a solid wooden floor just as he had begun to fall.
"Oh shit," the boy whispered. Figuring that it was better to simply jump off to the ground below than to be high up in the air at Star's mercy, he was about to when wooden walls and a ceiling suddenly winked into existence, trapping him inside. He tried punching his way out. It didn't work.
It's a log cabin!" Star's voice exclaimed from behind him. He swerved around to face her, and she was holding a notepad up to show him a perfect sketch of said building. "This is what it looks like on the outside. But in the sky! Cool, right? That's where everyone thinks we live. To be honest, I prefer the ground, 'cause it's lonely up here. I know! We need neighbors." She placed two fingers under her tongue and whistled, and a red door made out of Coke cans formed in the wall. No sooner had it come into existence did it open, letting in a couple of hammerhead sharks that walked in on hind cat legs.
"Hello, new neighbors! Welcome. It was getting lonely up here, but we're so glad that you moved in," one cried in a female-sounding voice. "If you're noisy, we won't mind too much because it's so quiet around here. You'll love it, though. It's a great place to live."
"I know, right?" Star agreed as the other shark looked as though it was looking about the room. "Um, hey, do you mind? What's with all the looking about? Checking for boards that can give us splinters?"
"Where's your furniture?" it asked in a gruff masculine voice. "And why did your husband just run outside?"
"He did? Didn't even realize." Star hesitated for a bit as her mind caught up with the entire question. "Oh, we're not married. We're best friends. Or formerly best friends, it depends on which of us you ask."
"But why are you here together? You two splitting the rent?"
"Oh no, we're not here together," the girl giggled, "I'm just proving a point." She shrugged. "Here I am, having a conversation with something that popped out of my head. Can't tell if it should be classified as an imaginary friend or a dangerous hallucination?"
Leaves continued to die.
Forget the hallucinations. SHE was the dangerous one. Now Marco knew that as fact. Good.
She stomped her foot, and a portal appeared in the ceiling. Marco fell from it, faceplanting hard into the floor that didn't so much as crack or vibrate from the impact, nothing to prove that he'd been falling for miles from the sky only a few seconds ago. "Was it the neighbors that got to you?" she cooed to him, "I forgot that you're a King. You don't have neighbors that just walk in. You should have a castle. In the millisecond that Marco blinked, he found himself in a massive castle, standing in the front entryway. His face was presented on banners everywhere. Star was still in the room with him, and she was all smiles. "See? A castle. My castle's back in Mewni, though, and it needs repairs. I could bunk with you 'till it's fixed, right? We gotta use blankets, though, 'cause there's this draft because we're still in the SKY—"
That was all she said before he punched her squarely in the face, knocking her against the wall of the castle, leaving behind a trail of blood and broken teeth. She healed as she usually did, and shook her head.
"Message received. Need a middle-ground, 'cause a castle just isn't your speed. Not too humble, not too lavish. How about this?" She snapped her fingers, and everything shrunk into itself, akin to the ill-fated Truth or Punishments box from the sleepover. It was all over in less than a minute, and Star waved her hands with a flourish. Do you like it now? It's a furnished condo. Great, and not bad. No bad neighbors, but good for making friends close by."
His answer was to backhand the princess so hard that it snapped her neck before he ran to the door. She recovered before he could escape and willfully made the door disappear, trapping him inside the condo with her. Without even any half-witted pre-action, a stick of chalk winked into existence in her hand, and she took it to draw a perfect tight circle around where she stood. As soon as she did so, everything else started twisting and spinning quickly as if the entire room was on a giant top, or in a blender. Marco was thrown around the walls roughly, his reinforced body breaking everything in the room except for the room itself. Amidst the madness, he noticed that everything happened around a secure epicenter, and that was where Star was standing calmly.
"Yeah, you notice, don't you? C'mon over here. It's a tight squeeze, but you can fit."
She spoke as if he wasn't about to try and kill her with his bare hands again. He was thinking of knocking her head in until her brains were running out of her ears but common sense told him that it wasn't going to work. He crawled over to her as best as he could despite the savage twisting and spinning the room was doing around her and finally ended up inside her safe circle, having to lean against her to avoid the dangers because of how small it was.
"You made it." She grabbed his hand and helped him to stand. "Easy, easy. You can lean on me." As she supported him, she smiled widely and cheerily, just like she used to when they were on Earth together; it felt like a lifetime ago since he saw it, but he didn't reciprocate. "Alright. See? We should just stop all of this useless arguing. It's getting us nowhere, and the multiverse is waiting on us to save it."
He had been fighting and had killed her over three dozen times already. She called it an argument.
He squinted his eyes. He could see a leaf floating around behind Star, a dead one that had withered off of her Tree of Life. The tree was visible now; it was statuesque, and gave off a tremendous aura, suggesting that it was far larger and imposing than it appeared, standing behind Star in the wrecked living room of the condo.
He averted his head a bit to glance behind himself and saw his Levi standing behind him, and it gave off the same impression of the tree, that it was infinitely larger than the building they were in but was reduced in manifestation to suit the size of the room. It held a broken sword in its hand, and when Marco checked his own, he confirmed that he somehow still clutched his own as well, though it was practically just a handle.
Had he lost his effectiveness? He was losing. Maybe he had–
Marco stabbed the broken sword into Star's throat, dragging the jagged edge and points through whatever he could, mutilating it while blood splattered all over the broken couch and mat and other such things as they continued to churn around them in a twister that had overtaken the entire room. He didn't want to give her a chance to heal, so he persisted, stabbing her over and over again, grunting like a madman all the while. When he eventually had enough of her neck spurting her blood all over him, her weak struggles clasping at him to get him to stop, he continued to rip into her with the broken sword all over her body. His hands, warm and reddened and sticky as it smeared him, continued to try to murder the God of Life, and every time he slowed, her healing would catch up and she'd recover.
"I think you ought to know that every time you try to kill me, someone else dies in my place—" was all she had to say before he thrust his bloodied thumbs into her mouth and tore them through her cheeks, before pulling her head apart at the jaws with sickening-sounding cracks and breaks, cutting her off mid-scream.
He did everything he could, but he eventually gave up just before he became too tired. As if all of his brutal methods and efforts didn't matter in the least, she healed twice as fast as she usually did, and glared at him.
"Had enough? You've been trying to murder me for over an hour. Haven't you gotten over it by now? It's old, Marco."
"Gotten over what?"
"This anger that you have. Did you really just start all of this over a sandwich?"
"No. I forgot about that a long time ago," he answered, baited by her question, "it's because you didn't support me. You laughed in my face when I was trying to tell everyone to stop using magic. And now look at us. We're gonna be miserable and stuck like this for the rest of our lives, and that's two things that'll NEVER gonna end. Your fault."
"I'm not letting you touch the Wellspring until I know for myself if it exists, what it does and if necessary, fix it if it's actually the problem. That's what we do, Marco. We don't go out on bloody crusades, we fix our problems. Together, just like we used to."
"The only reason why I stopped trying to rip your head off is because you said that someone else always dies for you. Is that what's been happening? I stab you, someone else drops dead?"
"Something like that."
He believed her. So… to kill Star, he had to kill the entire multiverse first? And if that was the case, wouldn't he be all alone after that? What a horrible bad turn of events. How was he supposed to counter that? If left alive, she'd doom the multiverse at some point, but to kill her would mean that he would have to kill the entire multiverse first. This couldn't be real.
That's when it struck him.
"This isn't real."
"Whaddya mean?"
"This. All of this bullshit that you're doing. It's not real. It goes against logic and reason." He stepped out of the circle into the twister that encircled the room, and everything stopped as soon as he did. "No such thing as a hurricane in a room."
She stepped back, almost recoiling from him. "What did you do?"
"Simple." He turned back to her. "Is it a coincidence that we're the ones that crap like this always happens to? Friends, rivals, enemies, Gods, exact opposites, all the time. When one of us starts, the other one stops. When one of us tidies up, the other one spoils it, and makes a mess."
Star made a face. "My name isn't being mentioned but I know when I'm being insulted."
"When one of us makes a mess, the other one tidies up. When one of us stops, the other one starts."
"And how does talking like that apply to what's happening now?"
"Hmm." Marco looked around. "The air up here in the sky is thin, and there are windows open. We should have been suffering from asphyxia." As soon as he spoke, air rushed out of the room as if escaping into a vacuum, but Marco took that as normal and welcomed it. "Next thing. We're in the sky. Buildings don't float in the sky. That's just retarded, even beyond what your mind shits out sometimes."
The condo became subject to gravity, and Star screamed as the condo fell, careening about the room like a panicking child as everything in the room floated upwards because of falling faster than the pull of gravity. Marco was the calm one for once, having survived being punted like a football by a giant – not something he believed he'd boast about — watching Star with a sense of satisfaction. The condo remained intact after it crashed into the ground seconds later, but Star's body was just as wrecked as the furniture's pieces scattered about.
"Hurtsss…" Star groaned as she recovered, though more slowly than her norm. "Can't a girl dream? I just wanted to give you a house where Gods live." She heaved herself up and pointed up. "In the sky. Am I wrong?"
"You were just showing off how strong you are but all you did was take a dump over every religion I know to ever exist. The next thing is this goddamn condo. Do you know what's wrong about it?"
"What's wrong?" she dared to ask.
"Do you have a title that says you own it?"
The girl was shocked. "It came out of my HEAD—!"
"And you have crappy taste. The real problem is that you got a condo…" Marco snapped his fingers, "just like that? Nothing comes free without effort and compensation, especially not houses." The condo immediately poofed away, leaving standing alone now in the empty, destroyed street. "And that's me cleaning up your messes." He shook his head. "Gonna get messy again in no time, I bet. Look at the ground." He bent down and picked up a dead leaf, one of many that were clearly visible in the aftermath. He found that he could interpret a name via the lines in the leaf and his face became stoic with silent fury. "This was a person… a baby. Look at it… Catherine Raymond. Probably had her whole life ahead of her. Didn't happen, of course. Look around at all the leaves, Star. THOUSANDS OF THEM!" Star's head fell in shame as Marco's words hurt her even more than his murderous attempts had ever been. "All of this because you WANTED to use magic. Do you wonder how I sleep at night? I don't. I'm turning into an insomniac, I spend most of the night wondering if I'm evil. But why should I be stuck with an 'evil' label when you're ten times worse? I've killed a lot of people, I know, but the living is literally dropping around you like autumn leaves. I'm the God of Death, but how you're the so-called God of Life is beyond me. I've never even seen Glossaryck do anything half as messed up as this."
"…" Star was quiet. A chilly wind blew in through the street, gently wafting the leaves.
"God of Life, maybe… but I'll still outlive you." He ambled off, intent on leaving the girl alone. He was no more armed than a snail, and if Star started fighting again, he couldn't do anything to resist. Surviving anything was his only faculty currently, as he'd lost his weapon, his edge in the conflict, and his nerve. Deciding to just withdraw since Star had been sufficiently brow-beaten and subdued, he heard the steady sound of a horse galloping, only seconds before a black horse and a rider come into view from around a corner. The rider flung a long chain that lassoed Star around her neck that was attached to the horse's saddle, and the girl gasped in surprise.
"What IS this?"
The rider leaped off the horse and fell into a shoulder roll, fully unfurling and standing tall in front of Marco as the horse continued to trot away. She looked around at the scene with wide eyes and pointed a thumb behind her at Star. "This all the princess's fault? She knows how to change a landscape, huh?"
"Higgs?" Marco recognized the woman as his friend before catching up to her question. "Actually, half of it might be mine. Could be more."
"Oh. Anyway, I'm tapping in." Higgs cupped her mouth before yelling at the still-running horse, "drag her to death, Famine! Head for a trash heap first!" The black starving horse whinnied a cry in return as it sped up. Star – confused about why she felt powerless – was trying desperately to free herself from the chain when she was yanked off her feet when the chain went taut, dragging her behind the horse. "Don't stop until she's sanded right down to the bone!" The screaming god's cries growing distant, Sienna turned back to Marco and saw his space unicorn underpants through his destroyed clothing. "Nice briefs. You okay though? You look like you just fought a war."
"That's what it was, a war," Marco grumbled as he put the sword handle into his pocket, "a pointless war. I can't beat her, or at least not yet."
"Because it's pointless?" Higgs swore under her breath. "She became immortal like you, huh?"
"Yeah." Honestly, Marco felt more annoyed than upset, but at least he had a way to counter Star. If only he could stop her before she started, that would've been even better.
"I'd like to pay her back even a little. Bitch had it coming. Even if it's just some suffering that she can go through, I'd feel better."
"We should just leave her alone. We're probably better off helping the others fight Omnitraxus, 'cause he's using a lot of magic and has too much common sense doing it. Where are they?"
"Oh, I'm just coming from there. It's a real shut-oven. Some random guy over there was yelling that 'Vagas was on fire', so I guess that's what the place is called. Or was that 'Vaay-gas'? Either way, the people running around looked like Mewmans." She looked down her nose at the Black King. "Or Humans, depends on which person you're asking. Point is, they look like us."
"Vegas? They're in Vegas?" Marco asked in disbelief. Alarms were going off in his mind. Star had said something to him before she had turned back time, about what Omnitraxus and Hekapoo were up to, and he knew that it was crucial that he stopped them as soon as possible. He didn't know of the details though, but he recalled that it was something important.
"Yeah, Vaay-gas, I'm just saying what I think they said," Sienna replied. "I teleported to Eclipsa to ask about the horse, but I had to leave because it was so hot there. Funny thing is, I saw a couple of other horses too—"
"I need a portal there," Marco interrupted, "now."
