"But we like not getting along!" Ruberiot answered Marco's exasperated question.
"Yeah! We're good at it." Foolduke agreed mischievously, as she revealed the key to ex-King River's handcuffs she had successfully stolen from Ludo in the confusion.
Marco looked at the key in surprise. "Wow! You guys really had me fooled!" he said with admiration.
Ruberiot chuckled in response. "No. We- we really do hate each other." he said, deadpanning.
Marco gave Ruberiot a perplexed look, but then rushed off to free the king, the performers following close behind.
"The Resistance will live on without me." Marco said with irony as he followed Buff Frog from the prison cell.
"Wha..?" Foolduke and Ruberiot questioned as tears silently poured down the cheeks of the Mime between them. But Marco and their would-be monster savior were already gone.
"Well how do you like that?!" Ruberiot fumed. "You offer to let a guy die a martyr to your cause ONE time, and suddenly he's refusing to let you out of jail!"
"I know, right? Talk about ungrateful!" Foolduke added, causing the Mime to look at her, surprised to hear the two agreeing for once, "If he'd died, he would've been a paragon of Mewni! Plus, I could have worked him into so many scathing satirical remarks comparing his feats of daring to the cowardice of our current ruling class."
"Right? And I could have written a hundred songs singing of our brave hero, Marco Diaz of Earth! He fought valiantly against the forces of the evil King Ludo until, tragically, he was cut down in battle against a mighty army of a thousand monsters! They practically write themselves!"
"Well you know what? Who needs him, anyway! I've got plenty of artistic comedy that probably would've gone right over his head anyway!"
"Absolutely. And he never did appreciate the finer points of musical artistry. Honestly, he was stifling us. We're better off without him."
The Mime glanced between her two comrades-in-arms, and a small smile worked its way onto her face.
"You can't seriously be calling this drivel art!" Foolduke shouted, throwing the stack of papers Ruberiot had handed her into the air. Ruberiot gasped and began frantically running around, trying to catch the papers before they could touch the dusty cobblestone road the two were standing on.
As he ran, he shouted back to Foolduke, "At least I craft something! The most artistic thing you've ever done was leave a whoopie cushion on the monster representative's chair!"
"First of all, that wasn't me, whoopie cushions are a crass and socially demeaning form of comedy only to be used in the highest forms of social commentary, and second, any sane person would prefer listening to a whoopie cushion over you scratching your fingers over your lute like my monkey trying to find a tick in its fur!"
"Well at least I can perform my art on my own! Only one supposed "art form" has to resort to the use of apes to do the artist's job for them!"
"My monkey's not an ape, he's a monkey!"
The two had been shouting at each other since they had left Mewni Castle that morning. It was now mid-afternoon, and they were heading back towards the castle from the town square below. The argument would have persisted even further, but as Ruberiot was coming up with a retort and reaching for the last of his lost pages, he noticed someone's foot standing on it. A foot clad in a pink boot that looked like it had a little monstrous face on it, with a single white horn on the toe of each.
"No! My art!" Ruberiot cried, seizing the paper and almost ripping it as he pried it from underneath the boot, not caring whom it belonged to until he heard Foolduke say from behind him,
"Uh... R-Ruberiot?"
He looked over his shoulder at her. She almost never addressed him by name, so he was curious as to what was up. She was just staring at something in front of him, looking a little scared. Ruberiot turned around, and found himself face-to-face with a frowning Princess Star Butterfly.
"P-Princess!" Ruberiot said, a little too loudly. He backed away and bowed slightly.
Star rolled her eyes and simply said, "Ruberiot. Writing something else to ruin someone's life?"
Ruberiot shook his head wildly. "Nonono, of course not, Princess! This is just a little... passion project I'm doing in my spare time! It has nothing to do with you or any of the nobility!"
Star raised an eyebrow at him. "Does that mean it has something to do with someone who's not nobility?" she questioned, sounding remarkably threatening for a girl still just shy of fifteen.
Ruberiot gulped. "M-maybe?" he said evasively. Star glared at him for a moment before sighing and shrugging her shoulders.
"Whatever. Just don't share things that are better kept secret, okay?" she said, before starting to walk away. Ruberiot breathed a sigh of relief, only to inhale again rapidly as Star turned to face both himself and Foolduke.
"Just so you know, I heard you guys arguing. Marco told me you seem to like it, so I'm not telling you to stop. But maybe you guys should lighten up a little..." Star looked away from them again, "... before someone gets hurt." It wasn't a threat. She sounded sad. The princess kept walking.
Ruberiot held his breath until she was out of sight, then let it out slowly. Foolduke shook her head.
"Some kids. It's like she thinks she knows us or something. I blame her upbringing. After all, she is a royal..." Foolduke paused as she turned to see Ruberiot trying to clean the dirt off his pages, while simultaneously desperately attempting to smooth out the creases in the one Star had stepped on. Something almost like guilt seemed to shift in Foolduke's chest, and she sighed before coming up behind him.
"Right here. You end the measure with and E flat with an F sharp base. It's in a completely different key from the rest of the song."
Ruberiot frowned at her. "As if you understand the artistic value of a sudden shift in the expected direction of a song." he said, puffing his chest slightly. Foolduke frowned right back at him.
"I know what sounds good, fiddle-head. And if you don't change that note, this song'll never be as good as Star's princess song."
Ruberiot looked at her in shock. Foolduke shrugged.
"It was fun to see the royals get a real shock to their system." she explained casually. Ruberiot looked nonplussed, but then gave Foolduke something between a smile and a grimace before turning to look at his page again.
"Maybe this does need a change." he muttered.
"Oh, uh, hi Ruberiot. Foolduke." Marco said awkardly.
"Marco. I'd heard you were back on Mewni." Ruberiot said, eyeing the boy out of the bottom of his eyes.
"Yeah, I've uh, been back for a while." Marco said, rubbing the back of his neck.
"Why are you here?" Ruberiot asked, eyeing Foolduke as she crept around behind Marco.
"Well, I wanted to apologize. You know, for leaving you in the dungeon and everything." Marco said, his eyes darting towards where Foolduke had left his field of vision.
"Apologize?" Ruberiot asked, unsurprised and trying to sound condescending.
"Uh, yeah. I'm staying in the castle now and everything, so I thought it would be best if we, you know... cleared the air? I guess?" Marco said, turning slightly to glance at Foolduke, who now stood behind him, hands behind her back.
"Well, I guess that could be done. For a price." Ruberiot answered, smirking at the boy. Marco frowned.
"Dude, you were going to let me die. Can't we just call it even?"
Ruberiot shook his head. "Oh no, Marco, I'm afraid we can't. See, we've given this a lot of thought."
"You have?" Marco looked nervously between the two of them.
"Yes. And we've decided there's only one thing you can do that will make us forgive you."
Marco sighed. "What do you want?"
Almost as soon as the words left his mouth, he let out a cry of surprise and pain as Foolduke hit him over the head with a rubber chicken. Both Foolduke and Ruberiot laughed as Marco rubbed his head.
"Okay, I see what you're saying about the rubber chicken, now." Ruberiot conceded. Foolduke looked him triumphantly in the eyes.
"Of course you do. No one can resist the instantly hilarious but subtly satirical comic value of a slapstick rubber chicken." she affirmed. The two put their arms over each other's shoulders as they continued to laugh. Marco gave them a slight smile.
"It's good to see the two of you getting along better, at least." he remarked. Foolduke and Ruberiot looked at each other, surprised.
"Huh." Ruberiot said. "I suppose we do."
"Yeah." Foolduke agreed. "I guess so."
They continued staring at each other, and Marco began to feel very uncomfortable.
"You're sure you don't want to invite your parents?" Ruberiot asked as he continued putting names on the invitations list.
"Absolutely positive! They're as Piefolk as Piefolk come! They'd scam everyone there for whatever they were worth, and I guarantee they'd at least try to make off with the cake!"
"Well, if you're sure. It doesn't seem right to just not tell them we're getting married, though."
"Oh, we'll tell them, just not until after it's over! Any sooner, and they'll find a way to be there and con the buttons right off that nice white suit of yours!"
"Still, shouldn't we at least go to visit them or something afterwards? Just to let them know?"
Foolduke sighed from the other room, where she was still getting her wedding dress fitted. "I suppose so. But remember, if my dad wants you to play any game at all, you say NO! Don't even look at the rules! Don't even look at the board! Just NO!"
"Okay dear, I promise I won't play any games with your dad."
Foolduke sighed. "We'll be lucky to come back with the clothes on our backs if we go there. Oh well, I guess I should let the family know I've got a husband, either way."
"Miss, I believe we are finished. Would you like to take a look?" the seamstress who had been tending the dress said to Foolduke.
"YES!" she shouted, shoving the seamstress out of the way as she darted for the nearest mirror. Her mouth dropped open as she looked at herself. The dress was everything she wanted it to be, but there was something missing...
"Oh, of course!" she pulled her jester's hat off the hook that hung beside the mirror, and placed it on her head.
"Perfect!"
"Honey? Could you come take a final look at the list please?" Ruberiot asked. Perfect timing. Foolduke strode out to meet him in her wedding apparel, and he gazed at her in wonder as she did so.
"Well, how do I look?" Foolduke asked simply.
"Wonderfully astonishing and astonishingly wonderful." Ruberiot answered, waxing poetical in a way she loved to tease him for.
"I should've known you'd say something like that. Now let's see that list."
Ruberiot handed it over. Foolduke scanned the page. Most of the names were standard fare. Relatives, old friends, a noble or two who insisted on being invited to everything even when the common people didn't want them there. But of course, right at the top were the two names both of them had agreed needed to be invited. Whether they knew it or not, those two kids had brought them together, and they wouldn't be getting married now if not for them.
Star Butterfly
Marco Diaz
"Looks good to me." Foolduke said, nodding her approval.
