ATUHOR'S NOSE: Did a little retcon back in chapter 20 (23) to keep Tempest's power curve in line, on the off chance anyone happened to be rereading this fic in the past, like, hour or so before this went up and was confused by the change. When I saw what I had originally written I thought I'd have to tweak like twelve chapters to fix it but then I only found that one outlier. ... I might still tweak it for different reasons but I don't 'have' to now.

Since Cloudy couldn't carry three people and Marco didn't know how to summon a Keyblade Glider (and, despite my offer, was uninterested in learning), the three of us were now walking in the general direction of a forest, through which I could see the top of a castle. Mewni Castle, would be the obvious guess, though for all I knew Eclipsa had somehow gotten her own castle, even bigger and better than the one belonging to the officially-recognized royal family. With blackjack and so forth.

... it took a few minutes of wondering about this before I remembered that I could ask. "So, uh, where's Eclipsa been hanging out lately?"

"Like you don't already know from your 'reference materials'?" Star retorted suspiciously.

"They don't give us current events, silly," I deflected. "I know Eclipsa's general deal because she's historical."

You don't have to use exact words, you know. You're not gonna earn any bonus points for technically not 'lying' when —

If.

— when Star finds out you were deliberately misleading her.

Star was frowning very loudly at me as she considered this explanation. "I'm watching you..."

"You've been watching me," I said. "You've said so like a dozen times in the past half hour. I get it, you find me suspicious."

"And you offer no explanations!"

I sighed and walked on in silence.

"... We're going to the royal palace," Star said eventually.

"Eh?"

"You asked where Eclipsa was?"

"Oh, that. Would that be the castle currently peeking above the treeline?"

"Uh-huh. Keep up, will ya Tempe?"

"Hey, I don't know this place," I said, "there could be any number of castles around here." I'm pretty sure there were several castles, in fact, but I've completely forgotten the details...

"Was that not in your 'reference materials'?"

I groaned. "I might have slacked off on reading them in complete detail, all right?"

Star frowned very loudly. "How convenient for you..."

"Star..." I sighed. "Either I'm not keeping a secret and you're wasting your energy, or I am keeping a secret and maybe there's a good reason for that. I've mentioned the whole 'outworld perspective' thing, right?"

"Obliquely," Star said. "You haven't given me any good reason to trust your 'outworld perspective', though."

I sighed. "Well... too bad. I dunno what to tell you at this point."

Star hmph'd and we continued onward in silence.

...

I think I'm taking the wrong approach to this whole quest, I thought, for once wanting my mysterious interlocutor's attention. Like, giving a random kid a Keyblade? What the hell was I thinking‽

I had a similar question myself about that, they responded. But what are you thinking now?

The ultimate goal here is to defeat Xehanort and whoever he's recruited, right?

Sounds right to me.

There's gonna be the whole χ-blade thing, too. Knowing my tropes, it's likely to happen no matter what we do, but I feel like we should at least try to stop him.

Evil always triumphs in the middle, as they say. How are you planning to counter that?

Xehanort wants a clash between seven lights and thirteen darknesses. I'm not really either at this point, I think, so I could form a team of greys to completely derail his plans.

Maybe. Who else would be on your team?

That's the part I'm not sure about. Vani, maybe, if I can convince him to break off from Big X.

"Big X." You find that unreasonably amusing.

Vani finds that unreasonably amusing. I find it amusing that he's so amused. A crucial difference.

You're still gonna make it a thing, though. It wasn't a question.

Yeah, probably. Wherever this voice came from, they clearly knew some amount about me. But anyway, as for more people... maybe Eclipsa can help with that, since we're talking to her anyway.

It didn't take much longer to reach the castle, and after a quick chat with the first guard we saw (who seemed annoyed at Star) we made our way to where Eclipsa was hanging out today.

"Is there a particular reason they don't like you?" I asked Star.

She glared for a moment. "I abdicated the throne and they're all really mad about having to serve Eclipsa now cause they don't like how she cares about monsters?"

"Mm," I mm'd. "I understand that intellectually, but I gotta admit, it's hard for me to wrap my head around the idea that some people are that... petty."

"That makes two of us," Star grumbled. "Why can't people just be nice?"

"Wish I knew," I said as we arrived.

Star opened the door. "Hello, Queen Eclipsa."

"Why hello, Star," Eclipsa said. "And is this your new friend you mentioned earlier, what was her name... Twister?"

"Not quite," I said, suppressing a giggle. "Tempest."

"We're not friends," Star grumbled.

"W- we're not?" I asked.

"We're... acquaintances," Star said. "I've talked to you like three times, and you're being all... shady! And you turned Marco into abomination bait!"

I sighed. "Well, that is why we're talking to Eclipsa."

"Yes, I was about to ask what brings you here today," Eclipsa said. "Though I'm... not quite clear on what you mean by 'abomination bait'...?"

"Long story, kinda dumb, not entirely sure how much I'm allowed to say, not that I super care about what's 'allowed' beyond a vague dislike of 'getting in trouble'." I waved my hand around dismissively. "Anyway, my initial plan for dealing with this involved leaving Marco here to continue being bait while I worked on a fix. Nobody really liked that, and the obvious alternate plan is bringing Marco with me, and nobody liked that one either, so we were hoping you had a third and better option..."

"That's not quite how it went," Star muttered, though quietly enough that I assumed she considered my explanation to be getting enough of the basic idea across. I wasn't sure what exactly she was objecting to, but since I was so frazzled I was half-convinced I was seeing mole people I couldn't rule out that I'd maybe gotten a few details swapped.

"So... you have a 'fix' in mind," Eclipsa said, "and you're just stuck on the execution?"

"... Pretty much, yes."

"Well, have you considered staying here while you do your research?"

"I..." I had considered it, yeah, but... "The aforementioned abomination bait thing. I can't say literally everything, but..." I pulled out my phone and showed Eclipsa the angry selfie Star had sent me. "Leaving Marco alone seemed like a bad idea."

"Though come to think of it," Marco chimed in, "no more of those Heartless things have shown up since you got here. Wonder what that's about?"

As if in direct response, a bunch of Soldiers and various types of those floaty elemental ones immediately swooced out of the floor.

"You had to say it!" Star exclaimed.

"Magnet!" I immediately summoned Voice of the Well and began fighting the Heartless off.

Marco karate-chopped a Blue Rhapsody into the floor. "Yeah, and whose fault is —" the Rhapsody bounced off the floor and got pulled into the magnetic vortex. "— oh, Magnet's the spell you just cast, isn't it."

"What?" It took me a few seconds to work out what Marco had thought I was saying. "Oh, yeah, obviously. Thundaga — shoot — Thundaga!" I had to cast that one twice because the first try fizzled, but the second one fired off perfectly, to my elation. "Ha! Got it!"

"... is that healing the yellow ones?" Star asked. "Also, Narwhal Blast!"

I gave the crowd a quick glance over with Scan and, sure enough, the Yellow Operas were looking a lot heartier than the rest, even after Star's narwhals tore through the group.

"One of these days I'm gonna remember that little detail before accidentally healing half a pack of these things," I grumbled. "Don't freeze the blue ones or burn the red ones. Just glad they don't have any green healers today..." (I looked their exact names up after the fact to write this, I can't remember that on the spot when they're basically element-swaps of the same base idea.) "Ruin, that's non-elemental, that shouldn't heal anyone." Though the little blast of magic energy had the obvious drawback of hitting only one target at a time, I could at least target it at the ones immune to what would otherwise be my best spell.

"Would you like some assistance? Midnight Shriek," Eclipsa intoned, unleashing a blast of dark magic that tore through the Heartless swirling through the air.

With my MP pretty low and most of the Heartless defeated, I cleaned up the stragglers just by smacking them with Voice of the Well. Which was not a task it was particularly suited for but I dealt with it. Between my swipes and Marco's karate, the last of them finally vanished.

And Star immediately glared very loudly at me. "Tempe, didn't you have better names for your magic last time?"

It took me a moment to put that together. "Oh, yeah, well, I still gotta learn the spell properly first before I can play around with it like that. I'll come up with something..."

"Anyway, you can see what I've gotta deal with now because of her," Marco said.

"I think..." I trailed off, tapping my temple in contemplation. "I think the most helpful thing you could do, Eclipsa, is keep an eye on him while I head off to that other world, to make sure he's not overwhelmed dealing with these things. And then when I reach my destination, I can... somehow... give that information to Marco, and he can dimensional scissor there and back as needed."

"That's one option," Eclipsa said. "What do you think, Marco dear?"

"I... don't think I like any of the options she's suggested," Marco said. "I guess, of the three, I might hate it the least? Depending on how long she thinks it'll take to get where she's going."

"An hour to a day," I said. "Depending on how the lanes have shifted. Getting from there to here took around three, four hours, so I can't imagine the return trip being longer than seven. I usually just set the autopilot and play my 3DS until it dings at me."

Have you considered using that opportunity for a nap sometimes? the other voice thought at me. You're so sleep-deprived Rachel can feel it.

Don't fourth wall at me, I avoid the fourth wall for a damn reason! ... I'm not proud to admit that my thoughts very distinctly resembled shrieking at this point.

"What I'd really like," Marco said, having continued the conversation unaware that I was distracted, "would be if she'd just put things back how they were, but she says she can't do that."

"Strictly speaking, I don't know how to do that," I clarified. "It might also be flat-out impossible, though." ... I faltered a bit as a rather painful thought occurred to me.

Don't you flinch away from this, kitty. This could be the solution.

If you like breaking the fourth wall so much, you must know why it's never going to happen.

Wouldn't it be so cool to defy her, though? Do something you know she's against?

... Not enough to take this path. ... Not yet, anyway. I'll put a pin in it. Might be easier to get away with later anyway.

"Hel-looooo? Mewni to Tempest, do you read?" Star tapped me on the forehead, and I flinched and stepped back, startled. "You zoned out suddenly, what are you doing?"

I shook my head to clear it. "Um, I had a sudden idea, but I realized on second thought that it'd be useless. I'm inclined to go with the third idea, except that I can't work out how to get the location to you — phone!" I smacked myself in the head. "Obviously. Phone. I can send you a picture of the library when I get there, and... will you be able to use that?"

"Yeah, that'd work," Marco said. "Might need two or three pictures, but that's no big deal when we have the power of communication in our hands."

I groaned with slight but distinct irritation. "I get it, I get it, I need to stop forgetting about extremely basic human skills. I'm working on it. But now that I've figured out some semblance of a plan, I can finally start doing things."

Eclipsa frowned slightly, scrutinizing my face. Well, all of me, but mostly my face. "Forgive me for saying, Tempest dear, but you look a bit tired. Are you sure you don't want to rest a bit before you head out?"

"Nah, I'm fine," I lied. "Besides, I can nap on the trip. Autopilot's really amazing on that thing."

"If you say so," Eclipsa said, sounding doubtful. "Just do be careful. I wouldn't want you to hurt yourself."