The talk

A/N: This one will be short, but it will ultimately answer a lot of questions that I have been trying to raise. If any of you have your own, this will be it for answers. So, enjoy.

Disclaimer: I do not own SVTFOE, only my OC's and the idea for this particular story.

3rd Person PoV

"Oh, hey Marco, I thought that you said that you had an hour… to… what the heck happened to you!?" Star said, as the two walked inside the house, hair messed up, covered in bruises with tattered cloths. She was watching some random tv shows, mindlessly flipping through the channels. "Marco!" She yelled suddenly, tackling him in a hug.

He said, "Oof!" As she crashed into him, and even though he's exhausted, he manages not to crash into the door frame. "Star, not that I'm not glad to see you, but I need to sit dow-MMF!" He was cut off as Star crashed her lips onto his.

"Are you ok?" she asked breathlessly.

"Um… yeah, I'm good," he said with a goofy grin.

"Oh thank goodness," she said and hugged him again. Things started to get quiet, and even though someone like Michael doesn't get uncomfortable too easily, but this display is making him so. Clearing his throat he catches the attention of Star and Marco. She let's go of him and steps back to address Michael. "Oh, hey. Who are you?"

"My name is Michael, Princess Butterfly," he says bowing. "I don't have a last name… I kind of forgot it a few dozen centuries ago, no family to speak of to remind me, and, yeah about our appearances," he stood straight and looked at her in the eye. "We need to talk Princess, something is going happening. Something very, very bad."

Star looks at him up and down. Tattered cloths, samurai sword and hilt strapped to his belt loop, bruises all over, a gash on the side of his face from when the Minotaur exploded into existence, and he seemed to be favoring his left leg a bit.

"Ok," she finally said. "We'll talk, come in and sit down."

"Uh, actually, is there a place where we can talk in private? The 3, no, 4 of us can talk? This involves a one, Hugo Mortimer as well, and, well, there's this from person watching us from the tree right there," he points his thumb over his shoulder to the outside. Marco and Star poke their heads out of the door to see Buff Frog sitting on a lawn chair in the tree, watching them with a pair of binoculars. He stiffens when he sees them looking at him, and then falls out of the tree when Star blasts him with a narwhal blast.

"Yeah, we can go to my room," Marco said. They all went inside, being sure to close and lock the front door and windows on their way up. "Hugo!" Marco yells as they pass his room, Star ended up just duplicating Marco's room, which actually took quite a few tries, one of which ended up being a portal to the twilight zone…. More on that later, but Hugo pokes his head out of his room, his face looking fuller as he continues to heal and keep more and more food down. "Come on, mystery person wants to talk to us about mysterious magical fate of the world stuff. Said that it includes you as well."

Hugo nodded and followed them to Marco's room. Once inside, Michael ushers everyone inside, to the irritation of Marco, and he closes and locks the door, goes over to the window and does the same, closing the blinds as well. He then looks around the trim of the walls, occasionally knocking on a spot or two on a wall, then he muttered some things under his breath, pointed at the wall with two fingers clamped together, and made a sweeping motion by flicking his arm horizontally. A energy field swept across the walls, door and window, and then faded out.

"Ok, sorry about that, had to put some wards up. With the Organization guy taking out the ones all around town, having this many magic users in one spot is especially dangerous. I also added a muffler spell in there so no one can eavesdrop on us," he motioned for them to sit on Marco's bed, while he got the swivel chair from Marco's desk. He moved it in front of them, and sat on it with the back in front of him.

"Ok, so, first off, my name is Michael, for those of you who don't know me," Hugo inclined his head to him in a greeting, though still looked confused. "And I'm just going to cut to the chase. I'm not from around here. And with that being said, I'm not from this universe," he paused to gauge everyone's reaction. They all sat a little straighter, though Star looked confused.

He continued, "I'm a warrior form a parallel universe, much like Earth, in fact, if it wasn't for the Princess here," he gave a good natured nod to Star, "it would be pretty much a mirror copy. The reason why I'm here though, I'm in a very hard struggle against an enemy known only as, the Darkness." They were watching him attentively, and hanging onto every word that he was saying.

"That struggle has lead me hear, to this universe. He is as elusive as the boogeyman in pitch blackness, never knowing where he is, but knowing that he's there. I've been here for a while, I did my research, I played the strategies, and I know for a fact that you 3 are the key to helping me stop him."

He was finished. As vague as it goes, that was vague, even for 'cutting to the chase'. Star was the first one to speak up, "Um… ok, not that I think that you're lying, but, I think you're lying."

Michael chuckled and said, "I don't blame you, but I assure you, Princess Butterfly, I am being truthful."

"Ok then," Star said. "Prove it."

Michel smiled, but before he could say, or do, anything, Hugo spoke up, "Uh, why does this include me?"

"Ok," Michael said, "easy question first. Simply put, you're brother. He wanted to rescue you, I didn't want him to so soon. I mean, in all reality, I could have just popped over to Draksus and plucked you out of that little hole you called a home." Hugo went wide eyed, but Michael continued. "I needed him to get stronger, so I gave him a drive to achieve just that, you. You were his motivation, his focus, and it made him strong. So, in the end, it worked out for the both of us."

Hugo was stunned, to say the least, but before he could contemplate or say anything else, Michael stood up. He held out his hand, and concentrated. A ball of light formed just above his palm, and in it a bunch of images were shown.

"Oooh," Star said. "What is it?"

"My memories," he said simply.

"Really?" Marco said. "And how do we know you're not faking them?" He gets' up and walks over to get a closer look. It's like a crystal ball, without it being a crystal ball. Just light, and the images flashing by in it.

"Trust me when I say," he said as an image of a younger version of him getting impaled through the stomach by a beam of energy. "No one can fabricate this level of pain."

More images flashed by. Him getting his sword from a flash of light when he was about 13, meeting this 12 year old twins, fighting scores and scores of demons possessing innocent people, a war of unimaginable devastation, very brief flashes of him making love to someone, only for the next one to show the girl getting blown up and engulfed in green flames. Him hugging a young boy in a white bear hat that covers most of his head, him heading into a white portal, looking over his shoulders and giving a sad, but steady smile as he holds up a shaky thumbs up.

He is next seen taking the hand of a person who's half in and half out of a blue box that says 'police' on the top. More demons are being fought and killed, him floating aimlessly through the black expanse of space, and finally, crash landing like a meteorite in what looked like a field near the castle of Mewnii. He gets up, looks around him, taking in his surroundings. Then he falls to his knees, and weeps in despair. He is utterly alone at this point.

The images fade, as does the ball of energy. He closes his hand into a fist, and let's it fall to his side.

"I am over 6,000 years old. My Earth was destroyed by war and devastation. I wondered for nearly 2,000 years until I met a young boy named Finn, and from there I had to sacrifice myself to save the world that he knew. But I didn't die. I ended up meeting my maker, no pun intended, and he gave me the mission of saving other worlds as well. For an unspecified number of centuries, I wondered, and faught. I had friends, I lost friends, I loved, I died. It was the same song and dance, over and over again, and now, I want it to end."

He walked over to Marco's desk, placed his hands on it and leaned into it. "He is eternal, existing in the void between worlds since before creation was formed."

Something struck a cord in Star's head. And she remembered the bedtime story, from so long ago. "There is a legend," she remembered her mother telling her. "A prophecy. It is told that a child will be born, to become brighter than the most brightest star in the whole of creation." A tear formed at the corner of her eye, but she blinked rapidly, not letting it fall.

"Ok," Marco said. "I admit, that was a lot, but how do we know that you're telling the truth?"

"It's ok Marco," Star says. She walks up and stands next to him, slipping her hand into his. "He's telling the truth."

"What?" Marco said, surprised. "How do you know?"

"Remember that story that I told you back on Draksus?" he nodded. "Well, what he's telling us, about the Darkness, it ties into that story, really, really well."

"It's true Princess," Michael said, but she cut over him, "Just call me Star." "Ok, it's true, Star. The demons from that story, the Scourge, do tie into this, and correlate into the Darkness quite fittingly. But, I'm afraid, that what I'm faced with, is much, much worse. More so, than you could possibly imagine."

Star took a shuddering breath, and exhaled slowly. "Ok, what do you need us to do?"

"Simple," he said. "We train."

End chapter 17