CHAPTER 4: I'm Marco
Acw28: Yup. She will still pop up from time to time though, so don't worry.
MariposaFalls11: Omg the new Gravity Falls made me so mad. It's kind of fun to make Marco so nasty to be honest.
Watermalone: Oh absolutely, episode 8 is crucial. And Toffee being angry is just kind of how I imagine him when he doesn't have an audience.
Legogamma: Thank you for your condolences.
So. This week has been kinda rough for me. Writing's tricky right now, but luckily I have the next several chapters for this already written.
I don't own Star vs. the Forces of Evil.
Against his better judgement, Marco followed.
GENERAL POV
He found her sitting on a park bench a couple of blocks away, her knees drawn up to her chin and tears streaming down her cheeks. Hiccups shook her body every few seconds, and Marco took a moment to study her from a distance.
Her hair was loose around her shoulders, and a blue sleeveless dress covered her body. Her wand had been deposited onto the bench next to her and Marco was ever so tempted to grab it. He kept his cool, however, even managing to reach into his pocket for a tissue.
"Are you uh…okay?" he asked, trying very hard not to snarl the question at her as he handed the tissue over.
Star looked up hesitantly, confusion flashing across her eyes as she took it from him. "Who are you?" she choked out.
Marco stepped back slightly, clasping his hands behind his back so as not to seem like a threat and sliding his dimensional scissors lower in his pocket. "I uh….I'm Marco," he finally answered, not missing the flash of recognition in her eyes. "I just moved here, and you looked kinda upset."
He nodded his head back towards the school. "What was all of that about?" he asked, feigning innocence.
Star winced and looked down at her hands. Silence fell between them as he waited for the answer and she contemplated it, the sun speckling across the two of them and dappling the trees around them with a light that Marco didn't think he'd ever seen before.
"I'm um…I'm from another dimension," Star finally got out, making Marco look up. "And…all of that stuff was Mewberty and I guess….I just freaked everyone out."
Marco pursed his lips. "They said some pretty harsh things," he said truthfully, scuffing his foot in the dirt. "I mean, you couldn't control all that, right?"
Star looked up at him warily and shook her head. "No. Why are you being so nice? You don't even know me."
Marco wanted to roll his eyes and spout off every fact he knew about her, which was quite a few, but he kept that all to himself. "Because," he said with a shrug. "You seemed kinda down, and everyone was being really nasty. I'd be pretty upset if someone didn't come to talk to me."
Star gave him a hesitant smile and stuck out a hand. "Thanks. I'm Star, by the way."
Marco took her hand with the slightest grimace, unable to stop himself from recalling the nasty sticky stuff that had come from her fingers mere minutes ago. "Cool."
They stood for another moment as Marco discreetly wiped the palm of his hand on his pants, neither of them quite sure what to say. "So…" Marco started. "Do…people at that school always treat you like that?"
Star flinched and looked down at her hands. "Not up until recently. They all just started acting like I had never hung out with any of them before, even Jackie, who was like my best friend until today. I think Ludo had something to do with it," she grumbled.
Marco raised an eyebrow. "Ludo?" he asked, knowing very well who the moronic demon was. After all, Toffee was trying to figure out how to infiltrate the other demon's castle.
"Yeah, my nemesis," Star said, glancing up. Catching the look of mild disgust on Marco's face, the girl sighed. "Sorry. I know, I know, it's weird for people on earth."
Marco paused and she studied him carefully. "Do I…do I know you?" she asked slowly. His hair and voice reminded her of someone, though she couldn't quite place who. His eyes were even more striking; something about them haunted her. They weren't much, normal brown eyes like half the world had, but there was something in them that was filled with quiet anger, something that glimmered with silent hopes. His name, too….it was the same as the Diaz's baby, though she knew that it was common for multiple people on Earth to have the same name.
"Not unless you've been to, uh…Texas," Marco said, pulling one of the only states in the United States that he knew the name of out of thin air. "That's where I'm from."
Star slumped slightly, defeated that this wasn't the Marco she was looking for. "No, I've never been there. Sorry to bug you, I guess."
She pushed herself to her feet and slipped her wand into her hand, walking towards the entrance of the park with her head down. Marco twisted his lips into a scowl and quickly went after her. "Hold on a sec," he said, grabbing lightly to her elbow.
As her gaze turned to him, Marco found himself unsure of what to say next. "I uh…I could use a tour guide. And you weren't bugging me. I came after you, remember?"
Star smiled thinly. "Thanks for that, Marco but I…don't really know if I can trust you. No offense," she added quickly, "but my entire school was just turned against me somehow. For all I know, you're just a monster in disguise."
Marco stiffened ever so slightly but let her go, knowing that he couldn't blow his cover. He waited for her to round the corner before going after her again. "Wait, Star, I-"
He was cut off as a portal opened up in front of them and Ludo and his henchmen spilled out. Star spun on him, eyes flashing. "You are a monster!" she cried out.
"NO!" Marco said quickly, holding up his hands and trying hard to look scared. "I have no idea what these things are doing here!"
"Star Butterfly!" Ludo squealed in delight. Star turned from Marco to the tinier threat and gave a rather impressive sneer.
"Ludo. What are you doing here?" Star demanded, twirling her wand through her fingers.
The tiny demon smirked. "Wouldn't you like to know?"
Star hesitated, looking befuddled. "Uh, yes…that's why I asked."
Marco bit back a guffaw. Okay, he had to scratch the whole "Prissy Princess" name off his list. She was sassier than he had expected.
"I don't have to tell you anything!" Ludo shouted. "Get her!"
It was now or never. Marco made a split second decision and leapt in front of Star, beating down a monster as quickly as possible without even tapping into his tentacle arm powers. Star stared at him in shock, a tentative smile growing on her face. "You can fight?"
Marco smirked and punched another monster in the face. "It's called….karate," he declared, remembering the name from the books that Toffee had given him.
Only minutes later, the monsters were lying in the streets like dead fish, groaning and gasping for breath as Ludo called a retreat. As they left, Star turned to Marco with a sheepish face. "Sorry I accused you of being a monster," she apologized, twisting a strand of hair around her fingers.
Marco shrugged, the adrenaline still pumping through him, and he struggled a little to keep control of his monster arm, flexing and relaxing his hand at his side to calm it. "No big. I could see why you thought that. We cool?"
Star smiled brightly, clasping her hands around her wand in front of her. "Really? You're not freaked out like everyone else?"
"I don't see why I should be," Marco said with a shrug. "So….I kind of need to go back to the school to get my bag. Want to come with?"
Star chewed on the end of her wand, studying Marco carefully. "Yeah. Yeah, okay."
"You see? He is doing fine," the teller assured Toffee.
Toffee frowned and rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Perhaps for now. But what if he begins to be around the humans too much, realizes he is truly one of them and not a monster?"
The teller pursed her wrinkled lips. "That is not my concern. However," she added quickly, seeing the menacing look on Toffee's face, "I can assure you that so long as he does not go to his former home, he will refuse to believe he could be one of them. After all, you performed the monster arm spell on him for a reason. It took a great deal of your power to do, I know."
Her eyes drifted to Toffee's missing finger and the reptile snarled, hiding the hand behind his back. "What I did is none of your concern," he hissed.
"No one said it was," the teller assured him, running her talons over her crystal ball once more and keeping a close eye on Marco and Star. "I foresee that in the near future, you will create the deal you have been hoping to make."
Toffee nodded firmly. "Wonderful. And the outcome of the deal?"
The seer pursed her lips. "Still fuzzy," she declared, squinting at the ball. "It can be altered if Marco's loyalties sway."
"They won't," Toffee said with determination. "And since they won't, can you tell me the outcome?"
"If they won't," the teller said softly, putting slight emphasis on the first word, "then you will get what you seek."
A rare, evil grin spread across Toffee's face and he spun to exit the tent without another word, leaving the teller sitting alone once again. She chortled quietly and shook her head.
"Foolish demon," she mumbled, adjusting her scarf and looking back into the crystal ball. "They all think they know humans so well. But they forget that the greatest ability of humans is the ability to change."
She rolled her eyes and slid back from her chair, moving to the calendar she had set up on a side table. "The blood moon approaches, Toffee," she cackled gently, circling a date with a red sliver of chalk. "And what of your precious kidnapped child then? Loyalties sway on the night of the blood moon."
The demon turned away from the calendar and pressed her talons to her lips, unintentionally pricking herself and drawing blood. She ventured to the door of her tent and stared out onto the plains of her dimension, a snicker spilling out of her mouth.
"Your demise," she whispered to the wind, "will be marvelous."
I love the teller. And yeah, I kinda copied the first episode with the Star and Ludo interaction; but since it was Star and Marco's first time meeting (technically) it seemed appropriate.
Reviews?