Matchmaker
As Bucky, Star, and Marco were walking back to their classrooms from lunch a week later, Marco was explaining to the Butterfly siblings why he seemingly wore the same outfit every day.
"...I like red. I like hoodies. So I bought a dozen of them," he was saying.
"I just wish I could buy my own clothes like Bucky instead of Mom sending servants to buy clothes for me," Star complained. Right as she finished her rant, a large group of students enthusiastically greeted her and showered her with compliments, a few of which she returned. "Boy, everyone is so cool here! It almost makes me wish Mom kicked us out years ago!" she said with a broad grin.
"Correction: she kicked you out! I'm just along for the ride," Bucky reminded her, ruffling his little sister's hair with a smile.
"You're right, Star. And I've already introduced both of you to some of the coolest people here: Alfonso and Fergusen!" Marco boasted proudly, gesturing to where his two friends were standing. Alfonso looked on while Fergusen attempted to talk to a girl through a face drawn on his stomach in marker, only for said girl to slap both his face and his belly. "...though they're usually cooler," Marco continued, his face drooping to a deadpan expression.
"Wow. That guy is hopeless," Bucky commented, chuckling at Fergusen's misfortune. Just then, a girl Star and Marco's age rode by them on a skateboard. She wore skinny jeans and a white shirt with blue sleeves, both of which clung to her slight hourglass figure. She had lightly tanned skin, her cheeks were ever so slightly dusted with freckles, and wavy icy-blond hair with a prominent teal streak in the front stuck out from under her red helmet, hanging down to the back of her neck. This was Jackie Lynn Thomas, and Bucky could see why Marco had a crush on her.
"Hey, Star! Hey, Bucky!" Jackie called out as she passed them, leaving Bucky wondering how she knew his name.
"HI, JACKIE!" Star called back. Marco just stared at Jackie, smiling goofily with hearts in his eyes. Star recognized the look on his face and gasped. "Marco, I need to fix you up!" she declared excitedly. Immediately after she did, Marco snapped out of his trance.
"What?!" he asked. Star scoffed and explained what she meant while casually tossing her Wand from hand to hand.
"Oh, come on! I'm almost as good at matchmaking as I am with magic!" Star's Wand then went off in Marco's face, turning it black with soot and scorching his hair.
"I'm good..." he wheezed. Star used magic to clean him up right as the five-minute warning bell rang.
"See you two after school," Bucky said and waved as he walked to his classroom.
His math class had a pop quiz, and he did his best on it before turning it in. One of his many talents was the ability to soak up information like a sponge and remember it indefinitely. Whether that came naturally to him as a direct descendent of the scholarly Queen Rhina the Riddled, or somebody cast a Memory Charm on him as an infant, nobody was really sure. Regardless, what he remembered from the lessons of Butterfly Castle's private tutors was coming in handy at the public Earth school, and his teachers really seemed to like him.
"Excellent job once again, Mr. Butterfly!" his math teacher, a tall, skinny man with neat red hair and glasses, proclaimed as he handed back Bucky's quiz. Bucky flipped it over to see that he had received a perfect score. Since Earth's grading system was vastly different from Mewni's, Bucky had to ask one of his classmates to clarify a few details.
While the teacher was in the process of handing out the rest of the graded quizzes, the mirror phone in Bucky's pocket suddenly started ringing and vibrating, turning everyone's attention to him. Bucky gulped and chuckled nervously.
"Will you excuse me for a second? I need to yell at my sister for calling me when she's supposed to be in class," he requested. He knew it must've been Star, because hardly anyone outside his family knew his number.
"Sure, go ahead," the teacher nodded. Bucky stepped out into the hall, flipped open the mirror, and held it to his ear like it was a Human cell phone.
"I swear, Star, if this isn't an emergency...YOU DID WHAAAAT?!"
...
"Okay, let me get this straight," Bucky said a few moments later, having opened a portal back to his and Star's bedroom after alerting his teacher that there was, in fact, an emergency. "You doodled on your test, as usual, and got a failing grade, right?" Star nodded. "You got jealous of Marco's grade and tried to bribe your teacher into changing yours, right?" Star nodded again. "Then how, pray tell, did she turn into THAT?!" Bucky yelled at her, gesturing to the hulking, green, potbellied Troll with flaming red hair and a pink gem in her navel that was tied to a chair in the middle of the room.
"She was mad about a date that ditched her, so I told her I would cast a spell on her that would make her irresistible. And, well...that happened," Star sheepishly explained.
"It's true. I was there for the whole thing," Marco chimed in. "She tried to turn Ms. Skullnick back to Human, but that spell teleported the three of us back here." Bucky groaned and pinched the bridge of his nose.
While the three teens were trying to come up with a plan to turn the teacher Human again, Buff Frog was spying on them from the top of the palm tree outside the window. He chuckled maliciously and opened a portal back to Ludo's castle.
"Ludo, Master," he reported, doing his customary (if strange) salute. "Butterfly siblings have come home from school early today. And they seem...distracted." Ludo was perched on top of a gigantic pile of cushions on his throne, slurping at a pink ice cream cone with some of it smeared all over his beak.
"Distracted?" he asked, then broke into a wide, evil grin. "Excellent! This is the moment I've been waiting for! Nobody can be at their best when they're...DISTRACTED!" He then cackled madly while flailing his frozen treat around, causing the ice cream to tumble out of the cone. Bearicorn, an anthropomorphic bear with a spiraling horn in the middle of his forehead, quickly picked up the fallen treat and put it back on the cone before Ludo could notice. However, Ludo simply discarded it as soon as he sat up. "Finally, I'll get my hands on that glorious Wand! And when it transforms, it'll match my hat! And then I'll finally get my big-boy body! I'll destroy a few things, trample a tower, become a lifeguard..." Ludo quickly snapped out of his fantasy before he could embarrass himself. "Well, don't just stand there, you miserable lot! PREPARE TO INVADE!" Once more, Ludo's henchmen roared in approval before rushing to the armory.
Back at the Diaz house, Ms. Skullnick started sobbing hysterically as Bucky pointed out the flaws in each and every plan Star came up with.
"I hate to say it, Star, but there's no alternative. You have to call Mom," Bucky finally said. Star gasped in fear.
"WHAT?! NO! I CAN'T ASK FOR HELP!" she screeched.
"It's the only way!" Bucky insisted. "You're not experienced enough to reverse an accidental spell, and I sure as corn can't help you. Only Mom has the knowledge to fix this!"
"But if our parents find out, they'll send me to St. Olga's Reform School for Wayward Royalty! A terrible, horrible place where no one who comes out is ever the same! AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!" Star screamed. Bucky just looked at her with a deadpan expression.
"Are you done?" he asked.
"Almost. AAAAAAAAHHHHHH! Okay, it's all out," she replied.
"Good. If you're that scared of telling them, just don't tell the whole story!" Bucky told her.
"My thoughts exactly! Just, I don't know, dance around the truth a little!" Marco added.
"Well, I guess I am a good dancer...okay, I'll give it a shot!" Star finally decided. She quite literally danced over to the jumbo mirror phone that was hanging on the wall and confidently ordered "Mirror, mirror, on the wall, call Mom!"
"Calling Tom..." a robotic feminine voice replied as the words appeared on the surface of the mirror. Star's eyes widened as a teenage boy with grayish-purple skin, wild red hair, three eyes, two horns, and a fang-filled mouth appeared in the mirror.
"Whoa, hey! What's up, Starship?" the new boy asked, wiggling all three eyebrows with a sly smile. Star's eyes narrowed, and she huffed.
"No! NO! NO! I said call Mom, not Tom," she growled. Tom developed a look of horror.
"Wait, no! It's okay! I'm here, and you're here, so can't we just-"
"WRONG NUMBER!" Star interrupted. A look of rage grew on Tom's face, and his eyes started glowing red.
"DON'T HANG UP ON ME, YOU LITTLE-" he roared in a voice that was supernaturally deep, but Star pushed the jewel on the mirror's frame that acted as the "re-dial" button, and the mirror went blank with the sound of a busy line. Marco looked over at Bucky and noticed that his face was stonier than usual.
"Psycho ex-boyfriend?" Marco guessed.
"Yup," Bucky confirmed.
Finally, Queen Moon appeared in the mirror and said, "Ah, Star, Buchanon, what a pleasant surprise!" That was when Star began her poorly worded request.
"Soooooo, Mom, say someone accidentally turned someone else into a Troll with the Wand," she chuckled nervously while Moon's face drooped from a smile to a deadpan expression. "Not that I would ever do that of course, that would be completely irresponsi-" Star was suddenly interrupted by a loud crash and Marco screaming.
"Star, what is going on?!" Moon demanded angrily as both Marco and Bucky ran past with panicked looks on their faces.
"GOTTA GO, BYE!" Star shouted and hung up on Moon. "WHAT HAPPENED?!" she shouted.
"Ms. Skullnick just jumped out the window!" Bucky told her. All three of the teens jumped out the hole in the wall where the window used to be and tackled the runaway teacher. Then they looked up and saw Ludo standing in Marco's backyard with his entire horde.
"Ludo?! What gives?!" Star demanded.
"I'm catching you...at your most distracted!" Ludo cackled. Star just huffed.
"Oh, please, I've been way more distracted than this!" she protested.
"I can confirm that," Bucky added.
"Oh. Well...HEY, LOOK AT THAT!" Ludo shouted, pointing behind the teens. "GET THEM!" he ordered his henchmen when all three turned their heads in confusion. The henchmen roared and rushed into battle, with the teens running in three different directions and squaring off for the fight.
Marco tied a white headband around his forehead, picked up a nearby rake, and spun it around like a staff, warning the Monsters that surrounded him that he had a Red Belt (which, predictably, meant nothing to them). Bucky unclasped his cape, threw it to the side, and took a boxer's stance. Star charged up her Wand with magical energy, making the star-shaped gem glow brightly. And Ms. Skullnick broke loose from the ropes holding her captive and was about to climb over the fence, when one Monster in particular caught her eye. He was nine feet tall and resembled the Minotaur from Earth's legends, with charcoal-gray skin, a gold nose ring, glossy black horns, a brown loincloth, and a sheathed sword.
"Alright, Ludo, get ready to feel the love! CRYSTAL DAGGER HEART ATTACK!" Star shouted, jumping into the air and unleashing a hailstorm of sharp ruby fragments shaped like halves of broken hearts, practically turning the Monsters around her into pincushions. Marco and Bucky leaped into action in a similar manner, beating the Monsters back almost effortlessly.
Bucky sent the Minotaur-like Monster flying backwards with a kick to the gut, which caused him to crash into Ms. Skullnick. The Monster attempted to pick himself up and found himself staring into the most beautiful pair of eyes he'd ever seen, attached to what he considered the most beautiful woman he'd ever seen. Blushing madly, he mumbled an apology in a guttural Monster dialect that even his fellow henchmen had trouble understanding and hauled the teacher to her feet before drawing his sword and rushing back into battle.
This exchange did not go unnoticed by Star, who for some odd reason found the scene endearing. She quickly formulated a plan while shooting a narwhal at a Monster trying to blindside her.
"Hey, Marco! Take over for a minute!" she called out to her new best friend before waltzing over to Ms. Skullnick, who was once more trying to crawl over the Diaz family's fence. "Oh, Skullzie!" she called out in a singsong voice, catching her teacher by surprise. "See that Monster over there?" She pointed to the Minotaur, who had Bucky upside-down in a Piledriver hold until Bucky wriggled around enough to kick him in the face, sending him reeling as he dropped Bucky. "He thinks you're cute!" Ms. Skullnick blushed and raised her hands to her mouth, giggling like a schoolgirl caught eyeballing her crush.
"Y-you really think so?" she asked.
"I know so!" Star replied confidently. "Wait right here while I go put in a good word for you!" She rushed over to the Monster in question and told him essentially the same thing she told Ms. Skullnick.
"STAR! GET YOUR HEAD BACK IN THE GAME!" Bucky roared angrily while Buff Frog had him in a Full Nelson. Buff Frog's grip was broken when Three-Eyed Potato Baby, an extremely pudgy Monster with three eyes, was knocked into him by Marco.
"Oops! My bad!" Star apologized sheepishly before unleashing one of her most destructive spells. "TURBO...NUCLEAR...BUTTERFLY BLAST!"
"Oh, no, not again!" Ludo moaned in despair as magical energy built up inside the Wand and formed an earth-shattering multi-colored explosion. When everyone's vision returned and the ringing in their ears faded, everything was covered in a combination of soot and fluttering butterflies. Star got confirmation from Ludo that none of the Monsters were dead, then allowed him to cut open a portal and retreat.
The dazed Marco and Bucky were disgusted by the sight of Ms. Skullnick hanging onto the Minotaur's arm and giggling while staring dreamily into his eyes, while Star was excited.
"So, Skullzers, about that grade..." she began, only for Ms. Skullnick to laugh.
"Oh, honey, I'd give you an A-plus if I were still your teacher. As it is, though, I'm running away with Captain Triceps here!" The Minotaur blushed and rubbed the back of his neck, burbling in his strange language. The new couple walked through the portal together, and it closed behind them.
"Well...that happened," Bucky said, trying not to gag as he patted the back of the discouraged Star. "Come on, let's help Marco clean up before his parents get home."
...
The next day after school, Bucky learned from an extremely distraught Star that Ms. Skullnick came back because she couldn't understand her now ex-boyfriend's strange Monster language, thinking he wanted to break up.
On the other hand, Marco was ecstatic because Jackie had actually spoken a complete sentence to him after Star gave him part of the credit for Ms. Skullnick's brief disappearance. Aside from that, school went on like normal.
Unbeknownst to Marco and his houseguests, though, a group of girls well-known throughout the school was plotting ways for their leader to grab the attention of the new (presumably) rich and popular prince.
In the eyes of Brittney Wong, a snobby Asian girl whose parents were the richest people in Echo Creek, she and Bucky would be the ultimate power couple despite the age gap between them. They would elevate one another's social status to an almost undefeatable level, and at the same time establish extremely profitable relations between their two families. Only two things currently stood in her way: Safe Kid and Bucky's infuriatingly annoying sister.
She and her posse giggled to themselves as they looked over their agreed-upon plan:
Step 1: Impress him with our cheerleading routine at the football game against Silver Hill Prep...
Uh oh! Looks like trouble is brewing for Star, Bucky and Marco! Stay tuned for what I think is going to be a highly anticipated chapter (that will most likely be a two-parter): School Spirit!