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TW: This story will contain references to physical and psychological abuse, murder, and torture.
|Old Money|
Lunchtime had arrived and in the school's parking lot Heather was lounging in the driver seat of her car, a black Audi convertible, scarfing down one of several large pieces of pizza she'd picked up from the cafeteria. Though the building had been reopened to students, she had come to enjoy just sitting out in the lot, even if the risk of her cheap lunch food ruining the interior of her expensive car was high.
"… Pizza mozza-rella… pizza mozza-rella…" She sang to herself through her teeth as she bit on the end of her slice and pulled to stretch the cheese out as far as it could go. "Rella, rella, rella, rella, rella, re-lla~"
Noticing a flash of white out the corner of her eye, she turned her head to see Shermie Pines' SUV pull into the student parking lot and come to a stop just adjacent to her own car. Her brows rising as she smiled around her pizza, she watched as Dipper, Mabel, and Misao all disembarked from the car.
"Thanks for the ride, Sherpa~!" Mabel called to her Grandfather after she closed the door.
Shermie looked over towards his charges, smiling. "You know, back in my day, when we played hooky, we didn't come back to school for lunch. If you kids want to make like a camel and hoof it, I got a full tank of gas and nothing to do for the rest of the day."
"Wish we could, but we have a lot of business to handle today," Dipper said.
Shermie gave them a knowing look. "All right then, just keep your eyes peeled and your noses clean. I'll pick you up after the dust settles."
"Thanks, Grandpa," Dipper replied as Shermie put the car in gear.
"I love you, Sherpa~!" Mabel called.
"Bye bye!" Misao likewise bid farewell, as Shermie pulled off and left the lot.
Heather leaned her left arm onto the door of her car as she waved to the trio with her right hand. "Hey! I was wondering where you guys were."
Mabel and Misao both greeted Heather with brilliant smiles as they made their way over to her.
"Wow!" Mabel said as she beheld the convertible. "This is your car?!"
Heather nodded. "Mmhm! Nice, isn't she?"
Misao raised her nose and smirked. "Your family has good taste in cars, sehr gut."
Heather giggled, then gestured at them with her pizza, a bit of sauce getting on the leather upholstered inside of the door. "So what's up? Why are you guys showing up here just now?"
Dipper rested a hand atop Misao's head and gave it an affectionate pat. "We were helping Misao get moved in properly."
"All my stuff finally arrived from Europe," Misao added for context.
"And we weren't gonna miss school, all our friends are here!"
Heather let out a hum and looked towards the school. "Yeah, I'd have stayed home. The drama is thick today."
She picked up her plate and offered it to them. "'Za?"
Mabel and Misao each took a slice, while Dipper refrained–more taken aback by the amount of pizza she had on her plate. "What drama?" He asked.
"Brittney," Heather explained as Mabel took a bite out of her offered slice, "Banned Star from the School Spirit Week activities. She can't be at the Pep Rally Friday, the Awesome Opossums Football Game Saturday, or the Dance after that."
Misao scowled. "Who gave her the right?"
"The school. This is basically her do-over for Spirit Week, and Brittney's got full authority over everything." Heather continued. "And the only reason they're letting her is because she's rich and Principal Skeeves is a tool."
"But why?"
Dipper and Mabel looked at one another and realized Misao wouldn't know. The former answered. "Because way before any of us showed up, Star set off an incident at the homecoming game. She didn't realize the football game they were having was a game, and not… you know… a battle."
Misao folded her arms. "Well with all that armor and violence, how could anyone not mistake American Football for a battle?"
"Valid point, but Star's a magical princess from another dimension, and she took the initiative to ensure victory."
Misao's face fell as she considered the implications. "Oh dear."
Heather shrugged her shoulders. "Yeah, it was total chaos. There were magical bombs going off, squirrel monsters, portals to other dimensions–I think Brittney even got eaten by a dragon or something–but in the end the Silver Hill Warriors forfeited so everyone was pretty stoked about the school's first win since like… before any of us were born."
"Star and Marco spent the entire weekend cleaning up the mess they made, though," Dipper said to Misao. "Star made an entire vlog about it."
"She did…" Mabel agreed.
Heather threw a hand up. "So you see why it's stupid that Brittney's banning Star? It's freaking double jeopardy."
"It is not fair!" Misao said, fired up again. "Why punish her again?!"
"Because Brittney hates Star, and because her rich Dad dumps cash on the school like Trip and Van's Dad do, she's going around drunk on absolute power like a Student Council President in a lame high school anime."
Heather looked aside. "I'm almost glad I'm going on this stupid trip, now."
Dipper took a deep breath. "Where is she right now?"
Misao liked Dipper's tone. "Yes, I am curious to know, too."
Mabel turned to her brother and bestie. "We've already got one rich kid problem; we don't need two."
Everyone looked at Mabel, who shrugged her shoulders and tilted her head slightly. "I'm just saying."
Dipper didn't expect that tug on the proverbial lead, but it did help him pull back from the confrontational impulse hearing about this gave him. He understood where she was coming from, though.
Misao looked up at Mabel. "But what about Star?"
"We'll chat with her about it later. There's no way that she's going to let Brittney tell her where she can or can't go."
Misao's smile was a little nasty. "Ja, you're right. She'll go to the dance no matter what that haughty girl says!"
Heather sighed. "And now I'm wishing I could go again, so I could see that go down."
The bell rang, and Heather looked towards the school. "Well, my lunch is over… but I have a study hall next so I'm going to keep eating my pizza."
"And I'm going to get more pizza since it's the beginning of ours!" Mabel said with her usual bright energy.
Misao was in full agreement. "And we can talk to Star about our inevitable counteroffensive against the forces of Brittney!"
Mabel looked off to the side. "Ah… yep…"
Dipper eyed Mabel with some curiosity at the shift in her tone and body language, before he heard a strange sound. It was a high-pitched whine, like the sound of a supercar rushing towards him… but there was a weird pulsing and droning to it that reminded him of a star fighter's engine out of a science fiction action film. As he looked around for it, first on the ground and in the sky, Mabel, Misao, and Heather noticed it, too.
"… What is that?" Heather asked.
Mabel brought a hand to her ear, trying to determine where the sound was coming from, but it was bouncing around everywhere. "… Is someone making TIE Fighter noises?"
As the sounds grew louder, Dipper had an increasingly bad feeling about what they could be.
Misao looked almost straight upward, and her eyes grew large as she at last identified the source. "… Ah."
While it didn't look like much, Britta's Tacos was a local institution. Hands down the best Mexican Restaurant in this corner of Los Angeles, if not the entire city, it was a place with food so good it could only be described as magical. The food was so well-known, that no one was above eating there, no matter who they were–hence why Trip Vanderhoff could tolerate being seen at such a place, waiting at one of the stand's tables sipping horchata through a straw.
"You did tell him to come here right, Dilbert?" He asked after lowering his cup.
"Dudley, sir," his butler replied before confirming. "Yes, I informed him of the time and place."
"I don't pay you to tell me your name," Trip snapped at him before he gave a quick careless glance around. "Where is he? Last thing I need is for him to pop up in a Bueno Nacho or something because he can't follow simple directions."
"I wouldn't set foot in a Bueno Nacho if my life depended on it," Marco said as he walked up to Trip's table. "It's all horse meat and cardboard tortillas."
Trip turned to him, with a brief nod. "Well, nice to see we agree on one thing. Hopefully we can see eye to eye on others."
He gestured over to the seat across from him. "Have a seat right there."
Marco sat down, gave Dudley a sharp look, then directed it at Trip. "So… what exactly do you want?"
Trip smiled and set his cup on the table. "Cutting to the chase I see, I like that."
Marco didn't reply, instead scrutinizing the preppy fop's perpetual and unwarranted smug expression as he talked. There were a lot of things Trip could want, or at the very least thought he could get from him.
Coming out of the blue to talk to me… what else could he want besides someone who could take a shot at Dipper?
"So, you and I are mutually acquainted with someone, and I am willing to pay a handsome sum for you to… get a message across," Trip continued.
I'm surprised he'd even come to me, but does he really think I'm for sale?
Marco curled his lips to one side and let out a snort. "Oh yeah? Just how handsome are we talking?"
"Deon, give him the number."
Dudley handed Marco a folded-up slip.
How much are you willing to pay for your petty revenge, Trip? He thought as he unfolded and looked at the note. His eyes shot wide.
Okay, that's a lot.
"Is that good looking enough for you?" Trip asked.
Marco did not want to be frank aloud, but he could understand why people were happy to throw themselves into the meat-grinder that was being an enemy of Dipper Pines. He set down and tapped his fingers on the bottom of the slip, before he folded it back closed.
He understood that, but even if he didn't like Dipper, he wasn't going to take this. "You are a piece of work, you know?"
"A work of art, some would say," Trip shot back.
All right, that was an okay comeback, Marco thought. "But no, I'm not going to take your money to beat up Dipper, or Drew, or whoever you got beef with."
Trip recoiled. "Wh-wha?"
"If you wanna fight someone, do it yourself."
Trip shot up to his feet. "Whoa, whoa, whoa! I wouldn't spend that much cash on beating up either of those losers!"
He stopped. "Not that I'd pay anyone to do it. I'm over the beef, it's done."
That was obviously bull, but the fact that Trip wasn't here for that did throw Marco off a bit. "Come again?"
Trip palmed his forehead and let out an exaggerated sigh. "I'm talking about the girl you know; I want you to let her know that I want to take her to the dance Saturday."
Marco tilted his head to one side, like a puppy hearing whistling for the first time. "… You want to take Star to the dance?"
The very thought obviously wasn't a good one to Trip, given how he cringed in disgust. "No, not her! The other girl you know!"
Marco searched his mental database of girls he knew. "… Janna?"
Trip's head dropped back, and he let out a frustrated groan before slamming his hand on a table. "Let me put it in a way you can understand:"
Then, in the most over-enunciated, condescending, touristy Spanish Marco ever heard, Trip spoke. "¿Quiero salir con la chica que se parece a ti? ¿Lo entiendes? Te estoy hablando español!"
Marco stared at him, his expression darkening. "Si me vuelves a hablar te arrancaré los huevos."
Trip stopped, and tried to parse his reply "Yes… you speak… eggs?"
He shook his head. "Ugh! You weren't there, but there was this girl a couple weeks ago hanging out with the magic princess. She had the same kind of hoodie you have on, but she was cute in it and she had this long, really thick hair in a ponytail and this really pretty face. You know her, right?"
A long, overburdened silence followed.
Outwardly, Marco was stoic, statue-like even with his tight-lipped expression. He stared at and through Trip, into the infinite–perfectly still.
Within the temple of peace and serenity that was Marco however, echoed laughter that would make the Joker inquire with worry. Only the briefest twitch of the corner of his lip gave away the slightest hint, but what were the odds that Trip would catch anything that subtle?
Trip was indeed too focused on Marco's blank stare to consider what lay beneath. "What?"
Marco raised his hands and clapped them flat together, before taking a deep breath. "You… want to ask her out to the Homecoming Dance?"
Trip rolled his eyes. "Finally, how is it so hard to understand?"
Marco brought his hands down onto the table and interlaced his fingers. "All right, I'm going to clear this up right now, so you don't get your hopes up, okay?"
Trip adjusted his glasses. "Huh?"
"That girl you saw with Star that day? At the park where they found you crying like a horse?"
The way Trip's face twisted into a grimace almost made Marco laugh, but he held it together. "That was me. Not my sister, not my cousin, me. Star cast a spell that made me super feminine and pretty, and I'd been stuck like that because her magic was messed up. Okay?"
Now it was Trip's turn to sit in silence and process that. He stared hard at Marco, taking off his glasses and squinting at him, before putting them back on again and squinting even harder, eyeing his face, his shoulders, his hair. He looked over at Dudley, and the old chauffeur had his back to his young charge, hunched over with one hand on his hip and the other over his mouth–his entire body shaking from his held back laughter.
He looked back at Marco, who waited patiently for his response with the ghost of a smug smile on his lips, then closed his eyes.
"Do you hate money?" He asked.
And there went Marco's head tilt, again. "Huh?"
"I understand my unfortunately tarnished reputation now precedes me," he continued as he opened his eyes to level a withering look at Marco. "But really? You're going to claim that you're a crossdresser to get me to back off?"
"Are you calling me a liar?" Marco asked.
Trip slammed his hand on the table. "I'm calling you an idiot! Just give me her digits so I can ask her out!"
Marco pointed at himself. "Her digits are my digits! She's me!"
"You can't be, you are not that hot!"
Now Marco's pride was jabbed. "I am so too that hot!"
Trip snatched up the slip and waved it in front of Marco. "What is wrong with you people?! This is more money than you'll ever see in your life, and you're just turning it down for what?!"
Marco thought about it. "The money's nice, but saying no to someone who has never been told? That's priceless."
Letting his hand gripping the slip drop to his side, Trip pulled back and slowly shook his head. "I don't get it…"
"Some people just aren't for sale, no matter how much you've got."
Something about that specifically hit Trip hard, he crushed the slip in his fist. "Everyone has a price. They may talk big; they may act all high and mighty… but in the end? Flash them a big enough number and they'll do anything for it."
He pointed at him. "I just need to figure out yours, and you're mine."
Marco got up. "You're pathetic."
"How can I be the pathetic one, when I'm the one with the money?"
"All that money and you can't buy the girls you like," Marco clapped back, and Trip blanched before his face turned a solid shade of furious red. "It's not a substitute for your crappy personality, and it never will be. Later."
As he turned away from Trip, he heard a mechanical whine from above. Looking up for the strange sound, he quickly locked onto the source and his mouth fell agape.
"… Huh?"
Slicing through the air, the eight vespid Magnavore Jet Fighters flew above Echo Creek, the afternoon sun dancing off their gold and black bodies as they headed towards the mountains, and Hillhurst.
Behind Marco, Trip's anger faded when he saw the Jet Fighters, and his anger drained away into confusion. "What are those things…?"
"Trouble," Marco said, before he felt his phone buzz like crazy in his pocket.
Translation
Trip: "I want to date the girl that looks like you? Do you understand me? I'm speaking Spanish to you!"
Marco: "Talk to me like that and I'll rip your nuts off."
