A/N: Made some minor changes. Somehow I didn't realized how janked up the graph was. 5/6/18

In all honesty Marco had no idea where things went from the average variety type of weird to the super 'have no idea how to explain" bland of weird that he is life was currently drenched in.

It all started one afternoon, his best friend Star Butterfly was belly down, feet up on his bed reading a book of some kind while he was at his computer desk streaming an old martial arts flick. Suddenly the blond princess of an otherworldly dimension shot up, clutching the journal to her chest and giggling rhythmically as she fled back to the region of her room.

Actually hold on, he thought about that last sentence. It was probably then where things got strange.

It was kind of a red flag in retrospect, should've followed that up instead of finishing off that old Mackie Hand film that he already watched a dozen times over. Could've saved himself a lot of trouble if he only had distracted her with something. Probably food, Star had adventurous tastebuds and any new type of meal as a surefire way to get her attention.

It would've save him trouble in the long run because it wasn't even a week later when there was a ring at the doorbell. Diaz thought that maybe it was a package being delivered. Something they needed to be signed because he wasn't expecting company. Hell, he wasn't even sure that he, Alphonso and Ferg really even hung out these days. He probably should call them one of these days.

He open the door and came face to face with his- well he wasn't sure if he could call her his girlfriend. He would like to but well he'll have to change his online social status and she'll have to do the same and that is a lot of pressure to put on a man. Relax Diaz.

The matter was that Jackie Lynn was at his door and she didn't call him about coming over. At least be didn't think she did. He didn't forget a date or something. It's not like he could just play it off if he did. He was still wearing his usual red hoodie and while he had the luck to wear deodorant today it was some generic brand, because really generic products are just as good as that brand stuff but still he wanted to impress when he was around Jackie so he bought that stuff anyway.

"Hey dude, sorry for the short notice. Star invited us over." Jackie smiled in ignorance of whatever internal struggle that he was having, "She must've wanted a girls' night really bad or something."

"No problem. I mean your house is my house." wait did that sound weird? "That isn't to say that you actually own it or on the lease or something. Just that you can come in whenever."

Reel it back a bit Diaz, "That is to say 'if you want to' and you don't have to feel pressure to visit if you don't. Um, know what i mean?"

He frowned "Wait, we?"

He tilted his head and saw, standing right behind the girl of his dreams was the girl of his nightmares: Janna. "Hello Diaz."

Sigh, "Hey Janna," wait since when did she ever use the front door?

"Hey since when do you ever use the front door?" Good job Marco, said that without sounding too afraid of her.

"Since Thomas here wanted to be a killjoy." she gave her blonde a playful glare as she stood to her side and received a counter attack in the form of a tongue sticking out at her.

"Hey girls." Star held a high voice as she descended the stairs in two hops.

Marco grabbed the princess and turned her around so that his mouth was away from the guest, "Star," he said in a hush tone, "Why didn't you tell me that Jackie was going to be here."

"Marco when have I ever warn about someone coming over?" she spoke.

"That is true. Your house is the town bicycle of the neighborhood." Janna added in.

She frowned as the kid with the red hood gave her a confused look, "Please Diaz, just because I can't see your lips doesn't mean I can't hear you. Your quiet voice is a stage whisper more than anything."

"Anyway, now that you are all here", Star sidestepped pass her housemate and into the center of the three and announced that she needed all three to go to her room post haste. Marco figured that meant that Jackie was right and that Star justed wanted another sleepover, no matter how much of a disaster the last one they had was.

Though like last time he wasn't really into it. No matter how much having the permission to be the center of attention of a bunch of girls seemed to be a guy's fantasy, in reality such things were nerve-wracking and brought up questions such as 'what do i talk about?' and 'is what I'm doing at any given point creepy?

He figured however, that he had to help get the girls settled for at least the time it took to get Star Fan and Pony Head over here, whenever they were going to show up. Marco was sure that if this was another sleepover that Star couldn't resist inviting those two and when they arrived maybe he could slip away unnoticed. There was no reason they really needed a guy there.

"Okay ladies and Marco." Star pushed open the door and while the rest of her room was normal there was a set up in the center, easily seen from the doorway.

There were three chairs. It was surprisingly unfestive, they were just metal folding seats, the ones you'd see at a school dance or assembly. They were facing a projector screen. No projector in sight but that didn't stop the flat surface from having a square lit up right in the middle of it showing what could only be described as a face draw in the manner that it wouldn't look out of place in steamboat willie. "Welcome to a presentation brought to you by your very own Star Butterfly."

She twirled her wand and a pink light swirled around it before shooting out onto the metal seats. The legs of the chair elongated and started to bend as if they were legs.

They started to jump and skip a bout, all while neighing like a horse. The three seats directed their faces, if you could call the blank metal surface that you would usually rest your back on a face, over to the trio of room guest. They moved towards them and kneeled low to sweep them off their feet.

Marco yelped as Jackie laughed and Janna gave a small "woohoo."

The chairs circled around room once then twice as Marco and only Marco held onto the metal construct with a deathgrip. The chairs would suddenly stop in front of the disneyesque screen and slowly shrink, returning to normal.

Star slid her feet along "Ready screen?"

She gave it a wink and the projector screen giggled and winked back "Ready Star."

Star raised her wand and held onto the top of it. There was a click and the top started to move off like it was being held together by a hinge. What was revealed was a bright yellow button, which Star moved her thumb upon and pressed down until another click was heard. There were four familiar symbols.

Star filled up with pride "Now what do you see here?"

"Um" Marco looked to his side and the two girls gave a side glance back to him. Guess it was up to him to answer, "Card suites?"

"Wrong Marco", Star point the wand turn clicker at him. "I mean i would understand if you said something like royal birthmarks, but really card suits?"

"Royal birthmarks?"

"Ya, see." she turned around and pointed at the hearts, "This one is me," she began before shifting her arm over to the diamond, "and this one is my mom and well I don't know who the other two would be but they're probably not important."

Jackie smiled, "Nah Star. We totally have cards with those symbols."

Star stuck up her nose before answering "well in any case it doesn't matter cause we're both wrong."

She returned to the screen, "these right here are ancient romantic symbols."

"Romantic symbols?" Marco questioned, "I get the heart but I don't understand the rest of them. Isn't the spade just like a shovel?"

"I can understand a club." Janna smiled with teeth "Nothing better then the feeling of arming yourself against your enemies."

"Oh" Jackie seem to understand something, "Diamonds are a girl's best friend. Is it something like that. Y'know familial love."

"Close," Star point at her fellow blonde, "Diamond does have to do with something like friendship but this isn't about love. It's about romance."

Star pulled out a book with a purple cover with the same four card suits, "You see this book, It is a translation of the teachings of an ancient goddess upon discovering an alien race known as the alterians."

There was a click heard and suddenly on the screen was the image a stone carving. It was a statue of a tall robed woman with a symbol of a sun indented on her chest. The only detail that she was human or at least humanoid was the brief glimpse of the very bottom of her nose, down to her chin and a tiny bit of her neck.

"These guys apparently perform the whole courtship rituals way different than how they do things on earth or even Mewni." Star brought the book close to herself, "That isn't to say that they're the only ones who do love and junk differently. There are are some places out there that'll make you blush after looking at a spatula. You wouldn't believe."

"Nah I can think of a couple ways that'll be kinky" Janna muttered.

"These guys in particular" she sang, "were known for having a multi-relationship system which encouraged the expression of different emotions."

The trio of listeners looked at each other and shrugged. They each took turns looking each other in the eyes. Marco concentrated, "So they were polygamous?"

"Oh Marco," the princess cooed "poor innocent Marco. Poor poor vanilla Marco."

She reached over and patted her bestie on the cheek, "the book expressly states that each relationship is completely different and in fact they considered. Each one was separate from the other and idea that having each one was polygamous was just plain silly."

"So, to not cause any confusion. Please don't interrupt during the presentation."

Marco and Janna looked and each other and shrugged while Jackie mimed zipping her mouth closed.

"So to begin. We start with one of your math graphs except in this case it's a graph of love."

She pressed on the clicker and the image was modified to include words "They are separated into categories."

The graph changed to show four categories.

"These are Pity, Conciliatory, Hate and conscient." Star frowned, "Concrescent. Conicupiscent. Sexy time."

The magical girl lazily twirled her wand. A bubble of pink energy popped from the object creating a flash that both engulfed the projector screen and temporarily blinded her friends who she was lecturing.

The graph changed appropriately to Pity, Conciliatory, Hate and Sexy Time.

"So the first thing is Pity, and that is what the book kept on calling it. 'Pity that', 'Pity this', 'I pity him', blahblahblahblah blah. Just going on and on about it. It's basically like 'understanding' more then anything else." So begin the first part of the grand lecture.

"So you combine that with 'sexy time'" Marco didn't consider 'concupiscent' to be that hard of a word to say but he didn't bother to correct Star. When she was in one of those moods she was better left at peace. "You get me."

Star pointed at the heart on the screen while simultaneously poking her cheek. "And as far as I can tell that is all cuddling, sloppy makeouts and holding hands on the beach. Y'know couple stuff. And then you have mom here."

Star slide her hand over to the diamond. "She's like super best friends. Like tell them everything, spend every moment together besties."

That sounded simple enough, though there seemed to be no difference between the diamond romance and actual besties as far as Star's explanation went. "Also there's something about keeping each other from going on homicidal rampages, but we can cover that later."

Wait that sounded really important Star. "Next we have the shovel."

No serious Star, homicidal is not a word you can just bring up and then skip like it's nothing.

"This one is the sexy time hate romance." Oh well I guess we will never know what the explicit mention of murder was all about.

"Um Star." Marco finally interrupted. You might've wanted to have done that before when her highness was mentioning the 'killings' but whatever, "Hate romance is a combination of words that I don't think work."

"I don't know about that." There was a lot of eyebrow moment coming from a rather smug looking hat wearing girl. "Can't you just imagine it, Diaz? A man and a woman engage in a battle to the death, clawing at each other's clothes. Eating at each other's throats. Not at all caring when their clothes rip and then-"

She seem to grow larger and was there globs of sweat rolling down Marco's neck. There were definitely globs of sweat.

"Easy girl." Jackie pulled on the back of the girl's neckline. Turns out Ordonia was appearing larger because she was leaning towards the boy.

"Don't want to scare him off." Jackie whispered in her ear.

Now they were smiling at each other and Marco was definitely sure that he didn't like that. He has never been afraid of Jackie before. No wait that's a lie, he has spent a life's journey avoiding her, but this was a different fear that had all to do with his bashfulness.

"Star why don't we continue on with the lecture. Everyone who wants to continue with the presentation, breathe. See everyone is breathing, everyone wants you to continue your explanation." Well to be honest you were a bit too busy talking to breathe so it wasn't unanimous, "What does the Spade represent?"

"Actually Janna's pretty much right." Star stared at the filipina with a blush dashed across her face.

"She is?" Geez, Marco try to keep the pitch of your voice down. You said that with a frequency that could crack glass.

"Woohoo. Everybody hate snog." Marco didn't need to guess who said that.

"Yaya. Hate snog." That one deserved a turn of the head. Both Janna and Jackie were pumping their fist in the air, repeating an endless chant of "hate snog, hate snog."

Janna please try to be just a bit less of a bad influence of the skateboarder.

"So moving on to part two."

"What about the club?" Marco's voice intercepted Star's finger which hovered just above the yellow button.

"What about the club?" Star threw the question back.

"Aren't you going to explain the club?"

"You want to know about the clubs Marco? Well I'm going to be honest. I have no idea what the clubs' deal is. I read that dusty tome all night and I can't make head or tails of the clubs, but I'm going to blast forward with this whole thing anyway." Star breathed deeply, "Alien romance is hard, Marco. It's hard and nobody understands."

Star slammed down on her wand clicker.

The projector flashed and suddenly there were faces on the screen. All of their faces drawn in simplified cartoonish glory.

"So you guys all remember the other day. When we were all worrying for nothing." Star reminded them, "Marco was worried that he'll be the third wheel between me and Jackie was worried about being a third wheel between me and Marco."

"I wasn't really worried about anything."

"And why am I here? I wasn't even with you guys." There was an obvious smirk, "Well as far you as you know."

"So to remedy our obvious suspicions and jealousy of each other, I have come up with this game plan." so Star were you just planning on ignoring the question? No wait she was clicking on the button again. She was definitely ignoring the peanut gallery.

The screen faces danced around the chart, "Let's start with Marco for example. Y'know since he's already got everything basically figured out."

The crude Marco drawing floated to the top of the graph. It smiled a dorky doodle grin. "So Marco already got two of the four down pat. We got him and Jackie acting all lovely dovey and me over here rockin that diamond; besties for life."

The respective drawings moved over their symbols on the graph. The Jackie head made a kissy face while the heart behind her beat. The Star head flash a smile as the diamond rocked left and right.

"So basically we're up here setting up boundaries." Janna offered an answer for the lecture.

"That still doesn't answer why Janna's here." Marco really needed a reason why Star invited the scary lady to his house. "Other than boundaries being something that she should've learned a long time ago."

Janna crossed her arms and pouted. Nice try but he was going to double down on that statement. You spend way too much time in his bubble of personal space.

"Ya about that." Star that laugh seems a little bit too forced.

The princess looked at the last remaining doodle on the screen without a position. "Psst, get over that shovel right over there."

Janna's head casually floated to the spade.

"No." Nope, nah-huh, no way in hell.

Marco's attempt to stand up was foiled when a magical force pushed him down into his seat. In this case the magical force was a hand shaped energy which radiated off of Star's wand. It poked him down with it's index.

"Marco, come on. Just listen please." Butt returned to seat, so did the giant energy appendage returned to the wand from which it came.

"Ya Diaz, hear her out on this." Janna tried to helpful to the mewman but only served to irritate Marco.

He knew enough to know that was probably her primary goal all along. It will most likely continue to be her primary goal in the future as it was in the past. "I'm pretty sure you're the last person I want to take advice from here."

"Please Marco." Sweet words came to his ears. They were however tainted by their intent.

"Jackie?"

Oh no, she was giving him that look. Doing that voice. Normally that was all it would take to put him under her spell. "Won't you hear her out."

It wasn't going to work this time. He couldn't allow it, "Why are you on her side? She's trying to make me do things with Janna."

"Ya and it's funny." Marco didn't want to be a boyfriend (still wasn't sure if that was his official title) who tried to check anyone but maybe he could request that she spent a little less time with Janna.

She tried again, "Star obviously worked really hard on it."

"Diaz, right don't you put one on me right now?" Janna puckered her lips, taunting him. Daring him to try.

"Hate snog, hate snog, hate snog!" Once again the furious chanting of the two girls continued again. This time they were joined by a third.

"Star, don't you use British vernacular on me. You don't even know what a 'British' is." She didn't. She didn't even know that China was a country. To her lo mein was the closest association to China there was.

Star paused but the two other girls continued their rioting, "Hate snog, hate snog, hate snog!"

"Of course I do Marco." the princess thought about it, "It's a pastry or something."

"No." if looks could kill.

"A cake, a custard, waffle."

"Hate snog, hate snog, hate snog!"

"It's not a desert."

"Marco I'm not going to stand here discussing sandwiches all day." Her finger drew an invisible line between Marco and Janna, instructing jim to his assigned fate, "You grab your hate friend and lay one on her this instant."

"Hate snog, hate snog, hate snog!"

"No!" Marco stood before any magical intervention could be cast. "And quit it with the hate snog hate snog, I'm going to be in my room."

He stomped out the door and out of sight from the gang of teenage femme fatales. Not before Janna got a glimpse of that tush.

"Oh that things that I'm going to do to that boy." she purred, "Thomas, you're sure you'll cool with me going after your boy."

"Ya Jan, this is hilarious." One could say that when it came to Jackie and Janna, that the two got drunk of each other's atmosphere, "Besides under Star's system, I think that between me and her we both got a 50-50 share each."

"Star." The duo looked at the project leader.

Stat gave a smirk that let them know that they were all up to no good, "Janna Banna by the time we're through, Marco is gonna hate you so bad, you'll be irresistable."

They all could live with that.

"Nice. I think I'm gonna have to borrow that book." she pointed at the purple tome that started all this, "I'm going to need the inspiration."