Oneshot: Existential

Star and Marco stood atop the hill and shouted their triumph. Star raised her wand, now sceptre, high in salute to the royal guard who stood in ragged lines surrounding the hilltop, battered and bruised. Marco shouted with her, raising his gleaming sword high, his beautifully engraved steel armour reflecting the setting sun and making him shine.

The men roared in cheer, raising their spears, axes, and swords in return of the pair's salute, "Long live the princess, long live the knight, long live Mewni!"

The cheer surrounded them and the pair turned to one another and hugged fiercly. The ground of the hilltop was peppered in burn marks, sword gouches, and dusted in the ash that was all that was left of Toffee. He had put up a good fight, holding off the royal guard and the pair at the same time, but Star's final gambit, drawing on all her internal power and encasing Toffee as he attempted a massive explosion spell, had paid off.

The pair pulled back, looking into each others eyes, smiling. The past three months had been brutal for the pair. Toffee had rallied the monsters for an all out assault on Mewni after defeating Star's mother in combat, laying the queen up in the infirmary. That paired with Marco and Star sorting out their relationships. Finally, a day ago Star and Marco had finally made up. Marco had forgiven Star for attempting to murder Jackie in a jealous rage and Star had finally accepted that Marco was her best friend, and nothing more.

Jackie, and to a lesser extent Janna, had even helped them by helping to unleash the full power of the crystal in Star's sceptre. Tom, Ponyhead, Kelly, and Starfan13 had also helped, and it was thanks to their group of tight knit friends that Marco and Star now stood victorious.

Glossaryck came floating toward them, looking as if he hadn't just been in a magical duel against a demon summoned from the pits of tartarus. He smiled at Star, "Well princess, I think I can say with certainty that your training, or at least the part of it where we have to be concerned about you burning down the dimension, is complete. Congratulations, you're ready to take your place as the true heir apparent."

Star spun the sceptre in her hand, "You're darned right I am! Woah-" The wings on the sceptre flapped, spinning the wand around much faster than Star expected and she almost dropped it. Star gave a small embarrassed laugh. Glossaryck smiled at his student, but then turned serious.

"Now, I have some good news and some bad news." He said as he floated down and picked up a blood red gem. The one that Toffee had been using. "The good news is that all the magic that Toffee was sucking out of the world is stored in this gem and it will decay slowly and safely over time until all the magic is back. The bad news is that will take about a year and until then we'll be pretty much magicless. It wouldn't surprise me if many of the more magically attuned creatures started dying out if we leave it that long, so I have a plan."

Marco and Star turned to the small blue man, "Whatever it is, we can handle it." Marco said confidently, hefting his massive kite shield.

Glossaryck actually looked apprehensive, "I wouldn't be so sure of that if I were you, boy. This plan asks far more from you than I would ever be comfortable with asking under less dire circumstances."

Marco looked serious, "I can handle it."

Glossaryck sighed, "Ok then. I need you to open a portal back to earth. Preferably somewhere quiet."

"Sure." Marco pulled out his scissors and opened a portal to the guest bedroom of his house. It was a drab affair, at least compared to Star's elaborate and messy room. The three of them stepped in and Marco closed the portal behind them. "So, what do we need to do?"

"You two? Nothing. It's what I'm going to be doing that's the important part. You two don't even really get a choice in what happens, only in how you react to it, really. I really hate this, you two are far to young." Glossaryck floated over to the desk and sat atop it, the blood red stone in his lap. "You see, with this much magic gone from the universe there's going to be a lot of problems. Magical plants and animals will die, spells won't work right, and even some peoples will die out or stop giving birth. It will be horrible for everyone involved really. Which is why I'm going to give up most of my magic to stop that from happening."

"Glossaryck, no! I just got you back!" Star gasped.

"Worry not princess, I will be fine. I will, however, not be able to keep up the magical spells that I maintain during the time of weakness that is to come. It means that I will not be with you, since this body is simply a puppet that I use to communicate with you. It also means that many dangerous spells, secrets, and creatures will have one less lock holding them back from the universe. You may need to subdue them until my return. Worry not, for they are far less formidable than the challenges you've already overcome in getting to this point, and I'm sure that you can handle yourself for the year it will take for the philosopher's stone to decay."

Star looked resolute, "I can do it, and with Marco with me I know I'll never fail, isn't that right, bestie?" Star grinned at Marco and he grinned back.

"I've got your back Star, count on it."

"Don't." Glossaryck said, "Count on it. There is a reason why I asked you to come here, to this place." Glossaryck's tone grew darker, "There's something I haven't told you."

"Ah, shit." Marco said, he knew how these things went. Glossaryck had some kind of deep dark secret that would change the very nature of their lives and would make them look at things in a whole new way. It was a trope as old as time.

"Yes, that about sums it up. For you see, Marco, my dear boy. Everything and everyone you know. All your memories, everyone on earth, the earth itself. All of it was created by my magic."

Everybody sat for a minute, taking that in. Everything Marco knew was created by magic. His first thought was that this was ludicrous. No one, not even Glossaryck, could create an entire planet, a race of people, all the diverse life, that Marco had seen. But Marco looked at Glossaryck and he seemed serious. "You're not joking, right, because it's not funny."

Glossaryck shook his head, "I'm afraid not. It's all an illusion. Quite an ingenious one, if I do say so myself."

"But how? How could all of this, the whole world, my entire universe, be fake?" Marco asked as the news slowly sank in.

"Well, it's not fake, per se. Earth is a real place, and everyone you know is a real person. You're just interacting with... reflections of them. Two dimensional representations of the real person. Take your parents, or yourself. There is an actual Marco Diaz who lives in Echo Creek California. He's a good kid. A bit to cautious, and in real need of a confidence boost, but pretty reliable. Which is why I chose him and the place he lived as the template for you." Glossaryck went on, though Marco was only half listening and Star was just staring.

"Of course, the real boy would have gone crazy, or gotten himself killed if he were teamed up with our lovely princess here, no offence." Glossaryck said this last to Star, "So I did some tweaking. Gave you reflexes faster than a normal human and a sense for danger so that you could keep yourself 'alive'. You can't actually die, by the way. Oh, you can be destroyed, but you'd just reform a day or two later. You won't age either, though if you're anything like my other children you'll learn to change your form."

Marco sat down on the bed.

"The rest of the town just needed to not look to hard when things went wrong. They're more puppets than creatures, aping what the real person might do in that situation, but made so that they'll never put Star in harms way, if they can help it. You don't have any such limitations, though I did set things up so that you'd feel a strong urge to see that Star wouldn't be hurt but I couldn't do more than that lest I make you seem less real."

Marco looked up at the blue man, "Then what am I?"

Glossaryck looked over, "The technical term is "Autonomous Crystal Powered Thinking Engine, though I prefer to refer to you as my children. I'd like to make one thing clear. You do have free will, in so far as you can choose to do anything. There is nothing artificially stopping you from, say, hitting me right now. I would stop you with magic, of course, but I didn't make you in such a way that you couldn't do it. You are one of my children after all, and you need to be free to make your own mistakes, not tied down for any set of rules, no matter how perfect, that I might think up."

"So, why are you telling me this now? Am I going to die, if you don't have magic?" Marco asked, a bit overwhelmed, though still not completely believing.

"No, you are 'autonomous' after all. You can survive without anyone or anything, if you choose. Though your body will degrade over time if you don't eat. No, I'm telling you this because nothing else here is autonomous. When I give up my magic, earth will disappear."

"So, everything and everyone I know will die." Marco whispered.

"Well, not everything. Obviously Star won't, and neither will anyone else not in this dimension. The people that these reflections are based on will live on in their true dimension. However, they will know only of the Marco that has lived there this entire time, not you, I'm afraid."

"I... I don't know how to handle this..."

"I'm sorry my boy, but there is no time left. We should go back. I wanted you here so that you could say goodbye to your home, but there's no more time, I can already feel myself growing weak, and this body will cease to exist soon." Glossaryck said, opening a portal back to Mewni, "You can take a minute, but don't take longer, this place will all fall to nothing soon." Glossaryck pointed out the window. Far away in the hazy distance a darkness was washing over the hills.

Glossaryck floated through the portal, leaving Marco and Star alone. The stood and stared out the window at the encroaching darkness. "I can't even say goodbye." Marco whispered to himself.

Star was silent.

"Star... Can I have a minute?"

"Yeah." Star says quietly, "I'll see you back home, right?"

"Yeah." Marco replies, not sounding confident.

Star slowly steps through the portal.

Marco stares at the encroaching oblivion.

Authors note:

So, how does it end? Does Marco stand there and be destroyed or does he go back to Mewni?

Does he take up residence in the castle or does he strike out on his own?

Does he eventually fall in love with Star?

Does he hate Glossaryck? Think of him as a father? Forgive him?

What does he think of Jackie now?

It's up to you, reader. Write down how you think the story ends and put it in a review! I want to see your take on how this one ends.

Comment Responses:

Sammy asks for a Moon X Toffee oneshot. I don't know if I'll ever get around to a proper Moonfee oneshot. The characters are in a position where we know enough about them that they're interesting, but we know too much about them for me to just make up parts of their personality like with Janna or Sabrina. Quite frankly, I'm just not all that into writing about them, they just don't fit my style quite right. I might do one in the future, but it's a long shot.

Fallen Angel wants a fic where Toffee kidnaps Star and makes everyone think she's dead and impregnates her. I already did that kind of fic though, it's called Butterfly Collectors, chapter 39. It's Marco and Janna in the position of Toffee, but quite frankly the fics would be so similar that it's just not worth it for me to write. Heck, you could just edit the chapter a bit and it would work.

Sirkylelenn points out that the last chapter was kind of rushed and forced. It was. Really, I lost the spark to write Star Vs. Oneshots after the premise roundups and the winter hiatus. At this point I'm just doing it because it's something to do, so you can expect the writing quality to drop off a bit. Sorry about that, but hey, I'm still posting.

JRC1700 suggests that I add some elements from anther fic to make the Dark Magic Multishot seem a bit more grounded. I have read that fic JRC, but I'm taking the Dark Magic thing in a completely different direction. You'll see what happens next soon, I hope.