Chapter Text
"STAR!!!!!!!!!"
Marco struggled relentlessly against the green chains of energy that prohibited him from moving, but there was nothing he could do but watch, horrified, as Toffee drained the life out of his best friend
"STOP!!!! YOU'RE HURTING HER!!!!!"
Piercing green magic gushed from the severed crystal imbedded in the villain's hand and swirled furiously around Star, whose electric blue eyes were growing dimmer by the second. The princess lunged at Toffee, wand-in-hand, in one final attempt to subdue him, but his magical assault had weakened her body beyond repair. With a shrill moan, Star collapsed to the ground and lay motionless, the light in her pupils now almost completely extinguished.
A sob tore through Marco's throat as he struggled against the magical shackles binding him for the umpteenth time, only to discover that he was now able to move freely. He scrambled to his best friend's side and frantically began checking for a pulse, for breath, for anything that indicated she was alright. All the while, he continued to assure her, "It's okay, Star, you're fine, it's going to be fine, please be fine, you'll be just fine, Star, PLEASE be fine!!!!"
But he felt nothing.
Star Butterfly—crown princess, heir to the throne of Mewni, and Marco's best friend—was no more.
"......you killed her......" Marco uttered blankly, staring into the sunken black eyes of the girl who'd radically changed his life in such a short amount of time. Trembling, partially from despair and partially from fury, he inclined his head to meet Toffee's watchful gaze and repeated, "....you KILLED her...!!"
Toffee chuckled, the chilling timbre of his voice not quite clicking with the spindly bird form he still had possession of. "Well, not technically," the former Ludo corrected Marco smoothly, hovering above him with a smile that could have been perceived as understanding, had he not already revealed his hand. "I've merely drained her magical life force. It would be possible to restore it and revive her if you had any healers around, but..."
He smirked.
"I believe the Chancellor is still...out of commission."
Marco's eyes narrowed. "Alright, fine! You've got Star! What about me? Are you going to suck the life out of me too before I karate-chop you into the next multiverse???"
Toffee tisked, an almost fatherly expression appearing on his face. "Oh Marco," he crooned gently, as if gently chiding a disobedient child. "There's no point in that. Without her?" He gestured to Star's broken form. "You're nothing."
With this, the villain cackled menacingly and snatched up Star's wand before zooming out of the cave and slamming a rock in front of the entrance with a wave of his hand, leaving Marco alone with the shell of the coolest girl he'd ever known.
With Toffee gone, the reality of the situation slowly began to sink in....
Star was gone.
And it was his fault.
"....STAR!!!!" Marco wailed, tears blurring his vision. "THIS WASN'T SUPPOSED TO HAPPEN!!! I—it's all my fault..... If it weren't for me, you wouldn't have had any reason to cleave your wand in the first place!! You...you'd be alive..."
He took one of Star’s cold hands in his, despair weighing him down so heavily that he doubted he'd ever be able to stand again.
"You trusted me with your friendship, and I hurt you. You trusted me with your life, and I let you die....
"...you trusted me with your heart...." he managed to choke, the final lyrics of Ruberiot's song reverberating within his skull, "...and all I did was push it aside......"
He knelt near Star in silence for a few minutes, grasping desperately for answers within his head. How could this have happened? How could he have let this happen??
"You know," Marco murmured weakly, "Jackie and I decided to stop dating pretty soon after you left Earth. I knew finding my best friend and being there to support her was more important than focusing on a girlfriend, and Jackie agreed....but I also think she was convinced that I'd fallen for you..."
He winced.
“...but I guess none of that really matters now, huh?"
Marco gazed down at the princess's fallen form, wishing beyond belief that he'd done things differently in Star's time on Earth, wishing he knew what he could have done to prevent her from ending up like this, wishing he'd been able to see the truth before it had been too late to act upon it.
"I'll finish what you started, Star," he vowed, determination seeping into his voice. "I promise, I'll do everything I can to protect the citizens of Mewni and defeat Toffee. And I promise that I'll never stop looking for a way to bring you back and that you'll always be the best, most amazing friend I could've ever hoped to have, and that..."
His voice cracked.
"...and that I'll always love you."
Gently, Marco brushed a rebellious strand of blonde hair off of Star's forehead and planted a soft kiss on her brow.
"Goodbye, Star."
With this, Marco's resolve shattered, and he broke down in gut-wrenching sobs, shoulders quaking and chest burning.
So it made sense that he didn't notice when the two hearts stamped on Star's cheeks began glowing faintly.
Slowly, translucent webs of purple began weaving themselves around the princess's form, lifting her up bit by bit as they did so. Star herself did not stir, but something within her most certainly was stirring.
When Marco felt Star's fingers shift away from his, his eyes shot wide open. Out of instinct, he jerked back upon observing her continue to rise off of the ground, still unconscious. As the webs grew thicker and thicker, encasing the princess's entire body, the rosy glow emanating from them only grew as well. Marco watched in awe as the chrysalis began to vibrate when it rose to around five feet off of the ground. Faster and stronger it writhed, until at last, with a searing flash of light so bright and pink that Marco lost his vision for a couple of seconds, the figure within burst free.
"......am I dead? ..... Marco, is that you?? Are we both dead???"
Marco, unfortunately, was currently incapable of offering any sort of response. He simply stood, gaping, with his eyes set upon the girl hovering a few yards away from him.
Star waved her hands in Marco's direction, only to recoil when she found more than eight fingers—and purple ones, no less!—at her disposal. "Yikes!!" she shrieked, recoiling.
Her eyes narrowed as she examined her two newly-formed sets of limbs. "....wait a minute."
Tentatively, she craned her head back--and gasped with joy at what she discovered.
"MY MEWBERTY WINGS!!!!!!!" Star giggled gleefully, twirling circles in the air on a pair of intricately-patterned lavender wings. "THEY'RE ALL GROWN UP!!!!!!"
And indeed they were. Star Butterfly had at last unlocked the full heritage of the Butterfly dynasty coded deep within her DNA. Unfolding from her back were two massive butterfly wings adorned with shimmering hearts. Six arms extended from her torso now, and a pair of dainty antennae bobbled above her head. Her hair, now also a shade of dark violet, had shortened significantly as well, so as not to get caught in her wings.
"This is so cool...!" Star breathed. "Marco, what do you think??"
The sound of Star repeating his name finally snapped Marco out of his stupor.
"....STAR!!!!!!" he proclaimed elatedly, hastily rushing over to her with a luminescent grin on his face. "You're okay!!!!! Well—more than okay, actually!"
Beaming, Star scooped Marco up in a six-armed hug and spun him around in the air a few times, the two of them laughing and celebrating as if the events of the past month or so had never occurred.
But just as quickly as Star's mood spiraled upward, reality set back in as she began recalling where she was. Quickly, the princess set Marco down before planting her own feet on the floor.
"Wait a minute..." she voiced with uncertainty, cocking her head at her best friend. "Didn't Toffee, like, drain my powers and more or less leave me for dead? That's the last thing I remember..."
Marco nodded with a little shiver. “…yup.”
"So...how am I prancing about on newly-grown mewberty wings now?"
Marco shrugged. He had to keep blinking to assure himself that Star’s transformation wasn’t just a cruel trick of his heartache-addled mind.
Star stared at him for a moment, perplexed. Then, without quite knowing why she was led to do so, she tentatively raised a hand to her forehead and touched it—in the very spot where Marco had kissed her only minutes before.
Instantly, a wave of understanding pummeled Star, and she staggered back.
"...it was you!" she gasped.
But before she had the chance to elaborate on this, the stone guarding the entrance to the cave groaned and started shifting to the side.
“You know something, Marco?” Toffee called out as he pushed the stone away. “I’ve been thinking...maybe you have some potential after all! You see, I’ve been meaning to find a new—erm, shall we say, host? And what better person to destroy Mewni as than the former princess’s best fri—“
Toffee took pride in having mastered a distinctly precise ability to mask his emotions. It was one of the qualities that kept him on his toes after centuries of plotting against the Butterfly family. But even he, the immortal monster of legends and tapestries, could not contain his bewilderment at the sight awaiting him.
Star Butterfly was fine. More than fine, actually. She had never appeared more powerful. And Marco Diaz, the seemingly-useless karate boy, was standing right beside her.
Heroes and villain stared wide-eyed at each other, each wondering how to gain the upper hand. After matter of seconds that consisted of Toffee darting his gaze between the princess and her prince, understanding suddenly dawned upon him. He chuckled, quickly regaining his composure.
“Well well…” the monster crooned with a smirk, directing his gaze towards Marco. “Looks like you aren’t as much of a disappointment as I thought.
“And Star! Why, you look just like your mom did the last time we fought. It's a shame to think of her discovering that her dear little princess finally earned her wings but tragically had the life re-drained out of her before she really got to use them…I’ll be sure to dispose of her before she has to find out." With these words, Toffee fired a blast of green magic at the currently-wandless Star, smiling wickedly.
Star, however, wasn't going to give herself up so easily this time. Eyes and hearts igniting, she thrust her hands forward as searing pink magic gushed out of them like a waterfall and formed a bubble around her. Toffee's blast fizzled and sputtered away as soon as it touched the force-field.
Toffee's eyes widened in shock and then narrowed in disdain. He fired another shot at Star, and then another, and then another, but the warrior princess deflected every blast as effortlessly as if she'd been doing it for her whole life. When Toffee realized that he'd lost his chance to defeat her, he made a last-ditch attempt to gain the upper hand by manifesting a giant, luminescent green limb and snatching Marco—who'd been soaking up every second of the battle from the sidelines, awestruck—with it....not realizing his action would have the opposite effect of what he intended.
"NO."
The next thing Toffee knew, he was lying flat on his back with the wind knocked out of his host's puny lungs. He could vaguely make out the hazy form of Star Butterfly hovering over him with a venomous glint in her eyes.
"You can try and kill me all you want, but touch Marco....and I'll destroy you," she declared in a razor-sharp whisper.
For the first time since he'd lost his finger to Moon, all those years ago, Toffee's stomach--though, technically it was still Ludo's stomach--lurched as an unpleasant chill seized his body.
He was afraid.
With the last of his energy, the villain rose from the ground and frantically fled the cave, leaving Star's wand behind in his haste.
Star remained hovering in the air, glaring after him with the same stone-hard expression on her face.
".....Star?"
Tentatively, Marco approached the princess and grabbed the hand that was nearest to him.
"You can calm down now. He's gone."
Star's shoulders relaxed, and she gently sank to the ground, her wings and extra arms folding up and disappearing as she did so. Marco immediately knelt beside his best friend and helped her to stand, supporting her weight while she re-adjusted to her normal form.
Star winced, holding one of two hands to her now-pale forehead.
"Ugh....Mom didn't tell me how draining it is to earn your wings...." she grumbled.
Marco, on the other hand, had never felt more alive. "Star, that was amazing!!!!" he exclaimed. "You just took down Toffee, the same guy who managed to defeat the entire magic high commission and drain their powers in less than two minutes!!! And after he'd drained your power, too!!!!! You still managed to beat him!!!!!!"
Star stared at the ground for a bit, the gears in her head whirring. Finally, she raised her gaze to Marco, hand still poised at the top of her head.
"But I couldn't have done it if it weren't for you."
"....what do you mean?" Marco asked—though deep down he suspected he understood what Star was getting at.
"I--I'm not sure..." Star replied sheepishly, shrugging her shoulders with a meager chuckle. "It's just...it's like....you replenished my power source. I can feel it was you. But I can't figure out how!!"
Marco bit his lip, uncertain as to how he could be more anxious in this moment than he'd been when Toffee was about to possess him.
Then, he spotted the royal wand, which was still strewn on the floor. Swiftly, he scooped up the heirloom and held it out to Star, who seemed to snap back into focus upon seeing it.
"You're right, Marco," the princess decreed, reclaiming her wand from her best friend. "We'll talk through this later."
Grinning mischievously, Star sprang into the air and raised her arms, and suddenly she was a butterfly again!
"Right now, we have a kingdom to save!"