When fighting Ludo, things aren't always easy. Sure Marco and I usually mop the floor with them, only expending minimal effort, but sometimes they get lucky. One time, while we were fighting, things almost went horribly wrong.
It all started fine, the monsters invaded and we got to fighting. Marco was fighting the giraffe monster at one point and kicked him in his weak spot, his neck. I was watching Marco fight, as I often do. When I saw Marco kick the giraffe monster, I was in midair, having jumped to better hit on of the larger monsters. On landing, I blasted another monster with my magic.
What I didn't see however was the deer-like monster sneaking up behind me. Suddenly I hear someone yell "Gotcha!" as I am swept up in a crushing embrace. I let out a scream, more of surprise than fear, as he hoists me into the air. This gets Marco's attention and he turns to help. Unfortunately with him distracted, his opponents were easily able to tackle him to the ground.
With both of us subdued, Ludo yelled out from where he stood overseeing the fight "Yes! Yes! Now somebody grab the wand! Lobster Claws, you!"
"Oh!" said one of Ludo's minions. He was a giant lobster creature, aptly named Lobster Claws. He had been more standing off to the side than actually helping during this battle, and it took him a moment to realize what was happening. One he realized where he was and what he needed to do, he started hyping himself up by saying "Yeah! I got this! Go Red Boy! Go Red Boy! GO RED BOY!"
"Stop flexing your thorax and get it already!" yelled Ludo as Lobster Claws danced in place.
"This is happening now!" cried out Lobster Claws before scuttling over to where I was held. With a yell, he drew back his pincer, preparing to strike. With a small whimper, I closed my eyes and gripped my wand as I waited for him to grab it. Next thing I knew, I heard him yell "Boo yah!"
I opened my eyes confused, I could still feel the wand in my hand. I looked at him and saw what everyone else saw. Lobster claws was holding aloft what looked like an antler and dancing as he said "I got it! I got it! You got clawed!"
All of the on looking monsters let out a collective gasp as they realized what he was holding. Turning, I saw he had clipped one of the antlers from the head of the monster holding me. He let out a grunt of confusion and loosened his grip. I pushed myself free from his grasp and his hands went immediately to his head where he started hopping and grunting in sadness.
Not wasting a moment or paying much heed to my ex-captor's distress, I used a blast of magic to launch myself into the air above the battlefield. Channeling magic into my wand, I cried out "Poison, Crystal, Cupcake, Kiss!" and loosed a blast of magical cupcakes at the monsters below.
The first group of monsters were pummeled with the confections, and were quickly dispatched. As I approached the peak of my flight, I blasted another group of monsters into submission. One monster seemed excited about the prospect of cupcakes, but a well-placed shot to his eye had him quickly incapacitated. With a masterful flip, I repositioned myself and fired the final bit of the spell at Ludo, knocking him to the ground with a grunt.
With the monsters taken care of, I landed near Marco and helped him to his feet before walking over to where Ludo was crumpled on the ground and saying "That was fun! But we gotta go to school. OOOh, you're on my backpack…"
Pulling it out from beneath himself, Ludo held it up with a disgruntled "Here."
I snatched it from him and Marco and I took off to catch the bus, having learned long ago to make time for battling Ludo in our morning routine.
It was a typical day at school, lots of interesting classes like history and lots of boring classes like math. Soon though the day was over and we were back at Marco's place. "Earth history is so cool!" I was telling him as we walked into the kitchen, "Ben Franklin blowing up that kite monster with his electric lightning powers? Like whoa."
"Yeah, that's not what happened" said Marco with a chuckle as the laser puppies congregated at his feet, ready to go on a walk.
That was when I noticed Lobster Claws still out in the back yard. I told Marco, "Hey look."
I pulled out my wand as Marco grabbed something from the kitchen to use as a weapon and said "Lets go."
Quietly we snuck out of the house before charging the monster. With a scream, I launched myself and tackled him to the ground. Rolling to a halt, I aimed my wand at the back of his head and said, "You want seconds on those cupcakes?"
Instead of responding however, Lobster Claws just laid there underneath me with his face in the dirt. Confused, I said "Uh, this is the part where you fight back."
"Go ahead" came a muffled cry from the monster. Turning his head to look at me he exclaimed "Blast me! Do it!"
In my surprise at the sudden outburst, I jumped back into Marco's comforting hold. As I collected myself and extracted myself from the safety of his arms, Marco said "Are you okay?"
"Well… Uh… the thing is…" As Lobster Claws spoke, tears started to form in his eyes before breaking forth into all out sobbing as he said "Master Ludo fired me! I can never show my face on Mewni again!"
I stood watching, dumbstruck at the scene playing out before me, so many thoughts and emotions were whirling through my brain. Marco however surprised me even more when he said "Oh man, he's taking this really hard!"
"You mean he felt sympathy for the monster?" asked Ruberiot.
"Yeah, he did" said Star.
"But monsters are evil!"
"At the time, I agreed with you, I thought all monsters were evil, as you will hear."
"At the time?" asked Ruberiot.
"Well, a lot has happened on Earth, and now… I'm not so sure."
"What do you mean?"
"Well, you'll just have to wait and see won't you?" said Star with a mischievous grin as she resumed her story.
"This is probably just a monster trick" I told him, swinging around to blast Lobster Claws.
Knowing what I was about to do, Marco reached out and grabbed my arm, pulling me back as he said "I don't think he's faking it. We should do something."
I however still had my doubts, but Marco is Marco and I was at least going to hear him out. So I asked him "Like what?"
"I don't know! But we can't just leave him like this" said Marco.
I was unconvinced, ready to blast the monster back to whatever den it had called from as I asked "Marco, why do you even care? He's a monster! Monsters are the bad guys!"
As if to prove my point, while we had been talking, Lobster Claws had scared some small animals out of a nearby tree and chose that moment to let loose a battle cry and start chasing one.
"I don't have to be bad" piped up Lobster Claws from beside us. "In fact, I've always secretly wanted to be good."
I was skeptical and crossed my arms as Marco trustingly said "Really? Well, maybe we can show you how."
"What?" My eyes flew open in shock as I turned to Marco and said "That's crazy! Monsters. Are. Evil! It's just their nature."
We watched as Lobster Claws held the cute squirrel he had caught, only instead of dangling from his grasp, he had let it climb up onto the top of his claw. Releasing the squirrel he said "No its not, look!"
"See" said Marco as he turned to look at me. Unconvinced I gave him a small pout of displeasure.
"Yeah" said Lobster Claws. However when we turned to look at him, he had the squirrel in his mouth has he tried to eat it. Swallowing it whole he said "See?"
I shot a look at Marco as we ran over to save the squirrel. "No, you can't just eat whatever you want. No spit up the squirrel."
With a horrible retching noise, the squirrel was thankfully regurgitated. I picked it up, threw Marco a harsh look, and said "I'm going to bandage him up. Marco, Make sure your new friend stays out of trouble."
After bandaging up the squirrel with a quick blast from my wand and some supplies from inside, I set the squirrel free as Marco said "Okay, Lobster Claws, the key to being good is do unto others as you would have them do to you!"
At that moment, a cyclist passed us and Lobster Claws lashed out, knocking the man from his seat. We watched him tumble away screaming, hands to our mouths in shock as Lobster Claws said "Like that?"
"Actually, that's 100% wrong. And you want to do the opposite" explained Marco. "Now say you're sorry."
"That's alright, I landed on a sprinkler" said the cyclist as he picked himself back up and remounted his bike.
"This is too hard" complained Lobster Claws. "I'm never gonna get this."
"Yeeeah, you should just give up" I interjected, smirking at him in challenge. I just wanted him to prove me right.
"Okay, don't listen to her" said Marco, refusing to give up on Lobster Claws. "The next time you get the urge to punch somebody, just imagine how it would feel if it happened to you."
Pausing for a moment, the monster seemed to look within himself before squinting and saying "I've got the urge!" After a brief pause, he straightened up, looking surprised, and said "Wow, that totally would have hurt."
That was when the child started crying. Turning to look, Marco, Lobster Claws, and I walked over to where a small girl was crying at the base of a tree. Marco reached out a hand as he said "Aw, what's wrong?"
"My kitty is stuck in a tree" sobbed the little girl, pointing up. We looked and sure enough there was a small, white kitten stuck in the lower branches of the tree.
Turning to the monster, ever thoughtful Marco said "Lobster Claws, this is your chance."
Glancing up the tree to where the kitten hung, some twenty feet up, Lobster Claws took off in his strange backwards run. He scaled the tree, and within a few seconds was up next to the kitten.
"Careful with my Mister Mittens!" cried the girl as Lobster Claws snatched up the kitten in his claws. As he slid down the tree, I watched on with my arms crossed as I waited for him to act up.
"Thank you so much Mr. Lobster Man" cried the girl when he offered up the kitten.
"I knew there was some good in him" Marco told me with a smirk. Conveniently, that was when we heard the muffled yowl from beside us. Lobster Claws had stuffed the cat in his mouth, similar to how he had tried to eat the squirrel not even tem minutes prior. Marco and I rushed over to him as we cried out in alarm and grabbed the kitten from his mouth.
"Now do you see what we're dealing with" I said, glaring at Marco.
Pointing at the kitten with a smile, Marco tried to calm me as he said "Mister Mittens is fine, no harm no foul."
Looking up, we saw Lobster Claws had replaced the kitten we had taken from him with the little girl in the few seconds we weren't looking. Tossing aside the kitten, we ran in to rescue her. After pulling her out, I had Marco watch Lobster Claws while I reunited cat and child.
After we sent them on their way, I looked on tiredly as Marco said to Lobster Claws "Okay that was my bad. I assumed you knew this, but you can't eat children."
"Really, not even annoying ones?"
"Never!"
"Help!" cried a voice off beside us. We turned to see a burning home as a woman called out "Help! Help me! My baby is still inside!"
"Your baby?" said Marco and I at the same time.
Lobster Claws stopped us though as he put a claw on both our chests and said "Don't worry, Red Boy has got this."
Turning, he did his backwards run and scuttled into the blaze as he shouted "And I'm totally not gonna eat it!"
Worried for both the baby and Lobster claws, I pulled out my wand and cried out "Cotton Candy, Fire, Extinguish!"
With a blast of magic and a quiet "poof", all of the fire turned into cotton candy. All three of us took off into the now safe house to find the baby.
"My baby! Oh my baby, my sweet baby grand piano!" said the woman as she ran over to a piano sitting in the main room and hugged it. She whispered to it "Were you scared? Tell me what you're feeling."
She pressed a key and the piano started to play itself as she burst out into song with the tune.
"I was wondering where that piano music was coming from" said Marco.
"Um, where's Lobster Claws?"
We turned to see a hole in the wall, leading out into the back yard. Marco and I approached, hearing what sounded like devouring coming from the backyard. Looking out, we saw he had busted through the fence and was chugging the contents of an ice cream vendor's cart while holding the man in his other claw.
"Well he's not eating humans, that's a step forward" said Marco optimistically.
"Whatever" I said, unconvinced. "Let's just go save that poor man already?"
We made our way over to where Lobster Claws was and Marco told him, "Hey, you can't do that buddy. Put the man and his cart down and we will see if we can't go find some other way for you to be good."
Eventually we got everything squared away and started making our way downtown where hopefully we could find something easy for him. We soon spotted an old woman crossing the street and Marco said "Okay, here's an easy one. Help the old lady cross the street."
We watched as he scuttled over and told the old lady "I'll help you Miss."
"I'd say he's starting to get this" said Marco as he gave me one of his amazing smiles.
Unconvinced I flashed Marco a glare as I said "Well I'm not taking my eyes off him for one sec-"
With a roar, the city burst into flames. Marco and I screeched in unison as we turned back to look at Lobster Claws. Where not even a moment before had been him helping the old lady across the street, he now had a car above his head and a backdrop of roaring flames. As we ran past the fleeing woman to stop him, a cyclist rode past us with a flaming helmet. Marco went to calm down the monster as I got to work clearing out the fire. After an unpleasantly long period, the last of the fires were put out. I wanted to yell at Marco about how foolish this was, but all of the magic had drained me and instead just motioned that I wanted to go home.
Having recovered some of my energy on the walk home, we all sat down in front of the television to watch the news. Marco and Lobster Claws sat apprehensively on the couch as I curled up in a worried ball on the floor. When the report came on, the broadcaster said "Tragedy today as a rampaging lobster man destroyed four city blocks. Miraculously no one was injured but one cyclist mourns the loss of his new bike."
"It was our first outing together" said the cyclist in an interview, sobbing into his hands "Now I have nothing."
Turning off the television, Marco said with a chuckle "Yeah, you know how the news sensationalizes things. I still believe you can be good, but until then, I'm gonna find some rubber bands for your claws."
I had a smirk on my face as Marco walked by and as I took a deep breath to tell him off, he cut me off by saying "Save it."
So instead of saying anything, I went back to smugly looking at Marco's retreating form. At least I was until Lobster claws said "Why is being good so hard?"
I stood up as I told him "The problem is, Marco's trying to make you something you're not. You're a vile, repulsive monster, why fight it?"
"Yeah, I am repulsive! I shouldn't be helping humans, I should be hurting them. You in particular."
"And I wish I could just get back to smashing your face! Maybe there's a way we can both get what we want."
I explained my plan to Lobster Claws, a way for him to get back in with Ludo while I get Marco to myself again, and stop having to look after the monster of course. He smiled as I outlined my plan and agreed to go along with it while Marco was distracted.
Moving fast, I grabbed a hammock and set it up in the back yard. I hopped in and pretended to fall asleep, knowing that such an opportunity would be quickly seized by Ludo. Sure enough, within a minute or two I heard the unmistakable sound of a portal opening and Ludo's band emerged.
Cracking one eye, I watched them approach and as Ludo reached for the wand I sat up and said "Ludo! I was just dreaming of kicking your butt!"
"Get her!" screamed Ludo as the monsters rushed me. The first monster that made it to me was Three-Eyed Potato Baby. He was quickly dispatched when I kicked him to the side and blasted him through the back door of the Diaz house. Behind him was a large group of monsters who I drove back with a blue blast that cut a line in the ground in front of them. The first to recover was a large, red monster with a horse head, but he was easily blasted away with the residual energy from my previous spell.
The next attacker was a two-headed monster. As I saw him approach, he leapt at me, trying to knock me out of the hammock. Instead of letting him collide, I leapt to more stable ground next to Marco as the monster bounced off the hammock and ricocheted towards us. Smiling, I took aim and blasted him back across the lawn.
Marco screamed in surprise "They're back?"
"Yeah, I lured them here. To get Lobster claws his old job back" I whispered to him. "I'm gonna let him beat me up. Play along."
My explanation was cut short as the next wave of monsters closed in. Blasting the closest in the chest, I ran over to where Ludo stood, pointed my wand at him, and said "Alright Ludo, I got more than cupcakes this time!"
When nothing happened, I stood up and nearly yelled "I said, I got more than cupcakes this time."
"GO RED BOY!" screamed Lobster Claws, vaulting over the wall to the neighbor's yard when he finally heard my signal. Landing in front of Ludo and his monsters, he threw a horribly telegraphed punch my way and I pretended to take the hit. With a faked cry of pain, I fell to the ground as he said "Boo-ya-ka-sha! Don't worry boss, I got this."
With a roar, he ran over to where I had picked myself up at while Ludo said "Boss? Didn't I fire you?"
With wonderfully beautiful acting, I pretended to fight Lobster Claws. He would throw fake punches while I pretended to fire off spells at him. It was so good I even heard some of the monsters complimenting his fighting skills and Ludo even said "Yes, yes, I do see marked improvement, but I'd really be impressed if you would just grab THE WAND!"
It seemed like my work was done and Lobster Claws was ready to go back to his old job so I fell to the ground and cried out "He's defeated me!"
As I lay there, floundering on the ground in an amazing performance, Lobster Claws reached over and snatched the wand from my hand. My first reaction was anger and I sat up indignantly while Ludo cheered. Then came the dread. With a worried squeak from me and a terrified scream from Marco, the wand started to glow. Eventually the whole backyard was bathed in the light of the wand. When the light cleared, I saw the wand had transformed for its new holder much like it had done for me.
It was dark purple and light purple. The bell of the wand was solid black and just beneath it were two spikey, claw-like protrusions. As we watched, the bell opened like an eye, revealing a pink iris with a black, silted pupil at the center.
"What's happening?" said Lobster Claws. First his pupils dilated to fill his eyes, turning them completely black and a sinister purple glow illuminated where his pupils should have been. His body started shaking as the energy flooded into him and then out when he couldn't stem the flow his dark nature was asking for. The outpouring caused smaller objects to start floating into the sky as he said "Being bad feels so good!"
I ran up to him and screamed "How could you do this? I was trying to help you!"
He turned to me and the strangest thing happened. With a groan, his eyes returned to normal and the wand changed again, this time into a cute red wand with little pincers below the bell and a giant doe eye, full of innocence, filling the plate.
"Whoa!" I was floored, having not expected his goodness to be able to manifest itself in the wand like that.
"Don't listen to her!" screamed Ludo, causing Lobster Claws to turn back to Ludo and his more sinister form. "She's the enemy!"
"No!" I shouted, causing him to turn back to me and his good side. "I saw the good in you! Don't do it!"
"Act like a monster and give it to me!" said Ludo, drawing the dark side out. Only this time, it was different and the two aspects of Lobster Claws seemed to struggle.
Seeing my chance I cried out "Lobster Claws, please!"
Then the wand started alternating between forms, one after the other and picking up speed. I watched, horrified that it would settle on the evil aspect. Thankfully, Marco was there and had the sense to do something before the whole situation went bad. Running over to Lobster Claws, Marco kicked him in the chin and laid him out flat on his back.
This knocked the wand from Lobster Claws' grasp and I recovered my wits as I leapt to catch the wand. When it landed in my hand, there was a swirl of light as the wand changed back into the form I know and love. While Ludo ranted about Marco, I leapt into action. Springing off the wall, I channeled my magic and cried "Stardust, Daisy, Devastation!"
With a yellow beam of light, the spell flew to where all the monsters were gathered before exploding. In a blast of yellow pollen, the monsters were scattered and defeated. As they picked themselves up, Ludo opened a portal and yelled "Retreat!" Needing not to be told twice, the monsters rushed for the safety of the other side of the portal.
When Lobster Claws approached the portal however, Ludo stopped him and said "Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. You! You had the wand in the palm of your claws! What did it feel like?"
"It kind of tingled."
"I knew it!" cried Ludo, almost shaking with joy. "I'm so jealous, can I touch your claw? After you!"
Marco however was not going to call it quits. Running to the portal he yelled "Don't do it Lobster Claws! What about wanting to be good?"
His answer was clear when a claw came through the portal and punched Marco across the yard. When he landed in a heap in front of me I said "Huh, Marco, you were right. There was some good in him after all!"
Unfolding himself, Marco groaned "Not much."
