Here's the big climax. I hope you like it. Star vs the Forces of Evil is owned by Disney and Stands are the creation of the brilliant and talented Hirohiko Araki. Yadda. Yadda. Enjoy.
1-Up Girl: Chapter 12
(Right where we left off)
Like a star at the end of its lifespan, Annie's battered and bloody body was seemingly destroyed in a tremendous explosion.
So bright was the light emanating from it that Ringo had to pull back his fist in order to shield his eyes.
And so great was the force of the blast that only the will of their captor kept Jackie and the others from being blown off to parts unknown.
Fortunately, this didn't last long. After about a minute or so, the light began to fade and the winds died down.
Unfortunately, Annie was still nowhere to be seen. In fact, all that remained of the blast site was a rather large mass of pure white smoke.
No, scratch that. Upon closer examination, Jackie noted that it was much too wispy to be smoke.
It was more like steam.
Lots and lots of steam.
As if generated by some enormous and unseen source heat source.
Very unusual.
But more importantly, it was obstructing her few of ground zero; which, as you might imagine, was extremely vexing.
If Annie had simply died, the game would have ended and their captor would've likely started celebrating. But given his confused expression, it was clear that this peculiar series of events was not of his design.
Something very strange was going on here.
And for better or worse, Jackie needed to know what it was.
XXX
(Down on the ground)
Like a newborn deer fresh out of its mother's womb, Annie stumbled around on shaky legs through a world that was alien and out of focus.
"Ugh…" she moaned groggily as her cognitive faculties slowly returned. "What happened? Why is my skin all tingly?"
Crunch!
"Oh no." she said fretfully. "Please tell me I didn't just do what I think I did."
Slowly the young otaku looked down at her feet and, to her great embarrassment, she saw that her worst fears had been realized. While in her semiconscious stupor, she'd apparently lost her glasses and now they'd been crushed into a hundred pieces by her big webbed feet.
Wait… big webbed feet?
What the heck?
Upon closer inspection, Annie saw that her eyes weren't playing tricks on her. Her feet had in fact grown large and webbed. And green!
Yes, as unbelievable as it might sound, dear reader, it was true. Annie's skin had gone from its usual Caucasian to an eerily familiar lime green. And not just on her feet, but all over her entire body. Every single inch of her pasty epidermis had become green and sort of cartoony looking.
Needless to say, the young otaku found this deeply, deeply disturbing. And these intense feelings of unease were only worsened when she took a moment to look at her hands.
"Whah!" she yelped in alarm as she saw that her hands now matched her feet. "Ew! Ew! Ew! Ew! EW! My hands are all gross and webby! Get it off! Get it off! Get it off!"
But alas, no matter how hard she shook them, the strange webbing between her fingers did not go away.
"AAAH! This is sick and wrong!" Annie cried distraughtly, before an unpleasant thought suddenly bubbled to the forefront of her brain. "Wait, if my hands look like this, then what about my face?"
In a panic, the young otaku started feeling around her face and, to her immense displeasure, she quickly discovered that her nose and mouth had been stretched out and fused together into a small but noticeable amphibian snout.
Naturally, Annie took this new development the same way any rational person would.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH! I'M A FROG!" she screamed in terror as she flailed her arms about frantically and dashed into the steam cloud like a demented loon. "AAAAAAAH! I'M A FROG! I'M A FROG! SOMEBODY PLEASE HELP ME!"
Without realizing it, Annie had run right through the concealing mist; putting herself, and her shocking new form on full display.
And needless to say, this elicited quite the reaction from the peanut gallery.
"WHUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUH!" went everyone, including Ringo, in perfect unison.
"L-L-L-Lightfoot? Is that you?" asked Britney, being the first to regain her composure. "What the heck happened? You're all… green?"
"I don't know!" Annie replied hysterically, still flailing her arms about like a lunatic. "I was just trying to overlay and now I'm a frog! AAAH! I don't wanna be a frog! Jackie, please help me!"
"WHAT? Why me?" asked the young skateboarder, sounding just as freaked out as everyone else.
"You're the one who's always talking about the secrets of the universe! You've gotta know something!"
"Sorry, but I have no idea what this is. It's like you and your Stand just… fused together somehow."
"Fused! I've fused with my Stand?" Annie asked aloud, sounding positively aghast. "I don't think I like this. No, I definitely don't like this! Make it stop! Make it stop!"
"Um… If I might interject." Ringo spoke up suddenly, sounding almost as off put as his captives. "As much as I hate to break up this riveting back and forth, I feel I must point out that this whole thing has gotten rather weird. Too weird even for my tastes. So… I'm just gonna end this before anything else happens. Sound good?"
Since this was not truly a question, the emerald jinn wasted no time waiting for a reply. So instead he raised his mighty fist once more and threw what surely would have been a life ending blow.
Fortunately, as she was already in a panic, Annie reacted quickly and, to her great astonishment, suddenly sprang herself over two hundred feet into the air.
"What?" Ringo cried in amazement as his tiny adversary zoomed higher into the lower atmosphere. "You can fly?"
Moments later, the young otaku fell back down to earth and landed softly on her webbed feet; miraculously unharmed.
"Um… apparently not." She replied, clearly confused by her own achievement.
Perturbed, but not discouraged, Ringo quickly shook off his astonishment and launched another attack; this time in the form of a meteor shower.
However, before any of the flaming space rocks could even come close, the young otaku suddenly vanished without a trace and then rematerialized several yards behind her attacker.
"Whoa…" she muttered in quiet awe. "Did I just teleport?"
"Who cares!" roared Ringo in a fit of rage as he attempted to end her with another laser blast. But just like the last time, Annie suddenly disappeared and then reappeared over fifty yards away. "WHAT!"
In a blind fury, the emerald jinn fired every attack in his repertoire, from fist to serpent, in an attempt to slay his hated foe. But alas, every time the result was the same; the young otaku would simply vanish and then reappear quicker than he could blink. Which of course only intensified his wrath.
But while Ringo was busy trying to exterminate her, Annie was having the time of her life.
'OMG~ This is amazing!' she thought to herself giddily as she effortlessly avoided one of Ringo's demon snakes. 'It's not teleportation, it's super speed. It's just like when I was overlaying, only now my reflexes are so quick I'm moving faster than I can think.'
A bit of an oversimplification, but accurate nonetheless.
Unfortunately, before she could truly revel in her newfound abilities, the emerald jinn somehow managed to catch her in his massive green mitts.
"HA! GOTCHA!" Ringo shouted gloatingly as he raised his clasped hands to eyelevel. "Not so clever now, are you, Lightfoot? Thought you could get the best of meAAAAAAAAH!"
Before anyone even knew what had happened, the emerald jinn released his grip; allowing Annie to slip free and revealing an enormous shuriken shaped water construct stabbed into his right palm.
'OMG~' the young otaku squealed internally as she landed safely on the ground. 'That was Aqua Boogie's Giant Aqua Shuriken. So wait, I'm super-fast and I can use my Stand's awesome ninja attacks? I've changed my mind. I LOVE BEING A FROG!'
In spite of her unbridled elation, Annie managed to maintain her composure long enough to notice two important things. 1) That Ringo's health bar had gone down to 95%. And 2) That he was so distracted by the gash in his hand that he wasn't even looking at her.
'Oh, this is just too good.' She thought as her lips formed into a mischievous smirk. 'Now let's see if I can cut that big bully down to size.'
Without a moment's hesitation, the young otaku formed a classic ninja hand sign and almost immediately fired a cannonball sized sphere of rotating, glowing water straight at her captor's solar plexus.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM!
The resulting explosion was at least three times larger than any she'd ever made before using Aqua Boogie. And the force it created was so great that it caused the giant jinn to cough up some of his own blood and sent his all-important health meter down to 45%.
"GAAAAH!" he cried out as he attempted to cradle his severely damaged stomach area in his arms. "You… you horrible little bitch! I'm gonna burn you to a crisp!"
And with that, he fired an extra deadly looking eye blast right at his froggy foe.
However, just before it made contact, Annie vanished once again.
"Hey, no fair! Stay still so I can kill you!" Ringo whined childishly as he feverishly searched for his target. But alas, she was nowhere to be seen. "RAAAAAAR! WHERE ARE YOU!"
"Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha-Ha~" Annie laughed sweetly, in a voice that seemed to come from everywhere at once. "Boy, you really aren't very bright, are you."
"What did you say?"
"But I guess that's to be expected. I mean, you don't really learn anything if you never challenge yourself."
"You little bitch! Come out and show yourself!"
"Don't get me wrong. Playing videogames is fun, but it's not really a talent. Really, anyone can do it if they know what buttons to push."
"Shut up! You don't know anything!"
"I know how to hit a homerun. And I know how to draw and write my own stories. Which means I also know how to dissect a character's personality. Wanna know what I've learned about yours?"
"I said, shut up!"
"You spent your whole life being jealous of the talents of others, so you shunned any activity you weren't instantly good at to avoid feeling inferior. And since you were bullied as a child, you think that gives you the right to bully others as an adult."
"SHUT UP!"
"You hate people because you don't understand them. And you don't understand them because you shelter yourself in worlds of bright colors and flashy lights."
"Please, just stop talking!"
"You enjoy killing people because you think it makes up for being picked on when you were little. You call yourself a god, but your powers are limited to the imaginations of people far more ambitious than you."
"Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!"
"In short, you never really grew out of the egocentricities of childhood. You're a sad, pathetic, possibly overweight man-child who lacks any form of imagination or talent. And the only source of joy in your life is the giving of pain to others. You're a loathsome wretch and I truly feel sorry for you."
"RRRRRRRRRRRRRR! WHERE ARE YOU!"
"Up here~"
Almost instantly, Ringo turned his gaze upwards and, to his immense astonishment, he saw his frogified foe hovering about a hundred feet overhead; using one of her Giant Aqua Shuriken as a makeshift propeller.
"Hi~" she said cheerfully as she gave him a playful wave.
"YOU! You dare mock me! I'll fry you to a crisp!"
And with that, the emerald jinn attempted to burn the young otaku alive with his heat vision.
But surprisingly, nothing happened.
"What the… No. NO! Why isn't this working?"
"It's like I said earlier. Your powers are limited to the imaginations of others. And the guys who programed this game never gave Le Jinn an attack that shoots up." Annie said before weaving a onehanded hand sign. "Whereas my Stand is limited only by my own imagination. Which as you're about to see is limitless."
Seconds later, a massive cloud of water constructs formed just above where Annie was hovering; blotting out the game's cartoonish sun and shrouding the entire arena in shadow.
Shuriken, Kunai, Senbon, Caltrops, Arrows, Spears, Tridents, Halberds, Sabers, and Katanas.
Thousands upon thousands of weaponry themed water constructs. All of them sharp. All of them deadly. And all of them pointed directly at Ringo. And with so much of the tower caught in the shade, there was nowhere he could go without being torn to shreds.
Suddenly, the emerald jinn started to sweat.
"W-W-W-Wait a minute! Let's not be too hasty about this!" he said in a cowardly and pathetic attempt to save his own skin. "You said yourself that you don't wanna kill anyone! So how about we just sit down and-and talk about this? You know, like adults?"
"You're right, I don't want to kill anyone." Annie replied somberly, before quickly regaining her fiery passion. "But I'll do whatever it takes to save my friends! I gave you a chance to end this peacefully and you threw it away like a spoiled child! You treat people like toys and torture them for your own amusement. As far as I'm concerned, you're not even human! So I'll feel no guilt about what comes next! Goodbye, Mr. Ringo!"
With a slight change in her hand sign, the water constructs started to fall.
Ringo let out a girlish shriek before trying once again to plead for his life.
But alas, these pleas fell upon deaf ears.
Annie's purse of forgiveness had run out.
So instead of indulging his childish attempts to worm his way out of it, the young otaku just looked down at him and with a stern gaze shouted,
"HELL 2 U!"
End Notes:
Only 4 chapters left and then I'm back on hiatus.
Thanks for reading and I'll see you in the next one.
Peace.