Chapter 11: Monster Arm, Part 2
That night, long after Star got the fallen bookself off of him and found an emergency healing potion in his personal closet, Bucky was awakened from his slumber by a peculiar weight on his torso. It almost felt like someone was sitting on his chest. As his vision adjusted to the darkness, Bucky found a pair of coffee-brown eyes staring into his icy blue ones.
"Whatcha dreamin' about?" Janna asked. She was crouched on the balls of her feet in the middle of his broad chest, fully dressed with an eager smile on her face.
Bucky blinked twice.
Changing the point of view to the outside of the house, the glass doors leading to the Butterfly siblings' balcony swung open.
"WORTH IIIIIIIIIIT!" Janna screamed as she sailed through the air in a wide arc, landing safely in a raked-up pile of leaves in the yard of the Diaz family's across-the-street neighbors.
"That girl is definitely gonna be a bad influence on Star," Bucky grumbled as he crawled back into his cot and closed his eyes. He failed to notice the light coming from Star's part if the room, nor the faint sound of pages being flipped...
...
The next morning, as the first rays of sunlight entered his bedroom, Marco stretched and let out a yawn. At the end of his yawn, his Monster Arm flopped onto his face with a loud SPLAT, covering him in purple goo and making him groan deeply. He hadn't slept well at all due to the Monster Arm flopping and flailing all through the night.
Marco groggily made his way to the bathroom to take a shower, grunting in discomfort at the feeling of his soggy, purple-stained pajamas. Adding to his frustration was the fact that he was severely right-handed, so he was forced to attempt scrubbing himself with his left hand. Once again, the Monster Arm's constant squirming compounded the issue, first by smacking the bar of soap out of Marco's hand, and then by brushing against the lever that controlled the water temperature and turning it all the way to the HOT position. Marco jumped around in the shower stall, screaming in pain as the bathroom filled with steam.
Now fully dressed, his skin covered in red splotches from the scalding water and the right sleeve of his hoodie bursting at the seams, Marco walked downstairs and sat at the dining room table, where breakfast was waiting for him. Bucky was already seated and eating his own breakfast. Marco tried to eat, only for the Monster Arm to smack the toasted bagel with butter out of his hand and hurl his plate of bacon and eggs against the wall.
"Need a hand? I can stand on it and pin it down until you get something to eat," Bucky offered.
"Nah, I'm good," Marco declined. "I'm not that hungry, anyway." Just then, Star joined them at the table, looking just as tired as Marco with bags under her eyes.
"Mornin', boys. Mornin', Monster Arm," she greeted with a wide yawn. "I was up all night looking for a counter-spell, but no such luck."
"Star, why didn't you say anything?" Bucky asked in concern. "I could've helped you look, you know. Especially since I had to kick Janna out of our room last night."
"No, no, I screwed up the spell, so this is my responsibility," Star said. "Besides, one of us has to stay alert today. I think I'm getting close to the right spell, though."
"Kids! You're gonna miss the bus!" Angie called from the living room. Marco reached for his glass of orange juice, only for the Monster Arm to pick it up instead and dump it over his head.
"I hope you're right, Star..." he groaned.
...
By lunchtime, Marco had gained some amount of control over the Monster Arm. While it still flopped and wriggled occasionally, it did so with less frequency and with a pattern Marco was able to anticipate. As such, while he was walking to his usual cafeteria table with Star and Bucky, he was able to keep the Monster Arm from making him drop his lunch tray.
A sudden commotion caught the three teens' attention and made all of them frown. Lars, a hulking gorilla of a boy who looked like he could've transferred from Silver Hill Prep, was tormenting a much smaller roly-poly boy resembling a stereotypical nerd, with glasses, braces, and a bow tie.
"Hey, kid, I got a joke for ya," Lars was saying with a cruel smile on his face. "What's the most important meal of the day?" When the smaller boy hesitated to answer, Lars smacked the tray of food out of his hands and said, "IT'S BREAKFAST! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!"
"Heh. That's a good one, Lars..." the boy replied with a nervous chuckle. But Lars wasn't done; when the boy knelt down to salvage his lunch, Lars grabbed the back of his head and rubbed his face in the entree, continuing to howl with laughter until...
SMACK!
"OW! Hey, who did that?!" Lars demanded, rubbing his reddening cheek. Marco and Bucky both looked at the Monster Arm in shock. Bucky had been about to step in himself when the Monster Arm did it for him. Marco looked back at Lars and chuckled sheepishly while pointing at his strange appendage. "Okay, that's it! Nobody hits La-" Lars was interrupted When the Monster Arm slapped him again. Repeatedly.
Bizarrely, for someone who looked so tough, Lars apparently couldn't handle someone else giving him a beating, as he burst into tears and ran away. Meanwhile, the Monster Arm hauled the boy Lars had been tormenting to his feet and wiped the food off of his face and glasses.
"I, good sir, am in your debt," the boy said with a bow upon realizing what had happened. Before Marco could respond, Fergusen rudely bumped the boy aside with a broad grin.
"YOU'RE A HERO!" he shouted, and the rest of the students started cheering.
To Marco's great surprise, Jackie came up to him and asked, "Hey, Marco, can I check out that arm?" When he reluctantly stretched the Monster Arm out for her to look at, other girls came forward for a closer look, including Janna and two of Brittany's cheerleading lackeys. He smiled at the attention he was getting.
"Don't get used to it, girls," Bucky warned. "We still need to find a way to get rid of that thing." As if it had heard him, the Monster Arm suddenly clobbered Bucky with the forgotten lunch tray, leaving the metal tray with a large dent in the shape of Bucky's face.
"Aw, snap! Are you okay?" Alfonso asked as Bucky calmly removed the dented tray from his face like a mask. "That looked like it hurt."
"Oh, trust me, it hurts like the dickens," Bucky confirmed. "But having someone like Star for a sister means things like this happen on a regular basis, so I figured out how to block out the pain."
...
Despite not having gotten any sleep the previous night, Star still insisted on looking for a counter-spell by herself after school. Thus, she sat at Bucky's personal desk with her Spellbook open to the very middle pages, carefully scrutinizing it while Marco lounged on Bucky's cot. Bucky himself had gone for a long walk to familiarize himself with the town.
"Ah-ha!" Star exclaimed, "I found it! A Reverse-Tentacle Spell...I think..."
"Maybe you should test it on something else before you use it on me," Marco suggested nervously.
"Good idea," Star admitted and placed a potted plant on the desk. "Returnio Armius Normoridicus!" she read from the Spellbook. The beam of light that shot from her Wand promptly burned the plant to a crisp, causing both her and Marco's eyes to widen.
"Uh...why don't you keep practicing, and I'll...uh...hang out a safe distance away...in my room..." Marco suggested as he slowly backed away with a nervous smile. Star only sighed and got out another plant.
"Okay, let's try this again," she said and looked at her Spellbook. "Returnio Armius Normorini," she said, hoping she just mistranslated one of the runes the spell was written in. This time, the plant straight-up exploded! "Yeesh! This might take a while..." Star commented with a wince.
...
Bucky returned an hour later to find his and Star's room littered with broken pottery and smelling like burnt leaves, Star herself groaning in frustration with her head resting on her arms.
"Do I even want to know what's going on?" Bucky asked. Star lifted her head and looked at him with bloodshot eyes.
"I finally found the right spell to turn Marco's arm back to normal, but I can't say it right. The plants I test it on keep getting either destroyed or horribly mutated," she said.
"Does that mean you're finally ready to admit that you need help?" Bucky asked with a knowing smirk. Star sighed and looked down in shame.
"Okay, you win," she conceded. "I do need your help, both now and probably in the future." She looked back up when Bucky laid a hand on her shoulder, looking down at her with a warm smile.
"Remember, Star, nobody said you had to do this alone," he said, his hand moving from her shoulder to rub her back. "You need to do one more thing before I can properly help you, though."
"What's that?" Star asked in confusion, prompting Bucky to kneel down to her level and look into her eyes as he explained.
"When Queen Skywynne started writing the new Spellbook, she placed a charm on it in case it ever fell into the wrong hands. Only those with direct permission from the Spellbook's current owner are able to read it. In order for me to help you, you have to give me permission to read from the Spellbook while both of us are laying hands upon it. Can you do that?"
Star nodded with a small smile. Bucky stood up and placed his left hand on one of the open pages of the book. Standing up as well, Star placed her right hand on the opposite page.
"I, Star Butterfly, Princess of Mewni and heir to the throne, hereby give you, Buchanon Butterfly, permission to read from the Royal Spellbook whenever you wish for the purpose of helping me further my magical education," Star proclaimed formally. When she finished speaking, Star's eyes and cheek marks began to glow with a soft white light. The Spellbook's pages began to glow blue where both siblings were touching them before Bucky's eyes began glowing white as well, signaling that Star's permission had successfully been given.
The glow faded, and Bucky looked down at the Spellbook. Before Star gave him permission to read it, the runes were constantly shifting around on the page, making anything but the individual runes totally illegible to him. Now that he had permission, he was able to read the spells in their entirety. Star pointed out the spell she was having trouble with and what she thought the runes translated as.
"You're actually not as far off as you thought," Bucky told her. "The only thing you're getting wrong is this part at the very end. The spell actually says Returnio Armius Normalrino." With that information, Star brought out one final potted plant and recited the correct spell. The plant vanished, only for a tiny human arm to push upward through the dirt and make a thumb's-up.
Star was excited and wanted to show Marco right away, only for Bucky to remind her how late at night it was. She reluctantly agreed to get some sleep and fix Marco's arm in the morning.