School Spirit, Part 3
Instead of catching the bus home with Star and Marco, Bucky stayed after school to meet with the football team. The more rules Bucky heard explained to him, the more confused he got.
"Wait, wait, wait. Football's only a game?!" he asked incredulously.
"Yeah, bro. What did you think it was?" the team captain asked in return.
"The way everyone was complaining about losing to the Warriors, I thought it was some kind of Battle Royale," Bucky explained. "It's natural to think that where I'm from, because Star and I have a lot of mighty warriors in our family."
With a set of borrowed football pads and a borrowed uniform, Bucky was shown the basics of how to play the game. All of the boys on the team quickly became jealous of Bucky's physical prowess. It was impossible to tackle him, even with the entire team trying to drag him to the ground. No matter how far away he was from the endzone, the ball flew perfectly through the goalpost every time Bucky kicked it.
"Well, I'll be darned! You just might be our saving grace, Butterfly!" the coach said at the end of the practice session, shortly after the sun went down.
"I gotta say, that wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be," Bucky told the team captain as they changed out of their uniforms.
"See? I told ya you would catch on quick!" the team captain replied. "The way you play, if we end up losing again, at least this loss will be less embarrassing."
Bucky said his goodbyes to the rest of the football team before walking back to the Diaz residence. Somewhere along the way, an elderly woman walking across Bucky's path with a brown paper sack full of groceries got mugged right in front of him. He never saw the face of the mugger, just a black blur as the thief ran past in the same direction the lady was walking, snatched her purse, and sent her sprawling on her hands and knees, the groceries scattering in all directions.
Rushing over to the lady and helping her to her feet, Bucky asked, "Are you alright, Ma'am? Are you hurt?"
"I'm fine, dearie, but that man took my purse!" the woman replied, pointing to the retreating thief.
Unconcerned, Bucky simply picked up a can of cat food that was lying at his feet, hefted it for a moment, then threw it overhand like a baseball. The can flew through the air and struck the back of the man's head, immediately knocking him out. Bucky then walked over to where the thief lay face-down, picked up the purse, and returned it to the elderly lady after helping her gather up her groceries.
"Thank you so much, dearie. Would you mind walking me home?" the lady asked him.
"Not at all," Bucky replied with a smile and walked alongside the woman back to her house, which coincidentally was right next door to the Diazes. When he finally stepped inside, Star and Marco were sitting on the couch watching a movie. On the coffee table in front of them was an open box of half-eaten pizza.
"Just in time, Bucky! Marco just introduced me to another Human delicacy called pizza. You should try it!" Star said with a broad smile. Bucky shrugged, picked up a slice of pizza, and took a bite. His pupils narrowed to pinpricks as his mouth exploded with flavor, and he greedily wolfed down the rest of the slice. It was unlike anything he had ever tasted before, and he couldn't get enough!
"Hey! Hey! Take it easy! You don't wanna choke, do you?" Marco exclaimed, snatching away the pizza box after Bucky grabbed more pizza with both hands and devoured it.
"Sorry. This just might be the best thing I've ever eaten," Bucky said after swallowing. Later that night, as he was laying down to go to sleep, Bucky noticed Star sitting at her desk, drawing something on a large sheet of paper and chuckling to herself every so often. He didn't pay it much heed.
He should have.
...
The next day was the day of the much-dreaded football game. Only, once the students heard that Bucky was on the team and what he was capable of, they collectively looked slightly less dismal when Bucky observed them between classes.
That evening, the school's stadium was packed with fans of both teams. Bucky and the rest of the Awesome Opossums were under the grandstands, listening to the team captain explain his strategy for the start of the game. Bucky had to ask for clarification when the captain started using names like Bombs, Traps, and Kitty-Cat Offense.
"Those are the code names we have for our special moves, bro," said the captain. "It's weird that I have to explain this to you. Star seemed to understand perfectly when I mentioned them to her the other day." Bucky's pupils shrank, and his face went pale. "Whoa! You okay, bro?"
"I'm not sure I heard you right," Bucky said, standing up and walking up to the captain. "Did you just say that you told a whole bunch of code words referring to game strategies to my sister?"
"Uh...yeah?" the captain replied uncertainly. He suddenly found himself several inches off the ground when Bucky grabbed him by the front of his jersey.
"ARE YOU INSANE?! STAR TAKES EVERYTHING LITERALLY!" Bucky yelled before dropping the captain and nervously pacing. "Oh, this is bad, this is bad, this is bad!"
"No time, for chit-chat, boys! It's showtime!" the coach declared, poking his head into the room. Bucky reluctantly followed the team out onto the field and got into his designated position. The opposing team, the Warriors, dressed in black-and-gray uniforms with matching helmets, acted more like gorillas than teenage boys, snarling, grunting, spitting, and roughhousing.
Bucky glanced down as the referee blew his whistle, and realized with horror that the kicking tee for the football was connected by a series of wires to a cluster of rainbow-colored crystals.
"NO! DON'T LET HIM KICK THE-" Bucky shouted, but his warning was too late. One of the Warriors charged forward for the kickoff and triggered a massive explosion with a rainbow mushroom cloud. The severely injured player crashed in the endzone behind the rest of the Warriors, and the soot-blackened football landed in the hands of the Opossums' team captain. Both teams started running around in a panic, triggering more of Star's booby traps, and the crowd quickly followed suit. Bucky just stood where he was in shocked silence, before his face turned red and shifted into a frown. "STAAAAAAAAAAAAR!" he bellowed in rage.
"I'm sorry! I'm trying to fix it!" Star called back. She was wearing a suit of armor she'd gotten from one of their relatives on the Johannsen side of the family for her fourteenth birthday: a black leather vest with a matching spike-studded skirt, gleaming steel shoulder pads, steel-plated armguards, and a black helmet with a single steel spike on top.
The whole stadium was in complete pandemonium. King River had clearly taught his daughter too well when it came to turning the tide of a battle to your favor. The sheer variety of the magic and non-magic traps Star had set was simply too much to describe. Bucky and Marco worked together to get as many people out of harm's way as they could, and Star was using her Wand to disarm as many traps as possible. Which was hard for her, because they were being triggered faster than she could disarm them.
Case in point, the referee was running around, blowing his whistle uselessly, and tripped on a wire near one of the endzones. The whole endzone, goalpost and all, swung upwards on a massive hinge, setting loose the magically conjured beasts trapped beneath. Butterfly monsters similar to what Star made on her first day on Earth, massive squirrels with matted green fur, and gargantuan three-eyed felines wreathed in flames.
Bucky swung his fist and knocked out one of the giant squirrels by punching it in the face. Immediately, it transformed into a trio of regular-sized squirrels in a puff of green smoke, and the squirrels scattered. Bucky paused to catch his breath but was knocked flat on his back when one of the giant flaming cats swiped its claws across his chest. Fortunately, the claws didn't reach his skin, but the four slash marks were starting to smolder and melt, so Buck quickly ripped off the borrowed football jersey and pads and tossed them aside, exposing his bare torso. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Jackie in an orange-and-yellow Awesome Opossums T-shirt about to be eaten by a creature resembling a cross between a snake and an earthworm. He ran across the field as Jackie was launched, screaming, into the air by the creature's tail, used the head of another squirrel creature as a springboard, and scooped Jackie up in his arms before she could fall into the creature's waiting jaws, landing safely on the ground in the next moment.
"You alright?" he asked the panting and wide-eyed girl. It took Jackie a few moments to recover from the near-death experience, and when she did, she realized she was being held bridal-style by the shirtless and extremely handsome Bucky. The normally laid-back girl's face turned scarlet, and she uttered a series of unintelligible squeaks. This was a peculiar reaction for Bucky, one he only saw when he rescued a member of the opposite sex. "Okay, then. I'll, uh, just...put you down now," he said and set her down on a nearby bench. When he turned around to get back to fighting the creatures, Star unleased an explosion of magic from the Wand that turned everything back to normal.
When the bright light died down, both Butterfly siblings looked at each other, panting heavily, relieved smiles growing on both of their faces. Something then cast a shadow over Star, which was strange, because it was late enough in the day that the only light came from the stadium lighting. She turned around and came face-to-face with the few Warriors who were still standing after the whole debacle. She gulped as they all glared down at her.
"Hey, Magic Girl. Are you the one who sabotaged our game?" one of them demanded.
"W-w-well, I, uh, I didn't mean to sabotage it, per se," Star stammered. "It was just a...minor misunderstanding on my part, that's all!" she defended herself with a nervous chuckle, sweating bullets.
"Let's get something straight, girlie," a different Warrior growled. "Nobody plays dirty in football except us, and we don't discriminate when it comes to giving out beatings. Now we're gonna teach you a little lesson. Boys?" Star started sweating even more as the Warriors grinned maliciously and started closing in. She was so frightened that it didn't occur to her to use the Wand to defend herself.
"Get. Away. From. MY. SISTER!" Bucky roared, charging at the Warriors and swinging one of the training dummies like a baseball bat. The padding on the dummy prevented any major injuries, but his superhuman strength still sent them flying. Seeing that they were no match for Bucky, the Warriors wisely gathered up their injured players, boarded the school bus they arrived on, and fled. "Are you okay, Star?" Bucky asked in concern, tossing the dummy to the side and helping her to her feet. Star sniffed before wrapping her arms around Bucky and burying her face in his bare chest.
"Yeah, I'm fine," she whispered as her body trembled. "Thank you, Bucky. I...I'm sorry for ruining the game..."
"Ruin it? The Warriors forfeited! We WIN!" the Opossums team captain cheered, prompting Star to wipe her tears and celebrate with the rest of the school.
...
Later that night, the pajama-clad Star was sitting up in her bed, reading a magazine loaned to her by Janna while Bucky was taking a shower. She unexpectedly heard someone knocking on her and Bucky's shared bedroom door, so she put down the magazine and walked down the spiral staircase to answer it. To her surprise, both Marco and Janna were standing in the doorway when she pulled it open.
"Hey, guys, what's going on?" she asked.
"Um, Star? I, uh, think we need to talk about Bucky," Marco said, rubbing his arm uncomfortably. Star nodded, stepped out of the room, and closed the door behind her.
"Okay, he should be almost done with his shower by now, so make it snappy," she said.
"You see, Star, after that Fire Cat ruined his shirt and he took it off, I got a good look at him for the first time. We both did," Janna began.
"Neither of us thought much of it until we saw his back," Marco added. Star paled. She knew where this was going, but she feigned ignorance anyway.
"What about it?" she asked.
"There were scars on his back, Star! Whipping scars!" Janna cried out. "How did he get them, and why?" Star sighed and checked to make sure her brother was still occupied before turning back to her friends.
"Look, guys, that's something Bucky really doesn't like talking about," she said. "And before we came to Earth, he made me swear on the bones of our ancestors that I would never bring it up. And that's a serious swear back home in Mewni." She sighed again. "For now, all you need to know is that he did something bad and was punished for it. If you want to know anything more, you'll have to ask him yourself."
"For once, I think I'll leave this juicy secret alone," Janna decided.
"Yeah. It's best if he opens up on his own terms," Marco agreed.
"I'm glad you guys think so," Star said with a small smile. "Because I'm not sure if you can tell, but Bucky has a really hard time trusting people. Some of the things that happened in his life just...hurt him too badly."
Marco and Janna took their leave. When Star stepped back into the bedroom, Bucky had his back to her and was in the process of pulling his shirt over his head. True to Janna's word, Bucky had so many lash marks that his back looked like a crossword puzzle, the scar tissue standing out a few shades lighter than his regular skin. Then the fabric of his shirt dropped, and the grid of scars was once more hidden from sight.
Without turning around, Bucky asked, "They noticed the scars, didn't they?" Knowing it was pointless to lie to him, Star opted for the truth.
"Yeah."
"How much did you tell them?"
"Just enough to satisfy their curiosity. I'm letting you tell the whole story. When the time is right."
"...Thanks, Star..." The Mewman girl walked up and hugged Bucky from behind.
"You're the best big brother a girl could ask for. You know that, right?" she asked. Instead of a verbal reply, Bucky turned around so that he could properly return the hug. They both dragged it out so long that they found themselves lying down on Bucky's cot, Bucky flat on his back and Star on top of him.
Like they used to do way-back-when but did with decreasing frequency, they fell asleep in each other's embrace.