'aha! Cinder, because you were exorcised, it appears you have produced a pure Zako!' That was a different Zako speaking compared to the one Linda had met earlier. This time, it had a purple head, and a pink and yellow body. It was thoroughly studying the woman from the egg Cinder had laid, and explaining why it was there- 'when one has been freed of the demon that possessed them, they may excrete a colourful plastic egg that contains a purified Zako. These Zakos are harmless, and may take on a different appearance if one happens to be possessed again' it concluded
Linda found this information very useful in short, so she gave the Zako a handshake as a sign of thanks. But she clearly didn't have any more time to waste as she needed to hurry if she wanted to exorcise her remaining sisters.
'well, 1 down, 11 to go, eh?' She said to Cinder, as they stood in front of Spinner's door (as Cinder had demanded her roommate and closest friend got exorcised first). The demon scarf grabbed ahold of the door's handle and just as Linda was about to enter, she looked back at Cinder, who was now boredly lumbering away, and asked '…so are you coming in to support me or not?' 'not really', Cinder replied matter-of-factly with a sigh while she observed a strange sculpture that looked a bit like the Atomium in Brussels. 'I wouldn't want to risk getting damaged even if I was on the sidelines- from how our battle went it sounds pretty dangerous!' She continued.
Linda smiled thoughtfully and said 'it's okay then, you can stay in the main area if you want!' and she cautiously opened Spinner's door with her scarf, with Cinder waving to her and wishing her luck as she stepped into the light…
Spinner's arena was bright and vibrant, with spires and arches made out of white bricks that had multi-coloured stars painted all over them. Linda felt a bit dizzy when she entered, like she was on a sailing boat in the middle of a wavy sea. When she stumbled over to a small gap in the wall, she was amazed to see the structure she was in was floating on a huge, fluffy cloud in a sunny, clear, azure sky!. What's more, she could just about briefly see a blue and purple shape rapidly zooming around, but she couldn't quite work out what it was supposed to be until-
'WOAH GUYS, IT LOOKS LIKE TODAY'S CHALLENGER HAS ENTERED THE CEREAL BOWL!' Boomed a voice from high above the clouds. Linda was quite startled by this and timidly murmured 'wh-who's there?'. Then the strange thing she saw flying around quickly appeared in front of her and announced 'WHY, IT'S ME, YOUR OLD PAL SPINNER!'
In her demon form, Spinner was an extremely odd creature- she resembled her favourite animal, the hummingbird, but at the same time looked like some sort of toy or otherworldly swiss army knife, with a pickaxe-shaped head and a steel ball supposedly representing her tail. She was hovering on green, insect-esque wings with eye-like markings on them and also had a purple, dark blue and dark pink body loosely connected to her head and tail by red discs. As she was infamous for her lack of an indoor voice, she clutched a megaphone in her right hand, which was pink with 2 claws.
'SO WHADDAYA THINK OF MY COOL, NEW ATHLETIC FORM, LINDS?!' She boasted through her megaphone while showing off all the tricks she'd recently mastered, erratically flying around without stopping. Linda covered her ears and shouted over her 'IT'S VERY NICE, BUT YOU KNOW WHAT WOULD BE EVEN NICER, SPINNER? JUST STOP SHOUTING AND LOSE THE MEGAPHONE!'. Spinner heard that instruction loud and clear, so she quickly said 'oh okay!' and dropped the megaphone so that it fell into the endless sky, never to be seen again.
Once that had been taken care of, Spinner clasped her hands (or rather, claws) together and gleefully announced 'well then, seeing how nice of you it was to drop in, how about we play a little game together, just you and me?. Linda definitely DID NOT like the sound of that, but she just decided to play along anyways. 'sure! Go ahead!' She beckoned 'I'd like to see what tricks you've got up your non-existent sleeve!' she was trying her hardest not to sound sarcastic, but she couldn't hear Spinner's response. 'hm, must've gone back to flying around' She thought (Spinner was also infamous for having the attention span of a toothpick).
A moment later, Spinner reappeared, hovering over the arena and carrying a mammoth shipping container that looked like it weighed a few thousand tons. 'the vanity demons also gifted me super strength, so I can carry this painlessly!' She commented, as she laid it down in front of Linda with a heavy THUD. She then opened the swamp-green double doors to reveal an amass of sports equipment of every shape and size: tennis racquets, bows and arrows, weights, skateboards, skis, skydiving parachutes, football nets, golf clubs, basketball hoops, you name it! But the curious thing here was that there weren't any balls for some odd reason.
Linda proceeded to query 'I like how much equipment you've got, Spinner, but why aren't there any balls? Every sporty person needs balls, surely!' 'well, I'm glad you asked!' answered Spinner 'why use a regular old ball when you can use an actual person? I've been waiting for someone to come and be my ball ever since I became a demon and now you can fill that role, my dear Lindy!'. Upon hearing that, Linda knew what she had to do- she curled up into a ball position and prepared herself for the worst. Spinner picked her up and exclaimed 'alrighty! Looks like we are gonna have a proper, full-on sports bonanza today in the Cereal Bowl! Watch this space, folks!'
An audience of Zakos flew in from every angle of the outside area to watch as her audience, and she hovered over to a boombox leaning against a spire in the arena, to excitedly press the 'play' button. Immediately, the song from Space Jam, which was her favourite movie, started blaring at the highest possible volume on loop as Spinner proceeded to go ahead and use Linda as her ball in a variety of sports.
Throughout this vigorous activity, all the pain Linda had been through had really gone to her head due to being violently bashed about by Spinner. She had been:
Dunked through a basketball hoop and gotten stuck in the net.
Kicked through a football net, hitting the goalkeeper Zako in the private parts.
Whacked over yet another net by a tennis racquet
Hit by both a swinging golf club and baseball bat. Thankfully a nearby cloud cushioned her landing for both of those.
Charged into by Spinner herself, who was wearing a rock-hard crash helmet.
And to add insult to injury, the Zako audience kept cheering wildly every time Spinner racked up points by scoring a goal or hitting a home run or getting a hole in one or a strike or anything else. Once all this had been done with, Linda got up despite all her injuries and walked up to spinner, who was currently in the midst of posing for photoshoots and signing autographs for her adoring Zako fans. 'hey Spinner!' She called out 'I've decided to have one final fight so I can get the demon out of you. Let's have a good old wrestling match, sis! Just like we always used to do, right?'. Spinner attentively turned her head towards Linda, before telling the Zakos that had been mobbing her to return to the audience. She accepted 'sure! I reckon I could beat you up within 30 seconds!' she then sniggered, and the audience cheered as they started the bout.
Linda got the headstart, by pulling on one of Spinner's wings with her scarf, which bought her down slightly, and she decided to counter by extending her tail of a gradient of yellow-through-grey upwards then hanging upside down midair. 'would you like to see a magic trick?' she asked rhetorically, before dropping a colossal, glossy purple bowling ball on Linda, which landed square on her head. Even though it was very heavy and caused indescribable, immense pain, Linda, very luckily, did not end up getting amnesia from it! She made her next move, where her demon scarf picked up the bowling ball and forcefully threw it towards spinner's chest, which in turn caused her to plummet to the ground and get her scythe of a head lodged in a small crater she had produced earlier from all the sporting excitement. 'help me! I'm stuck!' Spinner yelled as she helplessly flailed her arms, flapped her wings, and shook her tail in a hasty attempt to get out of the crater. She eventually freed herself, and Linda was glad that she had got some exorcism damage done while she was in this state.
Spinner engaged in another attack- she crossed her arms and bounced around the arena, proclaiming 'here I come!' and causing the ground to shake ever-so-slightly as she did so. The audience began chanting 'SPINNER! SPINNER! SPINNER! SPINNER!' and Linda had to think of a good strategy to finish exorcising her sister lest she remained a demon forever.
She decided to grab Spinner by the neck, as if to choke her, and swung her around wildly like a hammer throw weight until her scarf let go, which resulted in Spinner crashing into one of the Cereal Bowl's spires. 'I hope you had fun being swung around like that!' Commented Linda as Spinner strained to get herself unstuck. After brushing herself off of the debris that had gotten stuck to her in the crash, she reared her head back and shouted 'STOP MAKING ME DIZZY!'. She then extended both her neck and tail, while admitting 'I'm just about ready to conk out anyway, so why not go out with a bang? I present to you, Linda, the attack I've saved specially in case of emergency- The Spinner's Spiralling Super Special!'. Just as she was about to do this, the audience went quiet with hesitation with the exception of one small Zako, who cheered 'come on Spinner, come on Spinner, let's go you can do it!'. Then, with such great gusto, Spinner floated horizontally and proceeded to whirl rapidly around like a helicopter blade. She became a bit of a blur during this, and when Linda walked up to her she was smacked back by her head? Tail? She couldn't tell where Spinner's tail ended or head began.
So after putting some thought into her current situation, Linda had both herself and her demon scarf poised and ready to latch onto Spinner when she stopped, well, spinning. And as she rightly predicted, Spinner eventually slowed down after becoming too dizzy, so she tried to recollect herself. Then, Linda directly pounced onto Spinner, pinning her to the ground in the process. She went all out, with her scarf giving the hummingbird-pickaxe-pendulum-thingy that was her own sister a good, hard slap multiple times in quick succession. To her delight, the vanity demon was exuded from Spinner's body and floated up into the sky, only to burn into nothing in the atmosphere.
The audience of Zakos booed and swore when Spinner returned to her human form. The small one complained 'I want my money back!' as it flew off to join the rest of the retreating crowd. 'man, it sure feels good to be back on my own 2 feet again!' She said as she skipped around the arena. Linda silently watched her, wondering when she would lay the egg with the pure Zako inside. Spinner then twisted her ankle and tripped over, which caused a lime green egg to shoot out of her clothed rump and land on the floor next to Linda. It opened quite suddenly to reveal a short woman with short purple hair and a matching pink and purple outfit, which did a little happy jump and ran straight over to the exit door. Not that Spinner noticed it was happening, though, mainly because of her ADHD.
She stood in front of Linda and smiled, her hands resting on her hips. 'y'know, I kinda liked being a demon because it would've made me a lot more efficient at sports…' she commented '…but at the same time it would give me more of an opportunity to cheat'. 'you're exactly right, Spinner,' Linda replied 'because after all, you do know winning isn't important. It's the fun that counts!' spinner nodded in agreement, and she exited swiftly with Linda following suit.