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Janna has to be coy if this scheme is going to work – and to be clear, this scheme has to work. Her whole future is riding on this one. She casually settles in on the couch, pretending to read from a huge, well-worn tome of Old English songs and epics, but really she’s subtly peering over the crest of the yellowed pages at Star, who, according to plan, is on her phone trying to order dinner, and wearing a puzzled look on her face.
Star hangs up the call and dials again, then flops down on the couch beside Janna and puts the phone on speaker.
“Listen to this. Vinny’s is playing this weird message when I call.”
“You've eaten all the pizza,” a shaky, squeaky, prerecorded teenager’s voice says. “It's over. Maybe have some chicken and rice instead. With uh… what was it again?” he asks, away from the mic, “Buttery steamed vegetables? And spicy peanut sauce?” He pauses for a moment then continues, sounding stiff, seemingly reading off of a page now, “I bet your girlfriend will even make it for you if you're feeling lazy. Please just stop ordering pizza.” Then he whispers to someone else before the message cuts off, “Is that right? Can I have my wallet back now—?”
After the message ends, the automated voicemail lady mechanically reports that the inbox is full and the call disconnects.
“What’s up with that?” Star asks.
Janna puts down her book and feigns ignorance, “Oh yeah, you know what, I forgot to tell you dude. There was a note with the last delivery. They had to block your number apparently. Something about draining the world's supply of pizza sauce. Tragic, but I guess we’ll have to—”
Star cuts Janna off, “Let me use your phone then.” She puts out her hand.
“Nnnnnnno...?” Janna tries to sabotage Star’s clever, entirely unexpected workaround.
“What do you mean ‘no’? Why not?”
“It's... also... blocked?”
Star crosses her arms, clearly growing suspicious. “Uh huh. Your anonymous number is blocked. What’s the scheme here, J?”
Janna takes a deep breath, then puts on an assertive tone. “Alright Star, I didn't want it to come to this, but you've left me no other choice.”
She grabs Star by the shoulders with a serious look in her eye.
“Wait hold on, what are you doing?” she asks, a hint of distress in her voice.
“Communicating.” Janna shakes her head at herself with disgust. “Star, please, this has to stop. I can't handle any more pizza. It's too much, dude.”
“What?” Star manages to shake herself free of Janna’s grasp, “There’s no such thing as too much pizza. Come on, just give me your phone! I'm hungry!”
Star lunges at Janna and starts probing her pockets for the device.
“No! Stop that! Get off!” Janna smooshes her hands into Star’s face and tries to push her away, but it’s not helping much. She’s so freaking persistent. “We've had pizza every day for like a month, Star! A month! My clothes smell like pepperoni. My hair smells like pepperoni. My dreams smell like pepperoni! I am sick of fighting pepperoni demons in my sleep, dude! Give me a break!”
Star backs off. She’s sitting on the couch with her legs tucked under her now, facing Janna with a pleading look in her eyes, “Come on, Janna, please? Just one more night. This will be the last one. I just need my fix. You know Vinny's gets it just right with that stretchy cheese. And the sauce? Crispy crust? I need this, J. It's finals. I need brain food.”
“Dude first of all, pizza is not brain food. And it's been finals for a month? Star? A month??”
“Yeah, crazy, right? It should be illegal to make finals season so long.”
Janna closes her eyes and shakes her head. “Just because you don't like doing your homework doesn't mean it's always finals season, dude.”
“Feels like it! Isn’t that enough? My poor brain. Every assignment is so exhausting, Janna, I hate ittttt....” Then Star turns The Eyes™ up to 100, “...Pizza?”
Janna crosses her arms defiantly. “No.”
“Come on! You don't even have to eat it!”
“Star I will cook you something so nice it'll being you to tears. I found this really good cookbook at the antique place. Amazing stuff in there. The sauce in the recipe is described as 'transcendental'. Don't you want to transcend reality tonight? Doesn't that sound fun?”
“Vinny's transcends reality just fine, thanks.”
Janna scowls at Star. “Why are you being so stubborn about this?”
“Because I want my comfort food, Janna! I'm tired and stressed and I don't want to think about vegetables and rice or whatever!”
“Well too bad! It’s not happening!”
Star roars, “Raaaaaaaaaaa!!! Fight me!”
“I'm not going to—”
“Fight me! On the roof! Fifteen minutes! Our blades will decide.”
Janna rolls her eyes. She should’ve known this was coming. If only she had called the duel first, there might have been a chance she could win at a videogame or a round of chess or something. But Star always had the upper hand when it came to swords. Still, maybe she could find some way to cheat a victory out of her this time. And maybe Star wouldn’t change the rules at the last second to cheat her out of a victory. Again. ‘Blades only,’ she said last time. Whatever, Star. A snare trap and a net are perfectly reasonable weapons in a duel. But Janna is prepared this time. She has a good, technically rule-abiding plan that even Star couldn’t argue with.
After Janna gets the rooftop access door unlocked, the two fighters step silently and solemnly out onto the roof, both decked out in their respective battle attire. Janna has strapped some pouches full of trickery to her hips and chest, and tied a special, hidden weapon to her back. No use spoiling the surprise before the fight starts. Star’s sword rests in its sheath at her hip. She has smeared some war paint on her cheeks and dug a traditional Mewnian long-sleeved tunic out of the deepest darkest corner of her closet – strange attire for Star, who generally prefers short sleeved dresses and t-shirts, even in the cold. She must mean business this time.
A cool spring wind whistles past the feuding lovers, gently tussling their hair while they move into position for the duel. The breeze draws eerie creaks from the otherwise-still fans of the large cube-shaped HVAC units nearby.
Star glares at Janna from across the the apartment building’s roof with a grim look in her eyes. Janna can’t stop herself from smiling. It’s actually really cute how much Star wants to fight over this, even if it means Janna’s probably going to walk away with some light bruising and a crushed ego.
But she’s got another reason to smile this time. Despite her best efforts to keep up a veneer of disinterest, she can barely mask her excitement. She’s really pumped to unleash her surprise on Star. This time for sure, this time she’s going to turn the tide of battle in her favor, and the prospect of finally winning one of these duels is absolutely tantalizing.
Star calls to Janna over the wind, “We draw at sunset!”
Janna peers at the sun. It hovers in the sky a full thumb over the horizon. She calls back, “Wait so like, when it touches down? Or when it disappears?”
Star squints to the west, thinks for a moment, then replies, “Uh. I don't know I guess when it touches down?”
“‘Kay. Got it.”
They stare each other down while they wait, scrunching up their faces in intimidating frowns and sneers, sticking out their tongues, and occasionally glancing at the western horizon.
Eventually Janna lets out a sigh and shouts to Star, “It's not really moving.”
“It's moving a little!”
Janna places a hand on her hip and shifts her weight onto one foot, then pulls out her phone to check the actual time the sun’s going to set.
“Dude this says it’s not going down for another half an hour, are we really going to stand here that long?”
Star gives one more longing look towards the sun, then heaves her shoulders with disappointment and replies, “Fine, whatever, just draw your sword and let's do this.”
Star pulls out her childhood sparring blade – light metal, and thankfully not sharpened, but even still, it always stings like crazy whenever Janna gets hit, and the tender care she gets after the fact doesn’t quite make up for the embarrassment of losing with a bunch of welts all over.
These duels never really feel fair, honestly. Janna has no idea about fighting or swordsmanship. It’s way easier to solve problems through subterfuge and manipulation. Her terrible reflexes and nonexistent sense of timing always lead to a resounding loss. But not today, not with her sanity and her right to freedom from the unending torture of being drowned in the suffocating smell of pizza on the line.
When Star begins her approach, Janna draws her weapon from its wrapping on her back, letting the cloth shroud fall to the gravelly surface beneath her feet. When she points the strange blade at Star, her lover is stopped dead in her tracks.
Star lowers her own blade and raises a skeptical eyebrow, “What the heck is that? I said swords only!”
Janna smiles wide while she shows off her invention – a wooden sword with a water blaster affixed to it.
“Gunsword,” she smugly replies.
Star smirks and laughs, then returns Janna’s smile with an icy, confident glare, “Only a fool brings a gunsword to a Star fight.”
“That's not how that goes.”
“We'll see how it goes! En garde!”
Janna barely has time to dodge backwards in response to a feisty, dashing lunge from Star. This hangry fighter clearly has no plans of going easy on her. The unwieldy gunsword flails uncontrollably as Janna takes uneasy steps backwards, barely deflecting Star’s swings. She’s barely managing to stay on her feet as her heels stumble over the random cords and pipes that stretch across the roof. She needs to get some distance if she wants to hit Star with the blaster, but she can’t even gain an inch of freedom clumsily backing away like this.
“Stop running J,” Star taunts her prey, “You know you can’t win. Just give up now and you won’t even need an ice pack after this.”
“Never! I’m not having pizza again, Star!”
Star chuckles low, “Pizza tonight. Pizza tomorrow night. Pizza every night—” Star swats at Janna fiercely, knocking her off balance and tumbling her backwards onto her butt. The gunsword escapes Janna’s grip and clatters to the rooftop just out of reach. The battle-hardened warrior towers over Janna, a cruel look in her eyes, her sword inches from Janna’s chest. “—forever.”
Star hasn’t even broken a sweat, but Janna is breathing heavy. She’s not used to much of any exercise, never mind all this swinging around a blade, and a blade with a neon plastic tank full of pressurized water strapped to it no less. But she can’t give up yet. Maybe Star will fall for a distraction? It’s probably her only hope at this point, pinned down by a blade and at her lover’s taunting mercy.
Janna points emphatically behind Star at the rooftop access door and shouts, “Oh no! We’re bustef! It’s the landlord! Hide!”
She can barely believe that it works, but it does. Star drops her guard and turns her head – just long enough for Janna to pop a smoke bomb from one of her trickery pouches. She scrambles to her feet, grabs her weapon off the ground, and sprints to the other side of the roof before the smoke clears.
Star snarls and barks, “Janna! Swords only!! Stop trying to cheat your way out of this and accept your fate!”
“Make me!” Janna shouts back.
Now, finally a safe distance away, Janna can line up a shot at the beautiful, terrifying, charging pig goat of a woman in front of her. She hesitates to pull the trigger on her girlfriend for a second – but only for a second. There’s too much on the line to get cold feet now.
A few powerful blasts of water in the face bring Star to a complete stop, making her sputter and spit. Her rampage is halted for a moment while she wipes her face and clears her vision.
“That’s dirty, J,” she chides her lover, pinching the soaked fabric of her tunic and pulling it away from her chest, then letting it return to clinging uncomfortably to her body. “You think a little water is going to stop me?”
“Nope, but a lot of water might slow you down.”
“You coward. Fight fair!”
“You know how I roll,” Janna replies with a self-assured smile. “And hey, history’s written by the winners, dude. There’s never been a cowardly victor.” Janna tries to keep her banter cool and calm while circling the roof to keep her distance from Star’s advances. She’s anything but cool though. This is a life-or-death situation. Her heart is racing. She’s not sure if her water blaster is leaking or if her hand is soaked in sweat. Hopefully the latter. This thing was untested.
She finally finds a perfect position on the roof to bring her ultimate strategy into play. The wind is just right. The sun is at her back. This is the finest positional advantage she can hope for, and if she can’t beat Star like this, then there’s no chance she’ll ever beat her.
She hastily pulls herself up onto one of the air conditioning units to get the high ground. Then, silhouetted by the light of the almost-setting sun, she aims her shoddy, shady weapon at Star and demands a surrender. “You don’t stand a chance, Star.” She fires a warning shot over her lover’s shoulder. “Drop your sword and maybe I’ll go easy on you.”
“Never!” Star shouts defiantly, then raises her sword in a defensive pose. She’s squinting though with the sun in her eyes, struggling to see Janna properly. There’s no way she could dodge an attack now. The plan is working. But Janna knows Star would never back down. “Do your worst!” she taunts.
Janna shakes her head. The former-princess Star Butterfly has never been more than a talented fighter in a real battle. She might have fought a lot before, but Janna has read a lot of books, and played a lot of strategy games. If it comes down to a battle of wits and controlling the battlefield, there’s no way she can lose. Hopefully.
And now, with everything finally in place to enact her plan, she makes an adjustment to her water blaster, twisting a knob from ‘STUN’ to ‘KILL’.
“I didn’t want to do this,” she laments, “But if you won’t surrender, then I have no choice. It’s time, Star. I’m putting you down, for both of us.”
Coldly, she pulls the trigger, delivering what will surely be a deathblow to her opponent.
Star grits her teeth and braces for impact, but there’s no burst of water this time. Instead, the air is filled with a smokescreen made of thousands of tiny glittering rainbow bubbles – Star’s greatest weakness: pretty distractions.
The gentle breeze at Janna’s back guides the swarm of bubbles towards Star. The backlight of the sunlight makes them blindingly bright, and Star is left stunned and bewildered by the cloud of hypnotically wobbling, unbearably brilliant gems as they fully enclose her in an impenetrable fog.
In that critical moment – the only opening Janna could ever hope to secure in a fight against such a fierce opponent – Janna tosses her weapon aside, hops down from her perch atop the metal box, and launches into a dramatic roll, landing right under her bamboozled foe’s nose.
From this strategic vantage point, she unzips a large pouch on her hip and unleashes her secret weapon with a martial shout: “Ha ha! Barko Diaz, away!”
Then she tosses one of Star’s beloved laser puppies high into the air, piercing a column in the fog of bubbles that leads high in the sky directly over Star’s head, forcing the normally untouchable swordswoman to drop both her guard and her blade while she devotes her attention to catching the helpless airborne creature.
“No!” Star shouts, “You monster!”
But long before the stuffed decoy can land with an adorable, disarming squeak, and even before the clatter of Star’s blade as it falls harmlessly to the surface of the gravelly rooftop, Janna has Star pinned down, straddling the warrior’s abdomen, leaning all her weight into her arms while her fingers tightly grip her helpless prey’s intimidating biceps.
The bubbles gently drift away, and Janna takes a moment to appreciate the view of her helpless, vanquished foe in the pale orange sunlight. She sighs with relief. At last, an undeniable and unprecedented victory.
She leans in to whisper cruelly in Star’s ear, echoing the villainous words of a hundred cartoonish bad guys before: “Your heart is your greatest weakness, Star Butterfly. I’ve won.”
Star nips at Janna’s ear before she pulls away, pulling a small yelp out of Janna. But when she leans back to scowl at Star, instead of the ire and disappointment Janna is expecting to see, Star looks up at her lover with pleased, adoring eyes, a little smirk shaping her lips. Something’s not right. This isn’t what a defeated foe is supposed to look like.
“You got me,” Star shrugs – strong enough to lurch Janna forward, despite all the weight she’s putting on Star’s shoulders. Even restrained, this woman is far too strong. “That was a mean trick, J.”
“You know how it goes, dude. All’s fair.” Janna pauses for a moment before she asks, suspicious, “What’s with that grin? You look a little too happy for someone who just lost at her own game.”
“Do I?” Star replies with an uncharacteristically shy smile, “It must be that look in your eyes. You’re making me feel things with all that fire in there.” Star glances at Janna’s shaky hands desperately trying keep her shoulders pinned to the roof. She coos to herself, “Maybe I should lose more often if it ends up like this.”
Janna grins and playfully asks, “Oh, you like getting pinned down now?”
Star blushes a bit, and the silence is more than enough of an answer. Janna feels her own cheeks turning red. She suddenly becomes aware of the sensation of her lover’s firm body under her weight. Not a bad feeling to be in control for once. Shame she’d never get a chance to beat Star again after this once-in-a-lifetime victory.
Star sheepishly leads Janna on, “What are you planning to do with me now that you’ve got me?”
The way it usually goes with these fights, Star would whack Janna around with her sword a few times, Janna would admit defeat after futilely trying to fight back for a while, and then Star would steal a kiss as a trophy. It only seemed fair to claim a trophy of her own this time.
Janna leans in for a kiss. Star lifts her head to meet her lips. Janna’s mind gets lost in the adoration of her lover.
Unfortunately, the euphoria of claiming her prize doesn’t last long, because the moment Janna loosens her grip on Star’s arms to place a gentle hand on her lover’s cheek, she hears the sound of a spring releasing along with the shing of steel on steel, and in the same instant she feels a sharp, sudden jab of something hard and metal in her ribs.
She looks down in disbelief to find that Star has stolen a home-made weapon from Janna’s secret stash – a wrist-mounted, dull, retractable blade. It was concealed the whole time, hidden under the long sleeve of her tunic.
Ah, Janna think to herself, as she realizes this must be the reason why Star had abandoned her usual short-sleeved attire for the battle. Unbelievable.
Janna’s gaze returns to Star’s face and she’s met with the smuggest grin she has ever seen.
“Poke,” Star sings playfully, “I win.”
“No, come on! I have you! You’re down!”
“And you’re dead. It’s a contest of blades, J. What is that?” Star prods Janna’s ribcage with the stolen instrument.
Janna sighs, “A blade.”
“So?”
“So, I guess that means, technically, according to the stupid rules that you made up, you win.”
“ ~ I win. ~ ”
And with that singsong declaration, Star grabs Janna’s shirt to pull her defeated foe’s face down to her own. “Your heart is your greatest weakness, J,” she whispers, echoing Janna’s sinister words. Then she takes her prize, as she usually does, from Janna’s dumbfounded lips.
Janna melts into Star for a moment. This woman really has a way of making even a crushing loss feel like a victory.
It takes Janna a second to remember that she’s supposed to be upset. She pulls away from Star with an indignant rebuke, “My heart’s an impenetrable fortress, dude, shut up.” She crawls off of Star, stands up, and offers her triumphant foe a hand. “That was a dirty move, Star.” After a moment of reflection, she has to add, “A good move, though. Never thought you’d pull something like that on me.”
“Well,” Star beams at Janna, “I have an amazing mentor in the ways of being a cheating sneak, you know.” Then she turns her focus to fiddling with the locked retractable blade, trying to get it back into the mechanism. It’s not working. “Help?”
“Come on, are you kidding me? I’m not doing tech support for your stolen goods, dude.”
“Please?”
“Why? Are you planning to keep it or something? Just give it back!”
“It reminds me of you,” Star says, in a mockery of a wistful tone, “A memento. For when you’re away. Come on,” she insists, jabbing the dull point of the blade into her palm for emphasis, “Help me out here.”
Janna can’t believe she’s helping her enemy, but how could she refuse when Star’s showing interest in her devilish handicraft? Against her better judgement, she shows Star how to reset the spring, and Star thanks her with a sincere smile.
“You’re such a sweetheart.”
“Yeah yeah, you don’t have to rub it in.”
Janna drags her feet the whole way down the stairs back to the apartment, all the while being subjected to a cheerful song about the joy of eating pepperoni pizza every day.
As soon as they get through the front door, Star holds out an expectant palm.
“What?” Janna asks.
“Your phone. Mine’s blocked, remember?”
Insult upon insult after that injury, huh? Janna begrudgingly hands her phone over and watches with a grim look on her face as Star dials up Vinny’s. She doesn’t really want to be party to this, so she grabs her book and flops back on the couch to try to ignore the absolute travesty of Star’s order.
“Okay so, pepperoni,” Star explains to the hapless employee on the other end of the call, “But with more pepperoni. Got it? Alright. Now picture that in your head for a sec. You see it? Lots of pepperoni, wow, so good, right? Now take that extremely pepperonied pizza and add more pepperoni. Yes, more! Unreasonable amounts! I don’t want to see any cheese, just a sea of crispy red meat circles. I don’t care how much it costs, just make it happen. I’m celebrating,” Star says, giddy, glancing over at Janna, who is trying very hard not to pay attention.
But honestly, the thought of how nasty the apartment is going to smell after this is wracking Janna’s brain. Bleh. She buries her face in her book and privately sticks her tongue out at the thought. No use complaining now, though. She lost. Fair was fair, even if Star did cheat her out of her totally legitimate, hard-earned victory.
Janna notices Star’s voice trailing off while answering the pizza guy’s usual up-sale questions about adding chicken wings and bottles of pop to the order. The silence piques Janna’s curiosity. She peers over the top of her book at Star, who is looking back at her, smile faded, a hint of sadness in her eyes.
She returns to the call, “—What? Sorry, zoned out there. Uh. No. No I don’t want… anything else… Actually, you know what, I think I got wrong number! Yeah, just cancel the order. Don’t worry about it! Sorry!”
Janna lets her book flop onto her chest. She stares at Star in disbelief. “What are you doing?”
Star disconnects the call and tosses Janna’s phone back, then she crouches down beside Janna’s spot on the couch to place a soft kiss on her distraught lover’s cheek.
“Changed my mind,” she replies, as a plain matter-of-fact.
“Come on dude, just order your pizza, you won.” Janna doesn’t like the pitying look on Star’s face. She’s not a baby. She can take a loss.
“Nah, you know what? I’m craving chicken and rice now. Must be all that exercise up there.”
Janna skeptically stares Star in the eyes and echoes, deadpan, “Chicken and rice.”
“With peanut sauce, right?”
“Spicy peanut sauce.” Janna’s starting to warm up to the possibility that she might actually eat a decent meal tonight. “It’s good, dude. Real good.”
“And you’re cooking? I can just sit here on my butt, right?”
Janna puts her book down beside her and sits up, a bewildered look on her face. “You’re serious? You want to eat something normal for once?”
“Hey, come on! Pizza is totally normal.” Star pauses for a moment before continuing, “But, you know, you probably have all those ingredients ready, right? Why waste them? And, I don’t know, maybe it’ll be nice to change it up with something really transcendental for once.”
Janna claps her hands together as a proud grin shapes her lips, “Yes! Yeah. Dude you’re going to love this recipe, I’ve been sitting on it forever. And it’ll be done in like 30 minutes. Money back guaranteed. I’ll put Vinny’s to shame.”
29 minutes later, Janna settles in next to Star on the couch and hands her a plate of lovingly seasoned and charred home-cooked chicken, perfectly firm steamed vegetables, fluffy rice, and – according to Star’s glowing review – the best peanut sauce in any dimension.
“Worth it?” Janna asks, trying to sound like she doesn’t care.
She does.
Star nods and replies with her mouth full, “Totally.”
Janna can’t stop her smile from exposing the warm feeling in her heart and the sense of euphoria in her mind at hearing Star’s endorsement of her food.
Star smiles back, “Look at you, so cheery.”
“Oh shut up. You know I like making you food.”
“Aw, J. Is that what this was all about?”
“No. Star. No. This was all about how subjecting me to the horrible smell of pizza for a month was bordering on a violation of the chemical weapon ban in the Geneva Convention. But if you stop ordering in, I’ll cook you something good whenever you want. Every night even, if that’s what it takes.”
Janna isn’t kidding, either. Especially if it means seeing this look on Star’s face every night.
“Well,” Star replies, “I won’t make you beg—”
Janna really is ready to beg, though. Anything to put a stop to the madness.
Star continues, “—So, what’s on the menu for tomorrow, chef?”
“Uh, how about… a veal parmesan sandwich? I think we’ve got most of the stuff for that, except the veal. I’ll pick it up, though.”
“Never had that before. Is it good?”
“The breading is from my lola’s cookbook. Real crispy, and it’s got flavors for days.”
Star smiles and plants a kiss on Janna’s cheek, “Sold.”
After dinner, Star snuggles into Janna while they watch some shows. During a lull in dialogue, she whispers in Janna’s ear, “Hey… if you want to… pin me down tonight…”
Star’s sultry words arouse a flush of warmth in Janna’s face – a warmth that quickly ripples through every inch of her body.
Before Janna can answer, Star is giggling, “You’re so red. Is that too much—?”
Janna gives Star a playful shove, “Come on, you already know I’m not gonna say no if you ask like that.”
Star squeezes Janna’s hand, then returns her undivided focus to some dramatic turn of events on the screen.
Janna’s not really paying attention to the show anymore, though. She’s stuck on a thought and a warm feeling: maybe it’s not so bad losing a fight against Star, if it ends up like this.