MSFC08

## The Incredible Xia Letong

*Balala the Fairies: Magic Star Fate Castle, Episode 8*

不可思议的夏乐彤
*Bùkěsīyì de Xià Lètóng*

"**The Incredible Xia Letong**" (不可思议的夏乐彤 *Bùkěsīyì de Xià Lètóng*) is the eighth episode of Balala the Fairies: Magic Star Fate Castle.

## Summary

*Xia Letong is chosen to represent her class in High Jump but switches bodies with a cat due to Fesna's magic.*

## Plot

Near Fesna’s throne, Pipi chases Fuke who is holding a slice of cake. However, when they speak, “Pipi” speaks with Fuke’s voice while “Fuke” speaks with Pipi’s voice and both accuse the other of impersonating them. Fesna appears on her throne, and the pair begin flattering her. However, they quickly start arguing with each other again. Fesna lifts the spell, revealing that both have been under the influence of Shapeshifting Butterflies, which swapped their bodies. Fesna sends them off with the Shapeshifting Butterflies to swap their bodies with the Fairies so that they can bring back the Star Pieces.

An impatient Buding rushes Letong, who has stayed behind to clean the classroom. Letong attempts to wipe the blackboard but she is unable to reach the chalk drawings at the top. Buding begins listing Letong’s faults, which include being short and not being able to jump. Incensed, Letong shows Buding just how high she is able to jump… which isn’t high at call, causing Buding to roll on the teacher’s podium laughing. Angry, Letong declares to Buding that she is an expert at jumping high. However, Mr. Lu Ze overhears this as he enters the classroom. As Letong hides Buding behind her, Mr. Lu Ze decides to field her for the High Jump event in the School’s Physical Competition the next day. When Letong tries to downplay her abilities to get placed in a different event instead, Mr. Lu Ze comes to the conclusion that Letong may not actually be good at High Jumping and decides to ask someone else. Unable to accept this, Letong declares once more that she is an expert at High Jumping.

Letong whines that she is not good at High Jumping while alone with Buding at the seats near the sports field. Buding offers her a marshmallow, saying a little sugar might do her good. Letong retorts that she’d eat all the marshmallows in the world if her problem could be solved just like that. She asks Buding if there is some kind of magic that would make it so she didn’t have to participate, but Buding shoots the idea down, telling her to start practicing. However, something from the bushes attacks them and they are shocked.

A dazed Letong wanders the hallways unsteadily, even climbing the stairs on all fours, much to Keke’s surprise. Letong stumbles out of the classroom just as class is about to start, knocking Keke down, and runs away in an animalistic fashion. Mr. Lu Ze tells the confused students to go back to class and he will look for Letong. Keke is left thinking Letong is behaving oddly.

Mr. Lu Ze calls for Letong at the seats near the sports field and finds her curled up like a cat, asleep. He tries reprimanding her for leaving during class, but Letong wakes up, stretches like a cat and walks off.

At the greenhouse, Keke wonders about Letong’s strange behavior when Letong herself shows up. Letong stares intensely at a watering can before swatting it off the table and eats a flower, much to Keke’s surprise. Keke decides to talk it over with Yinyue. Meanwhile, Yinyue reads a book at the seats near the sports field, but thinks back to Letong jubilantly tearing out all the pages of her music sheet, one by one, and wonders what happened with Letong. Keke turns up and tells Yinyue of her off behavior. They discuss taking her to the infirmary when a black and white cat turns up. Keke picks the cat up but drops her in fright when the cat talks. Yinyue summons her wand but Keke leads her away and asks if the cat is Fesna in disguise. Yinyue dismisses this notion as Fesna is only able to appear as a butterfly in the human world. Keke suggests that the cat may be Fuke or Pipi and Yinyue agrees that it certainly looks like their work. However, the cat declares herself to be Xia Letong. Yinyue asks the cat to prove it and the cat starts singing and dancing. Yinyue unsummons her wand, recognizing Letong’s shoddy dancing. When Keke asks about the Xia Letong that they saw in class, Letong explains what happened:

After Buding was attacked by a cat leaping out in the bushes, she passed out and was put in Letong’s bag. Fuke and Pipi shows up, sending the Shapeshifting Butterfly out, which lands on Letong’s arm. Before Pipi could use the other Shapeshifting Butterfly on himself, thereby switching bodies with Letong, the cat leaps at them instead, and the Shapeshifting Butterfly lands on the cat’s body. Letong ends her story, lamenting that she doesn’t want to be a cat, since she can’t read comics, eat potato chips or even go home. Keke comfort her by telling her that she’ll try to get the butterfly out, but just ends up tickling her.

Pipi and Fuke watch from the trees and Fuke comes up with their next plan. Pipi falls out of the trees, making their presence known. Fuke shows up, claiming to have a way to help. He explains that they must first go to the Star Fate Wonderland to find a particular Star Piece that can lift the spell. However, believing this to be a trick, Yinyue chases them off. Angry at potentially having lost a lead that could undo the spell, Letong leaves in a huff and the other girls chase after her.

Meanwhile, Pipi and Fuke end up in the greenhouse, lamenting their ruined plan. There, they find Letong’s cat-inhabited body. The actual Letong catches up to them and asks if what they said was true. The two Transfer Elves promise that it is and Letong decides to trust them. They open a Transfer Gate to the Star Fate Wonderland and Letong jumps in, followed by the two Transfer Elves. Before the Gate closes, the cat in Letong’s body examines the Transfer Gate and ends up sucked in as well. Keke and Yinyue arrive at the greenhouse but didn’t see the Transfer Gate closing. However, they find Buding, who emerges from Letong’s bag.

Fuke, Pipi, Letong and the cat all land in a sweets-themed area of the Star Fate Wonderland. Initially surprised by the cat following them, she decides to enlist the cat’s help in looking for the Star Piece. Fuke and Pipi plan to leave Letong and report to Fesna but Letong stops them, telling them to lead the way. Fuke comes up with the excuse that they could cover more ground if they split up, which Letong agrees to after some contemplation. After Fuke and Pipi fly off, Letong and the cat find a dancing cookie. After it dances on Letong’s head, she chases after it.

Keke, Yinyue and Buding searches for Letong in the greenhouse but to no avail. They bump into Mr. Lu Ze who is also looking for Letong, as the High Jump event of the competition is about to begin. Yinyue promises to let her know if they see her and Mr. Lu Ze leaves to search other locations. Yinyue comes to the conclusion that they must Letong must have gone to Star Fate Wonderland with Fuke and Pipi to search for the Star Piece to break the spell. Buding acknowledges that the Star Piece could break the spell, but finds their motives suspect.

Letong and the cat chase the dancing cookie around the sweets-themed land and Letong starts having fun doing so, happy to have avoided the High Jump competition. The cat catches the cookie when it stopped on a flower-shaped chocolate and the pair lie down to rest, with Letong musing that it is not so bad to be a cat. However, she imagines her friends and classmates being let down when she doesn’t turn up for the High Jump event and realizes that she has to go back. She watches as the cat examines the chocolate flower and the cookie closely as they glow and both turn into Star Pieces. Letong tries using the Star Pieces to swap back. There is a bright flash of light, but when the light subsides… they haven’t swapped back at all.

Letong begins to fear that she would forever be stuck as a cat, remembered as a coward, and that Keke and Yinyue would forget about her. Fesna laughs, appearing before Letong. She telepathically pulls the Star Pieces from the cat’s hands. Letong is despondent, as she’s just a cat anyway, but Fesna says that she still has a uses and casts a binding spell on her. Fesna reveals that she plans to use Letong as bargaining chip to get all of her friends’ Star Pieces. The other girls show up and transform into their fairy forms.

Yinyue immediately opens by casting the cure spell, which Fesna dodges but dispels the binding around Letong. Letong lands on her feet, but chews Yinyue out for doing it while she was still so high up. Taking advantage of this opening due to their banter, Fesna cast bind on Keke, Yinyue and Buding and demands all their Star Pieces. Letong yells at Fesna to let her friends go and leaps at Fesna, but is easily swatted back by Fesna’s wing. Fesna taunts her, saying she’s just a cat. Letong becomes regretful that she didn’t listen to her friends’ warning. However, Buding tells her that now that she’s a cat, she can do things that others can’t. Letong thinks back to all the jumping she did while chasing the dancing cookie. Letong realizes that as a cat, she can do things Xia Letong can’t, before correcting herself, that she CAN do it, because she IS Xia Letong. She leaps around Fesna and scratches Fesna’s face. An angry Fesna casts a projectile, sending Letong flying towards a candy tree.

Letong lands on the ground, alongside some marshmallows that fell out of the candy tree. Looking at the marshmallows, Letong remembers Buding’s encouragement as she offered Letong marshmallows. Fesna shoots another projectile at Letong but the Marshmallow turns into a third star piece and reflects the projectile back at Fesna. Fesna is knocked to the ground and the two Star Pieces in her hands fall to the ground. The binds around Keke, Yinyue and Buding break. The Star Piece causes the Shapeshifting Butterflies to leave Letong and the cat, and disappear, breaking the spell. Letong wakes up, in her own body at last. She jumps in celebration, hugs the girls and transforms into Fairy Form. Letong augments her wand with the three Star Pieces.

Furious, Fesna gets to her feet and casts her Shadow Butterly at them, but Letong’s powered-up attack easily pierces Fesna’s butterfly, forcing her to retreat. The battle over, Keke picks up the cat, wondering if the cat has a name. Letong decides to name the cat Miao Xiaoye, because it wouldn’t stop meowing.

Letong tells herself that after this experience, she won’t run away again, and instead face difficulties head on with the help of her friends. At the school’s Physical Competition, Mr. Lu Ze and Keke enthusiastically cheers Letong on with pompoms, with Yinyue cheering in a more subdued manner. Letong spies Miao Xiaoye in the bushes before he runs off and she run towards the High Jump bar, confident she can face any difficulty.

## Characters

*In order of appearance:*

* Fuke
* Pipi
* Fesna
* Xia Letong
* Buding
* Mr. Lu Ze
* Miao Xiaoye (First Appearance)
* Yan Keke
* Milu
* Bai Yinyue
* Lubi

## Trivia

* Star Piece Count: 10
	+ Xia Letong: 5
	+ Yan Keke: 2
	+ Bai Yinyue: 3
* This is the first episode where Lubi doesn't have a speaking role outside of the recycled transformation animation.