“Alright Jill, just give it a spin, and we’ll have David over here perform the respective punishment on you.” Jill walked to the the wheel and gulped. This was the opposite of what she needed for this competition right now. She grabbed the edge of the wheel, and prayed that it didn’t land on Inanimate Insanity.
The wheel went around several times, many more times than Jill had thought it would have gone with the spin that she had done. Eventually though, the wheel began to slow down, and after several more go arounds, the needle landed on…
Jill’s Practice
“Welp. There goes all hopes of us winning,” Jill said, looking at her transformation in the mirror.
“Oh, don’t worry Jill, it’s not that bad,” Ophelia said, using her left arm to get some hair out of Jill’s face.
“Of course you would say that! You’re not the one in the middle!” Jill had managed to land on ‘Teamwork Makes The Dream Work’, which apparently involved merging all three of the girls together as some sort of three headed monstrosity. Cammie had her right arm and left leg, which fed into a triangular section of Jill’s torso and her head, which then fed into the left side of Ophelia’s body, which had her left arm and left leg. In terms of their clothes, Cammie’s standard shirt merged unnaturally into Jill’s green tank top (although could it really be called that now?) which merged into Ophelia’s violet dress. In terms of control, Jill had next to no control, relying solely on Ophelia and Cammie for everything.
“Please Jill, you get to be carried around by both me and Cammie. It’s literally the dream position to be in,” Cammie said.
“You might think so, but I don’t like the idea that you two could do whatever you wanted to me without me being able to fight back.”
“What like this?” Cammie asked jokingly, licking her finger and running it along the length of Jill’s nose.
“Yes! Exactly like that!” Jill complained. Ophelia gave Cammie a stern look as she laughed, wiping Jill’s nose with her sleeve. “Not to mention, I can’t use Ophelia’s potion in this form! How are we supposed to get any practice in?”
“Well Jill, you don’t have to worry about the potion,” Ophelia said.
“How can I not worry about the potion? You said yourself, I don’t stand a chance against Saffron’s magic. I don’t think being a day off of training is going to do me any good.
“I’m saying you don’t have to worry, because you probably got the best transformation to actually help in that regard,” Ophelia said matter of factly.
“Really? How?”
“Well, you wouldn’t know this because you’re mostly new to magic, but conjoinment is one of the best methods of training magic reserves. When you’re combined, your magic reserves are also combined, and so are your limits. By combining together, you can practice with magic often drastically greater than what you can achieve alone, and often keep the benefits when you turn back to normal. That’s why Covens are such a big deal in the Ancient Magicks, it’s the largest amount of people you can use before the law of diminishing returns starts applying.”
“Wait. If this is so good, why are we using your potion then?”
“Because my potion is better. but what I’m saying is is that this is the next best alternative. Honestly, if the producers veto’d the potion, I was going to recommend doing something similar to this.”
“Okay. That’s all fine and dandy, but we still need to practice stuff for the show!” Jill said.
“Here’s what we’ll do,” Cammie said, “We can go get the practice mannequin out, and you can tell us what you want to do to it. We’ll act out your part of the performance, and tomorrow Ophelia and I can put our parts in. And actually, this will probably be a better demonstration, since you’ll be seeing and feeling everything from a first person perspective.”
“That’s… Actually an amazing idea! Wow! You’re right Ophelia, this is easily the best 'punishment' we could have gotten!”
Saffron’s Practice
“Ugh! No! This is all wrong! We can’t do this for the show” Saffron said, crossing off yet another idea from her ideas list.
“Saffron! It’s perfectly fine!” Leela said, exasperated, “We’ve already gone over nearly fifty tricks over the past three days, and every time we finally start to get a rhythm going, you cut it from your show. At this rate we’re literally going to be making it up on the spot!” Leela’s facial features were currently the only part of her that still existed, connected where Holli’s should have been. If Holli could have talked, she would have been equally as upset with Saffron. “Can you tell us what’s really wrong with the trick? So that we can actually fix it and keep going?”
“Look! I don’t know what to tell you. There’s just something off about it.”
“No! Don’t give us that copout answer. That’s the same answer you’ve given us over and over again. There’s clearly something wrong with us, so what’s the problem? We’re nailing all the tricks, we’re hitting our marks, is it a pacing issue? What is it!?”
“Okay! Sheesh! The problem is that… Well… It’s because… You two are just… honestly, you’re just both way too professional!” Saffron’s voice raised to a shout, “I’m like, ‘Hey Let’s try this!’ And neither of you want to fight me back on it! David and I used to fight all the time! I had to fight tooth and nail to get him to start including Fernando!”
“Do you want us to start fighting you Saffron? Because I can start fighting you,” Saffron said, her voice starting to match Saffron’s in intensity, “Because I’m sick and tired of you just giving up on tricks! You need to actually plan something! You can’t just throw away all the hard work we’ve done on some sort of whim. You might be the magician, but we’re part of this team too!”
“Then you both need to start actually pushing out some personality on the stage!” The two had entered a full-on screaming match, “The style is just as important as the trick!”
“I have plenty of personality!” Leela said, sounding offended.
“Oh yeah! I’m sure that’s why you both got knocked out first.”
“Wow. That’s a low blow Saffron.”
“But it’s true! Both of you are too busy wanting to make sure that you look professional that you’re not willing to put yourself out there!”
“You know what I think this is Saffron?! I think you care just as much as we do about our image! The only difference is that you hide your insecurities behind a layer of weirdness! It's why you always try to include improv in your acts! That way if it does poorly, you can just claim that you weren’t even trying!”
“T-that’s not true!” Saffron said.
“And for your information, we do try just as hard as you! Holli let David use hypnosis on her, and I revealed my biggest secret to him! We’re willing to work past our comfort zones to try and improve. But clearly you’re not,” Holli walked over to one of the various empty cabinets. In a flash, the door opened, revealing that Holli and Leela were whole once again.
“Leela and I are done for the day. You can use Fernando to figure out what you want to do. You can come get us in the dining room tomorrow when you’re ready to apologize,” Holli said, walking past Saffron without even looking, not noticing that she was crying. Leela followed shortly behind her, leaving Saffron alone to stew in her own emotions.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
& Question Corner &
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To Jill: “Often times in these situations, you might end up do it unintentionally like drinking more than you should even though its very little. I'm simply worried for you is all since this is dangerous stuff. I'm not saying you won't listen to Ophelia, just reminding you to be cautious about these kings of things.” -quad2
Oh trust me, I’m going to be extremely careful when it comes to this potion. Ophelia warned me that’s extremely easy to overdose on, and that many weaker magician’s have became addicted to the power trips it can provide. Not to mention, I could potentially get disqualified if I forget to stop taking it at the right time.
To Drake: “Do you have the times for each contestant? I know it's just as much teamwork in swapping legs as it is actual running speed, but Ophelia's speed was impressive! Probably not Magic Olympics level, but she looks like she'd be competition with lower level professional tripod athletes.” -FlexibleAnatomy
Yes, we should have the times. I’ll just list them for you below:
Times (By order of completion of 100 meteres)
Ophelia : 11.21 seconds
Saffron: 11.89 seconds
Cammie: 12.39 seconds
Leela: 12.83 seconds
Holli: 13.00 seconds
Jill: 15.20 seconds
Team Saffron: 37.72 seconds
Team Jill: 38.80 seconds
We do not have times accounting for swapping of legs however, just what the time was when they reached 100 meters past their starting point. Ophelia did an admirable job, and with a bit of practice, she looked like she could knock out that extra second to at least qualify to compete in the magic olympics. Although she’s a far ways away from setting any records, at least in terms of a women’s 100 meter sprint for three legs.
To Ophelia: “That running was extremely impressive. I've had plenty of experience with three legs, but I couldn't imagine moving at those speeds. Do you have much experience with the tripod sprint, or other athletics and running experience?” -FlexibleAnatomy
Unfortunately, the mother of my current vessel was always worried that I would get fat or lazy if I didn’t do a sport during my secondary education. Because it seemed like the least dangerous of my options, she managed to convince me to sign up for track and field. Of course, she signed me up for the regular stuff, but I very quickly grew bored of it, and managed to convince her to let me compete in the magical version.
While I honestly preferred the 400 meter humantaur sprints, my school system was rather small, so I also ran the three-legged relays. I briefly considered doing transformed gymnastics as well, due to the theatrical component of it, but my coach wouldn’t let me switch.
To Michelle: “What are the odds that an Olympic-level magic athlete would have such a similar name to an Olympic-level regular athlete? Given how many such athletes there are in at least the latter case, probably higher than my question is implying, but still…” -HeraldOfOpera
Oh, Michael and I joke about it constantly. Ever since he started competing in the regular olympics people have been commenting on how similar my name is to his. However, if you’ve ever been around the magic athletics community, you’d know that it’s actually the reverse.
My first magic olympics was about thirty years ago at the ’91 Summer Magic Olympics in Barcelona. I represented the US in the 400m Air Sprint. I didn’t manage to win a medal, but thankfully I wasn’t last.
I guess it is pretty weird for us to have similar names, but it’s not unheard of for people in the field of sports to have similar names. For instance, last year in football there was a Brandon Marshall who was a linebacker for the Denver Broncos, and a Brandon Marshall who was a wide receiver for the Seattle Seahawks. Or Billy Beane and Billy Bean, who played on the same minor league baseball team.
To whom it may concern: “Remember when I said that we'll pick the choice with the greatest potential for shenanigans and/or plot bunnies? Yeah, this vote is going to hilariously lopsided.” -HeraldOfOpera
Yeah. I’m afraid I’m responsible for that one. I’m Jerry Barriz, the Producer who’s in charge of figuring out the prizes for what to give out for the midweek challenges. I realized all too late that this week’s decision was going to be heavily lopsided towards a singular prize, and for that I'd like to offer my sincerest apologies for any unneeded disappoint it may have caused in your viewing of yesterday’s episode.
Originally, this week was going to be a ‘select a punishment for the losing team’ round, however the other members of my team were worried that changing the formula for the last week would be seen as ‘brand damaging’. Because of this, we ended up going with an alternative set of options to keep the decision making process in line with those we offered in weeks prior.
The rest of the ANGA Production team and I will keep your comment in mind for any future, audience interactive productions we may make.