“Good morning girls!” Howard smiled as the losing contestants shuffled into the lobby, rubbing the sleep out of their eyes. The girls were slowly getting more used to being woken up early, although some of them were still struggling to conquer their old sleeping habits. “Now let me ask you all, what do you think caused you all to lose yesterday’s challenge? Of course, besides drugging your partner with magic enhancement potions?” He winked towards Patricia.

     “*Eep* You knew about that?” Sinopia asked, her cheeks turning red in embarrassment.

     “My dear, we’re filming everything on this show. The entire world saw it. And while the usage of magic enchanting drugs are a blatant disregard of the contracts you signed, I’ll let it slide this time since your partner had not informed you of the consequences of using them.” Sinopia gave Patricia the evil eye, as Howard continued. “No, the reason that you all are here is because you two teams seem to be struggling with working together as a team! Either of you two teams could have won yesterday, if you had tried listening to each other and helping your fellow teammate out, rather than focusing on your own standing in the competition.”

     Howard paced in front of the girls as he continued, his voice taking on a sort of ‘woe-is-me’ tone, “Of course, I really only have myself to blame. It’s been what? Four days since you girls have arrived, and I haven’t even bothered to have a proper rehearsal session with any of you girls. How can I expect you girls to understand the true value of teamwork, when I myself have not been a team player. Well, that changes today girls!” Howard stopped pacing, facing the girls and lifting up his right hand, placing his left hand behind his back, “From this point forwards, I promise you that you contestants shall be the most important thing in my life. Should you need anything of me, whether it be wanting to rehearse with me, or needing magical assistance or life advice, simply ring this bell at the front desk and I will appear post-haste to help you out with your request,” Howard reached into his pocket, pulling out a classic golden bell, and placing it down on the middle of the front desk, producing a little sign that said ‘Push for Assistance’ on it and placing it behind the bell.

     “With that out of the way, I’m afraid I must still punish you for losing yesterday’s competition. Thankfully, your punishment will hopefully only help in increasing your bond with your teammate.” From his pockets, Howard an old-fashioned oil can. He instructed Elise to raise her arms, and began squirting tiny bits of oil around Elise’s joints, the oil almost immediately absorbing into her skin almost instantly, leaving no marks. It took him around five minutes to get every part he felt comfortable with getting, although in all actuality a majority of that time was spent in waiting for Elise to pull off her shoes and socks.

     When he was satisfied with oiling up Elise, he moved on to Annette. Deciding that the process had taken too long with Elise, with Annette he simply opened up the top of the oil can, turning it over above her head. An impossible amount of Oil shot out of the small can at an impressive speed, the black substance absolutely covering her from head to toe in the black oil. Howard didn’t even bother with the pageantry for the other two girls, turning the can against them and covering them similarly in a large amount of black oil. Seemingly satisfied, he went to put the cap on the oil can, before turning instead to Elise, coating her in a similar amount of the black oil.

     The girls were still in shock at what had occurred, focusing on rubbing the stuff out of their eyes and spitting out any of the potentially toxic chemical that had gotten in their mouth. Grinning at how he absolutely covered his assistance in black slime, Howard tried his best to comfort them, explaining, “Don’t worry girls *chuckle* It’s simply some non-toxic body oil that we mixed with black food coloring.”

     This didn’t really help quell the girls anger, Elise speaking up and saying, “You really think that covering us in body oil and ruining our clothes will help us become better teammates!?”

     “Well, it’s not really just body oil,” Howard grinned, pulling up a bottle with a green label, “It’s part of my old specialty line of magic practical jokes called ‘You Dropped This’. What it does is- Well… You’ll find out shortly,” Howard’s grin briefly seemed to turn malicious, returning to normal as he said, “That’s all for now girls. I’d recommend go taking a shower and then making the most of your day!”

     The girls grumbled, making their way towards the golden elevator, leaving a trail of the black substance on the ground as they walked. Howard turned around, winking at the camera, before he too went into the golden elevator.

~~~

Maya and Sable, Practice Room

     Meanwhile, while the losing contestants had been brought down to the lobby to be punished, Maya and Sable, who were woken up just the same as all the other girls, decided that it would be the best usage of their time to try and knock out a morning practice to figure out what they were going to do for the performance that was very quickly approaching and attempt to fix the fact that Maya still had one of Sable’s breasts on her chest. Maya had spent a very frustrating night trying her best to simultaneously respect Sable’s privacy, and remove the offending limb from her body. Sable, on the other hand, had elected to remove her other breast from her body, preferring to even out her appearance than to continue walking around lopsided.

     “So, I tried using the specialized vanishing cabinet Howard had left me last night to try and only disappear my monoeye parts and keep your boob in place,” Maya explained, “but all that managed to happen was that it disappeared everything, no matter how much I focused on the effect I wanted. Do you think we could just try the same thing that we did yesterday?”

     “W-what!” Sable said, ducking her face away in embarrassment, her cheeks turning a dark shade of red “I’m sorry Maya, but I don’t think I’d be comfortable with doing that.”

     “Doing what?” Maya asked in confusion.

     “With t-touching your boobs.”

     Maya’s face turned equally as red as Sable’s as she realized what Sable had interpreted by her wording, “N-No! I meant you start out with pulling off my legs and then grabbing your boob off of me!”

     “Oh!” If it was possible, Sable’s face turned even redder as she explained, “That method really only works on similar parts. I’d have to touch your b-breasts or it wouldn’t work.”

     Maya exhaled loudly, trying her best to clear the tension in the room by saying “Then do you have any other ideas on how to at least separate it from me? Maybe an alternate method you used to do with your sisters?”

     “Well…” Sable had similarly managed to calm down a little, her cheeks returning to their more normal pale complexion. She thought for a little while, seeming to think a variety of options over before saying “I think I might have an idea. You told me that Howard gave you a ton of specialized props for you to perform magic easily on yourself, right?”

     “Yeah?”

     “Did he happen to leave you a pot of some kind?”

~~~

The Gym

     The doors opened up, and Elise stepped out of the elevator into the hotel gym with a white towel around her neck. Much like other hotels, the gym was a rather modest effort for a Gym, mostly composed of several year old models of treadmills, a couple of weight machines, and TV’s playing news channels 24-7. There was a set of doors towards the back corner with tiny stick figures representing men and women to indicate the gendered changing rooms, and the entire back wall was composed of a glass window that looked out into the modestly sized indoor swimming pool.

     Over by the treadmills, Elise spotted a pair of familiar faces, “Hi Penny!”

     Penny waved from her position on one of the treadmills. Just like the first day that the girls had ran into Penny in the dining room, her form was significantly altered from her base form. She reminded Elise of a humantaur, however, rather than the standard four legged configuration, Penny had a normal set of hips in the back, but only a single leg in the front. “What do you think?” Penny asked, gesturing to her changed lower half, “I got inspired by the tie-breaker race yesterday. I thought I would try putting my own spin on it.”

     “It’s amazing!” Elise said, boggling the ingenuity of one of her idols, “Where’s Jean?”

     “Oh, she’s off doing her own thing,” Penny said, waving her hand. She pressed the stop button on the treadmill, her gallop slowing down until she eventually came to a full stop, grabbing her water bottle and tower and stepping off the machine. She took a swig of her water before clarifying, “She’s probably speaking with our agent in the Shared Assistant’s Guild about our next gig.”

     “Does she normally handle that sort of stuff?” Elise asked.

     “Oh no!” Penny laughed, “we try to switch off who schedules our appearances.”

     “But how do you know whether your appearance is going to be good or not then?” Elise asked, tilting her head to the side.

     “Well, I don’t really know,” Penny said, shrugging her shoulders, “I generally just trust her to pick events that she knows that she will like.”

     “But what if you think that you wouldn’t like it?”

     “Well, then I’d go through with the gig anyways,” Penny explained calmly, putting her hand on Elise’s shoulder “Look Elise, Jean and I have been partners for many years now, and do you want to know the real secret to having a good partnership?”

     “What?”

     “It’s having faith that your partner has your best interest in mind,” Penny smiled at her, “You’re in it together, and you’re never going to be able to know everything anyways, so sometimes its just better to trust that your partner has made the right decision, even if you think otherwise. Because otherwise, you’re just going to be pulling in different directions and end up going nowhere.”

     “Huh…” Elise said, contemplating Penny’s words and reflecting on her performance in the day prior, “I think I see what you’re saying,”

     “That’s great to hear!” Penny said, grinning, “Now I was just about to go for a dip in the pool. Care to join me?”

     “Normally. Yes. In a heartbeat, but I think I have to go and talk with Annette,” Elise said.

     “Alright then, best of luck,” Penny said. Elise turned around, taking a step forward and hearing something hit the ground with a meaty thunk.

     “Hey, I think you dropped something,” Penny grinned.

~~~

Maya’s Room

     “Is that everything?” Sable asked, looking at the pile of instruments and doodads they had assembled on Maya’s living room coffee table.

     “Unless Howard hid something somewhere I wouldn’t notice, which honestly at this point wouldn’t surprise me all that much, I think this is everything.”

     “Well… I don’t really see anything that could help us out with what I have planned.”

     “Couldn’t we try cutting it off?” Maya asked, picking out a samurai sword with a little eye on the hilt from the pile of props.

     “Not using the method we used to morph together in the first place. Because look,” Sable pointed to the part where Sable’s shirt had morphed into Maya, the colors gradually changing, “our parts have blended together at the molecular level. So unless you know a way to cut with perfect precision, there might still be some of me stuck on you.”

     “Okay,” Maya said beginning to feel like her situation was even more hopeless.

     “But!” Sable said, a lightbulb going off in her head, “I think I might have another idea. We’re going to need to call in a favor though.”

~~~

Sable’s Room

     “Sin?” Sable shouted as she walked into the room, “Are you home?”

     “Yeah! I’m in my room!” Sinopia shouted back.

     “So you and Sinopia have connected bedrooms?” Maya asked Sable sash opened the door.

     “Yeah,” Sable confirmed, noticing Sinopia spread out on the bed. Quite literally, as her body seemed to be split up into about a dozen pieces. Her legs were split off her, thankfully clothed, torso, each one separated into three distinct parts: foot, calf, and thigh. Likewise, her arms were removed and split into three separate parts: hand, lower arm and upper arm. Her chest was split off of her hips, and her head was separated from that. “Hey Sin, do you mind pulling yourself together,” Sable said, as though the idea of finding her sister in a bunch of separate pieces was a rather normal occurrence for her, “I need your help convincing your partner to help Maya and I get back to normal.”

     “Normally, I would,” Sinopia said, wiggling her parts around on the bed, “but for some reason every time I try to reconnect, the parts won’t stick!”

     “Huh,” Sable said, confused. She picked up two of Sinopia’s pieces (a foot and a calf) and tried to stick them back together, focusing on restoring the parts back to normal. When that didn’t work, she thought of just trying to attach them using some attachment magic, but that failed to. “Uh Sin. What did you do?”

     “I’m not sure! Howard spilled some stuff on us to embarrass us, then I went back and took a shower, and then I slowly started to fall apart!”

     “Well then, I imagine it was probably the stuff he spilled on you that caused this to happen,” Sable explained calmly, “Was there anything else that he said about what the stuff would do to you?”

     “I think he said it would help us become better partners?”

     Sable thought for a moment before saying, “Maya, you grab two corners of Sin’s bedsheet. I’ll grab the others and we can drag her over to her partner’s room.”

~~~

Annette’s Room

     “Annette! Are you still put together?” Elise asked, using the knuckles of her detached left arm to rap on the country girl’s door.

     A barking noise could be heard from the other side, as the door opened up, revealing Rocky in the form of a pure black coyote with beady yellow, a grotesquely human looking black arm extending out of his back and opening the door. “Rocky! Stand down! It’s just Elise!” The voice of Annette could be heard from significantly further back. Rocky’s form began to shift once again, the arm receding into his body and his wolf like features softening slightly, although not completely disappearing as he took on the appearance of a black german shepherd.

     Elise gave her best smile as she passed by Rocky, the dog growling as she shuffled past him, and landed flat on her face. She let go of her detached arm and looking down her body to see that her right leg had detached right at the hip. “You’re going to want to hurry up. Once my second limb fell off it wasn’t that much longer until the rest started falling off!” Annette shouted from her location in the grassy field that made up the anti-chamber of her bedroom. She wasn’t as far away from the door as Elise initially thought, but now that she was going to be crawling to her, it was going to take a lot longer than she had planned to get to her.

     Nevertheless, a few minutes and a detached leg and pair of hips later, and Elise had made it to where Annette’s various pieces were splayed out on the grass. She was in a similar shape to how Sinopia was in her bedroom, although her torso seemed to still be attached to her hips. Elise laid down on her back, looking up at the artificial clouds on the high ceiling of Annette’s field, “Annette, I have something I need to say to you,”

     “No!” Annette said, rather assertively, “I have something to say, and this time I want you to listen! The way you treated me yesterday was completely unacceptable! I warned you after the first race that you needed to take curves slightly slower because otherwise you’d risk tipping over, and then you did the exact same thing in the final race! And yesterday! You barely listened to any of my suggestions! Look! If we’re going to compete together as partners, you need to start treating me like an equal and listening to what I have to say!”

     “You’re right,” Elise said.

     “Of course I’m right! Wait- what?”

     “I said you’re right,” Elise said, slightly melancholic, “I was actually gonna say more or less exactly what you said. After my shower, I started looking back at how I’ve treated you for the past couple days and realized that I’ve been acting completely inappropriately.”

     “Really?” Annette asked suspiciously.

     “I mean, after I had it pointed out to me by Penny,”  \ “Ah,” Annette said, understanding the true nature of the introspection.

     “But, I mean it’s not the first time that I’ve been called out for my selfish behavior,” Elise said, true regret in her voice, “You know, people joke about how YouTube isn’t a real job, but the truth is that I’ve not gotten the chance to take a break in almost the entire five years that I’ve been running it. I’ve had to miss out on a ton of really cool things all so that I can keep what little internet clout that I’ve managed to amass over the years. I couldn’t go to my best friend’s wedding because it was the one day a special guest of our’s could show up!”

     “…” Annette remained silent as Elise continued.

     “And I’ve been told multiple times now that I need to just let things go. Trust others to take over things like the editing and script writing, but I feel like if I give that up, I’ll just eventually end up being some interchangeable part of the show, that can be changed at any moment for the next pretty girl with a love of magic. When I gave up control of the show to Cody, I nearly had a panic attack! I guess I was just kind of pushing my own insecurities on you, when I knew you didn’t really deserve it. So… Can we just start over from square one?” Elise asked.

     “Well… I don’t think we can start over…” Annette said, Elise’s making a face of sadness, “But. I’m willing to give you a second chance if you are willing to actually try.”

     Elise grinned, flipping over and looking Annette in the eye and saying, “You’ve got yourself a deal!”

     “Great… Now can you try sticking me back together before you lose your last usable limb?”

     “Sure thing!” Elise quickly grabbed one of Annette’s arm’s managing to attach it to her shoulder before her own arm fell off. Thankfully, it stuck, and after some work and realizing that they could only attach parts to the other girl, Annette and Elise were whole once more.

     “Alright!” Elise said, clapping her hands together, causing them both to detach from her arms, indicating that while they were still whole, they were going to have to stick together to reattach them. Annette reached down, attaching one of her hands back to Elise’s wrist. “How about we do your original idea? Just play around in here for a bit until we figure something out?”

     “Sounds like a good plan,” Annette gave Elise an evil grin, taking a pitcher’s stance and tossing Annette’s other hand as far as she could, “Rocky! Fetch!"

~~~

Patricia’s Room

     Sable knocked on the door. “Patricia!?” Sinopia shouted, slightly muffled by the bedsheet her head was being carried in, “Can I come in?”

     “Yes! The door’s open!” Patricia shouted back. Sable and Maya opened the door, revealing that Patricia was in much the same shape as Sinopia was currently in, although she seemed to be trying to make the most of it, as her head laid sideways on her desk, with one of her hands crawling around like The Thing from The Adam’s Family. It was dragging various bottles of potions around, pouring one on her foot and trying yet again in vain to reattach the limb.

     “Hey Patricia,” Maya said, righting the girl’s head on the desk.

     “Hello. Did you figure out how to put us together again? Or just to bug me?”

     “A little bit of both,” Sinopia grinned, as Sable lifted her out of the bedsheets and put her next to Patricia’s head, “My little sister thought of something, but she wants to trade information with you. Go ahead and ask Sable.”

     “Well Pat,” Sable started, not making eye contact with the girl.

     “Patricia,” she said sternly.

     “P-Patricia,” Sable stumbled with the name, “You clearly know a ton more about magic than we do, so you must know a way to enchant objects with a specific effect.”

     “Yes…”

     “Well, we want you to teach it to us, and then we’ll tell you our idea.”

     “And what if I refuse?” Patricia asked.

     “Oh please!” Sinopia laughed, “We may have not had much opportunity to rehearse with each other, but you’re practically an open book with this sort of stuff. It’s eating you up inside to think that Howard has somehow crafted a spell that you can’t break. You’re dying to hear Sable’s answer.”

     “Let me put it another way then,” Patricia said, “What if I teach you, and it turns out that your ‘ingenious’ plan doesn’t work?”

     “Oh C’mon Patricia!” Sinopia whined, “If you do this, I’ll forgive you for screwing us over and getting us stuck in this mess in the first place.”

     “I did it because you’re lousy at magic!” Patricia said, emotion finally breaking through her hardened exterior, “How was I supposed to know that Howard would take retribution on us specifically for trying to help you!”

     “You didn’t even warn me of any of the side effects!”

     “I didn’t want you to get scared and not take the potion!”

     “Please Patricia! Can you just help my sister out? She just wants to get her boob back!”

     “… Fine!” Patricia shouted, “I’ll teach them, just please fix me so I can get back to my research!”

     “Always with the research,” Sinopia rolled her eyes.

     “Alright, I’ve fulfilled my part of the bargain,” Patricia said, having explained how to enchant an object as simply as she possibly could, “Now please fulfill your own.”

     “Okay,” Sable said simply, pulling out Sinopia’s hands from the makeshift bedsheet back. Holding the hands in her own, she used them to reattach Patricia’s parts, the parts finally sticking together. “Howard’s punishment was actually just a team building exercise. Only your partner can put you back together,” Sable explained.

     “…Of course he would do something like this,” Patricia said, annoyed that she hand’t thought of that possibility herself, “Well, in that case can you please all leave? I want to get back to my work as soon as possible.” She pointed towards the door, and her hand fell off her wrist once again.

     “Ah ha ha!” Sinopia laughed.

     “Oh no,” Patricia said, looking at the end of her wrist in fear, “…Does that mean-“

     “Yep!” Sinopia grinned, I guess we’ll be hanging out all day today!”

     Sable and Maya didn’t stick around to hear the barrage of swear words Patricia threw at the Sinopia as she started trying to reassemble her orange haired teammate.

~~~

Maya and Sable, Practice Room

     “Okay, remember what Patricia said about enchanting objects. Just focus on forcing your will on the object so that it can then return that energy onto you.”

     Maya closed her eye focusing hard as she touched her hands to the large black cauldron they had summoned in the practice room by touching the floor. She visualized the cauldron in her mind’s eye, imaging the effect she wanted to achieve when she would eventually step inside the cauldron. She continued to focus on it, and soon, she began to feel what Patricia had told her she would feel if she managed to link the enchantment to the object, with the feeling like something was leaving her body and entering into the cauldron. “Maya! Look!” Sable cheered.

     Maya opened her eyes, and just like she had imagined, the front of the cauldron had changed, a single, stylized, blue eye with long lashes now prominently displayed on the front. “Oh my God!” Maya cheered, “It actually worked!”

     “Alright, step on in then,” Sable said, genuine excitement in her voice, “If this works, we might not have to worry about the restoration as much for Saturday then!”

     Maya stepped into the cauldron, and just as she imagined, her skin began to take on a glossy sheen, as though she were sweating. Of course, If one were paying attention, it would have been rather obvious that it was not sweat, and instead Maya herself that was melting, her clothes melting along with her, dying the droplets of her skin that fell to the bottom of the cauldron with the greens and blacks of her t-shirt. Eventually all that remained of Maya was a puddle of a grayish looking liquid.

     Sable lifted up the cauldron, pouring it into a beaker and hooking the beaker up to a large condensing tube. She activated a bunsen burner underneath, and began explaining to the audience at home, “So, first, we split Maya up to a liquid, because that way the parts where our bodies joined together at the molecular level would separate out. Now, because of the way Maya enchanted the cauldron, our molecules have different densities. So, we’ll heat up the mixture just enough to filter out one of our molecules, and then we can finally get restored.”

     The mixture began heating up, and once bubbles began to form, Sable did her best to keep the temperature of the mixture right at a constant temperature. As the gas began to climb up the tube, it would reach the top, where it would condense into a black liquid and make its way down a separate tube to another test tube. Eventually, the contents in the large beaker stopped bubbling, remaining a muddy green liquid, while the test tube was now filled with a muddy black liquid

     “And they say you never learn anything practical at public school,” Sable laughed, detaching the black test tube and swallowing the contents. She closed her eyes as her body digested herself, and slowly a bump began to grow out of her chest, Sable finally regaining what she had lost the day before.

     Sable then took the beaker that contained exclusively Maya. She poured the contents in the cauldron, closing it with a lid, and then with a puff of smoke Maya popped out, once again whole and with her single eye filled with pride. Sable helped her step out of the cauldron, and the girls took a bow to their imaginary audience.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

& Question Corner &

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

     To Maya: “Congrats on today. I have a good feeling that you might win from your streak as of late.” -@@quad2

     Thanks! I just hope we can keep up the streak too! Sable and I have been working extremely well together!

     To Annette: “That was a surprisingly effective Phoenix Leap, especially for a relative amateur in regards to magic and magical sports. Do you have much experience with such a technique, in your time training and working with Rocky?” -@@WanderTones

     Yep! Back home we had our school ran a completely student organized Fourth Of July event. Of course, it was completely voluntary, so there weren’t that many kids that signed up for running things like parking, or concession. Instead, all the kids would sign up to be fireworks. I used to train with my mom in order to try and make the biggest bang so that I could be in the grand finale where all the big explosions were. I was usually towards the middle of the show, but in sixth grade I was finally chosen to be part of the grand finale! I've kept up with it ever since, just in case they might ever need to have an emergency recruit.