“Rise and Shine, girls! There’s much to be done today!” The voice of Howard echoed through their bedrooms. While Maya and Sable had slept soundly, waking up to Howard’s daily wake-up refreshed and ready to take on the day. The other girls, were considerably less pleased with the early wake-up call, although for significantly different reasons.

     Elise had elected to spend the night over at Annette’s room, since there punishment required the other being close by, less they completely fall to pieces. The two of them had a great time playing around with Rocky, the strange creature slowly warming up to Elise as they used her parts to play fetch with him. As the day went on, the artificial sun that usually lit up the field portion of Annette’s room began to set, the sky darkening and being lit up with several twinkling stars. They then took Annette’s set of spare bedsheets to form a little tent in her field, and spent the rest of the night getting to know each other better and to talk about their thoughts on what they should do for their performance on Saturday.

     With Patricia and Sinopia, it was quite the opposite situation. They too had agreed that it would be in their best interest to spend the night together, but clearly Patricia had other plans for how she was going to be spending the evening. While Sinopia wanted to use the time they were forced to stay near each other to figure out what they wanted to do for the show Saturday, Patricia seemed to want nothing to do with it, exclusively focusing on whatever research she was doing. The only time she would interact with Sinopia was when something fell off and she needed it to be replaced, although she would often times let Sinopia get into a much worse state before pausing her research and fixing her up.

     Regardless of the predicament they were in last night, both groups of losing girls were relieved when Howard announced, “The effects of yesterday’s punishments should have worn off by now. For those of you who still haven’t figured out what you want to do for your performance on Saturday, I would recommend figuring it out by the end of today, lest you run out of time to rehearse it and endanger your chances of remaining in the competition.”

~~~

Sable & Sinopia’s Room

     “I swear to God Sable! It was probably the most unbearable experience I’ve ever had in my life,” Sinopia whined to her sister.

     “Well, that’s just the way things turn out sometimes Sin,” Sable said, getting changed into her outfit for the day. After their breakthrough yesterday in figuring out a way to get effects activating on Maya easier, the two girls workshopped out an idea for what they might perform on Saturday, and were planning on trying to get a full run through of it with Howard present. So, for the first time all competition, Sable had made herself look the part of an assistant, her black hair pulled back out of her face, revealing its pale complexion, and she wore a plain black leotard that hugged her petite figure which she had hidden away with mostly baggy clothes.

     “I honestly think sometimes she’s more interested in her science stuff than actually winning the competition!” She flopped over on the bed, huffing indignantly.

     “Well, didn’t you say that Howard put a bell in the front lobby that we can ring to get his help?” Sable asked, “Why don’t you ring it and see if you can get Howard to help you out. Because if Patricia’s not trying to work with you, I don’t see why it should reflect poorly on your performance in the competition.”

     “You know what! You’re right!” Sinopia sat up, “Maybe it is time I tell Howard how much Patricia’s been mistreating me!”

     Sable finished putting on a pair of silver earrings with the letter S engraved at the ends. She twirled her body around in front of Sinopia asking, “How do I look? Too much?”

     “Wow!” Sinopia said, genuinely being flabbergasted at how mature her younger sister now looked. “You look amazing!”

     “Thanks! I really got to get going now though. Best of luck with dealing with Patricia!” And with those words, Sable was out the door.

~~~

Maya and Sable, Practice Room

     Maya and Sable were blown away when they reached the practice room. Howard had told them that he would be arrive in the practice room to make sure it was set up for their mock performance, but they were never expecting for it to seemingly be a scale model of an actual auditorium. The faint lines that marked the distinction of the magic panels that produced the effect were still present every meter, but that hardly seemed to matter.

     In front of the girls, Howard stood impatiently tapping his foot, and looking at a golden stopwatch. “Girls, you’re thirty seconds late,” He scolded.

     “But we came at ten thirty just like we scheduled?” Maya said, looking down at her phone and double checking that they were still on time.

     “But that’s where you’re mistaken girls. From now on, I want to get it into your head that being early is being on time, and being on time is being late,” He flipped his stopwatch close, putting it into his suit pocket. “Nevertheless, I shall forgive you for this transgression this first time. You would not care to see what I do if it should happen again.” He gave the two girls a stern look, before his face shifted to one of merriment, “Now then! Why don’t you walk me through this trick of yours and we’ll get this run through started!”

~~~

Lobby

     Sinopia stomped her feet as she made her way towards the front desk. She was just about to ring the bell marked for assistance, when she was startled by a feeble voice behind her, “Excuse me, Miss? Are you Ms. Sinopia?”

     Sinopia turned around, and standing before her was a rather pathetic looking creature. It was about half her height, was wearing a blue bellhop uniform, and had slightly paler blue skin, with a pair of tiny black horns poking out of its mess of dark blue hair. The creature had a very human looking face, save for the fact that a large blue beak replaced where a person might have a mouth and a nose, “I was asked by a Ms. Patricia to take you to her room immediately to discuss your Saturday performance.”

     “Well, you can tell her that the time for talking about that is over, and that if she wanted to work on it she could have done it yesterday.”

     “I’m sorry miss, but I’m afraid I’ve been ordered to fulfill any request made of me by the contestants of the show, so I must insist that you follow me to her bedroom.”

     “I’m not going to,” Sinopia pouted.

     “Alright then,” The little creature reached up and grabbed Sinopia’s hand. She felt a pulling sensation as the world seemed to blur around her-

~~~

Patricia’s Room

     -And found herself in Patricia’s Room once more. “Here she is Ms. Patricia,” The little blue creature bowed, standing up straight and saying, “And Ms. Sinopia has requested that I tell you,” Suddenly, the blue creature began speaking in a perfect mimic of Sinopia’s voice, “The time for talking about our performance is over, if you wanted to work on it, you could have done it yesterday.”

     Patricia looked annoyed, as the little creature took another bow, before excusing itself out of Patricia’s door. Sinopia looked sheepishly at the intimidatingly tall, African American girl, as she

placed a tablet onto the ground in front of her. “What is that?” Sinopia asked nervously.

     “Well, it’s probably better if I show you.”

~~~

Annette’s Room

     “And you’re certain it’s not going to hurt?” Elise asked, eyeing Rocky suspiciously.

     “Not a bit,” Annette said, “Transforming other people is one of Rocky’s favorite things to do! Ain’t that right boy?”

     “Bark!” Rocky said, producing a weird echo effect. Currently, Rocky resembled a two-headed caterpillar, with one end large enough that you could reasonably drive a car through it, while the other was closer to that of a small dog’s.

     “It’s just that… is there really no other way he can transform me than by digesting me?”

     “Well, it’s not really digestion,” Annette explained, “We’re still not really sure where the food goes when Rocky eats something. Just think of it like a teleportation routine, you go in one box and out another!”

     “Ugh… Fine! Here I go!” Elise yelled as she step into Rocky’s gaping maw. The beast’s gigantic teeth shut behind her, enclosing her in darkness.

     Annette stood around watching nervously as the lump that was Elise continued to travel down Rocky’s shrinking throat. While she had never personally experienced problems in using Rocky to transform herself, she had never tried it with another person, fearing that Rocky may mistakenly perceive them as a threat and leaving her with not knowing how to get them back. However, after the incredible night she had had with Elise the night prior, and the fact that Rocky had really seemed to warm up to her, she thought it best to finally give it a spin and see if Rocky could help them out in their act.

     The moment of truth came, and suddenly Rocky’s miniature head opened up, and out stepped a shrunken Elise, the only thing worse for wear being that she was absolutely covered in Saliva. Annette bent over, allowing the tiny girl to step in to her hand, and whispered, “So, how was it?”

     Elise, who heard Annette’s question as a shout, tried to shout back, “Oh my God! It was one of the craziest things I’ve ever done!” Annette managing to pick up most of her talk as a high pitched squeak, “We absolutely have to have Rocky out on stage with us!”

~~~

Patricia’s Room

     “Oh my God! Patricia! How did you even figure that out?” Not so much amazed at the effect that Patricia had chosen to demonstrate her newest invention, but instead with her explanation on what exactly the machine was capable of.

     “Well. It was actually based on something you said on Tuesday that’s been bouncing around my head ever since,” Patricia explained, typing away at her tablet and reattaching her head back to her body.

     “What did I say again?”

     “You were asking why your body was feeling sore from taking the magic steroids, and I explained that it was because your body was using one type of energy in order to create another, which got me thinking about whether I could transfer other bodily process in to a parallel process in the physical world, or potentially even the inverse. So I went and got to work on it and eventually cracked the code,” Patricia grinned.

     “Is that why you were more distant yesterday than normal?” Sinopia asked.

     “Yeah… I’m really sorry about that by the way. But as you said yourself, when I set my mind on a challenge or task, I develop really bad tunnel vision. It’s like, my brain literally cannot think of anything else until it’s figured out how to solve it. It’s why my roommates made me swear that I wasn’t allowed to bring lab stuff back to our dorm,” Patricia chuckled a little bit, before getting off her chest what she really needed to say. “I know you probably won’t be able to forgive me for the way I’ve acted the past couple of days, and I’ve definitely been a real bitch, but the truth is… While I’ve figured out how to make this, I really have no clue what the best way to show it off would be.”

     “Yeah… I sort of got that based on the fact that you thought it would be a good idea to show off this world bending power by just taking your head off,” Sinopia started laughed.

     “Ha ha! It was the only thing that came to mind,” Patricia laughed with Sinopia. After the girls had calmed down a little, Patrica asked, “So, do you think you can forgive me?”

     “…Alright. I will- On two condition!” Sinopia said.

     “Anything.”

     “Number one: You have to stop treating me like an inferior. Just because I may not know as much magic as you, doesn’t give you the right to continuously accuse me of not being good enough for this competition. I was chosen just like you were, and Jill had even less experience than I did with magic when she won last year.”

     “Of course,” Patricia said, embarrassed at the way she had been treating her teammate over the past couple of days.

     “And number two: Focus that big, dumb brain of yours exclusively on making sure that the performance on Saturday is the best so that you don’t get trapped in your own mind again.”

     “I swear I won’t even pick up a textbook until after Saturday,” Patricia said, putting her hand on her chest above her heart.

~~~

Maya & Sable, Practice Room

     “Alright girls, I believe we can get this fake show started now,” Howard grinned, happy with how the girls had developed their trick. Pointing towards a large red curtain, he explained, “I’ll go out and fake introduce the act, you two come out as cued, alright?”

     The girls nodded, and Howard did as explained walking out behind the curtain and giving a bit of a monologue about how happy he was to finally be performing again. Eventually though, he got to their cue, “And now, please give a round of applause to my wonderful assistants, Maya and Sable!”

     The girls stepped out, and their jaws nearly hit the floor. The fake auditorium they had been practicing in moments before was now absolutely jam packed with people, all of whom were clapping and hollering loudly to the appearance of the girls. A camera panned around, revealing that all of the ‘people’ were truly just facsimile’s, dummy’s with motorized parts to emulate the looks of an audience, but to the girls on stage with bright lights practically blinding them, it looked exactly like the real thing.

     “Okay Sable, why don’t you roll out the prop?” Howard asked the girl, who’s jaw was still hanging open at the sight of so many people. “Sable?” Howard asked again, his demeanor braking slightly. “Alright then, how about you roll out the prop Maya?”

     Maya, who had calmed down slightly from the initial shock, gave a nervous glance to Sable, as she walked back stage, wheeling out a prop with a large eye logo on the front. Just like yesterday, the logo more closely resembled her feminine eye, as opposed to the plain eye logo of the props Howard had provided her. “Wonderful!” Howard said, “Now Sable, please assist Maya with getting into the box.”

     Sable remained frozen, and now Maya was genuinely starting to worry, but thankfully, Sable seemed to be slowly breaking out of her deer-in-headlights stance, as she shakily reached over and unlatched the box… and accidentally caused the entire thing to fall apart.

     Tears began to well up in Sable’s eyes, and before either Howard or Maya was able to stop her, Sable had ran out of the practice room crying.

~~~

Sable & Sinopia’s Room

     “Hey Sable! I’m back!” Sinopia said, opening the door. Patricia and her had spent the rest of the day working through the ideas that popped up into her mind on how best to demonstrate the effects of what Patricia had invented. Eventually, they had narrowed it down to a list of a couple of different ideas that both really liked, and tomorrow they were going to narrow down the best ones with Howard.

     From the other bedroom, Sinopia heard crying. Sinopia walked in, and lying in the bed, her black leotard and fancy earrings thrown to the floor and covering herself in her blanket, she found Sable. “What’s wrong?” Sinopia asked, concern in her voice.

     Sable poked her head out from underneath the blanket, her eyeliner having melted and leaving black trails as she managed to get out between sobs, “We - We were doing a dress rehearsal - And - And there was a huge crowd - And - And - *Wah*” She ducked her head back under the sheets again.

     Sinopia got up onto the bed, hugging her twin tightly as she asked her calmly, “You froze up again?” Sable’s louder tears indicated that Sinopia had hit the nail on the head. Sinopia seemed to be at a loss for what to do, sort of just awkwardly hugging her sister, trying her best to coo words of encouragement into the blanket.

     Eventually, after an hour or two of this, Sable had managed to cry herself to sleep in Sinopia’s arms. Sinopia gently rested Sable down on a pillow, pulling the blanket back just far enough to make sure that she was properly breathing, and kissed her goodnight on the cheek. She then went into the other bedroom, closed the door, and started prepping herself for her own bed. After all, they would all have a busy day tommorrow.

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

& Question Corner &

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

     To Maya: “How does it feel, experiencing both enchantment and alchemy first-hand? Especially as the potion?” -@@WanderTones

     Oh my God! It was absolutely amazing! Seriously, I don’t think I’ve ever done as clean a restoration as I did when I used that enchanted cauldron. And the best part is: I enchanted that cauldron all by myself! Ah! If Mom could only see me now! She would be so proud!

     Melting has always been something I’ve been absolutely terrified to try out. Because, you know pulling something off and not being able to restore yourself isn’t the end of the world. You just have to carry that extra weight around for a while, maybe adjust your habits a little. But Melting?! There’s not much you can do as a puddle. But now, I’ve finally done it!

     And I even evaporated a little! Which was crazy! It felt like parts of me were flying, and then falling back down slowly! It was crazy! And then Sable drank me! I’ve never been digested before either! Oh my God! It was all so much fun!

     To Patricia: “You kept to talking about others' magical abilities when I asked you what your first impressions were of your fellow contestants. Now that you've spent some time with Sinopia, what do you think of her abilities, besides her limited reserves? In particular, is there anything you've found, in your interactions with her, that you could regard as positive qualities?” -@@WanderTones

     Well, after practicing with her a bunch today and all of yesterday, I can definitely say that that girl is one of the most persistent girls I’ve ever met. Seriously, at one point last night I had the bright idea to cut out the middle man and just use her hands to put myself back together whenever something fell off, and for more than thirty minutes straight she screamed, “put me back together again!” at me. It was honestly extremely impressive, and I tried to be better about putting her back together again after that.

     Also, I clearly have made an error in judgement with conflating the magical ability of my opponents to their intelligence, as Sinopia seems to be quite brilliant in many things other than magic. At one point, she picked up one of my journals and was reading it to pass the time. I asked her what section she was reading, as I suspected she was simply looking at the pictures because the text was in ancient latin, and she perfectly translated the paragraph she was on back to me.

     She’s also surprisingly imaginative. After spending time with her, I can safely say that if she had stronger magic reserves, she could easily out perform everyone else. I’m going to have to go back to my notes and re-evaluate how I see everyone in this competition now, and I guess for pointing that out to I owe her an extreme amount of gratitude.

     To Elise: “Trust me as a Shared Assistants Guild member when I say that you're not replaceable. You're not just a pretty face, you're a personality that adds your own charm to whatever you are a part of. And as someone familiar with online media production, I have to ask you: how many YouTube channels do you know that just tossed away their main personality when they got a crew? Once, maybe twice, but they're a clear exception. Unless you decide to pass the torch, or there's some major controversy regarding you that gets the Twittersphere riled up, you're still going to be there. And what's even better is, you're the most likely candidate for a boss if you do expand, get a crew, find a studio, and go professional (if you don't end up winning this season and finding yourself too busy with Weiss to return to YouTube). Just be sure to treat those who work for you with the same respect and decency as you would a teammate or fellow assistant.” -@@WanderTones

     *Sniff* Thank you so much Penny! For this and the words of advice you gave me yesterday! *Sniff* When I get home, I’m going to sit down with Cody- actually, Cody! If you’re watching this, which I know you are since I told you to, start looking for an editor to hire! I trust you to find one that’ll make sure our videos look fantastic!