“Rise and Shine, girls!” Howard’s voice cheerfully awoke the girls at the usual time, “I would just like to say how pleased I was with everyone’s performances yesterday. Please come on down to the main lobby so that Drake may reveal the contestant being eliminated this week.”

~~~

Lobby

     Once again, the girls lined up in their spots in the lobby, all looking around nervously as they waited in anticipation for the timer to hit zero once more, and they would be forced to say goodbye to one of their fellow contestants. When the clock hit zero, Drake pulled out a little card announcing, “The polls have just closed, and the results have been calculated. I’m afraid to announce that the contestant going home this week is… Elise.”

     Elise took her elimination in stride, simply shaking her head solemnly. “Just like last week, your send-off will occur later tonight on our rooftop stage. If you want to say your goodbyes, make sure you get them done before then.”

~~~

Elise’s Room

     Elise was busy packing her suitcase in her marble room, when she heard a knock on her door. Opening it up, she found the four other contestants. “Hey girls. come in,” she sighed.

     The four contestants came in, Annette taking charge and saying, “How are you holding up?”

     “Oh you know… I’m doing fine,” Elise said, her lower lip trembling a little bit, “I just thought I’d get a little bit further in the competition than the second round, you know?”

     “Well, look at it this way,” Sinopia said, trying her best to act comforting, “At least now you’ll be able to get back to your channel and see how well its been doing since you were gone!”

     “…I guess that’s true,” Elise said, not finding much comfort in Sinopia’s words.

     Sable lightly jabbed Sinopia in the ribs, “What my sister means to say is that we’re all going to miss you, and if it wasn’t for your help, she probably wouldn’t even be making it to the next round.”

     “Yes, that!” Sinopia said, rubbing where Sable had lightly hit her.

     “And if it wasn’t for your help, I wouldn’t have been able to think about how to work in props to help me perform!” Maya said, her one eye getting a little teary.

     “Not to mention being a great partner for that first round,” Annette said.

     “Guys! Stop!” Elise fake complained, her eyes welling up with tears a little bit, “You’re going to actually make me cry!”

     “Oh! Come here!” Annette said, walking over and giving Elise a hug, which she reciprocated immediately. The other girls quickly joined in, all of them a little teary eyed at the removal of their friend who had suffered so much with them.

     “Alright! When this all is over, I absolutely need to have you all on for a reunion episode!” Elise shouted from her position in the middle of the group hug.

~~~

Rooftop Stage

     Once again, the girls returned to the depressingly empty rooftop stage for Elise’s goodbye ceremony. The girls took their seats opposite the stage, and waited for the elimination to begin.

     The curtains rose up, and on stage were Howard and Elise, who looked slightly happier, but still depressed to be leaving. Howard cleared his throat before beginning, “Once again, we find ourselves having to say goodbye to one of our wonderful contestants. And, once again, it is my responsibility to ensure that they return home safely and with the knowledge they need in order to grow as an entertainer.

     Elise,” Howard turned towards her, “When I was looking around in order to the find the perfect parting gift for each contestant, you were by far the most difficult to shop for. For what do you get the girl who seemingly has it all? A successful, self-published show, an excellent degree of magical ability, and most of the chops necessary in order to make it as an assistant if they really wanted to? Well,” He gestured off stage.

     A rather stern looking businesswoman wearing a gray skirt and gray overcoat walked out. She had some light wrinkles on her face, and her dirty blond hair was tied up into a bun. “This is my former agent before I retired, Leslie Gerhard. And, if you’ll have her of course, your new agent and production assistant for your channel!” Some confetti shot out of some cannons, surprising Elise a little bit, while Leslie did not even flinch. “So, what do you think? Want to sign up with her?”

     Elise looked a little overwhelmed by her present, but managed to keep her cool as she said, “Normally, I would sign up in a heartbeat! But one thing I’ve realized from my time here is that Cody is just as important part of my channel, so I want to make sure to run it by him first before I sign. If that’s alright?”

     “It’s perfectly alright,” Howard said, a glint of happiness in his eyes, “but… just to make sure you don’t go home empty handed,” He reached into his pocket, pulling out a piece of paper that looked like a certificate, “take this! It’s a certificate saying that you will get the exclusive first interview with me and the winner of ANGA when the competition is over.”

     Elise squealed with joy as she clutched the paper to her chest after reading it. She ran over and gave Howard a hug as thanks.

     “So now, time to get you home. And, I must say you chose a rather restrained method of wanting to do this.”

     “Yep!” Elise said, folding up the certificate and putting it into her back pocket.

     “Well then, for those of you watching at home, I would recommend not trying to emulate this. YouTube has very strict magic protections, and you’ll most likely end up breaking your computer screen, unless you’ve received special permission like we have for the show” Howard said, a projector screen coming down towards the back of the stage. After some flickering, a projection came out from an unseen projector, revealing a YouTube page.

     The video was entitled, ‘ANGA Watch Party LIVE Episode 16: Elise’s Farewell’ and the channel just so happened to be Elise’s. Taking up a majority of the screen was the youtube video with a red dot in the corner indicating it was live. The video itself was rather plain, a rather plain looking white man with a thin, brown beard and brown hair was sitting in a gaming chair against a green screen, a tiny version of the episode playing in the bottom right corner of the screen.

     “Huh, I wonder what it’s going to be,” the video was about thirty seconds behind the actual episode, so Elise and Howard were just about to finish giving their farewell hugs.

     Elise crouched down in a runners lunge, Howard walking off screen, as slowly the youtube video began to catch up with the events that had already happened. “Restrained method? That doesn’t sound like Elise at all…” Elise’s legs tensed up. “…Yeah chat. Never try to do magic through YouTube. I heard that back in the early days before they got better magic firewalls, a guy’s internet cut off half way, and they never found a way to cure him… Hey wait!”

     When the man looked towards the camera in surprise, that was Elise’s cue. She took off at a sprint towards the projector screen, and jumped into the YouTube video, her entire body passing through the screen, and affecting the video itself. The two landed on the floor in a heap, the man’s chair not able to take the strain from the sudden impact. The chat on the other side of the window absolutely exploded with comments.

     Whoever was operating the camera aimed it downwards, revealing the two in a pile on the floor. “E-Elise!?” The man shouted in surprise.

     “Hey Cody!” Elise said, hugging him before picking herself up. “We better get the set back in order! I don’t want to miss next week’s challenge!”

     The projector, and the curtains closed once again.

~~~

Challenge Delivery

     “Well, it’s sad to see Elise leave,” Drake said, as he walked out from behind the curtain, “However, we now get to make the announcement on what this week’s challenge will be, and which celebrity guest will be introducing it!”

     Drake stepped to center stage and began his introduction, “The following woman requires almost no introduction, but I’m going to attempt to give her one anyways. Known far and wide as the Queen of the Natural Body Magic Movement, this magician has put together more quality productions than several of the other top magician’s combined! One of the founding members of the International Shared Assistants Guild, Automagic Industries, and general pillar of the entire magical community! Contestants, please put your hands together, for The Amazingly Magnificent, The Spectacularly Tremendous, The Delightfully Evil, Ms. Frankie!” Unlike in weeks prior, this time when the curtains rose, every single contestant was squealing with delight.

     Standing center stage was a fair skinned woman with short cut, wild red hair. She had a on an outfit that was very reminiscent of Elise’s Zatanna outfit, with long fishnet stocking, short black heels, a white dress shirt, with black overcoat and a red bowtie and black top hat to complete the look. She had an enormously large smile on her face as she looked over the contestants with her bright eyes.

     From off-stage, Howard walked on, shaking Frankie’s hand vigorously and telling her how much of a pleasure it was to be working with her for the first time. He handed her the same brown envelope that he had delivered to the prior celebrities, and as she opened up and scanned what the document said, gave Howard a cheeky grin, as if the note had an inside joke between the two.

     “Well, girls,” Frankie announced, finally turning her attention once more back on the contestants, “It seems that Howard has decided to really challenge you this week. Your challenge is: ‘Create and then perform the most complicated trick you feel you can handle. Performances this Saturday’.”

     “Yes,” Howard said, grinning as he took over from Frankie, “It has occurred to me, over the past two performances, that I have yet to be given a true gauge of how confident and skilled you actually are with magic. So, what better way to see where your limits exist than having you perform to those limits.”

     “Certainly sounds like a good idea to me,” Frankie grinned along with him, the two sharing a look before looking out at the contestants.

     “Now… Normally I would perform a trick with you,” Howard said, turning back to Frankie, “However, as I understand it, you’ve brought along an assistant of you own?”

     “That’s right, Howard,” Frankie said, waving to someone off-stage, “She’s just been newly hired, and I thought what better way for her to earn her wings than to perform live on ANGA?”

     “That sounds like a delightful plan!” Howard said, already hopping down from the front of the stage, “I think I’ll join the girls and watch!”

     From offstage, a dark-skinned girl walked out. She was wearing nothing but a two piece, blue swimsuit, her frizzy black hair only a few shades darker than her skin. “This here girls, is Maya, the newest member of my ‘troupe’,” Frankie announced, the Maya on stage giving a nervous wave to the small crowd, and audience at home. “Since the theme of this weeks competition is being complicated, I decided to bring along an equally complicated prop!”

     The back curtains rose up, revealing a trick that bore a lot of resemblance to the board game mouse-trap, in that there were many brightly colored pieces and sharp swinging items that all seemed to connect together into a Rube Goldberg Machine from Hell. “Would you believe it if I told you this used to be a toaster?” She quipped, as she led Maya to what must have been the starting point of the contraption.

    Frankie walked towards the other end of the contraption, “And now, let’s watch the magic happen!” She grabbed a tiny marble, and placed it along a rail. The marble rolled for a bit, before hitting some dominoes, which then landed on button. The button launched Maya up into the air screaming, before she safely landed on a mattress, the downward momentum of her body being just enough to activate several bands of leather to encircle her like snap-bracelets, and slowly begin the mattress’s journey down a slide.

     As the mattress went down the slide, it seemed like a sword would occasionally come out, slicing through one of the several leather belts and through the mattress, effectively cutting her into a variety of rectangular pieces. At certain junctions, these smaller pieces would branch off down a separate slide, either acting as pieces to activate another blade, or to get their own transformation done to them. For instance, at one point a piece of her was put into a glass beaker, the downward momentum causing it to bump downwards and turn on the bunsen burner it was set above, melting the piece into a smooth dark brown liquid, which would be poured out, shaped into a knife, and then fling itself to cut another part off of her. Another piece of her was placed on to a hydraulic press, which flattened it out, before tilting over onto a set of hands that folded her flattened square piece into a paper airplane and tossed it towards a target higher up on the machine, which after being hit, caused another blade to cut a piece of her off.

    Eventually, after what seemed like a eternity with far too many passes around the machine for anyone to be able to pay good attention to everything that was going on, the final, uncut piece of Maya was deposited into Frankie’s waiting hand. The piece was pentagonal and looked a bit like a muffin, the comparison not being helped any by a mechanical arm that shot out, shaking a can of what looked like whip cream, but was clearly more Maya, as the cream looked to be the same dark brown as any of her other parts. Frankie gave a wink to the camera, before biting down on the Maya cupcake, revealing the inside to also have a gooey chocolate center. “Mmmm. Chocolatey!”

     The curtains fell, and the contestants made their way back to their bedrooms, excited for the challenges this week may give them.

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

& Question Corner &

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

     “Sinopia O'Hare that was a great display of using magic to replicate toon physics. And converting it to a more theatrical scene, as compared to the 2-dimensionality of TV.” -@@WanderTones

     Thanks Penny! I took a lot of inspiration from the old Looney Tunes shorts specifically because they could work well as a single scene as opposed to some of the modern cartoons that are on today!

     “Elise Zatara, there really was not enough stage magic in Zatanna's appearances, so I must thank you for adding your performance to my repertoire. The use of traditional magic tricks in a villain fight was just the cherry on top. wob a ekaT, Elise, you deserve it.” -@@WanderTones

    R-really? She doesn’t do much stage magic? I’m going to confess… I haven’t really read much of the comic. Most of what I know about her is from some appearances in the animated shows, and some preliminary research I did for an episode on my channel where we talked about magic’s portrayal in comic books, and how Marvel and DC differed.

    Well, glad to hear that my performance was at least entertaining! A little sad that it got me kicked out, but maybe that just has to do with how everyone else did such an amazing job this round!

     “Atsable Kagari, I've only heard of the name of that anime, but I know that even if you weren't keeping with canon, using Kairi as your magician was a perfect fit. Though it may have been a good idea to figure out an anime that could have worked with the magician you may end up assisting for after this show. In any case, I may have to check this anime out.” -@@WanderTones

     Ooh! I would absolutely recommend it! It can get a little childish at times, but so do a lot of other really good animes! It’s really nice to look at, and Trigger’s animation style is always so energetic!

     There are actually some wizards in the canon of the series, but the show takes place in a school for young witches, and all of the teachers seem to be girls, and since Kairi and I had so much fun designing my costume, I thought it would be fun to invite her to perform with me! You’re probably right that I should have aimed to find one with a character more similar to what Howard looks like, but with only a few days to really plan everything out, I’m just glad that Howard was so willing to let me do it!

     “Misty and Humanma, I think your performance, besides Sinopia's, is probably the most universally recognisable of the night. But the fact that you've expressed your love of the series by highlighting some lesser-known Pokemon shows the passion you have for the series. Not to mention that this is the first trick where you've really presented yourself on your own: having Rocky take the role of a Beast Ball... wait, that's actually in the series -some kind of Pokeball shows how well he can work outside of the spotlight, and how well you can work in it.” -@@WanderTones

     Thanks Penny! It was a lot of fun to take more of the reins on this performance! Of course, if I win, I really want to work on trying to find a good balance between Rocky and I so that we can both be in the spotlight, but it great to hear that we can balance it out a bit so that he can take a break.

    Oh, and in case you were wondering, Rocky absolutely loved performing this trick! But it was really difficult to get him to sit around for so long. He also really struggled in trying to bring the monster designs into a real world setting, but I think he did a great job!

     "Maya the... Warlock? I know Howard said "Witch", but the Warlock is the closest class within official rules for D&D. You probably take the cake for the "Nerdiest" performance tonight: between the anime, video game, and comic book references we've seen, having a live play of a D&D encounter was certainly the most original. If I had to recommend something, should you revisit the idea, it would be to maintain the spirit but not so much the mechanics of D&D: dice rolls are great, having a narrator who's experiencing the events is a nice touch, but having to focus on the back and forth between DM and player broke the flow of the performance a little. It's a tough balance, I know, but if the popularity of D&D streams has shown one thing, it's how something special can come from such a unique format.” -@@WanderTones

     Thanks Penny! Hopefully in the future I will be able to cut out the dice, but they were one hundred percent a necessity for tonight. You see (and I know I’m going to spoil the magic a little bit, but I worked really hard on the effect!) I had enchanted the dice in order to help make getting the effects I wanted to turn out better. Not only were the dice rigged, but the actual magic itself was coming straight from the objects. That’s why they all had my cute little logo on them!

     But you’re completely right! Howard and I might have gone a bit overboard on trying to make sure there was enough context to explain what was happening on stage. I’ll make sure to work on that for this new challenge though!

     To Everyone: “Brava! I love the themes you girls come up with and how you took advantage of it for the most part. Though Maya and Elise seems to be the weakest in my opinion compared to the rest and Sable got tiring at some point. But don't let that stuff get you down, learning is half the battle. Specifically for Maya, I like the DND references but kind of felt lost here and there in your act and not in a good way. Sorry.” -Rei

     Annette: Thank you for the kind words!

     Elise: Well, clearly you weren’t the only one that thought my act was weak. But it’s alright! Because now that I’ve had some field experience, it’ll help me be more accurate for my channel!

     Maya: Yeah… As I said with Penny, I might have gone a little overboard in the dialogue department… I just wanted to make sure people who hadn’t played D&D before knew what was going on! Sorry to hear you didn’t like it.

     Sable: Sorry if you found my act tiring at points. I’ll try to make sure it’s more to the point next round!

     Sinopia: Thank you!