Saturday Night
Once again, the cameras panned around the rooftop stage, showing off the fact that all of the impossibly suspended seats were filled. Drake Bordignon stepped out from behind the curtain, and the audience began cheering.
After taking a few bow, Drake began, “Ladies and Gentlemen!” more cheers from the crowd, “Last week, we challenged these four amazing assistants to push themselves to the limit, and create the most complicated performance they could handle. Unfortunately, with the disappearance of our gracious host, we had an emergency challenge update, bending the goal of the challenge a little bit by allowing them to instead focus on learning a trick with some guest magicians under a time crunch.
Before we see how the girls handled this midweek change of pace, we have to first thank our wonderful celebrity judge, Frankie!” As with previous celebrity judges, a spotlight showed down on Frankie. She was wearing a red sequined dress that wonderfully matched her bright red hair. “For not only being a wonderful guest, but for providing us with some emergency magicians in a time of crisis. Please take a bow, Frankie!” Frankie did so, eliciting cheers from the audience.
Suddenly, the security guard who had been sitting next to Frankie stood up. What should have shocked her just made Frankie smile, as the security guard started removing his cap and uniform, revealing Howard in his classic styled suit. “And would you look at this! Guest judging with Frankie is our very own Howard Weiss!” Drake shouted out in genuine surprise, the audience cheering once more for the return of the proper magician of the series. As Frankie and Howard hugged, Drake continued his gracious words towards Frankie, “We here on the ANGA team want to thank her so much for the help she’s done, and apologize for Howard’s absence. After she’s helped provide her notes for the contestants, we’ll be giving her the most wonderful of sendoffs.” Howard and Frankie sat down next to each other, the two whispering as the audience cheers died down.
“And now… Without further ado. Let’s start the show!” Drake announced, walking off stage as the curtains slowly began to rise.
~~~
Maya’s Performance
The curtains rose on a stage that was decorated more like a therapist’s office than for a magic act. The red chaise lounge from Elise’s room had made a return, with Maya currently lounging upon it in a plain green dress. Sitting in a chair opposite of her was Jess, who was wearing a black pantsuit, with a clipboard in her lap. “Okay Maya… so last visit you told me you’ve been having some weird dreams recently?”
“Y-yes. Almost every night,” Maya confirmed.
“Alright, we’re going to try an exercise to see if we can get to the root of these weird dreams. I want you to close your eyes, and walk me through the most recent of these dreams that you can remember.”
“Okay,” Maya said closing her large eye, “So, the very first thing I can remember is that my body was floating around my bedroom,” As she described this, her body began to lift off the chaise lounge, floating to about waist height.
Jess stood up from her chair, placing her clipboard on a nearby table as she walked around Maya, saying, “Go on…”
“Then, I started to feel a strange sort of pressure between my legs and below my arms, and the next thing I knew, I had grown a new pair of arms and a third leg in between my original two.” As she described this, the offending limbs grew on her real body, her costume elastically stretching to accommodate the new limbs.
Jess nodded as Maya continued, “Then… for some reason my hair turned into snakes, which is odd because I don’t think I’ve ever met a true medusa in real life.” Maya’s hair began to take on a green sheen, strands connecting together to form larger green tubes. The ends of these green tubes eventually morphed into the heads of snakes, their tiny snake eyes closed just like Maya’s regular eye.
“Next thing I knew, it felt like I had lost all the bones in my body.” Jess reached up, holding Maya’s middle leg in her hands, she proceeded to bend her knee backwards impossibly.
She played around, bending her legs and arms at strange points, until she looked entangled within her own limbs. Satisfied with her exploration of Maya’s body, Jess told Maya, “You can continue.”
“Then… I started to feel an intense pressure in my stomach. Sort of like something wanted to come out…” As Maya explained this, it seemed like her stomach was gradually expanding outwards. At one point, it sort of looked like a handprint could be visible against her skin. “And eventually, the pressure grew too much, and my parts exploded absolutely everywhere!”
Maya’s parts split up, and soon it seemed like there were hands, arms, legs, a torso, a head, and a bunch of snakes flying around the room, bouncing off the back curtain, and the invisible walls of the rest of their set.
Eventually, the parts began settling, and Jess sat back down in her own chair. Soon a fully reformed Maya found herself lounging on the psychiatrist chair once more. The changes she had performed gradually dwindling away as she finally opened her eyes, looking at Jess with a smile on her face, “Do you think that means anything?”
“Well…” Jess said, looking at her clipboard, “It sounds to me like a pretty standard stress dream. I wouldn’t worry about it too much unless these symptoms started manifesting in the real world.”
“Alright, thanks!” Maya said, standing up and walking offstage, the curtain dropping behind her.
~~~
Sinopia’s Performance
The curtains rose, and the audience knew that they at least were going to get an interesting performance based on the set-up. Standing center stage was a towering hunk of machinery, the words ‘The Disaster Machine’ written on the side in spray-painted red lettering with a red arrow pointing to a large red button on the front of the machine. From opposite sides of the stage, JJ and Sinopia stepped out, Sinopia wearing an orange-sequined dress, while JJ was wearing a scientist outfit. The two girls exchanged questioning looks, as they reached the center of the stage taking a bow. “So, Sinopia, are you ready to perform the trick?”
“Yep!” Sinopia smiled, the two girls walking in opposite directions, Sinopia heading towards one end of ‘The Disaster Machine’, while JJ walked off stage.
JJ wheeled out what looked to be a rather standard zigzag cabinet. She looked towards Sinopia, who was about to step into the large machine and asked, “What are you doing?”
“I thought we were performing the trick!” Sinopia said, waving her hand at the large machine.
“No. That’s just for decoration. We’re doing a zigzag, remember?” JJ said.
“Oh… Right,” Sinopia smiled, walking over to the cabinet in getting in.
“Alright. Here we go!” JJ said, grabbing two blade, and sticking them into the cabinet at approximately head height and hip height.
“Ouch! Be careful,” Sinopia whined from inside.
“Sorry,” JJ went to the other end of the cabinet, pulling on the handle attached to the middle third, which jammed. JJ did her best to save face, giving a smile to the audience and pulling harder on the handle with all her might. After two more failed tugs, she managed to get the middle section free, but due to the amount of force she was using the piece came off the guide rails, crashing to the floor and completely destroying the box that had previously surrounded Sinopia’s torso. The force of the box coming free of the guide rails caused the rest of the cabinet to start tilting the other way, eventually crashing on to the floor as well, the wood splintering apart.
“Ouch,” Sinopia said dryly, doing her best to shake her head to get the driftwood off. JJ went around, gathering Sinopia’s three distinct parts (head, torso, and legs) and displayed them on a table.
JJ stepped back, announcing slightly annoyed “Ta da!” Just as she did so, a stage light fell from the ceiling, landing squarely on Sinopia’s torso, causing most of the audience to jump back in fright. Unlike what would have been expected of a falling light, the light landed with a dull thud against the table, all traces of Sinopia’s torso having disappeared. After some struggling with the light, JJ managed to pull it away, lifting up what remained of Sinopia’s torso.
Sinopia’s torso had been completely flattened, the only thing remaining being a thin disk of flesh with an orange-sequined outer coating. Sinopia looked like she was on the verge of tears, saying, “Gah! I wonder what else could go wrong!”
As if on cue, a guillotine blade swung down from the ceiling, hitting Sinopia’s hips straight through the middle, cutting them so that each new part had half of a hip and a leg. Sinopia moaned slightly, as the blade continued through her body, slicing through the table and causing her parts to all fall inwards towards the dull sides of the blade.
JJ reached down, picking up the only normal part of Sinopia’s body that was left, her head. She actually looked like she was on the verge of tears, so JJ held her close cooing, “Don’t worry Sinopia. Everything’s going to be alright.”
“No it isn’t! Almost everything that could go wrong has!” Sinopia said.
“Well… Do you know what we do when things mess up this catastrophically?” JJ asked.
“*sniff* Use the Disaster Machine?”
“Exactly!” JJ opened up the door on one end of the large machine, methodically putting everything that had been destroyed into it, including Sinopia’s limbs, the parts from the zigzag cabinet, the table, the stage light, and the guillotine blade. She closed the door, pressing the large red button and causing the machine to whir to life.
The sound of hammer noises, saw blades, and other power tool noises could be heard, as two steam pipes at the top of the machine blew out a bunch of smoke. Eventually, the noises died down, and out from the other end of the machine, a large, fully reconstructed cabinet was produced.
JJ opened the door, and out walked Sinopia completely restored! Well, really mostly restored, as the casual viewer would have spotted that her legs were on the wrong side of her body. Both of them looked down, before looking at each other and shrugging, Sinopia commenting, “Close enough.” The two walked back towards center stage and took a bow, as the curtains fell down once more.
~~~
Annette’s Performance
Zoe walked out on stage, wearing a cowgirl’s outfit, complete with a rather tacky looking pink stetson, a golden retriever attached to a leash following close behind her. “Hello everyone! My name is Zoe, and this good girl is my assistant for the night, Annette.” Annette gave a cute little bark, “Now, I know what you’re probably thinking. Pretty standard looking dog, right? Wrong! Watch this! Annette! Spit it out!” Annette seemed to make a motion like a cat coughing up a fur ball, before her mouth stretched impossibly wide, allowing for a strange looking person to walk out.
It was undeniably Rocky, the creature’s golden eyes and sharp toothed smile making it obvious, but the form that he held was significantly more human looking that the one he had demonstrated towards the start of the week. For starters, Rocky had stylized his hair so that it looked like he was wearing a pure black evening gown, and nice long flowing hair on the top of her head. He had also managed to get his fur to shorten, although it still wasn’t low enough that you could make out what Rocky’s skin tone underneath everything was. Rocky posed, giving a cute, but toothy grin.
“This is my other wonderful assistant, Rocky! And today, we’re going to do the classic cutting an assistant in half. But first, we’re going to need the props to do so. Annette! Split!” Zoe commanded. After a moment of concentration where the dog had to close its eyes, the cute golden dog form of Annette split in half right through her snout. The two sides walked apart, the skin between them bubbling until there were now two copies of the Annette dog standing next to each other. One copy sniffed the but of the other, and vice versa, before the two dogs started running around the stage.
“Okay! Annette 1! Box!” The dogs stopped running, and the one on the left gave a little nod, before it closed its eyes again in a look of concentration. Her form began to expand outwards slowly, gaining sharp corners, as her body became a furry version of the cabinet used in sawing an assistant in half.
“Great! Rocky, you get in. Annette 2! Saw!” Rocky opened the furry box effortlessly, sliding into position, as the normal Annette dog nodded. She closed her eyes in concentration, and her form began to flatten and lengthen out slightly, the tip of her snout becoming the tip of a large saw, some large canine teeth making the teeth of the saw. To demonstrate that Annette’s new form could work as a real saw, Zoe pulled out a plank of wood from offstage, picking up her new furry saw and cawing through the board with ease.
“Now, for the moment of truth,” Zoe said, placing the furry saw at the midpoint along the length of the furry box. She began sawing through, and within moments, she had separated the two halves of her pure black assistant. She started tickling one of her human looking feet, causing an inhuman laugh to escape from Rocky’s lips. Of course, to further prove her point, she then opened the halves of the furry box, helping lift Rocky’s halves out and revealing his bisected state.
“The best part of working with Annette, though, is the cleanup is so easy,” Zoe commented, as she pushed the two halves of the Annette box back together again. She opened up the box, and placed Rocky’s two halves and her saw clone in before closing the lid again. “Annette! Pocket Size!” The box began to shrink, until it was a fluffy box about one inch by one inch.
Zoe picked up the box, whistling a western tune as the curtains drew close to thunderous applause.
~~~
Sable’s Performance
The curtains raised, and Sable looked out at the crowd like a deer in headlights. She was wearing a sequined black leotard and her silver earrings, while Trina was, shockingly, in a more modest outfit, wearing an outfit that was very similar to the outfit that Frankie had worn the very first night she had been there. “Are you doing alright, Sable?” she asked calmly.
Sable shook her head, clearing her mind and focusing on the performance ahead, “Y-yes,” she finally managed to squeak out.
“Do you remember what we were going to demonstrate today?” Trina asked.
“Of course," Sable smiled, “We were going to teach people how to make clay sculptures. Right?”
“That’s correct! The first thing you’re going to need is a wonderful assistant like my own,” Trina grinned, gesturing to Sable, who was becoming less stiff as she warmed up to the crowd watching her and gave a short little curtsy. “Next, you’re going to have her lie down, but for convenience of view, I’m going to have her levitate, so that you all can get a good view of what I’m about to do.” Sable lent backwards, her upper body staying in place as her lower body rotated, leaving her floating at about waist height to Trina.
“First things first, you’re going to grab your assistant by the legs and pull!” Trina explained, grabbing hold of both of her ankles and walking backwards. As she did so, her legs seemed to lengthen, although Sable’s arms looked like they were being sucked in. Eventually, once her hands had reached her shoulders, her legs stopped stretching. “This step isn’t completely necessary,” Trina explained, as she circled around Sable’s body towards her head, “but I find that if you stretch the legs first, it makes this step much easier.”
Trina put her hands on either side of Sable’s head, and began to pull. Her neck began stretching impossibly towards Trina, her legs being sucked into her body in a similar manner to how her arms had, until her feet were flush with her hips, giving her a look sort of like a mutated giraffe.
“Next, using any sharp instrument, you're going to cut off your assistant’s neck directly below her head, and as close to her chest, making sure to get as much as possible,” Trina demonstrated using a machete, using two quick slices, catching Sable’s head but allowing her elongated neck to fall to the floor, where it landed with a dull thud.
“Now begins the fun part!” Trina placed Sable’s head on the floor before picking up the hunk of neck. “You get to knead the neck!” She sat down on the floor, kneading the neck like someone would kneed pizza dough.
“You don’t necessarily have to use the neck,” Sable explained, “but we’ve found that the small bones of the vertebrae in the neck are absorbed much easier than the bones in either the arms or legs.”
“When you’re done that, feel free to sculpt whatever you want using your new clay,” Trina made a variety of tiny shapes, out of Sable’s former neck, including a cube, a little dog, and a pyramid. “Next, we’ll start setting up our kiln so that you can fire these up.” Trina stood up, plucking Sable’s torso out of the air. “First remove, her hand and feet, these’ll be important for later,” Trina did so, before placing Sable’s torso on the floor. She traced a circle pattern around it, before grabbing her right breast, eliciting a gasp from Sable as her front opened up like a door.
“Next, we’ll need a tray and some kindling to heat these up. Luckily, we already have both,” Trina grinned, as she plucked Sable’s mouth off of her head, and held the head in her hands so that one was on top of her head, and one was below. With ease, Trina close her hands together, causing Sable’s head to resemble a pancake, which she placed on some unseen latches in her torso, suspending it at around stomach level. Next, Trina grabbed Sable’s hands and feet, plucking off the fingers and toes and splitting the palm and sole into smaller pieces, which she placed below the new head plate. She snapped her fingers, and suddenly the tiny parts of her former hands and feet lit up, blackening up in a similar manner to firewood.
“Now, put your clay sculptures in, and your new convenient mouth timer will tell you when they’re all ready to take out and start painting!” Trina grinned, doing so.
After about thirty seconds, Sable’s voice spoke up, saying, “They’re done! Be careful getting them out, I’m very hot!” Trina once again grabbed the breast doorknob, an oven mitt appearing as she grabbed the plate the sculptures were sitting on, revealing that they were now fully painted sculptures before taking a bow, the curtains closing once more.
~~~
Sendoff
“Once again, please give it up for our wonderful emergency magicians!” Drake said, walking out and amping up the crowd, “Without their help, it’s entirely likely we would have had to cancel this week’s competition!” The audience cheered with a massive amount of enthusiasm. Drake continued, “And that’s our show for the night! Which means that once again, it is time for the audience at home to decide the fate of our lovely assistants. Only three of these four girls can move on to the next round, so get on your devices and choose one to remove. We want to wish all of our contestants the best of luck in staying in this competition, and to all of you watching at home, Goodnight Everybody!”
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& And Now, A Word From Our Sponsors &
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“Want to keep up to date on all the latest America’s Next Great Assistant news?” The voiceover asked, “Well then head on over to the ANGA page on the Channel 17 website, where you can interact with other members of the community.” The commercial showed off the ANGA portal on the website, with links to the various features that they could perform.
“In addition to seeing audition tapes, check out the fully recorded practice sessions with no interruptions, or the extended sixty minutes version of the episodes. For those with premium cable packages and just dying for more ANGA content, feel free to also tune into the 24-7 livestream cameras.” The video clicked to the video tab, showing off the variety of these sorts of videos, “Not to mention special, behind-the-scenes interviews with all of our celebrity cameos about their time on the show!” The video showed Frankie and her four spokeswomen she had brought in being interviewed panel styled by a certain famous red-haired reporter.
“Head on down to the discussion forum, where you can talk with other fans of the show, discussing your thoughts on contestants performance, or potentially who you hope will win.” The video cut once more back to the ANGA main portal, clicking on the discussion tab, where a variety of message boards were already set up, including some listed as ‘TwinFaceOff’, ’MayaAllTheWay’, and ‘RockyInvestigationCommittee’.
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