Saturday Night

     The rooftop stage was absolutely buzzing with the chattering of the hundreds of magicians and assistants who had came to see the grand finale of the second season of America’s Next Great Assistant. The curtain shuffled around a little bit, and the audience suddenly grew quiet. However, rather than Drake, Howard walked out, holding a microphone.

     “Hello Everyone,” Howard grinned, “It’s wonderful that you could all make it. Before we start today’s show, I would just like to take the chance to thank a member of our community, who due to a series of events, some tragic, others uplifting, was unable to take part in our season. She wasn’t part of our community for very long, but the impact she’s had on us all shall be remembered for quite a while. Would you please give a round of applause for Erin?” David began clapping his hands, the audience quickly following along and growing louder, as a film reel of some of Erin’s exploits began playing on the monitors above the stage.

     The video included a large variety of acts, including being sawed in half, her being penetrated by a drill, and finally of Erin’s final performance, where her soon to be husband, Zack proposed to her. As this final trick performed, a message appeared across the screen,

     ’Congrats on the engagement, Erin! The ANGA team hopes you make a swift recovery!’

     Howard wiped a tear away from his eye, before returning back to the audience, “Now then… Who’s excited for the Grand Finale?” The audience cheered even louder, and Howard took this as his cue to get offstage and back to his seat.

     After another couple of minutes allowing for the tension to build up again, Drake finally walked out from behind the curtain, the audience going crazy. “Ladies! And! Gentlemen!” Drake announced, pronouncing each word clearly before moving on to the next, “I hope that you all are ready for the Grand Finale of America’s Next Great Assistant second season!” The audience cheered enthusiastically in response.

     “Last week, we challenged our glorious finalists, Annette and Sable, to perform one of the most difficult magic routines known to mankind. Two Magicians, Two Assistants, One Stage, Three Tricks, One Stage, and No Curtains in between. It will push everything that these two have learned to the absolute limits.” More cheering.

     “And of course, it should, because the winner of this challenge, as decided by the viewers, will signing a single year, extendable contract with the World-Class Ranked Magician, Howard Weiss! With! A One! Million! Dollar! Sign On Bonus!” The cheering grew even louder, most likely waking up everyone within a mile-wide radius of the hotel.

     “Then, with no further delay, Please silent all cellphones, and enjoy the show!” Drake walked offstage, the audience’s loud cheers suddenly becoming quiet as the curtains began to rise one final time…

~~~

Introduction

     The curtains rose to an interesting scene. The stage was set up like a park, with a green, hilly backdrop and a dirt path on the floor. Several stagehands had been recruited to mill about forwards and backwards across the stage.

     Sitting in front of this scene on a park bench were Lisa and Ann, each dressed up in some standard clothing: A t-shirt in their favorite color (red for Ann, green for Lisa) and jeans. Lisa spoke up first, looking at Ann, the audience and cameras able to only pick up half of the smile on her face. “Hey Ann… Do you want to play a game with me?”

     On Ann’s turn to speak, she turned towards Lisa, Lisa turning back towards the stagehand pedestrians, “Sure thing Lisa. What do you have in mind?”

     They swapped what they were looking at once again, “The game is that we each pick a person in this crowd for each other, and perform a magic trick with them. Whoever performs the best trick wins”

     Another co-ordinated change in where they were looking, “Alright. What does the winner get if they win?”

     Lisa’s turn, “Bragging rights?”

     Ann’s turn, “Alright, I’m in.”

     Lisa’s turn once more, “Excellent.” She snapped her fingers, and with a puff of smoke all of the stagehand extras on the stage disappeared.

     The only people remaining on the stage were two girls, walking in different directions and frozen in place. The one on stage left had on a black sweatshirt over her head, and a pair of black jeans, her black hair just peaking past the lip of it. The one on stage right was walking a tiny black beagle (who was also frozen in place) and was wearing pink cowgirl boots, blue jeans, a pink button down shirt, and pink cowboy hat.

     “Hm,” Lisa said, walking over to the tiny cowgirl as Ann walked over to the other, both finally looking towards the audience, “I think we might need to give these girls a bit of a lesson first.”

     Ann nodded, both girls snapping their fingers, as the two girls suddenly became free of whatever spell had been holding them in place. Their bodies and the clothes they were wearing gradually began to change.

     The short girl in the black sweatshirt grew slightly taller, her hoodie and jeans transforming into a beautifully sequined black leotard. Her short black hair grew out, and a pair of silver earrings with the letter S engraved on them grew out of her ears.

     The cowgirl, similarly, grew older. Her blonde hair grew out, her pink cowgirl hat and cowgirl boots turning black, as the rest of her outfit turned red, becoming a brilliantly sequined, red leotard. Next to her, her tiny dog grew in size, becoming a black wolf.

     The audience respectfully clapped, as Sable and Annette looked at themselves in mock surprise at their sudden change. Lisa smiled, “Ann, why don’t you go first? I think my two need a bit more time to adjust to the change.”

     “Sure thing Lisa,” Ann grinned, grabbing her new assistant by the shoulder and taking her to the center of the stage.

~~~

Sable’s Performance

     “Alright kid, what’s you name,” Ann asked.

     “Sable!” Sable smiled towards the audience, her stage fright having decided to keep itself hidden for once.

     “Do you know any cool magic tricks, Sable?” Ann asked.

     “Well, I can do this,” Sable held her finger up in the air, a tiny bulb of light popping out from the end of it, leaving a path of light in the air that spelled out her name. “My mom taught me that one.”

     “Hm… Interesting, but is there anything else?” Ann asked.

     “Well, I can do this too,” Sable reached up, pulling off her head with ease, and tucking it under her arm. “Ooh! Actually I think I might have an idea for a trick!”

     “Alright then, go ahead and whisper it in my ear,” Ann said, Sable doing as such. Ann grinned, “Sounds great! Why don’t you go ahead and take the lead? After all, you know more about this branch of magic than I do.”

     “Sure!” Sable smiled, reattaching her head and turning towards the audience.

     “Hello everyone! Ann and I are going to hopefully show you some interesting stuff. But first,” Sable closed her eyes and just like last week, her hair and leotard turning bright white once again. A key difference this time, was that when she opened her eyes, her normally dark brown irises had turned closed to an amber color and gave off a little bit of light of there own, “we’ll need to do a little bit of prep work.”

     Sable closed her eyes, and gave a look of concentration, as light began to collect together in a single spot, seeming to form a brightly lit slab in the air. Sable sat down on the slab, revealing that she had not only created a surface out of light, but one that could support itself. She closed her eyes, and with a swish of her hand, left a trail of light that resembled a sword.

     “Here you go, Ann!” Sable grinned, lying down on her slab of light, “Can you do the honors?”

     “With pleasure,“ Ann grinned, two oven mitts appearing on her hands so that she could grab the glowing hot blade. As she swung it through the air and through Sable, it disappeared.

     “Ah...” Sable sighed, the two halves of her slab of light drifting apart to show off her cross section, which glowed a bright orange, but was slowly returning to her natural pale skin color “I love being cut by light, because it automatically cauterizes the wound!”

     “Of course,” Sable sat her upper torso up, her legs hopping off and walking to their mark in front of Sable, “Just having a plain old sawing in half wouldn’t be that interesting…” Sable closed her eyes, and it appeared that suddenly, Sable’s upper half had teleported onto lower half backwards. However, as her lower half side-stepped around the floating slab of light, it had became apparent that what had actually happened was a second copy of Sable’s torso had appeared, and was attached to her hips backwards.

     “With some simple reflection magic, I can create a perfect copy of any parts of my body in the real world. The best part is, there’s only one side effect to it,” Ann walked over grabbing the head of Sable’s reflected body, and pulling up, the part coming off with ease. On Sable’s real body, her own head popped off, floating in the air and matching the trajectory perfectly to Ann’s movements of her reflected head.

     “Anything that happens to my reflected body happens to my real body, and vice versa,” Sable demonstrated by pulling her own arm off, the reflected torso doing the same, with her actions mirrored.

     Ann grinned, walking over and picking up Sable’s original body, her reflected body suddenly disconnecting from her lower half and floating upwards, “I wonder what happens if we touch the parts together though…”

     “No-“ Sable didn’t have enough time to stop Ann, as her parts completely intersected, both upper halves disappearing.

     “Oh no!” Ann said in mock surprise, “Oh dear! Don’t worry Sable! We can get you back! Umm…” She frantically walked around, before looking towards the audience, a lightbulb appearing nearby. From her pocket, she pulled out a handkerchief, putting it atop of the cross-section of Sables lower half (which had finally returned to her normal skin color), and saying, “Alright Sable, I want you to reflect your lower half across this.”

     As if on cue, Sable’s lower half appeared, reflected across so that its feet were dangling in the air. Her body leaned backwards, and soon the connected lower halves of Sable were walking about the stage a bit like a crab, stepping out forwards with both legs, and then backwards with her others, resulting in her whole body moving sideways.

     “Alright, now if I just take this,” Ann grabbed the slab of light out of the air, using it to cover one of Sable’s lower halves. With a snap of her fingers, Sable crashed to the floor. Sitting herself up on her four elbows, Sable now resembled a queen from a playing card, two front halves connect together.

     “As I was about to warn you, because the reflection is on an equal but opposite wavelength, when the two come into contact with each other, they cancel them out.”

     “Sorry about that,” Ann grinned, “Now, do you have any idea how we’re going to get your lower half back to normal?”

     “What we need to do is polarize one half of my body so that it’s a lower half once again.” Sable explained

     “How do we do that?” Ann asked.

     “Grab those two slabs of light,” Sable pointed to the two halves of the slab of light she had created at the beginning of the trick, “And hold them close together so that there’s only a thin strip between them.” Ann did as instructed, only leaving a gap about the thickness of a paperclip. “Now, just keep them that way, I’ll do the rest.”

     Sable maneuvered her body, lining up one of her heads with the gap and pushing. After some initial resistance, her body began to distort, flattening out as it pushed through. On the other end, Sable’s flattened lower body slowly began to be fed out. Once she had reached where her upper halves had joined together, she asked Ann to hand her the slabs.

     “What are you going to do with those?” Ann asked.

     “Well, we polarized my body, but there was a large amount of energy loss in the process, which is why they’re so flat, So…” Sable took the two slabs of light, and pressed them into each of her flat legs. As she fed them in, her legs began to gain more definition, and soon enough Sable was once again back to normal, taking a bow alongside Ann.

~~~

Annette’s Performance

     Lisa clapped politely, along with the audience of magicians and assistants who were clapping wildly at Sable’s performance. “Well kid,” Lisa turned towards Annette, “Are you ready to perform now?”

     “I should be,” Annette grinned.

     “Excellent, anything I should know about?” Lisa asked.

     “Well, Rocky, and I have been practicing a routine,” Annette looked nervously over at Rocky, “I think it shouldn’t matter that much that I’ve grown a little bit for it.”

     “Great, anything I need to know?” Lisa asked.

     “Oh yeah!” Annette walked over, whispering it into her ear.

     “Okay than, let’s get this show on the road!” Lisa grinned.

     “Alright Rocky! Ball!” Annette commanded. Rocky’s formed puffed outwards, as he gained an overall more spherical shape. Soon enough, he looked a bit like a furry, black yoga ball, with yellow eyes and a sharp-toothed mouth.

     With impressive acrobatics, Annette jumped up onto the Rocky ball in a single leap, and slowly began walking on him, rolling the Rocky ball this way and that across the stage. She even managed to perform a few tricks of her own while on top of the ball, like jumping and around in the air, and at one point walking on her hands to show her impressive sense of balance.

     Eventually though, she came to a stop in the center of the stage, Rocky’s mouth directly below her as she took a bow towards the audience. Lisa grinned as she ordered, “Rocky! Balls!”

     In an instant, Rocky’s mouth grew incredibly wide, plunging Annette quickly into the seemingly infinite darkness of his insides. Rocky’s form began to bubble and quickly began bursting apart, sending about a dozen smaller, spherical Rockys in a multitude of directions. The balls themselves then opened up, revealing several shrunken and spherical Annettes within.

     As the tiny Rockys began to coalesce back into a singular form, Lisa reached down, picking up the tiny, balled Annettes and beginning to juggle them in the air. Each time one of her was tossed up in the air, the mouth on the tiny face of each ball would scream in excitement from the feeling of going up, and then coming back down, creating an interesting echoing effect.

     After a few more rotations of this, Rocky had finally managed to pull himself back together, looking excitedly at Lisa for his next command. “Alright Rocky! Catch!” Lisa commanded, throwing out an Annette at him. He jumped up in the air, catching her in his mouth and swallowing the Annette ball.

     With the next few tosses, he continued to imitate this, however for the last few, Rocky began having a lot of fun morphing himself into different things to catch the Annette ball, including a trash can, a basket ball hoop, and a giant mouth, before turning into his human form for the last ball and catching Annette in his hands, petting her hairy top softly, eliciting a little purr from Annette.

     “Rocky, You’ve been working so hard. Why don’t you let Annette do the hard work for the next bit?” Rocky nodded politely, letting the tiny Annette ball roll on the floor until it came to a natural stop.

     The Annette ball stretched outwards unevenly, first an arm managing to pop out from its confined form, kneading its fingers in order to help other features form. After a bit more tinkering, Annette stood proudly on stage, although still much smaller than her normal form. This changed, as Annette closed her eyes, focusing on growing into form for the next part of the act.

     Annette’s form began to grow taller, and harrier, as she took on a four legged stance to accommodate her change. Her hands and feet began to shift into cylinders, becoming hard hooves. Her nose began to expand outwards, joining with her mouth to become a snout. Two large horns started to grow from the sides of her head, and her blond hair grew to cover her entire body. Within moments, Annette had transformed herself to a bull on stage.

     Rocky grew out a bit of flesh from his arm, fashioning a cape of sorts, his normally black fur becoming bright red. Annette, seeing Rocky’s new Red cape, charged at him. Predictably, when Annette got close, Rocky hopped out of the way, Annette skidding to a stop behind him, and attempting to charge at him again.

     This went on for a little while longer, Lisa looking at her clock before finally instructing Rocky, “Alright Rocky! Let’s move onto the closer now!” Rocky nodded.

     This time, as Annette charged at him, he let her hit his cape, the cape wrapping around her and forming a sac around her. With relative ease, Rocky absorbed the sack into his body, returning to his uncanny human-esque appearance. “Alright Rocky! Merge!”

     Rocky’s head turned downwards, as his skin tone gradually began to change, lightening up but still ending up several shades darker than Annettes. His proportions began to adjust, becoming closer to Annette’s than his exaggerated assistant proportions. A strange black aura seemed to emanate from him. Finally, Rocky lifted his head up, revealing the his head now almost exactly matched Annette’s, the key difference being that their now more human looking eyes had yellow irises, and her hair was closer to a brunette color than her normal blonde.

     “Annette? Rocky? How do you feel? Who’s in control?” Lisa asked.

     “We feel fantastic,” the new girl said, her voice sounding like Annette’s with some inhuman guttural tones harmonizing several octaves lower. “You may call us… Roxy.”

     “Well, can you still handle the show stopper this way?”

     “Gladly,” Roxy, closed her eyes, bending downwards and leaping into the air. From her back, a pair of black bird wings emerged, and with some effort, Roxy managed to fly upwards for a bit, doing a somersault as she came back down to Earth, performing a perfect splits as she landed.

     Lisa stepped besides the impressive display, taking a bow for her and the audience let loose the applause they had been saving for the compounded trick.

~~~

Shared Performance

     “So,” the still glowing Sable asked once the applause had died down, walking over to where Annette and Rocky were still merged together “Who won the game?”

     “Hm…” Lisa said, “I don’t know… Were you keeping score?”

     “Nope!” Ann laughed, “I guess nobody wins then!”

     “What!” Sable and Roxy said.

     “Yep! And now, you two can go back to living your plain, old, boring lives,” Lisa grinned, holding up her fingers.

     “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Roxy asked Sable.

      “If you’re thinking about performing a little bit of an Assistant’s Revenge, then that’s exactly what I’m thinking,” Sable grinned.

     From Roxy’s back, eight black tentacles shot out, wrapping themselves around Lisa and Ann’s hands and feet, lifting them up into the air with ease.

     “This is insubordination!” Ann shouted out.

      “Not really, we just didn’t want you two to miss out on the fun,” From Sable’s hands, two beams of light shot out, and with a single slice, she cut cleanly through Lisa and Ann from their crotch through the center of their head. As Roxy pulled the two halves apart, the audience could clearly see that their insides were protected by a layer of glowing red skin.

     Roxy’s mouth opened impossibly wide, and the tentacles fed the former magician halves in one-by-one. Satisfied, Roxy walked over to where Lisa and Ann had originally started the show, two large mouthes forming out of her hands and spitting out the duo, the two completely petrified into statues.

     Roxy and Sable returned to center stage, high-high-fiving each other for a job well done, realizing that they were slowly shrinking in stature once more. “We guess that without them actively using their magic, we’re reverting back to how we were…” Roxy said.

     “No!” Sable said, her voice filled with real emotion, despite the fact they had rehearsed this scene so many times before, “It’s not fair! There’s still so many tricks I wanted to perform with you!”

     “And Us with you,” Roxy said, her voice becoming clearer as she spoke.

      “Do you think… When we go back to our separate lives, that we’ll ever be able to find each other and perform together again?” Sable asked, her white light fading back into black, her voice getting slightly more high pitched.

     “Of course we will!” Roxy had reverted back to Annette and Rocky, Rocky having melted out through her feet and returned to his beagle formed. She had a strong melancholic edge to it, “After all, Darkness and Light are just two halves of the same coin. I know that we’ll perform together again some day!”

     The two girls, now reverted back to the younger selves they had started this trick as, hugged each other, real tears flowing down their eyes as the curtains closed on their final trick of the Season.

~~~  

Sendoff

     “Ladies and Gentlemen! Could we please get a massive round of applause for our two wonderful finalists, and our two breath-taking guest magicians, Lisa and Ann!” The audience cheered loudly.

     “And now, the moment that you’ve been waiting nearly five whole weeks to finally get to: The Final Vote of the Season!” Loud applause, “Unlike our previous votes. Tonight, you will be voting on who will become Howard’s new assistant, and thus be America’s Next Great Assistant. You can choose to base it on tonight’s performance, overall performance, or really any metric you wish to use. We hope that you’ve had a great time watching, and hope that you’ll tune in tomorrow for the results, and special live coverage from the Afterparty.” Drake waved, as the credits began to roll, closing out the program for the night.

Sorry Voting is Closed

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

& Question Corner &

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

     To Drake: “In case you are wondering, I managed to snagged that snow globe from a magic shop that I usually buy my props back in my magician days. Don't think I shrunk my entire store, it's just a damn good projection. Disclaimer, no heads were shrunken and harmed in the process. I did manage to find a part timer to look out my store for the time being.” -Rei

     That’s excellent to hear Rei. I hope that the heads had an excellent view of tonights Grand Finale!

     To Ophelia: “It's been a while but I got a special suprise for you, from a point of view. The Magick heads, they like to be called that sometimes, in my shop are watching you even though you aren't performing. They mostly want an excuse to see you again.” -Rei

     How kind of them. However, if they really wanted an excuse to see me, they simply could have requested a formal meeting with my Coven.

     To Sable: “I begged for Rei for me to visit you physically but Rei warned me about the rules. However, I am watching you perform from her magical artifact. I wish you well my apprentice.” -Izzy

     Thank you so much Izzy! I really hope that you enjoyed it!

     To Annette, Sable, Sinopia, Maya, and Howard: “I'll see you all at the after party, and tell you what happened the day of your challenge when we are away from the cameras and microphones, the others from season one are also invited to this. I'll bet they are curious too, just don't tell anyone what we reveal. I know Ophelia's coven can bind themselves with a magical oath of secrecy, except in cases when keeping the secret will endanger much. Can't wait to see you all there, and you can meet my family too.” -Genie Schutter.

     Sinopia: Don’t worry, I would never tell another living soul!

     Sable: …Yeah, maybe you might want to just keep Sin out on the loop of this one Genie. She’s a little bit of a blabber mouth.

     Sinopia: I am not! Gosh! I liked you so much better when you weren’t so assertive!

     Sable: *Sticks out tongue*

     Sinopia: *Sticks out her own tongue, smiling*

     Annette: Alright you two, settle down. Genie, I hope that our meeting will be able to answer the many, many questions I have for you about that day.

     Maya: I don’t really remember much from the day, other than the fact that it took almost a full two hours after filming that day for my eye to recover from getting hit with a tree branch, even with the healing potions they’ve got on standby.

     Howard: I’m very much looking forward to finally meeting your family Genie, and it would be especially helpful to know what exactly happened that day for insurance purposes.

     To Howard: “I want to thank you for housing my personal security detail near our suite and also for our luxurious accommodations. They are much appreciated, as well as the friendliness of your staff, they are really first rate. Your Bellhop Dudley seemed a little taken aback by his tip though. Was ten-thousand from each of us too little?”

-Jacob Schutter.

     It’s absolutely no problem Jake to host your security detail, we get many high-level VIP’s at the Hotel Weiss, so we’re used to having to come to some sort of compromise when guarantying their security.

     Also, I’m not aware of the exchange rate where you are from, but I must regrettably inform you that ten-thousand from each of you was far, far too generous. Dudley nearly had a panic attack earlier today when he came into my office to try and ask if I could return the money to you. In the future, for a family of your size, one hundred dollars would be seen as extremely generous for the caliber of our establishment. I will probably discuss with you later tonight what we can do regarding this fifty-thousand dollar kindness.

     To Nora: “You really should not wait, since your dad already told me that he wants to be off on tour once the winner is crowned. My advice, I know that from experience, you might talk to him right now, when he is still around. Wish you best luck.” -Andrea

     Oh gosh… He once to go on tour that quickly? I would think that he would at least want to stick around and rehearse his routine a little bit first… Maybe he needs me more than I realized?

     To Sable and Annette: “I still can't believe the Finale is here, my best wishes to both of you girls, you have deserved it and if I may give you both a lil advice, regardless of who wins, don't be afraid to tell Howard when something is not right to you. Like I had the nerves to open my mouth as well. And I'm pretty sure he could have easily found me. As long you don't get insulting he will listen.” -Andrea

     Sable: Thank you so much Andrea! I hope that you enjoyed tonight’s show!

     Annette: Same here! And you don’t have to worry about me or Sable. We’ll definitely make sure that he sticks on the right path!

     To the other Girls: “Congratulation to your successful careers, I'm happy that you all got into a good life and having something you love. Also Maya, I'm glad you got into a good position too, I was sad you didn't made it into the Finale. A friend of mine, she's a Monoeye too, wants to say to you that she is impressed about your determination. Speaking of which, I have asked Sable and Annette already, but what did you take from ANGA as learning experience?” -Andrea

     Maya: Thank you so much Andrea! What I took away as a learning experience… Well, obviously how to enchant objects would probably be the biggest one, was it basically helped me to discover an easier method to finally help hemi- and non-humans learn magic! What about you girls?

     Elise: I learned that I can trust the people around me to make good decisions, and that I shouldn’t try to micromanage everything in my life. Cody did an amazing job while I was away, and with our new manager, viewership on Everyday Magic has been through the roof!

     Sinopia: I learned to finally take charge of my own life, and that while I already knew Sable was good at magic, it turns out that she’s really freaking good at magic!

     Patricia: I must admit, I think that my short time on the show has helped me to see magic slightly more than just a means to an end. Magic can allow for many wonderful things that can help people work past the difficult points in their lives.

     Maya: Well, there you have it Andrea! I hope that you enjoyed the show, despite the fact I didn’t get to make it to the end!

     To Howard: “Thank you for the reminder, but I still guess it will be difficult for me, since I don't even live in the States. Still, I wish you a wonderful time and good luck with your show once ANGA is over. Besides that, you should speak with Nora, you would do good taking time for that ASAP.” -Andrea

     Yes, you’re probably right. If I don’t talk to her soon, I’m sure that I’ll lose my chance. Thank you for the advice, Andrea.