As was her tradition, Frankie had gathered the contestants for morning breakfast various breakfast staples being passed around and shared between the six contestants and their three mentors. “So girls,” Frankie grinned, “How did you four manage to get along yesterday, all stuck together?”

     Natalie spoke up first, “It was the worst! Rachel kept trying to drag us to go do stuff. I’m pretty sure I still have sand burns,” Natalie lifted her shirt off, showing unique blue bruises from that she had gotten the previous day.

     “Well, I wouldn’t have had to drag us everywhere, if you’d cooperated. You know, we didn’t have to stay in your room the whole day. We could have been equally productive at a park or somewhere else!”

     “If you had just worked with me, we could probably could have figured out our trick in a few hours, and then have plenty of time to relax!” Natalie shot back.

     “Yeah! And if you-"

     Frankie broke up their fight by interrupting Rachel, kindly but with force behind her words, “Girls, please calm down.”

     Rachel gave Natalie the stink eye, who returned in kind with sticking out her tongue.

     “Clearly your time together yesterday wasn’t as productive as I would have hoped,” Frankie sighed, “I’m sure though, we can come to a better understanding at your rehearsal today.” The two assistants continued to give each other dirty looks, as Frankie looked at Olive and Kacie, “I hope that you two had a better time of things yesterday.”

     “Oh yah! For sure!” Olive smiled, looking lovingly at Kacie, “Kacie’s a real whiz with her Doing stuff, and it was great to get to watch her process.”

     Kacie blushed, “And I had a great time too. It’s been a while since I’ve had someone mothering me.”

     Olive smiled, “Well anytime you want to feel that way again dear, just let me know. I can come by and brew some tea.”

     Penny and Jean whispered to each other at how absolutely adorable they were finding Kacie and Olive’s relationship, Penny currently being a miniature version of her three legged, four armed self tucked peacefully in Jean’s cleavage.

     Frankie smiled, her green eyes twinkling.“It’s nice to see how well you two are getting along. Bring that same energy to rehearsal today, and I’m sure Saturday will be a breeze for you two.”

     Frankie turned to look at Paxton next, “Have you thought any more about what you want to do Paxton for your trick with Dahlia?”

     Paxton blushed at her singling out, “A little bit… I’m not sure if I can do it though…”

     “Ooh!” Jean smiled, “Do you need any help just hashing it out? Penny and I would love to help!” The little Penny situated right at Jean’s neckline gave a little wave.

     “W-would you?” Paxton asked, blushing even more as she was reduced to asking for more help.

     “Sure thing,” Jean smiled warmly, “It’s okay to ask for help if you need it, Paxton. After all, the point of the show’s to help you get better. We don’t expect you to have everything figured out right away,” Penny nodded along, turning around to give Jean a tiny hug, Jean lightly rubbing the top of her head with one of her fingers.

     “Well, it sounds like everyone’s got a pretty busy day then. And what about you, Dahlia-“ Frankie turned to look, finding an empty seat. “Um… Where’s Dahlia?”

     “Oh, she left about five minutes ago,” Kacie said, “Just sort of stood up and left without saying a word.”

     Frankie giggled, “Well, I guess she’s busy today too then.”

     Breakfast was finished up rather quickly after that, the girls going their separate ways to prepare for their various engagements.

~~~

Natalie and Rachel’s Rehearsal

     “So girls,” Frankie smiled, “Any ideas on what you’d like to do for Saturday?”

     “Well,” Natalie said, a passive aggressive tone in her voice, “We would have something planned, if Rachel wasn’t constantly trying to drag us places yesterday.”

     “Hey,” Rachel said, “Maybe if you offered up something than just copying someone else’s trick, I’d be more willing to actually discuss designing a trick with you.”

     Natalie was flustered, “C-copying? I’m paying homage to them! That’s why I talk everyone through the trick!”

     “Mhm,” Rachel nodded sarcastically, “then why not design a new box trick instead? That would be the same as paying homage, and have more originality to it.”

     Natalie’s face grew red, “Well. At least my tricks have structure to them! Seriously, the way you just ambled through your performance on Saturday, I’m shocked you didn’t get sent home!”

     “Girls,” Frankie said, trying to regain control of the situation, “Please don’t-“

     “Lacking structure! I had a clear narrative arc!” Rachel shouted back, “Will was missing, turns out he was the monster all along, and I get turned to one in the end!”

     “And you call me a thief, at least I didn’t ripoff a TV show,” Natalie retorted back, “Seriously, Stranger Things?”

     “It’s a good show!” Rachel’s face was now practically just as red as Natalie’s.

     “Oh sure, I bet-“

     “Alright, that’s enough of that,” Frankie said, sternly, “I was hoping that you two would have settled your differences by now. I’m not going to rehearse with you two while you’re busy arguing.”

     “Frankie!” Rachel said, shocked.

     “You heard me,” Frankie was clearly hurt with the fact that she had to step in this way, “We’re not going to get anything productive done with you two bickering.”

     “Frankie!” It was Natalie’s turn to plea, “Please, the show’s on Saturday.”

     “Exactly,” Frankie said, trying to remain strong in her tough love, “So you two better work out your beef tonight, or we’ll be looking at another first for ANGA’s history books.” And with that, Frankie walked out of the practice room, leaving the two assistants to stew.

~~~

The Museum of Contemporary Art

     Dahlia had returned to First Fleet Park, walking with purpose across the garden towards the Museum of Contemporary Art. She had spotted it yesterday during the losers’ transformation, and knew that she had to go in for some inspiration.

     Dahlia took hours to painstakingly walk through all of the various art pieces, not even stopping for lunch. She passed by strange shapes, postcards of photos, an igloo made of pillows. At each one, she stood for several minutes, appreciating the message they tried to convey.

     At some exhibits, she stood for quite a bit longer than others. She stared into the void at a glass door situated in front of a rocky hole in the wall, feeling pulled towards the bright light at the other end.

     At two marble statues of women’s heads, situated in such a manner that it almost looked liked the two statues were kissing, she smiled, taking a photo of the statues with her phone before moving on to the next room.

     At another exhibit, weird bendy tubes stretching up towards the sky. Looking around, she stretched her own arms upwards, slightly increasing her height by magically stretching. She stood this way for a minute, until someone else walked into the room, causing her to blush and shrink back to normal and scurry out of the room.

     Eventually, Dahlia had gotten her fill of the art pieces and headed back to the Moleside Inn, locking herself in her bedroom for the evening.

~~~

Kacie and Olive’s Rehearsal

     “Alright," Frankie smiled, “So, I imagine you’ve got a setlist in mind Tetra that you want to perform?”

     “Yep!” Tetra smiled.

     “Great, and how are you going to incorporate it into the performance?” Frankie asked.

     “Ha ha… Well, I thought we were going to do something similar my performance last week,” A little animated sweat drop appeared on Tetra’s screen.

     “Really?” Frankie asked, “But then what would Olive and I do?”

     “Well, you two could be ravers…”

     “I’m sorry dear,” Olive said, sounding very apologetic, “But I couldn’t do that. Those bright lights are just her on my eye,”

     “Plus,” Frankie smiled warmly, “It’s really important to not stagnate with your performances. After all, you want to be able to show at the end that you came out of this show a better performer than you already were.”

     Tetra seemed apprehensive, “B-b-but… How would I be able to play to the room without my gear?”

     Olive walked over, hugging her, “Oh, honey, trust me. People are going to love your music, you don’t have to sit and watch over it.”

     “But my cues-“

     “Well, if you’ve got cues planned out, we can just rehearse to make sure we know them backwards and forwards,” Frankie grinned.

     “O-okay,” Tetra eventually relented, “I guess… I can try being more on stage…”

     “Great!” Olive smiled, giving Tetra another hug, causing her animated blush circles to reappear. “You’ll do wonderful, dear!”

~~~

Paxton’s Practice

     “So, what do you think?” Paxton asked, dropping her focus on her conjuration idea, “Do you think it’d be doable to scale?”

     Jean had her eyes closed as she thought through Paxton’s idea. “Well… With your current magic reserves, I’d give it about a 30/70 chance.” Paxton’s mood visibly worsened at this news.

     Penny squeaked something that was inaudible to Paxton, but Jean seemed to immediately understanding, smiling. “Ooh… That’s a brilliant idea!”

     “What?” Paxton asked.

     “Penny says you might have an easier time of getting it to scale if you had a focus.” Paxton stared at her blankly, Jean noticing the confusion, carried on, “Since conjuration focuses on creating something from nothing, if you had a base to work off of, you’d be able to create it a lot easier than if you were just free-handing it. Think of it like using base shapes in a drawing.”

     “O-okay,” Paxton still looked a little confused, “so if I did have a focus, would I be able to do it to scale then?”

     “Well, only one way to find out for certain,” Jean grinned, the two setting up for a test run.

~~~

Natalie’s Room

     Natalie heard a knock on her door. She had her suspicions on who it was, so she stayed on her bed, hoping that the knocker would go away.

     However, when the knocking continued to persist, Natalie sighed, standing up and walking over to the door and opening. “What do you want?!” she shouted.

     As she suspected, Rachel was on the other end of the door, looking very sheepish as she said, “Do you mind if I come in?”

     Natalie looked at her angrily, clacking over at the door and how easy it would be to slam it on her, before sighing, dropping her hand and saying, “Come in.”

     The two sat down on her couch, Rachel jumping right in, “So… I know that I can be a bit… intense at times.”

     “That’s a bit of an understatement,” Natalie said, Rachel wincing.

     “I- I don’t know why I’m this way. It’s just that… I don’t know!… Whenever I’m told to do something, it’s like my brain refuses to do anything until it’s too late to do anything… And then it just sort of all bursts out!..” Rachel looked at Natalie, hoping to see some sort of reaction, the other girl managing to keep her face surprisingly calm.

     “I’m really sorry about how I behaved at rehearsal today,” Rachel said, “And I know it can’t make up for how much of a lousy partner I’ve been,” Rachel pulled off the backpack she had been wearing up to that point, pulling out a large book entitled ‘Trapped in A Box - A History of Big Box Magic’. “I went to the bookstore and bought this…”

     She handed it to Natalie, who was about to speak up but was interrupted by Rachel, “I assumed you already had a copy of it, So I went through it and bookmarked the tricks that I think would probably be fun to do.”

     Natalie slowly began flipping through the pages, finding sticky note upon sticky note attached to the pages with designs of the boxes, saying things such as ‘Maybe?’ or ‘One-Person-Only’ or ‘Ooh! This could be good’.

     “So yeah, just go ahead and pick which one you want to do. We can practice the steps tomorrow.”

     Natalie sighed, smiling as she said, “This is a great starting point Rachel, but I’m afraid we’ve still got a little more work to do,”

     Rachel looked worried, Natalie dispelling her fears by smiling and saying, “After all, we’re going to need to find a way to spice the trick up! I don’t think the audience would be all that excited if we just copied a trick exactly how it was performed in the past.”

     Rachel smiled, “Yeah, I guess we better get to work then. It’s going to be a long night.”

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

& Question Corner &

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

To Everyone: “Well uh... Sorry for the bad englisch, Andrea is in bad place, she still look happy to sea you. No... No fear.

She… (Producer’s note, the rest of this comment has been translated from German to English for the American Viewing Audience)

I'll just say it in German, Andrea is currently in a bad phase, but I want to let you all know that she is looking forward to meeting you. She just won't get in touch, but don't worry.” -Relative of Andrea (@@Jeaune)

 Dahlia: “…W-what?” For probably the first time all competition, a real fear enters Dahlia’s eyes, as her fingers instinctively go up to her hair, tying it nervously around it. She bites her lip, closing her eyes and taking a deep breath. Her composure returned, she says, “…I’m sorry to hear that… tell her to take her time… we will meet, after all…”

 Olive: “Oh dear!” Olive looked genuinely distressed, “Is Andrea okay? You said she’s in a bad phase? Is she safe? Is she hurt? Oh dear. Oh dear. I’m going to have to expand my shopping list for next week…” Olive pulls out a little notepad from her purse, mumbling as she wrote, “Chicken noodle soup… orange juice… tampons… Tylenol… more shortbread cookies… blankets…”

 Natalie: “Oh no! I hope Andrea feels better by next week. But, if she’s not feeling well, it would make sense to step away for a bit. Don’t worry about it Andrea, we’ll have plenty of time to talk shop later! Take care of yourself first and foremost!”

 Kacie: “I’m sorry to her that. Hopefully Andrea’s in a better place by the time we get to Europe. I’m really looking forwards to meeting her, and it’d be a shame if we’d have to postpone it.”

 Paxton: Paxton looks concerned at the camera, “Oh no… Was it something I did? Oh no…” Paxton looks down, some tears welling in her eyes “Tell Andrea I’m sorry, and that I can avoid coming if she needs me to.”

 Rachel: “Andrea! You can get through this bad patch! From your comments, I know you’re incredibly tough and resilient, just like me. We will meet in Europe, and I know we’ll have a great time. After all, how else are we going to share that friend’s sampler?”

To Drake: (Producer’s note, the rest of this comment has been translated from German to English for the American Viewing Audience) “Don't worry about next week, Andrea will be there. No cancellation of Europe Week. She is definitely happy.” -Relative of Andrea (@@Jeaune)

 Drake: “Thank you for the heads up. It would be a real shame for the girls to have to miss out on meeting her. If she’s still not feeling up for it come the time we get to Europe, I’d gladly extend her a free trip just to meet everyone during the show proper.”

To Drake: “I think that will be fine to split the difference. I'll see you at the afterparty in a few weeks, let me know if your thrown off schedule has caused problems with booking the venue. As you know, I like to help where I can. I can offer a place for the afterparty if needed.

On a more personal note, I saw the black box you had. If it was what I think it was, I'm happy. You came back and were willing to go the distance if she was. That's significant, and means as far as I'm concerned, you're still in the running, when she's ready to settle down.” -Jacob Schutter. (@@James-MacCloude)

 Drake: Drake laughs, “Thanks Ja- Mr. Schutter, our production staff will get in contact with you about setting the payment up. Also, we’ve already got in contact with the venue and everything’s been sorted out ahead of time. But thank you for extending the offer just the same.

 And… Uh…” Drake blushes, “T-thanks… Genie’s… Well… Thanks, Jake.”

To David and Howard: “I'm sorry you weren't able to come and see the challenge for yourselves, but as you know by now we had some unexpected excitement during the challenge, so I guess it was lucky you weren't here. Still the invitation is still open to the both of you and your assistants. You may come at you leisure. An annual celebration is coming up next Wednesday if you are interested in attending as my guests.  If you come, my plan is to hobnob, eat, drink, and just have a good ol’ time. Let me know if you want to come or just come when your schedules allow.” -Jacob Schutter. (@@James-MacCloude)

 Howard: “No worries at all, Jake! And sorry to hear about the incident, I really thought Drake would have been more careful… given the circumstances.”

 David: “I’d love to come, Jake… if it weren’t for the fact that the show is still missing a permanent magician currently. As it is my responsibility to approve the choice in magician each season, I will have to unfortunately decline your invitation until I’m satisfied that ANGA will run smoothly.”

 Howard: Howard nodded his head solemnly, before grinning, “Well, I don’t have such commitments, fortunately. I’d love to come, Jake! And it’d be an honor if you’d let us perform a show for your guests. Annette, Rocky, and Sable have been progressing nicely in rehearsals, and it would be good practice for our upcoming tour.”

To Paxton: “Again sorry about that, I promise to ask next time. I do hope you win, but what ever happens, I hope to see you at the after party. And you're always welcome to come visit us here in Mageria.” -James Schutter. (@@James-MacCloude)

 Paxton: Paxton blushes, smiling, and looking away from the camera “I-it’s okay. Like I said… I didn’t mind it… It just caught me off-guard…
I hope to see you at the after party too,” her blush deepens.

To Rachel: “I'm sorry you and Natalie aren't quite there yet. I know procrastination seems fun, but when I do it I usually get into a really stressful situation. I know its worked out so far, but that sort of luck seldom holds, trust me.  I'm routing for all of you. Good luck.” -Genie Schutter. (@@James-MacCloude)

 Rachel: “Ugh… Natalie just doesn’t seem to understand the way I work,” Rachel sighs, “I don’t know if anyone really does… It’s just… It’s like- I try to sit down and come up with something, and my mind’s already moved on to the next thing. I can’t just put myself in a box and be content like Natalie seems to be able to.” Rachel sighs again, leaning her head back on the rest of the chair she’s sitting on.

To Kacie and Olive: “Olive, I like ‘Dancing Queen’ too, it’s one of the few disco song I like. Sorry Kacie, but you should hear me play Hamster Dance impossible remix on piano. We have got to have a jam session soon. Anyway see you at the afterparty.” -Genie Schutter. (@@James-MacCloude)

 Olive: “I’m glad to see

 Kacie: “Ha ha. I’d love to hear that some time.

 Honestly, I’m always so impressed by multi-arm musicians, I’ve tried doing a couple of shows with extra arms just to see if they’d help out at all, but I kept mixing up my cues and confusing myself by trying to do too much. “

To Dahlia: “I absolutely like your approach! I mean, if you really think about it, some forms of magic could be considered art.” -Shannon (@@FlagsOtherSide)

 Dahlia: “…Certainly… Just as a performer bears their soul on the stage… I shall bear my soul through my art~…” Dahlia strikes a pose.

To Rachel: “No worries. Nice try with the big brain play though. It would’ve been great to see it pay off, too!” -Shannon (@@FlagsOtherSide)

 Rachel: “I totally agree!

 But not really much point left on dwelling on it, after all, there’s always going to be another challenge to conquer!”