Phian sat on a stool and pored over the mesh of gears in front of her, trying to focus, trying to piece back together what process she was even working on. More needed to be added, but it almost certainly wouldn’t fit in the box if she did. Did it need to be this spread out, or could she fold it, compact it, maybe omit a part? Often in a creative project, it was hard to see the end from the beginning. If it was long enough, Phian found it hard to remember the beginning from the middle.

Suddenly, she was jostled to reality as a pair of arms draped over her shoulders, and boobs pressed against the back of her neck. “Hey, whatcha dooooin’?” came a cute voice from over her head.

Recovering from her startlement, Phian smiled softly. “Working on a prop. It’s… turning out to be more complicated than I was prepared for, I think.”

“Oh!” Jean cried gleefully. “Can I help? I’m good with my hands.” Before Phian could give any comment, a finger thrust into the box. “What’s this do?”

There probably shouldn’t have been tension on the gears, but there was, and the one she touched turned away from its neighbor, breaking their connection. This left no complete line from one side of the box to the other, and both sides of the rig fell to the box’s floor, several gears spilling out and rolling in all directions.

For a couple seconds, both just sat there and stared at the sudden mess.

Jean winced, and did her best to keep an endearing, apologetic smile. “I feex?” she offered. She removed herself from Phian’s back, and stepped up beside her, quickly starting to puzzle it together.

“I very much doubt... “ that was coming out insulting. Phian tried again. “It’s not that I doubt your mechanical skills, but in a magical prop, there are parts that aren’t going to make sense.”

“I think I saw how everything fell, though,” Jean reassured her. “I can at least get you back to where you were.It’s like a jigsaw puzzle, only not in two dimensions. Can’t be that hard, right?”

Phian lightly caught her wrist. “Do I need to take away your hands?” she asked with a slightly fatigued smirk.

“How do you know that’d be enough to keep me from helping out?” Jean snarked back. “For all you know, I might have spares!”

“I can keep taking parts off…” Phian leaned in with a chuckle.

A blush crossed Jean’s face, and her mouth pinched to a pout.


"Ooh, what if you added something instead?” Jean suggested as she hooked the last two pieces together. “Add some party poppers in here for spectacle? I'm sure this... springy.... whatsithickeydoo thingummie isn't that important. Every trick needs some confetti, you know. Else it's hardly magic, now is it?"

Phian snickered. “I’m gonna turn you into confetti in a minute.”

Jean’s cheeks raised to a lovely rosy shade. The magician could practically see the gears turning in her head.

“I’m not confetti-dent you would do that,” Jean challenged.

Phian burst out laughing.

“I’m sorry,” her assistant followed up. “That was a tearable pun!”

“Geddit?” Jean loaded, but Phian’s hand snapped up, making a quick swish and pull motion in front of her eyes. “Teaaaarrr…” The assistant’s words trailed off, as the magician’s laugh slowly followed.

“Hoooo… Okay, Jean.” She sighed, then smiled. Jean’s face was unsurprisingly still bright red, her gaze glassy-eyed and distant, her breathing slow, relaxed, and even. “What am I going to do with you?”

“Turn me to pap-wwwm…” the hypnotized woman replied.

Resting her elbow on the workbench, Phian propped her forehead on her palm. Should she have expected that? Probably. Even hypnotized, the puns seemed engrained in her. Not that she’d actually instructed her to be silent.

Phian looked around the workshop, to the other machines, many of them already-finished props. “The Press should do.”

The Press was a heavy, dangerous-looking machine on its own table. It had a triangular base, flat in the front, a thick, steel frame, with buttons on one of its posts: up, down, and emergency stop, and a hydraulic tube in the top to apply pressure to things within. Curtains were also hidden in the top, and a slot in the bottom for inserting and retrieving the products of pressing.

Rising from her stool, she hooked one arm behind Jean’s knees, and scooped the taller woman up into the hero carry. Jean’s arms instinctively flung around her with a blank, happy gaze. She carried her over to the prop.

Conveniently, when she laid Jean in the prop, she naturally moved to a casual, sideways lounging position, smiling off somewhere in the distance. Phian never was quite clear what went on in a hypnotized person’s head. “Nothing” was the go-to assumption, but then why hadn’t her blush faded?

Walking around the prop, Phian pulled down the two curtains in the rear. Back around the front, she smiled softly at her unmoving friend. She planted a quick kiss, and softly murmured “I’ll keep you right where I can see you. You’ll be my pin-up girl, motivating me from above the workbench.”

Taking a step back, the magician assessed if a costume change was called for. T-shirt, yoga pants, socks… No, she smiled to herself, this would do fine. She pulled down the last curtain, then pushed the button.

With a groaning mechanical whirr, the top of the machine pressed down, the box formed by the curtains gradually growing shorter and shorter. It was on the more brutal end of prop design: Were it not magical, it probably could still crush an assistant flat.

The top pressed firmly into the bottom, then gave a theatrical hiss as if it were releasing pressure.

Phian reached into the bottom slot, and from it retrieved a broad sheet of paper bearing the inked image of the lounging, dreamily-smiling Jean.

Humming happily to herself, Phian returned to the workbench. She stepped up onto the stool. Though there were no hooks or nails in place, the motion of hanging a picture ensured it would stay.

She stepped down, and back, taking a minute to take in her “motivation”.

At last, she returned to her stool. Now, where was she…?