DISCLAIMER: I do not own Hollywood U. This amazing game belongs to Pixelberry! :)

My responses to your reviews:

45. (15/06/16) Guest: You'll have to read the latest chapter to see if your guess is correct! :P Sadly, I have no plans of including any A-Lister recruitment quests in this fanfic at this time. However, it's a different story for the premium quests! :P Technically, there's already been one premium quest in this fanfic (Las Vegas Love was hinted at very briefly at the end of Chapter Five), and there will be a second premium quest before the end of the first character arc of "Not Your Typical Meet-Cute," so keep an eye out for it! :D I'm very glad that the way I include Thomas in the other quests seems natural; thank you! :)

44. (15/06/16) Guest: Very true! :D

43. (13/06/16) J: I update every week, so you won't have to wait that long! :) And I hope more people post their HWU fanfics on this website! :)

42. (12/06/16) J: "Super canon" is a big compliment for me – thank you! :)

41. (12/06/16) Guest: Thanks! :) Well, Lisa is an established star, so it makes sense from the university's point-of-view :P And if you check my author's notes at the end of the chapter, you can see when the next chapter will be released :)

40. (12/06/16) Guest: Thomas would probably win if they did, but Marie Claire would give him a run for his money! :D

39. (12/06/16) Guest: I think it's possible, but smiling with your mouth might be easier XD

38. (12/06/16) Guest: I don't know how turquoise cheese would taste like, but if you ever find out, be sure to let me know! :P I did pick those choices in the game – and those silly choices gave me some great writing material! :P

37. (12/06/16) Guest: That he does :)

36. (11/06/16) Guest: Epic? I like the sound of that! :P And if you check my author's notes at the end of the chapter, you can see when the next chapter will be released :)

35. (11/06/16) Guest: Thank you very, very much! :) You and the rest of my readers are definitely very welcome! :)

34. (11/06/16) Guest: That's Lisa for you – wild to the core! :P

33. (11/06/16) Guest: I did pick that option in the game, and I'm glad I did, because it was really funny! :D I'm glad you like my fanfic! :)

32. (11/06/16) Guest: I shall not confirm whether or not Marie Claire and Chris are an official couple (haha :P), but I can confirm that she went on the first Las Vegas date with him in Chapter Five – Thomas actually heard Chris' private jet right before he mat Marianne for their date. I also shall not confirm whether or not that event will be making an appearance at any point in this fanfic :P I think that On The Hunt date appears in Amour when the campus reaches Level Seven. And I'm glad you seemed to notice why I gave Marie Claire her name :D

31. (11/06/16) Guest: I'm glad you pointed that out! You're actually the second person to mention Mischief's magpie-ness, which I had no clue of while writing that chapter because I don't know muich about birds. Her magpie-ness will be discussed in a future chapter :D

30. (11/06/16) Guest: It should be a thing! :D

29. (11/06/16) Guest: They did break up way back, and they're not a couple in my fanfic. Their kiss and date was more of, "Hey, we're both single and attractive, so why don't we flirt over dinner?" It was a fun date, not a serious one :P

28. (11/06/16) Guest: I agree! :P

27. (11/06/16) Guest: Aww, you're so nice; thank you! :) By the way, when you said, "That is SO what Hunt would say," what in particular were you referring to?

26. (11/06/16) Guest: Thank you so much! It makes me happy that you like my story so much! :)

Chapter Twelve: Day 12 (Friday) – Spark Sphere (Levels 08-09)

Thomas finished carrying the third box from his office to the auditorium, glad that he had asked his friends to deliver the equipment to the university. After setting the third box onstage, he proceeded to open all of them.

Naively, when he had made the request, Thomas had thought that producing the "spark sphere" special effect he wanted for the introduction of the diva class project to his freshman class would be easy. Having worked on movie sets before, he knew that producing that effect was a matter of aiming the tubes at the right places and flipping a switch. Simple.

However, he had, stupidly, failed to account for the fact that he was not at a movie set. While Hollywood U had the most advance filmmaking technology out of all the universities in the world, that equipment was not in the lecture auditorium – and even if it had been, it was not quite of the same caliber as equipment that was used in high-profile, high-budget action films. That meant that many of the specialized tubes and sensors his friends had access to when filming scenes were already in place in their movie set as semi-permanent equipment, and that was why Thomas now had – checking his watch, he saw that it was exactly one o'clock in the morning – seven and a half hours to produce a special effect that would only last for ten seconds at the very most.

I think I have an idea, but I need to go there to be sure...

Leaving the two boxes of tubes beside the podium, he carried the third box and set off for the Hollywood U design lab.

In the design lab, Thomas opened the box and turned it upside-down, dropping numerous packets of clear wire, as well as a few other things, including a type of specialized glue gun and sticks of glue, on the table.

The special effect he wanted was a sphere of sparks that would flare briefly around him before disappearing. To do that, Thomas had to use electricity to produce sparks, which would then travel down the wires he had in front of him. They were not the normal rubber-encased metal cables that most people associated with wires – these were made of transparent conductive film that had been shaped into tiny cylindrical structures that looked exactly like wires with the thickness of normal earphone wires. Transparent conductive film was normally used for things like tablet touchscreens and solar power equipment, specifically because of their ability to effectively transfer low-voltage electricity.

He took out one of the wires and held it between his fingertips. Held against his wrist, the wire trailed down until the tip of his elbow. The plan was to connect several of the wires together in two separate pieces. The first would be in a gigantic rectangle with straight lines going through the middle and supported horizontally by non-conductive string, which would be placed in front of the stage. The second would be a large sphere with a small opening in the back just big enough for Thomas to scamper into.

Remembering that he had not yet taken the necessary measurements, Thomas slapped himself on the forehead with his palm before taking a pad of paper and a pen and heading back to the lecture auditorium.

After turning on the stage lights, he decided that the best way to measure the length of the stage was to count how many paces it took him to make his way across, and convert that figure into feet and inches. The height of the rectangle, as well as the height and diameter of the sphere, he decided, would simply be three times his own.

He went to work, walking across the stage and counting his footsteps as he did so.

One… two… three… four…

Back in the design lab, he was dumbfounded at his final calculation of how many feet of transparent conductive wire he would have to connect together.

I can't do all of this in time! Just doing this would take hours, never mind the positioning of it all!

But before he could get started, he remembered one of the main reasons why he had relocated to the design lab – he had planned to take big pieces of cardboard, put them together to make a sphere, and use that sphere as the mold for his eventual wire sphere. Because of its anticipated size, he couldn't put the sphere together in the lab – he would have to take the large pieces of cardboard to the stage, assemble the sphere there, and use the result to determine how to shape the wires intended for the sphere.

After wasting an inordinate amount of time choosing the right pieces of curved cardboard from a small side room of the university design lab, he put the cardboard, some ordinary glue guns, sticks of glue, a cutter, some cloth twine, and some transparent fishing string in a cloth sack. Hefting the sack over his shoulder, Thomas wearily trudged back to the lecture hall.

This had better be worth it…

As he held up different pieces of cardboard to determine which should go where, Thomas contemplated that it was a good thing that the Hollywood U fashion design lab had many pieces of soft and hard cardboard stored in the side room. They were actually for molding fabric for unique, avant-garde fashion pieces, but they served his current purpose just as well, since he needed curved cardbloard of many different sizes to create his stupid, time-consuming sphere.

He took the first two pieces and cut small holes into them before tying them together with string. Proceeding to connect several pieces this way, he constructed a bowl-like piece that would be the top of the sphere, angling the individual pieces just so before using the glue gun to stick them together.

After that was finished, he set it aside and worked on a different piece, this time one that would eventually look like a large, circular fence. That would be the second part of the dome, right under the cardboard bowl he had already made, and it would ever so slightly slope outwards, as the bottom of the fence would be the middle part of the sphere. And after that would be the third part, which would look very much like the second part except that it would slope inwards, and finally, the fourth part, which would be a bowl-like cardboard structure like the first part, completing the sphere. He would then connect all four parts together, first with string, and then with glue.

Leaving the glue on the fourth part to dry, Thomas returned to the design lab. The cardboard pieces had taken a lot of time, but he knew that was nothing compared to the amount of time it would take to individually connect the many, many pieces of wire in front of him together.

Bracing himself for what would be a long, arduous task, he set up the specialized glue gun – which used glue that was much more apt to conduct electricity than regular glue – and set it beside the flat piece of wood he had placed on the desk so that he wouldn't damage it while handling hot glue. He set to work.

After the first piece of transparent conductive wire and the second piece of transparent conductive wire were connected, he placed a drop of hot glue at the end of the second piece of transparent conductive wire, connected it to the end of a third piece of transparent conductive wire, and blew on the glue to dry so that both were stuck together.

And after the second piece of transparent conductive wire and the third piece of transparent conductive wire were connected, he placed a drop of hot glue at the end of the third piece of transparent conductive wire, connected it to the end of a fourth piece of transparent conductive wire, and blew on the glue to dry so that both were stuck together.

Needless to say, he repeated this pattern many times.

Many, many times.

Much, much later, when he finally finished the large rectangular and spherical wire constructions he had envisioned earlier, Thomas could have wept from sheer relief.

That was, had he not been too exhausted to do so.

Compared to the harrowing experience of connecting hundreds of small pieces of transparent conductive wire together, the rest of the work – draping some of the finished connected wires over the cardboard sphere so that he could make the necessary adjustments using the existing sphere as a mold; using a stage ladder to string up the rectangular net on both sides of the stage; connecting the two sets of tubes required to transmit the sparks and placing them on either side of the stage so that they were both touching the rectangular wire net; ensuring that the portable generators he borrowed from backstage had enough power to produce enough electricity in the first place before linking them to the tubes; and connecting the generators to the professional sound systems in the auditorium that he could activate by remote control – was not that difficult to carry out.

And after some finishing touches – right below the ceiling of the stage, there was metal scaffolding that was normally used to hold the spotlights, but today he used it to hold up several long pieces of connected conductive wire that would support the sphere and hold it upright, which he then connected to the large rectangular net – he was ready to test everything.

Fortunately for his sanity, it all went off without a hitch. After cleaning up the stage and the design lab, he checked his watch. It was eight-thirty in them morning. After working nonstop since one o'clock in the morning, he had still managed to prepare everything in time, with thirty minutes to spare before his class at nine o'clock.

That was just enough time to drop by his office for a change of clothes, take a quick shower in the bathroom of the professor's lounge, and hide backstage before his students started to arrive.

From his hiding place backstage, Thomas listened to his students chat idly as they waited for him to appear. Some of them sounded concerned, as he was usually in class much earlier. Others were relaxed, confident that he would be showing up soon.

It's time.

He flipped two switches on the wall, causing the lights in the entire auditorium to flicker out. As he listened to them gasp, he pressed the correct button on the remote control he held in his right hand, and he heard their exclamations of surprise as they saw what he knew would be in front of them – bright sparks of electricity, fierce like fire, tantalizing and free.

While they were distracted, he scurried out of his hiding place and quickly ran to the spherical net he had created, getting inside through a small opening in the back and crouching so that he could protect himself from the electricity that would soon surround him.

The blue sparks grew brighter and brighter, moving back and forth in horizontal lines almost threateningly, before moving to the ceiling wires and making their way to the spherical net.

As Thomas was in a crouch with his head held down, he couldn't see the top of the sphere – but he didn't have to see it to feel his spherical net become covered in electric blue sparks, and he almost felt one with the crackling energy around him – and somewhere inside his heart, he made the painful admission that no matter how much he loved teaching his students, he missed the terrible joy of creating films; of creating cinematic magic just like this – but he could only devote one split second to that aching regret, because all at once, the sphere disappeared, and only the professor remained.

From his crouch, he stood up, feeling, and seeing, all his students' eyes on him.

Thomas spoke only five words.

"Do I have your attention?"

In the face of what was likely the most dramatic – and definitely the most epic – entrance they had ever witnessed, his students could only gape at him in utter awe.

Utter.

Awe.

He heard one of his diva students praise his entrance, but apart from that student, the class was stunned, still gazing at the stage in absolute, jaw-dropping wonder.

Knowing that pausing for too long would ruin the moment, Thomas ducked to exit the sphere and casually walked up to the podium as he thanked his friends from the Terminator movies for the use of their equipment.

While telling his students that their next assignment was to capture attention through showmanship and spectacle, and that, after partnering up, it was up to them to choose how to do so, he thought of the seven and a half hours of measurements, calculations, assembly, and testing it had taken to do this for them.

The things I do for you idiots.

But, despite himself…

…Thomas was smiling.

(End of Chapter Twelve.) (18/06/16.)

01. Canon compliance:

The HWU quests that took place in this chapter were Wild Night (Level 08); Crash and Burn (Level 09); and Diva and Conquer (Day 01 of 07).

02. A tiny request:

Thank you for reading my fanfic! :D If you've read this far, I hope you'll consider taking an extra minute to leave a review for Chapter Twelve ("Spark Sphere")? :D Reviews really mean a lot to me as a fanfiction writer because I get to hear your thoughts on something I worked really hard on ^_^ Even if it's the year 2075 or something, I would love to hear your thoughts on this chapter! :D

03. Two interesting HWU things:

One, the HWU online television series! :D Did you know that a fellow HWU fan, Zoe (her username on Tumblr is "dizzyclueless"), is diligently working on HWU: The Series? It's a fan-made online television series based on Thomas Hunt and other characters from Hollywood U! ^_^ (At the moment, I'm just a very enthusiastic supporter... but I would LOVE to be involved in HWU: The Series someday! :D) You can find out more about this AMAZING television project on Tumblr (their official Tumblr blog is "hwutheseries"). I just LOVE how Pixelberry and Hollywood U have inspired SO many of us fans! ^_^

And two, my second HWU fanfic! :D If you're interested in reading Marie Claire's perspective of this chapter (Chapter Twelve), then I encourage you to read "NYTMC 2: Marie Claire's Interlude" ^_^ Here's the summary: "(Part two of the NYTMC series.) (Midquel.) How did Marie Claire Hart fall in love with her most dashing, yet most cantankerous, professor? A retelling of my MC/Hunt fanfic "NYTMC 1: Not Your Typical Meet-Cute" from Marie Claire's perspective, in 100-word drabbles."