1:43 P.M. Bares Amphitheater; Snara City; Caresica

Maxie laughed lightly, and sat back in her chair, eyes locked on her three roommates on stage. She'd been sitting there for the last ten minutes, watching them and Rosy do their little improv group. It had, for the most part, gone well, except for a few instances where nobody understood any of the jokes, but that had only happened twice so far. The most recent game they were playing was Freeze, which was, according to Bryan, the "classic" improv game where two people started out a random scene, and as the game went on, the other people would, at random times, call "freeze!" When that happened, that person would tap one of the performers on the shoulder. That performer would leave, and the other person would take his or her's place. It looked like a fun game to play and it was entertaining, though Maxie had to admit to herself: she actually sort of wanted to play now, too. She had had some good scene ideas for the game.

On stage, she heard Evan shout "Freeze!" Smiling, he bounded onto the center stage and tapped Kevin on the shoulder. Kevin unfroze and went off of center stage and Evan took his spot, imitating him in exactly how he was positioned: arms at his side, angled like a robot's, and left foot a little distance from his left shoulder, right foot at his shoulder. "So how do you like my Elvis impression?" he asked to Bryan.

"Will you stop that?" Bryan responded. "For the last time, we're at a Star Wars convention, not a Elvis impersonation barbeque!"

"What?! We are?! But the sign said–"

(Groan) "For the last time, that was a road sign on a highway for a town called Elvis, not Elvis Presley."

"Oh." A pause. "Are you sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure you idiot. Now come with me." Lowering voice: "That Leia over there looks pretty hot. Help me hook up with her."

"Ok." Raising voice: "Hey hot, hottie Princess Leia, my friend here thinks your hot!"

Maxie allowed herself another laugh, along with a good portion of the crowd.

"What the hell are you doing?! Don't do that! I want to take it a little slower then shouting at her!"

"Fine then, I will. Hey cutie! How you doin'?!"

"Freeze!" Rosy shouted.

But Bryan indicated to her that this game was finished, and he and Evan were allowed themselves a laugh before Evan walked up to the microphone. The crowd cheered ravenously as the game ended.

"All right," Evan said into the microphone. "Thank you guys. We only got a few minutes left so we're gonna do a quick game of Movie and Theater styles." He turned to the other three. "Who wants to write those down?"

"I'll do it," Kevin volunteered. "I'm pretty bad at this game."

The group exchanged gentle laughter.

"All right then," Evan said. "Go get the paper and pencil and write down the styles they want." He turned back to the audience. "All right, what we need from you guys is a bunch of different theater and movie styles for them to implement into the game. So start shoutin' those out..."

The crowd released a pandemonium of movies and theater styles. "–Shakespeare!"–"Garqui and Magic Knights of Firewer!"–"Lord of the Rings!"–"Salisbury Steak and the Sun!–"

Evan laughed and pointed that idea at Kevin. "Salisbury Steak and the Sun Kevin! Put that one down for sure!"

"Okay!"

Maxie whispered something to the two people she was with, Dassa Frull and, by her own request, Vanessa Hiller. She whispered the same two words to them both. They both smiled at the idea, and Maxie beckoned them all to stand up. Together, the three combined their voices and shouted "Napoleon Dynamite!"

Evan laughed at that and redirected to Kevin.

"–Spaceballs 2!–" "–Haunted Darkness!–" "–That's Very Good!–" "–James Bond: Operation Crow's Nest!–"

"Okay, okay, we got it all. We're done," Evan, turning towards his brother. "Kevin, what do you got?"

Kevin read the list off. "Salisbury Steak and the Sun, Napoleon Dynamite, The Life of Poppy Ponytails, and Calburn: Son of Fire."

"Aight, nice. I think that's a good list for now. Let's start." He turned to the audience. "Now what's going to happen, we're gonna start a scene. Kevin'll let the scene develop, then he'll tell us to stop at random times and pick one of those styles that ya'll named. Then we, the actors have to put those styles into our scene somehow—it's kinda hard to explain. Okay, anyway, we now need from you just a random scene and a random place where we do the scene..."

"–Mars–!"

"–In the middle of a battle–!"

"–The bedroom–"

"–A food fight–!"

"–The Imperial Senate–!"

"–A prison for–!"

Evan chuckled and pointed to a portion of the audience. "I heard 'Imperial Senate!' Good one! That's what we'll do!"

The crowd cheered at the results, and Maxie waited in excitement for that scene to begin. No telling how the boys and Rosy would tackle this one.

"Okay guys. Kevin stand over there. The scene is the Imperial Senate." He moved the microphone stand off to the side of the stage.

Bryan started, hunched over and speaking in a low, dark voice. "'Are we all here?'" he asked slowly. He was impersonating the Senate's Moderator, the 87-year old Donald Freemont.

The crowd laughed at the impersonation.

"'Yes you old hack, we are,'" Evan answered, speaking in a deep but young voice, and standing up tall, chest out.

Maxie instantly recognized Evan as being Senator Kalus Pordonet, representing the planet Urvador VII. He was, by far, the nicest looking senator of them all. Maxie would kill him instantly if she ever saw him, but that didn't stop her from wanting him.

Evan strode forward, chest still high, right shoulder out, expression seductive. Yes, he was black and Kalus was white, but it still was a relatively good impersonation. "'Hello ladies!'" he said. "'I want to cheat on my wife tonight.'" He lowered his voice to be very naughty and seductive. "'Who wants to join me?'"

The crowd "oooooo"'d and cheered their support.

"'Man or woman.'" Evan finished.

The crowd "oooooooo"'d louder and cheered more deafly. Some stood up, and some raised their glasses to him. Maxie raised her glass, Dassa stood up, and Vanessa just sat back and smiled.

"'Bukbukbuk baaucck!'" Rosy suddenly squawked from behind the other two, wrist resting against her chin, fingers sticking out like a beak. "'Buk buk buk buk bik book buk baaauck!'" Her mouth was wide open as she did this, and ended each "sentence" sharply. She was supposed to be Senator Pac'acca Siwuuriad, the only bird-like Senator from the planet Isiludar.

The crowd laughed extravagantly at the imitation, now loving every second of the trio's improv. As was Maxie, Vanessa, and Dassa.

"'Senator Siwuuriad,'" Bryan said in his old voice. "'I must ask you to calm down please. The universal translator is broken again and this arena, its...large.'"

Rosy marched up to him, moving her arms up and down like wings. "'Buk buk buk buk bukaaaaaauck!'" She slapped Bryan on the left shoulder.

"'Don't worry, I'll save you!'" Evan shouted heroically as Kalus. He stalked over to the other and gently shoved Bryan away. "'Get away from her fiend! Don't ever tell a beautiful lady like her what to do you old–––man.'"

The crowd laughed again.

"Freeze," Kevin said. He scanned the list. "The Life of Poppy Ponytails."

Evan lowered his proud shoulders and started to scream loudly and for a long time. This imitation was Poppy Ponytails himself. The movie he came from was based off of a children's story about a little boy known as Poppy Ponytails, who always wore his hair in a ponytail and screamed almost every minute of the day, and was treated very badly by the other children because of his "condition." The moral ended up being about why it's wrong to treat people differently no matter how weird or different they are. The movie had been a big hit in all parts of the Known Galaxy because of its uniqueness, like Poppy Ponytails himself was unique.

The crowd laughed again.

Bryan walked over to Evan and started screaming in his face. "'Stop it! Stop screaming! Not in the Senate chamber! You freak!'" He was now Timmy Twoface, Poppy's main bully in the class. "I hate you!"

"'Now Donald," Rosy said, approaching "Timmy" with a kind, graceful, proper walk. "That's not very nice. We must all be able to accept people for who they are, not by what they do or how strange they may seem.'" Her soft and comforting voice and calm manner indicated to the humored audience that she was Mrs. Heather Heartgold, the teacher of the class Poppy was in, who was sympathetic to him. "'God blessed Moderator Freemont with a gift,'"–the story was Christian in some parts of it–"'the gift of dying old.'"

The audience laughed mildly.

"'Unlike me possibly,'" Rosy continued as Heather Heartgold, "'who might be shot and executed tomorrow for boring the hell out of...'"(sigh) "'everyone.'"

Another round of laughter.

Bryan pouted. "'Okay, Mrs. Heartgol–'" he snickered–"'Senator Siwuuriad.'"

Evan walked up to the two and screamed louder into their faces, smiling.

Rosy sighed warmly. "'Oh Poppy, your gift is so...beautiful.'"

Evan continued to wail.

"Freeze," Kevin said again. "Napoleon Dynamite."

Bryan hunched over his shoulders, opened his mouth a little distance, and squinted his eyes, immediately characterizing himself as the famous Napoleon Dynamite, a classic, hilarious, weird high school character created in a self-titled movie back at the turn of twenty-first century. It had been popular amongst the high schools kids of that era, which included Bryan, Maxie, Vanessa, and Rosy as well as half the people in the room at the time. Now, years later, it was still a popular movie, especially amongst the Pilot Corps. "'Gosh, frickin' idiot!'" he shouted in a very, very raspy voice at Evan. The look on his face remained dead and neutral. "'I'm never votin' for you ever again!'"

Evan sunk his shoulders, and put a blank expression with empty eyes on his face. "'I'm sorry Donald,'" he responded with a Mexican accent, imitating Napoleon's best friend and partner Pedro who was just as bland and strange as Napoleon. "'I was just practicing for the Preston Talent Competition. I was trying to sound like the La Chupacabra. I think I can win the competition with it. What do you think?'"

The audience laughed again.

"'It rocked. You gonna win by a mile, dude,'" Bryan answered. "'Hey, wanna play me?'" he asked, referring to Napoleon's love for the game of tether ball.

Maxie let out a snicker at that.

"'Sure,'" Evan replied.

"'Hang on a minute,'" Bryan answered. He mimed picking up what appeared, to Maxie, to be a box. His other hand appeared to be wrapped around the handle of an object. He took two steps in the opposite direction, dipped a mimed scoop–that's what that left hand was holding–into the box, and then flicked whatever was in the scoop at something in front of him. "'Come on Emperor Palpatine, eat your frickin' dinner!'"

Maxie joined the rest of the crowd in laughing hysterically at this. He had just compared the Empire's ruler, Emperor Palpatine, to a lama. The lama's name in Napoleon Dynamite was Tina, and she was owned by Napoleon's grandmother and never ate the food Napoleon always tried to give her. So he would often resort to tossing it at the animal.

Bryan continued to pantomime reaching into the tin of food and tossing over the imaginary fence. "'Eat the food! Eat the food!'" he repeated over and over again as the audience continued to laugh.

"'H-hey Donald,'" Rosy said. She stood, legs together, shoulder's tightly knit. Her voice was light, and she spoke quickly but in a soft, quiet tone. She was Deb, Napoleon's and Pedro's other friend, who always had her hair tied up in a side-of-her-head ponytail and loved to take colorful and pretty photographs. "'Would you like to buy some more accessaries from me? I-I have new bracelets now. Very pretty and cheap like they always are.'"

"Freeze. Okay guys, the judges are giving us the evil eye," Kevin snickered. "I think we better stop."

The three improvisors broke their characters instantly. The crowd roared fiercely and "whooped." One stood up, then two, then seven; soon enough, they were getting a standing ovation from the crowd, including Maxie, Dassa, and Vanessa. Bryan, Kevin, Evan, and Rosy took their bows all at the same time, then energetically walked off the stage, excited and happy, and took their seats in the last three seats of the right side first row. They were the last act of the first round, and everybody in the audience loved them.

But the judges still had to decide if they did well enough to move on to the next round. The judging was next.