RayEarth Wars: The Casting Session
By Kristin Huntsman
After the last of the three movies ended, the actors sat still in thought for a few moments, until the director returned.
"Your casting sheets," the blonde woman said, sitting down in one of the unoccupied chairs that composed the home theatre, and passing around a sheaf of papers. Everyone took one and studied it curiously for a few moments.
"WHAAAAT!?!" shrieked Umi. "I have to be THREEPIO!!!!"
"I get to play Luke..." Hikaru said. She looked up at Lantis. "Is that a good thing?"
Eagle huggled Hikaru from her other side. "You get to be the hero again, Hikaru," he said. "Congratulations!"
"Hold it," said the director, and the actors froze insantly. It was a well-known fact that crossing the directors even the slightest could end up... ugly. "Please note that this is a working casting. We're here to discuss possible role changes should you feel you'd be better cast elsewhere. Many of you have gotten assigned rather minor parts; this is unavoidable due to the fact that there are more of you than there are major parts."
"Why not use the X cast, then?" Tarta demanded. "There're fewer of them, aren't there?"
"It's a moot point. N-chan is using them in her version of the Rocky Horror thingymajigger at the moment."
Everyone shuddered, having seen a preview for that fic.
"Poor Subaru-san," Tatra murmured quietly, taking a sip of her steaming tea.
"Hey, where'm I in here?" Zazu suddenly demanded, scanning the page. "I see Eagle and Geo, but I don't see me."
The director sighed. "I couldn't find an honest casting for you, Zazu, so I thought I'd ask you to help behind the scenes... after all, we need someone to build the ships and models. It'll be a lot of hard work, but if you think you could handle it, I'd really be most grateful...."
Zazu's eyes lit up, knowing this director's lack of technical skills. "You'll give me free reign?" he asked craftily. "I can build real, working ones if I want?"
A red pencil appeared in the director's hand out of nowhere, and she touched the tip of it to her own copy of the casting list. "Tell you what," she bargained, "let's use the FTO, the GTO, and the Mashins in place of the X-wings... if it's all right with the owners, of course," she asked, looking inquiringly at the three Magic Knights, Eagle, and Geo. They slowly nodded, one by one. "And the NSX as the Millenium Falcon... you can create all the rest, everything you want, as real as you want."
"Deal!" Zazu agreed, and Kristin marked on the paper. The changes to her own sheet appeared on the others as she wrote.
"Let's just go down the list," she said. "We'll tackle arguments as we come to them. First, Hikaru as Luke - any objections? No? Good. Then, next, Umi as C3PO--"
"I am NOT gonna be that robot!" Umi shouted.
"Why not?"
"Because! I hate him!"
"Umi-san, calm down..." Fuu tried to placate her. "I'm playing R2D2-san; it won't be that bad, will it?"
"Did I mention," the director drawled deliberately, "that this is an adaptation? In this version, C3PO - or UMI3PO, rather - is going to be a tall, beautiful android with a slight pearl-frost to her skin, and her name printed vertically in blue along her left cheek. FUU2D2 will be much the same, only with a gold dusting to her skin and the letters stamped in green. I was pondering altering your school uniforms, but decided not to. Does that allay any worries you might have about being stuffed into robot suits?"
"Do I get lines, or warbles and beeps?" Fuu asked while the simmering Umi sat next to her.
"Lines. We've translated most of Artoo's lines by now. The rest will be done by the time we start filming. Umi?"
"Fine," Umi snapped.
The director smiled. "Good. Next is Clef as Ben Kenobi...."
"No objections," the Guru said.
"Ferio, any objections to being Lando?"
"Aside from that I'd much rather flirt with Fuu than Eagle..." the Prince said, smiling at the blonde girl who wore his ring. Fuu blushed. "... None," Ferio concluded.
"Good. Eagle?"
"This is an adaptation, so I guess it would be slightly different - I'd be a Prince instead of a Princess, wouldn't I?" Eagle worried.
"Mmm."
"So Eagle has to deal with being flirted with by both myself and Ferio?" Lantis surmised.
"Like that's anything new to you, Lantis?" prodded Geo teasingly.
The director smiled at Geo. "Precisely my point. And Ferio doesn't seem to mind. Eagle, are you comfortable with the part? We can re-cast it, if you're not."
"No, it's just fine," Eagle confirmed, shaking his head. "But does this mean Lantis and I will end up together in the end, without Hikaru?"
"Hmm, good point," Kristin said. "I'll see what I can do script-wise." Another few lines in red pencil appeared on everyone's sheets. "Next is Lantis as Solo...."
"I'm fine with the part," Lantis said, abrupt.
"He would be," Asuka muttered. "It means he get to paw his boyfriend."
The director raised an eyebrow at the half-heard mutter. "Is there a problem, your highness?" she inquired of the teenaged Empress.
"It's disgusting," opined Asuka, "two men being together like that."
Kristin was silent for a moment, the rest of the cast even more so. "Well, your highness, if you object to your co-workers, then I would not wish to enforce your participation in this project. I shall simply re-assign the role I had thought to give you...."
"What role?" Asuka demanded. "It's blank next to my name."
"I know. I'd wanted to see if you fit it or if you would prefer to go back to Fahren for a while and take a rest." The director filled in the empty space with the name "Mon Motha."
"The leader of the Resistance?!" squealed Asuka. "You mean I get to be her!?"
The director flipped her pencil around and touched the eraser end of it to the name she'd just written. "However, if you are going to be having trouble working with either Eagle or Lantis, then I would not feel right putting you into a situation that would make you uncomfortable, your highness."
"NO!!" shrieked Asuka. "I'm fine with it, really I am!!"
Kristin didn't bother to hide her smile from the cast, but Asuka was too enraptured with her role to notice the others sharing that smile with the director. "Next is Ascot as the Rancor's trainer...."
Ascot frowned. "Is it going to be a real creature?" he asked.
Kristin shook her head. "No. What we're going to do is have an illusion of it. It will require a little more work co-ordinating Hikaru's fight scene, but will be bloodless in the end."
"How are you managing the illusion?" Ferio inquired.
"Seishirou from the X cast has been persuaded to help me on this angle," the director said, only a hint of evasion in her airy manner. "The entire scene will happen inside his maboroshi."
"How did you get him to help you?" Sanyun asked, being not nearly so naive as he looked.
Kristin studied a most interesting spot on the ceiling. "He owes me a favor due to a certain hot spring scene I wrote for him concerning the Sumeragi."
Hikaru blinked, not having a clue what was being discussed, while everyone else either flushed or coughed.
"Anyhow," Kristin continued, "is that acceptable, Ascot?"
"Yes." The Bal nodded vigorously, his brown hair falling into his eyes as always.
"Next is Caldina, as the dancer in Jabba's palace." The director looked inquiringly at the Chizetan dancer who curled up next to Lafarga.
"Not a very big part," Caldina observed, "but it's me. Fine."
"Who gets to play Jabba?" Lafarga asked. "It's not on the casting list."
"Yeah, and neither are the Ewoks!" Hikaru piped up.
The director sighed and put her chin in her hands. "Okay, there I confess to being stumped. To do Jabba I was going to work with Satsuki from X and see about using the actual footage of Jabba from the films and slicing it into this version. For the Ewoks, though, I could only come up with a couple ideas, none of which seem horribly feasible. One is to use the CCD cast of kids. Another is to use the Wish characters. The last is to use those SDs of CLAMP themselves that Nekoi draws. Any ideas?"
A sheet of paper popped out of nowhere near the ceiling and drifted down into the director's hands.
She stared at it, a sweatdrop forming on the side of her head.
"Lai suggests using the authors and readers as Ewoks," she said quietly. "Since we won't have enough cast otherwise. Particularly Rika as Wicket."
There was silence.
"I'll... discuss that later with her," Kristin decided.