She'd left before six in the morning. By the time she got back, it was nearly noon — just in time for lunch. Jennifer had made pasta. Jack Thompson wasn't home, so it was just the two of them.
As usual, Jennifer said nothing about Tom. She knew Maya had gone to see him, and she didn't ask. Maya, for her part, had no intention of mentioning that Tom had apparently cuckolded one of Hell's Kitchen's most dangerous crime lords. Some things were better left unsaid.
A baby stroller sat beside the dining table. James was strapped in, wide awake, staring at Maya with those huge dark eyes of his as she twirled pasta onto her fork — little lips smacking together with great interest.
The sight of baby James lifted the weight off Maya's mood. I'm going to become Hokage — well, a female Hokage — so why am I letting some third-rate street thug ruin my afternoon? The future had alien invasions to worry about. Maya had decided she was going to become Earth's most powerful asset. One local crime boss was barely a footnote.
In a much better mood, Maya lifted James out of his stroller and, still with sauce on the corner of her mouth, pressed a noisy kiss to his chubby cheek.
James wailed in indignant protest, tiny arms swinging. Maya laughed. Jennifer watched them, smiling but not intervening.
They'd barely finished eating when Jack called. He told them to be at the Hank Building on 41st Street by 3 PM — he'd meet them there and walk them in for the audition.
Maya considered arriving early, but Jennifer talked her out of it. Jennifer had more than ten years of audition experience, and she told Maya flatly: they were filler. The real decisions had already been made before they walked through the door.
Besson had already narrowed the field. Maya hadn't even gone to the preliminary round — this callback was purely a courtesy to the screenplay's author. Their apartment was a short walk from the Hank Building anyway. Leaving at two-thirty was plenty of time.
Maya retreated to her room to read. Soap operas held zero interest for her.
Lying on her bed, she set aside The Nature of Gravity and closed her eyes to check today's black market shop refresh. With a familiar shimmer, the old merchant materialized in her mind's eye. Maya focused — a swirling vortex appeared beside him, spun twice, and produced a gold card. On the card was a lazy-looking young man with a ponytail, seven shadow-tendrils hovering around him like limbs.
Shikamaru Nara. Shadow Imitation Technique.
Maya checked her inventory: one bronze-colored kunai infused with chakra metal, and one silver sealing scroll. She sighed. She was broke. The chakra-metal kunai was simply out of reach for now.
Shikamaru's Shadow Imitation Technique was a unique skill card — not a generic one like Transformation Jutsu. Using it would grant not just the hand seal sequence for Shadow Imitation, but the underlying principles of how the technique worked. Only Rank 1, but at least it was functional.
She cleared the kunai slot and slotted the card in.
She checked her Influence Points: 34. Then looked at the Gold-tier Shadow Imitation upgrade: 10,000 points.
Right. Nap time.
2:45 PM — Hank Building, 41st Street.
Jack, in a suit and tie, led the pair inside: Jennifer with baby James in her arms, Maya stone-faced beside her.
"The shoot is set to be filmed on location in Hell's Kitchen," Jack said as they walked, "so they're running the auditions here in Manhattan. It's a long shot, but Maya is a local — she knows that neighborhood from the inside. You never know, Besson might go for it."
On the second-floor corridor, a row of girls aged thirteen or fourteen sat silently on small wooden chairs lining the hallway. Maya scanned them quickly. One caught her eye immediately.
Jennifer was directed to a separate section — she was going for a minor supporting role, not the lead. Maya followed the other girls and took a seat at the far end of the row. Jack stood beside her, like the other parents waiting with their children. No one spoke. The hallway was hushed.
A door opened and a girl stepped out. A middle-aged Black woman leaned out after her and called, "Jessica Jones? Jessica Jones, you here? You're up."
"Coming!" A girl in a pink wool sweater scrambled to her feet.
Maya, eyes still closed, felt her expression harden. Through her sensory perception, she had read the full script — it was inside a leather briefcase in the room. It matched almost exactly the film she'd seen in her previous life.
Jack's manuscript, Manhattan's Miraculous Girl, was in there too. And the red-ink marks on the script told the whole story: lines drawn under the Hell's Kitchen location descriptions, and under the family dynamic section of the "miraculous girl" protagonist. That was it. Just those two passages.
The Frenchman had read Jack's screenplay, borrowed two specific elements that sparked something in his imagination, paid for the screen credit, and then proceeded to rewrite almost everything else. In a sense, Besson had more integrity than some — some directors would copy an entire twenty-episode story, stretch it into a hundred episodes, and claim the whole thing as their original creation. Besson had taken a few details and at least paid for the attribution.
"Maya Hansen? Maya Hansen — you're up!"
Jack gave her shoulder a light pat. "Go on. Don't be nervous — just treat it like one of those dance and music performances you've done before."
I've had conversations with the President of the United States. I've sat across from Howard Stark. Maya wiped cold sweat from her forehead and walked toward the door.
Luc Besson looked up at the girl standing across from him.
Dark gold hair in twin low tails, showing off a clean, smooth forehead. Curved, delicate brows. Beneath long lashes, almond-shaped eyes — deep green irises, sharp and still. And the lingering roundness of baby fat in her cheeks, catching the afternoon sunlight in a way that made the fine down visible.
Quite a striking girl, the Frenchman thought privately. He leaned toward the casting director beside him and murmured, "Very beautiful, isn't she? Looks like Jack Thompson wasn't exaggerating."
The thin, close-cropped white man beside him frowned. "Too beautiful. Mathilda should have an ordinary face — but with just a hint of a woman's allure underneath. This girl looks like a little angel. There's nothing... that would make someone feel that kind of impulse."