Pamphlets Flying Through the Air ~ Pre-Production (Open)

It had been a long last couple weeks. Arcadia had been hitting the job board more heavily than usual. She had taken more jobs before, but these last couple jobs were bigger. They also sent her across more of her Fiore in a shorter span of time than any of her previous work had.

Arcadia also still injured from her last encounter. It should have been a quiet night babysitting a low key murder mystery party. A psychotic requip mage and his buddy had other ideas, and now her favorite dress was in tatters, and Arcadia was a well-bandaged slayer. She was very much looking forward to getting her dress to a tailor and herself back to Fairy Hills to soak in some soothing and healing herbs.  

For now, a couple glasses of her favorite Fairy Tail slushie while catching up with the other Magnolia Seis was all she wanted to do. The Magnolia Seis were a group of kids she'd met in the East Forest not too long ago.  She often hung out with them when not busy with guild business. Even just chatting with them over her iLac could be pretty relaxing.

Taking a seat at the guild hall bar, Arcadia ordered herself a couple glasses of mixed watermelon-strawberry juice.  The bar staff left her with two glasses and a spoon. Arcadia rubbed over an aching bandaged forearm, before drawing out her sky blue iLac. She kissed the forehead of the Exceed-resembling kitty charm hanging from one corner for good luck.  

Setting her iLac on the bar, she picked up one of her glasses in one hand, the spoon in another. She absently stirred while chilling the glass through concentrating chill magic into her hand.  The young ice slayer sat her glass down only long enough to launch a messenger app, joining a Magnolia Seis group chat already in progress.  

She joined in the middle of some discussion on a new PSA contest the Magic Council was holding to put in movie lacrimas before the movie.  She couldn't help but giggle at the jokes flying back and forth.  Before she could get enough into the spirit to contribute her own jokes to the chat, it all broke up as most of her non-wizard friends log off for family-stuff.

Slipping her iLac away, Arcadia thought over this contest.  Her Magnolia Seis friends were right about one thing, It probably would be filled mostly with 'This is your brain. This is your brain in a dark guild.' kind of stuff. Maybe she could make a better one though. How hard could it be? It sounded kind of fun, and would be a good break from getting stabbed and sliced by clouds of knives.  Plus there was no train to ride. They could shoot it here in Magnolia.

Rubbing her chin thoughtfully, Arcadia began brainstorming. She took a sip of her watermelon-strawberry juice-turned-slushie as she began to think out loud. "Maybe something about a person handing out pamphlets. We'd be making a movie pamphlet after all. hmm...but what if the pamphlets were actually self-aware... and their only purpose in life was to inform their readers..."

It was something of a surprise to Arcadia when she belatedly noted that she was not alone with the bar staff. She smiled over to the vaguely familiar dark-haired mage down the way. The older mage's name unfortunately escaped Arcadia, having only seen her in passing at best.

The young blonde slayer chuckled and nodded, “Well... yeah. The contest is for PSA's They're all annoying by nature. Such magic constructs as self-aware pamphlets would be little floating PSA's so I'm sure they'd be as inherently annoying the video ones I see on my iLac. And since it is for movie lacrimas, the pamphlets wouldn't even need to be real.

Arcadia took long, slow survey around the front of the guild hall. ”This is just a little bit of practice. They'll totes need some sound added in later.” Drawing up on her  magic reserves, the blonde slayer deftly shaped 12 puppets  from shadowstuff.  The shadowstuff swirling out  into thin folded sheets until they were colored in to complete the shadow fantasy of  a small cloud of pamphlets swirling in a non-existent wind. Each shadow-pamphlet was stylized differently. Some had eyes,  some looked merely like mundane pamphlets, some looked like pamphlets with anthropomorphic folds to give them the illusion of a face without any illustration drawn on the cover.

The blonde slayer looked over the various designs swirling in the non-existent, gentle breeze, writing her notes down on a napkin. She smiled to Amaryllis, ”So what do you think? Should they have drawn faces on them that do the talking? Or should they be folded more into origami faces?  Maybe they should only talk through print that magically appears on their covers. My name Arcadia, by the way.”

Yes the young blonde slayer seemed quite serious about making this PSA for the Magic Council, starring self-aware pamphlets. She even took out her iLac, a sky blue affair with a single charm resembling an Exceed dangling from one corner. Arcadia turned its embedded camera on the swirling shadow-pamphlets to record them as a test. Since the shadow-pamphlets made no noise of their own, Arcadia made wind noises for them while she was recording.  "Swsssshhhhh.. shhh swoooshhh! shhhhe swooshhhhhs."

Arcadia already had the notepad app on her iLac opened up for her own notes. She quickly added in the first of Amaryllis's suggestions. Proficient at typing with one thumb, she kept her attention on the shadow-pamphlets,, taking the time to concentrate and shift them all to the folded origami design. She smiled on to Althea, “Hey, Thea! I guess we were just getting started on this PSA contest for the Magic Council. I think it's supposed to play before certain movie lacrimas in the future. But Amaryllis has good ideas about how we can make real sentient pamphlets...which now that I think about it would make an awesome promo for the movie. But I think we need to give them wind magic to put provide the breeze for them to fly in. Hmm oh I guess if you all wanna help me with this.. I think we'd only get paid if we won the contest, but that sounds good to me.. for something that doesn't involve anything violent for a change. Making a movie would be fun! And making real magic pamphlets would a a bonus...we could sell them even after the movie is done. Though I guess it doesn't havta be a long movie since it's for a PSA. That's funny a PSA about PSA pamphlets.

She paused, “Maybe I'm getting' ahead of myself here. I'm maybe we can divide up who works on making the pamphlets and on the movie. I think real ones would work way better than my shadow mock-ups. And should we star in the movie ourselves? And what kind of movie should it be? I mean pamphlets are out to annoy and inform people with their PSA, but maybe we should show how they help people in the end to encourage people to buy them?”

Arcadia rubbed her chin in thought, considering the demands they might need their pamphlets to do for the movie. She smiled to Amaryllis and over to Althea, ”If we're using the real thing for the shoot, then we' def need to work on them as part of the per-production. On the other hand, we probably need to figure out what all we need these pamphlets to do. So we can figure all the different kind of spells we'll be needing to enchant into them. Can you make paper into lacrima or do you take a lacrima and shape it through magic into paper to be a pamphlet? And to help them fly, we'll probably need to find some sort of wind magic to infuse them with. So maybe we should figure out the basics of the movie first, so we know what kind of acting the pamphlets will have to do.”

She would listen closely to Althea's pitch for the plot of the PSA movie. Arcadia laughed and and cheered, loving every bit of this 'fan fiction' inspired plot, ”Hmm I think that's exact kinda movie we need We can add in some talking animals for the younger kids they may wanna reach, I or something like that if we need to. They'd be comedy sidekicks, like when Moe-chan needs someone to talk to about how her heart is torn.”

Arcadia giggled at the idea of giving the pamphlet's eyes, "Never thoughta giving the pamphlets eyes., but maybe we should. Uh I guess we'll see if that's more hella cute or uh hella creepy when we experiment with making the pamphlets.

She quickly tapped the idea into her quickly accumulating notes on what the pamphlets might or should need. "And yeah I suppose we should get to work on them first. They will be the star. We need to make sure they'll be able to act and take direction. Or I suppose we could fake it if any of us know something like telekinesis. But that probably defeats the purpose Do we know anyone who does know wind magic?"

The pale blonde girl rubbed her chin in thought and quickly noted Thea having a good source for paper on her iLac. "Sweet. I guess we will need alotta that. Uh.. I dunno if we'll be able to reuse any paper from any failed attempts."


Arcadia smiled up to see Mia, "Hey Mia! I'm pretty good. We're working on a PSA for a contest by the Magic Council. I think we've decided on a love story about self-aware flying informational pamphlets..." She paused and realized she had skipped introductions, "Sorries... forgot my manners. Thea and Amaryllis, this is our newest guildmate, Mia. Mia, these are Thea and Amaryllis. I think you can thank Thea for juice being a thing in Fairy Tail."