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Save Point: Chakrim Get

Later, one of the fight choreographers comes up to her. He seems kind of distressed.

"I just wanted to thank you for helping us out with that last scene," he explains anxiously. "There was no way we could do it without at least one additional character making a surprise last minute appearance. We were going to get him to do it... but... but...."

He promptly almost breaks down and she's pretty much forced to hold him for a bit until he recovers himself. "It's so stupid.... he had so much talent..." he mutters into her shoulder. "Good looks, strong, professionally trained stuntman... he would have been a star. Then he gets himself killed when some stupid shonkily built platform collapses out from under him. In China, of all places. This was a guy who jumped through rings of spinning blades that were _on fire_and thought it was fun, and he gets taken out by some stupid piece of goddamn bamboo. It isn't fair."

She gives him a few moments to pull himself together, and lets him keep going. "Anyway, most of our go-to guys had gone home because it was already pretty much over and we weren't keeping them on the books anymore to save money, so you totally saved our ass on this one. I know we only gave you bit parts in the rest of the series, but this way we can do a sort of montage thing and imply that you've been around throughout the story in the background, keeping an eye on everyone and forwarding the plot, that sort of thing..."

"I hope I brightened up your day a little," Cleo comforts him, trying to be kind as he straightens up and sniffles into a tissue. "We can't bring him back, but I could help you finish this off in style."

"The thing is, we all decided we wanted to give you a present," explains the fight choreographer. He nods his head toward a bunch of his friends who are somewhat mournfully eating barbeque and trying to alleviate the pain of loss by honouring their friends memory with beer. "We weren't sure what, but then one of the guys had an idea."

He hands her a peculiarly shaped object concealed under a piece of folded golden-pink silk that seems to have been part of one of the costumes. It looks suspiciously like one of the flowing scarves from the huge mass-produced set of harem costumes, half of which have already been 'misplaced' by young amazons in push-up bras to take home and model for their boyfriends.

"Careful, it's sharp. Try not to touch the outside edges."

"Is this...?" exclaims Cleo wonderingly.

"Yes, it's the genuine article. They made about twenty or thirty of the original ones for the first couple of series, because they were just stamped out of sheet steel like a knife, but all the rest of them are all totally blunt. They look burnished and shiny and awesome on camera, but they don't actually have an edge. Safety regulations and all."

"So why is this one...?"

"Well, one night we were all hanging out with him having a few drinks, just like tonight, and we decided it'd be fun to have a contest and see if we could throw it for real. Like in the TV series. But since it was blunt it kept bouncing off stuff, so we kind of introduced it to a grindstone in the prop shops and gave it a real edge. No-one has to cut a slot in the scenery with an angle-grinder to get this one to stay put."

"But it must be worth a fortune. Once they finally start selling up the props, every mad fan in the world is going to want this!"

"Actually, no. You see, because we sharpened the edges, that makes it an actual weapon. No-one can take it to a convention, or use it on a film set, or actually do anything with it that might be fun without health-and-safety breathing down their necks. All you can do legally is hang it on a wall. It's listed on the books as 'damaged during shooting'. So, we figure we can damn well do what we like with it, and giving a really dangerous edged weapon to a hot girl is exactly the sort of thing he would've appreciated."

"I'm glad you all think I'm hot," she teases gently, collecting the chakrim from his hand and giving him a little chaste kiss. "Thank you."

He looks kind of embarrassed, but his mates over with the barbeque are all trying to give him a range of unobtrusive thumbs-up gestures that are in fact terribly noticeable. "The mad fans are all after the special ones from the last series, anyway," he excuses himself. "The one with the cross-bar that splits into two punching blades is already unofficially up to fifty thousand."

The silk they've wrapped it in is an astute choice, since it slides over the curved and sharpened edges instead of snagging on them and cutting through. Cleo makes sure it's secure, then carries the peculiarly deadly souvenir out to her jump-bike and puts in in one of the carry-alls, in case it might just decide to disappear at some point during the night.

"So, I wouldn't have picked you for having that sort of fight presence," someone else interrupts after she gets back, a person she doesn't recognize. "You made that scene look absolutely real, like you were actually in combat! Are you thinking about any other roles after this?"

Because there is no party-friendly way to explain that immortals become callous about filling in false paperwork, and obtaining faked credentials through demonstrations of real skill designed to convince others of prior training, she settles for, "Let's just say I have some military experience in my past. I'm not really an actor; this is just something I thought I'd do for fun."

"You must have gotten some stunt training somewhere, though. Some of those moves were really incredible! They'll probably put your name in the final credits for that last scene."

"Once you've run through a bunch of genuine explosions, fake ones with convenient springboards seem kind of tame. Same with anything else. I only helped with this because it's what he would've wanted - to give the story a proper ending, like it deserved."

"Oh come on, you can't tell me that you wouldn't like to be famous! Here's my card - call me after you've thought about it. I'm certain we could find you something suitable."

Cleo politely accepts the card, then as soon as she's far enough away and back among people she actually knows, flicks the card away with two fingers to send it spinning into a rubbish bin several meters distant, mentally imagining a first-person camera pursuing it through the air like it was the chakrim in the TV series. "Who was that guy?" she asks one of the stunt trainers.

"Some sort of Hollywood agent," the stunt trainer confirms. "There are two or three cruising the party and trying to pick up stray 'talent' now that it's all over. " He makes a disdainful 'air-quotes' gesture when he uses the word talent. "They've got a space to fill now he's gone. Damn vultures."

"Well, don't let them put my name in the big letters, okay? There's a reason I'm not trying to get famous. I don't mind being in the small print on the list of extras and stuntmen, but if I'm in the main credits the wrong people might notice."

"Hey, we all gotta stick together at times like this," agrees the stunt trainer. "Everyone's got a few things in their past they don't wanna get caught out on. At least they won't recognize you on the screen - that costume is incredible."

"You're still in costume?" exclaims his girlfriend, one of the costumiers, who is just coming back from getting them two more beers, long necks pinched between her fingers. "That must be really hot under all that latex and fur."

"It's a little bit warm but not too bad. All the more reason to have another drink, right?" Cleo lies cheerfully. "Besides, if I take it off it's not like I can put it back on. Isn't really room under here for anything including underwear, and once you tear it, it takes ages to put it back together."

"It's a really amazing job!" the costumier explains to her boyfriend. "See, they even got the nap of the fur right, the whiskers are real whiskers, and you can't even tell she's wearing contacts!"

"What, it wasn't you guys who made it?"

"Oh, stop it with that already. You know we only do the clothes. The special effects stuff gets done by Weta, they do all that stuff. She just shows up like that, we do a little brushing and dusting after each take, then she goes back and they take it all off carefully to preserve it for next time."

"Actually my boyfriend acts as a third-party consultant to Weta," Cleo explains. "They don't do it directly themselves. We're into cosplay and fully realistic costumes - he has a black dragon partial that you'd have to see to believe. In fact you might have, if you've watched the right episode - he played the monster in that single one-off scene where the child of the elder god comes looking for its mother? The one with all the low-light shots?"

"I saw that one. I didn't think it was really that good. It looked like a porcupine."

"They didn't like his first try at it, because they said it was too good and blended into the dark too well. So we put a bunch of pointy spines on its back and gave it more teeth than one mouth could possibly hold. They loved that - lots of scary lurking and dramatic lightning flashes and spine-tips vanishing around corners, ending with the monster getting epically killed - but, yeah, it basically looked like a porcupine. The original version, though, now that was something."

"You should show it to us some time."

Well, we all really need to sort out what we're doing next," Cleo hedges. "This has been a fun little thing on the side for me, but it was never a full-time job. And I imagine you guys'll be moving on to wherever you're needed next. I doubt there's going to be another series this popular filmed in New Zealand again anytime soon, but it seems to have attracted lots of movie companies, so that might be enough to keep you going. Or you could just always sell out and move to LA."

"I think it would be fun to try the movies," suggests the costumier. "Isn't that right honey?"

"The show must go on," the stunt trainer agrees in slightly mocking tones.