High School Musical: The Musical: The Series: Season 3

Opening Night! Harness Time

Inside, Big Red holds his flowers in his hand for Ashlyn. He scratches his white wig, wearing his red, black and white jacket with a flipped-up fur collar, he looks for his girlfriend. "Biggie!" Ashlyn runs up to her boyfriend, in her blue dress and pink jacket.

"Hey, I got you this" Ashlyn holds up her bouquet of flowers. "Hehe, I got you some too" Big Red holds up his. "And the best thing is...this isn't my first opening night, so I won't feel the need t constantly throw up."

"Um, just in case, find some water."

"Hey, half-hour call!" Val calls. The Shallow Lakers cheer as Miss Jenn and Dewey Wood gathers them up. "I've never been the best at speeches, so I'll leave this to my sister."

"Thank you, Dewey. All right, Wildcats/Shallow Lakers/VKs and AKs. My friends, my children. As you know, there is a judge out there in the audience tonight who is very important to the theater program. He is going to score every performance, music, sets, costumes, and everything. And after this, we figure out if we win. Keep that on your mind, but don't think about it too much. Go out there, have fun and try your best. Cause at the end of the day...it's all about you. Now go you there and do us proud!"

It was time for a "flawless" opening night.

INTRO PLAYS

In the theater room, the orchestra plays their tunes. From behind the curtains, Nini reads from the transcript for her introduction.

"Auradon. It's beautiful, isn't it? I'm Mal, daughter of Maleficent, and this is my home. It wasn't always. I was born on the Isle of the Lost, where all the villains had been banished, locked away for good. That is, until Prince Ben decided that their children should have a chance. So four villain kids-- the VKs-came to Auradon, including me. Long story short, Ben's the king now. I'm his girlfriend, and we are about to head back to this Isle to pick what will hopefully be a long line of new VKs who get to come to Auradon and find their happily ever afters, too."

When the play started, Good to be Bad starts to play, and the theater was quick to applause.

EJ watches the theater from a distance. He saw his family in the 3rd row, but he also saw a man next to them, talking to them with a clipboard. That man wasn't the judge Miss Jenn was talking about, he was in the first row. How was that?

"Caswell!" EJ throws his head back from the curtains when he hears Mr. Mazzara call his name. "I suppose that this is..."

"My last Opening Night with the group, yep. And I'm not completely upset bout it at all."

"don't worry, we'll never forget you though."

"Um, Mister M. Do you know who that man next to my dad is?"

Mazzara looks at the man sitting next to Cash. "Well, I suspect that's a man who works at a college. I'd keep my eye out for him."

"Oh, great" EJ lets out a sigh. As if he wasn't already in a panic. "Don't worry, Mister Caswell, when it comes to acting...or filming, I have no doubts that you will be very successful."

"EJ, come on, you're about to go on," Val tells him. "Thanks, Mr. M" EJ grins before walking off. He tries to shake his nerves, but they were sticking with him.

"Oh, Benjamin!" Miss Jenn calls. "Just doing last-minute checks, but I also wanted to thank you for everything. Thanks to you, I can finally breathe when it comes to these competitions."

"It's just doing what you can."

Miss Jenn wraps her arms around his neck, taking him by surprise. But he did tangle his hands around her waist.

Mike was backstage, wanting to wish Ms. Jenn good luck, but he saw her hugging Mr. Mazzara. Should be jealous that she was hugging him? Maybe, but he was actually happy for her. Miss Jenn noticed Ricky's dad staring and he waved.

"Okay, wish us luck" Miss Jenn grins before walking up to Mike, but Mazzara didn't notice. "Hey, you!"

"You like him, don't you? Mike grins.

"Well...that's a complicated question. My love life hasn't been the smoothest if you know what I mean."

"Yeah, I know. But the last thing I would want is to keep someone from being happy with someone else. So if you want to date him...you can."

"What about you?"

"I'll be okay...as long as we can still be friends."

"And Ricky? He did give me his blessing."

"I'm sure Ricky will understand too. After all, I want you to be happy, whether it's with me or him."

Miss Jenn looks back at Mr. Mazzara, looking at the paper from his clipboard. Maybe he was right, maybe there was still a possibility of them. "Thank you, Michael" Miss Jenn gives Mike one last hug.

It was time for the battle between Mal and Hades, which means the first try with the Harness, which everyone was...more than a bit nervous about, but they made a few modifications, so they were praying that this was better.

Nora, dressed in a wild multicolored skirt and jacket, was about to say her line, but she smiles as she saw Jet in the front row. She fans out her fortune cards in her hand in front of Ricky. "You're going to be a wise and brave king."

"He already is," Nini says.

"See the cards never lie" As Nora holds her palm out, Ricky gives prop money to the played "Fortune teller."

Right on cue, just as the others were about to leave, Bryan, playing the god of the underworld, elbows his way through the background VKs and breaks through, glaring at each VK. "It's Hades!" Kourtney calls. "Stop the car! He's trying to escape!"

Bryan was so excited, this was his first scene, and he wasn't gonna waste one minute of it. "I AM A GOD!" He bellows. "I DO BELONG HERE!" He bulged his muscles and arched his eyebrows with an evil grin on his face.

Ricky, EJ, and Big Red take one step, then Bryan aims his blue Ember in their direction. Thanks to sound effects, the 3 boys pretend to be struck and fall to the ground.

Ashlyn starts the fog machine and purple fog rolls in. Kourtney grabs the harness and straps it to Nini's back. "Good luck, Neens" she whispers to her. Mr. Mazzara uses the harness to lift her into the air.

Bryan raises his right arm, hurling the Blue Crystal and Mal. Nini pretends to be hurt, and Mazzara lowers her a little bit. Thank goodness the harness was working, it really looked like Hades was draining Mal's powers.

"C'mon, Mal, blast him!" EJ shouts. Nini quickly opens her mouth and throws her hand forward, as the Dragon exhales mightly. The fan machine Miss Jenn bought blew hard. Bryan pretends to tumble back when instead he just fell on the ground and ran to the back.

"Yes!" Miss Jenn smiles. They had done it. They had finally done the harness scene and no one got hurt. She can finally put her worries to rest. They now have a chance at winning the Theater Competition.

Everything seems like smooth-sailing so far, right, well, that's gonna change, soon, but I'll let you guys have some good luck for now, cause I'm about to hit y'all with a truck next chapter. Only a few more days until ZOMBIES 3...it's SOOOOOOOOOO close. Now, season 3, I can definitely wait for, I'm not ready cause I don't ship Rina and I want to live with my Portwell endgame being an actual fact and not breaking them up for a ship that really isn't the best, no offense to Rina shippers, but some of the shippers I saw are...really toxic. Again, this is not direct to ALL Rina shippers so pls don't start a war with me. Stay safe and have a great day or night, wherever you are.