Maya trudged back to her room, deflated. She pulled off her shoes and tucked them into the small box under her bed—the one she kept her ninja supplies in. Explosive tags, kunai, soldier pills, the custom gauze she'd used to bandage her foot that one time. All the essentials.
Worth noting: explosive tags don't detonate without chakra to trigger them. A slight difference from the Naruto world's version. And since Maya was the only person in this entire world who had chakra, she had no problem stashing dangerous ordnance under her bed without losing sleep over it.
She checked on the banyan sapling from Mokuzan—already looking nothing like the decorative bonsai you'd see outside a restaurant on Ninth Street. The trunk was straight, the leaves enormous. Maya set it by the window. She'd snip a few leaves to bring to school after the break and run some tests.
A glance at the clock: nearly five. With no one else home, Maya headed to the kitchen to make dinner. She had leftover grilled meat and the white-cut chicken Old Huang had given her. A fried rice night seemed right—and yes, the Hansen household absolutely stocked rice. Maya was, after all, what you might call an egg person.
Jennifer came home just before six, sweeping through the door with James on her hip and Jack in tow.
The smell hit her first.
"Baby, you are too sweet!" Jennifer called out, already kicking off her heels. "You made dinner?! We were literally just talking about grabbing you and going out to eat. Oh wow—Chinese food! Yangzhou fried rice!"
Jack was unlacing his shoes. "Maya, this grilled meat smells incredible. You used to only put in ham."
"The owner of that Sichuan place on our block gave it to me," Maya lied. "The chicken too. It's pretty good."
The two of them were starving. They washed up and dug in without ceremony. The grilled meat—clearly whatever Dingci liked—was not only delicious but came in a generous portion. Two adults and one girl, and all three of them ate until they could barely breathe.
This was, Maya realized, the first time she'd eaten dinner this full in a long time. The whole family collapsed onto the couch afterward, channel-surfing in a collective stupor, too stuffed to move.
"Ugh." Jennifer let out a small burp. "I'm so full. This is your fault, Maya. You made it too good. I ate way too much—this is terrible for my health and looks."
Maya had no comment. Wasn't it Jennifer herself who, not ten minutes ago, claimed she needed extra meat because she was breastfeeding and her nutrition was suffering?
"So what did you two do today?" Maya asked, steering the conversation elsewhere.
"Jennifer had scenes today," Jack explained. "The scene where she plays Portman's mother—just a few shots, but it still ate up the whole afternoon."
"Oh, and Maya—tell her the good news, Jack!" Jennifer nudged him.
Jack tried to look dignified. "Let's not make a big deal out of it. Keep it low-key."
Jennifer stared at him. "You answered one phone call and started screaming 'I'm going to be a real director!' loud enough for the security guard at the studio gate to hear. That's your version of low-key?"
Jack coughed, visibly embarrassed to be called out in front of his stepdaughter, and changed the subject. "The deal is—I have to write a script for Mr. Weinstein first. If it's good enough, I get my own directing credit."
"What kind of script?" Maya asked, playing along.
Jack's eyes lit up. "You know about George Lucas restarting the Star Wars project? After all these years—Star Wars back on the big screen. Hollywood is buzzing. It's still just industry whispers, but once the public finds out?" He let out a low whistle. "Tidal wave."
The expression on his face was painfully familiar to Maya—the look of a struggling writer staring at someone else's bestseller numbers.
"Anyway," Jack continued, "everyone knows Lucas is a weak scriptwriter. So he's opening it up—a large-scale submission process. The Weinstein Brothers want in on Lucas's pipeline, so they've put all their employees on it. Write something good, and who knows."
Maya kept her face neutral. Jack, you've been struggling for over a decade. What exactly gives you the confidence that George Lucas is going to pick your script? Even if Lucas isn't the strongest writer by Hollywood standards, his 'weak' is still relative to other legendary directors. Focus on the basics instead of dreaming about becoming a top-tier hit on your very first try—you're not exactly Tomato or Potato over here.
She thought about saying it. Then she thought about the ten years of failure it might take him to reach that same conclusion, and decided against it. In another decade, this would be exactly the kind of story people made entire roast threads about. For now, she let it go.
Maya finally couldn't hold it in. "Jack—how exactly are you so confident Lucas will pick your script?"
"I'm not confident at all," Jack said, completely at ease.
Maya stared at him.
"But that's why I have you, Maya! You're a science and tech genius, and Star Wars is sci-fi—you handle the setting, I'll handle the plot. Together we're unstoppable. We'll blow Lucas away and take the top prize!"
She was about to flatly refuse, then something clicked.
Wait.
Maya turned it over in her head. That afternoon she'd gone on a gacha spending spree—burned through 3 Influence Points' worth of pulls, and now her reserves were running low. But the Frank Gardes situation had taught her something: indirect action also generated Influence Points.
If she wrote a script—a really good one—and Jack directed it, and it made a lot of money...
Would that count?
She let the silence stretch a moment, then said carefully, "Jack, I haven't actually seen Star Wars. Hard to co-write something I know nothing about."
That wasn't a brush-off. It was the truth. Maya's past life had been squarely in the generation that grew up with the prequel trilogy—she'd started following Star Wars with Natalie Portman's episodes. The original films? Ancient history she'd never bothered to watch. And in this life, she'd been two years old when Return of the Jedi came out, with Tom and Jennifer fighting constantly and nobody taking her to the cinema.
"Easy fix," Jack said. "Tomorrow afternoon, we go to that classic film theater on 56th Street. They run the originals all the time."
Maya hesitated. Jack pressed his advantage. "Even if Lucas only picks up one good idea from our script, that's a few thousand dollars. If they select the whole thing? Could be tens of thousands. Worth a shot."
"And think of it this way, Maya!" Jennifer chimed in from the armchair, clutching James to her chest. "Once Jack's script gets chosen and he becomes a proper director, the two of us—mother and daughter—can both star in his film. How wonderful would that be!"
Wonderful. Maya stared at her mother.
Maya, you can call me uncultured, but don't insult my intelligence! Jennifer had said earlier. And now she was throwing out stage dialogue from her Broadway-adjacent years. This was not a personality. This was a symptom.
Maya held her tongue and let Jennifer finish.