The applause resounded throughout the room as the award for Best Female Actor was given to the renowned miss Jamie Fisher. Ira, playing the simple role of a dime-a-dozen support actor whose only contribution to the film industry was playing lots and lots of extras, dutifully clapped his hands and tried to make a nice face. This was a lot easier than one would think, as he actually considered Jamie Fisher to be a fairly good actress and had watched a couple of her movies when he had arrived in this world.
When the applause stopped, miss Fisher stepped up to the podium and held her speech of gratitude and acknowledgments. Most of the people in the room were actors, with a few close family members in attendance. Ira, whose only contribution to the film industry was sitting in the background and pretending to talk, was situated very far away from the stage at the very back of the large ballroom. He had been in this world for nearly two months now, and aside from the movies that the original owner of this body had acted in, Ira had himself had the opportunity to join 5 movies. This was a bit of a change-up for him, and he very much enjoyed it.
Ira loved movies after all, but it was very different when he got to be in them. He thought that this was a bit of a lucky break, possessing a body that had such close ties to the film industry without having left so much as a single mark on it. And he very much enjoyed visiting the different sets and seeing the behind the scenes reality of shooting movies.
When her speech wrapped up, miss Fisher stepped down from the stage and the announcer returned to his position at the podium to announce the winner for another award. There were lots and lots of awards going on right now.
This was another world where they had activated the coveted Tutorial Mode. Ira was once again possessing a mob character who had no effect on the story or the world and as such, had gently booted out the original soul who had inhabited this body and taken it over. His Host's mission this time was simple, the way all missions in the Tutorial Mode was simple; she was only supposed to correctly play a supporting character in a super melodramatic historical drama. In the story of this world, the body she was possessing, a certain Ellie Winterstein, had played this role horribly leading to the drama tanking in both ratings and views. This had led to the death, through overly complicated but ultimately related reasons and it had kind of been a domino effect, of Jamie Fisher's acting career. And Jamie Fisher was the protagonist of this world.
Her mission had even been allocated to her with great consideration, as she supposedly already had some acting skills. In addition, his Host's personality and temperament were very similar to the character that she was supposed to play in the drama, which would hopefully lead to a bit better acting. And of course, there was the scandal that she could no longer be involved in, but that should be easy.
With all the awards having finally been given out, it was time to eat. Ira watched, almost salivating, as a waiter came by and dropped off the food in front of him. This was food made by a real chef for the high profile actors that made the big bucks in the showbiz industry, and Ira had great expectations for it.
It had better not let him down.
This whole night was a prelude to the disaster that was about to commence. After this award ceremony, Jamie Fisher would get the offer to play the lead role in the infamous drama that would basically slaughter her whole career. His Host had spent the last two months perfecting her acting in order to fit her character in the drama and was also present at the award ceremony, as the body that she was possessing had played another supporting role in a movie nominated for an award. The movie had not won the award.
Being as Ira only played extras he was situated very far away from his host. This was more than fine with him, he did not want to spend any more time with that woman that he had to. Luckily, they were almost never around each other. She was harmless but just annoying enough that whenever he saw her and when she spoke, he always felt the urge to crush her like an ant.
The award party after the ceremony went on long into the night. As the humans got progressively drunker and stupider around him, Ira decided that he had seen enough and it was time to leave. So he packed up his stuff and skedaddled.
The outside of the venue was filled with fancy cars and a whole horde of reporters. Ira frowned when he caught sight of them and carefully edged his way along the side — thankfully nobody was very interested in him and let him pass unbothered. He sneaked his way around the reporters and through the crowd of cars, pulling out his phone as he moved to call for a taxi. This body didn't have a car of his own and the bus stop was so far away that Ira simply couldn't be bothered. Instead, he called for a taxi and waited by the side of the road.
His feet tapped on the ground as he waited impatiently. Time was edging closer to the morning than night and the stars were covered by clouds so he couldn't even revel in those sights. This world had five moons, which was a bit more fun than your regular one, but even those were covered by angry rain clouds.
Ira searched through his files while he waited, pulling out an old book of his that he hadn't read in a while. He shoved his bare hands in his pockets as he waited outside in the cold night air.
The taxi didn't take long to arrive, barely a handful of minutes in fact. It had likely been waiting not far off for somebody from the party to call for a cab and now that someone had, it whooshed in. Ira trudged into the taxi and gave his address mindlessly, already enraptured by the story he was reading. Much too enraptured to pay attention to what was going on around him.
It took nearly an hour for the taxi to arrive at his home, as he lived very far away from the award ceremony's location. At least he lived in the same general area as the city, even though it was still an annoying commute. But the award ceremony hadn't been awful, and he had had fun watching movie stars in real life. After all, it had gotten boring, yes, but he had still had a somewhat pleasant time. It hadn't been a complete waste.
By the time the car pulled to a stop in front of his apartment, Ira was about halfway done with this book. He paid the taxi driver and squeezed his way out, splitting his attention so as to not walk into something. He continued reading as he made his way up to the 7th floor of the large and somewhat rundown building. It was so late at night that he didn't meet any of his neighbors, which was nice as he didn't particularly like them.
The soundproofing in this building was not good.
Since it was already morning anyway, Ira decided to just keep reading throughout the night and give that sleeping thing a break so that he could read the rest of the book. And it was the first book in a series so once he finished reading it, naturally, he had to read the other five books. Needless to say, when he was finally finished with all the books, a whole day had passed by and his eyes hurt. Frowning to himself, Ira untangled himself from the couch he had been stuck in for hours and rose to his feet, unsteady as they nearly buckled below him.
He pressed his hand to his head and discovered that it was hurting. When Ira checked the time, he frowned even more. Time had gotten away from him, it seemed. He clicked his tongue in irritation and wandered over to the bathroom, as his body had an urgent need it required he take care of. After that, he headed to the kitchen, where he dowsed that dry feeling in his throat and made his stomach stop growling at him.
Then he yawned. Rubbing his tired eyes, Ira walked over to his tiny bedroom and crawled under the covers. He burrowed into them and closed his eyes, letting sleep finally claim him as it so desired. Right before he lost consciousness, he checked his map for Silas; the man had been at the award ceremony tonight and Ira was just the tiniest bit annoyed that he had missed him.
Then he wasn't thinking of anything for the next 14 hours.
Ira awoke, as he eventually always did. No matter how much he might occasionally resent his job and its position and the things that he was forced to do in the line of duty, he always somehow ended up waking up. Sometimes he wondered what it would be like to sleep for centuries but the one time he expressed that at work, his boss gave him a thorough and very long talk about psychology, and taking breaks and not sleeping away the millenniums because apparently, that was a bad thing? Anyway now Ira had very long breaks between missions. Which was nice.
Awake again, he was half asleep for the process of eating breakfast and doing his business in the bathroom. He took a long, warm shower and delighted in the use of a big shower stall that he could actually move around in. He was still a little pissed that the shower in the last world had been so small. Unfortunately, this apartment did not have a bathtub, but he had managed to find a public bathhouse with very warm water about half an hour's drive away in another city and had plans to visit it again.
He would get his bath if it killed him. But before that, he was going to eat because his stomach was really protesting the lack of substance recently. So Ira sighed and got some cereal from the cabinet. Somehow, even though he'd eaten breakfast not long ago, he was still hungry.
He turned on the TV in the living room and ate the cereal on the couch. His eyes were glued to the TV and the movie that was playing on it. Ira snacked mindlessly on his cereal as his eyes were glued to the screen.
It was a science fiction movie about how first contact with an alien race went hilariously wrong. In the sense that it had started a war. The script was a little unimaginative, and the acting was only so-so, and he was kind of annoyed at how melodramatic and illogical everyone was being when their lives were literally at stake and they should unite and so on, but instead, they broke down to in-fighting; it was very weird. But on the whole, the movie was entertaining and he always had fun watching humans die, so it was an okay movie.
Finished with the cereal, Ira let the bowl clash to the table and curled up on the couch. He grabbed the blanket from beside himself and burrowed under it, pulling it up all the way to his chin. He'd been awake for so long that even though he had gotten a good 14 hours of sleep, he was still tired, and he easily managed to doze off while watching the movie.
As he was on the edge of sleep again, he sleepily planned out what he was going to do next. He had decided that this time he was going to go find Silas himself and get those cuddles that he wanted. There was a teeny, tiny part of him that really missed those cuddles.