Chapter 3

Life as an Improv

Tuesday : March 4th 2025

“Hello, I’m Ruby Starfire!” Putting her best foot forward in order to make a good impression, Ruby leapt into the recording studio full of bubbly excitement and energy. Before her on the other side of the glass were three men, but unlike last night, Ruby’s fate lay in their hands this time. She was at the University of Melbourne, auditioning as an motion capture actress for an animated short film being created by the students.

“Good Morning Miss Starfire, and welcome to the audition. We’re going to be testing your improvisation skills today. We’re going to give you a character and situation in which they find themself, and you’ll have about thirty seconds to give us your take on the character based upon what we told you. Make sense?” The older man in the middle of the group asked, clearly the professor. Ruby nodded and the Professor continued.

“This needs to be a full body act, facial expression and body language are as critical as a clean delivery, because it will be these movements and details that will bring our animated character to life. Understand?”

“Yes sir!” Ruby replied cheerfully. She was already acting to some degree anyway because the morning hadn’t gone as smoothly as the day before. Rain showers overnight put Ruby’s hair on the friz, and when she arrived at the gym for her normal morning workout and shower, she found it a little busier than normal annoyingly. Not wanting to annoy others by hogging the sink and mirror to brush her hair, meant she had to sort her hair out in the car, using the Holden’s supercharged V8 to create the world’s most powerful hair dryer. And then just to top things off, when she finally found a parking space at the University after running a little late, she accidentally ran over a small bird who couldn’t get out of the way fast enough. As Ruby got out of her UTE, she found herself standing on the squished, gooey remains of the now 2D creature.

“Ewwww, gross! Yuck…” Ruby cringed as leapt back and she tried to scrape off her boots on the asphalt. When living on the road, especially in Australia of all places, roadkill was an unfortunate reality of life. However, this was the first time Ruby had ever quite literally stepped in it before. Equal parts grossed out and guilty for having smushed tweety-bird like a ketchup packet, plus all the other annoyances that happened this morning, Ruby had to take all those thoughts and shove them aside. In the short walk towards the doors of the University, all the parts of Ruby’s life had been condensed into a ball in the back of her mind, all that was left was the happy, beautiful, graceful girl the world associated with the name Ruby Starfire.

“Okay miss Starfire. You are now a teacher, disciplining one of your students,” the Professor behind the glass requested. Ruby thought for a moment, imagining what an annoyed teacher would look like in her head. She stood up straight but had a slight lean forward, left hand on her hip, right hand motioning as she spoke. Her voice as a mixture of concerned and annoyed, a hint of the not believing the stupidity of a child slipping through her voice as she said,

“Look Marco, we can’t be shoving pencils into the wall outlets, that’s how you hurt yourself! I’m going to have to send you to detention.” Ruby said, wagging her finger as she remembered teachers doing to her. Behind the glass one of the students started chuckling, imagining a scenario where a teacher would have to say this. The other wrote notes as the professor spoke up again.

“Try a more aggressive comedic tone?” The Professor requested. Ruby shifted her body around to bend over a little, like she was really talking down to someone, looming over them. Her voice upped the anger and annoyed side of the spectrum as she raised her voice and spoke,

“Marco! Stop it! You're going to barbeque yourself you stupid little cunt, knock it off!” The motion of Ruby grabbing the arm of the imaginary Marco and pulling him away from danger really sold the urgency in her voice, and forgave the little Australian slang that slipped into her performance. Now both of the students were cracking up, laughing as they marked down notes.

“Okay, switch gears. Show us a girlfriend who’s just been dumped by a long time partner.” The Professor again instructed. Ruby once again took a brief moment to compose a thought in her mind as her body language shifted. Ruby stepped closer to the glass, the stiff authoritative look gone, replaced by a desperate nervousness, almost that of shock and maybe a hint of horror. Her voice now high and shrill, she pleaded.

“What do you mean it’s over? After everything we've been through, you’re mother dying, the will and the estate and helping you sort all that out! Now you just want to dump me like this?!” As tears started to form in her eyes, Ruby got as close to the glass as she could and pounded her hand onto the glass.

“You bastard! I loved you! I loved you with all my heart!” Ruby screamed, her big blue eyes looking as miserable as a scolded puppy as they dug into her audience.

“Wow…” On the other side of the glass the students flaking the Professor were shocked just how rapidly Ruby could shift from one character to the next. Even the Professor seemed impressed. 

“Let’s see your best sadistic supervillain.” Once again, Ruby stepped back, taking a moment to wipe the tears and compose herself again before a cruel sadistic smile appeared on her lips, not too dissimilar to last night’s D&D game. She turned around, facing the back of the sound studio as she walked with a joyous stride, laughing, cackling like a witch. She circled back around to the middle of the room, now looking absolutely demented. 

“I expect you to die Mr. Bond!” She finally yelled, laughing out loud like she was having the time of her life.

“You’re surrounded by alligators, in a 20 meter deep pit! Even if you do manage to climb up one of the walls, all you’ll be rewarded with is a closeup of the bottom of my boot before you tumble back down to your death! So, be a true professional and die quietly, Mr. Bond.”

“You’ve got the look and the laugh down for sure, how long have you been acting for Miss Starfire?” The Professor asked. 

“About a… ah..” Ruby had to stop herself, still in her monologuing supervillain mode. A quick wave of her hand later, happy, bubbly, loveable Ruby was back.

“About a year sir.”

 “That’s… That’s it? You can improv that well after only a year?” The whole audience of three sat with stunned looks on their faces as Ruby smiled and nodded.

“With all due respect, my whole life is an improv. You’re just living in it!”

...

A couple hours later, Ruby finally emerged from the school. After what seemed like an eternity signing papers, she had the script in hand, she found herself in a pretty good mood considering the rocky start to the day. The film, called “Steel Princess”, followed the young princess of a war torn nation disguising herself as a knight and riding off into battle with the action happening to the beat of an original soundtrack again created by the students. It was extremely ambitious, even with a total runtime of about twenty to thirty minutes. The whole project centered around how artists could use AI as a tool to extend their ambition vs allowing it to disrupt their employment. That's to say, the project was being funded by some AI company called Nebula. 

As Ruby finally got back to her car, she saw the now dried up smudge of 2D Tweety Bird still plastered to the pavement. Ruby scowled and sighed as she carefully stepped over the flattened corpse and climbed into the safe embrace of her trusty Maloo. This audition had sort of kind of taken the work slot of Ruby’s day, meaning for once, she had the evening free.

 Melbourne is an enormous city, filled with endless things to do, if you have the endless money to support them that is. Fancy restaurants, malls, go kart tracks, arcades sometimes with a bar in them, movie theaters and regular theaters alike. There was so much Ruby wanted to do, and realistically could have done, but because of her nomadic lifestyle it wasn't really possible. She had learned early the importance of having a large savings when her UTE broke down just a few days after she embarked on this lifestyle.

Ruby’s father's death was a real surprise. He was a pilot, and routinely made trips across the Pacific to the Americas almost on a daily basis. But due to reasons unknown, his plane went down about one hundred twenty five kilometers off the coast of California. The plane totally disappeared under the waves of the ocean and all ninety lives aboard were lost. Back home, Ruby was sixteen years old at the time. Although her mother wasn't a part of her life, she had a normal enough childhood. The usual childhood of going to school and making friends as a child does. However, that all got turned upside down when her father died. Ruby, now the sole survivor of the Starfire family, was immediately placed into foster care and was eventually forced to transfer schools just a year before graduation. 

The complicated process of handing her father's will over to Ruby took far longer than expected, and it was only when she was just a few months away from graduation did the process run its course. To make a long story short, Ruby’s home would be foreclosed by the bank. They couldn't legally sign the loan over to a minor, even if only for a few months until she turned eighteen in November. Plus there was no realistic way she could take over the payment anyway. So, Ruby was left with whatever she could carry out of that house, her father's large but not remarkably so savings, and her father's car, the Holden Maloo. The day she turned eighteen and was free from her foster family, she hit the road and never looked back. 

However, fate wasn't done beating up on poor Ruby. Six days into her new life, the  transmission failed on the Maloo, suddenly getting more use in a week than it had in the last couple years. Effectively Ruby lost her home again, unable to live in it while it was in the repair shop. Forced into a hotel and to pay for the repairs, it was this event that made her so frugal and an odd job workaholic in her new life. 

Now however, fate had seemed to release its grasp on Ruby’s shoulders. It was March now and she had spent four long months living alone in her UTE, and in that time a lot had happened. She had landed her first modeling contracts, first working with the shoe company Roo Rider who made dingo style boots, (what Americans would call cowboy boots.) Then working for an Australian apparel company that sold through Amazon. Many of the pictures for cute sundresses and bikinis up and down the website feature Ruby, and that launched her new career. Over the next three months, she built on that success as best as she could while maintaining a steady supply of odd jobs to fill in the gaps. Often she found herself bouncing a couple weeks at a time between Melbourne and Adelaide, as freelance work shifted around and new opportunities, like this animated short film, presented themselves. 

However, with all that being said, and all being true. Work was not the reason Ruby was in Melbourne this time. As she passed a bus stop, a large poster showing Red Bull Formula one driver Max Verstappen hoisting an enormous trophy above his head signaled her true intentions. The Australian Grand Prix was only a week away, and for the first time Formula One would be sharing the track with the Australian V8 Supercar series. It was the hottest motorsports ticket in the country outside of Bathurst, and Ruby had managed to snag one. It was a huge expense, but one she wouldn't miss for the world.

A few weeks ago, the Red Bull team hosted a massive show run on the Adelaide Street Circuit to hype up the Grand Prix, as well as to make some announcements on a newly formed NASCAR partnership. There were stunt planes, a race pitting a NASCAR cup car vs Shane Van-Gisbergen's championship winning V8 Supercar, and a race between Red Bull's new RB17 supercar and one of their old F1 cars. Sadly, it happened shortly after Ruby bought the ticket for the actual Grand Prix, so Ruby did what she does best and improvised. Dressed head to toe in Red Bull Swag Ruby managed to sneak into the event posing as a promotional model for the team. 

It was Ruby’s first live motorsports event, being a long time and avid TV fan, and what an event it was! Along with nearly getting run over by her favorite driver Shane Van-Gisbergen, she got to rub shoulders with thirteen time winning Grand Prix driver David Coulthard, Nascar Cup series winner Ross Chastain, and the mysterious Motorsport Mercenary Stephanie McClaire. It was a taste, a super sampler, of a world Ruby desperately wanted to be a part of. Yet standing from afar, watching as construction crews set up sections of the temporary circuit around Albert Park, she knew it was a massively ambitious dream. 

“Oh man…” Ruby sighed to herself. The world of motorsports was calling to her. Her soul lusted for the attention, the passion, the speed, and the danger. Whether a model, a driver, or a member of the press, all Ruby wanted was to once again stand on the other side of the fence in front of her.

“One day Ruby, one day.” For now though, she had a script to study and an act to prepare for. So loading herself back into the Maloo, she went to find a place where she could study and get a bite to eat, Hungry Jacks.