The show went as expected.

Loren played beautifully, in fact, by the time people had written about it in newspapers and shown it on television the next day, it was reported to have been his best performance yet. He seemed so full of life and vigor that you were drawn to another world, and his body was so tense yet free that people could feel their own muscles expanding and contracting in tune with the music.

The only issue anyone could have was during the post intermission, when Loren spoke. As per usual, he preached about human rights and other meaningless things, and those who’d been to his concerts before weren’t surprised. There was nothing new.

What really seemed strange to the reviewers was the response from the audience, particularly the ones from the lower class section. Normally, people would cheer and praise him as he spoke, but on that night, it was an absolute madhouse. There were some shouts of support, sure, but those cries were at first vastly outnumbered by hollers of profanities and insults. From an outsider’s perspective, it almost seemed like a group of people came specifically for the sole purpose of harassing the violinist.

Then, as if that weren’t strange enough, opposition to those voices started getting louder, and the section where Loren Dames normally does his spiel transformed into a choir of rabble yelling at each other. To those who came solely for the music, this was a strange thing. Many found it barbaric and just a sign of the lower mind of the impoverished, but many enjoyed it, much in the way people enjoy watching car crashes.

Of course, those reviews haven’t been written yet.

The show continued on as usual after his speech, and as Loren left the stage covered in sweat and shirtless, Lance and Mick were quick to meet up with him.

“Fantastic performance!” Lance said, grabbing Loren by the shoulders and shaking him energetically. “Seeing it backstage was far better than seeing it from the audience! Oh, and ‘Ode to Four Trees’? Wonderful! Perfect! Amazing!”

That was certainly not what either of the other men were expecting their bodyguard to say.

But Loren quickly brightened up.

“Ah, thank you. I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

“Yes! And I’ll be sure to buy as much recorded audio of it as possible.”

“We can just include that in paying for your assistance,” Mick said. He was sweating, even though nothing had happened yet. “But, uh...in the meantime, what should we be doing about the security stuff?”

“Oh.”

As though a switch were flipped in his head, Lance changed moods.

Loren hadn’t noticed it, but as they continued walking, Lance no longer had a massive head. Instead, he looked more like a normal person, with sharp features and eyes. As he spoke business, all the playfulness from before had vanished.

“At the time being, we haven’t noticed anything strange. But that doesn’t mean much. During the performance, I noticed the crowd’s reaction was quite strange. Did it seem that way to anyone else?”

“Yes...I noticed that as well,” Mick said. They had returned to the changing room where Loren started to wash himself off with a towel. “Do you think the protestors were sent by Jackal? To intimidate us?”

“I wonder.”

“There were more people than usual in the common section, and they were a lot more rambunctious than we would normally expect. I mean, of course to some extent you can predict they’ll act a little more uncivilized, but this was unprecedented. At points you couldn’t even hear what Loren was saying. That strikes me as suspicious. Quite.”

“I don’t disagree,” Lance said. “But at the moment, it doesn’t really matter to us. There haven’t been any attacks yet, so I can’t understand what purpose there would be to doing so.”

Mick couldn’t really think of anything either, so he shook his head and sighed. His watch made a clicking sound.

“Grr…alright, I’ve got to be going to speak with the production and staff for the theatre,” Mick said. “Which means I could be gone for a bit. You’ll stay here and protect Loren, correct Mr. Gordon?”

“Naturally.”

“And Loren! You’ll stay with Mr. Gordon and do everything he tells you to do?”

Not expecting to be asked a question, Loren snapped back to reality. He was thinking deeply into the commotion during his speech. Even though he hadn’t fully understood the question, he smiled sheepishly and nodded.

It was a good enough response for the manager, who snorted and left.

Now it was just the two men sitting in silence in the small changing room. The room wasn’t fully soundproof, but it was to the extent that you couldn’t hear anything coming from the outside. The only sounds were water dripping down from the towel Loren was using. For a few minutes longer, the silence continued. This was probably the safest point in the building, and as per Lance’s decision, they were going to be staying here in the theatre rather than going back to an apartment.

The silence was broken when a knock came through the door.

“Who is it?” Lance asked, standing up and going to check. He kept an eye on Loren the entire time, just in case.

“Just...a guard...sir,” the man on the other side replied. “I need...to talk...”

***

Wow...that was…

If she could only think of a single word to describe the concert, it would be boring.

Now that she had seen and heard the violin being played, Honey realized the entire time she had been pantoming the entirely incorrect thing. It was almost laughable how foolish she’d been. So embarrassing. If Hanson ever figured out, he would use it as ammunition for mocking her for years.

Fortunately, she didn’t know a single person in the crowd.

And the crowd she was with, for the most part, didn’t seem to care much for the music. People were casually chatting and talking with each other as the performance went on, only paying attention during the moments where the sound of striking strings hit their eardrums. They were just as bored as she was. Why had they even come?

Then, for some strange reason, after playing for a bit, the violinist set his instrument down and started talking.

Why?

What?

Honey was completely perplexed. This wasn’t what she was expecting at all, and even as he yammered on about flavor of the week political topics, all she could care about was his sweat covered pectorals. Not too muscular, but also firm enough to tell he had some bulk. The kind of muscle you get from only working out to tone your body.

As he spoke, the people around her started getting a bit wild. The people in black started shouting out about how stupid he was, then the people in red started shouting about how dumb those people were. It was aggravating to listen to such bickering, which even continued as he started playing again, so Honey decided once and for all to leave the audience.

That didn’t mean she wasn’t going to meet Loren Dames after the show, however.

So, she quietly left the auditorium, then made a hard left to the backstage entrance. There was a man with a baton in his hands guarding the door, but Honey conjured a handful of spores in her palm to blow into his face.

***

As an Institute experiment, Honey possessed the unusual ability to cultivate various emotion-altering microbes in her body. They fermented in her stomach and could be dispersed through her skin or mouth, though she rarely did it from the latter. The spores were small and imperceptible to most, but she could very acutely tell where they were; they were pieces of her own flesh, after all. And when they got stuck on her teeth...that was awful.

***

It took a second for them to activate as the man’s eyes reacted with alarm to having something like dust blown into his face.

He coughed for a second, starting to reach for the small radio held at his hip, but as Honey put her hand on his forehead, he stopped moving.

Docile.

Subservient.

“Excuse me, Mr…” Honey started, pushing his head up slightly to look at his nametag. “Wells. Mr. Wells. I hope you’re working hard, but I wanted to go see the performer. He should be ending soon, I think, so can you let me go backstage?”

“Ughhhh…”

“Alright. Thanks. I’ll be taking those keys then, if you don’t mind. Keep up the good work.”

After swiping his keys, Honey quickly checked behind her to make sure nobody had seen the blatant crime, then quickly entered the backstage access area. It was dark, cramped, and smelled musky. Ah. That was exactly what she expected. The floors were wooden and the walls concrete, with metal pipes lining them. Small bulbs of light led her way to the real back.

Because she was expecting someone to try and stop her when they saw her, Honey started preparing two handfuls of spores. Just in case.

Since her hands were full, she needed to awkwardly use her foot to push the door in, and was put off guard for a second as she saw dozens of people walking around, cleaning and moving stuff to keep the show going. For only a moment, she didn’t move. Then, she regained her mind and entered, lowering her head a bit so she could pretend to be just another worker.

Hmm.

Who would know where the violinist stays?

If only there were a map.

Honey couldn’t tell from the people walking around, but none of them seemed particularly important. The ground floor was busy.

The stairs to the next floor, on the other hand, were almost completely untouched. A single guard stood at the base of the stairs, his eyes focused straight ahead and at attention, and his knuckles were white from gripping his small baton as hard as possible. Since she didn’t really have any other leads, Honey decided that was probably the best thing to do.

Without standing out, she strode past him, coughing into her hand in such a way that it blasted her microbes into the man’s face.

He blinked a few times and stared at her as she slowed down to face him.

“Hey, where’s the violinist?”

Unlike the spores from earlier, these were not as strong. They wouldn’t totally incapacitate someone, rather, they would lure them into a suggestive state. Most of their mind was left intact, but any sense of critical thinking vanished.

“He’s...upstairs…”

“Can you bring me to him? I’m a VIP, and we were supposed to meet. Don’t tell anyone else, of course.”

“Of...course…” the guard moaned. “Follow...me…”

This was too easy.

It was only fair that Honey had such a technique to interact with the world, considering everything she’d gone through to get it. And why wouldn’t she abuse it in every possible scenario? Life was too short to give a shit about ethics.

***

Lance opened the door slowly and saw one of Loren’s bodyguards standing with a slack jaw with one of his enemies, Honey Fragat, posing seductively behind him. As Lance blinked in absolute confusion, she straightened herself off and nodded for a second in realization.

“My apologies,” she said, turning around nonchalantly. “I guess I parked my car elsewhere.”

“Hold on.”

Lance started to take a step outside, but as soon as he did, Honey picked up speed. Of course, her physical abilities were quite lacking, so Lance was upon her and bringing her to the ground in seconds. As he pinned her to the ground, he pulled up his shirt to cover his face. This wasn’t the first time he’d had to deal with this girl, and after being doped over ten times, he swore he’d never let it happen again.

Wait.

If she was here, then that must mean…

“Damn you two,” Lance said, suddenly full of worry, and he handcuffed her and threw her over his shoulder. He started running back to Loren. “I can’t believe-”

But Loren was just fine, sitting completely naked as he dried himself off. He’d removed his clothes as soon as Lance had left, not thinking at all about what was going on. When he saw Lance carrying a random woman over his shoulder, the violinist slowly raised an eyebrow, but didn’t say anything.

For a few seconds, nobody said anything.

“Excuse me, Mr. Cowboy Hat,” Honey started. “Could you please let me go? I’m not sure what you’re doing, but I will call the police. This is kidnapping.”

“Kidnapping? Are you joking? What the hell are you doing here?”

“Uhh...who is this?”

Loren had absolutely no idea what was going on, but after seeing that Lance had brought Honey inside and closed the door, he slowly brought the towel he was using to cover his private parts. He was soon answered.

“I’m,” Honey started, her words coming out in gasps as Lance heaved her down and started trying to tie her to a chair. “Honey...Fragat. Biggest, fan.”

“Oh, you’re a fan, you say?” Lance asked. “Likely story.”

“It’s true.”

“Then what’s your favorite song by Loren?”

The look on Honey’s face was like someone who just got caught drinking orange juice from the container before putting it back.

“That’s what I thought,” Lance growled. “Where’s your brother? I didn’t think you two would do something like this, but now it all makes sense. The letter is totally a mind trick you’d try to play. But fortunately, I’m here.”

“I have literally no idea what you’re talking about. Why would my brother be here? What letter? You’re being confusing. And untie me!”

“What letter? Don’t try and play dumb. There’s no other reason you’d be back here unless you were the ones trying to kill Dames. I knew the two of you were rotten criminals, but this is a step I’d never thought you’d take. Killing innocents.”

“Killing?” Honey was becoming more and more confused as Lance spoke. “Wait, hold on. I’m not trying to kill anyone.”

“Then why the hell are you back here?”

“To meet him,” Honey said, nodding towards Loren, who had barely moved. He smiled awkwardly to be motioned at. “I just came for fun. Why are you here?”

“Why the hell are you coming to meet him?”

“Huh? Isn’t it obvious?”

“But you couldn’t name any of his songs! You’re not a true fan!”

“I don’t care about the music, I just care about those abs!”

“!”

Lance was planning on saying something, but the bizarre admission from the hitman before him blanked his brain. He blinked multiple times in rapid succession.

“W-what?”

“Those abs!” Honey repeated. “Mr. James! Remove that towel and flex!”

Even though that wasn’t his name, Loren Dames was so confused by the situation that he just did what was asked, setting the towel aside and doing his best to flex his arms. Honey nodded with satisfaction.

“Excellent. This, you see Lance, is why I came today. I snuck into the backstage exactly for this view, right here.”

“Are…”

This was like when he blew his brains out. His mind couldn’t immediately figure things out, and everything was piecing itself together into a jigsaw of absolute stupidity.

“Are you serious?”

“Of course I am,” Honey replied, studying Loren from head to toe. “Search your heart, you know it to be true. So, what was all this about a letter?”

“You really didn’t send it?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about!”

Just at that moment, as Honey shouted out, the door opened.

Mick’s jaw dropped as he saw quite a scene. In the back of the changing room, Loren was posing with his arms behind his head and legs spread wide, completely naked and looking pensive. Then, there was an italian woman he’d never seen before, tied to a chair, shouting and looking annoyed at her situation. Finally, Lance was standing over her, his face screwed up in a strange expression of confused annoyance.

Standing behind him, Ms. Lenz’s clipboard dropped to the floor as she saw the display.

“Uhh, what’s going on?” Mick asked. “Mr. Gordon...who is that?”

“She-”

“He kidnapped me,” Honey interrupted. Lance’s eyes widened. “I was just coming back to see James, and this dumb cowboy picked me up and started tieing me up. Just ask James, he can tell you the truth.”

“Who...is James?”

“Huh? How do you not know who James is? He’s standing right there?”

Honey nodded her head to the naked Loren Dames by the wall, who changed poses.

“Wait,” Loren started. “Do you mean me?”

“Who else?”

“His name isn’t James, you dumbass,” Lance finally said, putting a hand to his face. “You dumb, dumb, person.”

“What?”

“Sorry,” Loren said. “I’m Loren Dames. Nice to meet you Honey.”

Instead of being embarrassed, Honey just nodded slowly.

“Oooh, I see. You should make that more clear next time. This entire time I thought your name was James. You can’t do that to your fans, especially huge fans like me.”

“Sorry,” Loren repeated. “I...won’t do it again?”

This was starting to become too much for Lance.

“Don’t apologize you dumbass!” After bursting out, he turned to Mick. “Was there something you needed? I’ve got to kick this lady out of here, but other than that, we should be good.”

“N-no, there wasn’t anything...I was just coming to check in on you all. The backstage staff have pretty much all gone home at this point.”

“Well in that case, we’re good here.”

But a second later, in fact, they were not good.

***

Because in only minutes, the siege would begin.

For some strange reason, as Bear God’s busses started approaching the large concert building, they didn’t come into contact with as many police officers as planned. Standing on top of the first bus, as though at the helm of a ship, Bear God stood at attention with his arms crossed.

Warrior’s intuition was flaring things into his mind.

From a hatch right behind him, one of his subordinates, a man named Ricky, popped out.

“Bear God!”

“Yes, Ricky!?”

They needed to shout because the bus was currently driving and air was buffeting them.

“We just got within range of our scouts! It looks like they’re saying pretty much all the normal audience members have cleared out!”

“I see! And the police, too!”

“Yeah! They aren’t sure why, but the parking lot is almost completely empty! That being said, there’s something they said that bothered me slightly!”

“What!?”

“I said there was something that bothered me slightly!”

“No! I heard you, I meant ‘what bothered you slightly!”

“Oh! Sorry!”

The slight miscommunication made the Bear God Army members inside the bus laugh. One of the nice things in their current group was how easily things could be taken. Many of them were ex-soldiers and had grown accustomed to a harsh leader that didn’t allow side chatter.

“Our men say there are still some people there!”

“What people!?”

“In black suit!”

***

From the exact opposite direction, a convoy of military vehicles, disguised as civilian cars were travelling casually. Sitting in the very last car, smoking a cigarette was Dark Cobra, going over all the killing techniques she knew in her head. They had gotten reports earlier about a few things, namely that Loren Dames had apparently hired a squad of bodyguards.

That was pretty obvious, and well within the scope of her predictions.

The problem was what came in later in the report.

At the event, there had been a lot of strange people. Most of them seemed violent, carrying weapons and openly supporting Dames and harassing her people.

Before the show had begun, they sent roughly fifteen people to mix in with the lower class crowd of the concert, and once Dames started speaking about politics, they would boo him. The purpose of this was to make his suicide look natural: if his message was openly rejected by those he was trying to help, who wouldn’t accept that he killed himself? With her employer's influence, pushing a media narrative wouldn’t be hard. They even cleaned the place out of police officers. The only thing they’d need to do is disable the bodyguards and replace them with her own people for a few months, then have her target kill themselves.

A tried and true maneuver.

But these people in red were trouble.

Her scouts wouldn’t confront any of them directly, but after listening in, it sounded like these people were members of the Bear God Army.

Bear God Army.

Such a stupid name, Dark Cobra thought. It sounded like the kind of thing a little kid thinks of when trying to be cool. How foolish could they be?

However, as stupid as the Bear God Army sounded, intel reports about them were completely different. It was a group of revolutionaries, led by a particularly capable fighter: Ruskanov Petrovich, otherwise known as Bear God, who broke out of a Russian prison over a decade ago. The man was a beastly fighter and could kill demons with his bare hands, which helped earn him his title.

Were these people going to be defending Dames?

That thought had occurred in Dark Cobra’s head. It made her hesitate; failing a mission was something the Black Vipers couldn’t allow to happen. But they also couldn’t let their presence be known: if the news learned about an assassin group trying to kill Dames, the repercussions would be far worse than just failing a mission.

As they neared the concert building, she sighed.

Whatever.

She picked up a walkie talkie, and through it, she could communicate with all of her members one-way.

“Be ready for battle. Stay silent, but kill anyone in your path. We’ll clean up the mess later.”

***

“Hey! Get the fuck outta here!”

One man in red called out to a black suit.

“I’ll do whatever I want...scum.”

The black suit replied.

Before either larger group arrived on the scene, scuffles had begun. There were a few more than a dozen on each side, and neither of them were armed with weapons. But the Bear God Army and the Black Vipers started to face off without either of their commanders in sight. In the garden outside of the concert hall, the flames of war were fanned as fists met face.