Under halogen curtain, the silhouette of the bushy haired, terrified girl radiated and trembled. From within her shelter of stage light, which rained down upon her bright and iridescent, she watched as her bandmates assumed their positions, and took a deep, shaking breath as she steeled herself to join them. The moment which had become a frequent tormentor of her thoughts the past week, which had consumed all her hopes and wishes, both earthly and virtual, was now upon her— The Teen's Ball was now on.

With a firm lift, Aster picked up her bass and slung its strap around her shoulders, making her way to the front of the stage. Noticing her arrival, Cecil turned to her and gave some sort of sarcastic remark that she didn't catch, but in her brain felt that it would've angered her had she heard it. She turned her attention towards setting herself up for the show, unaware if he was still speaking, or if anyone at all was trying to get her notice. As Aster approached the microphone to adjust it, she looked out into the spacious room, which to her horror seemed to only grow larger the further into it she stared, until it appeared larger than her little voice could ever hope to fill.

Her gaze fell upon the tables neatly positioned across the ballroom floor, each clad in linen almost as delicate and elegant as the rippling dresses of the young girls who sat before them, and balked again at how preposterous it was that they of all people were chosen to inaugurate this event. She found herself starting to agree with Cecil's notion that Mareby-Roquefort was perhaps purposefully welcoming disaster, the thought of which surprised her.

It was a notion she once thought of as ridiculous, as nothing more than Cecil's anxiety speaking. In her great, narrow-minded zeal towards going forward with the show, she found no room in her confidence to ever doubt the legitimacy of their booking. Why would the simulation ever purposefully invite disaster? she thought.

Though now, something was missing— something that was so crucial to the success of this show and the very feeling that had allowed her to agree to it. Her excitement was gone.

It was something she had realized earlier on their ride to the venue, but had desperately waved away as little more than the result of a mind clouded by anxiety. She couldn't afford to believe it had gone, because she was nothing without it. What hope did she have of surviving on stage, without that adrenaline which numbed her fears?

A chill washed through her blood at this realization. What had happened?

She, who in the wake of the fruitless affair of their festival had been so eager for any promising chance that she agreed to this show without a second thought. She, who was so electric upon receiving the invitation that seemingly nothing could tarnish or dull her visions of stepping onto the next rung of her ascent to stardom.

Her heart twinged with envy towards the naïve Aster of the past.

She then scowled, as it became suddenly clear who had extinguished the flame.

“Fucking bitch,” Aster hissed under her breath.

It was Marienne.

In blanketing Aster's future with the tacit threat of destruction and thereby taking her attention away from Peppermint Plains, she had begun to kill Aster's sole source of hope. She realized that although she was currently in Peppermint Plains, she hadn't returned from 2066.

Aster looked back onto the stage at her bandmates, trembling. Sylvia waved at her while Sísí attended to Cecil's outfit like a proud mother. Marion, already breaking a sweat under the intense spotlight, was swinging at his drums as he tuned them. His hits reverberated throughout the hall, but Aster could not hear them. For, as she noticed the announcer step onto stage beside her, ready to begin introductions, the thrashing of her terrified heart seemed to fill the whole world.

“You likely haven't heard this band, but I'm sure you have heard of them!” he exclaimed, drawing from the audience a minor, polite applause. Aster glanced nervously up at the man, who flashed her a courteous smile.

“Aster, you need to plug in your bass,” Cecil suddenly remarked, gesturing towards a cable lying on the floor.

Embarrassed by this, Aster turned to him with a look of anger which took him aback, and said nothing as she plugged her bass in.

Cecil continued to gaze at her, his annoyance clear through the narrow squint with which he silently admonished her. Her behavior outside the venue had already left him deeply uneasy about their chances, but this final reaction confirmed to him that total and utter disaster was only a hair away.

As this thought occurred to him, almost as if inviting some mischievous force of malcontent in his thinking it, he watched as Sylvia left her position and raced towards the announcer to steal his microphone.

“Hello, Cherryaire!” she shouted with glee, taking quick steps to dodge the man and his attempts to retrieve the mic from her.

The rest of the band looked on in horror, but were unsure of what to do, lest their intervention only make things worse.

Cecil turned away, overcome with terror at what he saw to be confirmation of all his worst fears.

Aster, trying to the best of her ability to not burst into tears before the crowd, turned to Cecil as he turned away from the stage. As he turned she caught sight of his face, and read in it that concern which she had desperately tried to dispel— that the beginning of the end was upon them.

Sylvia looked out onto the crowd with a beaming expression. It was her firm belief that the show would be an undisputed success, and thereby avoid all chance of disaster, if she could suitably hype the crowd up before it began. However, in contrast to their warm acceptance at the biker's bar, no one here echoed her enthusiasm. The spacious ballroom met her as if it were completely empty, reverberating with its deep, awkward silence.

The teens and their guardians, now seated at their proper tables, watched on in confusion as Sylvia continued to speak, seemingly unphased by the lack of response. The announcer continued his attempts to retrieve the microphone in desperation, but was pulled aside by two of Marion's men as Sylvia continued to ramble. Sísí smiled and applauded, filling the silence with exclamations of 'bravo' backed by her echoing claps.

At last Marion rose from his kit, throwing his sticks to the floor. “Sylvia, get the hell up here!” he yelled, making his way towards the front of the stage.

Sylvia smiled impishly as he took the microphone from her and tossed it aside, which enveloped the room in a brief, sharp whine of feedback.

“Come on, let's fucking play,” he said gruffly to the others as he returned to the stage and sat behind his kit. “Can't believe I have to deal with this shit.”

Cecil looked towards Aster for the cue, anxious to begin, but was stunned by what he saw. The girl, with eyes underscored by bags as dark as crescent moons, had turned pale white. In her tiny, frightened hand was the handle atop her amplifier, which she had begun to drag further to the very edge of the stage.

“Aster, what are you doing?” Cecil asked.

He watched on in total disbelief as Aster not only ignored him, but returned to take the microphone with her as well.

Cecil rose from the keyboard and asked again, growing anxious.

Aster shot him a glare.

“I'm moving to the front of the stage,” she stammered.

“What? You're kidding, right? Everything is already set up.”

Aster's brows furled. Sylvia, returning to the stage behind Marion, took notice of the tempers flaring between the two, and moved to to separate them.

“Hey, it's okay Cecil!” she interjected, waving her short arms wildly. “I saw them do this on Cherryaire Bandstand—”

“I don't care what they do on Bandstand, it's bullshit that she's trying to place us behind her!”

Aster's scowl only deepened at this remark.

“I'm trying to make us look fucking proper,, okay?! I'd rather have us not look like a bunch of dipshits scattered across the stage—”

“Dipshits? Are you kidding me, Aster?”

By this point Sylvia's expression of excitement and exuberance had deflated into one of overwhelmed frustration, try as she might to combat Aster and Cecil's quickly deteriorating moods with her own cheerfulness. She had started the day with much hope owing to the success of the past few days of practice, cautiously optimistic that after Sísí's poetry night the rift between Aster and Cecil had been mended. However, as she watched the two of them spitefully call out to the other, a hair away from a full on argument, she couldn't help but feel her heart sink. She was well aware that Aster and Cecil were cut from the same cloth of hothead and could do very little about it— but she did know someone who could.

“Sísí!” Sylvia abruptly screamed across the stage.

Sísí, caught in the middle of foisting a new beret atop Marion's disgruntled head, turned to Sylvia. She could see in Sylvia's worried eyes that she was needed, and smiled.

Cecil and Aster turned in horror as Sísí approached, killing their quarrel at once as they returned to their respective instruments like scolded children.

“Are we gonna fuckin' play or what?” Marion mouthed to Sylvia as Sísí walked off, completely clueless to the nature or reason for the angry whispers emanating from their side of the stage. He looked out to the crowd, who were watching the band with a mixture of disgust and curiosity.

“It doesn't help to have disagreements, does it? Did we not remedy this?” Sísí whispered, leaning over Cecil's right shoulder as he fiddled with the piano's keys.

“What do you want me to say?” he hissed back. “I'm trying to play along. I agreed to do this show. I didn't agree to being put behind her like some session player.”

Aster again turned back, catching Cecil's complaint. Her face was twisted in irritation, though would have been a full-on scowl had she not been under the purview of Sísí's sharp eyes.

“And you, Aster,” Sísí continued, moving towards her. “Is there any success to be had in reopening old wounds?”

Aster gripped the neck of her bass tightly. She looked away from Sísí, though she knew that her gaze never once left Aster's face. She could feel her voice catch in her throat, break, and stutter, though she said nothing. She grimaced deeply at how awkward she still was with people, and could not bring herself to respond to Sísí.

Sísí remained with expression of stern reproach upon Aster a moment more, before once again dissolving into a self-satisfied smile as soon as she was assured of Cecil and Aster's civility.

Curiously, Sísí did not rectify Aster's abduction of the microphone and amp, and left her to her perch before the audience as she retreated to her vantage point by stage right with Marion's gang. Aster hung her head in the wake of Sísí's scolding, and remained silent as the band awkwardly moved to begin the show.

Cecil's eyes burned into the nape of Aster's neck, now standing directly ahead of him. He sat at his piano, fuming at the audacity and the repulsion he felt for this ingrate before him.

Breaking free of Marion's men, the announcer reclaimed his microphone and began the show with a triumphant cry for the impatient and confused audience, eager to start dancing.

“And now, the Love You Forevers!”

With that, Aster immediately launched into their introductory song with a ferocious strike of her bass, the intensity of which caused the speakers to growl in an unpleasant rumble which drew off put looks from an audience who looked increasingly hesitant to dance.

The rest of the band had not expected her to start so abruptly or deny them a count in and so came in late, stumbling to support her as she raced ahead in anger.

Cecil, not to be outdone, continued to fester in his own outpouring of indignation as he struck at the keys hard and abrupt. As Aster glanced back in confusion at his own angry, sloppy playing he grew yet angrier, and for the slightest second considered abandoning the show, but couldn't help but be constantly aware of Sísí's presence far off to the side of him.

The song soon finished with a stiff, quick ending, and the audience responded with looks of bewilderment. A few awkward, polite, and unsure occurrences of applause followed throughout the ballroom, but were quickly snuffed out by a larger silence which came as a sure tell of the cool reaction to their shoddy performance.

Aster turned back to glare at Cecil, who just as quickly raised his fierce eyes to hers.

She looked back out onto the crowd. Most were afraid to dance. Those few who did moved hesitantly and with little conviction. Their maneuvers were stiff and awkward, and they could not tear their eyes away from the band long enough to truly enjoy their moment.

Aster's eyes then darted from head to head, scanning the room in search of the guests she feared most. She would rather not confirm that these guests had seen that abomination of a performance, but felt it pragmatic to plunge the blade of embarrassment deep inside and get it over with, rather than live in fear of it for the rest of the godforsaken event.

Among the attendees she spotted were Willie Cooper, Cherryaire's biggest radio DJ, and Mareby-Roquefort, the two of whom were sitting together to the side of the dance floor. She grimaced as Mareby-Roquefort smiled upon her notice, and continued to search the remainder of the guests as the band began to sound stray notes, anxious to continue, before realizing that The Cherubs were not in attendance.

A rare notion of relief washed over her for an instant, before being lost with the tumult that consumed her. It was quickly replaced by fury towards the insult that they had decided not to attend her performance.

Cecil had already grown tired of the entire show, and wished to bring it quickly to an end, where he no doubt was eager to finally end his short tenure with the band. Rising from his piano, he called out to Aster.

“Are we going to play or what?”

She didn't respond, angering him even further.

“Aster, what the fuck are you even looking for?!”

Aster turned back to him, and in her anger yelled without thinking, “The fucking Cherubs!”

Cecil's heart sank.

“The Cherubs are here?” he repeated, hesitantly. His tone of voice had shifted to that of a barely audible, broken mumble.

Aster grimaced, realizing what she had done.

“They were supposed to be,” she grumbled.

Cecil looked out at the crowd, and could not spot them, but it did not matter— the damage had already been done. As the band moved into their second number, Cecil found himself so distracted by searching for their presence that he let himself fall out of time, out of key, and at moments stopped playing altogether.

A look of fury which rendered Aster's previous snarls as flashes of a lovers' smile in comparison erupted across her face as she turned to face him following several quick, successive mistakes on the part of Cecil.

Cecil took this look as the final straw, and slammed at his keys with both his palms, driving the killing blade into the song which caused it to crash to a halt as Sylvia and Marion stopped in concern of the quickly unfolding fight.

Cecil rose from his piano, staring daggers at Aster. She, in reaction to this, threw her bass off of her which crashed to the floor with an earsplitting explosion of low end which rippled throughout the ballroom, sending the few halfhearted dancers out on the floor scurrying to the safety of their tables.

“What the fuck are you doing?!” Aster screamed.

Cecil looked her in the eyes, hellbent on making sure that she could see the same glint of pure fury and anger within him that he saw so clearly imprinted in those fiery eyes of hers. He was resolved in that moment to give himself fully, finally to his rage, to not let Aster sneak away having trampled upon his respect so visibly, when a loud, guttural noise emanated from the rafters of the stage high above them, interrupting him.

Aster, Cecil, and all in attendance looked up in confusion whilst shielding their eyes from the bright lights. Aster spotted what seemed like motion coming from high above, near a maintenance ladder, but could not fully make out the shape.

Marion cried out some worry about the rafters coming loose, but what Cecil finally saw terrified him far more than anything he had ever seen.

Aster looked towards Cecil in noticing that something had caught his attention, and followed his line of sight high up past the lights. There in the rafters, billowing in the shadow cast by the lights like the wings of some decrepit angel, was the silhouette of a petticoat.

With a loud voice it announced its presence— “I, Albion Floyd, will not be denied!”

Then, with a scream that split the dead silent ballroom Floyd fell from the rafters, hugging the velvet curtain as he rappelled downwards in an arc towards Marion and his kit. With a second, much louder groan the metal scaffolding above them gave way, breaking apart and showering the stage in a rain of fragmented metal and bolts.

Floyd's curtain went slack as the rigging failed, sending him to the floor of the stage with a hideous thump. Behind him followed the largest section scaffolding, still intact, which came crashing down upon Marion's drum kit, who himself was barely able to escape in time.

"My fucking kit!" he screamed in horror as he watched his pearlescent drums fold and splinter underneath the wreckage which sank into it with a hideous crash.

Sylvia, who had sought cover from the debris with Cecil and Aster, quickly ran to Floyd's aid when she recognized the sight of the crumpled petticoat.

“Mr. Floyd!” she shrieked, running towards him. “Mr. Floyd, are you okay?!”

Marion, his eyes visibly wet as he mourned his kit beneath the carnage, turned to Floyd's body.

“Where the fuck have you been man?! What did you tell them?!”

Across the stage, the shouts of Aster and Cecil could be heard above even the screams of the audience and the sirens which bled in from the outside.

Marion's men rushed the stage, pulling them apart as Aster shrieked at Cecil.

“Quit the fucking band, then! What good are you anyways?! It's obvious why the Cherubs fucking dropped you!”

Cecil went silent. Like a breath blowing the fire out of a light, all the combativeness and rage which had been painted so evidently upon him subsided, and he deflated, casting his eyes away from Aster.

Aster, only just now realizing what she had said, winced upon seeing the look she had drawn from him.

She had been so full of anger just a second before, yet could now hardly bear the regret that was welling up within her as he turned away.

Her voice cracked as she attempted to apologize, but there was no hope in the world of that mousy little voice piercing the bedlam Floyd had wrought upon them. She could only watch, numb, as Cecil walked out through the ballroom's entrance, and those grand doors slammed behind him.

She crumpled to her knees, and sobbed.

By this time, the audience were thoroughly in a full on evacuation of the room. From the street distant sirens were approaching, and were soon followed by the entrance of policemen and other emergency services who poured in through the doors onto the ballroom floor.

They swarmed through the wreckage of overturned tables, across a floor rendered a glass menagerie by various broken fine china, and around Mareby-Roquefort and Willie Cooper, who marveled in joy at the sight before them.

They watched on as Marion, his men, and the hobbling Floyd at once began to run as they caught sight of the police officers making their way to the stage.

“I've paid my dues!” the warbling voice of Floyd could be heard to scream as they were pursued through the back exit of the theater, and then disappeared.

At the front of the stage sat Aster, head in hands. There, amidst mountains of twisted metal she appeared smaller than ever before. Sylvia was at her side, trying her best at consolation, but there seemed no end to Aster's sobbing.

She herself wondered if perhaps it would never stop.

As she gazed out towards Mareby-Roquefort's smiling face and at the emergency personnel rushing to her aid, she felt herself go numb.

What this world— what Peppermint Plains is, and represents, is protection. Rather than cherish that she allowed it to be subsumed within her own penchant for woe and misery, and made to represent no more a dim chance of hope than the wretched world she was born into.

“Stupid, selfish piece of shit,” she whispered to herself as Mareby-Roquefort and Willie Cooper drew near.

Their smiles did not fade, and were even joined in kind by the sly expression of Sísí, who finally broke from her position by the side of the stage.

“Bravo,” Mareby-Roquefort gave warmly, scribbling hurriedly upon a pad of paper.

“How would you like a prime time spot on Cherryaire's largest radio show?” Willie Cooper followed.

Sylvia looked up at them with a look of anger at their apparent insensitivity, but before she could speak, Sísí replied.

“As the newly instated press secretary for the Love Your Forevers— they would love nothing less.”