Okay, so I asked for prompts a little while ago and I got a very interesting prompt from Sophie on the 'I want to pop a hullaballoon' fanpage ;) I've mixed it around a little bit, so I hope she doesn't mind, but yeah, credit to her for the original idea and of course the usual disclaimer to say that Muse are not mine nor have I met them...unfortunately. Oh, and this will be in 3 parts, hence the title.

Taking a breather, Matt glanced out at the crowd in front of him. Thousands of people screaming his name, begging for more songs, dancing even without the music. They should be used to it. Surely, after twelve years of playing gigs and a whole stadium tour finishing right here in Indianapolis, he would've been accustomed to it by now. They still had a couple of festivals left to play, but this was the final date of the official tour. After the handful of festivals scattering the next month, they could take a break for a little bit. Matt considered his options. Maybe he'd take a little holiday with Kate and Bing.

He smiled at the thought. Being on the last stretch of the tour, Matt had been out of the house a lot and hadn't managed to spend as much time with his new son as he'd hoped. He'd been there a lot, of course, but most of the time it had been left to Kate, or even a nanny, to look after him. It'd be fun to take them, and Ryder too, away for a while, just to relax before the band let their creative juices flow and began work on the much-anticipated new album.

Behind him, Dom took a swig of water and asked,

"How're you guys doing?" to the crowd, greeted with cheers instead of an actual answer. "You feeling good?" Matt snorted, glad he wasn't behind the microphone, and Chris shook his head and rolled his eyes. Funny.

Making his way over to the piano, Matt set his own bottle of water down on the lid beside the megaphone. He pulled out the piano stool, the height already adjusted for him, and settled down on the seat, positioning himself. He delicately poked one of the keys and received screams from the front of the crowd. Just for that one note.

He placed his fingers carefully on a group of keys and began the intro to Feeling Good, playing the notes he'd known so well for 10 years. 10 years since they'd released Origin of Symmetry, what some people considered to be their breakthrough album and arguably one of the best. It depended on who they talked to. His left hand began to play the deeper notes and he took a deep breath before singing.

"Birds flying high, you know how I feel," he sang softly into the microphone, joined, and almost overwhelmed, by the crowd. "Sun in the sky, you know how I feel. Reeds drifting on by, you know how I feel." He changed the pitches around from the recorded version as he usually did, just to vary it and make it a bit more interesting. "It's a new dawn, it's a new day, it's a new life, for me...And I'm feeling good."

And in came the bass and drums, crashing and making the loud explosions they were known so well for. Dom grinned as he hit the cymbal, Chris focussing on his fingers sliding down the fretboard as the screen behind them exploded into life, colours whirling around and showing the true wonder of their set design. It was pretty much the same for every gig, but it always looked awesome.

Matt finished the main chorus with a little jazzy piano piece and picked up his microphone, distorting and shaking his own voice as he sang. The crowd went wild again, all of them knowing the lyrics off by heart, giving Matt a strange urge to change it up for once. Maybe he'd do that. Maybe he'd figure out another lyric quickly and mix it up at the next festival, just to amuse himself with the crowd's reactions.

No. That'd be silly. Feeling Good wasn't an original song anyway. He could change his own songs, but not really somebody else's. However, as he chucked the microphone to the floor in the rush to transition smoothly into the piano again, his eyes caught a bright light above him. He frowned to himself, blaming it on a faulty stage light, and continued to play.

However, his eyes couldn't help being drawn back to it every couple of seconds. He was getting distracted too easily, the end of tour making him a bit weary. He needed to focus. Maybe they'd have to skip United States of Eurasia. He didn't think he'd be able to concentrate on the piano solo at this rate. He glanced up, hoping to signal somebody, anybody, to change the setlist, but the sudden scream from his right was far more important.

It isn't difficult to tell the difference between screams of excitement and screams of pain. In essence, they are the same. They're high-pitched, although varying between people and vocal ranges. They're wild and out of control, often un-predicted; Matt of all people would know that. But, where screams of excitement sometimes have a string of unintelligible words attached, screams of pain are the piercing sorts of scream that can halt an entire room.

And that was what they heard that evening.

There was a split second when the band stopped playing, shocked as they turned towards the bewildered crowd, and you could almost hear a pin drop. And then the panic began. Matt leapt up from the piano seat, accidentally knocking his knees on the underside of the piano and falling back down. Chris flung his bass off, the straps catching on his shoulder, as Dom stood precariously on his drum stool to see what had happened.

Flames encircled the crowd, a giant ring of fire surrounding the arena from all sides, and the crowd were right in the middle of it. Panicking, people began running to the edges of the crowd, desperate to see what was going on. Some people considered the option that the flames were just part of the stage setup, or maybe a flamethrower gone wrong, and that there was nothing to worry about. However, the band themselves knew nothing of pyrotechnics in this show. They were saving that for the festivals. At least, that was what they'd planned.

So where had the flames come from? Anna, a girl in the crowd, searched for her friend, the two of them having been parted in the mosh pit. They'd agreed before they came that they'd meet up at a certain exit after the show, but hadn't planned for any disasters. However, in her search, she glanced up and shrieked, the rest of the people surrounding her following suit until the arena echoed with shouts.

Matt swallowed nervously and looked up slowly, not entirely sure what he was going to see. However, whatever ideas ran through his head were nothing compared to what was actually present. For a few seconds he was blinded and he squinted against the harsh light, blinking rapidly to attempt to see the cause of the light. His eyes began to make out boundaries to whatever was up there and his brain whirred, thinking of all the possibilities.

Soon, the entire crowd was staring up at the sky. Dom and Chris came to stand by Matt, the tour crew peeking out from behind the stage setup to see what the fuss was about, only to stagger backwards in shock and hide behind the screen.

Suddenly, the lights from the sky switched off and the whole stage production died with it, leaving the crowd bathed in the darkness of the relatively cool evening. They fell silent; the only audible sounds were a few frightened whimpers as they stared as one into the face of danger.

There was a loud 'clunk' as something happened above them, the sound resonating around the arena, and Matt felt Dom's hand squeeze his, the pair glancing at each other nervously. Chris' palms were damp, and he wiped them on his trousers awkwardly, the three of them feeling rather small and insignificant when standing on stage in front of a threatened crowd. Who knew what was out there? Who knew what challenges they faced?