So I'm doing a project with this piece. It was gonna be a oneshot forrrrrrrrrr about two minutes then it got too large for that. I'm hoping to get an audience for this!

Again, modern AU, set in a large city in Chon'sin

It's easy to pretend no one's there if you can't see their faces.

You kneel to the ground, as wooden as it is hollow. The other dancers in your troupe, as identifiable as the audience, stand to each side of you. They do what you do, and it makes you feel safe, one of them, even when you deign to stand out. Music backdrops the performance before it starts, dainty piano being consumed by visceral drums much like how who you are is consumed by you will be.

In unison, all five of you look up. At once, they gasp, guarded and exhilarated. Waiting for more. They're at the highest point of the roller coaster. As soon as you move, as soon as the music drops, they will drop, screaming in glee.

You have never loved anything more than leaving them with anticipation.

It's easy to treat the audience as one person you will never know. You've done it for as long as you've performed. That's the only way you can get through it all- if they are nothing but honored, amazed viewers, you can take their praise and take nothing but warm fuzzies from it. You won't have to live up to it.

Then you see her, and suddenly someone is there.

She's seated in the right of the third row, hands clasped together as though in prayer. Her hair is long and pink, like yours, but while yours is an intimidating mess of braids and ponytails, hers is straight enough to not have a hair out of place. Her features are faint, easy to miss, as easy to make her as faceless as the rest of the crowd were her grin not massive and blinding. She's not a viewer of a dance, but of a gladiator match.

You work to forget her as the music reaches its dropping point. You count in your head, biting your lip with your eyes closed, trying not to let the world see how bloodthirsty and human you are.

The music drops, and you wonder if she's still grinning.

She ceases to exist as your troupe launches into dance, but so do you. You are never the Olivia you know when you dance.

You're better.

Mr. Viron Pompier is a man of interest with a fitting name. As he talks backstage with the troupe, of which you are the only woman, he is full of pomp and circumstance. The five of you sit facing him on the cushions in the middle of the room, you criss-crossed in the back next to someone who doesn't look at you.

Your goal is to learn about him, and he is not shy about handing out lessons. Lessons from which high-society date he got his front row seat, to his relationship with the owner of the theater in Chon'sin you are currently performing in, to praise and criticism of the troupe that always softens to praise when he talks to you.

The boys around you, clad in black skinsuits and cropped haircuts, try to pay attention. They're on their phones or lazily acknowledging him, planning for his departure, but their lip service is admirable. You also wear a skinsuit, fake diamonds near the heart. You hate how tight it is, and how it draws attention to you, especially from him. You would like to stop paying attention to him, but you can't. When he addresses you, you don't hear his words. You hear his voice, its grandiose tones and leaps and valleys from dramatic to sickly sweet, and his body language is so grand, his arms raising and falling so dramatically that all you can wonder is if they'll drop on you.

Mr. Pompier reacts sharply to something that stops his words short. He looks behind him, and you notice the woman behind the man. She retracts her foot and smiles in a knowing, scolding way. The kind with teeth. You struggle to piece her together in her mind, and look for an uncomfortably long time even though the corner of the eye reveals Mr. Pompier smoothing his long blue hair, no mirth in his smile, as he turns back to you.

"Forgive me, my sweet," you hear your nothing say. Your eyes are on the woman. She's confined to a suit jacket black as the night with a purple button-up undershirt, and a loose pencil skirt, thin white lines down the face equally as black as her suit. "This is Cherche, my personal assistant." She nods, bowing grandly, her pastel pink hair falling over her face for a moment before returning as perfectly filed as it was before.

Wait a second.

You've learned to keep your gasps to yourself, but you know your eyes have become as wide and bright as streetlight bulbs.

She waves, but looks at you as she does so. You lock eyes with hers- faded, tired mauve, a warm, weathered smile within them. "I'm here to make sure Mr. Pompier is operative and decently behaved," she says, and the troupe chuckles, paying attention for probably the first time. Though your own laughter is weaker, you mouth a thank you to her, in a way that most effectively communicates that you're grateful, but you've already filled up your desired cup of human interaction for the day.

Mr. Pompier continues to speak, and you notice Cherche, surname unknown, stand by him, polite smile as she waits to protect her charge from himself- and hopefully, not others from her charge.

You stay at the back of everyone else in the Galactic Shadows troupe, all of you hightailing it to your apparent favorite bar whose name you often forget. The other four take the lead, talking amongst each other and occasionally back to you, where you give passable replies. It's been enough months that they know to smile and turn back when you end things curtly, though not enough that you can give more than two lines about each of them.

You look up at the lights in the city. Chon'sin City is so massive that even having lived here all twenty-five years of your life, you still haven't seen even half of it. It envelops you, and for once you feel comfortable in how miniscule you are. You can't imagine leaving it.

You walk through Old Town, a sprawling, open park to your left and the road before old brick-and-mortar firestone towers to your right. It's raining, just slightly enough that you don't regret not bringing a jacket, but enough that what doesn't dissipate in your massive, uncut mane sinks through your thin Studio Killers T-Shirt.

You hear the boys talking. There's Stahl, clad in fuzzy dad-sweater and baggy jeans, always the first to blush and scratch the back of his head whenever Vaike, strutting like the cock of the block in his superfluous shirtlessness, says something off-color (which is to say Stahl is near-permanently red).

Henry you have never seen out of the skinsuit you perform in- you're amazed that he has only had to pay for three replacements over the year you've performed together. He stalks every conversation for an opportunity to inject something nasty into it, and judging by the way that Vaike says "oh, that's fucking gross!" it was probably not the type of crude that he wanted.

Lon'qu you almost forget about, as he makes sure to walk as far away from you as possible. He never meets your eye without shock and anger, and he should thank his lucky stars you are the only woman on Earth who wouldn't bother demanding answers from him over it.

"Oh, thank god she did," you suddenly hear Vaike shout. The conversation was nicer when it was at normal volume level. You watch the cars as they pass you, looking at the ground for any puddles that might splash you. "I was just waiting for him to stop babbling. That seemed to do the trick."

Stahl sighs. "Yeah. I mean, he was making me uncomfortable." Hand on the bridge of his nose, he adds "I mean, this is just me, but he was making me uncomfortable the way he was talking to Olivia."

You perk up at your name. Pretending you were in the conversation from the start: "Mr. Pompier?"

Stahl nods. "Yeah. I mean, you looked uncomfortable, and I know he made me uncomfortable."

You shrug. "It's over now." Stahl nods and, sensing your involvement is also over, leaves you a smile as he turns back.

Henry grins at passing helicopters in the sky, waving as though they'll see him. "If he gets that way again, I'll kick his dick off, okay Stahl?"

Vaike gags. "Naga, Henry, do we have to stop letting you out in public?"

Henry's smile grows wide enough to take a bite out of the stars. "Fine, I won't," he says with an exaggerated whine. Then, calling to you: "Hey, Olivia! If he creeps on you again, can you kick his dick off?"

You snicker, mostly at how a horrified Stahl gawks back and forth between the two of you like Henry cut the wrong wire on purpose. "I'll be sure to," you promise half-heartedly.

Vaike laughs. "If we can get that Cherche lady without Mr. Boss-Man, it would be so much better." Then, in response to no one: "I mean, come on! She's a looker!"

Lon'qu decides to make his presence known by turning to Vaike so hard that Vaike leaps, squealing. "Quiet!" the loner hisses. "You gods-damn pervert."

"Hey, Mr. Party Pooper," Vaike responds. "I can't help it if she's fuckin' scorching." Stahl rolls his eyes, at once used to and already annoyed by his friend. "I mean, she's got a total dominatrix thing going on, innit?"

"Vaike, what did we literally just talk about?" Stahl scolds. The longer he stays near Vaike, the more you wonder what secrets keep his hair from turning gray.

Henry cackles. "You think every woman in a suit is a dominatrix!"

"Look, I won't argue that. But a woman in a suit is fucking hot." Vaike throws his hands up and turns to you, pleading for his life. "I'm not full of it, right Liv?"

You've already gotten used to being the liferaft he swims towards to die defending his certain brand of noble perversion. You feel six eyes on you (Lon'qu never looks at you) waiting for your answer. Always going for the one that ends the conversation quickest, you force a nod and keep your eyes on the ground at your side, stepping onto the grass of the park as you pass a puddle, just in case.

"See?" Vaike says, though you can't see their faces looking where you are. "Olivia thinks it's legit."

Stahl laughs. "Okay, I doubt that the validity of your claim was the problem in question."

You smirk, but don't look back up. Your surroundings get darker as you step between streetlights. They take your warmth away as you reflect on her, how she already retreats to your past as a missed connection, but when you reach the light and people can see you again, you smile.