Jade POV
It's 2:15pm now, and the agents have come back, letting us to be ready for 2:30. All three of us girls are getting changed into our outfits for tonight, leaving the more flashy jumpsuits and dresses for chat show in a few days. Vega's been put in near skin-tight black dress pants with a matching fitted blazer and white shirt, she's terrified to move as she thinks she's gonna spill something down herself, funny really 'cause she's probably the least clumsy of the three of us. Cat's been put in something similar, a long-line 3 button light grey and white blazer and dress pants, with so many small stripes down it she's started too look like a weird illusion. I've been put into a dark grey button up shirt and a black pencil skirt, the shirt's a little tight so I've undone the top few buttons to give myself room to breathe.
"I'm already sick of heels." Cat groaned, trying to fit her feet into her grey 3 inch heels.
"Have fun at the chat show then." I smirked, reminding her of the 6 inched heels she'd need to wear in the future.
"Argh!" She moaned, falling backwards onto the bed in annoyance.
"I feel like I need makeup." Tori said, looking at herself from a hand mirror.
"Have fun doing that without knocking any over yourself." I mocked.
"More like have fun doing it without any makeup." Cat cut in.
"Good point there." I said, noting that we didn't in fact have any makeup with us.
"They'll probably put some on us before the interview."
A knock on the door interrupted us. "You all decent?" Beck asked from the other side of it.
"Yeah." I called back.
"Are you actually?" He asked again.
"Yes!" I replied, yelling slightly. I don't take offence to him re-asking, as embarrassing him like that is actually something I'd do. He twisted the door handle and walked in, wearing black dress pants and a grey button down, marching my outfit. "You look dapper." I said, using a word that I'd never thought would leave my lips.
"You're looking beautiful yourself my lady." He replied with a slightly mocking tone.
"Thanks. What'd you want anyway?" I said sternly.
"The agents are here early, and I didn't want them bursting in on you so I offered to tell you all." He explained.
"We're all ready now, so let's head out." Tori said, helping Cat up from the bed and walking out of the door behind Beck and I.
"Hurry up girls, we're running late." One of the agents said.
"But you wanted us ready by 2:30." Tori said.
"And we're late." The agent replied, walking out of the room and to the elevator.
"But it's only- oh never mind." Tori sighed and followed the men out with the rest of us.
"Hey look at that." Cat spoke up. "We'e matching." She giggled, reaching out to touch Robbie's grey and white stripped tie, which matched her blazer and pants.
"So are Andre and I." Tori spoke up, nodding to Andre's black tie.
"You all match, congratulations." One of the agents said coldly, pressing the 'lobby' button once we'd all walked into the elevator.
No POV
Once the elevator had descended to the lobby, the agents led the teens out of the hotel and into the two separate dark grey cars, with semi-blacked out windows allowing the teens to see out but for no one to see in. These cars looked a lot more regular than the government looking once that they'd be driven around in for most of the week.
"Which one of you is Cat?" The Agent-Driver of the girl's car spoke up, for the first time ever while driving.
"Me." Cat said timidly from the middle seat in the back of the car.
"Thoughts so." The man replied, looking at who spoke though the rear-view mirror. "I was meant to have asked you this in the hotel, but we were running late."
"We weren't." Tori mumbled.
"But it's about your baby." He continued, ignoring Tori.
"My baby?" Cat replied, her hand subconsciously falling to her baby bump.
"Yes." The agent replied, still focused on the road. "This week will consist of a lot of interviews, and even after that there is a major chance you will stay in the public eye. It's your choice to bring up the baby, but I am going to inform you of the pros and cons." He kept talking without giving Cat a chance to answer. "You may feel like it is easier to leave out your rape and that you are pregnant, however there is a major chance that someone will notice it and rumour may spread. This could be during the interview phase or afterwards. Once again, it is your choice but rumours are never a good thing and it may spiral out of control."
"I didn't think about that." Cat whisper-spoke, 101 thoughts buzzing around her head. She couldn't even fathom talking about what happened during an interview that would be broadcasted nationwide, but she didn't want rumours to spread if she avoided it.
"You have until before the interview to decide." The agent finished, leaving the girl to make a big decision.
"No one will judge you if you tell the story Kitty." Jade said to the younger girl.
"I know." Cat replied. "Today's interview won't be live will it? I guess today would be the best day to say it the, that way it won't in front of an audience and they can cut it out if I have a meltdown." Her voice broke mid sentence but she held back any other sign of emotional vulnerability.
"It's up to you Cat." Tori yawned, leaning her head on the car window.
"Didn't sleep well Tori?" Jade asked, changing the subject.
"Funnily enough, you have a thing for kicking people in the middle of the night, it kinda kept me awake." Tori yawned again.
"I keep offering to sleep in the middle of the bed." Cat spoke up.
"No way, not with her violent sleeping pattern. She could kick your stomach." Tori replied.
"Did you just suggest that I'd end up hurting her baby?" Jade growled. "Don't you dare-"
"I'm sure she didn't mean it like that Jade." Cat cut her off, stopping a potentially violent rant. "Did you Tori?"
"Nah." Tori mumbled, her eyes shut and not really aware of what she was answering. Jade reached over Cat and flicked Tori's ear, making her bolt up right. "Ow! That hurt"
"Good." Jade smirked, leaning against the window on her side and looking out of it.
"You shouldn't have said that Tori." Cat whispered as she rested her head onto her girlfriend's shoulder.
"She kicks hard, she might-" Tori started to whisper back.
"It hurt her feelings Babe." Cat replied.
"I'll apologise later." Tori said back stubbornly, yawning as she talked.
Once the cars stopped, the teens were lead into large glass building which fitted uniformly among the other glass and steel monoliths that seemed to grow right out of the sidewalk. A receptionist seemingly recognised them instantly and handed them all a 'vistors' badge, and told them the directions to the correct room. The teens were sure that without the agents there to remember what she said, they'd have definitely gotten lost. "Here we are." One of the agents said, opening the door for them.
"How'd you remember what she said? There were like 50 instructions." Robbie spoke up as they walked into the room.
"Practice." The agent replied bluntly. "We'll be back when you're done." Both agents turned and walked back the way they came, leaving the teens practicality trapped in a building in which they knew no way to get out of.
"Andre, Beck, Robbie, Cat, Tori Jade, gosh there's a lot of you." A woman said quickly walking up to them. There was a shyness to her, hesitation in her body movements and a softness in her voice. Her cream suit had a tailored look that was bold against her dark skin, flawlessly perfect as someone on TV would be. "I'm Starr Lloyd" She introduced her, "and I'll be your interviewer."
"You already know who we are." Tori laughed, ever the social butterfly.
"That I do, but I hope to learn more about you in this next hour. Follow me." She started to walk away, leading the group to 2 dressing rooms. "Boys in the left and girls in the right, it's hair and makeup time." Beck and Andre groaned at the thought of makeup, but the girls and Robbie (who wears male-makeup sometimes) didn't care as they were all used to it.
Andre POV
After getting our makeup applied and our hair curled, straightened or twirled back into it's dreadlocks in my case; we were all sent back out of the rooms and along another hallway to the 'interview' room.
"It feels good to be in makeup again." Tori smiled, feeling especially pretty after months without it.
"My skin kinda enjoyed the break from it." Jade spoke up.
"You say that like you've got bad skin." Cat replied. "You've never had any spots."
"I've never had any that I couldn't hide with concealer." Jade replied, walking into the interview room with the rest of us following behind. It was a decently large room, with 2 cameras on tripods positioned to point towards a large couch beside a single chair.
"Good good, you're all here." Starr said, turning away from the man she was talking to, coffee in hand. "Take a seat." She motioned to the couch for us and handed us all small microphones to clip to our shirts before positioned herself on the single chair. "How do we all look?" She asked the man, who was now stood behind one of the cameras, while we clipped out mics onto the necklines of our clothes.
"Good here." He said, pressing a few buttons on the camera to focus on the teens.
"Here too." Another man said, from behind the second camera which was pointed at Starr's chair.
"Good." Starr replied, 'good' seemed to be a buzzword around here. With us all sat on the couch, we expected the interview to start. "Nope, I want you in couples." She said, motioning weird gestures with her hands, stopping when she looked at our confused faces. "You two," She pointed at Beck and Jade who were sat together at the end of the couch. "stay there. You," She pointed at Cat. "sit between those two boys." She motioned to Robbie and I, Cat complied and did so, leaving Tori next to me. "There, that's better, lovely couples."
"Um." Tori spoke up. "We aren't dating," She motioned to me and herself "and nor are they." She pointed at Cat and Robbie. "We are though." She reached over across me and put a hand on Cat's. Kinda making me feel awkward there Tor'.
"Oh gosh, sorry." Starr fluttered nervously. "You were all wearing pared off outfits, so I just presumed-"
"It's alright." Tori cut her off, smiling comfortingly. "Can we move back or?"
"Of course." Starr blushed as Cat moved back to next to her girlfriend, linking their hands together to make a point. "Let's just start okay?" She nodded to the men who turned on the cameras. "I will ask you all a few questions, you can chose to not reply and we will cut out anything you want us to. Understand?"
We all simultaneously nodded and/or said 'yes', and thus the interview began.
"So let's start at the beginning. What were you all doing when the cloud hit?" She asked.
Robbie decided to speak up to answer this. "We were all in Venice California helping Cat move into her Nonna's apartment when the TV suddenly starting flashing with 'breaking news' telling everyone to take cover."
"Then what happened?" Starr asked, sitting forward in her seat slightly.
"We hid, like the TV said." Jade replied bluntly.
"In Cat's room-" Beck continued, to stop any potential awkwardness that could have come from Jade speaking bluntly like that. "-there was this connected room that was sealed off by a safe. We didn't really know what it was for, but we all climbed inside and found out it was this bunker-like thing. It had enough food to keep us going for a few days, and it kept that gas out."
"Fascinating." Starr said. "So what was it like in there for those few days?"
"Boring." Jade spoke up. "I nearly went mad. There was nothing to do, and all the information we had about the world around us was a news article Tori found on her phone. Even that wasn't much help, it just told us how doomed we were."
"It must have been terrifying, when did you get out?"
"On like the 5th day I think." I spoke up, wanting to actually talk in this thing. "We weren't sure if the air was breathable yet, but we were so desperate to leave that I just climbed out of the saferoom and well clearly it was breathable. After that we ran out of the apartment and to Beck's car."
"What did the world look like outside?"
Questions like this continued for a while, with us just recalling every bit of information we could about the last few months. It was at this point when we realised how cool our story actually was, it'd make a killer movie or book, but no one would ever write about it. We all took turns telling parts of the story: Cat talking about what Dean did (with Tori's help), Robbie going into this dramatic story over how he broke his arm before feeling very embarrassed when Jade cut in saying he'd only fallen out of a tree, and Beck talking about the driving aspect.
"You kids have really been though a lot." Starr said, there was a tone of sadness in her voice that hadn't really left since Cat told her story. "But there had to have been something that brought you all through it."
"The arts." I spoke up. "We all used to go to a performing arts school and we love to sing and act. In Wanko's I found a toy guitar and we'd sing along to it, or perform old acting scenes from plays and exercises we've done."
"Who's the singers and who're the actors?"
"We can all sing." Tori spoke up. (A/N I'M SORRY I JUST HAD TO PUT THE MEME IN)
"I prefer acting more I guess." Beck said.
"You can still carry a tune." Jade said to her boyfriend.
"Who'd you say is the best?" Starr asked.
"We all have such different styles." Cat spoke up, who was still slightly leaning against Tori for comfort over what she had to say earlier.
"Cat has the best range I've ever seen," Tori started. "it's like 4 octaves. Andre's voice is so smooth and he can reach some pretty high notes for a guy. Jade can sing pretty much every genre imaginable and still make it sound good. Robbie... well Robbie" I could see she was mentally searching for a compliment for him. "Robbie's a great ventriloquist." Good save Tori
"Tori sung at last year's Platinum Music Awards." Cat spoke up, giving her girlfriend a bit of the limelight.
"That was you? I loved that song you sung 'Make It In America'." Starr beamed.