Gardenia 29
Gardenia- secret love
Mouri detective agency
Saguru's pov
"Check mate," Conan said for the third time this evening.
I stared blankly at the chessboard,"How old did you say you were?"
"Six."
Ran and Princess came back into the room.
"This boy's brilliant," I said.
Ran looked at me confused,"What do you mean."
"He beat me in a game of chess three times."
"That is impressive,"Princess said,"Now he has bragging rights."
Conan laughed to himself,"Kudo-kun taught me how to play," he said innocently.
"Well I think we should be going," Princess said shifting her feet," And Ran if you need someone to talk to call me okay?"
"I will thank you, feel free to drop by anytime you like," Ran said with a smile.
"I will have a nice day!"
We left the building and started walking down the street.
"So where are we going now?" I asked, running to keep up with her.
"I got a call from the staff of the theatre, saying that my drones arrived this afternoon. So I need to drop by and scale the program to fit the dimensions of the auditorium," She said hailing a cab.
"Drones?" "Yes, 250 of them," she said nonchalantly.
"Why do you need that many drones?" I asked as a cab pulled up to the curb.
Princess opened the door, she paused, grinned and said,"Do you want to help me pull this off?"
I stood there for a few seconds in silence,"Absolutely," I said with a smug grin and climbed in the back of the cab.
"Where to?" the cabbie asked.
"Edoka theatre please," Bella responded.
"So what exactly do you have planned?" I asked curiously.
"I'll show you when we get there," She said.
Edoka Theatre
When we stepped inside the theatre lobby Princess took off her coat she was no longer wearing her sailor uniform but a pink shirtwaist dress with red roses embroidered on the breast pocket and hem of the skirt, her hair was pulled back in a curly ponytail tied with a red ribbon, she had her iconic pin up makeup. In her arms she had a violin case.
We walked up to the front desk, Princess showed the woman sitting there an ID card of some kind.
"Oh Miss Adler it's a pleasure to have you here. Your packages are already backstage, just take that hallway, go down the stairs and follow the green line to get to the dressing rooms and the orange one to get backstage,"The woman said pointing to a hallway to the left."
"Thank you Ma'am, it's truly an honor to be here," Bella said with a small bow.
We entered the dimly lit hallway and followed the woman's directions. I'd never really been backstage before, this was the same auditorium Gunther had made his performance back in September, it was a lot different in the hidden heart of the theatre. It was clean but lit with soft yellow lights, the floor was made of mismatched tiles that were chipped, the ceiling was made of those foam panels, and the lights constantly flickering. Coloured lines were painted on the floor an orange line branched off in different directions labeled, 'stage right' and 'stage left'. We continued down the dark hall lit with dull yellow lights, it had a spooky atmosphere that I loved. Every few meters the corridor would branch off like a labyrinth full of dead ends.
"Alright, we need to go to the right wing," Bella mumbled, stopping in front of a stairway labeled 'stage right'.
We ascended the staircase, at the top of which was a set of metal double doors. They were heavy and quite hard to push open. The room was dark, now I thought the corridors were dark but there was hardly any guiding light to go off of, it was hot and extremely humid, the air smelled of dust. As my eyes adjusted to the sudden darkness there was a plastic fold out table on which Bella placed her belongings, the wall to my right was covered with levers marked with fluorescent tape and permanent marker, these levers were rigged to a pulley system that traveled high above my head to the various curtains and rows of lights. There was a sound board with various ports for wires to plug in, each one with a green light above to show which ones were active. Next to the sound board was a screen that displayed a live feed of the stage from the audience's perspective. To my left was the stage, various floor to ceiling curtains only three meters wide hung parallel to each other horizontally from the audience, I believe the purpose of these is to hide any light from backstage.
A man walked over to us from backstage,"Hello Miss, I'm the techie here. I'm here to answer any questions you might have."
"I'll be alright, I would appreciate it if you could lower the lighting bars for me," Princess said, walking over to several cardboard boxes under the table, she opened one and pulled out a stack coloured sheets of plastic.
The man nodded and walked over to the rig system. He lowered each of the light bars,"There you go miss, if you need anything else call the front desk," the man said as he left the stage.
"Shall we get on with it then?" Princess asked me.
"What exactly is it that we need to do?" I responded.
She smiled,"Each of the stage lights has a slot that you can put tinted panes in so that the light is a different color, the different colors help imply different moods," She said walking over to the cardboard box again,"The tinted sheets... I don't think that's the right word but I think you know what I mean... anyways The tinted sheets, panes, whatever, are in this box, here's a diagram of the pattern I need them in. It should be simple enough just slide the pane into the slot and move on to the next one,"She said placing a piece of paper on the table,"I'm going to take care of the lights that aren't on stage."
She grabbed something else from the box, it looked like a large security camera.
"What's that?" I asked.
"It's a projector, I'll show you what it's used for later," She said leaving the stage.
I picked up the paper she'd left on the table for me and looked in the box of colored plastic sheets, the panes were dark blue, purple, dark green, and a lighter blue. I took a stack of the sheets and walked over to the lights, they weren't on at the moment. I slid in each colored pane following the guide Bella had given me.