Chapter 2 – The Domino

The cast the Out of this World took a bow to thunderous applause, and that was Buster's cue to go. He vacated the VIP box with haste, navigating his way through the halls of the Majestic Theater until he was backstage to meet his theater family. All throughout the performances his phone chirped and buzzed in his pocket with notifications, and even now he could feel the occasional vibration. Social media buzz was expected after every show, but this amount of activity was unusual. As much as Buster loved to scroll through the comments and drink in the exuberant reactions online to his show, today's little moment of self-indulgence would have to wait. His family needed him.

Buster's face lit up as he ran into the first two members of his crew.

"Johnny! Nooshy!" he called out, leaping up to give the gorilla and lynx simultaneous fist bumps. "Great moves out there."

"Nice one Moon-man," Nooshy said.

"Darius! Magnificent hair, as usual."

The yak shook his head to give his blonde hair extra swivel. "It's won awards, you know," he said.

"Yes, you may have mentioned that... a few dozen times," Buster murmured. "Meena! Your voice gave me chills."

"T-thanks," the bashful elephant managed, short but appreciative.

"Porsha!" he called out, but a frown was burrowed into the wolf girl's face. She hadn't bothered changing out of her alien costume before retrieving her phone, and her eyes were glued to whatever she was reading.

"Is anyone else getting tagged, like, a ton on social media?" she asked.

"Now that you mention it," Johnny said, looking through his own phone, "been getting some weird, angry stuff today."

"Oh, I wouldn't worry about that," Buster said, patting the gorilla's thigh. "It's probably just Jerry. He's been sending me not-so-nice messages for weeks."

"Wait, you too? He's been sending me mean tweets ever since Crystal got arrested. Said my head looked like a sad scoop of ice cream," Johnny recalled with a puzzled frown. "What's that even mean? I was gonna block him, but I just started feeling bad for the bloke, yeah?"

"I blocked him ASAP," Ash said, thumbing through her own phone. "And at least ten of his alts."

Johnny blinked in disbelief. "He's got ten other accounts?"

The porcupine shrugged. "I stopped counting."

"I don't think this is Jerry," Porsha said. "He's only sent me nice messages asking if I've been okay ever since daddy got locked up. The stuff I'm seeing... uh oh..."

"What is it?" Buster asked.

Porsha bit her lower lip before saying, "I... I think daddy's finally retaliating." The Moon Troupe found a private corner to themselves as the rest of the stage crew departed for the night. They all huddled around Porsha's phone as she played the video that set social media ablaze. Clay hovered close enough to take in the commotion but remained silent.

"Get ready for the most explosive interview of the year!" a voice announced over dramatic music and quick flashes of Jimmy Crystal and the interviewer, Walter Kilborn. Kilborn was a bespectacled capybara with a stiff posture and shrewd gaze.

"Kilborn! Crystal! Mr. Redshore City himself gives his first interview since his arrest, and he's spilling it all to Walter Kilborn."

"What did he lie to you about?" Kilborn asked.

"Out of this World. Calloway. Everything," Jimmy said. "Buster Moon is a fraud and a conman. You can't trust him. I did and... he ruined my life."

"Watch all the shocking revelations tomorrow night on The Real Deal with Walter Kilborn!"

"There are some other clips out there like that one," Porsha said once it was over. "You don't need to see them."

"He's... he's just lashing out. No one's really buying into this... right?" Buster pulled out his phone to answer his own question. As he checked his own profile, he was met with an awkwardly cropped selfie that made his head look like it was ballooning in what little real estate he was afforded for an avatar. Below that was his new personal motto: "I stan optimism!"

Buster felt a rock in the pit of his stomach when he realized his followers nearly tripled. A mass of strangers waiting and watching for how he'd respond to the accusations, no doubt. That rock grew into a boulder when he saw himself trending.

"Look at these hashtags... Buster gets busted!? Conmoon? Team Moon vs. Team Crystal? How is this a thing?"

"That's social media," Nooshy said.

"But there are tons of people shouting about this without really knowing the whole picture."

"That's what social media does," the lynx responded with a quick shake of her head. "Don't know what to tell ya, mate. They eat people alive on there. I'd say, 'just don't be that guy,' but it's kinda late for that."

Ash snatched the phone right out of Buster's hands. It took the koala a moment to realize he was staring at air before he tried to take the phone back. Ash was surprisingly nimble despite multitasking, parrying his attempts while never taking her eyes (or thumbs) off his phone; Buster would've been impressed if he wasn't so frustrated.

He finally gave up, shoulders sagging, and asked, "What are you doing?"

"I'm the one that set this account up for you and I'm deactivating it," she said. "Just for now."

"Won't that make it look like I have something to hide?"

"It makes it look like you want to get some sleep tonight. I know you, Moon. You'll be going back and forth with randos online that don't have the full story." She gave him back the phone and he reluctantly pocketed it.

"She's right," Rosita said, giving Buster's shoulder a soft squeeze. "We can worry about the potential fallout tomorrow. Let's just go home and get some sleep for now."

It was once everyone had changed back into their street clothes and were ready to go that Gunter came racing toward them from the direction the lobby.

"Not zat way!" he said, pointing wildly from the direction he came. "Paparazzi, and not ze good kind!"

There were some shared, concerned glances until Buster took charge. "The back way it is, then!" he said.

Walking through the theater's backstage exit, Buster entered a world of disorientation. Cameras flashed with the erratic aggression of strobe lights and dozens of voices shouted probing, accusatory questions at him.

"Buster! Do you have a response to Jimmy Crystal's allegations?"

"Did you scam Jimmy Crystal?"

"Is your show part of a conspiracy to defraud Crystal Entertainment?"

Buster sheltered his eyes, but it did little to mitigate the damage. He took a step back towards the door—he swore the door was just here—and was nearly swallowed up by the photographers when a strong but gentle hand gripped his arm and pulled him back inside.

"Close call," Johnny said, releasing Buster. The koala gave him a quiet thanks.

"How did this blow up so fast?" Buster wondered aloud.

"My dad's still really influential even though he's in jail," Porsha said, her voice low and devoid of its usual pep. "When he speaks, people listen."

"And everybody loves a scandal," Ash said. "As long as they're not part of it."

Buster puffed up his chest, repositioned his bowtie, and said, "Well, we can't let some guys with cameras and no sense of personal space scare us! We're just gonna have to march right through them!"

"No need," Clay said. "I got this. Sometimes you just have to give them something shinier to distract them." He gave them a wink and threw the door open, stoic in the sudden swarm of attention. A mountain in the storm.

"It's frickin' Clay Calloway!" someone called out. As Clay Calloway's name rung out all around him, he plunged himself into the sea of paparazzi. The Moon Troupe watched through the slightly ajar door as the lion was swallowed up by a whirlwind of lights and bodies. A few minutes later they heard the engine of his motorcycle rev up. He passed by his pursuers at a slow enough cruise to give the illusion that they could keep up; they took the bait, peeling off to give chase as he rolled out of the backlot of the Majestic Theater.

"Now's our chance!" Buster said, and they left.

Redshore City brimmed with an electrical uncertainty that night. Buster couldn't shake the distinct feeling that a bolt of lightning would rip by any second. Life in the city had been anything but predictable since they first got off that bus from Calatonia, yet... this felt different. Controlled chaos. Jimmy Crystal was trying to change the narrative. So far, it was working. Everyone did what they could to convince Buster to keep his mind on anything but the accusations, the reactions, the scorn... but he knew. Something buried deep inside him knew.

Everything would be different from here on.

A/N

I liked the idea of Jerry checking up on Porsha. A lot of people either consider him just a sycophant or fixated on Jimmy, but he's theoretically been entangled with the Crystal family for years and likely watched Porsha grow up, so it makes sense that he'd care for her too.

#Bustergetsbusted