So I finally got a day off work and this is the result. For the very wonderful SJ. Hope you enjoy it, hun.

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2. Six Months Later

Katie

I suppose it's not the brightest idea to break the nose of your top designer's favourite model just before she's about to go onstage as the highlight of your show. If I'd slapped her I'd have probably gotten away with it, she did have her hands all over my boyfriend's cock after all. But restraint has never been one of my strongest features, and seeing her with Harry made me totally lose it. When the red mist descends it's like there's another person in my body, and that person loses all connection to logic till only the rage remains. The first punch sent her down and smashed her nose, but she was lucky that I didn't break a couple of her ribs. Lucky because the one person in the world who could get through to me when I was like that just happened to be in the building, and arrived on the scene just in time to stop me delivering a series of brutal kicks. I heard Emily's voice calling to me in twinspeak, our special language that only the two of us knew, and as always , she managed to pull me back from the edge.

When I came back from the bloodlust Tamara was slumped against a wall crying, Harry was writhing on the floor clutching his balls and there was blood on my hand. I looked up to find myself surrounded by a crowd of horrified looking people. Emily grabbed my hand and led me away from the scene. I could feel my body start shaking as soon as we were out of the public eye.

"What do I need to do?" said Emily, squeezing my hand.

"Go downstairs and make sure your girlfriend gets on stage," I said. "She needs to carry the finale."

"What about you?"

"I need to get some air," I said and headed out towards the street.

I think I knew in my heart that I had totally blown it. I had let my stupid fucking temper get the better of me, and I was going to pay the price. There had been too many witnesses seeing me about to kick the fucking shit out of a defenceless girl, and the gossip machine was probably already springing into action.

That was six months ago, the day I lost my job and became a pariah in the fashion world. I tried getting other work in the business, but no one would come within twelve feet of me. Tamara played it to the max of course, making herself out to be the innocent victim of my psychopathic rage, milking every bit of sympathy that she could and stirring everyone else up against me. The only person who took my side was Naomi Diamond. Tamara had been a huge rival of hers, and I got back into the show just in time to hear the massive round of applause Naomi got when she took her place on the runway. It catapulted her into the spotlight and she became the darling of Paris, getting much more lucrative and high profile contracts as a result. And far from being the slut that I'd imagined her to be, she had devoted herself to Emily. They were still together now, and even more stupidly in love than ever. Far from abandoning Ems for fame and fortune, she had taken her with her. Naomi had agreed to be in the video for some up and coming band, but only if they let Emily direct it. The thing had been a massive hit, and now Emily was being touted round the place as the hot new director everyone wants to know. She had gone forwards, I had gone backwards. No more Harry. No more posh London flat. Back in bloody Bristol and working for my Dad.

Could my life suck much more? Naomi had offered me work amongst her entourage, but my pride couldn't really stomach a pity contract from my sister's girlfriend. Plus there would be all the looks I'd get. I knew it would amuse Naomi no end that everyone was afraid of me, but I didn't want to be treated like a freak. So here I was far from the world I had known, doing marketing and promotion for Fitchtastic Fireworks, the family business. You tell people you work for a fireworks company, and they seem to think it's incredibly exciting and glamorous, but it's not.

It's dirty workshops and muddy fields. It's cutting and sticking and repetitive wiring and long dull hours. I guess in the old days of hand firing you could get off on the buzz of the risk, but like every fucking thing else, these days all the fun has been health and safetied out of existence. Everything is fired by computer, one man pressing a button once at the start of the show and that's it. Of course, like most technology, the possibilities that this opens up are limitless. The limits lie in the imagination of the user, and my Dad is no innovator. He sells out of the box displays to councils and events. He hit on a formula that works and by God is he sticking to it. He has a team of anonymous boys to do the grunt work, whilst he stays in the office and does the 'design'. I use that word loosely, cause I don't think he has had an original idea since 1999. He worked hard to get Bristol's millennium display, and he's been resting on his laurels ever since. Same fucking stuff, same predictable music – 1812 overture, Superman theme, Ride of the sodding Valkries, the latest X-Factor nonsense to appear contemporary, and if he's feeling particularly daring, or the client wants it, 'Firestarter' by the Prodigy. I fucking hate that track now, and I find it endlessly amusing that the rabble-rousing song has become the establishment's 'go to' track when they want to appear like they've got some fucking edge…as if.

I can't blame him, I suppose. It is really just a business to him, a way of making money and keeping his family secure. He has no interest in trying to be like those amazing French companies that do such mindblowing stuff around stadiums and architecture. Fitchtastic fireworks is what it is – family entertainment and not much else. I stared at the database on my screen and mentally geared myself up to call the people on my list, and try to sound enthusiastic about selling this shit. I could do it. I know I'm fucking good at what I do, but I just miss working with real creatives, people on the cutting edge of their profession. I missed the excitement of bring something genuinely thrilling and new into the public eye. Of course it's still lovely when you see a kid's face light up in wonder at the pretty lights in the sky. But me? I was totally fucking over brightly coloured explosives.

I took another mouthful of my coffee and picked up the phone in readiness, when my Dad came storming into the office with his face as red as a postbox, nearly bursting at the seams with anger.

"It's outrageous, that's what it is," he informed me. "It's a travesty, down right bleedin' criminal."

It took me several minutes for me to calm him down enough to reveal what it was that was so terrible. It turned out that the council had given the finale of the MayFest, one of our signature contracts, to another company. It didn't surprise me, MayFest was the first big arts event of the summer and brought a lot of people into the city. It was another example of Dad expecting everything to remain the same without him having to put in the effort.

"This wouldn't have happened if Dave had still been there," he complained.

He was probably right. Dave at Bristol Council Events office had been one of Dad's old cronies and they no doubt had some cosy little arrangement going that we got all of the big Bristol gigs, but as I had learned the hard way, you can't trust anyone but yourself and you have to constantly watch your back.

"They've got some new woman in," said Dad contemptuously. "I want you to ring her up and find out what the flippin' heck's going on over there."

I rolled my eyes, but did what he asked me anyway. It took me a while to get through. Trying to negotiate a council switchboard is like trying to find your way out of the Cretan Labyrinth, and I didn't have the new woman's name or direct line. I eventually reached a friendly young-sounding woman called Heather, who was quite helpful. Even though she wouldn't tell me the name of the company who had won the tender, she was happy to explain that the team had felt it was time to give the MayFest a new edgier approach that would appeal more to the younger generation, and the fresh contemporary feel of the modern city they were trying to promote.

I couldn't exactly argue with her, if that was what they were looking for we certainly didn't fit the bill. When I told Dad all this he went off on one again.

"But that's our contract," he insisted.

"No it isn't," I told him. "None of them belong to us, even if we have had them for a while. We're going to have to work a lot harder. It's a recession. Budgets are being cut all over the place, we can't take anything for granted. We're going to have to fight to win the work that is there, not just expect it to fall into our lap."

"That's why I need you Katiekins," grinned Dad. "You'll help me sort this all out now that you're back, won't you love. Finger on the pulse and all that. Help me keep up with these modern trends."

"Sure I will Dad," I said.

I didn't really have the heart to tell him that me being back was only a temporary measure till I figured out what the fuck I was going to do with my life, and that being the heir apparent to Fitchtastic Fireworks was not where my dreams and ambitions lay.

A month and a half later I was stood in the middle of a large crowd down by the docks for the festival finale. Dad had insisted that we come down and check out the competition. He was convinced that they wouldn't amount to much, but I wasn't so sure. He had been asking about in the industry, but it was none of the obvious candidates, in fact nobody seemed to know who they were. Dad seemed to think this boded well, but I had a bad feeling about it. One thing I had learned in the fashion business, the unknown is always dangerous. That's why everyone there made it their business to know as much about their rivals as possible.

A floating stage had been built out into the river and a multi-levelled structure sat upon it where a big dance piece was going to be performed. As I listened to the buzz of the crowd around me, I looked past it, across to the other side of the river to some derelict land, where I could vaguely make out some racks of the cardboard mortar tubes the pyro company would fire their shells from. It looked like they had an impressive amount of material at least, but gross weight of explosives does not a display make, and I wondered what tricks they had up their sleeves that convinced the council they were more suitable for the rebranding of the event. Still, I would have to wait until after the dance piece to find out, and that was something I was actually interested in. The company had been formed by a local choreographer called Maxxie Oliver who had paid his dues in the commercial theatre in London, but had come back home to make a space where he could create his own work. I'd heard they were really good, and had hooked up with some circus people to take the work into three dimensions, which accounted for the big structure. There was a cheer as the music started and the lights came up over the water.

The piece was called 'Evolution' and the first shock was that the dancers emerged from the river itself, before staggering around unsteadily as if they were still trying to get used to the feeling of solid land. The movement itself was quirky and amusing easily drawing in the crowd, even those who weren't particularly dance literate, and the dancers conquered their inexperience and learned how to move at floor level. They became increasingly triumphant, and began a complex series of interactions with risk taking jumps and lifts and it was particularly joyful to watch. You could feel the excitement in the audience as the movement and the music heightened together towards some kind of inevitable climax, but none of us were expecting what happened next. Half way through a bar, a loud cinematic boom interrupted the soundtrack. At the same instant, green jets of sparks shot out horizontally from the edge of the stage, illuminating the water and radically changing the environment of the piece. The audience gasped as the dancers froze into a tableau, but we barely had time to catch our breath, before a series of explosions just below the surface ran along the river from left to right behind the stage, sending jets of water flying into the air. More spark streams erupted from the stage edge and the dancers shifted their shape in reaction to each pyrotechnic event, which was choreographed perfectly to the music.

As a representation of the cataclysmic events that drive evolution, it was startlingly effective and when the chaos died down, the dancers made the decision to explore the structure. Once again they were uncertain, having entered a new environment, and they experimented along the lower levels finding their way again. This time they quickly gained more skill and we saw them climbing, swinging and jumping between levels, making their mark on their new place in the world. Blue flares started to ignite around the stage that they had vacated, creating an eerie light and billowing smoke, that the lighting designer punctuated with tight horizontal beams. Across the river the pyro team set off a series if mines from the roof of one of the old buildings, low bursting cluster fireworks in blue and red that swirled around the sky behind the stage. The dancers reacted to these events with caution, but were not so fearful as before, as if they were learning to understand their environment and the forces that controlled it. It was a beautiful marriage of images that blended the spectacle of the pyro and the dexterity of the movement perfectly to create a genuinely thrilling moment.

The pyro died down again and the performers moved even higher, this time controlled their new destination with even more confidence and speed. Their skills were incredible, and the way they moved at height had several people's hearts in their mouths. All around me I could hear people jabbering away excitedly, and raising their phones into the air hoping to capture a little piece of the excitement. Dancers began to leap freefall into what was obviously a concealed safety net or crash mat of some sort concealed within the structure, only to reappear moments later, pulled back into the sky counterbalanced by another performer jumping with a harness from the top. It was impressive stuff, but I got a knot in my stomach thinking about what was to come. These people were clever, and there was no way they were done yet.

A group of three dancers made their way towards the summit of the structure, as a low, almost subsonic foreboding rumble of bass oozed it's way out of the speakers. The group achieved their goal but just as they raised their fists in triumph, a massive jet of red sparks erupted right next to them, sending them tumbling back down the structure. Or at least that's how it seemed. There was an eruption of astonished swearing and screaming amongst the audience around me, but although it looked as though the performers were in genuine danger, I knew the pyro had been placed on a structure behind the structure to keep a safe working distance, and that the seemingly chaotic falls were inch perfect choreography from the dancers. More red gerbs ignited all around them, but this time they held their ground and began to climb the structure again, presenting a united force against the dangers that threatened to overwhelm them. I smiled to myself as I anticipated the next move. It was an easy trick, but it was a clever use of material. The red fireworks were a type that changed colour after about forty seconds, and as the dancers sent their metaphorical energy towards the jet it morphed into gold, as if they had been able to control the event. The dancers broke away from each other, each one moving to control a different stream of sparks. As each gerb in turn changed colour it looked like the dancer nearest to it was making it happen. They had it timed pretty near perfectly, and although fireworks are never one hundred perfect predictable it certainly created the right effect. The dancers began to move again, and a stunningly clever series of timed ignitions made it appear that they were now in complete control of their environment, raising flames and explosions apparently at whim. Suddenly it seemed like the whole of the structure and the land and water around it was ablaze in a beautiful chaos. Roman candles dance around the opposite shore, synchronised in colour and sound, jets of water began erupting from the stage lit to create liquid rainbows, and the performers danced in the middle of it all, looking like they were about to be engulfed in their own creation.

It was simply stunning. Even though I understood the mechanics behind how it had been created, it still took my fucking breath away. There was no denying the skill of Maxxie's dancers, but whoever had designed that pyro was a fucking genius. Not only did he create something fucking gorgeous, intricate and artistic, he was doing it around performers and water in split second interaction without overwhelming the piece he was trying to support. We had often incorporated a little bit of pyro into the runway shows, but this was a different level altogether. The performance ended with all the performers aloft on the highest parts of the structure, as a burst of small calibre shells lit up the sky in exploding spheres of blue and red behind them, and the crowd whooped and cheered and shouted their approval. As the dancers took their bows, the only person without a massive smile on their face was the muscular figure of my father, who was frowning with his arms folded resolutely across his chest.

"Well that was all very pretty I suppose," he admitted grudgingly. "But it's hardly a festival ending finale display, was it?"

Oh Dad, I sighed inwardly, as he couldn't see what was right in front of his face. Apart from the last burst of shells, all of the material that had been used in the show had been by necessity been low level and more theatrical types of pyro. Even in the darkness, I had managed to make out many more racks of tubes that would fire the high bursting aerial material for a larger scale display. The music had continued through out the curtain calls, and the dancers had spread their arms forward to acknowledge the front of house sound and lighting crew. They then turned and gestured back across the river to where the pyro team were based, and the music shifted to a haunting echoey piano. The lights dropped out on the structure, and in their place a line of yellow flares ignited on the opposite shore. More gold and yellow flares started to appear around the structure of the buildings behind them, illuminating windows and delineating the contours of the roof until they had created an entire landscape out of light and shadow. Small bursts of electronic sounds within the track were echoed with brief bursts of single shot candles sending white jets into the sky. A synth line started to dance across the melody and was met with multi-shot candles which sent their payload slightly higher towards the heavens, before bursting into showers of glittering green which reflected back off the surface of the water. Each explosion matched the development of the music and it was quite understatedly beautiful, but I felt my heart tighten as I recognised a build up in the pattern of the beats coming that if they were headed where I thought they were headed… oh fuck me.

Seconds later I was proved right as a facemeltingly filthy dubstep bass ripped through the air and the night sky was saturated with noise and colour. The crowd gasped and then cheered wildly, and once again I was blown away by just how fucking good the design was with events following perfectly the complex rhythms of the track. The music dipped back down to the piano and a waterfall of diamond white sparks tumbled down the side of the building, punctuated by silver comet mines shooting up from below to meet them. The drums built again, but this time the crowd knew what to expect knew what to expect. They roared as the bass kicked in again and a bank of reds and oranges took over the darkness high above. I couldn't remember the last time I had been genuinely excited by a pyro display, but my heart was beating slightly faster as the track hit its climax. Had they hit their peak too soon I wondered. Surely they couldn't keep this up for another six minutes.

I thought I'd been right when classical sounding strings started coming in over the beat. So they'd had their unconventional beginning and now it was back to the usual fare. But I was fucking wrong again. The strings began to repeat in a loop and a woman's voice cut in rhythmically across them. What the fuck? She was rapping. In French! The beat kicked in and the sky went wild again. I don't know what the fuck she was on about, but I knew she sounded fucking angry about it. The grandeur of the strings, and the noise of the pyro and the very real emotion evident in the rapper's voice started to change the very nature of the event. Instead of being just passive spectacle, I could feel the energy of everyone around me getting drawn deeper in. They started bobbing their heads along with the beat, massive smiles on their faces as they became increasingly drunk on the heady cocktail of noise and light and explosive percussion. My ears pricked up as the strings mixed seamlessly into a tune I recognised. It was a tune from the soundtrack to Amelie, its traditional Parisian melodies calming the atmosphere as the level of the pyro once again dipped down to a subtler flavour. Ok, so it was still a long way from the mainstream movie tracks that my Dad used, but at least it was something more recognisable.

Until a voiceover in English played over the track. "Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave." And then the sodding drum and bass kicked in. And the artist behind all this started painting his pictures in the sky. For that's what this was, it was fucking art. Layers of colour at different levels as gold palm shells rained down through them. The melodies of the tune were transformed by the beats and the bass into something truly alive, and Bristol was being transformed into somewhere more magical as its clear dark sky erupted with life. I don't think I'd ever seen people dancing at a fireworks display before, but all around me people started jumping around. This wasn't a display, it was a fucking party, and we were all invited. I caught the traces of two large calibre shells as they rose even higher than the rest, following them up, knowing they would be the finale of the show. I watched the massive bursts of gold as they filled almost my entire eyeline. There was a final gasp from the crowd, and then a moment's silence as they processed the fact that it was over. The eruption of sound that followed was more like that following the arrival of a rock star or a winning goal than anything else. Even the people who knew nothing about pyro knew that they had witnessed something special, but I was fucking gobsmacked. I found myself cheering along every bit as enthusiastically as my neighbours, despite the death glare I was receiving from my Dad. I could understand him, I suppose. If this was the competition, we were screwed.

"We have to find out who's behind this," said Dad, a serious expression on his face. I know he'd been expecting some ramshackle excuse for an outfit, so I knew he would have been shaken by the quality of what we'd just seen, even if he was scornful of their style.

"I'll see what I can find out," I said, and headed towards the front of the crowd, more for an excuse to get away from him, rather than any genuine desire to sneak on the other company. What I really wanted was the excuse to mingle with the crowd and enjoy the afterbuzz without Rob breathing down my neck. I was cut a lucky break when I spotted Pandora, a friend of Emily's from college amongst the performers. Back then she had been notorious for her wildly eccentric form of dancing. It was nice to see that someone had managed to harness that untamed energy into something creative.

"Katie," she yelled excitedly as I approached. I hadn't seen her for about three years, but Pandora was everybody's best friend, whether she knew them well or not.

"Great show, Pandora," I told her.

"Bloomin' bonkers wasn't it?" she beamed back at me. "I flippin' loved dancing around in all them pyros."

"Yeah, that shit was cool," I said, feigning nonchalance. "Who did all that stuff for you?"

"Oh they're brilliant," she replied. "They're called 'Le Coeur Explosif'."

"They're French?" I asked.

That would explain a few things. Their technical brilliance, their avant-garde style, the French music. It was also good because it probably meant that this was a one-off, and they probably wouldn't be working in Bristol again anytime soon, and wouldn't be a problem for us.

"Oh no, they're from Bristol," enthused Pandora. "But a couple of them are French. Or at least they speak French. There's this one boy Thomas, and he's a complete blinkin' dreamboat. I totally want to get into his pants for a bit of surf and turf. How's Emily?"

"She's pretty good," I said adjusting to Pandora's non sequiteur. "She's getting paid to make films now, and she's got herself a seriously fit girlfriend."

"That's whizzer!" exclaimed Panda. "There's a whacker big party down the old library after this. You should get her to come down."

"I think she's in Berlin this week," I muttered. "She travels a lot these days."

"Bummer," said Panda, not looking remotely bummed out. "But you should come anyway. I reckon everyone's gonna go proper mental."

I weighed up my options. Go home and listen to Dad complaining, or go and get pleasantly fucked off my head at the end of festival party, and maybe even get a shag. It wasn't even a decision. It had been way too long since I'd had any decent fun.

"Count me in," I said.

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The drum and bass remix of Amelie exists and if you google Freear on Soundcloud you can download it for free, you lucky, lucky people.