Evelyn

Evelyn Cevalier ran from the open arena, Astra Yao wrapped in her arms. Her gait changed briefly as she kicked open the door into the staff-only backstage. Astra's face was buried in Evelyn's breast and she was sobbing hysterically- but Evelyn felt like singing! She felt like dancing!

Astra was alive and whole and in her arms!

Just minutes ago, she'd spent an eternal elevator ride naming herself the greatest fool ever to have cursed this earth. Since there were no other floors in the Astroloop Tower that the top and the bottom, the elevator only counted in meters, and Evelyn had agonized over their slow upward increment.

What was happening up there? Was Astra safe? What was that helicopter all about? Was it nothing? Was it the worst thing imaginable?

She'd squeezed out of the lift doors immediately, her leading breast crushing painfully upon the steel. But she was out and running across the atrium. A few panicked people were already fleeing from the various doors of the arena. The giant screens on the walls which simulcasted the arena's interior for people at the concession stands all held the same image: a masked man holding a blade over the neck of a kneeling Astra Yao!

For the second time in Evelyn's life, she was about to fail so utterly, so irredeemably, that the realization of it almost caused her heart to stop right in that moment. It shuddered violently in her chest. Evelyn had gasped for air as her eyes bulged at the screen. She'd stumbled to her knees, neck craning to watch the rise of the killing blade, every fiber of her being screaming in denial.

And then: a miracle!

Praise to all gods and spirits, great and small! Praise to any demon or yokai or devil, for that matter! Anything at all responsible! And thank all creation and all of fate and the sky and the earth and the moon for Hoshimi Miyabi!

Holding Astra to her chest, Evelyn ran onward through the backstage tunnels. Stage hands, retiree backstage security, and Astra Yao's small clan of make-up artists, hairdressers, and costume managers parted before her fevered charge to the green room. That was all Evelyn could think about: get Astra to her dressing room. The dressing room was safe.

Meanwhile: people were crying from stress and its abrupt abatement. People were laughing with joy and relief. People were staring stoically, dazed by the near miss of tragedy. The myriad forms of human expression formed a panorama around the conveyance of the Idol to her Room. No one spoke. No words were necessary. Yet.

One of Astra's personal assistants opened the door ahead of Evelyn's progress.

"No one inside for now," barked Evelyn. "Core team: be nearby."

A few assenting sounds came from a few wide-eyed people nearby, but then Evelyn had Astra over the threshold and she kicked the door closed behind them. But it shut on the blood-stained train of Astra's dress. Evelyn cursed and tried to tug it loose, but in so doing, was swinging Astra around in princess-carry as her trapped dress train pulled against them both.

"Eve. J- just set me down. I can stand," said Astra. Her voice was crackly from recently ended sobbing.

Evelyn silently did as she was told. Astra's high heels clacked to the tile of the floor. Freed of her burden, Evelyn turned and opened the door slightly, tugged through the remainder of the bloody chiffon, and slammed the door shut. She turned on Astra.

Wet, gleaming eyes gazed at Evelyn like those of a sad and wounded fawn. Astra's mascara was everywhere, along with the rest of her makeup. A critical eye would find her a mess, but in Astra's good health, Evelyn saw only the most perfect being she'd ever beheld.

Evelyn reached forward and grabbed Astra into a powerful hug. Astra responded by wrapping her arms around Evelyn's back. They crushed one another to themselves.

"I'm so sorry," said Evelyn, the dread of her almost-failure causing her throat to close up. "I wasn't there. I should have been there."

"It's okay, Eve," said Astra, her voice with far more warble than usual. "I'm fine. I'm okay."

"But I-" Evelyn stopped as a finger pressed onto her lips in a shushing fashion.

Astra was pressing her finger into Eve's mouth. "Shush. You can't be everywhere, Eve. I know you were out doing something important, and you can't be everywhere. I'm not hurt. It's all okay."

Evelyn blinked. Astra could forgive the failure. That's just who she was. She was perfect.

Evelyn, however, could never let herself off that easily. This event was just another example of her own incompetence. Another reason no one should trust her, least of all Astra! Evelyn wasn't worthy of even standing in this room and-

"Eve!" said Astra, shaking Evelyn. "Get out of your head. I know what you are doing in there. Stop. I'm okay. Nothing went wrong in the end, so you don't need to blame yourself for anything. Okay?"

"...okay," lied Evelyn.

"...okay," said Astra, probably knowing she was lying.

They looked at each other for a few seconds, speechless. Evelyn's eyes flowed down Astra's hourglass form and evaluated the dress. If the human blood had previously been confined to the chiffon train, it was no longer. During Evelyn's carry of Astra, much of the skirt had also been stained. Streaks of blood were also on the torso. It was a total lost cause- and very macabre. Astra looked like an insane bride who'd just knifed the wedding party.

Evelyn's clothing wasn't much better off, but black leather didn't show blood very well. And that was the exact reason why Evelyn always used to wear it. And that old habit persisted till now.

Somewhere vaguely above and beyond the dressing room, Evelyn realized she could hear the arena crowd. It was a faint and heavy murmuring and rumbling of thousands of people. The audience was still here. No one had told them to leave, and perhaps they shouldn't be. They were all witnesses now, right?

"Let's get you out of that dress, Astra," said Evelyn, shoving the crowd from her mind. That was the venue's problem now.

Astra looked down at herself and managed to go even more pale. "Right. Yes."

Evelyn moved forward and Astra turned her back for the unzipping process. Astra stared intently at the rolling wardrobe which contained some of the backup costumes for when the setlist changed between performance dates- tonight's show's costumes were all hidden under the live stage at the moment.

"I'll wear the black tunic," said Astra to herself with conviction. "We'll just have to forget the costumes and do it like a musical festival."

Evelyn had just gently lowered the ruined wedding dress to the floor so the nearly naked Astra could step out and away from it, like a butterfly emerging from her bloody cocoon. Evelyn froze.

"...Astra? ...do what like a music festival?"

"The rest of the concert, of course," said Astra, already sliding one long leg into her white shorts. She wasn't looking at Evelyn, but instead looking across the room at the lyric scrawled mirrors. "My gods, look at me! Eve, get the girls in here!"

"Astra," said Evelyn, already knowing the answer. "Are you preparing to restart the show?!"

Astra blinked at her as she hopped on one foot, sliding her other leg into her tight shorts. "Of course. Why wouldn't we?"

"Because someone literally just tried to cut your head off with a machete!"

"Well Eve!" said Astra, striding over to the mirror to wipe an area clean of her own lipstick scrawl. "They didn't! So! Let's do what we came here to do, and give my fans what they paid money and time to come see!"

"T- the stage is covered in blood! It's a crime scene! PubSec will be swarming it!"

"In the atrium then!" said Astra.

"You can't fit 50,000 people in the ring! Well- not so they can see you, anyway!"

"Fine! The parking lot! Like when we were on the district fair circuit! It will be like old times!"

Out of objections, Evelyn stood in the center of the giant dressing room, utterly dumbfounded. She watched Astra begin frantically wiping her face clean of the destroyed makeup, the towel in her hands turning brown as the black and the white mixed on the clean cloth. Then Astra's softly purple eyes focused on Evelyn through the mirror.

"Eve! The girls! Call in the girls! I have to get ready! And you need to get my stage ready!"

Evelyn blinked at the absurdity of it. "The stage ready? It's a parking lot. There isn't a stage down there! We'd have to build one!"

"Well, if anyone can manage that, it's you. Right, Eve?"

Astra stood up, turned around, and blasted Evelyn with her best bambi-eyed look. "Right? Eve?"

Is she a goddess of a demon? "Yes, Ms. Yao."

And before Evelyn quite accepted that it was happening, she was marshaling Astra's entire beauty team into the green room and shutting them in to work their magic. Meanwhile, Evelyn called out harshly for her production managers and technical directors, and while they gathered, she delivered the news to the venue staff over the radio: Tell the crowd that the show will resume in 45 minutes. In the parking lot. Yes, really.

The requisite specialists and managers quickly gathered around Evelyn, all of them having been in the general area of the dressing room. All of them instinctively gathered to where Astra and Evelyn typically were during the tour. The only people missing were the two live show technicians: the board operators who actually pushed the buttons during the performance. Where were they?

Evelyn felt a bit of dread about their absence, but she could replace them. If it came to that.

"We're going to continue the concert," said Evelyn to her wide-eyed bunch. "In the parking lot."

Everyone silently stared at her. Then stared at each other. They returned their stares to Evelyn.

Yeah, welcome to the club, people.

"Don't stand there, gawking at me like fools," snapped Evelyn. She pointed at a pudgy goat thiren. "Frederick! The three stage trucks are just flatbeds when they are empty. Get your boys to line them up in the lot. That's our stage. Delana! Michael! Get your roadies and grab as much sound equipment as you can. Get the best and biggest system you can manage in the time we've got. We can add to it after we get restarted. I want the word 'pillage' to be your guiding philosophy. Lights? Do the same. Use the trucks. Gods, use the fleet. Use the tower. Put whatever lights you can find wherever you can find to put them. I don't care about coherence, I don't care about colors, I just want Astra Yao lit up like the fucking sun. Yes?"

"Yes, Ms. Chevelier!"

"Go, then! Go!" Evelyn clapped her hands together loudly. Everyone jumped and ran off to accomplish the miracle she'd just demanded of them.

As they all scattered, a tall man in a venue security uniform stepped into their place. It was Takamura and his face was grim and serious. Though, Evelyn didn't really know the man. Maybe he was always grim and serious. Still, it was the kind of face one expected to see after automatic weapons were discharged around a huge gathering of unarmed innocents.

"Are ambulances coming?" asked Evelyn. "Is PubSec on the way?"

"Already coming up the lifts," said Takamura. "Some of the rafter techs saw the intruders when they breached through the roof. So PubSec technically knew what was happening before we did."

The remote city police were more informed of an emerging crisis than the onsite security teams? Gods… That could only have occurred because Evelyn had not integrated the venue staff with the Astra Yao staff. The lines of communication between the two teams had never been established.

Evelyn closed her eyes and rubbed at her temples. It wss not that she'd forgotten to do so, it's just that they had never done it. Never. Anywhere. Venue staff were usually a security threat to Astra Yao, but in this situation, maybe they would have been her saviors.

Either way, it was a fucking embarrassment. Another failure on a growing list of failures. But it was time to ask the question she dreaded most:

"Casualties?"

"None," said Takamura.

That was a relief! Evelyn almost couldn't believe it. But it was a day of miracles, it seemed. So that means the two board operators were okay.

"What about in the audience, though?"

"None."

Evelyn blinked. "None? With all those shots fired?"

Takamura shook his head with wide eyes. "The bullets… Lady Hoshimi deflected them all into the floor. No one in the whole place was hit."

"All of them? Those rifles hold thirty rounds! And there were two rifles shooting at her! I saw it!"

Takamura could only shrug helplessly. "None were reported, Ma'am."

Evelyn could only blink at Takamura in disbelief. So: that was the level of skill in a Void Hunter? It wasn't just a meaningless title, was it? Void Hunter Hoshimi Miyabi…

"Well, find out who is heading up the PubSec response," said Evelyn. "In the meantime, let's you and I hash out how we are going to get 50,000 people from the arena to the parking lot in something of an orderly fashion. Otherwise it will degrade into the usual go-home chaos. And we do need to keep clear paths out for the people who want to go home…"

The next thirty minutes were a frantic, ad-hoc logistics session. Evelyn spoke to about a dozen different people a dozen different times, remotely connecting her subordinates with gear and other teams. Meanwhile, Takamura helped hold the PubSec officers at a distance- giving them the stage for forensics and shuffling to them as few staffers as possible at a time for witness interviews. The police were not disposed to be patient for the sake of something trivial like an Astra Yao concert, but they also couldn't interview everyone at once.

But there was one thing still nagging in Evelyn's mind: where was Hoshimi Miyabi? Evelyn felt a deep obligation to thank that woman for what she'd done tonight. And there was something deeply wrong about failing to do that before the concert resumed downstairs in the parking lot. She and Astra needed to give their thanks to their savior. That was essentially the final step in the death of the first concert and a prerequisite for a proper start to the second. Or at least, that's how Evelyn saw it.

Takamura was able to learn from his new PubSec liaison that Hoshimi Miyabi was in witness interview with their captain. With some finesse and creative language, they learned that both personages were in one of the side hallways in the labyrinth under the arena stage. Evelyn set out at a quick gait to find them.

She quickly reached the designated crossroads of hallways. There was no one immediately visible. But as Evelyn slowed, she heard the murmur of voices in conversation. She headed in their direction.

Old habits sparked in Evelyn's mind. She changed her gait and became careful with her step. The noise of her own footsteps vanished and she advanced down the hallway as quiet as a ghost. The murmur of tense conversion ahead coerced into coherent words:

"We both know you could have handled the situation without killing anyone," said a terse woman's voice. "But you didn't. You chose to butcher those people."

There was a short silence. "Do you ever feel like you are inside an eddy of time, Zhu Yu-an?"

"Don't change the subject, Miyabi! I know your head-in-the-clouds routine, remember?"

"We have had this conversation before, but not in this place. This moment is like a mixture of the past and the present. Our lives are swirling about-"

"Miyabi!"

There was a soft sigh. "I will say: 'I will eradicate all evil'. And you will say: 'Who decides what is evil?''. And then I will say: 'I do.'"

A sigh of frustration. A hint of futility: "What happens if you get it wrong, Miyabi? What then?"

"...Was I wrong today? …Was I wrong back then?"

A silence.

Evelyn didn't think she was going to get a better opportunity to interrupt the conversation. She stepped around the corner and found that Void Hunter Hoshimi Miyabi was already looking in her direction. The smallish fox thiren woman stared at Evelyn with a mildly unsettling neutrality, her red-colored eyes giving her an ominous sort of look. Her killing sword was grasped in her hand, but it was sheathed, at the moment.

A PubSec officer was confronting the Void Hunter; a relatively tall, extremely fit, and notably curvy PubSec officer. The woman's attention followed Miyabi's eyes and she turned to face Evelyn's arrival. Ms. PubSec's amber eyes seemed angry, but they matched well with the orangey highlights in her black hair. She was beautiful. They both were beautiful, both the officer and the Void Hunter.

But not as beautiful as Astra Yao.

"Yes?" said the PubSec officer whom Miyabi had called Zhu Yu-an. "Can I help you? Oh, you're Miss Yao's personal security, aren't you?"

"Evelyn Chevalier," said Evelyn as she offered her hand.

"Captain Zhu Yu-an," said Zhu Yu-an, shaking her hand. "How can I help you, Miss Chevalier?"

"We are going to resume the concert in the parking lot. Will that pose any problems, Captain?"

Zhu Yu-an's eyes widened. "Ms. Yao still wants to perform?"

"The show must go on, captain. Ms. Yao is very dedicated to her fans."

Zhu Yu-an blinked a few times. "W- well… an outdoor concert requires a permit."

Evelyn felt a spike of annoyance. A permit? Was she seriously-

"And I will attain it for you, Miss Chevalier," said Zhu Yu-an quickly. "It's the least I can do to support Miss Yao today. I will also have a detail assist with security and traffic, with your permission."

Evelyn took a deep breath and felt a surge of genuine affection and gratitude for this policewoman. "That would be very appreciated, Captain."

"You are welcome," said Zhu Yu-an. "But please remember to not allow any of your staff to leave until they've had their interviews. That includes you and Ms. Yao. But we can wait until after the… the concert- is there anything else?"

Evelyn's eyes drifted to Miyabi. The thiren woman seemed to have immediately lost interest in their conversation and her eyes had drifted elsewhere. But Miyabi seemed to sense Evelyn's attention. She looked back and locked gazes with Evelyn, who felt her own breath catch softly in her throat.

A slight thrill went through Evelyn's body. There was an aura to the Void Hunter, no mistake. It seemed to funnel out of those red-tinted eyes.

"Actually," said Evelyn. "I was hoping to extend my gratitude to Ms. Hoshimi…"

Captain Zhu Yu-an's expression darkened slightly. She looked over her shoulder at Miyabi. Police woman and Void Hunter shared a look that was loaded with emotions that Evelyn could not parse. Finally, Zhu Yu-an sighed in defeat.

"Of course, Ms. Chevalier. But before the end of the day, could you please provide me with the personal details of Ms. Yao's dancers and technicians? We don't want to miss anyone who was in contact with the extremists."

Extremists, was it?

"Of course, captain," said Evelyn.

Zhu Yu-an nodded and walked away. The sound of her giving various orders through her radio gradually faded into the distance. Meanwhile, Evelyn and Miyabi looked at each other in the brief silence.

What did one say to the person who saved half of your soul? Evelyn tried to remember that moment when she was running through the atrium, the giant television focused on the rise of the machete over Astra's neck. How to put into words the crippling dread that had almost dropped Evelyn to the floor? How then to describe the explosion of relief and hope evoked upon witnessing Miyabi's miraculous rescue?

How to handle thanking someone else for doing your own work? Your. One. Single. Fucking. Job.

"Ms. Hoshimi," said Evelyn, and immediately floundered. "Thank you for-"

"Don't mention it," said Miyabi quickly. Her eyes broke contact and she started walking away.

Evelyn blinked in surprise. Was this situation nothing to someone like her? Or did Void Hunter Hoshimi Miyabi hear 'thank you' so often that she was now tone-deaf to gratitude?

Well, she was going to hear this, damnit!

Evelyn reached out with her arm and placed her hand in Miyabi's path, using her palm to halt the forward momentum of Miyabi's collarbone. Miyabi blinked in genuine shock. One of her ears twitched.

"Withdraw your hand," said Miyabi, her voice ominously quiet.

Stopping Miyabi's sudden exit was Evelyn's only motivation for her desperate act. She withdrew her arm, not looking to further provoke the Void Hunter's ire. Though perhaps Miyabi was already angry, as her stoic gaze was slightly different now- her eyes were open wider. Evelyn felt an aura of danger pass through her body, and the inspiration provided by Evelyn's survival instinct kicked into gear, just like it always had in her previous line of work.

"Forgive me, Ms. Hoshimi. But I want you- I need you to understand: you saved my soul today. Astra Yao is- is- everything to me. If I smile, it is because of her. If I am content, it is because of her. Without her, I would be dead. I would… be a broken, heartless thing- only going through the motions of life out of pure habit."

Miyabi's emotionless gaze was fixated on Evelyn. A vulpine ear twitched, deeply.

But she didn't seem to be getting more angry.

"So," sighed Evelyn, drawing herself up and broadening her shoulders. "Thank you."

A silence stretched between them. Evelyn looking down into the somewhat grim face of Hoshimi Miyabi. The fox thiren's red eyes peered up from under her brows. A vulpine ear twitched again. Twice.

"You are welcome," said Miyabi, finally. "...Ms. Chevalier."

Evelyn took a breath and felt like an important task was complete. Miyabi was clearly a prickly individual. There was always a satisfaction in getting more from someone like that.

"Ms. Yao would like to thank you, as well, personally," said Evelyn as she switched back to manager mode. She offered her offending palm as a guide back down the opposite hallway towards Astra's dressing room. "Would you be willing to come with me and meet her?"

Miyabi's eyes hadn't left Evelyn's since their physical contact. "All right."

With prize in tow, Evelyn led the way back to Astra's green room. She felt slightly giddy. Facing down Miyabi's displeasure felt like a trial, and Evelyn felt a strange sort of victorious satisfaction. Without realizing it of herself, Evelyn was walking with the slightly exaggerated stride she used when she wanted to impress someone- fully exploiting the long length of her own legs to accentuate her body's shape in motion.

Miyabi, following behind, was inadvertently impressed.