The vendor stall groaned under the weight of the crowd.
Eliane's silver ponytail whipped around as she spun, grabbing another stack of Vesta-branded t-shirts from the crate behind her. The fabric slipped through her nimble fingers—fingers that could julienne a carrot into ribbons blindfolded—and she slammed the stack onto the counter with a grunt. Her olive skin glistened with sweat under the heat of the portable lanterns rigged above the stall. The white chef's jacket she wore, unbuttoned over a black top, had somehow already acquired a smear of something sticky across the left sleeve.
"We're almost out!" she shouted over the roar of the crowd. Her blue eyes, wide with a mixture of panic and exhilaration, scanned the sea of bodies pressing against the makeshift wooden barrier. "Like, completely almost out! The t-shirts are gone! The hats are gone! The—" She grabbed an empty cardboard box, shook it. "The glow sticks are gone!"
Bianca leaned over the counter, her waist-length black hair escaping its messy bun in thick, rebellious strands. A pencil—the third one today—had materialized behind her ear. Her magnifying goggles sat pushed up on her forehead, reflecting in the orange light of the setting sun streaming through the stadium's open dome. The grease stains on her overalls formed abstract patterns over the floral dress beneath, and she squinted at the dwindling merchandise spread across the table.
"Like, that could be," she said, her expressive hands already gesturing wildly, tracing shapes in the air as if diagramming a solution, "like a problem. A real, actual, capital-P Problem. Because if we, like, run out, then, like, people get cranky, and cranky crowds are, like, statistically more likely to—"
Jannali cut her off with a sharp curse that cut through the chaos like a blade.
"Bloody hell."
She stood with her arms crossed, her stylish headscarf—deep purple today, wrapped artfully to conceal her forehead—pulled tight against her afro. Her large golden hoop earrings swung as she tilted her head, listening to something only she could hear. The wind, maybe. Or the stall itself. Or the coins clattering into the metal lockbox at her feet. Her brown eyes, expressive and sharp, tracked the flow of bodies moving past their position near the stadium's outer concourse.
"But the berries," she continued, her accent drawing out the vowels in that lazy, sun-baked way of hers, "just keep comin'. Fair dinkum, I've never seen anythin' like it." She tapped her hoop earrings—once, twice—a nervous habit she couldn't shake. "We've sold more in the last hour than I could win at the tables. And we're not even at the good stuff yet."
She wasn't wrong.
The stadium had become a living creature, a beast of seventy thousand lungs all breathing the same hot, spice-scented air. The crowd pressed and flowed around them—dockworkers in grease-stained coveralls, nobles in gold-threaded songkoks and polished brass accessories, pirates with their Jolly Rogers stitched onto leather vests, marine deserters keeping their heads low, children perched on shoulders, their faces painted with Vesta's lightning-bolt logo. The hanging gardens that cascaded down the stadium's concrete walls dripped with exotic flowers, their perfume mixing with the sharp tang of grilled meat from the food stalls and the sugary sweetness of cotton candy.
A group of teenagers pushed past, laughing, and one of them—a girl with pink hair shaved on one side—scooped up the last Vesta hoodie from the table, slapped down a stack of berries, and disappeared into the throng before Eliane could even process the transaction.
"We're out of hoodies now," Eliane announced, her voice cracking.
Ember started to laugh.
It wasn't a normal laugh.
It began as a low giggle, the kind that bubbled up from somewhere deep and dark, and then it climbed, rising in pitch and intensity until it became a full-throated cackle that sliced through the ambient noise like a serrated knife. The neon-pink space buns on her head—streaked with soot, gravity-defying—bounced as her petite frame shook. Her mismatched eyes, one icy blue, one gold (the prosthetic that whirred softly when she focused), darted across the crowd with a wild, unfocused energy. The charred plush rabbit tied to her waist, Mr. Cinders, flopped against her hip.
Her pale, burn-scarred hands twitched at her sides.
"Maybe," she said, her voice a singsong whisper that somehow carried over the roar, "some fireworks would—"
"Like, relax."
Bianca's hand shot out, fingers wrapping around Ember's forearm. The engineer's grip was steady, firm, the calloused palm warm against the smaller woman's scarred skin. Her colorful nail polish—chipped at the edges, because it always was—radiated against Ember's complexion.
"Like, I am sure," Bianca continued, her voice dropping to something softer, something meant only for the four of them, "they have, like, already thought of that. Vesta's team, like, probably has a whole department for, you know, like, dramatic lighting. Explosions. The works. You don't need to, like, add your own."
Ember's cackle stuttered. Her gold eye twitched. Her lips pulled back from her teeth in something that wasn't quite a smile and wasn't quite a snarl.
"Josiah says—"
"Josiah can, like," Jannali interjected, her voice flat, "stuff it."
Jannali's brown eyes flickered to Ember's face, reading the tension in the set of her jaw, the way her fingers still twitched toward the Molotov hairpins hidden in her space buns. Jannali had seen that look before. On battlefields. On ruins. On the faces of people who'd heard too many voices and couldn't make them stop.
"The berries are good," Jannali said, shifting tactics, her accent softening. "Real good. We're doin' a bang-up job, yeah? No need to add extra bang. Just... breathe."
Ember's chest hitched.
For a moment—just a moment—something flickered across her face. Something raw. Something young. Something that looked like a little girl who'd hidden in a well while her family burned.
Then it was gone, replaced by a grin that showed too many teeth.
"Fine," Ember said, and she sounded almost normal. Almost. "But if the show's boring, I'm rigging the confetti cannons."
Bianca squeezed her forearm once, then let go. "Like, deal."
The lights dimmed.
All at once, the stadium seemed to inhale. The seventy thousand voices that had been shouting, laughing, arguing, singing—they all dropped to a hush. The hanging gardens swayed with anticipation. Even the grilled meat stalls stopped sizzling, as if the vendors themselves had frozen mid-flip.
A voice, deep and resonant, echoed over the intercom.
"Ladies and gentlemen... crews and captains... citizens and scallywags..."
The words rolled across the stadium like thunder, bouncing off the retractable dome that hung open to the darkening sky. The sun had dipped below the rim of the bowl, leaving only a smear of orange and pink on the horizon. The first stars were beginning to prick through the purple twilight.
"The show... is about to begin."
Jannali closed her eyes. Her head tilted, as if she were listening to something the others couldn't hear. Her hoop earrings caught the last light of the dying sun.
"About bloody time," she murmured.
---
On the other side of the stadium, chaos of a different flavor was unfolding.
Jelly Squish bounced.
Not walked. Not ran. Bounced.
His translucent blue body—azure and wobbling, shimmering like the surface of a sunlit sea—propelled him through the crowd in a series of gelatinous leaps. Every landing sent ripples through his form, his massive starry eyes wide with delight, his permanent toothy grin stretched even wider than usual. The tiny red bandana tied around his head fluttered in the breeze of his own motion. The seaweed belt around his waist—makeshift, stolen from a beach somewhere—slapped against his wobbling hips.
"Bloop! Bloop! Bloop!" he chanted with every bounce.
Behind him, Sanza Kaplan Figarland walked.
The eight-year-old did not run. Running was pedestrian. Running was for commoners. Running was something the lower classes did when they were late for their menial labor.
Instead, he strode through the crowd with his hands shoved into the pockets of his cargo shorts—new clothes, because the old ones were, in his words, "unacceptably plebeian." His armored Gundam-style spacesuit graphic t-shirt stretched across his small chest, and his sandals slapped against the concrete with each step. His red hair—unruly, mod-style, refusing to be tamed—stuck up in a dozen directions. His heavy Gallagher eyebrows hung low over his piercing, judgmental eyes.
"I'm hungry," he announced, his voice cutting through the crowd with the clipped precision of someone who had never been told to be quiet in his life. The affected aristocracy in his tone made the words sound like a royal decree. "This is, frankly, unacceptable. I require sustenance immediately."
Jelly bounced past him, giggling.
"Food! Food! Food!" the mutant-jellyfish-human hybrid chanted, his body flashing a soft pink with every syllable.
Monster—the large brown monkey with a topknot that sat on his head like a disapproving pineapple—scampered past Sanza on all fours. The monkey's intelligent eyes tracked a group of teenagers walking past with paper cones full of fried dough. His lips pulled back from his teeth in a grin that was entirely too human.
"Ook."
It was not a question. It was a statement. A threat, perhaps.
Bonk Punch groaned.
The massive man—built like a brick wall that had been hit by a slightly larger brick wall—planted his feet and crossed his arms. His muscles bulged under his sleeveless vest, and his bald head gleamed under the stadium lights. His eyes tracked the three troublemakers with the weary resignation of someone who had been doing this for far too long.
"The announcement," he said, his voice a low rumble, "said the show is starting. That means we need to get to the seats. Now."
"But—" Sanza started.
"Now."
Jelly bounced in place, his body jiggling with excitement. "Bloop! Seats! We get to sit! Like civilized people!"
"You have never," Bonk Punch said flatly, "been civilized a day in your life."
Jelly's grin somehow got wider. "Aye sir!"
Monster let out a chattering laugh and vaulted onto Bonk Punch's shoulder, settling into place with the ease of long practice. The monkey's topknot bounced as he scanned the crowd, his brown eyes missing nothing.
Sanza sighed—a dramatic, world-weary exhale that aged him forty years—and pointed toward a vendor stall twenty meters away, where a rotating spit of meat skewers glistened under heat lamps.
"I'm hungry," he repeated, as if Bonk Punch hadn't heard him the first three times. "And I will not be herded like livestock. Provide sustenance, or I will use my Spirit Projection to spy on your most embarrassing memories and broadcast them to the crowd."
Bonk Punch stared at him.
Sanza stared back, his heavy eyebrows lowered, his piercing eyes unblinking.
"You're eight," Bonk Punch said.
"Age is a construct invented by the weak to justify their mediocrity."
Jelly bounced between them, his body flashing through a rainbow of colors. "Meat! Meat! Meat! Let's get squishy!"
Monster chattered in agreement, beating his chest with one furry fist.
Bonk Punch closed his eyes. Counted to five. Opened them.
"Fine," he growled. "Meat skewers. Then we go to the seats. No detours. No stealing food from strangers. No—" He pointed at Sanza. "—threatening to psychologically scar me."
Sanza touched his face—his eyebrows, specifically—in that thinking gesture of his. "I make no promises."
The vendor stall was a frenzy of activity. Smoke rose from the grill, carrying the scent of charred meat and spices—cumin, coriander, something that burned the back of the throat in a pleasant way. The vendor, a round woman with flour-dusted cheeks and a smile that didn't reach her tired eyes, worked the skewers with practiced efficiency, flipping them, brushing them with sauce, stacking them on paper plates.
"Five skewers," Bonk Punch said, slapping down a handful of berries.
The vendor didn't ask questions. She just grabbed five skewers, wrapped them in banana leaves, and shoved them across the counter.
Sanza grabbed one before Bonk Punch could even take the bundle. He bit into the meat—chicken, maybe, or something close to it—and chewed with the expression of a food critic who had already decided to be unimpressed.
"Adequate," he said, his mouth full. "Barely."
Jelly's hands—which had, at some point, morphed into cartoonish mittens—reached for a skewer. His body glowed a happy yellow as he took a bite, his starry eyes closing in bliss.
"Bloop! This is the best thing I've ever tasted!"
"You said that about the sponge cake," Sanza pointed out.
"This is better!"
"You said the sponge cake was better."
"This is different better!"
Monster grabbed a skewer and scampered up Bonk Punch's arm to perch on his shoulder, the monkey's teeth tearing into the meat with savage enthusiasm. Grease dripped down his chin. He didn't care.
Bonk Punch took the remaining two skewers, one in each hand, and began to walk toward the main seating area. The crowd parted around him—not out of respect, but out of self-preservation. The man was a mountain.
"Move," he said. "Show's starting."
Sanza followed, still chewing and wiping a smudge of grease off his chin. He squinted at the wall of tall people in front of him, looking annoyed. "I can't see anything but people's butts," he mumbled around a piece of meat. "And it is way too loud—it's making my teeth shake."
Jelly bounced beside him, leaving faint glittery trails on the concrete. "Bloop! It's gonna be great! Vesta's gonna sing! And we're gonna cheer! And maybe she'll let me on stage!"
"She will not," Sanza said.
"You don't know that!"
"I know everything."
Jelly's body wobbled with laughter. "Bloop! You're funny, Sanza!"
"I am not funny. I am correct. There is a difference."
Monster chattered, flinging a piece of meat at Sanza's head. The eight-year-old dodged without looking, his expression never changing.
"Primitive," he muttered.
Bonk Punch reached the entrance to the seating area and stopped. The stairs stretched down before them, leading into the massive bowl where seventy thousand seats curved around a central stage. The lights were still dim, the stage dark, but the anticipation in the air was thick enough to choke on.
"Find your seats," Bonk Punch said. "Stay out of trouble."
"No promises," Sanza said.
"Bloop! Let's do this!" Jelly bounced past him, his body glowing bright blue.
Monster chattered, beating his chest again.
Bonk Punch watched them go—the bouncing jellyfish, the strutting eight-year-old, the monkey on his shoulder—and sighed.
Then he followed them down the stairs, because someone had to keep them alive.
The lights went out completely.
Seventy thousand voices gasped as one.
And then the first chord hit.
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