[18th July 2032]6Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ1NRvEUyuEL
“You think this will work, huh?” Aurora looked at Alistair.
“Nah, I don't think, I know.”
“Don’t you think FF was enough though?”
“Yes. I mean, sure, Faithful Frauds for that game… ‘SWISH!’ hit like a quarter of a million streams, but as you can see it's clearly not enough.”
“Alright.” Aurora took a sip of her water. “Let’s do this.”
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“Alright. North?” Ali twirled the drumsticks around his fingers.
“Just… say Aurora. You don’t need to use our band names, it’s not like there’s anyone here. Let’s just start!”
“Lucid?”
He strummed the guitar.
“Lincoln?”
“Born ready!”
“Lux?”
“Hell yeah!”
“Alright, North, hit the camera!”
“…whatever.”
They were a band. A rock and power metal band. A pretty good one too. They were called the Luminous and consisted of five stars. Alistair was the drummer of Luminous. Recently, they had released a new song called Faithful Frauds, which had been a big success, just not big enough for Alistair though.
They did, however, recently get a massive opportunity with a giant investment company who usually invests in… numerous things. Bands, games, charities, you name it. But they could potentially get Luminous global. They had to show off their skills if they wanted this opportunity though, so they’ve been making performance videos and sending them to the company in hopes of getting these funds.
…
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“We were meant to know if you were accepted 2 hours ago.” Lincoln was adjusting the settings on the keyboard, messing around with notes to get a perfect sound.
“Lin, give it a chance, jeez.” Alex turned around to Ali. “Give it another hour, if they don’t ring back, I’ll just call them and ask.”
“You’re wasting your time and you know it, Ali.” Lincoln said.
“Wow, you’re so optimistic!” Ali got up out of his seat and grabbed his phone, setting an alarm one hour from now. “You good, Lucid?”
Lucius nodded.
“Hey, Lucius.” Aurora walked over to Lucius with her notebook filled with lyrics.
Lucius waved back, hanging his guitar on the wall.
She opened her notebook and pointed to the lyrics as Lucius read, obviously not out loud, he couldn’t. He seemed to approve, putting a thumbs up in response.
“Alex, wanna come practice this with me?” Aurora used the notebook as a fan.
“Uhm, sure!”
“Hey, good luck, Lux!” Ali waved as they both went into the practise room.
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It was silent for a bit. Lincoln was doomscrolling, Lucius was playing with his hair, looking at Ali as his leg was bouncing up and down, constantly checking his phone as the timer went down, trying to calm himself.
Alex and Aurora came back after a bit.
“Still haven’t called?” Aurora looked at Ali in disbelief.
“No. I don’t think I’ve been accepted. I really wanted to do this when you suggested it Alex, for us-”
RING!!!!!
“Oh my god.” Lincoln looked like he was in shock. He didn’t expect them to actually ring back.
“Pick it up!” Alex rushed to her seat as Ali answered the call, turning it on speaker mode.
“Hello? Apollo?”
“Alistair, yes?”
“Yeah.”
“Sorry for the inconvenience of the late call. We had to accept a lot of people.”
“It’s all good.”
“Hopefully you don’t have anything planned today. Because you, too, have been accepted.”
“W-wait-”
“Meet at the Lunar Tower by 2:30PM. Don’t be late.”
Beep.
Ali put his hands on his head.
“That was ominous.” Lincoln rolled his eyes.
Lucius pointed at the time on his phone. It read 1:39PM.
“Don’t be late, my ass! They called almost THREE hours late.” Aurora sighed.
“Well you have to consider how many other people have probably been accepted, y'know? It’s not just us.” Alex scratched her head. “Hopefully this isn’t some kind of twisted shit I’ve made you sign, Ali!”
“Uh, yeah! Otherwise y’know my DEATH would be in your hands?”
Lucid booked the taxi to Lunar Tower and showed Ali.
“Oh, thanks Lucid.”
Aurora grabbed Ali’s bag and threw it to him.
“Uh…”
“Why are you sitting around, go!”
“…Thanks, North. Well, all of you.”
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Ali was outside pacing about, until the droning sound of the taxi finally greeted him as the door opened by itself.
“Lunar Tower, yes?”
“Yeah.”
Ali hopped in the back of the taxi and shut the door.
“How long will it take to uh… get there?”
“30 minutes, how you say… give or take, y’know? Traffic is bad today.”
“Shit.” Ali muttered under his breath.
The man started driving as Ali looked out the window, admiring the amazing cityscape as his eyes got heavy.
Drifting… slowly.
“Please let this work.”
…
“Here’s your stop, brother. 65 please.”
Ali woke back up to the entrance of Lunar Tower.
“Wh… SIXTY FIVE?”
“…Yeah.”
“You got a card machine?”
“No.”
“It's 2032, WHY don’t you have one?!”
“Money, please.”
Ali hurried to his wallet and dragged out the last of his cash. Luckily it was enough to pay.
“Fuck sake.”
“Have a nice day!”
Ali walked out of the taxi, grabbing his bag and slinging the straps on his shoulders. He pulled out his phone and checked the time.
2:24PM.
“Oh god.”
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The first floor was…very busy. Ali had to get to the 18th floor. He squeezed past the hordes of people to get to the elevator.
“Surely all of these people can’t be here for this thing, too, right?” Ali told himself.
The elevator door closed as Ali pressed Floor 18.
He turned around to two other people. One was a girl who was dressed very professionally, and a logo on her blazer which read “Leya’s Sold”, the local supermarket in the area. The other person was a guy dressed very casually and seemed to be looking straight at Ali, trying to get a perfect frame of his face.
“Oh my god it’s you? Alastor? From Luminous? My brother listens to you all the bloody time!”
“You know who I am?”
“It’s hard not to, he has that poster of you guys.”
“Oh!”
“Here, can you sign this for him?” He grabbed out his notebook and ripped out a page.
“Uh-”
The guy forced the paper to Ali’s face.
“With what pen?”
They turned to their left.
“Hey!” The man waved to the woman. She simply grabbed the pen out of her blazer pocket and threw it to Ali.
“Uh… thanks.”
“Wait, are you… actually Leya?”
She looked up to the guy.
“You seem to be recognising everyone, huh? Yeah, I’m Leya. Manager of the Leya’s Sold supermarket chain. I know who Ali is… but who are you?”
Ali was signing the paper.
“Kieran! Or just call me Dark, it’s what my name means and it… sounds cooler?”
“I’m calling you Kieran.” Leya grabbed the pen out of Ali’s hand.
“Are we all headed to floor 18?” Kieran put the piece of paper that Ali signed in his pocket.
“Yeah.” Ali and Leya both nodded.
“I wonder what we’ll have to do.”
“Can’t just be us three though, right?”
“Na. I’ve got a friend who took up this opportunity for their charity.”
“Oh? Who?”
“Crescent… Well, Cres. We set up donation boxes in the supermarkets for her charity.”
“Blackrose Charity?” Ali questioned.
Ding!
The elevator doors opened.
“Yeah!”
“Oh, sick. So they’ll be more than just 3 of us then…”
They all stepped out of the elevator to be greeted with a large, wide room with three doorways, along with tinted windows, those that are impossible to see into but easy to see out of.
And from Ali’s view… 9 other people. They were all waiting at the door to the left.
“They look like a colorful bunch.” Leya walked over.
Ali pointed to the door slightly and asked “You’re all here for-”
“The opportunity? Yeah. We’re all waiting for Apollo to open the doors.” A man with bright yellow hair mentioned. He had the nametag “Soleil” on it. Kieran looked around and realized that they all had nametags.
“Where did you get those?” Kieran pointed to Soleil’s nametag.
“Downstairs on the first floor.” Somebody mentioned.
“But there’s hundreds of people down there?” Kieran exclaimed.
“Well yeah, they’re all furious that they were denied.” Soleil thought for a minute. “If I recall correctly the website said 48 people were accepted and almost 552 were denied. Insane, really.”
“We don’t have enough time to go back down there and get nametags!” Leya scratched her head. “Shit!”
“It’s fine, we probably won’t need it anyway. Besides, your name is already sown into your blazer, no?” Soleil checked his watch.
2:27PM.
“W-wait. There's gonna be 48 people up here?” Ali mentioned.
“There’s meant to be, but judging by the time, it’ll be way too late for them to turn up-”
Ding!
The elevator door opened and a woman with the nametag “Crescent” walked through.
“Oh! You’re actually here, Leya!”
“Yeah, hey there.”
“So now there’s… 13 of us?” Kieran asked.
“Definitely not 48, huh?” Soleil giggled. Everyone was too nervous to laugh with him.
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There was an awkward silence that took over the room as everyone stared at the door.
“2:29PM.” Soleil paced around.
Ali walked up to the door and grabbed the handle. “Has nobody thought that maybe we should just…”
“Oh! I was wondering when people would show up.”
Their host was waiting for them, in a massive, complex room that didn’t even feel like it fit in the building. Numerous chairs with headsets… a square in the centre of the room with 9 screen displays.
“Were we… supposed to come in?”
“…Yes.”
The thirteen of them walked in the room.
2:30PM.
“Shut the door for them, Ezra. And lock it.”
“Alright, Boss.”
Apollo pulled out numerous papers. They seemed to look like contracts.
The whole room illuminated purple and orange.
“Let’s begin.”
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and then Add to home screen.