Despite being called a ballroom, there wasn't much about the place that seemed traditional or stuffy. The enormous, auditorium-like room had a feeling caught between something art deco, and something very modern, as the ceiling towered overhead, vanishing into darkness above, and the deliberately low, bluish-colored lighting restricted and focused everyone's view on the silhouetted audience and the still-dim stage. Along the walls, support beams running up to the huge ceiling were covered in long, stretching ribs of soft blue and purplish lights that added to the generally chic, city-wise appeal of the room. Similarly, skinny, towering windows ran up the back of the room, somewhere behind the stage, partially draped on each side by impossibly long, dark, wine-colored curtains. On the ground level, a sea of pretty typical seats, movable and stackable rather than fixed in place (as it was still a ballroom), covered almost the entirety of the huge, glossy black floor, and, rather surprisingly, the majority of them were filled. Along the back and sides of the rooms were seat-filled, stadium-like balconies on no fewer than three separate floors, and even those were pretty well occupied.

The band was not popular or well known. The fact that they could secure a venue that size and fill it had a fishy scent to it. It could have had to do with the pricing, though; the party found that the tickets were pretty dang cheap. And, if not that, there were the million or so flyers around town.

The cavernous room would have echoed a great deal, but it was hard to hear much of anything over all the chattering people and the recorded music track, ambient in the background. The stage was still empty, save for instruments—a sizable drum kit, several electric guitars, a bass, and a rather indulgent command center of keyboards and synths (with a bright, red keytar parked nearby for good measure). It seemed the band must have still been backstage. The concert wasn't set to begin for another few minutes.


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Beyond those double doors lay yet more doors nestled in further doors, heralding surprisingly more doors, all interconnected by — you'll never guess. Large bundles of cables ran to and fro for no readily identifiable purpose, while black-shirted stage hands tapped mics, pointed remotes at various things, tested levels, and bustled about in an organized chaos.

The atmosphere was palpably frenetic, and most everyone was showing it in their own way...

"I don't think I've ever seen you stare at your reflection this long," observed an acid green monkey somewhere within the labyrinth. "Lacey'd be real proud."

He was young -- Easily half the age of the other primate in the room, and sported a lovingly gelled mullet, along with pair of sweatbands on each wrist, and not much else, save his impish grin as rocked restlessly upon a barstool that separated his feet from the ground by at least three-quarters of his height.

"Shut it, Boogie," replied Jam without any real effort or conviction as she continued to leer into her dressing room mirror looking two shades shy of sick. "Or I'll do... something."

"You know, something... generally unpleasant. For you."

"Oh, no! My one weakness--!" The youth clutched his heart dramatically, very nearly falling off his perch before deadpanning with a wave of his hand.

"You're fish in a barrel, Laylee. No fun at all right now -- What're you getting so worked up for? S'just like any other show we've ever done, only with like... a thousand times the turnout."

He paused to squint.

"Are you actually putting more make-up on yer eyes?"

"Not 'more,'" corrected the redder of the primates, shortly and just a little sheepishly, screwing the cap back on a tube of mascara as she turned in her seat to offer a crass glance. "'Some.' Did I mention there could be pain?"

Boogie twiddled the fingers of both hands in the air, ala "I'm so scared" sentiments, and rolled his eyes.

"Whatever," he shrugged boredly, hopping off his stool, strolling casually to the door. "I'm just sayin', if there's that big a call to impress, y'might've done better t'wear the poster pants."

Wheeling about in a blur, Jam managed to look simultaneously mortified and affronted.

"Yeah, well! You might've done better to-- ... Shut up."

A looming shadow lumbered up behind the bickering allies and peered down upon them from behind. It was Casey, but for once, sans gun-arm. Clearly, he had the sense to replace it with his much more peaceable prosthetic hand before trying to enter a crowded auditorium.

"You might wanna check out the opposition before you try 'scaring' anybody," he observed in a very suppressed, quiet, level-sounding tone, just loud enough for them to hear him when he leaned down. "If what you say is true, and they've got a few million robots, around the globe, they're probably not gonna leave their security detail to some... bouncers in black t-shirts."

He gestured toward the aforementioned double-doors where there indeed stood such an aptly-described bouncer. The guy, maybe a wolf of some kind, was modestly gruff-looking as a bouncer should be, but didn't appear all that formidable.



Backstage, somewhere behind the curtain, sat Rock amid the ruckus atop a hard, black gear case, an unplugged electric guitar resting on his knee, and a handwritten sheet of chords lying next to him, which he stared at intently as he strummed at an inaudible volume. He appeared very focused, and maybe just a little on edge; every now and again, he'd stop and start again abruptly, playing the same section three or four times over with a look of utmost dissatisfaction.

Rock could play; he had played for a better part of his sentient existence, but it wasn't the love of his life like it was for pretty much every single one of his bandmates, so it didn't come as naturally to him as the others.

See for example Shane, his gawky-looking stork bandmate, who, despite the appearance of one afflicted by a vast dearth of still-functioning brain cells, could play baroque fugues on an electric guitar, by memory, and while watching gameshows on TV, and in fact just finished doing so to "warm up." He had only moments ago finished and gone off to wander around one slow, dragging step at a time, as if lost in outer space, before finding his way to Rock by some total happenstance.

He proceeded to stare at Rock most intrusively and indiscreetly as he played. The white primate could only clench his jaw and pretend he didn't notice, and that it didn't bother him.

"You should just... like... barre chord that part, dude..."

Meanwhile, less visible than the stage hands, and more hidden along the edges of the room, near each and every door, were many, many glowing eyes—a disconcerting number of them, some red and towering high above where normal eyes were usually hung, and some green, and at a more conventional eye-level station. The red ones belonged to repurposed Egg Gunners, Tau's military-pawn-of-choice, while the green ones were the eyes of many Capsule Troopers, each with a large, multiple-barreled cannon clasped to its back. They weren't terribly uniform; some were painted black, some were very scuffed and carried peculiar-looking equipment on their backs, and many of them just idly talked to one another about all sorts of things. It was clear that they were there for one unified purpose, however: to stand around with big guns and maybe use them to make a lot of not-so-musical noise if given sufficient reason.