The house lights suddenly dimmed the room to even darker than it already was, and the stage all but vanished in the poor lighting. The background music simultaneously faded out, leaving everything in silence, save for the murmur of the crowd. Some stage hands dressed in black had been up and about, tuning instruments and setting things up, so movement up there was not foreign to the audience, but now, it looked like there were folks actually picking up instruments.

An extremely quiet, high pitched, warbling, rapid sound, like some kind of scurrying, erratic organ slowly rose from mute and grew louder; a single, staccato thump from bass and electric guitar came simultaneous to a spotlight on an utterly ridiculous, burly-looking red-mohawked monkey with a keytar, and repeated twice more with the addition of more spotlights for a much more familiar red primate girl bearing a bass, and a gangly, baby-blue stork with aforementioned electric guitar.

An baritone announcer's voice suddenly boomed.

"Back after their tour of Cape Norden, Rodina, and the Glastonian states, here they are! Welcome Cause for Alarm!"

The girl plunked out an ominous, almost video-game-boss-battle-esque bass trundling bass line that, after a few notes, erupted into a roar of overdriven guitar and tonewheel organ, soaring up and down in grandiose, overblown flights as the drummer, a bright green monkey also suddenly illuminated by spotlight, raged into motion, replete with a drumstick clutched in his... tail. Yes, the little boy was drumming with his tail, too. Call it cheating, but it worked.

The spectacle continued for maybe a good thirty seconds longer than it musically should have, with glaring white lights pulsing and flaring in rhythm, keeping the four well lit until finally, after a window-cracking shriek of guitar and effects, everything fell quiet, and... the song kicked in with a hard bass drum and started for real, with a solid rock beat, and a squealing-but-laid-back guitar intro from the swaying, lazy-faced bird standing up front and center on the stage.

"♫It's been such a looong tiiime♪..."

The bird swaggered his way back, as the red monkey with the keytar had stepped up to the microphone and started singing. It was textbook rock-and-roll, nothing outlandish anymore—a pulsing bass line delivered by a girl all too happy to pound one note loud and proud, and a steady beat—but still pretty catchy for those with an ear for it. The singer's voice was high, but wasn't as over-the-top as his appearance, and despite a complete lack of fashion sense (as was the case with most musicians), he was pretty professional and, really, not half bad at all.

While most of the people in the room had never seen this band at all, it'd all be pretty familiar stuff for Ace, from Jared (Rock's aforementioned mohawked father), to Shane (the slow-brained stork with the passionate, caressing love for his guitar, whom he had also met), and especially Jam herself. What he wouldn't have expected in a million years, however, was what came when all the other instruments suddenly dropped out, the players started clapping the beat with guitars hanging from their necks, and the stage lit up to full:

It was Rock, stepping right up next to Shane (positioned stage left), strumming a bright red acoustic guitar. In what was probably one of the most self-indulgent moments of the white monkey's life that didn't involve explosions or guns, he shared a microphone with the guitarist and sang a high harmony part behind his own dad, all in front of a big crowd clapping along to the beat.



The song continued as normal. Really, the whole set was... pretty much what anyone would expect of a rock concert. Anyone who had arrived hoping for anything more sinister would likely find themselves disappointed if unable to be entertained, as there was no sinister political message delivered, no recruiting call for Chimera, and no mind control devices in sight. (Well, then again, if there had been, perhaps they wouldn't remember them, but that's a meta-thought for another meta-day. Suffice to say it didn't happen.) It was just a lot of high-energy jumping around and flailing of instruments.

After a couple completely polar-opposite songs headed up by Shane, they took a time out to catch their breath and drink some water. The bassist stepped up to talk.

The concert blazed on and on. Though their music was an eclectic mix, the selection seemed to pretty steadily gain in intensity, and a few times, with high-flying volume and theatrics, it felt like they were actively trying to blow the roof off the place (or, at the very least, blow the speakers). Pretty much everyone seemed to get to play their part, save for Rock, who mostly stayed in the background and abstained from doing much more than play his guitar and sing backup.

The last number brought the show full circle, though, back to something stylistically much like it had started with. By the end of the song, it all ultimately culminated in a raucous electric-acoustic rhythm flying into a gratuitous thunder-crash guitarsplosion from a four-in-a-line row of instrumentalists at the very front of the stage, and closing off with another over-the-top solo from the sedated-looking stork.

And just like that, it was over. The lights cut with that final note, then came back up to let the musicians take their bows, set down their instruments, wave their waves, and slip out through the curtain in the back. Well, most of them, anyway.

"Hey! Yeah, I totally love you too!" came the muffled, too-far-from-mic call-back from Shane to someone in the audience. He pointed at someone. "... And you! You too! ... Man, I just love, like, everybody? I think?"

A couple of his monkey bandmates (bandmonkeys?) had to come back out and drag him off the stage.

"Wuooah, I have to go now!..."

The room hadn't been packed to its absolute brim, but the number of people there was impressive, and it must have been some feat of advertising for them to have managed to draw a crowd that big when they were literally unknowns. Again, perhaps it was owing to the so-dubbed "poster pants," but for whatever reason the audience came, the reception to the music seemed good enough.

The house lights raised just enough to give everyone a clear view to walk and leave, and most folks did just that, meandering their way back toward the front of the venue to exit. At least a few were gathering around the cluster of bouncers near one of the backstage door, though, where they were let through one at a time after some pass checks.

"That be some good times," The drunken rabbit said with a firm nod after everything was said and done. It was a good band, he'd have to snag a CD or two sometime in the future.

Then he regarded Geoff as he mentioned the passes... He licked his lips idly before speaking up. He glanced back at the backstage doors and shook his head.

"Don't suppose we do. If ya wanna get back there, yer gonna have'ta sneak in." He said with a grin.

There didn't seem to be a call for too much sneaking just to see what was going on backstage, at least. Though there were a few bouncers controlling flow through the main backstage entrance, said entrance stood with its metal double-doors wide open. With the area beyond fairly well lit as it was, it was easy enough to see a couple members of the band milling about just by standing in front of said door, including Jared, Rock's obnoxiously-tattooed-and-pierced-and-mohawked father.

Over the din of the crowd (and the now-resuming noise of recorded music playing over the speakers) it was hard to hear what was going on, but it seemed he was very warmly greeting one of their arriving backstage guests—probably a little more warmly than she would have preferred, with a big, cheesy smile and an arm around the shoulders.

Ace scoffed silently at Ivan's comment. He wasn't one to take the suggestions of a rabble-rousing drunkard so seriously-- at least not when there felt like so much on the line. Not that it really mattered, though. He was going to make it through there if it killed him. He looked in the bouncer's direction discreetly, as if to size them up... but caught an eyeful of something far more interesting.

There's always a moment where everything clicks. The moment that everything is supposedly leading up to, and it seems like time must slow down, because seeing it happen in any other context would be to completely waste it.

There she was, in the same familiar flesh after all this time; playfully shoving off Jared's would-be hug with a smile birthed from a smirk. Caz was either stretching or just trying to keep her head from flying off with all the excitement going on, but it was clear she was expressing some level of mirth in light of the band's musical hubbub. It couldn't even be heard what she was saying over the ruckus, but simply seeing her move at all felt like such a surreal experience, the serval was stuck in the headlights for longer than he felt he should have been. He felt shame only after the fact, when he realized he was asking himself if it was really her.

Before realizing: Yes, it was.

He was moving before he even knew he was moving, not wasting a word on his companions, or anyone else for that matter. Whoops-- so much for subtlety. Hard to keep a low profile when you're pacing briskly on a path that didn't even seem to take the bouncers into consideration.

In all fairness, he was not actually making a suggestion as much as he was teasing the hedgehog for his apparent personal agenda to confront the monkeys. Ivan could certainly not care less if they even managed to approach the backstage. He certainly had nothing to say to them. Add to that, the effort it'd take to get back there to snoop for any potential valuables left Ivan's interest at zero. At least, with his current knowledge of the monkeys in question. That is to say: No knowledge. All he'd gotten from comments tossed around by everyone was that this 'Rock' fellow wasn't very nice to his friends.

He gave Ace a glance when he realized the cat was heading toward those double doors with a slight cant of his head before looking at the others, "Ya think he got a backstage pass and di'nt tell no-one?" He punctuated with a sigh, ruffling the fur on the back of his head with a gloved hand. Then, like a rubbernecker witnessing a terrible wreck, turned to watch Ace, silently wondering how the situation would go down.

"Wo-woah, justasecond there sir," said one of the bouncers with as much politeness as could be mustered with the haste necessary to get the words out while stepping into the speedwalking feline's path. The black-shirted dog wasn't being a stereotypically rude, grunting club bouncer, at the very least, but he was doing his job, or trying to. "See your pass?"

The noise and sudden movement of all the bouncers nonetheless drew Jared's attention, as his focus shifted off of Caz (with effort) and onto Ace. He squinted for a second, almost as if sure he knew the guy, though it was hard to tell in that lighting, and around all those black shirts.

Meanwhile, somewhere just far enough away that he couldn't really see out the stage door, Rock trudged his way to a folding chair and proceeded to deflate in it. Whether it was a satisfied or just plain exhausted expression was hard to tell. As fun as it all was, that kind of display and performance was about as tiring for him as fighting, at least in a mental sense.

Slouching forward with his forearms on his knees and his face focused on the floor, he sat for a good minute and just let the mixed excitement and stress bleed off. With his ears ringing from the roar of the amps and the sudden silence following, he eventually looked at his hand, and winced; fingerless gloves meant he had actually been able to play properly, but also meant the pads of the fingers of his left hand were bright red like pickled sausages. He may have been a tough guy, sure, but he was a tough guy who normally wore thick gloves and didn't make a habit of grinding his fingers up and down a bunch of sharp, taut metal strings.

Music. Fun, but not quite so fun for the uninitiated.

Yet another pair of primates shuffled down a flight of steps from... somewhere, both gesticulating animatedly through an adrenaline-buzzed mostly verbal replay of the set.

"That part where he was like, 'derner, tck-uh-tck, derner, tck-uh-tck, derner, derner,' and then-- Hey! It's Caz! Caz is here!"

Boogie's immaculate air guitaring jarred to a halt with a light elbow to Jam's ribs, just as they happened across Rock, and further on, Jared... and their guest.

"Uh! Uh! I gotta go!" he suddenly blurted after an impromptu hair-smoothing and breath-check. His attempted strut broke into a run some few yards away, and severely cost in cool points.

The redder of the simians shook her head, but was grinning like it was Christmas morning. Clutching at both ends of a hand towel draped around her neck, she sauntered up to Rock's chair with a lazy gait, and leaned back on her heels to watch its occupant.

Though all she said was, "Good show," something in her tone and eyes alluded to a poorly contained pride that would have been more appropriate for having created the wheel, the internet, and pizza.