The Show Must Go On!

Author Note- Here is some nice music to help with the atmosphere while reading!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6OHgjeZNUdM

Deep beneath the streets of Boston, buried and concealed under sewer channels, piping, and stone, a man in a white mask walked through stark white halls. In one hand he held a bundle of folders and in the other, an empty beaker. While his mask had the expression of painful rejection, his own face was stiff and expressionless as he marched down the various same halls of sterility. Finally, after several junctions, he entered a door marked "A3-C CHEMICAL COMPOUND ANALYSIS".

A3-C was lined with various see-through vacuum tubes and large oil drum-sized containers of various chemicals. Hydrated ferrous sulfate, Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, Ethyl ether, a countless number of these drums as they slowly moved up and down on vertical conveyor belts mounted on the walls.  He paid no mind to any of this as he sat at a table outfitted with heavy machinery. He thumbed through his folder pulling out several pages, arranging them to form a much larger schematic for his latest design.

His cold eyes stared at the various equations and theorem as if hoping to find a string to pull, some minor error that would turn this new creation into a failure.  Several minutes passed as he visually tore into the schematic before he gave an unnatural smile behind his mask.

Not pausing to celebrate his calculations he spun his chair around and began outfitting the giant machine, connecting its intake ports to the numerous vacuum tubing. He places the beaker inside the machine and closed the hatch, turning the machine on with a loud hum.

The man in the white mask suddenly collapsed at the table, head rocking back as the swivel chair lazily moved. Seven rooms away a woman in a white mask showing blissful glee looked up from her desk. She stared at the multitude of T.V. screens that covered the walls.  Each screen showed various disasters happening all around the world. Natural disasters, riots, high-speed chases, murderers, supervillains duking it out with heroes. There was not a single good image amongst what lined these walls. She slowly and methodically observed each screen, taking note of the horrible events that were happening. The ones with people crying were the ones she stared at the longest. Hours passed as she looked off at what the world really was before she collapsed in her chair and stared off with cold dead eyes.

The masked man rose from his crumpled form as the large machine stopped. He pressed a button and brought up the various details of what sort of chemical reaction just occurred and smile that unnatural smile.

'143 failures.' He mused to himself as he reread the readouts.

'Only 143 failure to do what most consider impossible but I have done it.' He shook his head from these thoughts. It wouldn't help anything for him to start gloating and develop a superiority complex. Besides...It won't make him feel happy again. He looked back to the vial of golden-hued smoke. 'But this...This will. I just need to test it on a wide range of people and refine it.'

His mind raced with various ideas of how to get a large number of test subjects on such short notice. He couldn't test the chemical on his false bodies, there wasn't anyone actually there to react. Kidnapping is an option but that would attract far too much attention to get the number he needed. Eventually, he settled for creating some type of event where the subjects willingly come, not knowing what the actual experiment was. That only left the question of what do people go to see?

Pigeons flew low and slow with a bit of cloudier evening air, no rain or storm was present. The birds starved for something to amuse them at the moment after leaving from being semi-autonomous beings resisting the urge to shut there eyes and leave things be, knowing food would not come if they chose to shut things out now. Like many times before this one, they stayed and ‘struggled’ to maintain a balance in their life.
Flight from place to place, grabbing crumbs where they could, despising those who found more when they flew further or those who got lucky. Cleaning themselves, making themselves presentable, and flying with there groups, wondering why nobody is interested when they do not leave these circles. Some viewed themselves as survivors but it was better than the pigeons out on the other end of town they were sure of, they could at least relate to the birds from the west, despite of course being filled with a rougher group they were very similar.
Some had friends over on that end that they liked to swoop by once in a while, some just flew away one day without saying goodbye.

“BEGONE PIGEONS!”

A stained shoe stomped the ground announcing the presence of a rather uncaring and frustrated young man. Everything he wore showed care, but only the care given to an object long lost at childhood, beaten and dusty but still together, almost a style all on its own. Tan cotton pants and a white and red plaid dress shirt with a long blue stitch roughly sewn in across the left side, and a black rolling stones T-shirt, which was the only thing on his person that wasn’t damaged in any way.

Nobody needed to know it was bought from a thrift store, the rest conveniently foraged from a bin and cleaned or fixed.

This was Takuma’s way of trying to blend in with a bunch of people, fiddling with a ticket in his pocket he pulled it out and examined it, he was on time as people shuffled past him in hurried groups wanting to get in there seating, under his breath he muttered again, "Pigeons".
Takuma carried on trying to move through the crowd, some staring his way over his earlier reactionary show. Making his way up front his hand dropped by and showed his ticket in, there was some suspicion regarding his entry but it wasn’t drawn to the point of being a problem, he was actually taken in a bit better than he intended.

Heading down he knew the seat he gots, the ones he was dressed so ‘nicely’ for, left hand side, orchestra seating, middle of one of the rows off to the side. This ticket he plucked from the side of the street well he was heading to go clean some apples he bought of whatever pesticide was on them, but then what compelled him was less himself but a forced curiosity to embark on a trip to go see this, he was in the area so why not? Spend a bit to buy a nice shirt, hoping to get more he was disappointed that even used stuff was well past his budget.

He was here now though, sitting slowly in his seat, waiting for it all to start.
Looking at his feet, something did cause a jump in him, something wasn’t right.
He was missing his right foot sock.

The reaver was having a strange day.

Rai experienced being paid for the first time. She’d just gotten done cleaving apart some low level demons out of a lighthouse and soon found herself with a toothless mariner who decided he’d pay cash for some fish demon corpses. He’d all but shoved the money in Rai’s hands and took the corpses before she had the time to come up with words as to why she couldn’t have the money and why he shouldn’t have a pile of fishy evil.

Not like she could complain, even if she had no idea what to do with currency. She never needed to eat, shelter was basically any old tree that would block the rain, and this world did not seem too keen on throwing her out of establishments like Dis did. Perhaps she’d cross something off her secret subconscious bucket-list.

In Dis theatre was reserved for the rich and high status. Peasants never got to see any of the plays, even if they were secretly christianized by the theocracy. Either way, she did always want to go and not get tossed out.

Taking the crumpled linen-paper she approaches the ticket booth, glancing through the glass wearily.

“Seat number?”

“Um.” Rai asks, not really sure what the clerk was asking of her.

“What kind of seats would you like?” He clarifies, sitting up in his chair to eye the demon woman holding a few crumpled bills. “Nose bleeds, front row, what you got in mind?”

“Oh, However close this will get me?” She asks, sliding the money across the table.

The man eyes the dollar bills for a moment before glancing back to Rai. “New to theatre, huh?”

Rai brushes her hair behind her horns, half expecting to get booted from the establishment “That obvious?”

With a light chuckle the portly man pulls off a ticket and slides it over to the reaver. “4th row in the center.” The clerk strokes his cinnamon colored mustache as Rai couldn’t help but let the joy show through her usually stoic face.

“Thank you!” She chips, taking herself inside the theatre before he changes his mind!

She all but sighs in relief, slumping into her theatre chair, taking in all the sights and sounds that were associated with Dis high class society. This was something no reaver before her had likely experienced. Only then did some incredibly bright light hit the corner of her eye. Some man’s soul was like what humans described as staring into the sun. That wasn’t right at all.

Rai couldn’t help but seem to stare off into space in Takuma’s direction, as if trying to determine what she was looking at. She eventually came to the conclusion he wasn’t a demon and thus she wasn’t going to pursue any further. She was here to watch the theatre, she’d just try to ignore the beacon of energy a few seats over and watch the show.

A man with a clipboard strolled past as dozens of make-up artists, prop designers, actors, and stagehands went about in a determined frenzy of activity. Lines were rehearsed and arguments were thrown about. In the midst of all this chaos, the man with a clipboard seemed unfazed as he continued to casually walk through the madness, and why would he be concerned, given how this was his own creation.

"You." The man with a clipboard pointed at an usher who was coming back from helping seat the unaware test subjects. "What is the total occupancy?"

The usher's face slackened as he rattled off "1532". Any emotion or warmth that they used to greet the subjects was gone, replaced with cold and unfeeling eyes.

"Hrmm, a higher turnout than expected...They must be e̸x̷c̷i̶t̷e̵d̷ for the show."

The man's voice hitched at the word, mangling and distorting it to near unrecognizably. It was as if just saying the word caused him pain.

"Carry on but close the doors in 15 minutes. I want this building sealed off once the show begins."

The man didn't wait for the usher to respond as he was already moving further down the staging area. He entered a locked room marked "PROPS" finding himself in a room filled with clear oil drums containing yellow-tinted smoke. Various piping and hoses were affixed to the containers connecting them to the building's sprinkler system. He checked his clipboard and forced a smile at the projected numbers. If all went as expected, he'd have quite a lot of data.

A man in a well-fitted suit stepped onto the center stage. He tapped on his microphone, grabbing the crowd's attention. He tapped a few more times to shush even the more obnoxious of the crowd.

"Thank you, thank you all...For coming to tonight's one and only performance. I am Ezekel Brant, the producer for this show and I am g̸l̶a̴d̷--." He coughs. "Sorry...The show will be starting in just a few minutes so please be considerate to others and use this time to grab refreshments or relief yourself. I'd like to encourage everyone to remain seated for the full performance as this is a show unlike any other!"

The man took a moment to catch his breath.

"This is the world's first fully interactive show where you are not just viewing the stage, but are right in the middle of all the action. There is no barrier keeping you from this art!"

He paused as the crowd began to clap.

"As this is a unique experience I'm sure many of you have questions but please look underneath your seat for a booklet."

He reached into his coat and pulled out an orange pamphlet.

"Thank you all again for coming and none of this would have been possible without you...Enjoy the show."

He disappeared behind the red velvet curtains leading backstage.

The Booklet

Takuma was fiddling around with the booklet in his hands, lazily looking back between it and the stage above. This should be interesting.

Continue per normal, have nothing to really add to this post yet, not doing well and taking too long to reply

Rai couldn’t help but be curious why people insisted on handing her blank paper. She eyes the booklet as if looking for the writing that was supposed to be on it, however since new age printers no longer used the weight of a literal printing press and receiving a handwritten document was very rare, she couldn’t see the indentations in the paper denoting writing to actually read. Just as she continued to try to read the horrifically plain document she perks to the sight of movement with no souls.

Why were the ushers soulless? Was this some kind of necromancy? She stirrs visibly watching the ushers with no attempt to hide the staring. With a snort she settles back in just as another abnormality rears it’s head. A man with a soul dark as a pit and distorted with the most static she’d ever seen. Rai tilts her head trying to make sense of what exactly she was looking at here. It was like staring into a deep hole with nothing at the bottom and it was talking at her. She didn’t get the usual itch demonic activity brought on, but this was still making her a bit weary of the whole situation.

She stands, sparing on glance back to the blindingly bright soul she’d seen earlier before scooting past other guests to the aisles, choosing to follow the ushers. She had to find out where those were coming from first.