Jake Addams: April 29th, 20XX
My heart pounded so loudly I could feel it in my feet, and I struggled to differentiate what part of that came from the near death experience we had just escaped and what parts came from Sparrow flirting with me.
Or maybe she wasn’t, and this was just her version of being funny. She did seem to enjoy messing with people.
I tried to retort but I couldn’t think of anything that wouldn’t come off as mean or as overly improper. In the end I could only turn away and focus on the road. I tried to see the results of the truck that had nearly totaled us, but Sparrow had driven far enough that I couldn’t.
“That was crazy. Its lucky that you got out of the way in time.”
I tried to sidestep her comment, but she refused to move on and instead elaborated, despite having a habit of not doing so.
“What? Alice never called you handsome? Damn shame. Its fine though, I’m not one to withhold compliments.”
She put a hand away from the wheel and effortlessly flicked some of her short hair out of her face. I assumed this was to let me see the teasing smirk on her face, but I had a much harder time understanding her than I did others.
Her charismatic teasing pulled me out of my forced calm and forced me to look out of the window until we finally arrived at her workshop.
Unlike Alice who would usually wait for me to walk around and open the passenger side door for her, Sparrow swiftly jumped out of the driver’s seat and hit the roof of the car as a signal for me to get out.
“Quickly help me get all of this stuff into the workshop. We lost quite a bit of time on the way here.”
I still wanted to sit and decompress after our near-death experience, but she seemingly had no intentions of sitting around and waiting for me to finish.
“Come on out Mr. Handsome. We don’t have a lot of time today.”
There wasn’t much more I could do but get out of the car, grab the things in the back seat and follow her into the brick building.
After looking around I realized we were close to where Finn lived. If I’d had my car, I might have dropped by but that wasn’t an option. I didn’t see him at school today so I wanted to check up on him, but maybe I would save that for tomorrow. Since it was the weekend, he would probably be home.
I got into the two room, one bathroom studio apartment and once again met my multi hair colored kidnappers. They all scattered around the room working on various parts of the larger project but snapped to attention when Sparrow and I entered.
Sparrow immediately dove into action and went to talk to Melissa about the official theme and coordinators of all of the participants of the showcase. I ambled toward corner and tried to stay out of the way, but a costume was shoved into my arms and I was pushed behind one of the many changing curtains.
I changed as quickly as I could, knowing that it was only a matter of time before the curtain was pulled down. Usually, it wasn’t on purpose, and someone just needed the space that the panels took up, but other times… well.
Either way I’d learned to change quickly.
I left the panel and walked over to a pedestal so I could get stabbed and prodded by a million needles and pins. They tried their best to be careful but maybe because I never complained, they gradually became less and less careful.
Every so often someone would take a picture and I would be pulled into position like a mannequin. After a while I just started coming up with my own poses. I didn’t know exactly what character I was being dressed at but from the uniform inspired motif I figured they were probably a military person.
I pulled up as much of a memory of my dad as I could and tried to pose like he used to. I doubted it was super accurate, but it seemed satisfactory enough that they stopped telling me what to do. Aside from adjusting me to show off parts of the costume they let me do what I wanted.
They finally let me off the pedestal and onto a styling chair while my arm was locked in a clay cast. I was told something about a mechanical arm but nothing more than that. It sounded pretty cool though, so I looked forward to seeing the prototype.
Two of Sparrow’s close friends, specifically the ones with green and yellow hair styled my hair and put makeup on my face.
I tried my best not to make any expressions and mess up the art, but it was hard. This wasn’t the first time I’d ever had makeup on my face but nothing on this level.
Although they were working on different things their teamwork was so smooth that I couldn’t help but be impressed. I tried to catch a quick nap while they did their work, but they talked around me, and I found myself caught up in the conversation.
“Rin, try to make that a bit more dramatic. If you make it so boring, then I can’t paint his face properly.”
“What do you want me to do? His hair is so short I can’t do much else but spike it up and I don’t think that’s what Sparrow had in mind.”
“I think it would look nice, especially if you used some of the colored gel and tinted it to the same metal as the arm the others are making. He also has sharp features so I think he could pull it off. Jake what do you think? Something like this.”
I took the referenced picture that Mori had pulled up and held it up while Rin debated her options.
You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.
“I’ve done this hairstyle before, and it wasn’t bad. They needed to clip the back of my hair though for it to look decent.”
“Hmm, well you’re right, the bottom half of the back of your head does protrude more that the top.”
I added that to my growing list of insecurities about my appearance but otherwise didn’t add anything to the conversation and let them do their work.
“What if I did the spikes but instead of tinting the whole thing, I just did the tips?”
Mori leaned over and moved my face to face hers while she debated Rin’s suggestion before slightly scowling and grabbing the make up remover.
“We can do that, but I’ll need to redo the makeup. How long did Yuko give us before she wanted to do the pictures?”
“We have about an hour and a half, but they’re just concept pictures, you don’t need to worry about making it look perfect.”
The costume was surprisingly comfortable to sit in for long amounts of time but it was still a costume. The tight material started to dig into the flesh of my stomach, which made me fear that I’d gained weight in the week or so I’d taken away from practicing.
I make plans to resume practicing with the school’s team while they prepared for next season. I’d been trying to stay away from the team and let the new captain take over properly but if he didn’t have a solid grip on the team by now they he might appreciate my help.
“Rin! Why don’t you do it this way, then when Finn comes around, we can do a related theme. Did you see the costume design that Airi put up?”
Mori nodded and attacked my face with a new vigor.
“Yeah! It could be something like a Prince and Retainer concept?”
Oi-
Before I could comment, Rin let out an excited squeal.
“Absolutely! That would look so cool, and it would tie in great to the story line that Melissa and Sparrow are working on.”
Not to mention that I’d yet to see any such storyline, I couldn’t help but think about how that was one of the tackiest ideas I’d ever heard.
I wisely chose to keep my mouth shut while there were so many sharp objects so close to my face.
“Yuko! Airi! Did you hear that?!”
Yuko paused from taking pictures on the other side of the room and yelled back without missing a beat.
“Sounds good to me! I’ll mock up some compositions and send them to you Sparrow!”
“Sparrow! You still need me to send me Finn’s measurements before I can do anything. I think it sounds good though.”
Sparrow finally popped out from beneath a forest of fabric rolls and yelled back at her team.
“Got it! And Airi I just sent them over! My brother took a little while to get them to me. Someone get over here and help me come up with some cool props!”
And just like that, the entire concept of the large showcase submission had been adjusted. This wasn’t the first time it had happened, and it likely wouldn’t be the last. It was such a difference from Alice’s group that worked like a military camp. She hired professionals, had a large budget and held auditions to ascertain the best fit for the job.
The contrast was sharp but somehow, I couldn’t help but feel like Sparrow’s team would at least get up to the same quality, if not surpass it.
“How did your brother have them?”
Sparrow shrugged and made it clear that not only did she not know, but she also wasn’t particularly interested either.
“I think Finn does something at the company he works at, but I can’t be sure. Heck, I barely know where he lives.”
Just as I was about to tell her the ridiculousness of his apartment, I suddenly got the feeling that it would be better said in private, or maybe not at all. The cold glare of the older man I’d met at the hospital, Mr. Lux, suddenly swept past my mind and I was completely discouraged.
It was probably for the best anyways as Mori tied a mask to my face and sternly warned me not to move my face.
They day passed in a blur and at a point I gave up trying to keep up with the mass changes being made to the script and even what the submission for the showcase would look like. I just put in a request to Melissa and Sparrow that the finalized details should be put into an email for me so I could tell my teammates that had jumped Alice’s ship to join me.
The last of the participants left Sparrow’s workshop at a little past dinner time and I ducked behind the folding screen to change my clothes back to what I’d came here in.
“Jake, wait! Before you do can you try this on? Airi wanted to run a few things by her mom.”
Airi’s mother was a famous costumer for more traditional plays, rather than for movies. She knew how to make clothes more movable as well as flashy enough that the details could be seen from a distance and up close without being tacky.
It wasn’t particularly like I had anywhere to be tonight, so I just grabbed the parcel of clothing from her arms and turned right around to where I’d come from.
It was a clunky military suit that looked like they had merged the real country’s military garb with the inspiration from the anime that one of them had brought up. It had belts of fake weapons striping across the chest in an X, and a long cape that could open and close around my shoulders. The back of the shirt itself was completely cut out and exposed my back, but I figured that was a stylistic choice and not because they had cut corners.
It was completely impractical for a real fight, but for a costume it looked pretty cool. I laced the boots up tight and walked out to the waiting Sparrow. She directed me back onto the pedestal where I turned and posed without feeling even a hint of embarrassment. At this point this was the tenth time I’d done this within the last six hours, the time for embarrassment had passed.
“Yeah, this looks good. Airi will run it by her mom, and we’ll get the tailors to get started on production for all of the volunteers you so kindly found for us. Can you get me their sizes?”
I was going to tell her to ask them herself but then again it would probably be easier to corral all of those guys and get those sizes quickly.
“Sure, how soon do you need them? If its urgent I can get them all here tomorrow to get their measurements taken through the week.”
“As soon as possible, since we started pretty late. If you could do that then I’d be thankful.”
Well, it looked like I had a lot of house calls to make. Of course, there were some of them that would come in regardless since they enjoyed spending time with people, and this was as good as a spot to hang out as any. And it was always nice to be in a space where a bunch of good-looking people constantly complimented your appearance.
Even though most of us were off season, the school gyms were still full. Everyone wanted to be in their best shape for the actual showcase.
But then there were also the others that took the off season as a golden chance to sleep and eat enough for the next three years. For those guys it would be more effective to just drive to their houses, pick them up and drop them off after.
I returned to the folding screen and started changing when I heard a loud thump echo from the bathroom.
I worried that Sparrow had fallen and gotten hurt, so I ran out without having taken anything off and saw a stressed-out Sparrow glaring at the bathroom door.
“Sparrow, are you okay?”
She nodded but before she could respond the sound of someone retching and throwing up aggressively filtered out of the bathroom, followed by the sound of running water and the toilet flushing. Normally that would be disconcerting to hear, but it was even more so, considering that we two were the only ones left in the workshop.
I just didn’t know how they would have snuck into the workshop without Sparrow noticing. We heard light steps pad toward the door of the bathroom and Sparrow held out an arm in front of me, as if she intended to protect me.
As sweet as the gesture was, it made more sense for me to step forward. Hopefully they would peacefully leave when they realized that the space had people, but if they refused, I had the most faith in being able to take them down without anyone getting hurt.
I took her arm and gently tried to pull her behind me, but that caught her off guard and she tripped. I tried to use my other arm to catch her before she fully made it onto the floor but she caught herself on my clothes and took the both of us down.