Destia Jayden March 16th,20XX

Despite all the preparation that we’d done, the actual performance went by in a blur. I couldn’t exactly remember exactly what I did or even how well we’d done, but a few events stood out when I looked back at the day.

I remembered Archer nervously throwing up right before the performance. Cherry, Tenzin and Lena had forced us to practice three more times before we actually hit the stage, and that had upset his stomach. I also felt like it had something to do with his powers, but I had no way to verify that.

The wait for our turn had been excruciating, and I remembered tensions running high as other performing groups had asked why we were performing on the last day. There had been a lot of famous people there, and I’d wanted to get some autographs, but I’d been so nervous I could barely force out three words in a single sentence.

Thankfully Archer had picked up on my desires and had gotten them to sign a few things for me. While I wasn’t super happy about having my thoughts read, Archer had apologized and said that he’d been so nervous he really couldn’t help himself.

Well, he was still a kid, and he was nice enough about it; I’d try my best not to let it bother me too much.

The performance had gone well. At some point, I’d hyper-focused on one member of the crowd and had maintained eye contact with them for the entire duration of the event. I had never seen the person before, but something about their calm eyes in the midst of the bustling crowd had made me calm down.

The whole thing was a blur, and it took effort to sort through all my memories, but that wasn’t work I was particularly willing to do.

It was work I wasn’t willing to do, but It became work I had to do under the conditions of my “duties as a squire.”

An excited Kaja and an intense Eva stared me down as I desperately pulled up a memory from the events of yesterday and told it to the camera. I wasn’t a great orator, but Kaja had assured me that I just had to say how I felt at the time of certain events, and she would deal with the rest of it.

“How I felt when we performed? Well, I was excited. I was nervous but we’d practised so much that I honestly thought I could perform the routine in my sleep.”

The mask was itchy on my face as I tried to talk more animatedly. Kaja had specifically requested that I exaggerate my expressions since I couldn’t take the mask off.

Well. It wasn’t that I couldn’t take my mask off, but I still didn’t know if I wanted my name attached to this. There were just too many questions that I would have to answer, and unlike the others, I still went to a normal school. It was already hard enough as a Squire and having connections to Joyce and the others.

If they thought I had connections to top singers and such, I wouldn’t know how to handle the fame seekers and the fan people. I already had enough Archer and Tillo fans coming at me for autographs and personal videos from them. There was the occasional Kaja fan as well, but they as a whole were much more sedated for some reason.

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I barely made it through the interview before finally getting off the uncomfortable chair and heading toward my room to change. We had all returned to our hotel suite after our performance, and right now, the last missing member of the group, Kristen, had come to meet with her group members. Hollis, the dancer I’d replaced that had broken her foot, had also come out to support her other members and reform their bonds.

Her cast was a bit lower quality than the sophisticated ones that Kaja and Tillo sported, and I could tell it made her a bit uncomfortable. She slightly tucked it into the couch and stylistically draped her jacket over it.

I hadn’t meant to stare at her for too long, but I suddenly made eye contact and embarrassedly looked away. She frowned and looked at me for a bit longer before looking away. I hoped she realized that I’d been so focused on her because I’d never met her before today and not for any other reason.

There were very few things that I wanted to do that to leave the room immediately, but I couldn’t seem to walk fast enough, and I mentally reinforced my determination to not use my powers.

Although dancing had helped burn off some of the antsy itch I got from not using my powers as often as usual, I was finding it harder and harder to stay still. My movements were getting harder to control and my mass eating was finally catching up with me as I wasn’t burning even half as much as I usually did.

As fun as our trip had been, I couldn’t wait to get home and work with the scientists again.

I forcefully loosened my muscles and forced myself to walk slowly out of the room, both to avoid exposing my powers to the others in the room and to avoid making Hollis think I was running away from her.

As it turned out, the costume I’d put on had originally belonged to her. I was sure that for someone as social as Kaja, that would have been a wonderful place to start a conversation, and they would have been best friends by the end of the hour. But I wasn’t Kaja, and I wasn’t much of a conversationalist.

I’d tried to ask her if she’d picked it out herself, but she’d just looked me up and down and had insinuated that I’d likely had to take it in to fit into it, which was not true. In fact it was so obviously not true that I wondered if that had been a whole other type of insult than what I’d originally thought.

Well, as uncomfortable as being automatically disliked was, It wasn’t like I would ever have to see her again after today, so I guess it didn’t matter.

It still wasn’t fun though.

I’d finally made it across the large area of the living room when Cherry suddenly called me back. The sudden call made me stumble into an ottoman and the medium-sized fixture fell in front of me. My left toe was a bit bruised but otherwise, I was okay.

“Destia! Where are you going! I wanted to talk to you a bit more”

Her loud voice startled me and the request was something that was too difficult to decline but was also too uncomfortable to accept. Cherry and Tenzin were nice and I’d spent a couple of days practicing with them, but Kristen and Hollis especially made hanging out difficult. my mind temporarily went blank and I went into a panic as I tried to come up with a response.

My heart thrilled as a familiar sensation spread through my body and my mind sank further into a panic. I needed to regain control of my body, but I also needed to respond. This had never happened before.

Not the crippling social anxiety that made it hard to see more than two feet in front of myself when I got into situations like this; that was something I’d even come to terms with and had sufficient enough control over. What was new was the sensation of my powers going haywire. I needed to get out of here, but I couldn’t risk moving and speeding away while the whole room of people looked at me.

A strong hand suddenly wrapped itself around my arm and yanked me into another room, saving me from myself.