Blaze

[disclaimer: there are mentions of blood, violence, trauma, sickness, drowning, mental instability, and death.]

***

“You have a natural fire.”

I sat still as the clean ointment was dabbed into my skin, although I couldn’t help but wince when the stinging finally started. Mr. Sig’s hands were deft, gentle, having worked with injuries and treatments and bickering children for longer than I had been alive– and so were his words.

I couldn’t see his eyes. Or his mouth. Or his face, which he did not have at all. The only indication of his talking was when his paper-square head stretched and folded on the vowels of his words. I had always thought it was just regular paper that somehow managed to float, but being so close to it now, close enough to feel breath if it weren’t for the fact that he didn’t breathe, made me realize it was more than that, some otherworldly material, still flat as paper, that glowed faintly turquoise.

“And fire burns brightly.” He reached into the small white box in front of him and carefully extracted a bandage with his paper-thin fingers. I wondered at how he managed to hold it up at all, let alone the heavy suitcoat that he wore atop his broad shoulders. “And that isn’t a bad thing, not necessarily– the world needs bright things.” Peeling the sterile paper off the bandage, he slipped it carefully over the scratch on my upper arm, smoothing down my fur to make sure it stuck. “It needs bright things in order to see. It needs light in order to see.” 

I watched him tuck the rest of the materials back into the white box and place the small container inside his suitcoat. His head turned back to me, gently. “But sometimes that light can be blinding.” He lifted his hands, motioning to me. “It can be consuming. It can be distracting.”

I noticed his gaze shift and realized he was glancing over the various cuts I had retained in the fight. Sniffling self-consciously, I raised a paw to rub over my snout, still feeling the sting of Tarko’s hoof swiping at my cheek.

I didn’t blame him. I started it. But he was too close, and too loud, and I couldn’t let him be that close, because how was I supposed to trust him when anyone who had been close before was–

Mr. Sig’s hand was placed comfortingly over the paw that was still lying on the ground, the paw that I had used to unforgivingly cuff Tarko in the face. “I’m not saying that you should feel bad.” His head tilted, questioningly. “Did I say that?”

I blinked at him, eyes fluttering. I didn’t remember him saying that. 

He lowered his head. “You choose your voice, little blaze.” The hand resting atop mine gave it two soft pats before retracting. “You speak on your own time.” He leaned back, casually, almost amicably, crossing his legs in front of him. “But it is important to communicate, yes?”

Finally I managed a nod, a tiny, imperceptible thing that delighted Mr. Sig, who clasped his hands approvingly. “Yes.” He looked at me. “Did I ever mention that you should feel bad?”

I shook my head softly. He didn’t. He didn’t even say anything. The fighting had stopped as soon as he’d entered the room. Tarko had looked about ready to have an accident out of fear, and the other Littlestars were all pushing and shoving to pretend like they hadn’t crowded around to watch. Evidently, fighting was a rarity to them.

Again I ran a paw over my scuffed face. Littlestars were so strange.

“I don’t believe you should feel bad.” Mr. Sig looked down at his hands. “You have many reasons for being as you are, and no one should strive to change you.” He lifted his head with a chuckle. “Not even me.”

I didn’t really know what laughing was. Nothing seemed extraordinarily funny to me, especially not anything that would ever make me laugh, but the sound that came out of Mr. Sig was something low and warm and safe, and I wanted to climb into it, even though I knew that you couldn’t really touch a sound. A sound was a sound– it was there for a moment, and then it went away, and sometimes if you were lucky it would bounce back at you before fading. Mr. Sig had a voice like that, a voice that went into your ears once, and then again, but softer, and then again, but even softer, until eventually it fizzled away.

I liked Mr. Sig’s voice.

That same voice brought me out of my thoughts. “Every Littlestar comes from their own background,” said Mr. Sig, more considerately, and gentler than before. “They are the characters in their own stories, just as you are in yours. Every one of them sees their lives through a different set of eyes.” 

I glanced at his face, or his lack of a face, with sudden curiosity. He didn’t have any eyes. He didn’t seem to have any eyes. Not one, not two, not sixteen like Tarko’s friend Glep in the Green Squad, but none. I didn’t know how he saw the world, or if he saw it at all. Maybe it was possible that he perceived everything differently than everyone else who had eyes.

Mr. Sig shifted knowledgeably. “You would be surprised, little blaze. Just because you cannot see the eyes does not mean the eyes cannot see you.”

My ears folded. I leaned back, eyes wide.

He moved on too quickly for me to process what he meant. “You and Tarko will always see things differently. Tarko and Glep will always see things differently. Glep and Zive will always see things differently.” He waved his hands. “It is the way of life for no two Littlestars to see the world exactly the same.”

What did he mean? I didn’t like Tarko. Tarko probably didn’t like me after I threw my fists into his jaw and tackled him to the ground. I would never like Tarko. Tarko would probably never like me, either.

“My point, little blaze, is that I do not blame you for doing what you did.” Mr. Sig looked at me, in the way that only he could look at people, the way that made me want to run somewhere and hide under a roll of thick blankets, knowing that even those wouldn’t be able to conceal me from his invisible eyes. He could look at me, but while he was looking at me, he was also looking into me. I felt like his gaze was a dagger, a dagger that could cut straight through fur and skin and bone and muscle, disregarding blood and nerves, and find its way into my heart, except it didn’t kill me. It didn’t even hurt. It was just a bit scary, to be seen so clearly by someone I had never spoken a word to, by someone who I thought hardly knew me. Except it was safe. It felt safe. 

“You have a fire inside of you that would be unnatural to put out.” I didn’t realize that he was still talking until his voice echoed back into my ears. It was so hard to focus around him. “Unlawful, almost. It is not up to me to regulate the power that you have.”

I didn’t know what he was talking about. I didn’t have any power. The only advantage I had over the other Littlestars was that I knew how to fight, and my claws weren’t blunt and trimmed down to the quick. I wasn’t afraid to use them. But I didn’t have anything honestly special. 

“I do not believe it was exactly wise to fight someone twice your size…” Mr. Sig let his voice trail off into a soft laugh, and I twitched an ear in recognition. I wasn’t sure how I felt about it yet. I wasn’t exactly proud, but I didn’t feel ashamed, either. “But you had a reason for doing so, even if your reason was not incredibly well-developed.”

Yes, I’d had a reason. Tarko was too close. I didn’t like it. I didn’t want anyone to be that close. I was going to wait in line like everyone else, but he had to lean over my shoulder and rasp at the rest of the Green Squad, who were far in front of us, and I didn’t like it. I didn’t like his voice. I didn’t like his breath, how it felt or how it stank like that bitter black drink that the older Littlestars liked to gulp down. I didn’t like him at all, and I wanted him to get away from me. That was why.

I didn’t say anything to Mr. Sig, because I didn’t know how. I only stared at him, eyes narrow, my left one still swelled from where Tarko had kicked my face with his hoof.

Mr. Sig looked at me and the anger melted.

Then he looked away. “I know you have your reasons.” As he pushed himself to his feet, he extended a paper-flat hand, and I reached up and set my paw into it, letting him pull me upward. “I know you see the others differently than they see themselves. But I do request that you give it some thought before you try to attack someone who may end up being your friend.”

Tarko would never be my friend. And I hadn’t needed to think it over. He was just too close to me. No one should’ve been that close, let alone that bull-boy.

Mr. Sig’s flat fingers squeezed lightly against my paw, and he began to guide me out of the dark hallway, toward the dim light at the other end. “I will never change who you are, little blaze,” he said. “You choose when you want to speak, and we can talk this over again then. Yes?”

I didn’t know how else to respond. It was impossible not to agree. Yes, whenever I found my voice, whatever that meant, we would talk again. Or maybe he would talk. I liked it better when he talked, mostly because I didn’t have a voice yet, and I didn’t really see the need for one. I was getting on just fine without it.

His dress shoes clacked quietly against the wooden floorboards as he led me toward the sound of music and clamor that had become my home. “For now,” he started normally, “let’s get you back with the others. It’s about time for that dinner you skipped out on.”

—

It was quiet by the time I returned to the mess hall. The other Littlestars had since cleared out, leaving a lingering stench of stale food and sweaty paws, and a few watery janitors who seemed in a similar state to Sera were mopping the floors with sad, slow motions. I stood still, tray in-hand, and watched them before hearing Sera’s voice call over from the table in the far corner of the room– “Hey, uh– hey, we’re over here!”

I glanced over. Sera, Zive, and Ino all sat impatiently at the table, Sera being the only one who had noticed my arrival. Zive and Ino, in the meantime, had resorted to napping, leaning into each other, Zive snoring like a beast, Ino fluffed out like a big white pillow. My paws were moving toward them without hesitation, and I shuffled down beside Sera, who had saved one of the few clean seats left for me.

I set my tray on the table and stared at it blankly. The food was kept warm by one of the cafeteria Overseers, a nice lady who looked like she was made of pink, shimmery crystals, but the gathering condensation had since melted back onto the tray, leaving it more unappetizing than before. Without a word, I lifted a paw and nudged the tray away from me until it hit Zive’s arm. Immediately the dragon-boy jerked up, eyes wide, nostrils flaring briefly with purple fire, before he scented the food and realized who had just given it to him.

“Oh.” Zive straightened up, causing Ino to slump into his side. The dragon-boy shoved a clawed hand jokingly into the lion cub’s face, shaking him awake, and Ino jumped up with a start, shrieking like a wildcat. At the sound, I felt my claws unsheath, digging into my kneecaps– looking down, I hadn’t even realized that my hands had been pressed into my legs. Tension, the very tension that Mr. Sig had just managed to coax down, had returned with a vengeance.

Something warm and liquid-like reached around my shoulders. I stiffened, despite the warmth, and heard Sera’s voice in my ears. “It’s OK,” she murmured, though I couldn’t help but notice the catch in her breath as she tried to find something to address me by and couldn’t figure out what to say. I almost felt bad for her.

Almost.

I wriggled my shoulders uncomfortably, a signal that I didn’t want her to be that close– I didn’t want anyone to be that close, and if Tarko still bore the scores of my claws over his face, I didn’t want Sera to suffer that same fate– and she leaned away. “Zive! Ino!” she snapped, causing the two boys to look up, Ino from his caterwauling and Zive from curiously sniffing the greasy tray. “Could you calm down? For once?”

Ino yawned, white fangs flashing in the dim cafeteria light. Glancing around, I noticed that the Overseers had dimmed the ever-bright fluorescent lighting into something much more bearable. Dingy, but still bearable. 

“I’m calm,” Ino responded, rubbing a too-big paw over his snout. I wondered when he was going to grow into those paws. “I’m very calm. I was just–” a second yawn, “–asleep.”

Sera nodded once. “Mhm.” She folded her arms. “You– you too, Zive–” he had reached a tentative black claw toward the soggy food and, upon hearing Sera’s voice, retracted his arm self-consciously, “–were supposed to stay awake to wait for…”

Again there was the pause because I had no name. Sera looked at me, as did Ino and Zive, with various different expressions on their faces, but I could tell they were thinking the same things. Who was I? Why didn’t I have a name? How were they ever supposed to figure out a name for me if I would never talk?

Or maybe they were thinking about my black eye.

I nudged the tray further toward Zive, who glanced at Sera as if checking for permission. When she didn’t immediately respond, he dug into the food, shoveling it down in great, famished gulps, as if he didn’t have three servings already and hadn’t gone around stealing the other Littlestars’ food and begging for scraps every meal of the day. 

But Sera paid him no mind. Instead she investigated my eye with a hesitant hand, which I winced away from. I didn’t want anyone to touch me. Even Sera, gentle as she was. 

“Oh.” Her hand retreated, but her gaze did not. “Sorry, uh–” there it was again, that pause, “–how was your, uh, time? With Mr. Sig?”

Zive perked up immediately at the name, as did Ino, both lifting their gazes and looking around like Mr. Sig would catch them doing something unthoughtful. Ino was in no trouble, sitting innocently at the table as he played with his paws, but Zive happened to be shoveling down my portion of food, which wasn’t very thoughtful. Even if Mr. Sig had still been around to notice, I guessed he wouldn’t have minded if I explained that I’d given Zive my food. I didn’t want to eat a soggy greasy mess of slop, even if the Overseer who’d made it had tried to keep it warm just for me. And Zive had a void for a stomach. He would eat anything. I had once caught him gnawing on the wooden post of a bunkbed. He claimed he was snackish, but dragon teeth could bite through anything. I was surprised he hadn’t eaten a hole in the wall.

I didn’t say anything in response. I wondered when Sera would stop asking me questions and expecting me to answer. 

Zive swiped a forked tongue around his teeth and sat back. Only then did I notice that the tray was empty. “You don’t have to ask her stuff, Sera,” he said, swallowing down a burp. “Y’know she hardly answers.”

“She’s weird.” Ino spoke quietly, but my ears twitched. I heard him. I heard him and his heartbeat. And Zive’s two heartbeats. And Sera’s water-blood as it flowed through her clear veins. I heard them all. “She doesn’t even talk.”

Sera straightened up. “Mr. Sig says it takes a while for everyone to find their voice,” she answered confidently, resting her watery hands against the table. A cold, clear puddle grew in size the more her fingers grazed the smooth surface. I wondered when she would notice. “He says that some people never find their voice at all.”

Ino looked doubtful. “Why wouldn’t you find your own voice?” He made a motion with a blunt, trimmed claw, still much larger than any of my own, to his neck. “It’s right there, isn’t it?”

Sera scoffed. “He’s being figurative.” Finally she noticed the puddle that had been gathering on the table and lowered her hands, frowning down at the watery mess. I looked down, noticing the already-larger puddle in her chair, and wondered how she lived when she soaked everything she touched. “It means that some people choose to talk and some people choose not to.”

Zive snorted. “Why doesn’t she choose to talk, then?” He brushed the empty tray out of the way and stared at me, his eyes wide and purple, the pupils pointed and sharp like a snake’s. I could do nothing but stare at him in return.

“I don’t know.” Sera answered for me. “Some people just… don’t talk.”

Ino drew circles on the table with his claws, one paw holding up his chin. “How’re we supposed to talk to her if she never talks back?”

“Maybe she can find some other way to talk,” Sera encouraged.

I only stared at her. I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t know how to talk. I didn’t like talking. I didn’t like it when other people talked. No one except Mr. Sig had a very nice voice. Although I guessed Sera’s and Zive’s and Ino’s voices weren’t as bad as Tarko’s. Maybe some people had nicer voices than others.

Slumping with disappointment, Sera turned from me to Zive just in time to realize that he’d eaten all my food. “Zive!” she shouted disappointedly.

The dragon-boy tilted his head at her. “What?” A stray piece of cafeteria food was caught between his teeth, and, noticing it, he flicked out his forked tongue, unsuccessfully trying to free the trapped particle.

Sera grumbled at him. “You didn’t leave anything for– for– her?”

Ino looked up shyly and murmured something quiet enough that neither Sera nor Zive seemed to hear. “She needs a name.”

I flicked my ears toward him. A name. He was right. I did need a name. I at least needed something to be called so that the other Littlestars would stop staring at me and calling me random words that meant nothing to me. Tarko in particular had taken to calling me “Orboot,” since he thought he was clever in mixing “orange” and “boot,” but I didn’t wear boots, and I wasn’t orange. It was russet, Mr. Sig had said. I liked the word. Maybe I would’ve suggested the word as a name, if I knew how to say it.

Ino stared at me. “Yeah,” he said, louder, “you do need a name.”

I stared back at him, but I had nothing to say.

“What she needs is some food,” Sera announced, standing up and leaving a rather large puddle in her seat. “C’mon, uh– fox,” she started, offering me a watery hand that I looked at suspiciously for a long moment. “Maybe we can get you some snacks somewhere else.”

Zive and Ino hopped out of their seats as I continued to stare at Sera’s hand, eventually refusing it. “I know!” Zive chirped as we wound our way around the table in the mess hall, nodding thoughtfully to the janitors who had to deal with Sera’s puddles ruining their clean floor. “I know where some snacks are!”

Ino giggled. “What’re you gonna make her eat? A bedpost?”

Apparently the story had gotten out after all. I hadn’t even said anything about it. Maybe Zive eating bedposts was a regular occurrence.

Zive snorted disapprovingly. “I don’t think there’s anything wrong with bedposts,” he said, raising his nose pridefully. “But if she’s not really in the mood for bedposts, there are other snacks.”

Sera glanced at him. “Like what? Metal rods?”

“No!” The dragon-boy hopped ahead as we exited the mess hall. He ran down the corridor, peeking around the corner to be sure no one was around, and skipped back to us excitedly, his broad, spiked tail swinging behind him. “I know where some real snacks are. Some of the Yellow have been stockpiling from the itty-Stars’ snacktime, and they keep it under their beds, and I know where!”

Sera stopped us all with a disapproving scowl. “So you’re going to steal from them?” Her arms crossed. “That isn’t very thoughtful.”

Zive’s head tilted. “I’m not stealing.” He straightened up. “I’d be asking. Asking them. Some of the Yellow are my friends.”

“Partners in crime, more like,” Ino laughed, and Zive smirked guiltily, folding his arms behind his back.

Sera seemed to think over his offer. She glanced down at me, taller than I was– all of them were taller than I was, but Ino especially so– as if considering if I was still hungry or not. And I was. Very, actually. But I had no inclination to eat the greasy slop of the mess hall, especially not after raking my claws across Tarko’s skin and feeling blood well beneath my paws. My appetite had been stolen from me, and reasonably so. As hungry as I was, I didn’t feel like eating a bedpost, either, but I couldn’t say that aloud. I didn’t know how. There was no way to tell them all how I felt except to stand there and stare at them, hoping they would know.

Mr. Sig’s words echoed back into my mind. “You choose your voice, little blaze. You speak on your own time. But it is important to communicate, yes?”

If only I knew how. I would’ve done anything Mr. Sig had told me, if I knew how to do it. But there was no communicating with the three who stuck by me like glue, nothing beyond the blank stare with eyes as wide as I could muster considering my face was swollen.

Sera took my paw in hers without asking permission and tugged us forward. “Fine,” she agreed. “But only for… the fox.”

The fox. 

Zive led us down the hall– the dragon-boy, the lion cub, the water-creature, and the fox.

—

I stuffed another soft, chewy disc in my mouth, letting my teeth sink into the sweet circle before crunching it down. Zive, Ino, and Sera were all indulging in similar snacks around me, the four of us bunked together back in the safety of our quarters. Two bunkbeds, four bunks, separated by gender in two different rooms attached to a nicely-sized living space, but Zive, as always, had found a way around the system for when all four of us wanted to be together. Nightly he constructed a flimsy fort made of blankets and fairylights strung up on chairs, the floor lined with fluffy pillows stolen from the sofas and beds, and nightly he would drag us all kicking and screaming into it to either talk– or listen, since I had yet to speak a word– about the days’ events or just stare at the light filtering through the blankets until we fell asleep.

Zive acted as if his cleverness was never caught by Mr. Sig. But my sleep was fitful, and easily broken, and almost every night I would wake up to someone inching open the door of our quarters and peering inside, slipping away before they could be rightly identified. I guessed it was an Overseer, although I never asked. I never said anything. I never even indicated that I noticed the person, only pretended to be asleep until they left. Whatever secrecy Zive thought he was achieving was untrue, but apparently Mr. Sig didn’t seem to mind that we were breaking the rules.

“I love cookies,” Ino rumbled happily, licking the last of the crumbs from his lips and giving a long, shaky stretch. “Especially the itty-Stars’. How come they always get the best stuff?”

“Obviously,” Zive croaked, digging through the bag of goodies he’d managed to negotiate from the Yellow, who had demanded a future portion of his daily meals and a say in what my name would be– if any of the Littlestars were, actually, to be given the honor of deciding on my name, “it’s because they need to get comfy. Mr. Sig wants to comfort them, so he gives them snacks and treats and stuff.” He dragged out a cookie with the end of one of his claws and tossed it into his mouth, throwing crumbs as he spoke. “It’s the easiest way to make ‘em feel good.”

Sera, who was sitting on a sheet of rubbery-plastic that was meant to absorb whatever puddle she was accidentally forming, and who had been banished from sitting on a pillow by Zive, scoffed in his direction. “It’s not for that,” she said. “You make it sound like Mr. Sig’s doing something bad.”

Zive spat, and then coughed, until plenty more crumbs ended up on the pillows in front of him and a spurt of purple fire sat on the edge of his tongue. Delicately he dabbed the forked end to the roof of his mouth until the flame went out, and then, straightening up to regain some dignity, he said, “I wasn’t sayin’ anything like that. None at all.” 

As I slipped the remains of a cookie into my mouth, I realized I could hear his hearts racing.

Ino glanced at him. “You’re defensive,” he grunted playfully, flicking the puff at the end of his tail in the dragon-boy’s direction.

Zive flinched back in embarrassment. “Am not!”

“You are!”

“Am not!”

Sera glanced at me while the boys dove further into fighting. I ignored her, even though I could feel her gaze, very different from Mr. Sig’s, digging into my fur, and watched the boys bicker. I wondered why they didn’t ever really fight. I guessed they didn’t have a real reason to be mad with each other. They seemed to like arguing more than they liked going at each other with their claws.

I was busy thinking about who would win when Sera’s voice cut into the clamor. “So, Zive,” she said, purposefully loudly, absently passing a soggy cookie from hand to hand, “are you excited about the assignments tomorrow?”

Zive perked up, turning away from Ino. His teeth flashed in the warm light of the fairylights. “Asssignments? Oh– right, tomorrow is assignments!” He pumped a fist in the air, bumping up the blanket ceiling of our makeshift fort. “Yes! I can’t wait for them!”

Ino leaned forward, forgetting his argument with Zive, and pressed both front paws into the pillows, claws sinking in and out with excitement. Lion cubs were very strange. “Which group d’you think we’ll get?” he asked, looking between Zive and Sera. I placed another crumb in my mouth and ignored that he wasn’t looking at me. “What color? Who d’you think will be with us?”

“I don’t see why we wouldn’t be a group,” Sera nodded, splashing on her rubbery-plastic sheet. “We’re bunked together already, so why wouldn’t we?”

Zive fell backward. “Bunkmates are never in Squads together,” he complained dramatically, raising his hands to his head.

Ino glanced back at him. “Not never.”

“Not never?” The dragon-boy pushed himself onto his elbows. “Have you ever seen bunkmates be in the same Squad?”

“I don’t know who bunks with who!” Ino threw up his paws. “So how would I know?”

“It’s not impossible,” Sera interjected calmly, swallowing her soggy cookie, which floated inconspicuously in her watery head, gradually disintegrating the more I stared. “We already work so well together. Why wouldn’t Mr. Sig pair us up?”

“Well, I don’t know…” The lion cub scratched at the pillows until stuffing appeared beneath his paws, and then he lowered his head into his hands, frowning. “I hope we get put in the same Squad.” His eyes, big, golden spheres, slid over to me, and I blinked at him in return before he looked away.

Zive glanced at me. “What about her?”

Sera scoffed. “She’s right there, Zive.”

The dragon-boy looked up. “Yeah, I know, but–”

Sera waved her watery hands, throwing droplets across the pillows. “She’s right there.”

I blinked.

“So why don’t you ask her?”

Zive looked at me blankly. He shifted on the pillows, twiddled with his claws, checked his back to see if any wings had grown– none had, sadly, from the tiny black nubs at his shoulder blades that he swore would one day become broad dragon wings– until finally he was forced to look back in my eyes.

“Well…” He didn’t seem to know where to start. His usual bravado had faded down to something almost embarrassed, even though I didn’t think of myself as very intimidating. The swelling from Tarko’s hoof had gone down, and an Overseer had helped me scrub the blood from my paws with a disinfectant wipe, so I wasn’t nearly as frightening as I could’ve been. I wasn’t even trying to be. I was holding a half-eaten cookie and sitting on a pillow. There was no other least-intimidating position I could’ve been in. “Well, it’s just that, y’know, she– I mean–” he caught himself, “–you are, uh, y’know…”

Zive waved his hands, expecting me to follow, but I did not. I was just about to slip the last of the cookie into my mouth when he shouted, louder than I expected him to, hands thrown up into the air, “How are you supposed to be a part of a Squad if you don’t even talk?!”

I jerked back. Zive’s words rang through my head while Ino and Sera both reached forward to comfort the dragon-boy, who threw off their hands with a flurry of unharmful swats. “I mean, I just want to know! How come you never talk? How come you don’t talk? D’you even make noise? How’re you supposed to be a Superstar if you never even make noise?!”

“Zive!” Sera chastised, splashing furiously at Zive’s face. “Would you calm down? The other bunks are probably trying to sleep by now!”

We were struck with the realization that it was probably light’s out. Our lights weren’t out. And Zive had just shouted all the air out of his lungs.

For a long, hot second, the four of us waited with bated breath to have an Overseer open the door of our quarters and chide us for being up so late and take away our pillow fort privileges. But nothing happened. We were safe.

Zive turned back from staring at the door and smoothed his rippling scales. “Sorry,” he apologized, “sorry, sorry, sorry– I didn’t mean to be loud.”

That wasn’t true. He was naturally loud. Nothing he did could ever be quiet. His two hearts were loud, his talking voice was loud, his singing voice was loud. He was lucky that I had never had the same relationship with him as I had with Tarko, otherwise he would've had the scores of my claws over his face, not the bull-boy.

“But… it’s just…” Zive looked over at the other two Littlestars, as if seeking their approval, and they both shifted uncomfortably. “You guys have to be thinking this too, right? How are we– how is she– gonna become a Littlestar if she never even makes a noise? How are we gonna be in a Squad with her if she never even sings? How am I gonna be a Superstar if I’m in a Squad with someone who doesn’t sing?!”

Zive fainted backward dramatically, his voice rising despite himself, and Ino caught the dragon-boy’s head in his paws, staring at him with mild concern. Sera watched the spectacle, eyes narrowed, and leaned back against a rubbery-plastic chair behind her. I was pressed against the blanket wall behind me, not sure what to do, feeling the same seizing tension from earlier, when Tarko was too loud, too close, when I didn’t know what to do and the only thing I could think of was the last thing that was too loud and too close, so then my claws were lodged in the rough skin of his face and fists were flying at him and the cold ground was pressing against my back–

“Hey.” It was Sera’s voice who reached through the encroaching blackness at the edges of my vision. “Hey, hey, hey– it’s OK– it’s OK!” She reached forward, and I almost jerked back, had her hand not come to hover peacefully a comfortable distance away from me, extended if I needed it, retracted if I didn’t. 

“It’s OK,” she soothed. “You’re safe here. They’re just arguing, because arguing is what they do. They’re doing it for fun. They won’t hurt you. I won’t hurt you.” Her words were soft, voice softer, everything chosen carefully and slowly, almost like Mr. Sig would’ve done it– thoughtfully was the word he would’ve used. “You’re safe here. You’re safe.”

The weight that had been pressing into my chest gradually eased. Breathing became easier. Sera’s eyes glowed in the center of my vision until the blackness went away, and I sighed, trying to steady myself. 

I didn’t know what that tension was. And I didn’t like it.

Looking over, I finally registered that Zive and Ino had sat up and were watching me with wide, frightened eyes. Zive, glancing at Ino before returning his gaze to mine, pushed himself onto his rear and stammered, “I– uh, I’m– uh, I’m sorry about, uh, that, uh…” Embarrassment crept into his features. His claws scraped together with nervousness. His two hearts were beating fast.

I stared at him. Now that the tension was gone, I was slowly starting to pick up what he’d been whining about before falling onto his back and pretending that his future was destined to be miserable. It made sense, at least a little bit, considering the little bubble that the Headquarters was compared to everything outside of it.

Littlestars were trainees. Mr. Sig’s trainees. Of course, everything in the Headquarters belonged to Mr. Sig, because he was Mr. Sig, and no one could tell him no. And Littlestar Squads were preparation for becoming a Superstar. And being a Superstar was the only way to survive anywhere outside of the Headquarters without being caught and recycled into an Organization slave.

That’s what Zive himself had said, anyway, weeks ago, when I was first bunked with him and his two tagalongs and I hardly knew any of their words, let alone the slang that they used around the Littlestar bunks. Being a Superstar was essentially the only way to survive, and to be one, you had to be assigned to a Squad and learn to dance or sing or act or do some other wildly impressive thing that would make an audience adore you.

I had yet to see a live audience. The Superstar shows were played on repeat on the little televisions in the common room of the Littlestar bunks, but they were hard to pay attention to. The colors were blinding and the singing was loud and the cheering was mind-numbing and I never stayed long enough to finish a single one.

But how were they– the three who were in front of me, the three who’d stuck by me constantly even when I was a lot less calm than I was now– ever going to become Superstars if I was with them? It certainly wouldn’t be any good to have a Superstar who couldn’t talk.

Zive and Ino both stared at me until I was sure that their eyes were slowly drying out. Zive blinked once, twice, enough times for me to guess that I was right, and rubbed at his eyes before asking, in a much softer voice than he’d ever mustered before, “How come… you don’t talk?”

Sera spoke up before anyone could stop her. “It’s like Mr. Sig said, Zive. She’s–”

Zive swatted his tail in her direction, splashing through her puddle, and Sera winced. “Hey!”

“Shut up, will you?” croaked the dragon-boy, folding his arms. “How’s she supposed to talk if you’re always talking for her? She’s gotta find her own voice, remember?”

Sera did shut up, but not without pursing her lips and acting offended. 

Zive returned to staring at me. After a few seconds of silence where I did not answer, doing nothing but staring at him and trying to control my breathing, he continued, “C’mon. Say something. You know you can say something, right? You don’t have to, like…” He glanced at Sera and Ino as if either one of them would have an objection to his words, but both of them shrugged at him. “I dunno. I’m not that good at talking. But you don’t have to be… scared… of talking.”

I wasn’t scared of talking. I wasn’t scared. Zive and Ino and Sera were not scary. Neither were the other Littlestars. Neither was Tarko or Glep or the Green Squad. Mr. Sig wasn’t scary, not in that way. I wasn’t scared of anyone or anything in the Headquarters, except maybe myself. 

I just didn’t know how to talk.

I hoped that Zive would understand. I wished that he would understand. I stared at him and willed him to understand, even while, physically, I was doing nothing but sitting on a pile of pillows and gazing at him with very, very wide eyes, breath ghosting past my whiskers. 

The three in front of me exchanged a glance. “You can talk,” Ino asked, tentatively, his ears flicking with telltale nervousness, “right?”

I stared at him.

Mr. Sig’s words came back. “...it is important to communicate, yes?”

I didn’t have a voice. I didn’t know what a voice was. But I knew yes and no, and I knew that there were ways to talk without ever using a voice, so finally I shook my head.

No.

No, I couldn’t talk.

—

“So-So!”

I leaned away from the mirror, whirling and throwing the Superstar designers around me into a frenzy. Turning away from the strange russet figure who sat in the center of my vision, I caught sight of the rest of the Pink Squad– Zive, Ino, and Sera, all adorned with their pink accessories and looking ready to perform– bursting through the doors, ignoring the angry shouts behind them, and heading toward me. Zive– who was never much one for accessories– had a pink band tied in a ribbon around his tail, Ino wore a pink metallic chain around his neck, and Sera’s water had been infused with something faintly rose in color, light enough to where it looked more flowery than bloody. All of them sparkled with excitement as they ran up to me and smiled.

“So-So!” The nickname Sera had given me after the four of us had stayed up all night trying to figure out a name for me and could only conjure up so and so, because I was always so this or so that, sounded familiar in Ino’s mouth. “You look– so– wow!”

There it was again, the so. That was why I was So-So. Unofficially, really, because none of us had told Mr. Sig about it yet, but I liked having a name that only the Pink Squad knew about. It made me feel unique. Not weird, not strange, not out-of-place, but unique.

Maybe that could’ve been my name, if I’d thought about it longer.

I looked down at myself, identifying what Ino was addressing, and I knew what he meant. As the rest of the Pink pushed the Superstar designers out of the way, I turned back to the mirror, investigating what I’d been turned into. The past few days were an intense blur of having my fur cleaned and clipped and then cleaned and clipped again when the designers thought it wasn’t good enough. Thanks to the intervention of Mr. Sig, my claws hadn’t been trimmed down to useless little nubs, and they were still sharp enough score a good line in anything, especially Tarko’s pillow, which Zive had stolen from the Green’s bedroom the night we had been relocated from the Littlestar bunks to the Pink Squad quarters. I looked like me– I looked like the tiny russet fox that I had always been– except if me had been picked up and reshaped and washed and dried and bleached and dyed and doused in glitter until it was something perfect and new. The only thing I had yet to obtain was a pink accessory to match my Squad.

“It’s gorgeous!” The murmurs of the Pink echoed behind me as I admired what the Superstar designers had managed to do. I didn’t know how they dealt with Littlestars, the title that the Pink and I felt proud to hold when we were all assigned to the same Squad, but I was impressed. It was no easy task to take someone as rugged and feisty as I was and transform me into a performance-ready Star.

I was no Superstar. Not yet. None of us were, and there would be many months before any of us were ready to perform an actual show on an actual stage in front of an actual audience that wasn’t just assigned to watch us and clap in the safety of the Headquarters. But at least we’d managed the first step.

The second step, of course, was finding my voice.

“I… like it,” I managed to cough out as I admired the unfamiliar sleekness of the fur along my arms. 

The Superstar designers around me, managing to corral the Zive, Ino, and Sera into a more manageable location, all cheered with excitement. If it had been hard to me to force myself to sit still while they doused me in water and soap and dye and occasionally a tiny splatter of makeup, if they could afford it– Mr. Sig made it a point to avoid giving makeup to any of the Littlestars, unless it was the tiniest touch of some eyeliner or glitter– it had been even harder for them to do it. I wished I had more ways to thank them, but all I could think of was a tiny, unimpressive nod and a squeaky little “thank you” that left them breathless and happy.

After several minutes more of admiring this new So-So in the circle of mirrors, the designers finally left, leaving the Pink and I to collapse in a heap on the beanbag chairs in a far corner of the room. The bags smelled of soap and makeup and cleaning supplies, as did everything else in the messy room, but I didn’t mind it. It had become something of a homely smell to me, and I sank into the plushness, letting the fluffy chair cradle me like a cloud.

It was Zive, digging around in a paper bag, that finally broke the silence. “So-So,” he sang, “I brought something for you!” He dropped a brown bag of goodies in the center of our circle of beanbags, rifling through it and pulling out a sweet, soft disc that I knew he’d traded with the Yellow for. “Snacks!”

The dragon-boy tossed me the cookie and I caught it with both paws, chomping down the snack. The Superstar designers were nice, but there was hardly any time for food in their fervent schedule, let alone snacks. Mr. Sig checking on us was the only thing that seemed to remind them that I needed to eat, otherwise I would’ve eventually collapsed from exhaustion. Apparently Zive and the Yellow were still keeping up with their deal.

Sera and Ino both dug into the snacks, and the four of us lounged on the beanbags until the little brown bag of stolen food was half-empty and we were lying on our stomachs, content with the world.

“So…” Sera, who had sat down on a beanbag made of a rubbery-plastic material that seemed fit just for her, spoke up, lifting her head. “How was it, So-So?”

I picked at the fabric beneath me with my claws, drawing out little strings of color and nipping them with my teeth. “It… was good,” I said, with as much strength as I could muster. Speaking was still not entirely natural to me, but Mr. Sig had begun the process of encouraging me to use the voice that felt like it was trapped in my throat, and thus far, it was working. Most words, I could say. The Overseers told me I was a fast learner, but it felt like I already knew how to say most things. The difficulty occurred when I tried to actually make a noise, not when I tried to pronounce a word.

“Good?” Zive looked at me with mock-suspicion, leaning forward on his elbows. “I think you’re lying!”

Sera scoffed. “Why would you think that?”
Zive tossed up his nose. “It’s not very thoughtful to lie, y’know, So-So.”

They seemed to like my makeshift nickname. 

I rolled onto my back, staring up at the ceiling as I tried to gather the breath to speak. “I… not lying.”

“It’s I’m, So-So,” Sera corrected absentmindedly, flicking water away from her hands. “Or I am, but with a contraction.”

I didn’t care. I knew that she corrected anyone and everyone who made a mistake. It was nothing against me in particular, and that at least discouraged me from being honestly annoyed with her. She was just trying to help, anyway. 

“Leave her alone, Sera,” Ino groaned, paws laid flat beneath him. “She just learned to talk. She needs to figure out how before you start getting all grammar on her.”

“That’s not–” Sera sighed frustratedly, relenting her point and leaning back against the beanbag. Clearly none of us were going to listen to her.

“My time wasn’t good,” Zive piped in, picking a piece of chocolate from between his teeth with a dull, black claw. “The designers scrubbed me down for days straight! They were complaining about my scales being all dirty, and Mr. Sig had to stop them before they dyed me hot pink!”

Ino and Sera both couldn’t help but giggle at Zive’s intonation, but I only twitched an ear curiously. Humor still didn’t make very much sense to me. Zive probably would’ve looked ridiculous if his being part of the Pink Squad was designated by his scales being bright-hot magenta instead of their usual midnight black, but I wasn’t sure how to respond to that. The only thing I could think of doing was rolling back onto my stomach and picking at the beanbag, back paws kicked up into the air.

“You don’t look so bad,” Zive continued, glancing at me.

Ino snorted and shoved a paw over his nose. I didn’t catch what he found so funny. 

“I– I mean–” Zive sat up straighter, eyes widening. “I– well, I didn’t mean that you looked bad before, but…” 

His rambling apology continued the longer I stared at him, eyes narrowed with confusion. What was he apologizing for? He wasn’t lying when he said that I didn’t look bad. I probably looked bad before, but I hadn’t paid very much attention to my appearance before the designers found me and made me consider what I looked like to other people. Either way, I didn’t mind. Zive was Zive, and everything he said came with the disclaimer that he was, well, Zive. He was more thoughtful than he would admit.

I stretched out my front paws in front of me and admired the smooth, shiny fur. “I… like it,” I repeated.

Sera nodded. “Good. You look nice, So-So.”

I twitched an ear in her direction. Mr. Sig always said something about accepting compliments, but I wasn’t sure how to do that, so I only lowered my chin onto my paws and looked down at the floor.

“But you don’t have anything pink!” Zive complained loudly. His voice turned my gaze upward. “And you’re in the Pink Squad. You ought to have something pink.”

Ino grasped the chain around his neck and fiddled with it, looking at it with suspicion. “Maybe they’d make you wear a chain, like me.”

Sera shook her head. “I don’t think they give any two Littlestars in a Squad the same accessory.” She waved her arms, throwing clear-pink droplets around the room. “They just dyed me pink. I can’t really wear anything, so I guess they had no other choice… but you could wear something, So-So?”

“You got a tail?” asked Zive, leaning around me to catch a glimpse of the long, fluffy thing that sported as my tail. “Yeah. You have one.” He waved his own, a flat, black thing with spikes running up its spine, showing off his pink ribbon. “Maybe they’ll give you a ribbon like me!”

Sera looked up blankly. “They don’t give two Littlestars the same accessory,” she said bluntly.

Zive glanced at her. “But she could have something else on her tail.” He rolled onto his side, looking up at the ceiling in thought. “What else can go on tails? Bells? Glitter?”

I noticed Ino squinting at me in the corner of my vision and glanced over at him, curious. His ears pricked when he saw that I’d turned away from looking at the floor, and he said, almost shyly, “I think the designers gave you some makeup– or something. Your eyes are big and sparkly.” As if snapping out of a trance, he looked away, embarrassed. “I mean, they look big and sparkly. Bigger and sparklier than usual.” Then he lowered his snout onto his paws and did not speak.

I looked at him curiously. Ino was always a little weird. Maybe rude, sometimes, but only accidentally. He had big eyes, larger than Sera’s or even Zive’s, golden saucers with yellowish flecks around the center, and his ears were large and round and swiveled toward every sound, much like mine. Either he was naturally sparkly or the designers had given him some sort of makeup, too, because he looked shinier than usual.

I didn’t know what he meant. I didn’t know why he seemed suddenly shy, but he was Ino, and he was always shy. He might’ve felt shy, if he’d just gone through his time with the designers and was still adjusting to his new look. That was probably what it was. He was probably just shy.

Zive’s voice shook me out of my curiosity. “You still need something pink to wear.” He had stood up, stretched, and was going through a box of the designer’s things that sat near the vanity, rifling through it with unpracticed hands. Sera had stood up to follow him, but she could hardly stop him except for flicking water in his direction, which only glinted off his newly-washed scales and landed sadly on the floor. “C’mon, So-So!” Zive called over as I rolled off the beanbag and pushed myself to my paws.

I walked over to the box, watching as Zive dug through it and pulled out various accessories of various different colors, muttering “pink” under his breath like a chant, until he pulled out a little strip of baby-pink fabric. Grinning, fangs flashing in the light of the vanity, he folded and unfolded the fabric and tied it into loops until he figured out what he was, and then he gestured for me to walk closer.

I stared at him, eyes narrowing slowly. I was a Littlestar– Mr. Sig had finally given me the title after I’d said my first word. I was in the Pink Squad, which took much begging and negotiation and pleading to finagle, especially because, at the time, I hadn’t yet spoken and was still looked down on by the Green Squad for tackling Tarko to the floor. And I was So-So, even though I didn’t have a real name yet and no one outside of the Pink knew what to call me.

But that did not change who I was.

I liked Zive. He was nice. He was loud and annoying and reckless, but he was still nice and thoughtful and kindhearted. But that did not mean I wanted to be close to him, much like I didn’t want to be close to anyone else. The only person I would ever be close to was Mr. Sig, only because I trusted him with my life, and maybe Ino, only because he was one of the few Littlestars I knew who also had fur and wasn’t covered in scales or water or tough bullhide. I had no desire to stand any nearer to Zive than I already was, a comfortable distance away.

Sera glanced at me and poked Zive in the side with a watery finger, causing him to jolt with realization. “Sorry, So-So,” said the water-creature, apologizing for the embarrassed dragon-boy. “Sometimes he forgets.”

I was reminded that Mr. Sig had pulled aside the rest of the Pink– when they were still Gray, before the assignments– and told them something about me, but I didn’t know exactly what. Hopefully it was something that didn’t make them scared of me.

I didn’t want them to be scared of me. I liked them.

Zive cleared his throat. “Here.” He shoved the piece of fabric into my paws and motioned to my neck. “You tie it around your neck like… like that.” He watched as I lifted the strip of fabric and held it around my neck, tying it into a flimsy knot at the back, and then gasped. “That’s it!” he shouted, a grin spreading across his face. “That’s it– that’s it!”

Sera looked me up and down as I lowered my arms. Wearing the little piece of fabric felt strange, since I wasn’t used to having anything external press against my fur, but as she pulled me toward the vanity and my gaze was forced into the mirrors, I realized what she and Zive were so excited about. I had a pink accessory.

It wasn’t hot pink. I didn’t even think it was the same shade of pink that Zive and Ino wore, and it definitely wasn’t the same color as Sera’s water, but it was still pink. I stared at myself for a long moment, admiring the light shade against the white splotch of fur beneath my chin, before twirling to see how it looked in the back. The knot I’d tied wasn’t very pretty, not as neat as the ribbon on Zive’s tail, and I wondered if the designers would have a fit over it or if they would’ve liked what I had chosen for my accessory.

Technically Zive had chosen it for me. But I doubted the other Pinks were able to choose their accessories– Sera certainly wouldn’t have dyed herself, and Ino didn’t seem to like the feeling of the chain rubbing the fur around his neck. Maybe it was natural that no Littlestar ever chose their own accessory. 

Sera, Ino, and Zive had all circled around me, admiring the new accessory with approving murmurs. “Do you like it?” Sera asked sensibly, glancing into my eyes.

I stared at myself. I looked remarkably unfamiliar to how I would’ve looked a week or two ago. Unrecognizable, almost. Ino was right– the designers must’ve done something to my eyes, because they looked bigger, more outstanding, than usual, and they seemed to almost glow at the edges.

Did I like it, though? Did I like how I was now compared to how I was before, matted and ruffled and hardly composed? Did I like the little piece of fabric that signified who I was?

Yes.

Yes, I did.

Before I could work up the energy to answer, my ears swiveled toward a noise, and I turned away from Sera and toward the door in the back of the room. In my peripheral I glimpsed Ino’s ears following suit. There were footsteps in the hallway. Someone was coming.

I thought we’d been left alone, although I didn’t know why the Superstar designers had decided to leave us alone in their workspace, considering that we weren’t the most clean or responsible Littlestars. But maybe they hadn’t left us alone after all.

The doorhandle clicked. The door swung open. Silhouetted against the warm hallway light was Mr. Sig, who looked on with gentle curiosity as Zive and Sera and Ino all threw whatever things they were holding at the ground and tried to position themselves as if they hadn’t been doing anything unthoughtful, even though they already weren’t. Something about Mr. Sig’s presence always made them check themselves.

I didn’t stop to consider the stolen fabric around my neck until it was too late to remove.

Mr. Sig reached over a papery hand and flicked on the light switch, igniting the room with the bright, fluorescent lights that the designers had been kind to turn off on their way out. “It’s good to see you all,” he greeted appropriately.

The Pink all murmured polite greetings. I was still trying to figure out how to force my voice out of my mouth when Mr. Sig continued, “I see you’ve been treated to by the designers– do you like what they’ve done?”

The facade of orderliness was gone as all three of the Pink spoke up about their experiences, what they liked and disliked and what the designers had proposed that they had disagreed with, but I stayed silent. Mr. Sig was listening to them– I could see his head tilted forward in that genuine, considerate way that was unique to only him– but part of his focus, I realized, was on me. I wasn’t talking. I wasn’t replying. I was still standing, back to the vanity, fidgeting with my paws, not sure of what to do.

“Yes.” Mr. Sig raised his paper-thin hands to soothe the Pink’s chatter, which gradually died down. “Yes, I can see that. I hope you all enjoyed your time with the designers– you’ll be seeing them very often once you become Superstars.”

Zive and Sera glanced at each other with wide, round eyes. I caught the specifics of Mr. Sig’s wording– once, not if, they became Superstars– and guessed that they must’ve felt excited. I wasn’t sure what happened to Littlestars who never made it to being Superstars, but becoming a Superstar was an immense achievement, and if not that, then the life dream of Zive and Sera. I wasn’t completely certain about Ino’s dream, only because he didn’t have the same reaction to Mr. Sig’s words and was instead looking at me with the same shy curiosity as he’d had when we were sitting on the beanbags. Noticing my gaze, he turned his large, golden eyes away, too embarrassed to acknowledge that I’d caught him staring.

Mr. Sig watched the interaction before stepping aside and motioning to the empty hall behind him. “Well, Pink Squad,” he started, causing the four of us, newly-named and still very unused to the higher level of treatment, to raise our heads, “training doesn’t happen on its own.”

Zive perked up. “We’re still training?” he shouted. All of us, apart from the ever-considerate Mr. Sig, flinched at his volume.

Mr. Sig nodded. “Of course, you are,” he said smoothly. “How do you think Littlestars become Superstars?”

The Pink glanced at each other wonderingly. I still couldn’t meet their eyes. I was busy wondering why it was so difficult to speak. Desperately I tried to cough out the words that were stuck in my throat, but they refused to budge, and I was left standing alone as Zive, Ino, and Sera bounded off down the hall at the invitation of Mr. Sig and headed toward the training rooms.

I stared after them. Mr. Sig was still in the doorway. Did they forget about me? Were they leaving me behind? What was the weird stinging I was feeling in my chest? I didn’t feel anything about it. I didn’t think that I did, anyway. If they left me behind, then it wasn’t anything all too deep or personal, and I wasn’t going to feel anything about it.

I tried to think that I didn’t feel anything. But I couldn’t convince myself, because there was some heavy disappointment in my chest that I couldn’t force down, as much as I tried to say I was apathetic. They left me behind. They forgot.

A shadow was cast over my face. The room went cold. When I finally looked up, I noticed that Mr. Sig hadn’t gone to chase the Pink down, but was walking toward me instead. “I hear they’ve given you a name,” he said gently, conversationally.

I pulled air into my lungs. My chest felt like it was wrapped in some coil that made it harder to breathe. I didn’t like it. I didn’t want it. I thought Mr. Sig had already gotten rid of the tension. I thought that was over.

Mr. Sig looked at me and the heaviness melted.

Finally, I nodded. “Y… yes.” Talking still felt difficult, but not as impossible as before.

“What is it?” His head tilted, and I guessed that he already knew. If he’d found out that I had a name, he’d certainly found out what the name was. 

I wondered what he would think of it as I spoke the syllables aloud. “So-So.”

Mr. Sig looked at me thoughtfully. “It sounds interesting.” He paused. “Do you like it?”

I didn’t see anything wrong with it. It was a nickname, and I didn’t even have a regular name before it, so being called anything besides Orboot was a positive for me. In response, I nodded. 

“I suppose it works, then.” One of my paws had slipped into his right hand– I didn’t remember it happening, but apparently it had, because he was guiding me toward the door and down the hall to where the Pink had run off to. “You are always welcome to choose your own name, little blaze. You have a while yet before you become a Superstar.”

I wondered whether or not I would become a Superstar. I wanted Zive and Ino and Sera to be Superstars. They certainly had the ability to be. Zive had the voice of an angel– an angel who sang too loudly and too often, but still an angel– and Sera had a miraculous vibrato and Ino could move as smoothly and sharply as a snake. The months of training ahead weren’t to teach them anything, but to harness the obvious abilities they already had. They would make it to Superstardom easily.
But I wasn’t so sure about me. The only reason I was in the Pink Squad with them at all was because we were friends, and they’d begged Mr. Sig to allow me in despite my voice being shaky and quiet and my paws still trembling. I would try to become a Superstar– I would try to learn at least one of the things that the trainers would decide to teach– but that didn’t mean I would make it.

Mr. Sig’s voice entered my awareness as we turned a corner in the hall. “You should believe in yourself, blaze.”

I wondered if he was going to use my new name. But maybe he was still waiting for me to choose my own, which wouldn’t be possible if Zive wanted to keep up his deal with the Yellow. “Why?” I asked, glancing up at Mr. Sig’s glowing face.

He looked down at me. “Because I believe in you.”

—

Gingerly I lifted a paw to my face, wincing with pain. Tarko’s hoof had left a gruesome mark that still stung to the touch. Biting back a whine, I dug further into the cold, soft cot, wanting to bury myself in the puffy pillow and hope that I would never return to the waking world.

The door creaked open. Light spilled onto the wall in front of me. The three shadows that stood in the doorway hesitated, murmuring to each other, before being ushered forward. I knew who they were even before I heard their voices. 

“So-So…” 

Now the name sounded stupid coming from Sera’s mouth, and I grabbed the pillow, ignoring the stinging pain in my cheek, and pulled it down over my ears. I didn’t want to hear that name anymore. Not after what the Green had done. I didn’t want to hear it ever again, from Tarko or Glep or Geyser or Nissa, or from anyone in the Pink. I didn’t like it. I didn’t want it. I would think of something else later, if there even was a later to be had, because I didn’t want to get up from the cot or remove the pillow from overtop my head.

Despite the fluffy block over my ears, I could still hear Zive, Ino, and Sera muttering to each other unsurely. I watched their shadows on the wall in front of me, hesitating, deliberating, pointing accusingly at each other as if deciding who would have to come talk to me first, when suddenly another shadow was cast across their three and they all turned at once. But I didn’t have to turn. I knew who it was just from the length of the shadow, the reflection of pale turquoise light against the wall. Mr. Sig.

I unfolded the pillow from around my ears and tucked it under my elbows, slowly sitting up. Everything still ached from the fight, but I wouldn’t cry. I had already told myself I wouldn’t. Being hit in the face first was one thing– then, I couldn’t think clearly. I was excused from the tears that stung in the corners of my eyes when the sudden thunk of Tarko’s hoof had collided with my jaw. But now, I’d had the time to think, and I didn’t need to cry anymore. I wasn’t going to cry anymore.

Finally I turned away from the wall and faced the four who stood in the entrance of the room– the Pink, my Squad, with a nervous Zive and a sympathetic Sera and a sniffly Ino, and Mr. Sig, standing behind them all, trying to encourage them to go toward me.

I wasn’t crying. I wasn’t going to cry. The Overseer had helped to bandage up the cuts and soothe the worst of the bruises with ice packs, so I was already treated. I didn’t need to cry. I wouldn’t cry.

Ino rushed forward first, Zive and Sera close behind, and their voices overlapped with questions that I couldn’t respond to. For some reason my throat felt tight. But I didn’t fail to notice that they hadn’t been excused from the fighting. The Green must’ve gotten them, too, before the Overseers could peel them off of us. Again the other Littlestars, with all their teaching on thoughtfulness and kindness, had done nothing but stand around and gawk at us as we were beaten to the floor.

Mr. Sig walked toward me and I burst into tears.

It took a long time– lots of sitting together on the cot, lots of the Overseers bringing us juice boxes, lots of the Pink making fun of their own injuries, laughing off the scrapes and bruises– before my eyes finally dried up. Mr. Sig had left most of the talking to the other Pink, and I didn’t remember when I’d let them get close to me, but eventually we ended up in a comforting pile of hugs sitting in front of the cot. I didn’t care that Sera’s water was forming a cold puddle on the floor. I didn’t care that the spikes on Zive’s tail were poking me every time he shifted restlessly. I didn’t mind most of all that Ino had curled up next to me. Only after a while of sitting and breathing did I realize that his fur was damp with what I assumed were tears, although I didn’t ever recognize that those tears might’ve been mine.

I sniffled. Zive’s breathing was soft enough that he could’ve been asleep. I was tucked in Ino’s arms, listening to the thumping of his heart in his chest. Sera was leaning half-against me, soaking my fur. I might’ve fallen asleep, had Mr. Sig not still been standing over in one corner of the room, discussing something softly with an Overseer with a green pin on her shoulder– the Green Squad’s signature color.

Subtly I tilted my ears toward the conversation, hoping to not be noticed. A shift in Ino’s breathing told me that he was still awake, and I heard the softest sound as his ears swiveled in the direction of Mr. Sig and the Overseer. Evidently both of us were curious. We were lucky that Zive was asleep, otherwise he would’ve shot up and shouted and ruined our secrecy.

“...becoming Superstars,” Mr. Sig was saying when I finally found my focus. His voice was warm, too warm, and somewhat furtive, and I was finding it hard to listen. I wished there was some way to outlast his voice. “Their behavior has been inappropriate even before they were given their assignments.”

The Overseer clasped her hands in front of her nervously. “We’ve been trying to teach them,” she started. “And most of the Squad is listening, but Tarko’s been influencing them lately…”

Mr. Sig sighed, or made the impression of sighing, since I was sure that he didn’t have any space for lungs in his paper-flat chest. “I don’t want to put the whole Squad at risk,” he murmured thoughtfully. “If it’s possible, I would like to give them another chance.”

“Another chance might make them choose the same path, sir–” the Overseer interjected.

“If they choose the same path again, then they will be returned to Gray training.” Mr. Sig nodded firmly. “I am willing to give them another try without Tarko in their Squad.”

The Overseer, lowering her gaze, reached into her coatpocket and pulled out a notepad about the size of my paw, clicking a pen. At the sound, both she and Mr. Sig turned their heads toward us, the Pink pile on the floor, and I shut my eyes, hoping that Ino had done the same. I’m asleep, I thought, trying to deepen my breathing. I’m sleeping. I’m sleeping because I’m very tired from crying a lot.

I definitely wanted to fall asleep. I could feel the urge to drift off running through my veins. But I had to stay awake to listen, because– was it possible? was I hearing it right?– were they going to remove Tarko from the Green Squad? I had to know. If that was what they meant, then the Pink and I would be free. No more worrying about Tarko pouncing on us in the dance studio because we happened to be there at the same time as him and the Green. No more being called that stupid, terrible nickname that I never wanted to hear again. Please, Mr. Sig, I thought, since I didn’t want to reveal that Ino and I were still awake and I couldn’t figure out how to force the words out, please remove him from the Squad.

“Should we remove him, then?” asked the Overseer. I narrowly opened one eye to see her holding up a pen to the paw-sized notepad.

Mr. Sig seemed to be considering something, hands folded behind his back, head tilted toward the ground. Without looking up, he nodded. “Yes,” he said, very quietly, very disappointedly. “I thought Tarko had potential, but I may have overlooked some of his past choices…”

“Sir.” The Overseer’s hand stopped its movement atop the paper. Her voice was hesitant as she said, much softer than before, “I understand that it was his fault this time. But what about the last time?” When Mr. Sig did not immediately respond, she continued with, “He didn’t swing first. He may have been acting brutish, but it wasn’t his fault. It was the girl’s.”

Their gazes flicked back to me and I shut my eyes, fur rippling with unease. I hoped they didn’t notice that I was still awake. Maybe Ino had taken the hint and had kept his eyes shut. At least he wouldn’t get in trouble for listening in on their conversation. And Zive and Sera were fast asleep. I’m asleep, too, I thought, trying not to dig my claws into Ino’s white fur, fighting the nervous instinct. I’m asleep. I’m asleep. I’m very asleep.

“Was it wise to put her in a Squad, sir?” asked the Overseer, and I relaxed in the hopes that she hadn’t noticed I was still awake.

Mr. Sig’s voice was gentle as he spoke. “She hasn’t done anything wrong, Krisso,” he said. “She has been through what very few Littlestars ever have, and she was still adjusting at the time. Lately, she’s been better.”

“But…”

“Today, for example.” My eyes were shut, but I could imagine Mr. Sig making a motion with his paper-flat hands, like he always did. “Tarko went after her first, but she did not fight back.” A pause. “I believe the Green got off easy, considering what she did to him last time.”

The Overseer– Krisso– suppressed a laugh that my ears barely caught. “I understand that, sir,” she nodded, “but if Tarko is being removed without another chance, why would she still be in the Pink? Shouldn’t we at least have… waited… a little bit before putting her into training?” There was a noise, something like a disapproving scoff. “She could’ve put her designers in danger.”

“She could have done many things, Krisso.” Mr. Sig’s voice floated behind my eyelids. “She can do many things. Things I don’t believe even she understands.” There was a pause, a long one, where I made sure to keep my eyes shut and my breathing slow, just in case they were looking over at us to make sure we were all asleep. For once, Zive’s snoring was actually a gift. “Don’t worry about her. Training will become much smoother without Tarko around to be a bother.”

“Where should we put him, then?” Krisso responded.

“Back in the Gray.” His voice lowered. “Preferably in another part of the facility.”

“And do… what?”

“Talk with the Gray Overseers, please.” His voice dropped to a tiny whisper that I couldn’t pick up without straining my ears, and by the time I had stretched my hearing enough, he was finished talking. “Thank you.” A dismissing word, and then soft footsteps as Krisso left the room, muttering and tucking her paw-sized notepad back into her coatpocket.

I felt Mr. Sig’s gaze turn from the doorway over to me and I couldn’t help the nervous prickle that spiked through my pelt. It was enough to tell him that I was still awake, still coherent enough to know that he was here and anxious about being caught listening into his private conversation, and I waited for him to chastise me. Maybe he had caught Ino, too. 

But no chastisement came. He looked at us for a moment longer, murmured something that I barely caught, and then his footsteps receded down the hall.

His words replayed in my head. They had to have been for me. There was no one else that he addressed like that, not one of the other Pink, and no other Littlestars were in the room. 

“Let nothing put out your fire.”

—

Cold liquid splattered onto my paws. I looked down, not realizing how tightly I’d been holding my juice box until I saw the little claw-sized holes poked in the sides of it. Disappointed, I watched as the clear juice drained from the box and ended up on the floor at my feet. So much for having a soothing drink after training.

The day had been exhausting. Zive had insisted on forcing us all to the dance studio first thing, even though my fur was still ruffled and Sera hadn’t had the chance to rinse the lint off her water-skin and Ino was still rubbing sleep from his eyes. We’d tidied ourselves up on the way down the hall, walking all the way to the studio only to realize that we’d forgotten our accessories, and then I’d had to walk all the way back to the Pink quarters and grab my bandana and Zive’s ribbon and Ino’s chain and Sera’s rose-colored dye before trudging back to the dance studio. It was another half-hour of messing with our accessories until we liked them– the designers had insisted that I let them tie the back of the bandana so it wouldn’t end up looking like a messy knot, even though I liked the messy knot more than the clean little bow that they always made– and then another half-hour of recalling the dances that Mr. Sig had taught us last week, and then another half-hour of pointing out each other’s mistakes and dealing with Zive shouting every instruction at the top of his lungs, and then two more hours of repeating the process until we took a break for lunch, which was a small affair that we had decided to keep within the confines of the dance studio despite the Overseers being upset about us covering the floor with crumbs. They mopped the floors while the four of us crashed, folded together in a pile of boredom and exhaustion, and it was Zive’s voice, clear and unnecessarily loud, that woke us all into a frenzy as he pulled us back into practice again. Back, forth, forward, Zive in the front, then back again– let him sing, Sera and I form a circle– Ino jumps, then me, then Zive, then Sera slides at the end– eventually the instructions were so ingrained into my thoughts that they became a mantra that I repeated until my muscles felt like water and my bones had melted in my arms and all four of us collapsed to the floor.

Eventually the Overseers arrived to drag us out of the studio, since we’d been using it the entire day and the other Squads weren’t thrilled about us getting special privileges just because we had gotten there first. We’d pretended to ignore their angry stares as we were marched down the hall and to the lounge, where we were given juice boxes and coloring books and told to relax until later, but obviously, none of us were relaxing, and we had no idea when later was.

Zive was pacing near the door. The Overseers had asked us not to leave the room, and I could tell he wanted to burst out into the hall and head back to the dance studio, but even Zive had to listen occasionally. Sera was busying herself with splashing water all over the coloring books out of spite. Ino’s claws had been sinking in and out of the couch cushion in his paws to the point where he was swamped in pillow stuffing and looked like he was surrounded by a cloud. I had just popped a hole in my juice box. Impatience buzzed in the room like a swarm of flies.

It was Zive who snapped first. “When are they gonna let us out?” he complained, raising his hands to the sides of his head. “We’ve been in here for, like– too long!”

Sera did not look up from the coloring book she was soaking. “It’s been fifteen minutes,” she replied smoothly.

Zive scoffed. “Fifteen minutes too long!” He started to pace again, footfalls soft against the carpeted floor of the lounge. “Fifteen minutes where we could still be practicing.”

“What are you so upset about, anyway?” Ino looked up from his cloud of pillow stuffing. I glanced at him curiously. He was one to talk, surrounded by the evidence of his own anxiety. “We’ve had the whole day to dance. And my legs are tired.” His back paws stretched out shakily before folding again, and he leaned back against the cushions behind him, round, golden eyes looking up at the ceiling. “I don’t wanna dance anymore.”

Zive perked up. “Then we don’t have to go back to the studio!” he responded, looking over at the door. “We can practice singing instead.”

Sera blinked. “I think you’ve sung enough for one day.” All three of us recalled Zive’s incessant singing during the hours of practice and stifled both a laugh and a groan. I was beginning to understand, at least a little bit, what humor was, and it turned out that Zive and Ino were some of the funniest Littlestars I had ever met. Disregarding the fact that I hadn’t spent very much time with other Littlestars, it was still something of a compliment.

“Have not!” The dragon-boy argued back, turning toward the door. “Maybe we can ask the Overseers to let us out of here.” He raised a clawed hand to knock on the door, as if an Overseer would be standing outside and guarding us, but we weren’t trapped. We could leave if we wanted to. It was only a matter of whether or not we wanted to follow the Overseers’ instructions, which usually came straight from Mr. Sig, and I would never disagree with Mr. Sig. 

There was no way to tell if he’d authorized our forced relaxation, though, because as Zive knocked and knocked, no one came to the door. “Huh,” the dragon-boy mused, leaning back. “I guess… nobody’s there?”

Sera glanced up curiously, leaving the soaking coloring book to melt in its misery, and pushed herself to her feet. “Why wouldn’t anybody be there?” she asked, walking toward the door and standing at Zive’s side as he knocked again and again, but there was no answer. “You realize you’re knocking on the door from the inside, right?”

Zive blinked at her. “Yeah.”

“People…” She looked between Ino and I as if either of us would have an answer, but I was still holding my leaking juice box and Ino was surrounded by a cloud of pillow stuffing. Neither of us had anything to say. “People usually don’t knock on doors from the inside.”

Zive shrugged off her logic. “So?” He raised a fist to knock again at the door only to have it swing backward in front of him. Alarmed, both he and Sera jerked back with unceremonious yelps of fright, backing away from the door before realizing who stood in its wake. Mr. Sig.

“Hello.” He looked down at the two Littlestars in front of him, straightening his tie apologetically. “I’m quite sorry, I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

Sera wiped a bead of sweat from her brow and nodded. “It’s alright, Mr. Sig,” she responded appropriately, nudging, and eventually pulling, Zive to the side to give Mr. Sig the space to enter the room. “Won’t you come in?”

The room wasn’t ours to offer. In fact, we’d made quite the mess of it since we were told to sit in it and wait for an indeterminate amount of time. But Mr. Sig took Sera’s invitation anyway, shutting the door behind him and looking over the cloud of fluff that Ino sat in, the juice box puddle at my feet, the teeth marks on the furniture from an antsy Zive, and the soaking pile of coloring books on the table with no particular judgment in his posture. I was reminded that he dealt with Littlestars on a daily basis– Littlestars who were much worse than we were, if such a thing was even possible– and I wondered how he managed to be so calm.

“I’ve been told that you have been practicing since this morning,” said Mr. Sig, moving toward one of the few chairs that hadn’t been marked by Zive’s teeth or torn apart by Ino’s claws or splattered by Sera’s water and settling on it. “Have you gone over the moves I taught you?”

Zive nodded fervently while Sera pulled him around the table to sit across from Mr. Sig. “Yes!” he announced, proudly lifting his snout. “I led the practice.”

Sera glanced between him and Mr. Sig. “All day,” she emphasized. The slightest twitch of an eye was all it took for Ino and I to know that she was very tired of Zive’s extroverted confidence and probably would’ve liked some alone time after spending the entire day with him.

Mr. Sig, who noticed everything, tilted his head curiously. “You’re very dedicated,” he complimented, soothing Zive’s rippling scales and coaxing a sharp-toothed smile from the dragon-boy. “I think that dedication deserves some reward.”

All of us perked up. “Reward?” Ino asked, leaning over his torn-up pillow and throwing bits of white fluff from his fur. “What kind of reward?”

“Well,” Mr. Sig looked down at his hands, crossing one leg over the other, “I could send you off to the dining hall and leave you to recover for the night…”

Our faces fell. Even Zive, who had a stomach the size of a black hole, wasn’t smiling. The Yellow had stopped giving food to him after they’d found out that we as the Pink had chosen my nickname– the nickname that I had since requested to change– without asking for their opinions, and every time they saw him, they glared at him collectively until even he, the ever-confident Zive, was thrown off and wanted to duck and hide. As much as we tried to convince them that I could still be given a name, they refused. Going to the mess hall, where they would most likely be at this time of day if they weren’t taking over the dance studio just to spite us, would only result in them staring us down angrily. 

At least they hadn’t confronted us yet. But they hadn’t had the chance to, and if we ended up in the mess hall at the same time as them, then…

“Or…” Mr. Sig had not yet finished. Our faces lifted. “I was thinking of a different reward.” He steepled his hands. “How tired are you?”

I glanced at the others. I was tired enough to curl into Ino’s cloud of pillow stuffing and fall asleep, but I didn’t want to do that now, not when Ino was still in his cloud, and especially not when Mr. Sig was in the room. Ino looked tired enough to fall asleep in his own cloud of stuffing. The light in his bright golden eyes was tired and sad. Sera seemed more watery than usual, dripping constantly on the floor– I wondered if she was going to suddenly become a waterfall and end up as a puddle that we would have to scoop up in a vacuum to carry around. Zive would’ve denied that he was tired, because he was Zive and he was never weak, but his two hearts were beating slowly in his chest, and I could tell that he was only denying himself what he needed– what all of us needed. Sleep. But if sleeping was tempered by being forced to go to the mess hall for dinner, lest our supply of snacks be depleted, then I didn’t want to sleep. I didn’t like the Yellow if they didn’t like Zive.

Ino could not suppress a yawn. “Pretty tired,” he admitted. Sera and I nodded assent, and Zive’s silence was a telltale answer.

Mr. Sig’s paper-face folded downward in a frown. “That’s unfortunate,” he said, uncrossing his legs and pushing himself to his feet. “I was considering showing you around the Superstar studio tonight, but if you’re too tired, I’ll–”

All of us jumped to our feet at once, stumbling over each other, tripping over tired paws and claws and trying not to completely embarrass ourselves. “No! No, Mr. Sig! We’re not too tired!” The shouting was a mixture of voices that I thought was just Zive, Ino, and Sera, but gradually I realized that my mouth was open and I was talking, too. No. Not talking. Not speaking, but shouting, shouting with excitement, the adrenaline jumping back into my veins at the thought of being so close to the very thing I’d been working for. The Superstars.

Mr. Sig lifted his hands, relenting to our requests. “Alright, alright,” he murmured, face tilted upward in a smile, before walking toward the door and swinging it open. “If you can stay on your feet, that is.”

I realized that my legs felt like jelly. Sera was still melting. Zive looked like a balloon ready to burst, and Ino’s paws, already too big, seemed clumsier than usual. All of us straightened up like we were still well-disciplined Littlestars and not the infamous Pink Squad, and Mr. Sig, looking us over, nodded approvingly before leading us out into the hall.

The way to the Superstar studio was about as long as the way from the dance studio to the Pink quarters, a walk that seemed longer than it was because of all the winding twists and turns. We came upon a stairway that I was sure we were going to take, and just as I began to worry that I wouldn’t have the strength to make it up several flights of stairs, Mr. Sig led us to an intricate-looking elevator and herded us inside. I watched him scan over a series of labeled buttons attached to the elevator wall before selecting a button in the shape of a star. The door slid closed, the elevator shot downward, and I found myself clutching a railing on the wall before I knew what was happening.

Mr. Sig was the only one of us who was still calm. His hands were folded behind his back as he turned to us, curiously. “I believe you’re going to have to get used to riding elevators, if you want to be Superstars,” he said, with no particular emotion.

All four of us snapped up. Even if the elevator was jerking downward and my stomach was jumping into my throat and my paws felt like they were glued to the floor, I would stand up straighter if it meant I could be a Superstar. Superstars take elevators, I thought, shuffling my paws against the smooth elevator floor to try to keep myself steady. Superstars take elevators all the time, and they never get scared.

Finally we slid to a comfortable stop somewhere far below the Littlestar quarters that I had always called home. I had never been on an elevator– at least, in the Headquarters– before. Everything I knew had been on the floor with the other Littlestars, the itty-Stars, and the Squad quarters. I hadn’t even known that there were other places in the Headquarters besides the first floor, but apparently there were, and we were so deep underground that my ears popped. 

The elevator door slid open. Mr. Sig gestured for us to step out into a space much more lavish than anything I had seen before. The walls were high, painted a deep magenta shade that soothed my eyes compared to the bright colors of the Littlestar quarters, and the floor was carpeted and plush under my paws. Along the walls were various shelves, on top of which sat several artifacts that, upon closer inspection, belonged to past Superstars. A magazine with a wolf on the cover. A newspaper with a trio on the front page. A CD case with the Superstar logo– three bright stars all flashing neon colors. Mr. Sig stopped to explain a few of the artifacts to us, but he left most up to interpretation. Zive, Ino, Sera and I gawked at the items as we passed, muttering to each other. Could that be us one day? Would we get put on the cover of a magazine? The front page of a newspaper? Have our own CD?

Mr. Sig led us down a series of hallways, peering into rooms along the way and greeting people that I assumed were Overseers, straightening up the Superstars’ bedrooms, editing music videos, testing makeup, before finally stopping at a large room filled with screens. The walls were hot pink, a color that had become all-too-familiar to me from living in the Pink Squad quarters, and the floor was a dark magenta carpet patterned with little yellow stars. The room was filled with items– television screens, CD players, headphones with cords attached to nothing, small tables and beanbag chairs– and the back wall was lined with monitor after monitor displaying old Superstar shows.

Without thinking, I walked straight toward the monitors, fascinated. The mutters of the Pink become an irrelevant blur in the back of my mind as I stared up at the screens, the lights flashing into my wide eyes. Briefly I remembered how I used to be unable to sit through an entire Superstar shows, because they were too loud or too bright or too long, or maybe because I felt jealous and afraid that I would never be able to make it to Superstardom when here I stood in the very studio where Superstars were made. I wondered how my paws had ever been able to lead me to such significant ground.

“Ah.” It was Mr. Sig’s voice, and only Mr. Sig’s, that snapped me out of my fascinated trance. “I see you’re enjoying the shows.”

I nodded silently. It was impossible to watch every monitor at the same time, but my eyes kept flicking from screen to screen, attempting to keep track of every show. Not all of the shows were the same. Some of them were primarily vocal– shows that, I thought, would fit Zive very well. Others were a lot of dance. And there were others, too– theatrical shows that I had rarely seen any Littlestars train for, especially not the Pink. We seemed to be more of the singing-and-dancing type.

Well, Zive and Ino and Sera seemed to be the singing-and-dancing type. I could dance. Mr. Sig had even complimented the energy of my movements– whatever that meant, since I didn’t really pay attention to what I was doing when I was dancing– once, and that filled me with more confidence than anything else did.

But I couldn’t sing. I could hardly talk, let alone lift my voice the way Zive or Sera did.

“I remember these.” There was a hint of something strange, something like longing, to Mr. Sig’s voice as he lifted his head and looked over the wall of monitors. “All of these. I remember when all of them were itty-Stars.” Looking over, he gestured to a screen to my right, on which a newer-looking show flashed with familiar faces. “Do you remember who they were?”

I squinted and found that I did. I remembered those Littlestars. Their faces were a blurry mush in my head, but I remembered hearing them practice singing in the studio when I was still a Gray– an inexperienced Littlestar without a Squad. Looking at them now, at the flashing background that they sang in front of, the easy way they boasted their Superstardom, the cheering audience they stood in front of, I could hardly believe that they were the same Littlestars I had once known. I could hardly believe that any of these were once Littlestars.

Mr. Sig looked down at me. I felt his gaze on my face, and whatever emotion had been coiling in my chest released its tight grip. “It’s been a long time since you were a Gray, too,” he started gently. “Have you learned to use your words yet?”

I glanced back. The Pink was still rifling around the room behind me, admiring all the technology and staring at themselves with awe when the camera feeds caught them, Zive busily admiring the tiny wings that had begun to grow out of his back. None of them were paying attention. Unconvincingly, I responded, very softly, “Yes.”

“You seem more confident.” Mr. Sig tilted his head. “But it only seems so. Do you prefer to talk?”

I shook my head. “No.” He should’ve known that by now. And maybe he did. But if he knew, why was he asking me? Mr. Sig wasn’t the type to waste words.

He gestured for me to follow him away from the monitors and sat down on one of the many chairs in the corner. I followed, settling across from him, worried that if I sank too deeply into the plush beanbag then I wouldn’t be able to get back up. It was hard to admit how tired I was to anyone other than myself.

Mr. Sig looked at me. Every coil unwound from my chest. Every worry began to melt. I was sure that I would melt, too, because the beanbag suddenly seemed more plush than before, the room warmer, the safety thicker and richer, the drowsiness deeper and fuller–

“Do you want to become a Superstar?”

I blinked. I was falling asleep. Evidently Mr. Sig hadn’t intended for this to happen, as he looked away from me, paper-head tilted upward in something of a smirk that he couldn’t keep down. Self-consciously, remembering how I’d just fervently told him that I wasn’t that tired a few minutes before, I managed to sit up, rubbing the sleep from my eyes. Later would be the time to sleep. I was in– we were in– the Superstar studio for the first time, and I couldn’t fall asleep like it was boring.

“I’m sorry,” Mr. Sig laughed. “Very sorry about that. Although I will try to get this over with quickly, if you can manage to stay awake for that long.”

I sensed the humor in his voice and flicked an ear in his direction. I could manage it. I could–

“Have you learned to use your words?”

I coughed. “Yes.” Yes, I could manage to stay awake, and yes, I’d learned that other people could not tell what I was thinking just from blankly staring at them. The past few weeks of Littlestar training had been surprisingly helpful for my talking ability. But not my singing. Nothing could help the fact that I couldn’t raise my voice.

Mr. Sig straightened one of his cuffs. “I know you’ve been training with the others,” he said softly, quiet enough so that even Ino, who was busily bickering with Zive about who looked better in the camera feed across the room, couldn’t hear him. “And I know that they have been training to become Superstars.” He glanced in their direction, gauging whether or not they were listening in, and leaned forward slightly. “You know, I was planning to give them the title sometime within the next few days–” my eyes widened, and I nearly shouted for joy, had he not been staring intently into my face, keeping me deliberately quiet, “–but there is something I want to clear up first.”

He leaned away. I had the urge to whirl around and tell the other Littlestars what I’d heard– that their dreams would come true any day now, and all their hard work had paid off– but I knew that it would be rude to Mr. Sig, who had a reason for keeping it a secret, as well as a reason for telling only me. And maybe that reason wasn’t as good as I thought it was.

I remembered what he’d told Krisso the Overseer back after the fight with the Green, the first fight I ever had in the Pink Squad and the last I ever had with Tarko. He had vouched for me to be in the Pink, but Krisso had disagreed, considering my past behavior, and I wondered if other Overseers who had watched me fight shared her opinion. Could they still hold that opinion now? Were they wary of me becoming a Superstar? What did it say about the Headquarters as a whole– about Mr. Sig himself– if I became a Superstar and Tarko didn’t get the chance?

I hadn’t thought about Tarko in a while. And I hadn’t had the need to. He was removed from the Green Squad a day after the incident and I hadn’t seen him since, though apparently, according to reports from Glep, Geyser, and Nissa, he’d been sent back to being a Gray in a different part of the Headquarters and was being retrained. At the time I thought it was good enough– after all, my face still bore the bruise of his hoof, and Ino’s nose was still healing from a gash that Nissa herself, the awful cat, had opened up– but now, thinking back, I wondered if it was right after all for Tarko to be sent off and for me to be given the privilege of becoming a Superstar.

I looked up, into Mr. Sig’s glowing face, and searched for some answer there. Was I not going to become a Superstar after all? Was I going to be separated from Zive and Ino and Sera and shipped off to be a Gray again?

My claws unsheathed. I felt my paws tighten into terrified fists. It wasn’t the thought of failing at Superstardom that scared me– it would knock off months of work, yes, but none of that work meant anything without my friends. It was the thought of being separated from the only people I knew and trusted. The people that I cared about. If I was sent back to being a Gray, I would have to be retrained and retaught and bunked up with an entirely new trio of Littlestars, and by the time I could hope to be placed in the Pink Squad again, Zive, Ino, and Sera would have already graduated. It would be hopeless. I would only get to see them as impersonal celebrities on the Superstar shows. I would hardly ever see them. 

And what would I do then, when the people I cared about were taken from me?

“Blaze…”

Mr. Sig’s voice echoed at the edge of my hearing, but everything– him, the Pink, the tinny sounds of the music playing over the monitors– sounded like it was at the end of a long, dark tunnel. Far away. Unreachable.

“Blaze…”

I wondered why he had still chosen to call me that. Even after the downfall of my unofficial nickname, he’d stuck with referring to me as blaze, despite it not being a name at all, only a word. At least, after I’d been assigned to the Pink and gained a little more stature, he had taken the little out of it. 

“Blaze.”

Mr. Sig was looking at me. I blinked once, twice, before I registered that he was still there, across from me, not at the other end of an unreasonably long, dark tunnel, but sitting on a chair a few feet away. He was looking at me, the light in his paper-face rippling with concern. He was there, but the worries weren’t melting. The worries weren’t going away like they usually did. They were still there, still sticking to the inside of my brain until I couldn’t get them out, until they were the only things I could ruminate over–

“What are you worrying about?” His voice echoed into my awareness again. “Did I ever say that you wouldn’t become a Superstar?”

I wondered why he insisted that I talk so much. Clearly he could read my mind. He didn’t need me to speak to him.

His head tilted forward, affirming what I knew. “I am no magician, blaze,” he laughed quietly. “I only know what I can see.”

Despite not having eyes, Mr. Sig saw more than I did.

“You have nothing to worry about.” He lowered his gaze, folding his hands in his lap. “I was only going to ask you if… you want to become a Superstar.”

I opened my mouth to answer, but he raised a hand before I could make a noise. “Ah,” he tutted, “think carefully before you answer, please.”

Think carefully? What did I have to think carefully about? I had spent the past several weeks learning to dance and trying, and failing, to sing and coordinating my life with the lives of the three Littlestars who stood somewhere behind me. Their dream was to become Superstars. So why wouldn’t I want the same? Why wouldn’t I follow in their footsteps?

Mr. Sig looked at me. “Do you really want to become a Superstar?” he asked, lowering his hand. “Is that what you want?”

I opened my mouth, again, but nothing came out– and this time, not because Mr. Sig interrupted me, but because I couldn’t figure out what my answer was.

I wanted to be a Superstar. At least, I thought I did. But Superstardom– the fame, the flashy colors, the bright lights and loud voices and audiences screaming cheers of my name– was not something I dreamed about. I didn’t mind it, but I didn’t want it, either. It wasn’t my goal.

Then why have I been training so hard?

Why did I care? Why did it matter so much, if I didn’t want the fame and colors and lights and voices and cheers? Why was I working toward it if I didn’t care about it at all?

Mr. Sig was still looking at me. “Let me ask it differently,” he said, setting his elbows on his knees and leaning forward. “Do you want to be a Superstar, or do you want to be with your friends?”

That. That was it. That was exactly it. 

I didn’t want to be a Superstar. Of course, I wouldn’t mind being one, and being around the others in the Pink Squad made me share their infectious excitement whenever Superstardom was mentioned– hence why I had shouted earlier in the day, which I hardly ever did– but I didn’t dream about it. I didn’t care for it. I didn’t want it.

What I wanted was to be with my friends.

Not just to be with them. But stay with them. Watching the new itty-Stars come in, seeing them grow into Littlestars that bickered and fought and then apologized and hugged and messed up their box-steps and threw lunch trays at each other and stole each other’s socks and complained about thoughtfulness lessons, only to be separated into bunks and Squads and eventually Superstars, made me realize how lucky I had been. The only reason Zive and Ino and Sera had not been separated was because I was bunked with them and, at the time, I wasn’t exactly stable around anyone but them, so Mr. Sig had put us all in the same Squad to make sure that we stayed safe. Thanks to him, Zive, Ino, and Sera had been able to be lifelong friends, and I had been able to tag along with the people I had learned to care about, the people that had learned to care about me in return.

I didn’t want to be separated from them. I didn’t want to live without them. They were the reason I had learned to talk, had trained so hard, had let the designers trim and clean my fur to the point where it was sleek and smooth without a single stray clump. I would follow them wherever they went. If they wanted to become Superstars, then I would become a Superstar alongside them. If they were sent back to being Grays, then I would be sent back to being a Gray alongside them. There wasn’t anything they would do that I wouldn’t also do, or at least try, with all of my might, because they were the first people that I ever knew, the first Littlestars I ever trusted, and I would never leave their side.

Mr. Sig stared at me intently until I felt uncomfortable beneath his gaze. He must’ve been reading my mind, because there was no way I was going to be able to say everything I had just thought out loud. Not with the Pink so near. It was already difficult to express how I felt to someone other than myself, let alone to the people I cared about.

Mr. Sig leaned back. “You know, blaze,” he began amicably, “you should really talk more often. You have a lot to say.”

He can read minds, I thought. He can! I knew he can!

But if he was reading it then, he said nothing of it. “I would never try to change you,” he said. “Do you remember when I told you that?”

I nodded. I did. Very well, actually. I remembered sitting in the round hallway and listening to the rain pattering against the roof above us as he’d patched up the scratches from the fight with Tarko and told me that he didn’t blame me. It was one of few conversations that had stuck in my mind ever since, and it was impossible to forget.

“You know me,” Mr. Sig chuckled. “I don’t repeat myself unless I truly mean it.” He straightened against the chair behind him. “And I truly mean it when I say I would never make you into someone that you are not.”

I blinked. His voice was unexpectedly firm. 

“You have a natural talent.” He lifted a hand to the side of his paper-thin head– I could hardly imagine what he meant to do, but maybe he was thinking– and sighed. “A natural fire. I’ve told you this already, yes?”

Yes. Multiple times, in various different ways, had Mr. Sig strangely referred to me and my russet fur as something of a fire, the most obvious being my nickname. Blaze.

“Part of this talent, I can see in your dancing.” He waved a hand. “But that is only part of your talent. And that would be only part of being a Superstar.”

I didn’t know what he meant. I was good at dancing. Good enough to make it into a Squad, good enough to be considered for Superstardom, good enough that Mr. Sig complimented me about it. But I didn’t know what “other talent” I had. I wasn’t good at anything other than dancing. Everything else was just natural routine– eating, sleeping, walking, attempting conversation.

Mr. Sig looked at me. “Blaze,” he began, seriously, “I don’t think you are meant to be a Superstar.”

I stared at him. I sat up. I flattened my ears. “What?”

“No–” immediately he raised a hand, and his gaze made the rising tide of confusion and anger begin to melt in my chest; for the first time, I hated it, how easily he controlled a conversation, and I didn’t want the false soothing that made my heart beat slower and my eyes want to shut into sleep, “–no, this does not mean you cannot become a Superstar, nor does it mean you are not talented enough to be one.” 

He watched me carefully, waiting for my fur to stop rippling, waiting for the spite to clear from my eyes, but it didn’t. Not fully. I fought the unbearable urge to sink into the fluffy beanbag and let his voice carry away my worries. He’d just told me that I was good enough to be a Superstar– better, apparently, because I had this other magical talent that he was refusing to name, that I had never seen before– and then he said that I wasn’t meant to be a Superstar, when it was the only thing I had been working toward for the past several weeks? What was the point of training, then? What was the point of waking up early and having Zive drag me out of bed and into the dance studio and choking down the disgusting mess hall food if I wasn’t going to become a Superstar?

I didn’t want it. Not by myself. But I knew that Zive and Ino and Sera had dreamed of it their whole lives– Zive and Sera, at least, I was completely sure about– and I would never be able to convince them to do anything else. The point of their lives was to become Superstars. They were meant to become Superstars, obviously, otherwise Mr. Sig would never have told me that he was planning to give them the title sometime soon. 

But me? No, I wasn’t meant to be a Superstar. I wasn’t talented enough to receive the title. I didn’t get to spend the rest of my life with my friends. They would spend all their time together, just like they had done when they were Littlestars bunked in those stuffy rooms with the pillow forts and the fairylights, and I would be alone, destined to whatever stupid fate Mr. Sig thought I was better suited for just because I had other “talents.”

I wanted to get up. I wanted to throw something. I wanted to gouge my claws through something, preferably something glowing and papery and flat, something that would probably give very easily.

But Mr. Sig was a master of conversations, and I had no hope of lasting against him and his smooth words and terrible voice, the voice that I used to cling to for comfort amidst the everyday chaos of the other Littlestars. “Blaze,” he said, warningly, carefully, looking straight at me, “did I say that you could not be a Superstar?”

My mind searched through all the things he’d told me in the past few minutes of sitting in the chairs and pretending that the Pink wasn’t in the room. My anger fizzled slightly when I shook my head, realizing that he’d never told me such a thing. “But you didn’t say–”

He interrupted me with a raised hand. “I meant that you have far more talent than you know of.” He leaned forward. “Have I not given you plenty of time to think this over? I told you about this the very first time I met you.”

I didn’t remember back that far. At least, not clearly. I remembered something about the Headquarters breaking into the old Organization building, the place I had lived before arriving here, but everything else was a blur.

“You have a fire,” Mr. Sig said, quietly, low enough that I had to tilt my ears forward to hear it. “A natural fire. It isn’t just for dancing, although it gives you quite the advantage in that area. But I’ve seen you use it before.” His voice morphed into that comforting, familiar laugh that I remembered from that evening in the rainy hallway, and without my will, my ears relaxed. “The Overseers very much dislike me when I admit it, but the way you fight– the way you used to fight, shall we say– that was how I knew. You’ve seen how most Littlestars are. They are…” He searched for a word that was both complimentary and accurate but couldn’t seem to find one. “They are not fighters. They are easily afraid. The most frightening concept in their world is being caught making pillow forts in their quarters.”

Caught off-guard by his implications, I laughed, not expecting the sound to come from me. So he had known about Zive’s nightly pillow forts in our old Littlestar bunks. Did he know about the deal with the Yellow, then, too? What else did he know that he had never told me?

Mr. Sig’s face curved into a smile. A jolt of betrayal hit me in the stomach when I thought of how easily he’d made me laugh. I’m supposed to be angry, I thought, glaring at myself. I’m supposed to be mad at you for saying what you did.

But the anger was gone. The more I reached for it, the more it faded, until it was hardly there at all and I couldn’t recall why I was mad at him in the first place.

“You were always different from the other Littlestars,” Mr. Sig admitted, turning his face away and allowing me a moment with my thoughts. “You never spoke, yes, but that wasn’t what made you different. Neither was being a captive of the Organization’s.”

I frowned. What did Mr. Sig know about the Organization? It was general knowledge among the Littlestars that the Organization was some sort of evil superpower, but I’d always thought that none of them really knew anything about it, and I wasn’t about to tell them what I knew. There were some things that I would never share, not even with Mr. Sig.

Mr. Sig, for once, couldn’t seem to find the words for what he meant, and I, unlike him, did not have the ability to read minds. I wasn’t able to figure out what he meant just by watching him. He held out his hands in front of him and stared at them until I was sure he was finished talking, and only then did he straighten up and say, clearer than before, “I do not want you to waste your talent in being a Superstar, blaze.” He hesitated before letting out a tiny sigh. “That is all.”

I didn’t know what my talent was. If he never told me, how was I supposed to figure it out? Did he mean that I was good at fighting? That wouldn’t get me anywhere except for being a Gray, evidently, because Tarko was good at fighting, too, and he was still bunked with the Littlestars, waiting for his next chance to be assigned to a Squad. And it wasn’t very thoughtful– the word that Mr. Sig loved to use, that he taught every itty-Star before they were given their bunks, the word that defined the Headquarters as a whole, even the Superstars who danced and sang out in the world beyond– to fight. That wasn’t a very thoughtful talent for me to have.

I stared at him. I wanted him to tell me what my talent was. Did it have something to do with fire? With being the blaze? Did it have something to do with fighting? With knowing about the Organization? What was it?

Was it worth abandoning my friends over?

No. No, because nothing was. I would never abandon the Pink. Even if we became Superstars by ourselves, even if we never performed a show together, even if our bands and names were never attached to the public eye, I would never abandon them. Not for any waste of talent that Mr. Sig apparently saw.

I leaned forward. I looked at Mr. Sig. I said, firmly, “I want to be with my friends.”

He nodded, as if accepting my fate. “Then you will be.”

I stood up and walked away.

—

When did I get here?

I didn’t remember moving. The last thing I could recall was tossing and turning in my bunk in the Pink quarters, trying to fall asleep and knowing it would be the last night I ever spent in that stuffy hot pink room with the other three Littlestars I had always known. It was the last night I would even be a Littlestar. The thought of becoming a Superstar in the morning had my heart jumping in my chest, and I was certain that I wouldn’t be able to sleep the night through, despite what Mr. Sig had told Zive, Ino, Sera, and I about getting enough rest before the debut. I didn’t remember ever falling asleep, and I certainly didn’t remember going anywhere, either.

But the more I looked around, the more it seemed like I wasn’t really anywhere. Darkness surrounded me on all sides, an empty, echoing blackness that held nothing but a faint violet light coming from somewhere overhead– as far as I squinted, I couldn’t see the source of the light– and, as my paws registered the ground beneath me, a cold floor with a thin layer of water on the surface. Disgusted, I paced a few steps, flicking water off my paws with every movement, but the more I walked, the more I discovered that the floor had no dry spot. It was eternally wet, and the water rippled endlessly every time I touched it. 

I was busy trying to shake the water from my paws when I heard it.

“Fire…”

My ears pricked up. That was a voice. But it wasn’t Zive’s or Ino’s or Sera’s or Mr. Sig’s.

“Fire shines brightly…”

I turned. It sounded like the voice was coming from behind me, but nothing stood in the darkness a few feet away. I was alone. Despite myself, I called out a cracked, nervous, “Hello?” into the shadows around me, hoping to find whoever the source of the voice was.

“Fire catches quickly…”

My fur was rippling. I didn’t know when I had begun to feel afraid, but fear was creeping slowly into my limbs, spiking my fur and shortening my breath. I swiveled my ears toward the source of the noise, trying to find its origin, but it had no source. It seemed to be coming from every direction at once.

“Fire consumes completely…”

My ears were flat. I didn’t want to be afraid, but I was. As much as I spun in the darkness, paws splashing loudly in the cold sheet of water, I couldn’t find the voice. It came from everywhere. It echoed and warped and hissed and whispered like nothing I’d ever heard before, and I fought the urge to press my paws against my ears to try to block the noise, knowing it was useless. I didn’t want to show my fear. As much as it was obvious in my puffed-out fur and trembling whiskers, I didn’t want it to be any more obvious than that.

“Fire burns out.”

I was plunged into water. 

I didn’t know how it happened. Maybe the floor had opened up and dropped me into a bottomless pit full of water. Maybe it had come at me from above. Maybe a wave was building up silently behind me and had crashed into me. Whatever way it happened, suddenly there was no air, and everything was water, and I was flailing and kicking and screaming all the air out of my lungs, which were quickly flooded with cold liquid.

I choked. Water had never felt so heavy before. Now it wasn’t the few harmless droplets sprayed by Sera when she talked, or the sweet-smelling soap suds in the bathtub, but an endless expanse of chilling heaviness that weighed down my fur and filled my lungs and nose and mouth and ran into my ear canals until I had no air left. There was nothing left to breathe. There was no way to breathe.

Breathe. Breathe. The thought pounded through my mind in a frenzy as I swiped my claws through the water, trying to find a way up, to the surface, a way with air, a way where I could breathe. I need to breathe. I need air. I need it. I need it.

But there was none.

I had never really understood air before that moment. There were so many different creatures in the Headquarters, with very different shapes and attitudes and qualities, that I wasn’t sure if all of them needed to breathe or not, and it didn’t seem to matter very much to me. Mr. Sig was a prime example of being a unique person– he was, after all, completely flat, and if not for his suitcoat it would be impossible to view him from the side– and he did not need to breathe. He did not even have a nose, let alone lungs. There was no reason for him to need air if he didn’t even have the space for lungs.

But then there were others. Others like Zive and Ino and Sera and Glep and Geyser and Nissa and Tarko and Krisso. Others who needed to breathe just like I did. And I’d never thought much of it before, mostly because I’d never had any reason to. There was always air. It was always possible to breathe. 

I didn’t know what would happen if I didn’t get any air. But I knew that my chest was starting to hurt, and my eyes were stinging, and my lungs felt like they were going to burst if I didn’t choke out the water in them and find my way to some air.

So I thrashed. I fought the water. I fought it with all the energy left in my veins, which was slowly, gradually, dissipating into exhaustion that pulled at my fur and made my limbs go slack and blurred the edges of my vision. I kept trying, kept swiping, kept flailing, until I had nothing left. 

Pain was pulsing in my chest. Weariness was thrumming through my bones. As much as I tried to keep my eyes open, I couldn’t, and I felt my eyelids fluttering slowly, securely, shut, sealing me in darkness.

The voice was the last thing that filled my awareness.

“Beware the world of shining stars.”

—

“Soda?”

I looked down at the paper in my hands. On it was written a list of random words that the Yellow had thought up– cupcake, toothpick, candle, seltzer, pillow, coffee. It seemed to me like they’d just written down whatever thoughts came to their minds as they looked around their quarters, but the only word that they were interested in, the one written in big red marker and circled furiously, was soda. 

I glanced up. The Yellow– or at least the Superstars who had once been the Yellow Squad– were staring at me with folded arms. Their yellow accessories were gone. Their eyes were bright and sparkling. On their shoulders were placed the tiny silver Superstar engravings, the three stars pinned together. They had certainly grown from the small mischievous Squad that I remembered.

But that didn’t change their attitudes. It had been months since Zive had struck the deal with them, and yet they still thought that we had betrayed them by not letting them choose my first nickname. So-So.

I didn’t even like So-So. I hadn’t liked it for a while. The Pink and I had never actually considered a new name for me until today, when Mr. Sig brought up the fact that I still didn’t have a definitive name. He couldn’t make me a Superstar until I had a name, and when I asked him why, he’d said it was because the name of every Superstar was engraved on the back of their pin.

I would’ve liked to know the names of the old Yellow who stood in front of me. But I couldn’t see the backs of their pins, and I knew that none of them would let me touch the silver stars. They were far too precious to be handled by anyone other than the Superstars themselves and Mr. Sig, who presented the pins in a ceremony broadcasted to the entire Headquarters. The ceremony that was supposed to happen today, if I hadn’t woken up in a sweating frenzy from a nightmare that I barely remembered and still bore no official name for myself.

Now the Yellow had returned, still holding onto the grudge that they had never been able to choose my nickname, with the request that they could choose my real name. My official name. The name that would be engraved on the back of my Superstar pin and announced to the world when I stepped out onstage a few nights from now.

  A few nights. My stomach flipped at the idea. In a few nights, Zive, Ino, Sera, and I would make our first appearances to the world outside the Headquarters as Superstars. Only in a few nights.

But first, unfortunately, I had to decide on a name.

“Why… that one?” I pointed down at the paper, my voice sounding unfamiliar, loud, in my ears.

One of the Superstars tossed up her head. “I used to like it when I was little,” she scoffed. For being Superstars, she and the other Yellow weren’t very nice.

I guessed they had always disliked me, though. They weren’t as bad as the Green, but the grudge they had toward Zive had extended to all of the Pink, and that included me. Once I thought we might’ve been friends, but now that we were moving on to becoming Superstars, there was no reason to try to make up or hold onto old arguments. Neither meant anything anymore.

“Can…” I looked down at the paper again. “Can I choose a different one?” They’d given me a list, after all. I didn’t see why I wouldn’t be allowed to choose my own name.

The members of the Yellow looked at each other unsurely. “Depends,” said one. “But we like Soda.”

I didn’t like Soda. The more I sounded it out in my head, the more it reminded me of So-So, and I didn’t want to be So-So. So-So was left behind when Tarko was removed from the Green Squad and I’d made a promise to myself that I would stick by the other members of the Pink no matter what. The shy, mute, unpredictable So-So no longer existed, and I would never be that way again.

But who was I now? 

I tried to think over all the names I had considered in the past hour of sitting in the waiting room before the Yellow had arrived. Russet, of course, had come to mind first, since I used to like the word, and Mr. Sig had said it was the color of my fur. Russet. It sounded strong and defensive and maybe feminine, although the only reason I liked it was because it reminded me of that rainy night in the hallway after the fight with Tarko. I considered briefly what it would sound like with the other Pink names– Zive, Ino, Sera, and Russet– and decided that I didn’t like it.

The next name that came to mind was the word Mr. Sig always called me by, even now– Blaze. When he’d first sat me in the waiting room early this morning, after the Overseers had soothed my frazzled nerves and handed me a steaming cup of tea to drink and scrubbed the sweat from my fur, he’d said that that could’ve been my name. In fact, he was even planning on making it my name if I didn’t decide on anything. Blaze. Blaze the Superstar. I liked it as a nickname, even though I was beginning to like Mr. Sig less and less, but I didn’t like it as a real name. It sounded too arrogant. As if I was some sort of burning fire that would capture the attention of the world, which I did not want. 

I only wanted to be with my friends. And today was about being with them, watching them remove their Pink accessories, receive their Superstar pins, and don the title that they had always deserved.

None of the other names on the Yellow list were too inviting, I realized. Either they had thought up the list months ago, when they had first made the deal with Zive and believed that they would get the first say in naming me, or they had forgotten to make a list and only had one at all because they had rifled through their quarters, looking for things to name me after. However it happened, I doubted they put much thought into it. They must’ve just been doing it out of spite. At least they wouldn’t hold it over Zive’s head anymore.

Cupcake, toothpick, candle, seltzer, pillow, coffee… There was no way I would present myself as a Superstar with something as ridiculous as Toothpick as my name. I didn’t want to be Russet because it sounded too harsh with the names of the other Pink. I didn’t want to be Blaze because it sounded too arrogant for someone meant to be a thoughtful Superstar. And I didn’t have any other name ideas, so it wasn’t like I had any reason to refute the Yellow. I especially didn’t want to tell them the reason why I didn’t like Soda. 

“Fine.” I handed the list back to the Yellow and one of them snatched it from my paws, tearing it into pieces. “I’ll go with Soda.”

They glanced at each other haughtily, eyes sparkling with satisfaction. “Sounds good to me,” murmured the Yellow who had suggested the name, a grin flashing her teeth in the dim lighting of the lounge. 

Then she left, the other four following behind her, and I was finally alone with my cup of cold tea and my clammy nervousness, waiting for the Pink to come back and find me before Mr. Sig walked through the door and I would have to talk with him again.

I didn’t like Mr. Sig. I didn’t want to like him, at least, because he’d been making it very difficult to dislike him after our conversation in the Superstar studio a few days before. Everything he said was tinged with that apologetic, too-sweet voice that I couldn’t help but fold my ears at. He was being nice. Too nice. Too nice to the other Pink. Too nice to me. I couldn’t handle it, and I had avoided talking to him as much as possible, since I didn’t want to think about the strange things he’d told me before about my talents and my fire. 

I liked dancing. I could dance well enough. It wasn’t good enough for me to have my own show, because, of course, what was a Superstar who couldn’t sing doing onstage by herself? But it was good enough for me to at least be given the title, if only to do so alongside my friends. Zive and Ino and Sera had nearly tripped over themselves with excitement when Mr. Sig had announced that today would be the day of their ceremony.

Hopefully it would include my ceremony, too. But it was supposed to be happening soon, and I didn’t know if Mr. Sig would have enough time to engrave my name on the back of a Superstar pin if he didn’t even know what my name was. A small part of me thought it would be a good way to spite him, making my own independent decision, but a much larger part thought the better way to spite him would be to become a Superstar after all, since he evidently didn’t want me to. I would do exactly the opposite of what he wanted me to do. I would receive my pin. I would become a Superstar. I would step out on that stage with the three that had grown to be my closest friends and take the world, or at least the Headquarters, by storm just because he didn’t want me to.

This is your fault, Mr. Sig, I thought as I stared down at my paws. If he’d never said anything at all, then I wouldn’t feel this way, and maybe it would’ve been different.

“You’ve chosen a name, have you?”

I nearly jumped. Mr. Sig’s voice jolted me out of my staring at the floor, and when I lifted my gaze I wondered how I hadn’t noticed that he was in the room. I didn’t remember hearing him open the door. I hadn’t even heard him down the hall. How did he move so quickly? Was he being silent on purpose? Was he trying to scare me?

At least he had backed away from his mind-reading after our chat in the Superstar studio, otherwise I knew he would’ve said something unnecessarily apologetic and tried to get me on his side. But instead he walked toward me, gracing the carpet beneath him, as if he didn’t have any idea what I was thinking. “Well?” he asked. “Have you?”

I nodded. “The Yel–” I caught myself before I could name them incorrectly, knowing that the newly-dubbed Superstars would not be very happy about being referred to as their Squad name, “–the old Yellow Superstars came to… help me.” There was no reason to tell Mr. Sig about the deal, no reason to bring up anything that had happened between Zive and the Yellow. As far as I was concerned, the deal had been kept, and Zive wouldn’t need to borrow stolen food from the Yellow anymore as of tonight.

“That’s good.” Mr. Sig looked at me and I avoided his gaze. “Would you mind telling me what it is? I’ve already requested the other pins, but yours, I kept blank just in case–”

“Soda.” I stood up. “We chose Soda.”

I felt Mr. Sig’s silence. It was worse than his voice, because when he was silent, he made absolutely no noise. No breathing. No heartbeat. Just nothing, so firm and absolute that it almost made me afraid.

Almost. Mr. Sig might’ve been annoying, but that didn’t mean he would hurt me.

“Soda.” Mr. Sig thought over the word, turning away from me. “Yes. That works.” He walked toward the door and motioned for me to follow him, but I refused. My paws were glued to the carpet beneath me. I would not move.

He turned back, only his paper-square head. “If you’d like to see the others, they’re quite excited about the ceremony tonight, and they’ve been waiting for you.”

Immediately I started toward him, forgetting my unimportant spite, and he led me down a series of hallways until we reached the Superstar prep room. Supposedly it was close to the stage where the ceremony would take place, but there was no evidence of any such stage nearby, no labels on any of the doors that suggested they led into it. Maybe the stage had a much wider entrance, and this was just a private room for Superstars to get ready before going out for shows.

I thought it strange that the Headquarters had a stage. It was useful for practice, yes, but none of the Superstar shows actually took place inside the Headquarters. The entire reason for becoming a Superstar was so that you could perform out in the world beyond, the world where anyone could watch, the world that, according to Mr. Sig, didn’t appreciate thoughtfulness as much as the Headquarters did. The only thing the stage in the Headquarters could be used for was getting Littlestars used to standing in front of a live audience, and maybe for the Superstar ceremonies. Otherwise I didn’t think there was any point to it.

Mr. Sig knocked at the door, much like he always did, and a familiar chorus of voices answered from inside. The door pulled open, revealing an anxious Zive, who opened his mouth in a wide smile upon seeing me standing awkwardly beside Mr. Sig. 

“You’re here!” exclaimed the dragon boy, reaching forward and pulling me into the room. “You’re here! Did you decide on a name yet? Did you get the Yellow to come by? Were they mean to you?” Questions came spilling out of him faster than I could find answers, and I found myself laughing at his tone. He sounded genuinely worried, as if I would’ve let the Yellow pounce me and bully me like the Green once did. They might’ve been larger than me, but being small meant that I was nimble, and besides, the Yellow never were ones for violence. They would sit by and watch a fight happen, yes, but they never fought in it.

“I got a name,” I answered, pushing myself away from him. Sera and Ino, both having perked up from the anxious hobbies they were busying themselves with across the room, had stumbled over to me and were asking similar questions to Zive, eyes wide with curiosity. While I admired what the Superstar designers had managed to do in merely the past hour, I explained what the Yellow had said, their ridiculous list of names, and how I eventually ended up settling on Soda, which Mr. Sig was going to engrave in the back of my pin. And then it would be official. My first official name. Soda the Superstar.

Ino tilted his head. “I kinda like it,” he relented. “It reminds me of your old nickname…” Before he could say the words, he seemed to remember that I did not appreciate mentions of my old name, and his ears folded, embarrassed, against his head. “Yeah,” he finished. “I like it.”

Sera looked me up and down. “What does it have to do with you?” she questioned, waving her watery hands at me, careful not to let any out-of-place drops splash against my puffy fur. The designers had yet to reach me today, but I knew they would have to get to me eventually before the ceremony started. They wouldn’t want me prancing up onstage looking like I’d fallen through a patch of brambles just before I was meant to receive my Superstar pin. 

I shrugged. “I don’t know.” Nothing about me said Soda at all. I wasn’t made of water like Sera was, so I couldn’t even boast any bubbles, and I wasn’t very outwardly friendly, so I wasn’t even bubbly. My fur was russet, not really the color that soda typically was, unless it was an orange drink, and my ears were not round and large like Ino’s, but tall and sharp. I was very much not a Soda, but the Yellow had insisted, and it wasn’t like I’d had the time to think of anything better. “It works, I guess.”

Zive cocked his head. “At least you’ve got a name now,” he chirped positively, turning back to Mr. Sig, who was still standing in the doorway. “When are the pins going to be done?” the dragon-boy asked excitedly, balling his hands into fists. “Soon? Soon?”

Mr. Sig nodded calmly. “Yes,” he relented. “The ceremony should take place this evening, and I’ve given the Overseers plenty of time to finish up your names.” He looked over us all, as if to check that we were all in the room, and then stepped back. “Tonight we will discuss what your first shows will be. Does that sound alright with you?”

My happiness vanished. He was asking. Of course, he was asking. He never told anyone to do anything, only asked them, and while it was implied that we were going to discuss what our first Superstar shows would be tonight after the ceremony, maybe even over dinner, although I was fairly certain that Mr. Sig did not have to eat, he was still asking the others what they thought. As if they could say no to him. 

I looked at them tentatively as they all shouted their agreement, too excited to do anything else. None of them knew about what he’d told me. I had decided that it would be best to keep it a secret from them, since they didn’t need to know how I felt about Mr. Sig, or why I felt that way. Even if they did find out that I disliked him, maybe they would just accept it without explanation. I had always been aloof. Maybe disliking Mr. Sig wasn’t too far outside of my regular behavior that they wouldn’t question it.

The others returned to talking, voices chattering with excitement, wondering at how the ceremony would be, what would take place afterward, if they would be hungry enough to eat dinner after all the anxiety of the day, but I didn’t pay attention to them. I was watching Mr. Sig. He hesitated, glancing over us all, before leaving the room and pulling the door shut behind him. 

I knew he was looking at me carefully. I knew that he could tell what I was thinking. And I didn’t bother to look at him back.

—

Water.

Blinding, empty, endless water that stretched in every direction.

As soon as I shut my eyes, I was there. I was there and I couldn’t escape. 

Immediately I closed my mouth, not letting any of the water in. I had learned from my past mistakes. I had been here before, every night in the past few days, ever since the Superstar ceremony had left me feeling anxious and sick to my stomach about what was to come. But even after spending so long in the dark waters, I still did not know how to swim.

I flailed. My paws cut through the water, claws slicing into the darkness, but there was no surface. I had nothing to grasp onto. The only thing I could hold was myself, which was hardly enough to rescue me from the infinite darkness. At least I knew by now that I was dreaming, but that didn’t make the experience any better. The dream always ended the same way.

Drowning.

Let me out of here! I stopped flailing briefly to let a string of bubbles from my mouth, hoping they would head toward the surface of the water, and followed their direction as much as I could, paws straining against the encroaching cold. Let me out! Let me out!

I didn’t know who I was talking to. I wasn’t really talking at all, only thinking and hoping that something other than myself could hear, because in the first dream, there had been a voice, and maybe that voice belonged to a person, and maybe the person could pull me out of the water. Please let me out! I thought, eyes stinging. Please let me out of the water, if you’re out there! Please help!

Something whispered at the edge of my awareness. I could hardly hear anything through the rushing of water in my ears, clogged and muffled, but the whisper became louder, loud enough to break through the blockage and reach my baffled mind. It echoed around me, coming from every direction at once, until finally I could make out the words– “Beware the world of shining stars.”

That was what it had said the first time. Fire shines brightly. Fire catches quickly. Fire consumes completely. Fire burns out. It sounded almost like Mr. Sig, talking about fire and flames and burning as if any of that meant something to me, but I didn’t understand it. At the moment I was not thinking about fire, because I was surrounded by water, and I wanted to get to air. Neither of those things related to fire in the slightest.

I considered opening my mouth to shout, knowing that I was going to drown in the dream anyway, but fought against the idea. You! I thought, whirling in the water, trying to catch sight of whatever was talking into my mind. You– help me get out of here! Let me out!

“Beware the world of shining stars.”

I don’t care! I swung my arms, resisting the urge to open my mouth. My lungs were starting to hurt. The ache was settling in. You’re here, aren’t you? Help me get out of here! Help me!

“Beware the eyes that see.”

My mouth opened. Cold, dark water rushed into my lungs, filling them instantly. Pain spasmed through my chest. I went limp.

Please, please, please– please help me! I tried to talk, but my mouth was full, my throat choked, freezing water spreading through my insides. Help me! Help me!

There was no response.

Help me! I continued to call, despite knowing that it was pointless, that I was dreaming, that once the pain reached its pinnacle and the life drained from my limbs, I would wake up thrashing in the Superstar bed, covered in sweat and tears, drenched like I had really drowned. Help me!

Nothing.

Why aren’t you helping me? Rage burned in my veins as the fight left my body. Why do you hate me? Why are you doing this?

“Beware the hidden things.”

A final thought came to mind, the final moment of clarity through the haze of agony, that told me soon I would wake up. Soon this would be over, and I would only have to wait until the next night to experience it all again.

Who are you?

As the water faded, the voice answered.

“Beware the things that put out fire.”

—

“It’s OK. It’s OK. It was just a dream.”

Just a dream. The words sounded empty considering the painful drowning I had just experienced, so vivid that I could’ve sworn, night after night, that I was really somehow managing to drown in my own bed, but Ino’s voice was full. He had found me, as he usually did, after I’d woken up thrashing and screaming for help, and this time he’d decided to let the other Superstars sleep in. Tomorrow– or today, I guessed, because it wasn’t late at night as much as it was very early in the morning– was the big day. The day of our shows. The day we would step out of the Headquarters for the first time and be known as Superstars to the world beyond. The day that I was beginning to dread more than anything, because how could I become a Superstar if I kept having awful dreams? How could I share in the enjoyment that I knew Zive and Ino and Sera would be feeling if I was constantly distracted by the thought of drowning?

The idea of water was beginning to terrify me. The designers had tried to give me a bath the other day, and I nearly fought them in refusal to go in the tub. They’d relented, confused and not wanting to be scarred by my claws– which they made sure to file down to something much more manageable after the incident– to giving me a shower instead, which was enough to scrub out the day’s worth of sweat and grime and whatever other unnameable things managed to burrow their way into my fur. Even then, I was beginning to dislike showers, but I didn’t want to be that disgusting. I could retain at least a sliver of my dignity while entertaining my fear of drowning in a considerably small bathtub full of soap suds and surrounded by people who would rather help me than hurt me.

I gripped Ino’s fur tighter and said nothing in response. We’d curled up on the beanbag in the far corner of the room, watching the bland, silent reruns on the TV set across from my bed, since there wasn’t much else to do and I did not feel like going back to sleep. I knew I was going to need it in order to remember all the steps to my dance, but at least I wouldn’t be dancing by myself. 

Because I couldn’t sing, Mr. Sig and the other Superstars– which now, they were, definitively, Superstars, and no longer members of the Pink Squad– had planned out our first show to be split up into several parts. Zive, Ino, and Sera, who each had a remarkable talent for both movement and vocals, would get their own individual shows at the start of the night at separate times. Then, in the timeframe where I would’ve had my own show, had I ever learned how to sing and if I could’ve sounded like anything other than a dying cat, all of us would do the show together, with Zive and Sera leading the vocals and Ino and I doing the more complicated dancing part. It was comfortingly familiar, practicing with the people I had always known, choosing the dance that we’d spent all day in the old Littlestar studio learning. There was something exciting about being able to carry ourselves all the way from the Littlestar bunks to the stage as Superstars, still being together. We weren’t a Squad– Superstars were typically soloists– but we were still together.

I liked that.

“So…” Ino’s voice was quiet, almost hesitant, still shy like it had always been. I glanced up at him, illuminated by the light of the TV and the warm lamp that sat nearby. He looked almost exactly the same as he had when he’d been a Littlestar, except maybe taller– which was unfortunate for me, because I felt like I’d hardly grown two inches in the past few months– and he swore that his lion mane was coming in, but I didn’t see it. He seemed just as fluffy and immature as he used to be. “Are… are you excited about… tonight?”

I leaned back. Ino had a knack for never knowing exactly what to say, and it showed. “No,” I replied quietly. I could’ve said more– I had learned a lot more words since I had been assigned to the Pink– but I never felt like it. I was never particularly good at talking. 

The lion cub glanced at me. “Really?” He turned away from the TV, golden eyes curious. “Why not?”

I wondered how I was supposed to explain to him what I had been dreaming about. He’d been surprisingly sensitive– compared to the Ino that I had used to know, anyway, the one who thought I was weird and made fun of me for not having a name and not being able to talk– about asking me what my nightmares were in the past few days. He hadn’t said anything about them, and considering that I had only told him they were bad dreams, that was a good enough response for me. I didn’t need him to comfort me when he didn’t even know what my dreams were about. 

There was one person who probably would’ve known. But my desire to talk to Mr. Sig had plummeted to absolute zero after the night we’d discussed the Superstar show. He’d kept glancing at me as if I would change my mind about being a Superstar, pausing between his sentences, trying to convince me in his too-nice voice that I could still go back if I wanted to, that he could revoke my pin, that he could take my name off the Headquarters’ Wall of Fame, but I refused. I avoided his too-nice gaze and shut my ears to his too-nice words until eventually he gave up and let us go for the night. The most surprising thing about the whole experience was that the other Superstars didn’t even seem to notice that anything was wrong. 

I didn’t blame them. They’d spent their entire lives with Mr. Sig’s existence in their world, or at least a good chunk of it. And while he’d been in my life, too, I did not feel as numbly enamored by him as I once did. 

I was not a Littlestar. I was not a Gray. I was not a tiny fox who could be manipulated by sweet words and Mr. Sig’s glowing face. I was a Superstar, and I would not let him control me anymore.

But none of that changed the fact that Mr. Sig was likely the only person in all of the Headquarters who knew what my dreams of drowning meant. He and the voice in my nightmares seemed to share a similar fascination with vague warnings and discussions about fire. But I did not want to talk to Mr. Sig, and especially not about something as vulnerable as my nightmares. With any luck, he would leave me alone after the show tonight, when I was firmly revealed as a Superstar to the outside world, and I would never have to have a real conversation with him again.
Maybe that was too hopeful. I would still see him around, and he would probably be the one scheduling my shows, especially since I would have to tag along with Zive, Ino, and Sera in order to actually do anything. But maybe I could finagle a team of people to schedule things for me, and then I wouldn’t have to talk to him anymore.

I realized that Ino was still beside me, and had just asked me a question, about five minutes after the question was asked, and I flicked an ear, embarrassed. “Sorry,” I muttered. I rarely found the need to apologize, but Ino was quite sensitive, and he tended to take everything the wrong way. It wasn’t his fault that I hated Mr. Sig. And he would likely never understand why I hated Mr. Sig, unless he saw beyond the smooth voice and the flawless suitcoat and the paper-thin, glowing face. Every time I thought about it I wanted to swipe my claws through it just to see how easily it gave. I wondered briefly if Mr. Sig felt pain, and if doing so would’ve caused him some sort of immeasurable agony, and I almost felt bad.

Almost.

“It’s fine.” Ino shifted against the beanbag, stretching out his paws. “Are you nervous?” he asked, glancing at me with his round eyes. “For the show? Is that why you’re not excited?”

Maybe I was nervous. I wasn’t unfamiliar with stage fright– not completely, at least, since the old Pink and I had had to practice in front of a Headquarters audience in order to prove that we had what it took to be Superstars, but that was on the tiny stage in the auditorium. I’d seen the stages on the Superstar shows, massive things with glaring lights and colored lasers and smoke machines and gorgeous background screens that played tricks on your eyes. There were hatches in the floor that background dancers– lucky Littlestars who didn’t quite have what it took to be Superstars, but at least had the chance to be onstage outside the Headquarters– could crawl out of, and platforms lowered from the ceiling that could drop Superstars onto the stage, spreading puffs of smoke around them. Zive, Ino, Sera, and I had practiced with the smoke machines before, just to make sure we could adjust quickly enough to see through the fog, and it turned out that the only sensitivity we had was that Zive could accidentally set the smoke ablaze with his fire-breath and cause bright purple flames to dance through the air. It wasn’t as dangerous as it looked, since the flames only tickled and didn’t quite burn, so Mr. Sig had given the dragon-boy an allowance to use his fiery ability if he promised only to do so during parts of the song where it actually made sense, otherwise the wonder was lost. Zive had agreed, but I couldn’t help but notice that Mr. Sig had turned his gaze away from the dragon-boy and over to me, and the moment I realized why, I’d stormed out of the room.

Fire. He was talking about fire, and I had something to do with fire, some ridiculous talent that he’d never explained, only hinted at unhelpfully, so of course he’d had to look at me. I had a natural fire, whatever that meant. And I was wasting it by doing the one thing I wanted to do, becoming a Superstar to stay with my friends.

I dug my claws into Ino’s fur, not resisting the angry urge, and felt him wince under the slight pressure. For once I wanted to sink my claws into something of Mr. Sig’s– his glowing face, his turquoise tie, his dark purple suit– and tear it apart.

“I’m sorry,” Ino murmured, and I realized he must’ve been interpreting my frustration as something toward him, since he wasn’t a mind-reader like Mr. Sig and he always took everything the wrong way. “I didn’t mean to… upset you.”

I withdrew my paws. “It’s not you,” I muttered, ears flattening. Ino didn’t need to be thinking that I hated him. I really didn’t. He was the only Superstar who had come to check on me after hearing me shouting for help in my dreams, and he was about as sympathetic and sensitive as a snowflake. Sometimes I wasn’t even sure what to say to him. I didn’t want him to feel walked-over.

Ino’s big eyes glanced at me. “What is it, then?” he asked, softly.

I shifted. I couldn’t tell him about Mr. Sig, so I made up the next best answer. “It’s… the show.”

“Are… are you…” He seemed to be trying to find a word other than nervous. “Are you afraid?”

Afraid. Somehow choosing the most blunt word was Ino being the most correct. I wasn’t nervous. I wasn’t angry. I was afraid.

I didn’t know how the shows would go. Of course, we had a plan; the other Superstars had each picked out their songs and had practiced them constantly in the past few days, the Headquarters had done the expertise marketing to the public– keeping everything a secret, showing nothing but the silhouettes of us in the photoshoots, leaving it as a mystery to entice the public. But that didn’t mean one of us wouldn’t mess up, or that something wouldn’t go wrong, or that I wouldn’t completely topple off the stage. It didn’t mean that my nightmares of drowning wouldn’t come true.

I wondered if it was going to rain today and briefly entertained the idea of drowning in a flood.

Finally, I nodded. “Yes.” It wasn’t easy to admit, not even to myself, but Ino was too empathetic to refuse. I was afraid of what would happen during the shows today, and I hadn’t meant to prick my claws into his fur. He didn’t deserve that. 

“Oh.”

Silence. We watched the bright lights of the TV from where we sat on beanbag, neither of us speaking, for at least five more minutes.

“I’m scared, too,” Ino admitted. 

I wasn’t surprised. He was Ino, after all. He was nervous just talking. But he didn’t have any reason to be nervous, not for his show. Although he’d never admit it, his dancing was some of the most expert out of all of us, even me, and he was able to control both his movements and his voice with ease. Mr. Sig had assigned him background dancers for his very first show, which was a feat, since the debut of a Superstar was typically a solo venture, so he wouldn’t be up there alone. And in the last show, he’d be with me. With all of us. We would be together, just like we were as the Pink, and that was where we felt the most natural– working together, Zive in the lead, Sera close behind, Ino as the shooting star, and me, holding up the background. He didn’t have anything to be afraid of.

I wasn’t sure how to say that aloud, though. I could’ve. I could’ve tried to say everything that I had just thought. But it seemed like too many words, especially for someone as particular to silence as I was. 

The only thing I could do was reach down and slip my paw into his. Maybe that would be enough. Some people did better with touch than they did with words.

I thought back to when I had used to snap at whoever got close to me and almost smiled.

Almost.

—

The tiny spokes of the silver pin ran across my paws. The little sensation was the only thing keeping me grounded amidst the anxiety brewing in my stomach.

It was storming today. Of course, that didn’t mean anything bad for the shows themselves, since they were indoors and the auditoriums had large, round roofs. The only thing it would possibly hinder was the size of the audiences, since they had to move from auditorium to auditorium out in the rain, but Mr. Sig had said that it wouldn’t affect the ratings all too much. If people were dedicated enough, they would come– and people were typically dedicated enough if they had paid the price for all four Superstar show tickets.

The debut show had been agonizingly planned beyond what Zive, Ino, Sera, or I had discussed with Mr. Sig the day of our ceremony. Each show took place at its own separate location out in the city above the Headquarters; Mr. Sig had rented out four separate locations for the shows, the biggest being for our cooperative show at the end of the night. Zive’s show took place first, at the first location, and then Sera’s at the second, Ino’s at the third, and all of ours at the fourth. It had taken several hours, but after much bickering and bathing and cleaning and washing and being tended to like paintings by the Superstar designers, all four of us were ready for the night. The only difference in our appearances would come in the final show, when Mr. Sig had decided to let us all wear our Pink Squad accessories as something of a tribute to where we came from and how far we managed to rise.

I thought it was sweet. Not that Mr. Sig had thought of it, but the idea of paying at least some mind to the Squad where we had worked our tails off made me smile. The only issue was that, as the Superstars we were now, we were not given our exact same tokens to wear– this I noticed when Zive’s ribbon was a different shade of pink and my bandana didn’t carry the scent of my own fur. But they wouldn’t let us apply any of the accessories until the final show, so before I could question why we weren’t given the same accessories from our time as Littlestars, the items were packed away and we were all ushered off to our separate locations.

There was something awful about being the one to go last. I’d hardly paid attention as the Overseers had ushered me down into the lowest levels of the Headquarters and driven me through a series of long, dark tunnels until we arrived at an elevator that took us up to a nice-looking lounge. I didn’t remember moving at all until I was set on a plush sofa and left with nothing but my Superstar pin, a TV already set to the channel that Zive’s show would be aired on, and a small glass of some unidentifiable bubbly liquid on the table in front of me.

My paws were shaking too much for me to hold the glass. I didn’t trust myself not to spill the drink all over me, not after seeing how hard the designers had worked to make my fur clean and spotless, so I let it sit and listen to it sizzle in the glass until the TV started to make noise.

I perked up. It was 8 p.m. It was time for Zive’s show. Already. But weren’t we just being ushered out of the Superstar studio? Weren’t we just hugging each other good luck? Weren’t the designers just chastising Sera about hugging me and soaking my fur? Wasn’t I just listening to their hearts hammering in their chests?

Apparently not. Time had passed as if I was never there at all, and suddenly the TV lit up with the Superstar auditorium a few blocks away from here, and Mr. Sig was silhouetted against the bright screen behind him, announcing that tonight, there were four new Superstars to take the world by storm– tonight, there were four new celebrities to fawn over– tonight, there were four individuals who had worked hard to accomplish their dreams and had finally managed to reach stardom. Tonight, tonight, he said, was the night that the stars shone brightest.

My ears flicked. That sounded familiar, but I couldn’t figure out exactly where I’d heard it before. Something about stars, and something about brightness… or was it shining…?

Shining… stars…

And I missed it. Zive’s voice came from the TV as he dropped confidently from the ceiling, his winds, now large enough to let him glide a short distance, unfolding expertly before he landed easily on the stage. Smoke puffed up around him. As he called out to the audience as if they were old friends, and they screamed cheers in response, I wondered at how he was managing to look so unbothered. I knew his hearts must’ve been hammering in his chest. I knew his void-stomach must’ve been churning unbearably. But somehow, magically, he showed nothing of the nervousness brewing beneath his skin as the screen lit up and the song began.

I could hardly believe my eyes. I had been around for almost every one of Zive’s practices. I had known him since he was a lot shorter, since his wings were nothing but tiny black nubs on his back. And still I was surprised at the amount of ease and spirit with which he sang.

I stopped fidgeting with my Superstar pin only when I felt an uncomfortable prick in my paw pads and realized that I’d cut myself. Nervously, in the hopes that no designer would come in and berate me about ruining my appearance the night of the show, I set down the pin and licked the small trickle of blood off my paw, eyes flicking briefly up to the screen. Zive was still singing. The audience was still swooning. Occasionally the camera would zoom on his face, mid-cheeky grin or dramatic expression, and the cheers were loud enough, even through the flimsy TV screen, that I felt my bones rattle. I wondered how it felt to actually be in the auditorium, with the music and Zive’s voice and the crowds of enamored people and the sheets of rain thundering down on the roof.

I realized that I could hear the pattering of raindrops from where I sat and my ears pricked with curiosity. I hadn’t fully registered where I was, but now that I thought about it, where else would the Overseers take me but to the very place I would be performing at?

If I could hear the rain, that meant I was aboveground. If I was performing in less than three hours, then that meant I had to be near wherever I was performing at.

It dawned on me that I was at the final auditorium. Only I wasn’t in the auditorium, probably in a private lounge with limited access, and there were most likely Overseers nearby to tend to anything I needed. Considering that I’d already been brushed up by the designers, I had a tiny glass of bubbly liquid in front of me, and my stomach was flipping too much for me to even consider dinner, it was unlikely that I would need anything, but at least there was the comfort that they were around if I did. Mr. Sig had probably set that up. 

I was suddenly very grateful that he hadn’t come with me. If there was anything I wanted least in the world, besides being swept up in a flood and drowning, it was to talk with Mr. Sig. 

Before I knew it, I’d drained the glass of bubbly stuff– it sparkled in the back of my mouth and it buzzed going down my throat, and I still couldn’t figure out what it was– and Zive was singing his third song and the audience, having been given several hot-pink glow sticks to wave around, were swaying along with him, tears glittering in their eyes. Zive had them wrapped around his fingers.

Time felt like it was going both immeasurably slowly and ridiculously fast in the lounge. At some point I had to stand up and walk around, since my legs felt like jelly, and I practiced a few poses in front of a mirror before feeling ridiculous and stumbling back onto the sofa, and by the time I returned, Zive’s show was over and Mr. Sig was inviting everyone to the second show. Sera’s show.

The first hour had passed. It was 9 p.m. I was on in less than two hours.

It took a while for the audience to migrate from the first auditorium to the second, but in the meantime, the TV played reruns of the Superstar debuts that had happened in the past year, noting how different, how unique, each Superstar skill was. Merchandise was advertised– mugs, carpets, jackets, caps with Superstar faces on them, Superstar photos, Superstar magazines, the rise of the Superstars, everything, everything Superstar until it hardly sounded like a word anymore.

I had never considered just how many Superstars there actually were. Certainly enough to fit into the city, but if so, why was the city still so obsessed with them? It had to get old eventually. There was only so many times that a new group of prodigious kids could rise to stardom before they would be forgotten about entirely. Maybe Superstars moved on from the city. Maybe the city was just a starting point.

But I couldn’t imagine leaving the Headquarters. And I didn’t know what Zive and Ino and Sera planned to do after tonight’s debut. Were they planning on leaving the city? Were they… planning on going to different places? Would I have to choose who to go with? What happened if they all split up and left me alone in the Headquarters with Mr. Sig? I couldn’t live with myself. They had to stay together. We had to stay together.

I missed it again. The one thing that brought me out of my stupor of anxiety was Sera’s voice, beautiful and sorrowful at once, warbling through the television speakers and reaching my flattened ears, which lifted in surprise. She, too, seemed almost unfamiliar up on the Superstar stage, shining in the bright spotlights, sparkling with glitter, looking much more mature than I’d ever seen her before. I knew she could sing, but I had no idea she could sing.

I wondered how I would look up onstage. Would I freeze up? Would I lose my facade of mystery and silence and stand there like an idiot?

No. No, I wouldn’t, because I would have Zive and Ino and Sera with me. They would be around me. Ino would be there, and he would notice if I was panicking, and he would help me, even if the only thing he could think of doing was slipping my paw into his and holding it tightly. And maybe that would look cute to the audience. Maybe they would assume–

Oh. Oh, no. Never mind. I could do it without Ino’s help. I didn’t even know why I had thought of him. He wasn’t relevant. I didn’t need him. I–

There was murmuring outside the door.

I lifted my head. Peering over the edge of the sofa, I could see that there were shadows milling about in the stream of light coming from the door a few feet away. Outside of it, Overseers were murmuring to each other, too low for me to hear exactly what they were saying, but loud enough to know that they sounded somewhat worried. What were they worried about? The storm? Was it causing issues with the electricity? Were there some people in the audience making trouble? Glancing back at the TV, I didn’t see anything of the sort, and I was reminded that Sera’s show was still on. It was disrespectful of me not to watch.

I turned away from the door and let Sera’s voice serenade me from the speakers. She’d moved on to her second song and was moving easily across the stage, occasionally throwing a sparkling droplet into the audience that several hands would reach up to grasp, as if they could keep water for anything more than a few moments before it soaked into whatever surface it touched. She smiled and sang and winked and soared, and I didn’t know how she was the same person who used to correct me about my grammar. The Sera on the stage and the Sera in my mind were not the same person, because one was a Superstar who knew her place in the world, and the other was a Littlestar who was still trying to find it.

The audience screeched cheers. I couldn’t help but clap, even though I knew that I was alone and Sera couldn’t hear me. I wished she knew that I was watching her show, and I wished she knew that I was proud of her, and I wished she knew just how desperately I didn’t want her to leave. Or Zive. Or Ino. We had to all stay together. We had to all be together.

But once the show was over, would it really matter anymore?

I couldn’t handle the thought, so I pushed myself onto my paws and asked the Overseers outside the door, interrupting their conversation, if I could have another glass of whatever the bubbly stuff was, and they looked at me like I had two heads– which wasn’t all too concerning, considering that there were plenty of people in the city who must’ve had two heads– before laughing and telling me that the “bubbly stuff” was called soda, just like me. Still chuckling to themselves, they walked away to grab me another glassful while I stood still and wondered why I had to be so dumb.

Once the Overseers returned with a slightly larger glass of bubbly stuff– soda, which I should’ve known, and kept berating myself for not remembering the name of– I sat back down on the couch and held the cup like it was the most precious thing in my world and slurped down soda until my stomach felt uncomfortably full and I had to get up and find a restroom. The most annoying part was that Sera’s show had ended by the time I returned, and I didn’t even get to see her wave out the audience as she retreated offstage and disappeared into some puff of smoke. The only thing I snagged was the clip at the very end, where Mr. Sig invited everyone to the next auditorium for the second-to-last show of the Superstar debut.

The clock ticked. It was 10 p.m. I was on in less than an hour.

The screen flashed past the reruns, which I hardly paid attention to, until suddenly it was the Superstar stage in the auditorium that must’ve been close by. I could see, even just from the TV, the sheets of rain falling thickly down on the roof made of glass, the dark clouds curling above, the spotlights cutting through the fog and the smoke as if searching for Ino, who should’ve been there. 

My heart jumped into my throat. I set the half-empty glass of soda I’d been drinking onto the table in front of me, staring intently at the screen. Did Ino never make it into the stage? Was he OK? Was he panicking? I didn’t think he would actually panic. I thought he would have enough bravery to at least get onto the stage before he collapsed, if he did at all. Please, Ino, please be OK–

My thoughts were interrupted. The stage exploded in light as a strong, nimble figure seemed to leap out from the fog– probably a hatch in the floor, I thought, since practicing onstage had led me more to think about how it worked and less about how it was so wonderful– and soar into the air, landing on the ground with an easy, practiced air. He was still shrouded in shadow, but as he swept his tail around him and the smoke cleared, I could see clearly that it wasn’t just any figure who had leapt onto the stage, not just any silhouette who was claiming the eyes of the captivated, drenched-in-rain audience, but Ino himself.

If I hadn’t recognized Zive or Sera, then Ino may as well have been an entirely new person.

Now as Ino stood in the spotlight, and his background dancers, Littlestars dressed in shadow like a second skin, crawled out of the smoke around him and positioned themselves like ninjas, I could see the mane that he claimed was forming around his neck. The more I looked, the more I could picture it as just Ino being small and fluffy and surrounded by that white cloud of pillow stuffing that he’d torn up from his own anxiety. That Ino, the shy one, the quiet one, the one who accidentally insulted me and giggled at Zive’s jokes and defended me from Sera’s grammar-pestering, didn’t seem to exist any longer as I watched this new, sparkling, glowing Ino move across the stage in a white-green blur, the background Littlestars moving with him, turning his debut into a performance.

I couldn’t remove my eyes. Even when the Overseers’ murmurs were picking up outside my door, even with the lights in the corner flickered because of the heaviness of the storm, even when my stomach was flipping in my chest as I heard the clock on the wall tick, tick, tick, I couldn’t stop watching Ino’s performance. He sang while he did it, controlling his breathing and measuring his voice, but it was the unexpected singing of the Littlestars, whose unique figures showed in the flashing of their various-colored teeth and their curiously-tuned voices, that enamored me. While they were only his background dancers, they were also his background voices, and I knew that all their hearts were pitter-pattering with delight at being able to be onstage with a real Superstar, a Superstar that they hoped to be like one day if they worked hard enough.

I was struck with the realization that I was probably going to be looked up to, too, and I couldn’t handle that. Finally I tore my eyes away from Ino’s show and buried my head in my paws. 

I couldn’t imagine being someone’s role model. I couldn’t imagine stepping up on that stage. I couldn’t imagine doing anything like that. Ever. So why was I about to do it? Why was I going to do it in less than an hour? Why did the clock keep ticking, on and on and on? Why was Ino’s voice streaming through the speakers, surrounded by the harmonies of his Littlestar background dancers? Why did I have a Superstar pin?

Minutes passed. The singing turned to cheering as the audience watching Ino’s show threw flowers and air-kisses and love toward his shiny, shiny face, in which his golden eyes were round with delight and disbelief and humility. I thought I would be able to watch the end of his show, but before I could witness him take his last bow and descend off the stage to head to the final auditorium, the Overseers burst in the door.

I whipped around. Warm light flooded the walls from the hallway beyond as the Overseers, faces pressed with worry, stepped inside the lounge. They moved around the room like hawks, scanning everything, pulling the shades off of lamps, digging under the couch cushions, looking between the books on the bookshelves, and I shrank further into myself, frightened. Before I could ask what was going on, one Overseer grasped my wrist with a firm hand and pulled me onto my paws. “Sorry, Miss Soda,” she apologized, dragging me toward the door before I could think to resist, “but we have to get you moving.”

Moving? I blinked at the clock in the wall just before an Overseer took it off and investigated the back, rifling through the batteries. It was almost 11 p.m. Another hour had passed. It was time for my show. I was on.

And I didn’t have my Superstar pin. 

“No–” I reached forward, toward the sofa that the Overseer was busy dragging me away from, but she did nothing but pull me back, muttering something in a soothing voice that I didn’t bother paying attention to. How could I go onstage without my pin? And why were the Overseers searching the lounge like it had termites in it? And why had Mr. Sig not appeared on the TV yet to invite the audience to the final auditorium? 

“I’m sorry, Miss Soda,” the Overseer crooned as I was pulled out of the room and into the hall beyond. “You’ve got to get going.”

Get going. Were we heading toward the auditorium now? But why did it have to be so quick? Wouldn’t I have to be touched up by the designers first? Why weren’t they here? Why was everyone rushing through the hall like something was wrong?

I tried to say any of my questions aloud. I tried to say anything out loud. But nothing came out except for a squeaky, strangled, “My– my pin.”

The Overseer looked down at me. Brief sympathy graced her pale blue eyes. “That’s alright, sweetie,” she responded, and I had the urge to yank my arm out of her grip, “it’s better that you don’t have it now.”

Better that I don’t have it.

I couldn’t follow her words. I could hardly even follow her as she pulled me quickly down the hall and toward the elevator and led us down, far, far, far down until my ears popped and my fur was rippling uncomfortably, to the tunnels below. Other Overseers with far more worried expressions were waiting there. Some seemed guarded, others only fearful, but all of them looked at me with something like both relief and trepidation before grasping my front paws and banding them together and settling me in the back of a vehicle.

I didn’t know what was happening. I could hardly register the sounds blaring around me– was that an alarm? But why did it sound so distant? I didn’t know why my wrists were held together, but my paws were pressed into each other, claws digging into my skin. I didn’t know how I had ended up in the back of a vehicle or why there was a grate between the backseat and the front. The only thing I knew was the pounding of my heart, the tunneling of my vision until it had black, fuzzy edges, the heavy stone settling on my chest that made my lungs feel smaller and smaller with every breath. All I knew was that I was being contained. I was being captured. I was being trapped.

Trapped.

They’re trapping me.

They’re trapping me.

“Let me go!” The shout tore from me before I could consider whether or not it was a good idea. Letting my claws fully unsheath, I jammed my back paws into the seat in front of me, kicking it forward and hearing a satisfying oomph! from the driver. “Let me go! Let me out!”

Murmuring came from the front. Words I caught but didn’t bother to pay attention to. Something about being rabid, about not making sense, about not understanding what was going on, about being wrong, innocent, not knowing–

I kicked my feet against the chairs again, shutting them up. I didn’t care what they thought of me. As far as I knew, they were taking me away again, back to that place, to that Tower, to that room with nothing but the cold floors and the matte walls and the voices and the needles and the pain– “Let me out! LET ME OUT!”

The vehicle slid to a stop. I looked out the window to my left, wondering suddenly if the glass was fragile, and was just about to slam my paws into it when the door swung up and Overseers were in my face. I flinched away from their hands, their gloved hands– gloves, gloves which brought back the worst memories of all– and I nearly managed to get a swipe in on one of them, had my wrists not been bound together by some terrible white link. Before I could struggle, before I could scream, before I could bother to listen to their words as they tried to tell me that they weren’t doing what I already knew they were, something was jammed into my arm, and my resistance melted. My arms turned to jelly. The air left my lungs in one final, fell swoop, and then everything was gone.

—

“Beware the world of shining stars.”

Not again.

Water. Cold water. Everywhere. 

I wasn’t plunged into it. I was already there. As if I had never moved from the last time I’d drowned and was revived only to return to the exact same body– mouth shut tight, lungs fighting for air, fur soaked to the bone.

I didn’t even have the strength to fight. There was no point in fighting. I would just wake up back in my bed in the Superstar quarters, anyway, kicking and screaming. Maybe this time, if I didn’t shout for help, then I wouldn’t scream at all. Maybe I would finally not be so scared of the water that threatened to take my life.

Go on, then, I thought, letting my mouth fall open and trying not to flinch as the water filtered in, cold, tasteless, unbidden. Take my life already. Drown me like you always do.

The water seemed to be taking its time. Frustrated, I breathed the last of the air out of my lungs, hoping that this would be faster than the last few nightmares, and waited for the pain to begin.

“The shooting stars are falling…”

My ears were filled with water, but somehow they still managed to pick up the voice that echoed around me until it shot straight into my ear canals, causing a shiver to run through my soaking tail.

What? I looked around, searching for the source of the voice, hoping that once, just once, I would be able to see whoever was giving me the ridiculous, vague warnings. Who are you?

“Comets streaking through a sky of black, only to burn into wisps…”

My brow furrowed. The pain began, but for the moment I managed to ignore it. My only comfort was the fact that it wasn’t real.

Who are you? I tried to turn toward the voice. Where are you? Are you here? It didn’t seem to have any source, nor did it seem to be coming from anywhere in particular, so I wondered whether or not it was actually with me or if it was somehow speaking into my head. Are you… with me?

“But the fire…”

There it was again, that fire. How I hated being called that. I hated even the idea of fire. Fire and water both, I disliked. Air, I could’ve gone for, but I knew as I let my paws go slack in the liquid around me that there was no air anywhere nearby. I would only have to float until my body accepted its fate and decided to drown.

It was remarkable how quickly I’d given up my fight. But there was no reason for me to fight if I was just going to wake up, normal and alive, like I always did.

“The fire is still burning.”

I didn’t care about the fire. I didn’t want to talk about fire. I would’ve preferred never to hear the word fire again, since it reminded me too much of Mr. Sig, of how he always called me blaze, how he always thought I had some special, stupid talent that was never important enough to be told to me, how he always controlled any conversation with his too-sweet voice and his too-nice face and the little glowing motions he made with his paper-flat hands.

“The fire is still burning, and it needs you now.”

The pain was spreading. Desperation for air burned through my body like wildfire, and despite my restraint, I felt myself choke, calling out for help in the darkness. Please help me, I cried, silently, letting the water carry me off. Please help. Please help me– please, get me out of here– please, make it stop! Make this stop!

I didn’t want to dream about drowning every night. I didn’t want to wake in sweat and tears. I didn’t want to force someone else to comfort me. I wanted it to be over. I just wanted it to stop.

The voice, as always, gave me no answer but an unsatisfying warning that I knew I would never understand for as long as I lived–

“Beware the things that put out fire.”

“What did you do to her?!”

I didn’t snap into wakefulness. I only knew that I was lying on a hard, cold surface, and the air was stifling around me, and there was a voice shouting at the edge of my awareness.

“Sir, she was fighting! She could’ve hurt someone–”

Two voices. Three. Maybe more, but I wasn’t awake enough to count them all. Arguing. 

“Maybe she was fighting because you trapped her in the back of a van!” The voice snapped, and I felt my fur spike with instinctual fear. It sounded familiar, and yet not. There was a certain echo, a certain depth, that I remembered from somewhere, but I couldn’t grasp exactly where. Someone had that voice. I just didn’t know who.

“There was no other way to get her out of there safely–”

“I’m sure–” the voice laughed, a harsh, bitter sound that made my ears twitch, “–I’m sure there was a way besides shoving her in the backseat of a car.”

“Sir, please, listen. She was fighting. Kicking the driver’s seat. We could’ve been in danger. We had no other choice–”

“Oh, yes, and I’m sure the driver’s seat’s feelings were very hurt.”

The arguing voices murmured, embarrassed, and unable to find a retort. Only then did I manage to slip my eyes open to slits.

I was lying on my side. Something cold was pressing against me, some sort of table. Far across the room, figures were standing together in clumps, but it was a particularly tall, glowing figure that caught my attention. Flat as paper, wearing his long, signature suitcoat, dress shoes muddy from the pouring rain, stood Mr. Sig. And yet it wasn’t Mr. Sig. Something was definitely wrong with him, but I couldn’t figure out what it was for as long as I stared.

Numbly I watched him argue for several long seconds before realizing that he was no longer glowing turquoise. Instead his entire body was engulfed in a bright shade of blinding red that hurt my eyes to look at, and his voice, when it finally came from him again, was sharp with rage.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he snapped, one finger pointed toward the door. “Start the evacuation and get out before I have to see your awful faces one more time.”

Frightened, the other figures, who I recognized from their white jumpsuits to be Overseers, made their way toward the door, beginning to file through it with furtive glances behind them. Just as they were about to leave, I managed to lift my head an inch above the cold surface beneath me and choke out, “Sig?”

Mr. Sig’s head snapped back. The red glow flickered uncertainly before fizzling down to a simmering darkness, and he ran toward me, nearly tripping over his feet. “Soda,” he gasped, laying a paper-flat hand beside my head, “Soda, thank goodness, you’re awake.”

His words melted together. The more I stared at him, the more I registered that something was wrong. Incredibly wrong. The Overseers had stopped shuffling at the door, peering at me with both guilt and curiosity. Mr. Sig’s words weren’t as polished and easy as they typically were. His voice still echoed, but it was less captivating, more crackling, more desperate. The room stank of fear and regret. Something was wrong.

It might’ve taken me several moments, or it might’ve taken me three seconds, before I realized what was so wrong.

Zive, Ino, and Sera weren’t with me.

The shows. The storm. Mr. Sig never showing up to invite the audience to the final auditorium. The Overseers hauling me out of the lounge, digging through every device in its vicinity. Losing my Superstar pin. Being tossed into the back of a car. Being contained. Being trapped.

Zive, Ino, and Sera were not with me.

I moved before I could think

“What did you do?!”

That was my voice. It was raw, and loud, and almost snarling. And those were my claws, glinting in the dim light, and they were tearing through Mr. Sig’s suit, because I’d thrown myself at him, and for the first time I was hearing the person who might’ve been my mentor, who I used to trust, shouting in pain because I was attacking him.

I dropped to the floor. My legs felt shaky but still absorbed the impact nonetheless. Mr. Sig was staggering backwards, his red light flaring. The Overseers were gasping and pushing at each other. But I didn’t care.

“It was you,” I growled, pushing myself up. “It was you! You did this!”

I shouldn’t have been surprised. Of course he had been planning to cancel the final show. Of course he messed everything up just to ruin my chance at being a Superstar. Of course he separated me from my friends. Because he was Mr. Sig, and he got what he wanted, and if he didn’t want me to waste my useless, stupid, unexplainable fire talent on being a Superstar, then I would never be able to. 

He’d taken my friends. He’d ruined the final show. He’d separated them from me because he was a selfish jerk who wanted to use me.

I should never have trusted Mr. Sig.

Words came out of my mouth. I didn’t remember ever hearing them from somewhere, but maybe I’d caught them from the less-thoughtful Littlestars when I was still a Gray and couldn’t tell right from wrong. I threw myself at Mr. Sig, letting my claws sink into his stupid suitcoat, his stupid tie, his stupid, papery skin, and pushed him backward. I called him things. Things that I wasn’t entirely sure of the meaning of, but they sure seemed to fit him in that moment. I threw my fists and my voice and my energy until there were shreds of his coat caught between my claws, and he did not fight back. Not once.

I expected him to throw me off. I expected him at any moment to grab my wrists and shove me to the floor. Because he certainly could’ve. Unlike Tarko, who was just a big, fat bull whose horns hadn’t even grown in yet, Mr. Sig was three times the size of me, and much taller, and much larger, despite being flatter than paper. I kept expecting him to hate me, to chastise me, to tell me something about being unthoughtful or impulsive or reckless, but he didn’t say anything. He let my claws score through his suit and tie and face and hands until the energy of rage burnt down to exhausted confusion, and I fought the urge to sink to the floor, paws clenched into fists of anger.

“Why?!” I shouted up at him, ears flat, teeth pressed into a snarl. The Overseers had backed away, frightened, in a clump at the door to my right, but I ignored them. I didn’t care about them or what they thought of me or how I was acting. They could see me as a rabid fox for all I cared. “Why did you do it?!” I screamed, letting the words tear from me. “Why did you take them?! Why? WHY?”

I already knew why. He was selfish and arrogant and cruel and he wanted to use me. But I needed to hear him say it.

Mr. Sig did not look at me. His head was tilted toward the ground, paper-face shredded at the edges, suitcoat torn at the seams. I waited for him to respond, to do anything, but the only thing he said wasn’t even addressed to me as he lifted his face and turned to the Overseers huddled in the doorway– “Start the evacuation.”

Finally the Overseers left, tripping over their feet, stumbling down the hall. I heard their worried voices, their thumping heartbeats, their terrified gasps for air, but I didn’t understand. What were they so afraid of? Me?

I looked back up at Mr. Sig, whose impeccable posture had faded down to an exhausted slump. His coat was torn. His papery hands were peppered with claw-sized holes. His face was scratched. His glow was dim and empty, and his voice, when he did speak, was incredibly, frighteningly, low.

“You are right.” He wheezed, a sound I never thought he was capable of making, and tried to straighten up, though with no measure of dignity to his movements. “You are right.” He looked toward the edge of the room. “You are right, little blaze.”

The nickname alone was enough to make me want to throw myself at him again. But he didn’t stop me. He only looked down, acceptance in his movements, and sighed.

“I am a terrible, terrible, liar.”

That… was not what I expected.

I stared at him. Tiny strips of his paper-skin were still pulsing at my paws. Threads of his suit were caught in my claws. The taste of the words I had spoken was settling in the back of my mouth like vomit, and I swallowed them down, clarity beginning to cut through the reckless rage of moments before.

He’s a liar. He was admitting it, right in front of me, but for some reason I didn’t believe him. He’s a liar. He lied to me. He lied to all of us. He’d lied about the final show just to get me on his side. He’d promised my friends the stardom of their dreams. And now they weren’t here anymore. They weren’t with me. He’d taken them somewhere, taken them from me, and–

Mr. Sig chuckled bitterly. “You have no idea what’s happened, do you?” 

The sound caught in my ears. I threw a paw at him, digging my claws into his coat and dragging them through, tearing off another shred of expensive purple fabric, but he only laughed at me.

“Yes,” he coughed. “Yes, attack me. Go ahead. I deserve it, anyway, especially from you.”

That made me pause. What point was there to attacking him if he was just going to stand still and take it? What would that do for me then?

He looked down at me. “Oh. So now you’re being thoughtful, are you?” His voice cracked into a low, awful laugh. “Now, when it doesn’t matter anymore? Now, when my entire program has fallen apart– now is the time you choose to be… thoughtful?”

I couldn’t bear to look at him anymore. I didn’t want to hear his voice. I didn’t want him to be near me anymore. I threw myself at him, scoring my claws through anything I could get ahold of, voice rising in terrified anger. “Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!”

Mr. Sig did not care. He let me rake my claws through his skin and throw him around the room, and he kept laughing, and all I wanted was for him to just shut up.

Weight was pressing in on my chest. I realized that Mr. Sig was watching me carefully at the same time that my energy was beginning to fizzle away. Whatever the Overseers had done to me to make me fall asleep was causing my bones to feel like jelly, and I was worried suddenly that my paws would no longer keep me up. I didn’t want to be weak in front of Mr. Sig. I didn’t want to collapse in front of him. I wanted to tear him to pieces for what he did, for what he kept doing, and I wanted him to feel the pain of it. I wanted him to ask me not to. I wanted him to care.

But he wasn’t caring. He kept letting me. If he felt pain he gave no indication of it besides the slightest flutter of his paper-thin skin, and I finally shrank back, tired of fighting someone who wasn’t going to fight back.

Mr. Sig slouched. He didn’t bother to straighten his tie. He didn’t look down and fix his cuffs. He didn’t care about himself at all. Instead he watched me closely, carefully, and his gaze was digging through my fur and skin and bone like the dagger that I always remembered it being, reminding me of that night in the rainy hallway, and I could do nothing about it. I had tried to shut him up. I had tried to stop him. And it wasn’t working. None of it worked.

“Do you want to know…” he attempted to straighten up, but his posture was still weighed down with pain and fatigue, “...what really happened?”

I stared at him. “You took them,” I rasped, ears flat against my head. That was what had happened. That was what I knew had happened. 

Mr. Sig looked at me and tried to laugh, but the sound came out wrong, twisted, until he was doubled over in pain and regret and other things I didn’t want to identify, because I was afraid that if I did, I would feel bad for him, and I didn’t want to do that. I wouldn’t feel bad for him. There was nothing to feel bad about. I just didn’t have the energy to attack him anymore.

He pushed himself back up, face tilted in a painful smile. “It’s a wonder I ever let you into that Squad at all,” he coughed, grinning crookedly. I flinched away from him, feeling fear coil in my stomach. “I should’ve kept you out of it. You never should’ve met the… the others.” Immediately his cocky grin disappeared and his face tilted toward the floor.

My ears unflattened. “The others,” I whispered. “The others. You took them!” I started toward him again, hoping that I could at least manage a few punches before I slumped from overexertion. “You took them from me!”

Mr. Sig looked at me and the anger did not melt. “You know me, Soda.” It took a considerable amount of effort for him to just straighten up to his full height, but once he did, I backed away from him, reminded of how much larger he was than me. In a few moments I would be defenseless, and he would have ample opportunity to return all the things I’d just thrown at him. “I would never ruin one of my own shows.”

I grit my teeth. “It wasn’t your show,” I growled, voice low. “It was ours.” It was theirs. Zive’s, Ino’s, and Sera’s. I was just the tagalong at the end. It was never about me. Neither was it ever about Mr. Sig. He was just the announcer. The trainer. The mentor. It was always about them, never him.

As if that ever made any sense to him. He was Mr. Sig, after all. He got whatever he wanted. He had an entire underground system of tunnels to his name, and more than enough Superstar celebrities to vouch for him being the most fantastic person to ever exist. He’d never had to suffer through anything. He would never have to suffer through anything. He lived in a bubble, and he taught the other Littlestars in a bubble, and he–

“You know,” Mr. Sig’s voice rumbled suddenly, and my fur spiked up as if I’d heard a roll of thunder, “it isn’t very thoughtful to assume things about people, little blaze.”

I snapped. “Don’t call me that.”

His head tilted. “Then don’t assume that I have never been through suffering.”

Mr. Sig? Suffering? The two words didn’t seem to go together. Unless it was Mr. Sig inducing suffering, and in that case, yes, they did go together. But he didn’t seem like the type to have ever experienced suffering. His whole life must’ve been one big glamorous show after another.

Mr. Sig smiled at me and I hated him even more. “I thought you knew me.” His voice slithered into a pained cough. “But I am a liar, after all. Maybe I should stop being surprised.”

I hate you, I thought, since he was gradually revealing that he was busily reading my mind like he always did. I hate you. I hate you. I want you out of my life forever.

“Do you want to know what happened to your friends or not?” Mr. Sig’s bright red glow returned suddenly, and my eyes blinked, adjusting to the abrupt light, too close to my face. “I thought you were going to sacrifice everything you had just to be with them.”

“I–” I held a paw in front of my face, trying to shield my eyes from the brightness. “I– I would. I was.” What was I saying? “I do.” Was he going to finally admit to me that he’d taken Zive and Ino and Sera? Was he going to tell me where they were? Would we ever get a chance to do our final show again, or had he taken them to someplace so far away that I would never reach them?

I was still in the Headquarters. I knew that, from the maroon-magenta walls and the plush carpeting beneath my feet and the dim lights out in the hall. But the Headquarters was quite large. Maybe he’d just hidden them somewhere on another floor, and I would have to go find them–

“I didn’t take them.”

I looked up at Mr. Sig. I registered with a pang just how torn he was, practically in pieces. Small bits of papery skin were still managing to float around the remainder of his face, but he must’ve been in pain. If he’d been any other creature, he would’ve been bleeding terribly, but he was Mr. Sig, and the only reason he wasn’t cold-blooded was because he didn’t have any blood in the first place.

“What?” I couldn’t process his words. “What– what do you mean?” My voice, hoarse from yelling profanities, was considerably softer than before.

“I didn’t take them.” His voice lowered. “They did.”

They.

I stared at him uncomprehendingly.

“They were there.” He looked away. “They found out the locations of the shows. I swear I never gave them access. We released the locations in private to be passed around the public sphere.” He talked quietly, as if confessing to some conspiracy or another, and turned his face away from the door. “I made sure that they would never intercept it, but they… they must’ve… found out from a civilian.” He pressed a hand to the side of his head, winced in pain, and covered it with a broken laugh. “I never should’ve trusted the city with such valuable information.”

What was he talking about? They? The city? Releasing the locations for the shows? I didn’t understand. Mr. Sig was speaking gibberish.

He looked back at me. “They were in the tunnels,” he rasped. “They found the auditorium and pretended to be audience members. They didn’t even reveal themselves once the shows ended. I left before the others– before Zive and Ino and Sera–” his voice choked over their names, and fear tightened in my stomach, “–because I had to be at the next location first, and every time, they… snuck in. They just…” His hands tightened into fists. “...took them.”

Who? Who was they? Who was he talking about?! Had someone taken my friends? Had I been fighting the wrong person all along? 

My mind jumped to a plan. I would get out of here. I would leave the Headquarters. I would find whoever had taken Zive and Ino and Sera and I would tear them to pieces. I would rescue my friends. I would get them back. We would all be together again. We could finish our final show. We could–

“Soda, it was the Organization.”

The Organization.

I looked up at Mr. Sig. For a blissful few seconds, I couldn’t remember the meaning behind that word, and it meant nothing to me.

Then the seconds passed.

“No.”

It was the first word that came out of my mouth. No. No, Mr. Sig was wrong. No, that was impossible. No, the Organization couldn’t have known. No, they didn’t take my friends. No, no, no, no, no.

It didn’t happen. It never happened. It hadn’t happened that way. Mr. Sig was remembering it wrong. It wasn’t the Organization. It was someone else. It was another group of people. People that were less cruel. People that were less brutal. People that wouldn’t capture and torture and terrify and silence my best friends. 

Capture and torture and terrify and silence…

My breath caught. I didn’t want it to, but it did, and then I was crying. Not softly crying. Not sweetly or sympathetically. Not in any way that would make you want to look. But horribly. Loud, ugly sobs tore from my chest and shook my body, and all at once my legs couldn’t hold me up anymore. At any moment I expected to hit the floor.

Something closed around me. Arms held me up. Mr. Sig lifted my shaking self against his chest, and there I sobbed uncontrollably, panicked and terrified and knowing all at once, with sudden, undeniable clarity, that there was nothing we could do.

The Organization. The Organization had taken them. Taken Zive and Ino and Sera. Taken my best friends, the people I loved, the only ones that I had ever cared about, the only ones that had ever understood me. The Organization had stolen them. They’d snuck into the concerts and waited until their time was right and by the time anyone could’ve noticed their absence, my friends were gone. They were gone.

The thought shook me to my core.

They’re gone.

“I know.” It was Mr. Sig’s voice, despite all the hatred, all the yelling, all the slips of his paper-skin that still clung to my claws, that reached me through my sobbing. “I know. I know.” I wasn’t sure if he was crying, too, but I didn’t know if it was even possible for him to cry or if all he could do was slump over and be silently miserable. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have let them in. It’s– it’s my fault. I know.”

A tiny spark of determination managed to burn through the sorrow building in my chest. “We–” trying to speak left me breathless, and I had to swallow back several more sobs before I could muster up my voice in any understandable capacity, “–we– we– have to get them back.”

Mr. Sig’s voice stopped, and I knew what he must’ve been thinking. That we couldn’t get them back. That it was impossible. That there was nothing we could do, because the Organization was too powerful, and it would be a death wish for us to do anything against them. I knew what he was thinking because I was thinking the same thing. But I couldn’t let that become true.

It wasn’t true. It wasn’t. There had to be a way, even though I knew that there wasn’t one. The Headquarters had rescued people from the Organization before. They’d rescued me from the Organization. If they’d managed to snag me from the Organization’s grip, couldn’t they do the same for Zive and Ino and Sera?

Emotion won over rationality when I thought of what sort of atrocities the Organization would put my three friends through, and I pushed myself away from Mr. Sig’s chest, claws snagging on his lapels and dragging a large chunk of purple fabric along with me, dropping to the floor. I would not let them be taken. I would not let them be captured. I would go after them– I would do whatever it took– and I would get them back.

Mr. Sig looked down at me. “No, Soda,” he croaked. “No. You can’t–”

“We have to get them back!” I shouted up at him. Speaking was still difficult. Feelings were battling with logic in my terrified mind, and I wasn’t going to sit down and acknowledge them, because acknowledging them made them real, and I didn’t want them to be real. They weren’t real as long as I never thought they were. “We have to! There has to be a way! We’ve– you’ve– you rescued me from them!”

“Soda, it isn’t that–”

“You’ve done it before!” My voice rose as I tried to return energy to my exhausted limbs. “You can do it again! It’s not impossible! It’s not– it’s not–”

“They’ve found the tunnels!” Mr. Sig snapped, red light flaring, causing my eyes to squint against the advancing brightness. “The tunnels– the tunnels are connected to every auditorium in the city.” He coughed. “And all of them run back to here. The Headquarters.”

I stared at him. He was talking gibberish again. Why would I care what the Organization had found or not? They might’ve known that the Headquarters existed– it was famous because of the Superstars, who told stories about their experiences whenever they were interviewed, and those interviews could be watched by anyone, not just citizens of the city who had no connection to the Organization– but that didn’t mean that they–

“The Organization is after the Littlestars.” Mr. Sig’s voice broke into my spiraling nonsense. “They hate the Headquarters. They hate– they hate–” his voice caught, a rare thing that was enough to make me flinch, “–they hate me. And once they find the Headquarters they will take everything and everyone in it until there is nothing left. It won’t be just you.” He stepped toward me. “It won’t be just your three friends. It will be everyone, every Littlestar, every Overseer, every living thing in this building will be theirs, and they will stop at nothing to take all of it from me.”

He sounded desperate. He sounded crazed. One hand was clutching at the torn-up tie around his neck like it would save him, the other clenched into a fist at his side, and he was shaking. Genuinely, really shaking. It was enough to make me back away from him in fear.

Mr. Sig looked down at me.

“Which is why you need to get out of here.”

My mouth fell open. “What?” What did that have to do with any of this? Why did I matter? I didn’t care about myself! All I wanted was–

Mr. Sig reached forward and grasped my wrist before I could argue. His grip was vice-tight, unforgiving, and as much as I struggled against it, he would not let me go. “What– what– where?” Confused, unfinished questions left my mouth, but he would not listen. He pulled me to a corner of the room and pushed aside a sofa and opened a hatch in the floor before shoving me down into it, and together we crawled down a dark, musty ladder before ending up in a tunnel. 

I didn’t want to be underground again. I didn’t know how deep I was in the Headquarters, but something about being underground now made me feel more trapped than it did safe. If what Mr. Sig said was true– if anything that he’d just told me was true– then the Organization was here, or at least would be here soon, and they would hunt down every last living thing in the whole of the Headquarters and take it all for themselves. 

I knew that he must’ve been right about that, at the very least. The Organization was a monster that would devour anything in its path. It wouldn’t care if that anything included little innocent itty-Stars who knew nothing about life and only wanted time to play hide-and-seek with their friends before they went to bed at night. It would take them all, and it would never feel a thing.

What I didn’t know was why Mr. Sig was leading me into a set of tunnels when he’d just said that the Organization had found the set of tunnels that was connected to the Headquarters. But maybe these were different tunnels, because the lights were dim and spaced unusually far-apart and the air was musty and cold and the floor wasn’t carpeted but instead smooth beneath my paws.

I had given up on fighting against his grip by the time we reached another ladder. Mr. Sig ushered for me to go up first, and I did, my legs feeling shaky, paws barely able to hold myself up. I emerged into a small, dingy room that smelled like dust and disuse, and I couldn’t hold back a sneeze as Mr. Sig ascended after me, shutting the trapdoor behind him and pushing a large box over it.

The room was cramped. It smelled like a storage closet, full of things that were hardly ever used– old wooden crates, cardboard boxes labeled with SUPERSTAR OUTFITS that must’ve been full of outdated costumes, broken television sets. The only significant thing about the room was that there was a strange, white door in the corner across from us, a door that looked too clean considering the state that the rest of the room was in. Mr. Sig, shoving boxes out of the way and not caring whatever ended up on the floor, beckoned me to follow him as he made a makeshift path through the dusty mess.

“What is this place?” I managed to ask, rubbing the tears and dust from my eyes.

“Old storage,” Mr. Sig responded vaguely, nearing the door. “It was used a lot more back in the old days, years ago, but–” one glance at an old, dusty photo that included himself and a quartet of blobby, brightly-colored figures who must’ve been Superstars made his voice crack, and he shoved the frame onto its face, blocking the picture from view before I could figure out who those Superstars were, “–it’s practically useless now. All of this stuff is… junk.”

I didn’t believe that. Mr. Sig was a terrible liar.

We reached the door and he stopped in front of it, looking down at the handle with trepidation, before turning back to me. “I hope you know…” I realized then that he wasn’t actually looking fully at me, but at the floor by my feet, “...or, I hope you’ll understand, at least one day, why I’m doing this.”

I stared at him. It was just a door. He didn’t have to make such a big deal about it. “What is this?” I asked, still clutching the piece of fabric I’d torn off from his suit.

He reached for the handle hesitantly. “Something I should have told you about,” he muttered, turning the handle, “when I first noticed your fire.”

I was going to be mad at him for telling me about my stupid talent again, but before I could, he pulled open the door, and immediately every particle of my body wanted to leave the room. Fear rooted my paws into the ground. My fur rippled, spiking into hackles. My ears pressed flat against my head, trying to block out the high-pitched ringing that was coming from the space inside the doorframe, which wasn’t really a space at all, but a rippling, glowing mass of swirling turquoise.

I was reminded of something the longer I stared at the turquoise. By the time I realized what I was thinking of, Mr. Sig had taken my wrist and was guiding me toward the door.

Instantly I fought back. “No– no!” I shouted. “I’m not going in there!”

Mr. Sig, who was the very thing that the turquoise swirls reminded me of, looked almost taken aback. “You have to leave,” he said, with a surprisingly reasonable voice considering that there was a void leading into who-knows-what a few feet in front of him. “You can’t stay here. You–”

“No!” I didn’t let him finish. Instead I grasped the hand that was wrapped around my wrist and tore my claws through it, hoping it would discourage him, but Mr. Sig only gave a brief shudder of pain and did not loosen his grip. If anything, it tightened.

“You don’t understand.” His tone was incredibly calm, and the red glow that had been pulsing around him since I’d woken up was dying down, slowly transforming to his usual turquoise. “I am doing this to protect you.”

“Protect me?!” He was throwing me into a doorway with nothing but a swirling mass of bright color inside, a swirling mass that made me want to use every ounce of my strength to get away, and he called that protection? How could he know where it went? Where did it even go to? For all I knew, he was sending me to my death. 

Mr. Sig stared at me. He did not look. He stared until I was sure that he was reading every thought going through my mind. 

“I wish I had more time,” he finally sighed, “to explain this to you. I wish… I had explained it to you earlier.” His grip on my wrist loosened, but he would not let me out of the doorway. “You deserved to know the truth.”

Now I was beginning to be more afraid of him than I was of the door-portal-thing behind me. He wasn’t making sense anymore. What did the glowing world of color behind me have to do with anything? What did it have to do with the Headquarters being overrun by the Organization? Didn’t Mr. Sig have better things to do than shove me into a portal and leave me to die? 

“No.” I pushed against him, despite knowing that my strength was beginning to wane. “No. No. I don’t want to be protected. I don’t need–” my voice broke, and I cursed, silently, for being so vulnerable, “–to be protected.”

Mr. Sig’s face, torn and broken, curved into a weary smile. “You tell yourself that, little blaze,” he said, too quietly. “You keep telling yourself that.”

I grit my teeth. I will happily jam my claws into your stupid smile and tear it to pieces.

“There it is. There’s that fire.”

More than happily, I thought.

Mr. Sig looked back at the other corner of the room, the one with the hatch that we had just crawled out of, as if he expected Organization officers to come bursting out of it at any moment, and he turned back to me with renewed seriousness. “This isn’t your death,” he said, very succinctly, as if I would be inclined to believe him after everything he’d done. “It will lead you somewhere. To a hall. But it won’t be… a regular hall. It will be different. There will be doors, but the doors will be different, too. The doors will lead you to different… places.” He was talking quickly, too quickly, and my ears were having trouble understanding what he was saying. “Different… worlds. Different dimensions than this one.”

Dimensions? Now I was completely lost. What was he talking about? What were dimensions? And if I was going to end up in a hallway, why did the door behind me lead to a swirling mixture of nothingness?

“You’ll understand.” I won’t. “One day.” I won’t! “But the Organization won’t follow you here. They–” he broke off into a laugh, “–they don’t even know about this place, and they hate my guts for it, so you’ll be safe.” He paused. “Relatively.”

I had no idea what he was talking about. The more he tried to explain, the less I understood. “But– but– what?!”

I didn’t want to go through the door. I didn’t want to end up in a hallway that would lead me to other dimensions. I didn’t want to leave the world that I had always known. It was the only world that I had ever been in before– how was I supposed to just leave it?

One look back at the swirling color behind me made me doubt that Mr. Sig was sane at all. He’d yelled at the Overseers earlier, and he’d let me tear him to bits, and he kept laughing as if everything was OK when it surely wasn’t. Maybe he’d gone mad. Maybe he was panicking because the Organization was going to find the Headquarters. Maybe he was just being irrational. But if he was, then I didn’t want to end up in the place where the door led, because that meant that nothing he said was true after all. That meant I wouldn’t know anything.

“No.” I turned away, my voice rising with fear. “No, no, no– no, I don’t want to leave! Don’t make me leave!”

My friends were still in this world. The world that I had always known. If I left this world, then I would be leaving them behind, too– and that was more hopeless than leaving them in the hands of the Organization, which caused enough strife on its own.

“You can’t stay here,” Mr. Sig soothed. His voice was suddenly very soft, very sweet, so very, very comforting, and tears returned to prick the edges of my eyes. “You’d be in danger if you stayed.”
“I don’t care!” I didn’t care about danger. I didn’t care about myself! I cared about my friends, and if they were taken from me, then I would do everything in my power to get them back–

“Did you think I would just leave them there?”

I stared at him. My eyes were wide. My heart was pounding. I only realized that I was gasping for air until the room went silent and I could hear myself panicking. “What– what d’you–”

Mr. Sig let out a tiny, self-deprecating laugh, removing his gaze from mine. “The Organization is after the Headquarters…” he sighed, “...because they’re after me.” The hand at his side clenched into a fist. “I am the reason they have always hated Superstars. I am the reason they took your friends. And I hope to be the reason that your friends… are freed.”

“But– what?!” I couldn’t help but ask again. He still wasn’t making sense. Nothing he was saying was making sense. The Organization was after him, but what did that have to do with Zive and Ino and Sera? Couldn’t he just run away? Couldn’t he just–

“I have many, many souls in my care, Soda.” His gaze returned to mine, his glowing face flaring briefly with a new, determined light. “I will not let the Organization take them all.”

My eyes widened. Finally, something was making sense. “You’re– you’ll save them?”

“I will try.” He reached up with his absent hand and straightened his ragged tie, as if holding onto what little dignity he had remaining. “I cannot promise you that they will be safe, but I can promise you that I will try.

“But– but–” I was breathless by the time I finally found the words, “–how?” Didn’t he just tell me that it was impossible?

“Did I ever say it was impossible?”

I stared at him. When I didn’t respond, he leaned closer and repeated, firmer than before, “Did I ever say it was impossible?”

I shook my head, like I was still that silent, scared Littlestar in the rainy hallway waiting to be told that I was wrong for attacking Tarko. 

“No.” He leaned back. “No, I did not. And while I do not have high hopes in my… abilities…” he glanced over himself briefly, at the tears in his suit and the claw marks in his paper-skin, like he was trying to gauge how professional he still looked, “I know how the Organization works. And I know that they would love to have me back.”

His voice broke slightly on the last word. I remembered what he’d said about not assuming things and wondered briefly what he meant by that. Had he been in contact with the Organization before? If they wanted to have him back, did that mean they’d had him before? But when? I’d never considered how old Mr. Sig was, but he must’ve been old enough to have seen the rise of many Superstars into fame. Thinking back that far reminded me that he was much older than I was– by hundreds of years, possibly– and it wasn’t impossible that he had worked with the Organization some time in the past.

Mr. Sig’s head tilted. “Worked with is a strong choice of words,” he said, surprisingly casually for someone who was actively reading my thoughts. “But… yes. Yes. At one point, far in the past– farther in the past than this dusty, old room– I was… with them.”

No wonder he’d told me he was a liar. No wonder he’d understood when I, having been freshly rescued from the Organization, refused to talk and was afraid of anyone being in close vicinity to me and only stuck with a small group of people. No wonder he’d done and said everything he did– about me, about my talent, about my fire which he had yet to fully explain. Because he had witnessed the Organization firsthand, and he knew what they could do, and he knew what they had done to me.

I stared at him. Really stared. Something about the angle of his head told me that he was refusing my gaze, but I didn’t remove my eyes from his face.

“I…”

I couldn’t bring myself to say it. The words felt choked in my throat. Speaking was suddenly as difficult as it had been when I was a small Gray Littlestar and didn’t know anything about the world. 

“I’m… sorry.”

Mr. Sig did not look at me. And I couldn’t bear that.

“I’m sorry,” I choked, tears pooling in my eyes, running down my face, soaking into fur. “I’m sorry. I’m so– so– sorry…”

If only he had told me earlier. If I had known the truth, then I never would’ve hated him. The past several weeks would not have been wasted on spite and distrust. I never would’ve avoided him. I never would’ve attacked him.

I looked up at the tears in his suit and his face and his hands, and I sobbed.

“It isn’t your fault.” Mr. Sig’s voice entered my hearing gently. “It is not your fault that I am a liar.” He lifted his gaze. “You were the first one to notice, really, and I should have told you earlier– but now is not the time for should haves.”

Mr. Sig looked at me.

“I will do what I can. I will keep them safe.” His face, shredded and dimly glowing, tilted up into one last, weary smile. “I will give myself up if it means that I can save them.”

He pressed his free hand against my chest. 

“I am doing this to keep you safe, little blaze. I promise you.”

The anger melted.

“Be the fire you have always been.”

He pushed me into the doorway.

I screamed. I thrashed. The world fell away from my paws. I searched for a solid surface, flailing and falling, tumbling through the blinding, colorful madness, screeching wildly. “Sig! Sig! No! NO!”

But there was no solidity to this realm of turquoise. I was flipped upside down, thrown around, pulled in multiple directions at once. Pain was shooting through my limbs. Blood boiled in the back of my throat, spilling out of my mouth. My stomach lurched, and I gagged, feeling vomit tingle in my chest.

This way. That. Everywhere. Nowhere. The names and faces of the people I loved flashed behind my eyes. Their voices whirled through my ears. The only thing that kept me stable was when I caught a glimpse of my paws, shaking and bloody, and saw the little piece of soft fabric from Mr. Sig’s suit miraculously still snagged in my claws. Immediately I clutched the thing, the only thing I had left from the world I’d left behind, to my chest, hoping desperately that soon, this would all be over. Soon, I would die. Either I would end up in that hallway that he’d told me about in his state of frenzy or I would simply die– and maybe dying wouldn’t be so bad. He’d said that he was going to try to rescue Zive and Ino and Sera, after all. If they lived without me, I would be happy.

But what happens to Mr. Sig then?

OOMPH!

I landed. Finally, I landed, the breath knocked out of my lungs, my ribs aching from the sudden impact with a cold, hard surface. Before I had the time to register where I was, the vomit hit the back of my throat, and I heaved up everything I’d managed to scarf down since the morning– which wasn’t terribly much, because it was the day of the shows and I couldn’t convince my stomach to stop churning– most of which was the soda I’d drank in the lounge at the auditorium. Groaning, pushing myself away from the sizzling puddle, I rolled onto my back only to see that Mr. Sig had been right after all. I was in a hallway.

A wall, a bland, white wall, was in front of me, along with a door that was still swung wide-open. At first I couldn’t see anything in the door but the same swirling turquoise that I had just been thrown through, and at the sight of it, I could feel stomach acid rising in the back of my mouth, but the longer I stared, the more I was able to see through the turquoise, into the other side, into the world from which I had just come– and there was Mr. Sig.

Mr. Sig.

He was still looking at me, even through the jumbling nothing-space that I had just been thrown through. He was still looking at me. And he was still smiling.

“No!” I shot onto my paws, pushing myself upward, ignoring the slimy puddle on the floor or the lingering ache in my limbs or the way my stomach still felt unsteady within me. “No, Sig, don’t–!”

He reached to the side. I didn’t think of what he could be reaching for until the door in front of me, the door in my world, began to close, and I saw the door in my old world, the one that Mr. Sig still stood in, sliding slowly shut. Mr. Sig was pulling it shut. He was sealing me in. He was trapping me.

His words rang through my head. 

“I am doing this to keep you safe, little blaze.”

The door clicked shut.

I sprang forward. Too late I realized that the door was no longer open to the turquoise realm I had just been in, but firmly closed, and I slammed myself into it before I could think. Sparks burst behind my eyes as my head hit the wood, and I gasped in pain, paws clenching into fists. 

Dizziness threatened to overwhelm me. The puddle of vomit stank at my paws. The hallway was blindingly white. The world was spinning, and I pressed myself into the door, trying to hold on for just a little bit longer. Just one more moment. Just a few more seconds of strength, and then I would let myself relax.

I pounded a paw against the door. “Sig?” I shouted, tasting blood and spittle and vomit in my mouth and wincing. “Sig?” I was too tired, too scared, to call him what I always had, Mr. Sig. I didn’t even know if that was his name anymore or if he’d made it up. Was he Mr. Sig after all? Or did he used to have some other name when he was a part of the Organization?

Not thinking, I slammed a fist against the frame, claws digging into the white surface, dragging down the cold, unforgiving wood. “Sig!” I screamed. “Sig! Let me out of here! Let me–”

My paw slid down the door and hit something, something long and metallic and cold, and I realized quickly that it was the doorknob. I could just open the door. I could go back. I would have to go through that sickening green world again, but at least I would end up back in the world where I belonged. At least I would see Mr. Sig one more time before he gave himself up. At least I would have a chance to see my friends again. Because I hadn’t died when I was thrown through the turquoise realm, and I didn’t want to live without my friends. I couldn’t live without Zive and Ino and Sera.

My paw closed around the doorhandle. I reached to shove it downward and pull the door open when something clicked, a tiny knob turned, and the handle wouldn’t budge.

For a brief moment I didn’t register why. I tugged at the handle, wiggled it slightly, but it refused to swivel completely downward. It was stuck.

No.

It was locked.
Mr. Sig had locked the door.

From the inside.

I jammed my fist against the door, not caring about the pain that shot up my paw and into my wrist. “SIG!” I yelled, knowing he could hear me, knowing he was still standing there, his torn-up hand hovering over that lock, knowing he was regretting what he was doing. “Sig, let me out! Let me out!”

At one point he would have to lower his hand. At one point he would have to step back. At one point he would have to walk away and uncover that hatch and slide into the tunnel below and leave me. He was leaving me. 

He was leaving… me.

I threw myself into the door, hoping that I would be at least able to cause a dent in the wood, maybe a crack, maybe something large enough to fit my paws through and scratch the rest of it to pieces. If I could break it, then I could get back to that inter-world and then end up back in my world. Again and again and again I threw myself at that door, clawing at it and screaming, screaming for Mr. Sig to come back, apologizing for everything I’d done, wishing that he would forgive me for being so stupid and reckless and ruining everything, waiting for him to come back, waiting for the handle to unlock. I threw myself at that door until I was sure that something was broken and it hurt to breathe and blood was dribbling from my mouth and tears were pooling in my eyes and the world was swimming and I couldn’t keep myself standing anymore. 

And then I sank to my paws and cried into the little piece of fabric from his suit until everything was gone.