Chapter 24

 

\\\ Nick ///

 

Showtime!!

So this was the big day and I was amazed that I wasn't nervous. Daz was in charge of the showcase, as he was every year apparently, so when we all signed up he was able to determine where to place everyone in the show so that they could change any sets around easily enough. Daz wanted me to close the show but I didn't want to do it on my own, so he arranged it so that Fleek Flow would go on fairly early, giving them time to change before helping me out at the end. The build up to the show had been really hectic. Not only did I have to work out what I was going to play but I also created the music for Lucas to dance to, the backing soundtrack for the Fleeks to use and we'd recorded some dialogue for their performance, as it was easier than having microphones falling off while they were flipping around.

On top of all that I had to work on some choreography and watching the others rehearse so I knew where the sound cues needed to go. Oh and in case that wasn't enough, we also had exams to take and college applications to do. I wasn't the only one working my ass off though. The other guys had their choreography to work out as well as costume fittings and all the exam stress to go along with it. Danny was the only one who had it a little easier as he was in the year below us so he had another year to go before he took his exams. By the time the showcase rolled around we were totally ready. As we were in our last year we'd actually finished school a little earlier than everyone else so that gave us more time to rehearse and refine everything. I kinda felt sorry for Danny though as he was the only one left in school when all of us had gone. Even though we still saw him after school and at weekends it was still a hard transition for him. Thankfully he had a few friends in his year, including Aaron, and he threw himself into making this the best performance ever for the rest of us, even if he did have one gripe.

"It's so unfair." He grumbled as he finished gluing his mask on.

"Hey, it's not our fault you didn't have a growth spurt." Tom replied while he attached his own mask.

"It's probably best that you didn't anyway otherwise we'd have to change all the costumes and choreography. That costume actually suits you, and I know you'll give a kicks ass performance." Ben said, checking his cape and cowl one last time.

There were only a few more minutes until curtain and the dressing rooms were abuzz with noise and clamour as people warmed up and tried to make sure they were completely ready to go. I looked over the Fleeks as they put the finishing touches to their costumes and I had to admit, I was incredibly impressed with Josh's mum's work. I'd seen some of her previous costumes in a couple of our comic shops but these were awesome. She'd even got them up to date so Tom and Danny's costumes were as up to date as possible. We hurried up to the stage where I could take a group photo of them before the show started and then we went back to wait in the wings for the show to start.

At 8pm on the dot Daz walked through the curtain to greet the audience and get the show started. The first act on was "The Amazing Mikey" doing his magic act. He didn't have huge props or anything like that but the audience were still impressed with his performance. He did plenty of tricks where he could get audience members to help out, including some pretty cool sleight of hand tricks. What was most impressive though was his charisma, especially considering he was only thirteen. He had the crowd eating out the palm of his hand and even when one of the tricks went wrong he was able to get the audience laughing about it. When he was finally finished the audience really showed their appreciation and he bounded of stage with a huge smile on his face.

After that the curtains closed and we had a couple of minutes to set up for the Fleeks. While the teachers and stage hands were moving Mikey's props and dropping the backdrop for their part, a girl called Allison was out in front of the curtain doing some stand-up comedy. She wasn't bad either. I'd obviously heard all her material in rehearsals but she'd tweaked it a bit and pulled out a few gags I hadn't heard before. Some of them got some groans from the parents but generally she had them laughing along with her. When she was done it was time for the guys to shine. I was still backstage at the soundboard making sure everything went off without a hitch. Daz put me in charge of the sound and lighting effects, while I had Lucas and Sammie helping out with some of the special effects.

When it was time to start I hit the button for the sound effects and immediately there was the sound of a helicopter flying over as the twins made small search lights sweep across the curtains.

"All units, all units, Bane has been tracked to a warehouse on pier 59. GCPD units en route and the Batmobile has been spotted in the area." The curtains opened to show a warehouse setting on the backdrop, complete with a bat signal in the window, as the soundtrack started up in the background. There were a few crates scattered around at different heights, a couple of monkey bars and a seven foot tall wall off to one side. In the middle of all this stood Bane (from the comics, not that weird one from the Nolan films). He wasn't hugely muscled but he was still big and intimidating. A loud growl came over the speakers as Bane challenged to cops to attack him. Before they could though there was a loud crash from the back of the auditorium and Batman and Robin came running down the aisles as the music kicked in, before jumping up onto the stage. As they did though they threw their capes off so they wouldn't be a problem during the fight. This was something we'd had to change early on as they kept getting in the way in rehearsals.

"You're done Bane, it's back to Arkham for you." Batman said, pointing toward the villain. They both rushed towards him and as they did, Bane swung his arms as if he wanted to catch them in a bear hug. Batman quickly dropped to his knees and slid underneath his outstretched arms as Robin deftly side flipped away. Batman then quickly vaulted over one of the crates as Bane tried to follow but as he did, Robin grabbed his arm from behind. Bane then swung his arm up with Robin still hanging on and as he got to the top of the ark Robin let go into a dive roll before coming to a stop in a crouching position, facing Bane. At this point the crowd were cheering wildly for what they'd just seen but now it was time to take it up a notch.

"Is that all you've got Bats? I'm barely breaking a sweat." Bane growled.

"He's right Robin, we're going to need help." Batman said.

"Bring whoever you want, it won't help. Now it's time for the big guns to come out." Bane said and positioned himself in the middle of the stage. He hit a button on his forearm and as he did I hit the strobe lights and smoke. At the same time Red Hood, Nightwing and Red Robin all hit the stage. While Bane was hidden and the lights were flickering, all the Bat family were pulling off various tricks and flips on the stage to get into position. When the lights came back on again there was an audible gasp from the audience as they saw Bane was now huge. He let out a roar and flexed a massive double bicep pose as Nightwing and Red Hood stepped in towards him. As they did he swung a punch at them but they both dropped onto their backs before executing perfect kip ups and then cartwheeling out the way for Red Robin to launch himself at Bane for a head scissor move. Red Robin leant back to pull Bane over but Bane didn't move. Instead he lifted Red Robin into the air and threw him up and backwards away from himself. Red Robin was able to twist his body in mid-air and land into a roll.

Batman then ran at Bane who swung his arms together to catch the Caped Crusader. His arms caught only air as Batman was able to roll between Bane's legs, causing the big man to reach down, as if he was trying to snare his opponent. As he bent down though Robin stepped up from behind and launched himself off Bane's back, somersaulting over his bent over body as he tagged him on the back of the head. Bane roared in frustration and immediately went after the boy wonder and as they headed towards the wall Robin ran up it a couple of paces before timing a perfect back flip to vault over Bane who crashed into it. Nightwing and Red Hood were soon back to grab him by the arms but Bane easily overpowered them, tossing them to the sides as they deftly flipped back to land on their feet. There was a quick pause for a little more applause before they went into the final sequence.

"Ok boys, let's finish this." Nightwing said.

They rushed towards him and were able to avoid his wild swinging punches, as well as getting in a few kicks of their own. Robin then taunted the bigger man to chase him before vaulting over a couple of crates and mocking him as he went. When he got to the last crate Robin stood on top of it with his hands on his hips, teasing the big man some more. This time Bane picked up the crate with Robin still on it and hoisted him above his head as the audience gasped in surprise.

"That's it, take him down." Batman yelled.

Bane was still holding the crate up with his arms extended fully as Red Robin and Red Hood grabbed on either side of him to do a human flag, so now Bane had Red Robin hanging off one arm and Red Hood hanging off the other, both of them perfectly parallel to the ground. As they were doing that Robin did a handstand on top of the crate as the audience went wild. Nightwing and Batman gave each other a nod before sprinting towards Bane and both doing a wall run somersault off his chest. When they both landed Red Robin and Red Hood dropped back to the ground but as they did, Red Robin was able to pull the device from his forearm, severing the Venom injector and putting an end to the fight.

Bane lowered the crate to the ground and Robin was able to jump off and roll to safety as the strobe lights and smoke came back to hide his transformation. When the lights came back on Bane was on his knees in the middle of the warehouse as Batman went over to lay him out with one final punch. Sammie and Lucas then came on dressed as GCPD to take Bane away into the wings as the audience were cheering like crazy now. Meanwhile the Bat family were all high fiving each other as they got their breath back.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, GIVE IT UP FOR FLEEK FLOW!!!" Daz bellowed over the PA system. The guys all took their masks off to show their real faces now and took a bow. "Over here we've got Ben Anderson as Batman, Danny Clarke as Robin, Jamie Forster as Red Hood, Noah Grady as Nightwing and Tom Blackwood as Red Robin!!" The crowd were on their feet for the group and none of them could stop smiling. "And lastly, give it up for the amazing Alex Conway and Josh Draper for playing Bane." The two Banes came back on stage without their masks to take a bow with the rest of the guys before the curtains closed. As the stage crew took down the warehouse set the show had a brief interval to give everyone a bit of a break.

Back in the dressing room the guys were all excitedly talking about the performance as well as getting changed for the second act. I was pretty impressed myself as I wasn't sure we were going to pull it all off. The biggest problem had been doing the transition from small Bane to the larger one. The original plan was to have Alex go on as the smaller Bane and then do a switch over with all the strobe lighting to then have Josh play the bigger Bane. The first problem we had with that though was that we couldn't figure out a way to get them to switch over without people seeing, the second problem was that Alex was completely uncoordinated and messed up so many times in rehearsals that they just decided to have Josh do the whole thing. We still needed Alex backstage so that people would believe the one on stage was actually two different people. When Josh grew on stage he was hidden by the smoke and lights, but as he was doing that Alex was shrinking in the wings with Lucas and Sammie shielding him from anyone who might see. Having the masks on both guys really helped with that as no one noticed what really happened.

When Lucas had changed we went to wait in the wings for the interval to be over. He had that nervous excitement about him again as he waited for his moment. He was doing a piece with the girls who were limbering up and stretching in the wings on either side of the stage.

"Are you ready for this?" I asked.

"I was born ready." He replied.

"Thought so. Break a leg out there."

"Not gonna happen." He smiled and then gave me a kiss before I went back to make sure my guitar was all tuned up for my performance later.

The second half of the show started with Lucas and his friends doing their dance piece. It was set to some music I'd written for them and the dance was led by Casey and Lucas. Although we told the girls it was meant to represent growing up and the changes we all go through, in actuality it was more representative of the journey Lucas and I had been on. From showing both of our isolation from friends when we were younger, to dealing with the turbulent nature of Lucas controlling and learning about his strength, to me being bullied by Brandon. The other girls danced as the conflicts we both had to overcome and in the end Lucas and Casey danced around each other to show how they were both changing to become more in sync with each other, before finally fully dancing together in perfect harmony. When they finished the audience went crazy for them and I could see a few people who'd been watching from the wings with me shedding a tear. I wrapped Lucas in a huge hug and kissed him right in front of everybody when he came backstage while the next act went on to, hopefully, wow the crowd.

There were a couple of acts on before me and I felt myself getting more and more nervous as my time drew nearer. I couldn't do any more than I already had though. I had my acoustic guitar ready for the first song and my headset mic was in place; I was ready to go. When it was finally time for me to go on I walked out to the front of the stage and sat on the stool with the main curtains behind me. It was just me and the audience, no back up, so this was my time to shine. The lights went down, leaving me in a solitary spotlight as I took a deep breath and started to play the first chords. My nerves melted away as I started singing my own song, all about finding my family and setting my world right. Quite often I'd get lost in the music and make the world just disappear but this time I kept my eyes open, looking out into the audience. I saw my mum a few rows back with her head leaning on my dad's shoulder as his arm was draped over the back of her seat. Next to them was Uncle Sam and Aunt Becky in a similar position, all four of them with glassy eyes and big smiles on their faces. Alex and Josh had also joined them and were watching me sing my heart out.

The music flowed out like a magical wave. I didn't have to think about the strings to pluck or the frets to hold, my hands just went where they needed to as if they were guided by some divine power. People told me I had a good singing voice and I know people are always critical of their own tone, but right there I knew I hit every note perfectly. My breathing was spot on so when I hit the long notes there was no wavering or struggle. When the song was over there were a few seconds of complete silence that felt like a lifetime before the entire room burst into wild cheering.

I felt overwhelmed with emotion right there and I had tears rolling down my cheeks. After another minute Lucas came on stage clutching my favourite Jackson PC1 ready for my next song. We switched guitars before he gave me a kiss, causing the crowd to cheer again, and I even heard a few wolf whistles. He held the guitar up and waved to the crowd as he took it off stage, along with the stool.

"Ok, are you ready to take this home?" I asked to an enthusiastic cheer. "Alright then, here we go." The spotlight now came from directly above as the curtains parted, leaving the stage behind me in darkness. For the next part I just wanted to do a medley of famous guitar riffs so I started with Sweet Child O' Mine by Guns `n' Roses before seguing into Whole Lotta Love by Led Zeppelin. The crowd were eating it up as I went into some other songs they knew and I even threw in a riff that I hadn't told the other guys about. I played the opening to Does Your Mother Know by Abba and looked over into the wings to see Ben flipping me off with a huge smile on his face.

Finally I went into the opening bars of Black Diamond by Kiss which starts off fairly softly with just a guitar and the singer. As I sang the opening lyrics I started to gradually move backwards out of the spotlight into the darkened stage behind me and at the end of the intro I let the guitar squeal out the last chord for a few seconds until Sammie counted us in. When she did I dropped to my knees as I hit the first notes and the stage burst into light as Danny somersaulted over me and the other Fleeks flipped and cartwheeled onto the stage. By now we had the whole auditorium rocking with me, Sammie, Daz and Adrian blasting out Black Diamond, while the Fleeks, Lucas, his girls and the rest of the cast were all dancing up on stage. The feeling was absolutely incredible as we brought the house down and when we hit the last note there were streamers and confetti firing everywhere.

"Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for the Emberville Academy Showcase stars!!!" Daz called out over the speakers sending the crowd absolutely crazy. Before I knew what was happening I was suddenly hoisted up onto Noah and Jamie's shoulders with my hands in the air as the crowd seemed to get even louder. The guys dropped me back to the ground as Lucas swept me up into a huge hug.

"Listen to that sound. They love you almost as much as I do." He said into my ear before kissing me again to more cheering from the audience as well as everyone on stage. From that point on I didn't care what else I did with my life, I knew I was born to do this, and with Lucas along with me there was nothing to stop us going to the top.

 

Epilogue

 

\\\ Alex ///

 

It's a weird felling being nervous for someone else. I didn't have anything to fear as I was just a spectator but as I looked at the alter to see Luke standing there, with my husband as his best man, it took me right back to when I'd been in the same position marrying Josh. We all stood up as the music began and I could see Luke taking a deep breath to steady his nerves. I followed everyone else's gaze to the back of the church where Nick stood arm in arm with his mum ready to walk her down the aisle. Usually it was the father of the bride in that position but Nick had insisted that he be the one to give his mum away to his dad and his grandfather agreed without any argument. They walked in step toward the alter and the smile never left Nick's face.

Most of the Fleek Flow boys were sitting on the bride's side of the church with their families, all of them were smiling and giving Nick the thumbs up as he passed by. Summer's parents were also over there along with a few of her old high school friends, some of whom I hadn't seen for years. Sammie and Lucas were on Luke's side with me, along with Ben, his parents and all of their grandparents as well. Luke's mum looked so happy to finally see her boy getting married and having a family of his own after playing uncle to Ben for so long. They had both written their own vows and once they had exchanged rings they were officially man and wife.

The reception was held at a stately home nearby, one which actually had a statue made by Josh in their grand hallway. There was the formality of the meal and the speeches to get done as well and poor Luke looked mortified when Josh started his best man's speech. Luke had chosen him as his best man as he said he couldn't trust me or Sam not to embarrass him. Little did he know that we had written the speech for Josh and even used a big screen behind their table to show every embarrassing photo we could find of him. We never heard much about Brandon; except that his parents were making sure he didn't come over to spoil Luke and Summer's big day. Sam and I didn't take any chances though so we asked some of our old school contacts, who hated Brandon as well, if they could make sure he didn't gate-crash and thankfully he stayed away.

After that was all finished some of the tables were cleared away to make room for the dance floor where Lucas, the Fleek Flow crew and Nick put on a performance to celebrate the day. They had a live band instead of a DJ so naturally Nick wanted to get up there to perform a number for everyone. He even had his dad play along on the drums for one of the songs and the look on his face was beyond happy.

It's crazy to think what's happened to that boy in the last ten months. He came to town full of anger and pain but gradually that all faded away with help from his friends as well as discovering he was part of a loving family. Not to mention that he and Ben brought our families closer together. And I couldn't be more proud of Lucas for helping Nick become the man he is today, as well as for accepting himself over the last year. I'd been so worried about him putting on an act all the time when he was at school but with Ben urging him to be himself he blossomed into the young man he was meant to be. As for Sammie and Ben; it was nice to see them realise they were so right for each other. Josh and I joked about the `what if' for years and then when it finally happened we were happy for them both.

Who knows what going to happen with these kids next. They've all got big plans and bright futures ahead of them and I, for one, cannot wait to see where they go from here. And who knows, maybe someday they'll have their own families to continue their story, but for now I'm just happy to know they're all there for this incredible start to Nick's new life.

 

The End.

 

Afterword

 

So there you have it, that is the very end of the story. Hope you all liked it and I'd like to say a big thank you for all the support and messages over the last few months. Also a huge thank you to Nifty for hosting it and if you want to show them your support for more stories like this then you can donate here https://donate.nifty.org 

I have no idea what I'll be posting next or when but if you're reading this story as it's published or years down the line then you can still message me on the usual email address sithspawn78@yahoo.co.uk

Thanks again

Steve