#SHES SO. AUGH I LOVE HERR

[icetones]

Fifteen hours in and i think we should talk about bellara more can we talk about bellara i wanna talk about bellara

[wardencommanderrodimiss]

Klavier releases a new single and part of it features Taka's screeches as part of the song, Apollo thinks it's weird but it's hailed as artistic and avant garde.

Hey did you remember this ask from a month ago because I did and here’s the payoff.

“No.”

“It would be hilarious.”

“No.”

“You let Fräulein Cykes talk you into making him an Instagram.”

“That is different.”

“And a Twitter.”

“That is also–”

“Just say that you like her more than me, ja? I won’t be offended.”

“You should already know that I like her more than I like you.”

“I should have expected that.”

“Do you not have work to be doing, Gavin-dono?”

“I do not. I have nothing better to do than bother you. I imagine the Fräulein would quite enjoy some photos of our dear Herr Birdie in a recording studio for his insta, ja?”

“You are not going to ask her–”

“It is far too late; I texted her ten minutes ago.”

“You are an absurdity of the likes of which I have only ever seen on a witness stand or the defense’s bench. What compels you to be as you are?”

“In general, or specifically why I want my next single to feature Herr Taka?”

“Yes.”

“There are too many music critics with heads so far up their own asses that they can taste the prohibitively expensive wine which they drank with lunch, whose superiority complexes have bid them to dismiss every song I have ever written simply because teenage girls like me, and I want them to be crushed under the weight of their own pretentiousness as their alleged artistic sensibilities struggle to reconcile the avant-garde aspect of featuring a bird of prey on a track with the fact that I was once the lead singer for a boyband.”

Klavier waits, his elbows propped up on Simon’s desk, grinning at him, waiting for any sort of reaction. The seconds tick by as Simon, staring past Klavier, slowly blinks once and refocuses his eyes on him. He blinks again. Klavier is still grinning.

“You are not… actually going to bring him into a recording studio, are you?”

“Of course I am. I am an artiste.”

“You are a witless lunatic.”

*

Apollo has not had time to close the door of the office behind him before Trucy, bouncing, has appeared in front of him with a grin on her face to inform him, “Prosecutor Gavin put out a new single!”

“Uh-huh,” Apollo says, trying to feign disinterest, which is difficult given the special powers of every single other person who inhabits the office. Athena has appeared in the doorway, grinning at him. She doesn’t stop grinning, either, and her expression doesn’t waver in the slightest, like some static image at home on the poster for a horror movie. “Athena, why are you grinning like that?”

“No reason,” she says, and her smile reappears larger than ever.

“Uh-huh,” he says. He decides to ignore her. “Have you listened to it yet, Trucy?”

“No, I was waiting for you, since it just came out this morning!”

“Don’t these things usually happen at midnight?” Apollo asks before he realizes that knowing this fact probably does not help his intended image of appearing disinterested in the music industry and Prosecutor Gavin’s career.

Trucy shrugs. Athena has not stopped grinning. “Stop making that face,” Apollo says.

“No,” Athena says, through her teeth, her smile still plastered across her face.

“You look like Professor Means.”

“Augh!” That did it. Her face twists like she is trying to get peanut butter out of her mouth, massaging the remains of the smile out. “That’s mean, Apollo, that’s really mean.”

“It’s Means, I think you mean,” Trucy says, expertly dodging the smack that Athena aims for her arm. “Have you heard it yet, Athena?”

“No,” she says, now looking like she is trying to stifle the smile that is again spreading across her face.

“You’re lying,” Apollo and Trucy say in unison.

“Ooh, Athena, do you know something about this?” Trucy asks, bouncing again as she makes her way over to her laptop.

“No.”

“I don’t even need my bracelet to tell that you’re lying now,” Apollo says.

“Is this finally the love confession for Apollo that all his music from the past year has been building up to?” Trucy asks.

“The what,” Apollo says.

Trucy waves a dismissive hand at him. “I’ll explain later; I have charts to back me up.”

“You have what,” Apollo says.

“If it is that,” Athena says, “then he didn’t tell me.”

“What did he tell you?” Trucy asks.

“Just play the stupid song,” Apollo says.

“Finally!” Widget crows and Athena slaps her hand over her necklace.

If Apollo were to admit it, which he won’t, most of Prosecutor Gavin’s music isn’t bad. Some of it isn’t to Apollo’s tastes, especially not at the cacophony of a live concert, but all of the Gavinners albums are at least okay in places, and the solo stuff is better. And it’s probably good for his sanity that he thinks so, because every time a new single drops, Trucy plays it on loop for at least a week and never ever uses headphones.

He sort of hopes she won’t do that with this one though, because it’s just… weird. Not Klavier’s usual style, inasmuch as there has been a coherent thread between his solo releases, and not to Apollo’s liking. Trucy is bobbing her head though, tapping the desk as they huddle around the laptop, and Athena is the one bouncing on her heels now. “What’s that sound that keeps coming up?” Apollo asks when he’s turned it over in his brain enough to decide that whatever the hell is going on in the background mixing is neither an instrument that he knows nor a normal human sound.

“Shh!” Trucy hisses, and her frown means that he’s earned himself a second loop of the song for talking through part of it.

About twenty seconds later, he asks, “Is that some sort of bird?”

“Looklook look!” Athena has an arm around his neck in a second, pulling Trucy close with the other, and she shoves her phone under their noses. “Look!”

“That’s a bird in front of a microphone,” Trucy says, a little confused and probably more disgruntled that Athena is now talking over the music too.

“That’s… that’s not Taka, is it?” Apollo asks. His head is starting to hurt.

“It’s Taka!” Athena drops her phone on the laptop keyboard and does a hopping dance around the desk. “Taka’s a singer now! Look!” She wedges herself in between them again to swipe through more pictures on her phone, the first eight of which are the first picture from slightly different angles, with Taka barely having moved. There’s one that is obviously a candid with Klavier talking to someone off-camera to the left, his guitar in hands, Taka on his shoulder; another with Klavier doubled over laughing at something, Taka halfway out of the frame, Simon standing off to the left staring straight at the camera with the barest hint of a smirk on his face; Klavier sitting on an amp, Taka perched on the head of the guitar. A selfie of Athena making a peace sign in front of a shelf of shiny awards; a wobbly picture obviously not taken by Athena because the subject is her grinning and poking one of the trophies. A video looking to be taken accidentally, unfocused angled at the ground as Klavier’s voice comes from somewhere: “–murdered with that as the weapon they will find your fingerprints and arrest you for it.”

“Then we spent like twenty minutes talking about what the best murder weapon in the room would be,” Athena adds.

“It looks like you had fun,” Trucy says. Apollo can hear the jealousy seeping into her voice and Athena’s head jerks up in alarm.

“I was only there because Prosecutor Gavin told me about the idea of having Taka on the track, so that I could help convince Simon, but then it turned out that Simon agreed because - something about spite, I don’t know what they were saying - and then I blackmailed him into letting me come to the recording session too because otherwise I could tell the world about his upcoming single. I’m sure if you wanted to see the place you could ask him! I’ve wanted to tell you guys about this for like a month!”

Apollo has a sinking feeling that Trucy won’t be the one overplaying the song, but rather Athena instead will. This suspicion only intensifies when she retrieves her phone to show them the last of the pictures, which includes a selfie of the four of them, Taka perched on Athena’s head, and at least two dozen more of Taka from various angles, in front of a microphone, on the amp, on the guitar, doing absolutely nothing, scratching his head, sleeping. “I was going to delete some of these,” Athena says, “the ones that are basically the same as others, but then Simon asked me to send all of them to him and I didn’t get around to it.”

“I can’t believe Prosecutor Blackquill’s pet bird is now a rock star,” Apollo mutters. “I can’t believe Gavin featured a bird on one of his songs.”

“Believe it!” Trucy says. “And since you talked through it, we will be listening again. Hey! Don’t walk away! Polly! Get back here!”

Apollo sighs.

*

“What are these papers?” Simon slowly lifts the offending stack from his desk, gingerly rifling through as though he expects a threat to spring from the pages.

“Reviews,” Klavier says, “of my new hit single. These are all the ones that said artistic or avant-garde. I highlighted every instance for you.”

Simon sets the papers back down and slowly shakes his head. “A question for you now,” Klavier says. “Is it you or Fräulein Cykes who runs Herr Taka’s insta?”

“She does.”

“I will have to apologize for her for being inundated with follower notifications.”

“What do you mean?”

“I tagged the account in my latest post.” Klavier holds his phone up to Simon, showing a picture of him with his guitar and Taka sitting on it, a microphone positioned in front of him. It was purely a photo-op that Athena wanted; I’m not going to accomplish anything with a bird on my guitar, ja? “So I imagine that several thousand of my followers, at least, have gone to follow Herr Taka.”

“Is he famous now?” Simon asks.

“Perhaps - if not yet, then soon.” Klavier glances at Taka asleep on his perch. “He is handling his rise to stardom very well, but he does have the best manager.”

“Would that be you?” Simon’s lips twitch in a smirk. “The most humble as well, I suppose.”

“Oh yes. I am very humble. You put enough dents in my ego on a daily basis for me not to be.” Klavier stops in the doorway and grins. “Enough that what Fräulein Cykes told me about your ringtone won’t go to my head.”

“She said what to you?”

“Ach, brushes with stardom make informants of the closest friends. It is nothing unusual for the celebrity world, that she sold you out.”

“She said what?” Simon repeats.

His phone rings, loudly, and he cannot lunge to silence it quickly enough. Klavier’s grin, impossibly, grows wider. He raises his phone in his hand, the screen showing that whoever he called has just hung up on him, and waves it. “It won’t go to my head,” he repeats. “It was not me, but the featured artist with me, ja?”

“Do you not have work to be doing, Gavin-dono?”