Booming

*TW Drugs & Alcohol*

Maxie had half expected to be met with the sight of smoke and lasers with a booming bass. However, to his surprise he didn't see any of that, and if he hadn't known any better he would have assumed that the gravel maintenance road they were walking down was entirely mundane. 

Peering ahead, he looked intently at the gravel road treading beneath his feet.

It was hard to see much of anything with how oppressive the darkness was, even while holding their flashlights up. They would have assumed that they were utterly lost if not for the fresh footprints the group was following closely behind.

"I'm getting kinda scared guys..."

"Shut up Irie, that's not even funny"

Maxie laughed at the couple's playful banter feeling wistful.

It took some time before Maxie began to see vibrant flashes of neon in the distance. Passing a tall fence lined with barbed wire through a neatly cut portion, the loud booms he had been hearing in the distance had reached a cacophonous climax, and his gut suddenly quaked. 

It felt like when old cartoon characters stepped on a rake and a big "BOOM!" would resound, causing their body to vibrate and wobble back and forth. 

He suppressed a hearty chuckle and shook his head to clear his drifting thoughts. 

What Maxie thought he was being discreet about did not go unnoticed by James, who threw an accusing glare at Brock, though he didn't seem to notice. The music was getting louder.

Stepping past a pair of tall bushes Maxie nearly stumbled once the ground was no longer sloping. Catching his fall he looked up and froze.

In front of him was suddenly a large clearing, scattered here and there with people wearing rather eccentric clothing. Many seemed to be intoxicated but were chatting in small groups hanging around another tall, but newer, metal fence, gating off the stage. 

"Ok, so my buddy said that there's an area towards the back with a bunch of bamboo that we can sneak our way in through."

Batting his neck to look at Aaron, James spoke with a hint of irritation in his voice,

"What do you mean we have to sneak in, I thought you said this was your buddy's setup?"

"Yeah my bad, he just invited me to tag along."

James's eye was literally twitching, it was Maxie's first time seeing something so comically accurate. He let his laughter get the better of him, letting out boisterous cackle. He didn't know what was so funny but everything seemed just so funny tonight.

Noticing the strange glances he was getting from the others he focused on gathering his wits. 

"I'm tryna get on that kinda level~" 

Kat's remark was met with a loud bout of laughter from everyone, including Maxie himself, though thinking about it he got really self-conscious. Was everyone laughing at him, not with him? Concentrating intensely on acting normal, he didn't understand what was wrong with him.

No... with the world? 

'Ah, what the hell'

Everywhere in his vision was wavy, in the way patches of the ground would become wavy in the heat, but also in weirdly extreme high definition. His movements seemed more punctuated, articulated beneath a hefty weight.

He looked between Jasmine and James, who were now looking at him, their faces obscured by a complex kaleidoscope of geometric shapes and colors. The sound of the booming bass in the background was becoming distant as well. He didn't realize it, but he was grinning like an idiot.

Aaron now fully in his element, led everyone through a winding maze of bamboo until the thicket cleared. A sea of neon leasers greeted them with bodies hidden behind plumes of fog, everything moving harmoniously in a strangely hypnotic rhythm. 

All around them the earth shook in tandem with the speakers. A flurry of laser light shows assaulting their eyes as the acrid stench of BO wafted towards them.

Jasmine screamed cheerfully behind him then said to the group,

"Who's ready to get slammed!"

Next thing he knew he was holding a really delicious, and weirdly warm, can of sweet iced tea.

The music was blasting and colors were streaking across the crowd, his body had gotten engulfed by the sea of people shortly after their arrival, and in that time he didn't know how or when he had gotten to the middle of the crowd or even when he had gotten two more fresh cans of iced tea in his hand. But he didn't care.

Shrugging it off, he could see people gathered around in a large circle in front of him. Curious, he weaved his way through the breathing mass of people. He felt weirdly serene as he became one with the horde, ducking and bobbing between them, like everyone was one big organism.

Peering past the shoulders of a broad back that blocked his view, Maxie was awestruck.

In the center of the circle was a shirtless man, muscles rippling beneath his skin, where on his chest Maxie saw a large, elaborate tattoo of the Fibonacci sequence, that swayed with a captivating rhythm as the man took laborious breaths.

He wore a fearsome devil mask that sent chills down Maxie's spine and wielded two flaming rods in either of his hands, completing displays of dexterity unlike any other. The way he was twirling them in the air, dancing between flaming batons like a savage acrobat, was beautiful, and utterly spellbinding. 

His graceful, and seemingly chaotic, movements had a pattern to them. At first glance it appeared as though the majorette had no direction, performing his stunts on impulse through improvisation and skill. But looking closer, Maxie had seemed to have cracked a sort of code.

Past the mesmerizing shapes and shadows cast by the flames as they danced across the stage, laid a rudimentary set of actions which the majorette performed with utmost precision. By seamlessly transitioning from one move to the next, he was able to accomplish truly stunning achievements of technique by only using a few simple moves in harmony with the music. 

Then, past his capabilities, were a set of parameters he was confined to. The limits of his body, the limits of his stage, and most importantly, the limits of his mind.

Maxie was fully enrapt, looking for any kind of pattern that he could glean from the man's chaotic movements. He didn't know why unlocking the key to this man's essence was so important to him right now, but that was all that consumed his mind.

Thunderbolts assaulted his vision from time to time, accompanied by their cacophonous booms, but that did little to quench the fires of his spirit. Led by his intuition and keen eye, Maxie received revelations about more fundamental aspects of motion through his acrobatic movements.

Watching intently, he was thinking back to his physics class, Ms. Nelson's voice echoing in his head,

'Everything boils down to matter, energy, and the interactions between them.'

Her bewildering lectures slowly began making perversely twisted sense. He was so close to uncovering it, he could feel it in his very marrow. Something about the man's tattoo itched his brain in ways he could not explain. If he could just watch for a little while longer certainly would be able to grasp it... right?

His vision bled white and the sound of a gong reverberated through his being at a frightening tempo. It was becoming clearer as the seconds passed him by. The mans fearsome form becoming more intuitive, repetitive, like he could almost predict the mans actions as he flew around the scared crowd of onlookers.

He bored holes into the mans chest where his tattoo laid bare. It was.. moving? The ornate amalgamation of numbers were cascading into one another infinitely. Shapes and geometry were clashing in Maxie's head as numbers lit up and tessellations crashed and remolded. His vision was spinning through the sequence, transfixed. Things were becoming less coherent around him, and time slowed to a sickeningly slow crawl.

'I think I'm gonna hurl'

All of a sudden a thunderbolt resounded in his mind and his vision went completely. 

In that moment he felt whole, or rather apart of a whole, and profound.

'Ah—'

At that moment a hand grasped his shoulder pulling him back. 

"Where the hell were you man, the place got rolled 20 minutes ago?!"