This is a thing set immediately after the Season 2 finale that I had to get out of my system so I could focus on enjoying the bits I DID love (which was everything else about the finale).

She'd started composing the message months ago, and it had taken the end of the world to get her to finish it. She'd done so an hour ago, but it took her a while before she could bring herself to do anything with it. Finally, Irma hit send, and tapped impatiently on her mouse as the send button did that spinny "loading" thing.

While she waited, she leaned back in her chair and spun it around, letting the organized clutter of her room blur as she spun. Every exposed surface spoke of the insanity of the past two years. The multitude of instruments, mainly guitars and keyboards, crammed into every space that would fit. Drafts and scribbles of sheet music everywhere, piles of it propping up cups full of half-drunk coffee in 'Lairdman Academy for the Performing Arts' mugs that she really would clean up at some point, honest. Her walls plastered with early concept drafts of the band's posters, each one featuring a different name as they'd cycled through them. It had seemed so important, up until a few days ago.

Too important.

But now, it didn't matter. All classes were cancelled, all deadlines on hold while the world held its breath and tried to figure out whether or not it was going to keep spinning.

Irma stopped her chair and looked back at the screen. Still loading. With a deep breath, she switched over to the other window, where news reports from New York battled for relevancy with half-coherent Tweeter posts and blurred cell phone pictures and videos.

The discordant plink of the messenger broke into her thoughts, and she switched over to the blinking tab.

Game_Maestro:

Hey, you've got family in the city, right? You okay?

Despite the situation, she couldn't help but smile. Hiro looked like he'd walked straight out of the lead role of a shoujo anime, and knew it. He milked the stoic, distant, foreign student thing dry, knowing how much it drove the girls at Lairdman nuts. But she also knew he'd been born and raised about three blocks from her, and though he rarely spoke in class or at practice, it was messages like this, which completely dropped the act, that let you know you were part of his inner circle. That he actually cared. And right now, she could use all the caring she could get. They all could.

Hipchick_2447:

Some. Most are upstate, and everyone still in the city when the shit went down made it to em.

She paused, biting her lip before adding:

Hipchick_2447:

Still got some friends AWOL though. You?

Game_Maestro:

Dad's fine. You dodged the question.

She had. The problem was, she didn't actually know the answer to the question. Frowning, she called the message she'd written - still loading - back up onto the screen.

[[Message]]

To: A. O'Neil

From: I. Langenstein

Hey April,

Had that dream last night that I used to have back in sixth grade all the time, and it made me think of you. I know when I got into Lairdman we said we'd keep in touch when I moved away, but we both know how high school is. And it's been crazy here. Awesome, but so crazy, and every free second I have is spent in practice, and then I got into those summer programs, and they'll help SO much if I decide to try for Juliard, and suddenly it's another year gone.

I don't even know if my messages are reaching you anymore. Last year after that weirdness went down with the big alien ship things in NYC, I tried to check in, but my computer fritzed. I took it to the IT department - I'm telling you, one of the things that sucks most about boarding school is that you're depending on them for EVERYTHING - and I'm not sure the new IT guy's all that. The guy's got, like, ONE expression, and the way he talks, I'm starting to suspect he's part computer himself. He keeps getting me to repeat things whenever I talk to him. I swear, my laptop's been even buggier since he fixed it.

Anyway. If my messages ARE getting through, I guess I can understand why you wouldn't answer. I never thought it'd be so easy to drift apart. Or that it would happen so fast. But if we can fix this, I'd really like to. There's always going to be deadlines, and five hours of practice after school, and all that, but even though I've got friends here, nobody really UNDERSTANDS things like you did. Like, how cool it was to see the rats on the subway tracks building a nest for their babies. Or why gluten-free food doesn't HAVE to taste like ass. Seriously, do you know how hard it is to get a gluten-free bagel out here that doesn't taste like styrofoam?

Guh, why is this so hard? What I'm trying to say is, I miss you. And if you ever want to talk, I don't even have your number anymore, but mine is

Oh god, I just saw the news from New York. April, please, just send me a line to let me know you're okay. Please?

Be safe.

[[message not delivered]]

CLICK TO QUEUE

Sighing, Irma hit the queue button and closed the tab, leaving her faced with Hiro's message again. Taking off her glasses for a minute so that she could rub her eyes, she settled them back in place and put her fingers back on the keyboard.

Hipchick_2447:

I don't know what okay is anymore.

Game_Maestro:

Join the club. Everyone else has checked in with fam. All okay. Wanna go play something loud and angry for a while?

Despite everything, Irma couldn't hold back a quiet laugh as she shook her head. This school was hell sometimes. Every waking second spent practicing, or writing music, or nursing the wounds on your hands when your calluses cracked, or falling over from lack of sleep. But the five of them had come together to form the band because despite all that, music took them away from all the other crap they had to deal with. They may not all agree sometimes, but when they were in the middle of that thing that happened when the music just gelled, none of it mattered. Nothing else mattered.

Hipchick_2447:

Meet you at the practice space in 5.

Nobody said a word when they met up at the practice portable. It wasn't that kind of meeting. They just plugged in, cranked the amps, and played until everything went away. Until confused, aching hearts started beating normally again. Until they blew the transformer and took out the power grid for half the campus.

Including the building where the IT department housed their surprisingly robust servers. And as the campus network went down, Irma's phone switched over to a mobile network, and the app running in the background finally found a gap in the firewall that had surrounded it since the summer break.

[[message delivered]]

"Red? You okay?"

April jerked at the sound of Casey's voice, tearing her eyes from the message on her phone. "Uh, yeah. I'm fine. It's nothing."

Casey folded his arms, raising a brow at her. "Doesn't look like nothing."

"Nothing I want to deal with right now," she amended, with a pointed glance toward the next room, where the brothers' tense vigil continued.

Casey's expression softened, and he hugged her to his side in quiet understanding before he returned to the chopping board.

April had her part of the soup to tend to, but before she went back to it, she closed the new message that had just arrived and scrolled down through her messages until she found the one she'd been looking for, sent at the end of August.

[[From: I. Langenstein. Subject: "HEY GIRL GUESS WHOS MOVING BACK TO THE CITY!]]

April turned her phone off and put it away. Whatever that was, it could wait. They had more important things to deal with now.