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Hall of Fame Talent, West Hollywood, California, Friday, 8:45 a.m.
Logan Hall’s office was cold again. It always was.
Not in temperature—the air conditioning slid across the panoramic windows like a whisper—but in atmosphere. It was the kind of cold that settled into the corners of a room when everything had already been decided, and no one had the courtesy to admit it. The kind of cold that clung to glass and chrome and quiet power.
Sunlight streamed in narrow slats across the floor, carving up the room like it had something to say. A platinum record glinted in the light. A single white orchid stood in a vase—centered, flawless, eternal. Her coffee steamed gently on a black lacquer coaster, untouched and growing colder by the second. Her tablet lay face-down, deliberately ignored. As if anything worth reading today would be written by someone else.
The raccoon sat behind the desk, immaculate and immovable. Navy blazer pressed to a knife’s edge. Wristwatch aligned with the cuff like it had been set with a ruler. One leg crossed over the other at a perfect angle, the point of her shoe angled toward the door in unconscious warning. Her claws tapped once—exactly once—against the armrest before stilling again. Her tail curled lightly around the leg of the chair, posture textbook but taut, like a whip coiled beneath her calm.
At 8:59 a.m., Riley, her bright-eyed hyena intern, appeared in the doorway. His fur was too neatly brushed, his clipboard too tightly clutched.
“Alex Marx is coming for her nine o’clock,” he said, almost whispering, like the room itself didn’t want to be disturbed.
Logan didn’t lift her head. “I know.”
He lingered a beat too long, uncertain, then vanished. The door clicked shut with a whisper of tension.
At precisely 9:00, the elevator chimed.
Alex entered without knocking.
She didn’t stride. She arrived—not with force, but with weight. Presence. Like gravity had changed when she stepped into the room.
Her hoodie was oversized, one sleeve pushed up just enough to show the fine sleep-deprivation tremble in her wrist. Her fur still held the smell of shampoo and barely-dried sweat. Her hair was damp, pulled back in a low, half-hearted knot that hadn’t quite dried. Glitter clung in the hollow of her throat like an old wound that refused to fade. Her tail dragged a little as she moved—lazy, deliberate, disinterested in decorum. Her sunglasses stayed on.
The door sealed behind her with a quiet hiss, shutting the world out.
Logan didn’t rise. She didn’t need to. She lifted her chin in acknowledgment, gaze steady, expression unreadable—like she was studying a sculpture that might shatter or combust.
“You’re early,” Logan said, coolly.
“And you’re always on time,” Alex replied, lowering her sunglasses with two fingers. Her eyes were sharp beneath the exhausted haze—red-rimmed, unreadable. “I figured I’d make an impression.”
She smirked, lips dry, one fang peeking out more than the other in a gesture that couldn’t decide if it was charm or threat. Logan barely returned it.
Instead, she flicked two fingers toward the chair without a word.
The tiger sat slowly, carefully, like she was easing herself into character. She draped one leg over the other, foot swinging lazily, then stilled it mid-motion. Her arms crossed tight over her chest, like she was holding something in. She slouched just enough to look like she wasn’t trying—but not enough to lose her silhouette.
“I want to do another album,” she said.
Logan blinked once. Not surprised. Just waiting.
“We already have one scheduled. It’s clean. Safe. Bankable.”
“I don’t want safe.” Alex tilted her head, gaze fixed on the far wall like she was watching something no one else could see. Her voice was dry, flat, nearly hoarse. “I want noise. Blood. I want guitars that sound like they’re howling through rust. I want vocals that crack in the wrong places. I want to make something they’ll hate before they realize they need it.”
“You want to torch your career?” Logan asked, no judgment in her tone—just diagnosis. Her face didn’t move. Not even her tail.
“I want to find out if there’s anything left under the ash.”
Silence. Long enough for the hum of the HVAC to feel like a ticker on a bomb. A long enough pause to let both their pulses slow or spike.
Logan leaned back, one brow arching slowly. Her hands folded in her lap, careful and composed. Regal. Ready to strike.
“And you expect me to manage this... unravelling?”
“I expect you to try,” Alex said, lifting her gaze now. “So I can ignore you and do it anyway.” Her grin widened so that both her oversized sabers were now equally prominent.
That earned the faintest twitch of the ringtail’s lips. A flicker. Amusement, maybe. Or recognition.
She picked up her tablet, thumb hovering above the screen like a trigger.
“You’ll need someone to ground you. Someone who’ll fetch water when you’re crying and still look good next to you on tour.”
“I want an assistant,” Alex said. “Not a handler. And not some hyper-competent ice queen with a law degree and a backup plan. I want someone dumb. Soft. Fresh out of college. Preferably pretty and morally confused.”
Logan glanced up. Her tone was flat steel. “You’re not getting Riley.”
Alex smiled—not sweetly. “I don’t want Riley. I want a type.”
She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, voice dropping into something almost conspiratorial. “Hot. Hopeful. College-fresh. Full of trembling idealism and just enough anxiety to be useful. Someone who still blushes when I talk to them.”
“They’ll imprint on you.”
“I’ll make them art.”
Logan tapped her stylus once, sharp as a gavel. “You’ll pick from a list I approve.”
“And if I sleep with one of them?”
Logan didn’t blink. “Then you’re paying their severance.”
The tigress chuckled—a low, breathy thing that might have been affection, or threat. “You think I’ll fall in love?”
“I think they will.”
Alex leaned back, stretching her arms over her head until her spine cracked softly. The hem of her hoodie lifted, just enough to reveal the soft shimmer of old glitter covering the light bruising along her ribs. The tour was kicking her ass just a little bit—but that, too, was becoming useful.
“I already wrote the first track,” she said. “Exorcism.”
Logan raised one brow again. “Dramatic.”
Alex grinned. “You like dramatic.”
Logan didn’t disagree. She reached for her coffee, finally lifting it to her lips. Her claws clicked once against the porcelain.
After a moment of tense silence, Alex cut it with the scissors that were her teeth. “Are you coming to the show?” she asked, tone casual but not careless. Testing something.
Logan looked over the rim of the mug. The corner of her mouth curled.
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
That landed. Alex’s smile wavered—just for a moment—then solidified into something steadier. She rose, smoothing her hoodie, tugging the sleeves back down over her wrists, like sealing something back inside. She showed herself out.
At the door, she paused.
“Thanks,” she said.
Logan didn’t look up. “For what?”
“For letting me play with fire.” Alex purred.
Now Logan smiled.
Not the cold kind. Not smug. Something small and sharp and absolutely certain.
Because she knew.
She sipped her coffee. Tail flicking once behind her chair.
And said nothing at all.
---
SoFi Stadium, Inglewood, Greater Los Angeles Area, California, Friday 7:55 p.m.
The crowd was already screaming.
Not in the hopeful, pre-show hum of “maybe she’ll come out early,” but in the ravenous, pre-riot thunder of a tiger long teased and still unseen. The sound filled the air like smoke, vibrating through the floor, the walls, the bones. It was a living thing, that roar—hungry, electric, breathing. A wild creature fed on years of obsession, parasocial fantasy, and digital worship.
Somewhere beyond the velvet walls of the stadium’s green room, ten thousand fans were packed shoulder to shoulder beneath rigged lights that blazed like miniature suns. The crowd was a living ocean of furs, ears, tails, and antennae, each pair of eyes dilated wide with devotion. The scent of heat, vape clouds, sweat, hair product, and overpriced perfume clung to every surface. Fog machines wheezed like dragons down in the wings. Neon signage pulsed like heartbeat monitors along the edge of the stage. The air itself was thick with glitter and anticipation, heavy like humidity before a storm. Every square inch of the place seemed ready to combust, like a spark away from disaster.
The green room felt like a bunker on the edge of a holy war. The walls were soundproofed thick, but the low throb of the crowd still leaked through like a distant drumbeat. Makeup trays littered every countertop. LED lights ringed the vanity like a crime scene. A bouquet of unopened champagne bottles sat half-wilted in the corner. The scent of anxiety clung to everything—warm hairspray, cold coffee, and hot adrenaline.
Alex sat perfectly still.
A goddess mid-metamorphosis, swathed in a glittering kaleidoscope of sheer, tight, loud fabric. Her bodysuit shimmered like broken stained glass in the desert sun—a semi-sheer masterpiece of vivid yellow, electric blue, and bold black. The fabric clung to her like a living flame, refracting color with every breath, every twitch of muscle. Her eye makeup was a twin-bladed weapon: yellow sliced against blue in wings that reached back to her temples like lightning. Her lips were black, and glossy, like a mannequin on the verge of tears. Her cheeks were carved with contour sharp enough to kill. Every inch of her face was sculpted like a threat.
She stared at her reflection, dead-eyed and glittering. Her tail—long, striped, alive—flicked, restless, brushing against the faux velvet cushion of her dressing room chair. Her breath came shallow and hot. Despite the industrial-sized fan blowing in the corner, sweat had already beaded at her collarbone, threading down the line of her chest in glitter-flecked rivulets. Her spine ached from the weight of her boots, the outfit, the moment. But she didn’t move.
Logan stood behind her, one heel resting on the rung of a production crate, coffee in hand. Blue tailored blazer, black trousers, the faintest glimmer of amber and vanilla trailing her like a whispered threat. Her presence cut through the chaos like a scalpel—clean, calm, deadly. She didn’t need to speak. Her silence was louder than the crowd.
Alex finally broke it. “I don’t like the setlist.”
Logan didn’t look up. “You signed off on it.”
“I was high.”
“You’re always high.”
Alex turned to face her, one brow arched sharp enough to draw blood. “Exactly.”
Logan set the coffee down and moved closer. She adjusted the glittering bodysuit at the tigress’s shoulder with clinical precision. “What do you want to change?”
“Add Plastic Doll before Clone Love. Move Glass Heart later. Make them wait for it. And I want to end with Perfect Celebrity. No encore. Just... that. Cut to black. Make ‘em stew.”
Logan stared at her. “That song makes you spiral.”
The striped feline smiled, feral and fragile all at once. “That’s why it works.”
A knock at the dressing room door. Then a voice—nervous, male lynx, from the stage crew. “Miss Marx? Five minutes to curtain.”
Logan opened the door, barked a quick “Copy that,” and slammed it shut again. She turned back to her tiger.
“Whatever’s going to happen out there,” the raccoon said, straightening the strap again, her voice low, “make sure they don’t forget it. Not even in therapy.”
Alex rose. Towering in her boots, radiant, ruined, perfect. Her shadow stretched long across the dressing room floor like a skyscraper in summer.
“I’m not giving them a show tonight,” she whispered with an eerie grin. “I’m giving them a haunting.”
Art ©
Character(s) ©
Alex:
Do you want to support stories like these, participate in AMAs, suggest ideas, vote on them, and read them early? Support me on Patreon!
or my SubscribeStar! 
Follow me on Twitter!
Follow me on BlueSky!
Join my Discord Server!
Logan Hall’s office was cold again. It always was.
Not in temperature—the air conditioning slid across the panoramic windows like a whisper—but in atmosphere. It was the kind of cold that settled into the corners of a room when everything had already been decided, and no one had the courtesy to admit it. The kind of cold that clung to glass and chrome and quiet power.
Sunlight streamed in narrow slats across the floor, carving up the room like it had something to say. A platinum record glinted in the light. A single white orchid stood in a vase—centered, flawless, eternal. Her coffee steamed gently on a black lacquer coaster, untouched and growing colder by the second. Her tablet lay face-down, deliberately ignored. As if anything worth reading today would be written by someone else.
The raccoon sat behind the desk, immaculate and immovable. Navy blazer pressed to a knife’s edge. Wristwatch aligned with the cuff like it had been set with a ruler. One leg crossed over the other at a perfect angle, the point of her shoe angled toward the door in unconscious warning. Her claws tapped once—exactly once—against the armrest before stilling again. Her tail curled lightly around the leg of the chair, posture textbook but taut, like a whip coiled beneath her calm.
At 8:59 a.m., Riley, her bright-eyed hyena intern, appeared in the doorway. His fur was too neatly brushed, his clipboard too tightly clutched.
“Alex Marx is coming for her nine o’clock,” he said, almost whispering, like the room itself didn’t want to be disturbed.
Logan didn’t lift her head. “I know.”
He lingered a beat too long, uncertain, then vanished. The door clicked shut with a whisper of tension.
At precisely 9:00, the elevator chimed.
Alex entered without knocking.
She didn’t stride. She arrived—not with force, but with weight. Presence. Like gravity had changed when she stepped into the room.
Her hoodie was oversized, one sleeve pushed up just enough to show the fine sleep-deprivation tremble in her wrist. Her fur still held the smell of shampoo and barely-dried sweat. Her hair was damp, pulled back in a low, half-hearted knot that hadn’t quite dried. Glitter clung in the hollow of her throat like an old wound that refused to fade. Her tail dragged a little as she moved—lazy, deliberate, disinterested in decorum. Her sunglasses stayed on.
The door sealed behind her with a quiet hiss, shutting the world out.
Logan didn’t rise. She didn’t need to. She lifted her chin in acknowledgment, gaze steady, expression unreadable—like she was studying a sculpture that might shatter or combust.
“You’re early,” Logan said, coolly.
“And you’re always on time,” Alex replied, lowering her sunglasses with two fingers. Her eyes were sharp beneath the exhausted haze—red-rimmed, unreadable. “I figured I’d make an impression.”
She smirked, lips dry, one fang peeking out more than the other in a gesture that couldn’t decide if it was charm or threat. Logan barely returned it.
Instead, she flicked two fingers toward the chair without a word.
The tiger sat slowly, carefully, like she was easing herself into character. She draped one leg over the other, foot swinging lazily, then stilled it mid-motion. Her arms crossed tight over her chest, like she was holding something in. She slouched just enough to look like she wasn’t trying—but not enough to lose her silhouette.
“I want to do another album,” she said.
Logan blinked once. Not surprised. Just waiting.
“We already have one scheduled. It’s clean. Safe. Bankable.”
“I don’t want safe.” Alex tilted her head, gaze fixed on the far wall like she was watching something no one else could see. Her voice was dry, flat, nearly hoarse. “I want noise. Blood. I want guitars that sound like they’re howling through rust. I want vocals that crack in the wrong places. I want to make something they’ll hate before they realize they need it.”
“You want to torch your career?” Logan asked, no judgment in her tone—just diagnosis. Her face didn’t move. Not even her tail.
“I want to find out if there’s anything left under the ash.”
Silence. Long enough for the hum of the HVAC to feel like a ticker on a bomb. A long enough pause to let both their pulses slow or spike.
Logan leaned back, one brow arching slowly. Her hands folded in her lap, careful and composed. Regal. Ready to strike.
“And you expect me to manage this... unravelling?”
“I expect you to try,” Alex said, lifting her gaze now. “So I can ignore you and do it anyway.” Her grin widened so that both her oversized sabers were now equally prominent.
That earned the faintest twitch of the ringtail’s lips. A flicker. Amusement, maybe. Or recognition.
She picked up her tablet, thumb hovering above the screen like a trigger.
“You’ll need someone to ground you. Someone who’ll fetch water when you’re crying and still look good next to you on tour.”
“I want an assistant,” Alex said. “Not a handler. And not some hyper-competent ice queen with a law degree and a backup plan. I want someone dumb. Soft. Fresh out of college. Preferably pretty and morally confused.”
Logan glanced up. Her tone was flat steel. “You’re not getting Riley.”
Alex smiled—not sweetly. “I don’t want Riley. I want a type.”
She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, voice dropping into something almost conspiratorial. “Hot. Hopeful. College-fresh. Full of trembling idealism and just enough anxiety to be useful. Someone who still blushes when I talk to them.”
“They’ll imprint on you.”
“I’ll make them art.”
Logan tapped her stylus once, sharp as a gavel. “You’ll pick from a list I approve.”
“And if I sleep with one of them?”
Logan didn’t blink. “Then you’re paying their severance.”
The tigress chuckled—a low, breathy thing that might have been affection, or threat. “You think I’ll fall in love?”
“I think they will.”
Alex leaned back, stretching her arms over her head until her spine cracked softly. The hem of her hoodie lifted, just enough to reveal the soft shimmer of old glitter covering the light bruising along her ribs. The tour was kicking her ass just a little bit—but that, too, was becoming useful.
“I already wrote the first track,” she said. “Exorcism.”
Logan raised one brow again. “Dramatic.”
Alex grinned. “You like dramatic.”
Logan didn’t disagree. She reached for her coffee, finally lifting it to her lips. Her claws clicked once against the porcelain.
After a moment of tense silence, Alex cut it with the scissors that were her teeth. “Are you coming to the show?” she asked, tone casual but not careless. Testing something.
Logan looked over the rim of the mug. The corner of her mouth curled.
“Wouldn’t miss it.”
That landed. Alex’s smile wavered—just for a moment—then solidified into something steadier. She rose, smoothing her hoodie, tugging the sleeves back down over her wrists, like sealing something back inside. She showed herself out.
At the door, she paused.
“Thanks,” she said.
Logan didn’t look up. “For what?”
“For letting me play with fire.” Alex purred.
Now Logan smiled.
Not the cold kind. Not smug. Something small and sharp and absolutely certain.
Because she knew.
She sipped her coffee. Tail flicking once behind her chair.
And said nothing at all.
---
SoFi Stadium, Inglewood, Greater Los Angeles Area, California, Friday 7:55 p.m.
The crowd was already screaming.
Not in the hopeful, pre-show hum of “maybe she’ll come out early,” but in the ravenous, pre-riot thunder of a tiger long teased and still unseen. The sound filled the air like smoke, vibrating through the floor, the walls, the bones. It was a living thing, that roar—hungry, electric, breathing. A wild creature fed on years of obsession, parasocial fantasy, and digital worship.
Somewhere beyond the velvet walls of the stadium’s green room, ten thousand fans were packed shoulder to shoulder beneath rigged lights that blazed like miniature suns. The crowd was a living ocean of furs, ears, tails, and antennae, each pair of eyes dilated wide with devotion. The scent of heat, vape clouds, sweat, hair product, and overpriced perfume clung to every surface. Fog machines wheezed like dragons down in the wings. Neon signage pulsed like heartbeat monitors along the edge of the stage. The air itself was thick with glitter and anticipation, heavy like humidity before a storm. Every square inch of the place seemed ready to combust, like a spark away from disaster.
The green room felt like a bunker on the edge of a holy war. The walls were soundproofed thick, but the low throb of the crowd still leaked through like a distant drumbeat. Makeup trays littered every countertop. LED lights ringed the vanity like a crime scene. A bouquet of unopened champagne bottles sat half-wilted in the corner. The scent of anxiety clung to everything—warm hairspray, cold coffee, and hot adrenaline.
Alex sat perfectly still.
A goddess mid-metamorphosis, swathed in a glittering kaleidoscope of sheer, tight, loud fabric. Her bodysuit shimmered like broken stained glass in the desert sun—a semi-sheer masterpiece of vivid yellow, electric blue, and bold black. The fabric clung to her like a living flame, refracting color with every breath, every twitch of muscle. Her eye makeup was a twin-bladed weapon: yellow sliced against blue in wings that reached back to her temples like lightning. Her lips were black, and glossy, like a mannequin on the verge of tears. Her cheeks were carved with contour sharp enough to kill. Every inch of her face was sculpted like a threat.
She stared at her reflection, dead-eyed and glittering. Her tail—long, striped, alive—flicked, restless, brushing against the faux velvet cushion of her dressing room chair. Her breath came shallow and hot. Despite the industrial-sized fan blowing in the corner, sweat had already beaded at her collarbone, threading down the line of her chest in glitter-flecked rivulets. Her spine ached from the weight of her boots, the outfit, the moment. But she didn’t move.
Logan stood behind her, one heel resting on the rung of a production crate, coffee in hand. Blue tailored blazer, black trousers, the faintest glimmer of amber and vanilla trailing her like a whispered threat. Her presence cut through the chaos like a scalpel—clean, calm, deadly. She didn’t need to speak. Her silence was louder than the crowd.
Alex finally broke it. “I don’t like the setlist.”
Logan didn’t look up. “You signed off on it.”
“I was high.”
“You’re always high.”
Alex turned to face her, one brow arched sharp enough to draw blood. “Exactly.”
Logan set the coffee down and moved closer. She adjusted the glittering bodysuit at the tigress’s shoulder with clinical precision. “What do you want to change?”
“Add Plastic Doll before Clone Love. Move Glass Heart later. Make them wait for it. And I want to end with Perfect Celebrity. No encore. Just... that. Cut to black. Make ‘em stew.”
Logan stared at her. “That song makes you spiral.”
The striped feline smiled, feral and fragile all at once. “That’s why it works.”
A knock at the dressing room door. Then a voice—nervous, male lynx, from the stage crew. “Miss Marx? Five minutes to curtain.”
Logan opened the door, barked a quick “Copy that,” and slammed it shut again. She turned back to her tiger.
“Whatever’s going to happen out there,” the raccoon said, straightening the strap again, her voice low, “make sure they don’t forget it. Not even in therapy.”
Alex rose. Towering in her boots, radiant, ruined, perfect. Her shadow stretched long across the dressing room floor like a skyscraper in summer.
“I’m not giving them a show tonight,” she whispered with an eerie grin. “I’m giving them a haunting.”
Story continued on my Patreon and also my SubscribeStar!
<<< PREV | FIRST | NEXT >>>Art ©
Character(s) ©
Alex:
Do you want to support stories like these, participate in AMAs, suggest ideas, vote on them, and read them early? Support me on Patreon!
or my SubscribeStar! 
Follow me on Twitter!
Follow me on BlueSky!
Join my Discord Server!
Category Artwork (Digital) / General Furry Art
Species Tiger
Size 1586 x 2323px
File Size 4.86 MB
Listed in Folders
That is a good way to put it! Logan isn't quite the loud-diva, but she knows her power. But she has to deal with a diva, who knows her power, who is also LOUD, like Alex!
Thank you, though, I am glad you liked the tension! I really like writing Logan and Alex.
Thank you, though, I am glad you liked the tension! I really like writing Logan and Alex.
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