Self-Sabotage | A Dewdrop-Ghoul Fanfiction

4. A Winner and a Loser

It was around 8 PM when Dewdrop stood on Ghost's side of the stage, he was playing the first notes of Kaisarion. Ghost had to open The Satanic Panic Tour, and the crowd, consisting of at least 30 thousand people, was cheering excitedly. Some of them even made signs for the bands they were a fan of. One of them was for The World's Doom, the band Ghost was going to compete against today. ''Hailey, I love you more than free WIFI'' it said. Another sign someone in the crowd was holding was for Ghost, ''My husband just found out why our daughter's name is Sunshine!'' it said. Apparantly someone named their child after Sunshine.

Roy, Eve, and Betty were watching them somewhere in the crowd behind the barricades. Luckily, because I was their photographer, I was allowed to be in front of the barricades.

I quickly took a few shots of Dewdrop while the spotlight was still on him, before Papa came on the stage.

''Kaisarion! A prophecy told!''

I turned to Papa's direction, focussed my camera on him, and took a great picture of him. It didn't take long for the other band to get on stage as well. Hailey, the lead singer of The World's Doom, was wearing an all-leather suit while she sang Kaiserion with Papa. Her voice sounded good, just like the rest of her band. But that's all they were, good. Not great.

After they were done playing Kaiserion, they started to play one of The World's Doom's songs. The song had a cool, heavy sounding bassline, played by one of the bearded guys of their band.

''Whatever's wrong feels so right to me!''

Hailey's blue hair was blowing in the wind as she sang the song. Even the lyrics in the song matched her mean personality so well, I thought, as I took some more pictures of Aether playing his guitar.

A few songs later, I switched the lens of my camera to focus more on the back of the stage. Cirrus and Cumulus were dancing with each other, it was adorable. I took some pictures of them before focussing on Mountain, he looked like a beast on those drums. Swiss was shaking his hips as he was singing the backup vocals to Hunter's Moon. Sometimes he smiled at Sunshine, whose vocals were amazing this show.

The red spotlight was on Rain as he started to play the first notes of Con Clavi Con Dio on the middle of the stage. The bass line of The World's Doom's song was good, but not as good as this bassline. Mountain was hitting the cymbals of his drum kit hard, and then the rest of the band started playing the song as well. They were all headbanging, just like the crowd. Rain made place for Papa, who was swinging the thurible around while he sung.

''Lucifer, we are here! For your praise, evil one!'

The smoke that was coming from the thurible made for some really cool looking pictures. After they were done with playing Con Clavi Con Dio, the drummers of both bands had a drum battle. Each of them were hitting the drums as hard as they could, while still having perfect timing. Obviously I had never seen the drummer from The World's Doom drum before, but judging off of what I just saw, I would say that he was just as good as Mountain.

The time flew by as I was taking pictures of the bands on stage. I had seen Ghost perform a lot at The Rituals at the church, so of course I knew all of their songs and how they performed them live. The World's Doom however, was a band I had never heard of before this tour. I enjoyed listening to their songs, they weren't bad. But they just lacked a certain kind of energy on stage that Ghost absolutely had. The band members of The World's Doom didn't even seem to like each other (I mean, I don't blame anyone for not liking Hailey, she's not a kind person), while Ghost had great interactions with each other.

Aether did a little dance on stage at the end of the song Ritual, Dewdrop noticed this and began to mock Aether's dancing by doing a bad impersonation of him. This made the crowd laugh. Hailey didn't like the fact that the ghouls were so liked by the crowd, that she pushed Dewdrop and Aether aside to get the crowd to focus on her. Aether just shrugged it off, and continued to play anyways. Dewdrop, on the other hand, didn't take it that well. He threw a guitar pick at Hailey to get her attention. Once she was looking at him, he stuck up his middle finger to her.

I immediately took a picture of this, this was going to go viral. Especially since Aether and I did some research on Hailey yesterday after meeting her. We found out that her repetation isn't that good already, we saw tons of haters online. Now I don't think that sending hate messages to people online is a good thing to do, but people were for sure going to like the picture of Dewdrop sticking his middle finger up to Hailey.

This seemed to make Hailey angry, she pointed at her lead guitarist, who then started to play some epic solo. This was making the crowd go wild. It was Dewdrop's time to shine now, and he knew that. He walked towards the other lead guitarist, trying to be intimidating. This didn't seem to work because the other guitarist was almost 2 times as tall as Dewdrop. But this didn't stop Dewdrop. As soon as he started to play faster than the other guitarist, the spotlight was on him. Everyone watched while his fingers danced on the guitar strings. The bearded guy pushed Dewdrop away, he tried to play faster than Dewdrop, but failed. Hailey noticed this and gave her guitarist an angry look. Dewdrop played another solo and at the end of it, the crowd cheered for him. He smiled as he held his guitar up in the air. I took a picture of this, the lighting was perfect.

The last song they played was Square Hammer, like always. Aether, Rain, and Dewdrop stood next to each other at the beginning of the song, until Papa began to sing. I took some more pictures during the song, and at the end of it someone threw a banana plushie with a smiley on it at Aether. This made Aether smile as he picked it up. Some other people threw roses at them as they all were standing in line and took a bow. Hailey and her bandmates were also bowing, but quickly got off stage when someone threw an egg at her. I would've never done something like that myself, but I let out a small chuckle underneath my breath. She kinda deserved it for being such a bitch to us yesterday in the tent, and today on stage.

Not much later, I met up with the bandmembers in one of the tents backstage. ''You guys were doing so good! There's no way you're going to lose this battle.'' I said, while I sat down on one of the chairs in the tent, next to Swiss. Swiss smiled at me. ''Yes it went really well indeed! The crowd is voting now through an app on their phones. The organization told us that they have half an hour to vote. But even if we lose, I don't care. I had so much fun, and the crowd was amazing! Although I think that they could've reacted a little nicer to Hailey.'' Dewdrop scoffed. ''Nah, that bitch deserved it. Oh and Nali, please tell me you've got a picture of me sticking up my middle finger to her?'' ''Yes, of course I took a picture of that!'' I grabbed my camera and showed the band some of the pictures that I took of them on stage. ''I look way cooler in these pictures than I do in real life.'' Aether said. ''No, don't be so insecure!'' Dewdrop said, while looking at the small screen of my camera with a picture of him and Aether on it. ''The guy on this picture looks so cool!'' Aether slowly began to smile, but stopped when Dewdrop said: ''oh look, you're there too!''

Half an hour later, both bands stood on the stage again, ready to hear who won the battle. I stood back in my place in front of the barricades, listening to what the host guy of the organization had to say.

''Hello satanist! My name is Mister Gorgo, and I will be hosting the Satanic Panic Tour of 2023.'' He was bald, and had a goatee beard that looked like he drew it on his face himself. ''On my right side here, we have the band The World's Doom!'' Everyone boo'ed loudly. ''And on my left, we have the band Ghost!'' Everyone cheered. ''Hm, I wonder who is going to win this battle.'' Mister Gorgo said with a sarcastic tone in his voice. ''Luckily for you guys, I don't have to keep this secret to myself anymore.'' The crowd silently waited for what Mister Gorgo was going to say next.

''The winner of the first battle of the Satanic Panic Tour of 2023 is... Ghost!''

Everyone in the crowd cheered loudly, except for the few fans that were there to see The World's Doom. Dewdrop jumped excitedly in the air when he heard the news. Mountain didn't seem to believe it, he just calmly stood there with a smile on his face. It had not yet dawned on him. All three of the ghoulettes  and Swiss were dancing, while Aether high-fived Rain.

Mister Gorgo gave Papa the microphone. Papa was just like Mountain, very calm. I think that he was so calm because he already knew that The World's Doom didn't stand a chance against Ghost. ''I want to thank everyone who voted for us.'' Papa said into the microphone. ''And I hope that you will vote for us again, in our next battle!''