Backfire (Niall Horan)

Chapter 21 ~ Technical Problems

Chapter 21 ― Technical Problems

Men were running everywhere, rushing to fix a problem with the sound system. We were at the sound-check and suddenly, everything collapsed and now we couldn’t hear the boys. I could see the panic in all their faces, trying to know what was wrong with the equipment. They had a concert in three hours and unless they cancelled the show, they had to fix the problem immediately.

“Help them,” Belle murmured bumping against my shoulder softly. I sighed as I nodded.

I didn’t want to pop up my face where I wasn’t invited, after all, it wasn’t my job, but I had a pretty good idea of what the problem was. Once I helped for a small gig of Marcus’ band and they had a very similar problem that I could fix. It was weird that this happened with such sophisticated equipment, but nothing was perfect.

“Excuse me,” I said as I made my way towards the back of the stage where three men were trying to solve the problem with the electronic panels. “I think I might know what the problem is,” I added.

They all looked at me sceptically, like I was just a kid pretending to be a big man. I wanted to punch them just for those looks. Soon, I felt a presence at my back as a pair of warm arms wrapped my waist. “Do you think you can help them?” an Irish accent asked and I nodded.

“Yeah, but they don’t believe I can do it. They believe that ‘cos I’m a woman I can’t handle this. Bitch, please!” I stated rolling my eyes and leaning more against Niall’s chest.

“You should give her a chance. She’s great and brilliant with all these stuff,” he suggested to the men who now were looking at me with their mouths open.

“You can try, but I hardly think you can fix it. If we couldn’t do it, why could you?” The one with black and short hair asked. The first I was going to push out of the bus, I told myself.

I rolled my eyes and snorted unattractively, at which Niall laughed and I just smiled at him, loving the way he seemed to find all my weird actions cute. I pushed the men aside and started to examine the panels filled with different buttons. Yeah, I knew this kind of technology; I could do it. I started working my magic and as I thought, the problem was the one I was expecting. They couldn’t find it because normally a fail like that didn’t break down a whole system, but there was also a little problem with the configuration of the principal software, so it made everything bigger. So I fixed first the problem with the software, changing some codes and stuff like that, then I worked on the panel itself.

It took me almost an hour to finish and I could see the men were babbling and laughing at me. Niall was still there with the other boys, giving me moral support. I was calm; I knew what I was doing.

“Boys, pick up your mics. We have a sound-check to do,” I told them smiling and I heard the men snorting at my back. I was about to behead them.

“Did you do it?” Niall asked running towards me and I just smiled.

“Let’s see,” I replied as they all ran to the stage again and I rebooted the system. In less than five minutes, the sound of I Wish could be heard all over the arena. I turned around to see the faces of the men that were laughing at me minutes before but that now looked impressed. “You were saying?” I asked with my best face of don’t-you-dare-say-something-to-me-again-bitch. They mumbled things and I just rolled my eyes. “I don’t know how you couldn’t find the fail. It was pretty obvious. If you had seen that the OS was failing because the configuration for the processor was wrong, we would’ve avoided all this. Ugh, men!” I snorted as I made my way towards my friends who were laughing.