Chapter 238 - 238: Going Viral For His Dance Moves

<🎧 Song Recommendation: Yeah! by Usher (ft. Lil Jon & Ludacris)>

Kiana played a club record from the early 2000s through the speaker, and it immediately made everyone want to dance.

Max stepped into the middle first.

And in fairness to him, Max went for it.

He opened with the worm, which he executed surprisingly well.

He transitioned into a running man, then the sprinkler, then something with his hips that made two dancers cover their eyes.

He finished by coiling low and launching into a standing backflip, landing squarely on the beat with both arms out and one leg extended in a pose he had clearly practiced for a long time.

The circle exploded. People were screaming. Alex and Connor who had gathered to watch were applauding as well.

[Sam_Kupers: OKAY MAX?? OKAY??]

[just_a_girlguy: HE ACTUALLY DID A BACKFLIP I TAKE EVERYTHING BACK]

[79UG03RULEZ: bro has been in the lab. he wasn't lying. he wasn't lying!!]

[Vigilantly: 720k]

Max wasn't even winded. He just pointed one finger straight at Von.

"Your move, Hollywood."

Von handed his bottle to the nearest dancer and stepped into the circle.

He didn't rush. He stood there doing absolutely nothing for four counts, letting the clapping build, and the moment the bass dropped, his whole body seemed to change material.

It started as a slow ripple through his fingertips that traveled up his arm, across his shoulders and down the other side, so smooth it looked like the stream was buffering.

Then the popping snapped in, sharp enough that people gasped at the sound of the air.

He tutted a shape in front of his chest, threw it away, slid backwards across four feet of arena floor like the ground had turned to glass, dropped into a windmill, spun into a headspin that pulled a real scream out of the crew, and folded up out of it into a one-handed freeze.

And he held it dead still. His whole body was suspended on a single palm for three full seconds while the beat carried on without him.

Then, on the downbeat, he floated back onto his feet like gravity had made an exception for him, and simply stood there.

"OOOHHH!!!!"

The arena floor lost its mind immediately as everyone began screaming at Max's face.

[Hattorin: WHAT]

[Raiho: WHAT WAS THAT WHAT WAS THAT WHAT WAS THAT 🥹]

[WarMachine78: rewind it. REWIND IT.]

[FraulC: he held that freeze for THREE SECONDS on ONE HAND after a headspin. that's not human]

[lieLaiMonamen: i've been dancing for 11 years. i want everyone to understand that what you just watched should not be possible and he can ALSO sing.]

[Vigilantly: 950 THOUSAND]

[SleepParalysisAngel: THE DANCERS ARE ON THEIR KNEES 😭😭]

[PewPewMaster: RIP MAX 2011-2020 🕊️]

Kiana was also among those shouting in surprise and she was also wondering how she'll prep them to keep up with someone as good as Von.

Only Tobias Grant who had already witnessed Von's magic was less surprised, he only shaked his head lightly as if saying, "little do they know".

Max walked in a small, slow circle. Then he lay down flat on the floor, arms spread wide, staring up at the rigging while almost a million people watched.

"Somebody call my mother. Tell her I'm not the guy anymore."

"You good?" Von asked while standing over him.

"I've been humbled, bro. Publicly and in high definition." Max sat up. Then the grief vanished from his face instantly, replaced by glowing hunger as he grabbed the tripod.

"But do you understand what just happened? Do you understand what I just captured? This clip is going to outlive both of us. Now imagine if I got more clips from what he did upstairs."

"You're still not posting anything from rehearsal."

"This isn't rehearsal. This is culture." Max clutched the phone to his chest like a stolen infant. "Von. Be reasonable."

Von thought about it for a second, then shrugged. "The freestyle can stay up. That's it. Nothing about the show leaves this building before opening night. I want the first time anyone sees any of it to be from a seat in the show."

"YES." Max pumped both fists at the ceiling. "CHAT. CLIP IT. CLIP EVERYTHING. I'M BEGGING YOU."

They didn't need the encouragement.

The clip was everywhere inside twenty minutes.

It didn't even matter that it was filmed vertically on a phone in front of a black curtain. Maybe that was why it worked. People were already adding green screen and making a lot of edits that flooded TickTock.

Von was going viral once again, ahead of his debut tour.

[@dancewire: the one-handed freeze at 0:41. that's a full three count. i genuinely need a physicist.]

[@Not_A_Critic: what do you mean he isn't even a dancer. what do you MEAN.]

[@hoopsandhums: bro warmed up on a Tuesday and ended three careers]

[@leviathanofficial: 😂😂 my guy is not real. ATL, y'all better sit down when he gets there.]

[@GingerbreadMan: whoever the big fella is, he took that L for all of us. respect brother.]

[@auranova777: It's Von, y'all haven't seen anything yet 😹]

By nightfall it had crossed twenty million views, Max had gained hundred thousand followers in a single afternoon, and three separate dance channels were running frame-by-frame breakdowns of the four seconds where Von slid backwards.

Max, to his eternal credit, replied to every single person calling him trash with the same message.

"ninth out of two hundred. look it up."

They ran the group numbers for the next four hours.

The dancers learned very quickly that they had to stop watching him, because every time Von hit a formation change dead on the count, somebody at the back would miss their own cue from staring.

Kiana had to call three resets purely because her crew kept getting distracted by their own client.

By the time they broke for the evening, the stage was half built, Conor's kit was mapped, Alex's harmonies were locked, and David had left already to plan other stuff.

Von was toweling off near the soundboard, laughing at something Alex said, when Emily walked out of the tunnel.

She wasn't walking the way she normally walked. Her heels were fast and her expression was a bit too serious for such a positive day.

"Em? What's wrong?"

Emily didn't answer. She just pressed the phone into his hand.

It was a post from an anonymous account made forty minutes ago. The account had eleven followers. Already sitting at two hundred thousand reposts.

It was the setlist.

All songs in order, even the encore. And it even included the unreleased track that Von hadn't given a title yet.