Azzie's Arc

Chapter 3 of 3

Four hundred bottles filled Azzie's shop from floor to ceiling. Her ornate display glowed, every shelf packed with colored gloss. She flicked the sign to OPEN and waited. An hour passed. No one came. The problem was not stock now. No monster knew her gloss existed. A full shelf sold nothing without eyes on it. Grey sat on the counter, watching the empty door. "Okay so," she said, "you made the stuff. But nobody knows it's here." She shrugged. "Feels lonely in here. Like a party with no guests." Azzie stared at the shining bottles. "I need people to see it. On someone. In real life." An idea sharpened. "Not just anyone. Someone monsters already look at." She knew who. She grabbed a crate and drove to the gym. Terra was the first monster ever rehabilitated. Every Monstropian knew her name. Right now she was slamming a barbell to the floor hard enough to crack tile. Her horn dripped sweat. She caught her own grunt before it turned into a roar, the way she always did. "No," Terra said, before Azzie opened her mouth. "You don't know what I want." "You want me to wear your paint." Terra wiped her plates with a towel. "I don't do glam." Azzie set the crate down. "You told me to stop hiding my scales. Remember? You started this." She held up a teal bottle. "This makes scales look better, not fake. Your scales. On camera. Monsters watch you already." Terra picked up the bottle. She rubbed a drop onto one back plate. The stone-gray scale caught the light and shone deep blue. She turned her arm. The color moved like water. "Huh," Terra said. Grey had followed and stood in the doorway. "Whoa," she said. "Okay, that's actually kind of amazing." Azzie's hands shook. "Let me film you. One clip. You lift, your scales shine, I post it." Terra flexed. The plates rippled with color. "Fine. One clip. No wig on me. No skirt." "Deal." Azzie filmed Terra pressing a weight overhead. The gloss threw blue light across the room. Grey watched from behind the phone, grinning. Azzie posted it that night with the bottle name across the screen. By morning the clip had spread through every Monstropian feed. Comments piled up. Monsters wanted the shine on their own scales, their own hides. The shop door opened before Azzie even flipped the sign. A line formed outside her Glam Grotto. Gargoyles, serpents, and horned things pushed in, pointing at the glowing display. Azzie sold forty bottles in an hour. Then eighty. The stock she thought would never move flew off the shelf. But the crowd cleared her shelves fast. By noon her four hundred bottles were nearly gone. Demand was real now, and huge. To make more, she needed the lab again. The lab Nancy watched. The lab where every batch was counted, and where a woman held her secret and waited.