As the second round of performances rolled through, one thing beca abundantly clear — everyone had leveled up. With or without mishaps, with or without artificial rain, with or without Rick Astley making uninvited cobacks. Everyone was giving it everything they had and then reaching into their pockets for whatever was left after that.
But then.
Then.
There was one team.
One specific, particular, absolutely unhinged team that deserves their own mini chapter, their own mont, and possibly their own docuntary.
This was a team that ran — exclusively, completely, without alternative fuel source — on pure, unadulterated, weapons-grade audacity.
For their second performance, featuring a female artist as per the assignnt, they had chosen — and this author needs everyone to take a breath before continuing —
No Na.
THE No Na. The No Na of the viral hit. The No Na whose choreography had broken the internet, broken several spines, and broken the general concept of what the human body was capable of.
That No Na.
"How," you ask, "could they possibly pull that off?"
The answer, as previously established, is audacity. Pure, undiluted, dically inadvisable audacity.
The secondary answer is that this team had spent so much ti perfecting their first performance that their second one had been assembled in approximately half a day. They needed sothing. They found No Na. They decided to copy the music video second by second. Not out of confidence. Not out of skill assessnt. Out of the specific desperation that produces either catastrophe or legend, with very little in between.
They'd already had their mishap in the first round, so the second performance was blessedly chaos-free. Which was deeply, cosmically ironic — their most thrown-together performance was the one the universe decided to leave alone.
The performance began.
With the opening. The iconic one. The one that everyone who had seen the original music video recognized instantly —
The hand bell clap.
The backbend.
The yawn.
The contortion chest roll into all fours with the belly pump crawling backwards.
That opening.
The trainee who opened stepped forward. Looked directly into the cara. Summoned sothing from a place deep within himself — sothing fierce, sothing committed, sothing that had absolutely decided it was not going to be embarrassed today.
The crowd lost it before he even moved.
The hand bell clap ca — sharp, clean, then yeeted to the side with a dismissive flick that sent fragile masculinities everywhere into a quiet crisis.
🎶 Get into it— 🎶
For context: this particular team contained what was arguably the straightest collection of straight n LEAVEN had ever assembled. And not a single one of them was afraid of this choreography. Which was, honestly, its own kind of beautiful.
The backbend followed.
The audience heard it before they saw it fully.
Creeeeeeek.
The trainee's spine, registering its formal complaint with managent.
He held it. Pushed through. Looked at the audience during the yawn with the expression of a man who absolutely was not showing that his back was filing for early retirent in real ti.
And then — the chest roll.
Now. The ladies of No Na execute this transition with the fluid, boneless grace of people whose bodies have been specifically engineered for this purpose. The chest roll into all fours is smooth. Seamless. Like water finding its level.
This trainee, not being made of the sa material, had opted for a walkover instead. Smart adaptation. Good instinct.
What was slightly less smart was the amount of oomf he put into said walkover.
The transfer happened.
Too much montum.
The floor arrived faster than anticipated.
THUD.
Face. Chest. Ground. All three parties introduced to each other simultaneously and at so speed.
The kind of plop that has both sound and feeling — the audience felt it in their chests. Several people grabbed the person next to them. A few covered their mouths.
His teammates on stage perford the Herculean task of maintaining their fierce expressions while their entire internal infrastructure collapsed from suppressed laughter. The effort required was visible. It was shaking shoulders. It was suspiciously bright eyes. It was five people pretending with everything they had that nothing had happened while sothing had very much happened.
@MileyCircus: I want to applaud the effort alone. The dedication. The commitnt. The sheer will to attempt this. I salute you sir, from the bottom of my heart. 🫡
↳ @Koko: he said face et ground, ground et face 🤣🤣🤣🤣
↳ @chunchunMaroo: THE THUD. I felt the thud. My ancestors felt the thud.
↳ @404BrainNotFound: the way he just imdiately scrambled back up like NOTHING HAPPENED is the most unhinged display of professionalism I have ever witnessed
↳ @hells_swarm: the teammates trying not to laugh is its own separate performance and honestly they deserve their own critique
No ti for embarrassnt. No ti for dignity assessnt. No ti for anything except getting back into position and continuing.
He scrambled to all fours.
Belly pump. Crawling backwards. The face — and this is the important part — still fierce. Still fully, completely committed to the bit. Whatever his body was doing, his face had decided it was intentional and was sticking to that story.
Hitting the beach kneeling pose. Hand over head. The whole thing.
🎶 Work— 🎶
"PERIOD!" Dora hollered, completely losing it. "WERK BEEEEEETCH—"
His teammates were going through their own private purgatory of trying to maintain composure while being physically incapable of it. It had beco, quietly, a second challenge running parallel to the actual performance. Adapt to the choreography. Also adapt to watching your teammate plop face-first into the stage floor and get back up fiercer than before.
Eight seconds into the performance.
Eight.
Already unforgettable.
****
And the performance kept going.
And the gag? Kept gagging.
The mouths in that audience had been hanging open for so long at this point that collective jaw fatigue was becoming a genuine dical concern. Because every single ti soone thought okay, surely that's the peak, surely it cannot top that —
It topped that.
The formation shifted — three mbers pulling into a triangle, holding it down with the choreography while the fourth mber walked to center stage.
Not walked. Walked. The way people walk on runways in cities where the fashion weeks happen. Like the floor was honored to have him on it.
🎶 Grab your waist trainers, Hit the treadmill, Do Pilates, How ya legs feel, Take a group hike— 🎶
He was doing the absolute, unqualified, certified most.
anwhile the three in formation were — and this is the only word that applies — working. The head whip. The jog in place. The cartwheel, executed with varying degrees of technical success and one hundred percent of available commitnt.
All of it.
Now. In the original No Na music video, there is a mont. An iconic mont. A mont that has been screen-captured, gifted, d, and immortalized across every corner of the internet.
One of the divas doing squats with a makeshift barbell — a wooden pole, two water dispenser bottles partially filled, attached to each end. Resourceful. Sustainable. Giving recycling activist ets fitness influencer. A whole, complete, standalone mont.
The team on stage could have copied it directly.
They did not copy it directly.
Instead — with the creative confidence of people who had decided half a day was enough ti to develop original artistic vision — one mber walked over, hoisted another mber entirely onto his shoulders, and proceeded to perform squats.
With a person.
A whole person.
🎶 Do them squat squats— 🎶
Dora left her chair. Both hands in the air. Clapping. Standing. The full physical expression of soone who had not been prepared for this and was choosing joy about it.
The audience was not handling it.
And then the chorus arrived.
And whatever energy had been in the room before the chorus? Relocated to a higher plane entirely.
🎶 Fuck it up, boy, put in that work! Fuck it up, bitch, put in that work! Fuck it up, bro, put in that work! 🎶
And they shook ass on that stage.
With their whole chests. With their whole everything. Like n who had looked at the concept of dignity, assessed it, and decided it was optional today and possibly most days going forward.
The towels that had been hanging from their waistbands this whole ti — pulled out. The iconic towel choreography, executed. And then launched into the crowd with the energy of people distributing gifts at a very sweaty, very chaotic religious ceremony.
The crowd received them as such.
The skippy side-to-side hip hops ca next — fierce faces fully maintained throughout, which at this point was its own athletic achievent.
And then.
The shirts ca off.
All of them.
Simultaneously.
Months of LEAVEN training, revealed. Chiseled, defined, thoroughly earned — out in the open, under the stage lights, drenched in the honest sweat of people who had given everything they had.
Nobody was complaining.
The complaints departnt was closed. Indefinitely.
The ending hit like a finale was supposed to hit — the full workout choreography sequence, committed to with the energy of people who had nothing left to lose and had decided to spend it all right here. Side to side lunges. Mountain climbers. Scissor kicks. Leg spreads. And finally — the leg lift pose, near horizontal, holding it, the stage lights catching every drop of sweat like so kind of unplanned, extrely chaotic, deeply effective music video.
When it ended, every single one of them was drenched. Heaving. Spent.
Beautiful.
In the audience, Louie stared at the stage with an expression that was working through several emotions simultaneously.
"Those fuckers copied ," he said.
Timmy considered this with his characteristic thoughtfulness.
"People imitate the great," he said. "That ans you're great. Since they copied you."
Louie looked at him.
Processed this.
"Huh." A pause. "Yeah. You're right actually."
Fully convinced. Imdiately. Without further debate.
Timmy nodded, satisfied, the awkward smile sitting warmly on his face.
The logic was airtight and nobody was going to tell Louie otherwise.
And so yet another performance joined the pile of things that happened at this evaluation that nobody was going to forget in a hurry.
The gag had gagged. The shirts had co off. The squats had been perford with a human being. The towels had been distributed to the congregation.
It was, by any honest asure, a lot.
It was also, by any honest asure, absolutely fantastic.
****
PS- If you haven't already guessed by now, the music featured in this chapter is "Work" by No Na.
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