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[bailarina]

Imagine an impending future in which the political world order has been turned upside down; after a third world war, the EU has dissolved, leaving the Europan nations in shambles, Russia has been all but obliterated, Africa is developing and the US is behind, the new first-world powers largely situated in Asia, India and China taking special lead with their superior technologies. The world is a scary place and the people living in it are rightly scared, all of Europe especially having turned in on itself in response. There is a swarm of refugees from old Russia and from the most vulnerable Muslim countries, but strict policies are trying to keep them out. Religion has become a pariah, a thing of the past or a sign of backwardness in the people still practicing it. Digitalization is by some considered the only way forward and by others thought extremely dangerous, considering the worldwide Blackout in 2044, a successful hacking attempt that left large parts of the Earth without power for a whole day, affecting everyone, thousands and thousands dead as a consequence. In the aftermath, all the world feels the rift. Extremes versus extremes.

This is the world Lupe lives in.

Lupe is a 24-year-old factory worker at Thrift's textile headquarters in Madrid who divides her free time between street dancing for an additional income and taking ballet classes with a former Russian prima ballerina. Her dream is to be accepted as a student at the Spanish Academy of Dance's flamenco department. She has been dancing flamenco since she was a child and did as a teenager receive intensive training from a former Academy teacher (her father's sister), showing a great but still very raw, unpolished talent.

Lupe is the youngest child and only daughter of a former prostitute and she grew up in the same trailer park outside Madrid where her mother still lives, offering tarot readings and healing to afford her next drink. Lupe has two older brothers, though she only has contact with the oldest of them. He is part of a gang of thieves that roams Madrid and is often in prison for petty crimes. The youngest brother lives with their biological father, a rich banking executive whose wife couldn't have children of her own. He therefore made a deal with Lupe's mother, whom he had at that time already fathered two boys with, that he and his wife could adopt her infant son in return for Lupe's mother being well compensated until the boy reached the age of eighteen. He would receive the best possible upbringing and lack nothing, whereas Lupe's mother would get money to drink for. When Lupe was born, her father showed no interest in her at all, though when her mother later came to demand more money with Lupe in tow, once the adopted son had turned eighteen, Lupe's father paid her to stay quiet and arranged for Lupe to receive dance classes until she turned eighteen herself. Once she reached this age and the dance classes stopped, she never heard from him again.

These days, she is the on again, off again lover of Alondra Guiomar Vivas, a famous female bullfighter.