"RAN-KO! RAN-KO! RAN-KO! RAN-KO!"
The building rumbled, first with the chants of the crowd, and then with the roll of thunder roaring through the sound system. Camera flashes sparkled like stars blinking in and out of existence in milliseconds across both decks comprising the wide arc of the outfield seating, joined by flickering white strobe lights flashing around the outer edge of the stage. Twin spotlights danced in a duel of light in the cloudy sky, alerting everyone in the city that a party was about to begin at the ten-year-old Olympic baseball stadium nestled on the banks of the Han River.
The building shook again - this time, with the sound of a dark, evil cackle, and the roar of thousands of excited voices.
The lead singer reached down, curling her hands around the necks of the two men holding her on their shoulders to steady herself. Here we go, Ranko, the young singer thought excitedly as a column of flame blasted forth from an emitter embedded in the stage floor on the far right side of the stage.
As it was behind the brunette backup singer, the flame projected only the backlit silhouette of Hitomi Uyeno toward the crowd in the darkness as she struck a pose with her right leg extended, both of her hands resting on her knee. The tiny impish wings harnessed to the back of her red sequined microdress flapped lightly behind her in the slight chill breeze that scooped its way into the bowl of the stadium off the water.
"Whoa-oh-oh, uh-oh! Look out! Look out!"
The crowd went berserk.
A second column of orange fire erupted forth from the opposite end of the stage, revealing the shadowy form of an identically-clad Emi Kimoto striking the opposite pose, facing inward toward the center of the stage. Emi was glad of the blast of warm air, as the deep chill of the December air was doing her no favors in the revealing outfit. At least there's a costume change soon enough, the blonde thought in the split second before she began to sing.
"Whoa-oh-oh, uh-oh! She's gonna make you shout!"
Both flames went out for a moment, plunging the stage back into darkness, but then a new jet of fire burst from a position a third closer to the center of the stage on the right side, again illuminating Hitomi in silhouette as she closed toward the middle of the large stage.
"Whoa-oh-oh, uh-oh! Beware the flow!"
Equidistant from center stage, a fourth jet of flame roared from the stage floor on the left side, blasting Emi with another wave of radiant heat.
"Whoa-oh-oh, uh-oh! Turn off the radio!"
Both the jet behind Emi and the one behind Hitomi lit up at once, and then another pair behind them joined in, and a third, creating two parallel lines forming an aisle down the center of the stage. From out of the darkness at the back center of the stage, two large men marched down the aisle toward the front of the stage in lock step with each other, their shoulders almost touching. They wore matching leather armor dyed a deep blood red. The crimson leather cuirasses were grotesquely molded to loosely resemble rib cages, as if their skin had been flayed clean from their bodies to reveal the bone and viscera within. Both dancers wore a matching pair of crimson vambraces, the leather contorted in the shape of the underlying muscles and tendons of each arm. The greaves strapped to their shins were similarly designed, leading down over black skin-tight pants to red leather boots that came halfway up the dancers' calves.
The audience would never know it, but the boys' flawless costume armor was actually fully functional. The martial artist in Ranko had spotted the imperfections in several iterations of her seamstress sister's designs, until Izumi finally gave up. The band's costumer had ultimately outsourced the twin suits of armor to her friend Ari from college, who had devoted her time to mastering the arts of traditional crafting such as leatherwork and even blacksmithing.
Seated across the shoulders of the two young men and steadied by all four of their hands was a young woman in blood-red leather pants and a matching jacket over a sequined black camisole, her sparkling black heeled boots dangling crossed at the ankles in front of the boys' chests. Her flame-red hair was left loose, waving over her shoulders and restrained against the breeze only by the headband of her wireless microphone.
Projecting the maximum volume her voice could produce into her headset microphone in the hope of being heard over the hysteria building in the crowd, the seated redhead began to rap. At one hundred and seventy beats per minute, it was all she could do to get the words out in time. The hardest part was breath control; there were only a few pauses in the words where she could steal a partial gasp of air and limp to the end of the verse on it. She found it even more difficult with the chill of the air biting at her lungs.
"It's the legendary lyricist, the Phoenix rose! I'm here to shake your body from your hair down to your toes! It starts in your ears and flows down your spine! Works its way into your hips until it makes you mine!"
As she delivered the first verse, Ranko was carried toward the crowd between the six columns of flame. She uncrossed her ankles and removed her hands from Utaru and Sanyo's backs, gesticulating with her hands as if casting a spell in the firelight.
"Oozes down into your heart and it infects your soul, until your whole entire body starts to lose control. 'Cause the second you start hearing my hypnotic groove, you'll forget how to think…"
Hitomi and Emi darted to the sides of the entourage, flanking the young men on each side. Ranko bent her knees, placing the soles of her feet against the firm pectoral muscles of her bearers in their leather shells, bracing against the tops of their heads with her hands.
"... and you can only…"
Sanyo and Utaru propelled her forward by pushing her backside, throwing her forward off of their shoulders. As they did, Ranko kicked hard off of their chests to add more force to her launch. She landed in a crouch nearly a meter in front of the young men, her left leg extended so as to absorb the majority of the impact in her right knee. As her feet touched the stage floor, she balled her left hand into a fist. The songstress fired her hand downward, punching at the floor. At the moment her knuckles made contact with the stage, fifteen flame jets surrounding the performers, including the six making up the central pair of columns and nine spread at equal intervals across the front edge of the stage, roared to life.
The gravelly sound of crunching glass echoed through the sound system. Behind Ranko, a reddish-orange line began snaking its way up from the bottom of the video screen, glowing as if it were aflame. It snaked and spidered its way through the remainder of the screen until, half a second later, the crystalline tinkle of shattering glass striking the floor rang through the speakers. The video display seemed to crumble, raining shards of animated black obsidian glass down toward the floor and revealing a hellish scene of fire and brimstone in its place. It was as if Ranko's fist had punched through the wall between dimensions and created a portal into the devil's front yard, with rivers of fire and lava snaking through barren red and orange crags of foreboding underground caverns.
"... MOVE!"
Ranko's one-word imperative was enjoined by the deep bass voice of Shinji Yokota. The remainder of the stage lights came up to full power in an instant, revealing Ranko, her four backup dancers, and the four other musicians of her band at the back of the stage in their full glory to the welcoming roar of the capacity crowd.
Ranko popped back to a standing position as Sanyo and Utaru stepped forward, forming a triangle with Ranko at its point and Emi and Hitomi at its back corners. In unison, the five dancers kicked their right legs forward, swiveling on their left ankles and thrusting their right legs downward in an exaggerated diagonal stomp.
"Don't be shy. Everyone knows you can't help but lose it when your system's overridden by the sound of music."
Ranko gave a little shrug of surrender, shuffling her shoulders and her hips as she stalked forward, leading her chevron of dancers.
"It's not your fault; nobody can maintain their focus when they're sucked into the Dragon-style hocus-pocus!"
She raised her left hand to her temple, miming scratching at it in confusion without actually touching it to avoid disrupting her hair any more than the headset microphone was already.
"Don't know why you're surprised that you're completely transfixed, and absolutely mesmerized by the track that we mixed. I mean…"
All of the stage lights cut off at once, save an orange-red spotlight beam shining directly on Ranko's form.
"... with Ranko on the mic…"
A second beam pierced the darkness from the trusses suspended above the stage as the first blinked out, illuminating Noboyuki "Crash" Matsuyama. The blond guitarist leaned back a bit, tilting his cherry-red electric guitar skyward as he played a few notes of a prominent riff.
I wish I were a dude sometimes, Emi thought, shivering in her short red dress as she gazed longingly at Crash's black leather jacket and ankle-length blue jeans. It's so freakin' cold out here.
"... Crash strummin'..."
The orange spotlight that had tracked Ranko pivoted up and slightly to her left, illuminating a drum set and its commander. The hot pink hair of Zoe King nearly perfectly matched the color of the five romaji letters that made up Ranko's name on the black head of the bass drum in front of them. They slammed their drumsticks down on their thighs, and the plastic sticks began to glow from within with a bright pink light. Zoe wore black jeans and a raspberry-colored tank top featuring two words in white lowercase English lettering: yes, mistress. The letter i was dotted with the image of a pink orchid. Over it, Zoe was clad in a knee-length dress made out of thick clear plastic like a raincoat. The outfit was completed with a bubblegum pink studded collar and a pair of rose-tinted sunglasses framed in pastel pink plastic. A furious run on the tom-toms announced the drummer's presence to the capacity crowd.
"... Zo drummin'..." It still broke Ranko's heart that she'd had to change the lyrics to one of her favorite songs. It wasn't that she didn't love Jacob's partner and the extra bit of punk edge Zoe brought to the band. Far from it. She just still missed the hell out of her dear friend, original Dapper Dragons drummer Ken Hirata. In the space between heartbeats, she mentally whispered a silent prayer for him.
Zoe's spotlight rocketed to their right to focus on their boyfriend, a young man with a green fauxhawk in a long-sleeved yellow and blue plaid button-down shirt. It was left open, revealing the white tee shirt with the Dapper Dragons' logo under it. His fingers danced nimbly on the keys of his Yamaha DX-7 synthesizer keyboard. Meanwhile, the second beam of light, which had cut off and pivoted away from Crash, kicked back on to highlight the black-haired bad boy of the band on Ranko's back left as he slammed on the strings of the pearlescent white bass guitar strapped to his chest over his black studded leather jacket.
"... Shin and Jacob, droppin' bombs back there? You should'a seen it coming!"
Ranko waved to the crowd, taking half a beat to mentally rehearse the few words she'd memorized from the Korean phrasebook she bought at the airport two days before. "안녕, 한국! Hello, Korea! What's up?! You didn't really think I'd cross all the way through more than a dozen countries, and not stop off on the way home to collect your Seoul, didja?! Well, you were warned, and you came anyway, so I guess you know what that means…"
The red-haired songstress began singing over another devilish peal of deep, menacing laughter from her bassist.
"You can't help but dance! There's no time to rest! There's a siren on the mic that's making you possessed!"
Hitomi crossed her wrists in front of her face, her palms extended outward to the crowd as if protecting herself from a blinding beam of light as she sang. "There's nowhere to hide…"
Emi turned her back to the crowd before looking over her shoulder, effecting a facial expression as if she were running from some unseen danger and checking to ensure it wasn't catching up to her. "Nowhere to go…"
Both girls were, at once, grabbed from behind in bear hugs - Hitomi by Sanyo and Emi by Utaru - and lifted off of their feet. They kicked wildly at the air as they were carried back toward the center of the formation as if trying in vain to escape their demonic captors.
Ranko gestured back toward the women with her hands as if pointing them out as an example, her eyes still facing forward. "No escaping from the…"
It was Shinji that finished the chorus in his dark, demonic bass singing voice. The song's title rumbled through the speakers surrounding the stage, reverberating in a deep echo in the cavernous stadium like thunder in the mountains. It also quaked through both decks of the seating as thousands of revelers joined the chorus of one of Ranko and the Dapper Dragons' most popular songs.
"... DEMON in your ra-a-di-o!"
With her four backup dancers continuing to move with the music behind her as it was extended to give Ranko time to speak to the crowd, the band's lead vocalist gave a spritely giggle into the boom microphone extending across her left cheek. "Yeah, you guys are so screwed now! You know what happens next, right?! Get ready!" She cocked her head to the side, mocking a wince of almost-pity behind her devious grin as she issued her warning far too late.
"There's another verse coming, so I'm back from hell to put your shakin' butt right back under my spell! There's a slither in my rhythm, shipped in straight from Hades…"
Two jets of orange fire blasted from the middle of the stage, the frontmost pair of the aisle Ranko had been delivered down to start the performance. The one on the right was less than a meter behind Sanyo, and the left side was the same distance behind Utaru.
"... heatin' all the boys up…"
At her sides, Hitomi and Emi made a show of fanning their faces with their hands as they gazed over their shoulders almost longingly at their vocalist and friend. Their voices were joined by nearly three thousand others in the audience, almost all of them feminine.
"... and most of the ladies!"
Laughing, Ranko stalked the edge of the stage left to right, her scintillating boots just a few meters out of the reach of the revelers in the standing area closest to the stage. She reached down with her right hand, wagging her index finger left and right in an admonishing gesture.
"So don't call a doctor! Don't call a priest! You're a thrall to the rhythm and can't be released! All that's left is to surrender and profess your devotion as you're lyrically commanded to perpetual motion!"
As Ranko continued rocketing the lightning-fast rap lyrics from her lips, her four backup dancers trailed after her in a slow trudge, rigidly rocking their hips side to side as they stutter-stepped behind. They lagged well behind her, as if she was tugging them around the stage against their will with nothing but the power of her voice.
Ranko beamed with an excited grin as she stepped onto a slightly raised steel catwalk placed to the left of center stage. It was just over three meters in length, with steel railings on the front and back that came almost to Ranko's waist. I love this part. This is just too fucking cool.
Emi and Hitomi flanked Ranko, making the single step up to join her on the little platform. As they did, Sanyo and Utaru charged up behind them, each placing a hand on one of their backs and swaying with them. They seemed to be doing something with their other hands on the girls' backs, but the crowd could not make out what.
Ranko dropped her arms to her sides, bending them forward at the elbows. She curled the fingers of both hands around her upturned palms as if summoning some dark, mystic force. As she did, the two male backup dancers launched into back handsprings to clear the area, and the platform began to rise from the stage, suspended from the steel trusses overhead by several thick cables sheathed in black to hide them from view. A thin mist surrounded the base of the platform from an unseen fog machine, illuminated orange and yellow by the overhead lighting.
Ranko extended her arms as she danced, wiggling her fingers downward. To her left and right, Hitomi and Emi danced alongside her in identical movements with blank stares in their eyes and limp wrists, as if the redhead between them was manipulating their bodies like magical marionettes. The audience's roar was deafening as the platform continued to rise, stabilizing a little more than three meters above the stage floor.
"I'm a psycho on the microphone, vile and evil! With a rhythm this insidious, it's gotta be illegal! As long as you can hear me, then you're mine for the taking! Now, my devilish revelry's got your skeleton shaking!"
Ranko turned to her left, reaching toward Emi with a clawed hand and a tensed arm. Emi stiffened and straightened her body on her tiptoes, as if being choked from a distance by the power of Ranko's song.
"Your muscles take over, your mind's deactivated, as this tricksy singin' pixie makes you totally captivated!" Of course, when she'd written the song, she had no idea that just over a year later, she would formally become a Pixie, as a member of the Minato University cheerleading squad. Sometimes things just work out like that, she thought with a bright smile. Happy accidents.
Without turning to face Hitomi, Ranko reached behind her with her right arm in a similar claw gesture. Hitomi stiffened as her girlfriend had, staggering toward Ranko at the center of the elevated platform as if being dragged against her will.
"Might as well give in, and come to grips with your fate…"
As soon as Ranko's fingers made contact with Emi and Hitomi's chests, she thrust out her arms, shoving both girls backward off the edges of the raised platform.
"... once you heard the bass drop…"
The last word was joined subharmonically in the first octave by Ranko's bassist, and the platform plummeted rapidly back down toward the stage. Ranko crouched, placing her hand on the platform to stabilize herself as it crashed to the stage floor. See, Akane? I don't need a stupid safety wire. I got this.
Hitomi and Emi, meanwhile, remained airborne, suspended from the black cables that Sanyo and Utaru had clipped to the steel D-rings between the wings harnessed to the backs of their costumes just before the platform had begun its ascent.
"... it was already too late!"
The casters controlling the wires suspending Ranko's friends from the trusses above the stage whirred around in a clockwise pattern, causing Hitomi and Emi to soar in a circle orbiting Ranko from some four meters above the stage floor. They continued wiggling their shoulders, hips and arms, as if their flight was powered entirely by the music crashing through the speakers behind them.
"Whoa-oh-oh, uh-oh! Beware the flow," Hitomi sang as she whirled around Ranko's left shoulder.
"Whoa-oh-oh, uh-oh! Turn off the ra-a-di-o!" Emi's line was added as she trailed Hitomi's flight path around the stage.
With the girls suspended out of the scene, Ranko was left to carry the chorus mostly alone. As she did, she gestured upward at her friends with her hands, as if using their plight as evidence to demonstrate the power she had over anyone she chose.
"You can't help but dance. There's no time to rest! There's a siren on the mic that's making you possessed! There's nowhere to hide! Nowhere to go! No escaping from the…"
"DEMON IN YOUR RA-A-DI-O," thundered Shinji's deep bass voice through his headset microphone as the stage lights momentarily blinked out, a series of strobes punctuating his hellish cackle alongside the audio sample of a thunderclap.
The white stage lights came back up to find Ranko walking toward the back of the stage, her back to the audience. One of her hands rested on each of the male backup dancer's sternums, and she pushed them back toward the band as she packed her lungs for one of the fastest segments of the song and began to rap.
"You're not ready for me, Seoul! I'm strange and exotic!"
A substantial portion of the crowd joined Ranko in the remaining four words of the rhyming quintet.
"Diabolically, chaotically, hypnotically EROTIC!"
The red-headed singer turned her head and winked to the crowd as she continued marching Sanyo and Utaru backward on the stage. Several of the women in the crowd held up pink tank tops they had purchased at the band merchandise stands at the entrances, which featured the rhyming quartet of words screen-printed in white across the back in a hellishly edgy font.
"Even if you don't wanna be dancin', you're forced to be, so cower to my power of seductive sonic sorcery!"
Ranko released the boys' leather armor, pointing to the floor at her feet with both outstretched index fingers. As she did, Utaru and Sanyo both dropped to their knees, lowering their foreheads to the stage and extending their hands in front of them in total supplication.
With a satisfied smirk, Ranko turned back to the crowd as Emi's shadow passed over her head. She gently lowered herself, sitting on Sanyo's arched back and crossing her ankles. "You're totally enchanted, so give in to my hex! You ain't gettin' with me, and so it's better than sex!"
She pointed high into the top balcony of seats stretching in a wide arc around the stadium, where center field would be during a baseball game held in the building, with two outstretched fingers. "Even the boys up in the upper deck, bored and listless, will be crawling to the floor, screaming out…"
Ranko lifted her hand, holding it out against her ear as if straining to hear a distant call. The songstress fell silent, but her prompt was answered by nearly every one of the twenty-four thousand, two hundred and fifteen Firebirds in attendance at once.
"YES, MISTRESS!"
Ranko giggled into her headset microphone as she popped back to her feet. Fuck, that never gets old. And this is the best part - because they're not on the album, every show gets a surprise with the new verses. Whaddya think, Seoul? You guys ready?
She took a deep breath, rocketing into the beginnings of the new verses that had been added to create the Hellfire Cut of Demon in Your Radio. Over more than thirty shows of the Wildfire Tour. Ranko had learned that she needed to bellow the first new lines at nearly the top of her lungs, because the crowd's excitement for the additional content would drown them out otherwise.
"Every bop I drop's a hit, because your mistress DOESN'T MISS! That's why my beat has moved your feet up to the edge of the abyss!"
Shinji's bass voice boomed the final word with her as, to Ranko's left and right, the wires suspending Hitomi and Emi above the stage slowly began to lower them back to ground level. The male backup dancers rose from their supplicant positions, rushing up to meet the girls and disconnect the wires from their harnesses and free them to move unrestrained about the stage again.
"All this drummin' is summonin' up my musical minions: bodies rubbin' in the club I've made my personal dominion!"
The crowd's response to the first salvo of new lyrics comprising the extended songcould easily have registered on the Richter scale.
Ranko lifted her left leg off the stage and started to fall backward, and Sanyo rushed up behind her. She collided back-to-back with him, rocking her hips and letting him support her weight.
"The irreverent revenant, revvin' up everybody hearin' me!" Ranko chopped at the air with her hands as she rapidly dropped each of the similar syllables, the sounds rocketing from her lips and keeping pace with the hundred and seventy beats per minute of the dance track behind them.
"No talisman can challenge the malice of my tyranny! Bringin' the sickness with a quickness, and it's spreadin' through your nation, infectin' ya with vitriolic, rollicking contagion!"
Ranko extended her arms at her sides with her elbows bent, again curling her fingers skyward as if summoning some dark power. Sanyo gripped her under the left armpit, Utaru taking her right, and the pair lifted her nearly a meter off the stage floor. She lowered her head, closing her eyes, and bent her left knee as if she were taking flight. She remained silent as Hitomi and Emi carried the chorus together.
"You can't help but dance! There's no time to rest, when there's a siren on the mic that's makin' you possessed! There's nowhere to hide! Nowhere to go! No escapin' from the…"
Ranko snapped her eyes open, flashing them up to the crowd. Shinji did not join in at the end of the chorus as he normally did, but Ranko answered her backup singers' call with a furious rock scream.
"DEMON IN YOUR RA-A-DI-O-OHHHH! Yeah!"
As the boys set her down, Ranko laughed into her headset microphone, nodding approvingly of the crowd's thunderous acknowledgement of the lead track's new lyrics. She strode the edge of the stage, waving to the capacity crowd. She wanted to make eye contact with every single person in the audience, impossible though she knew it was.
"I told ya you weren't ready, Seoul! You guys don't listen too good, do ya? Well, it's too late now! Welcome to my own little corner of hell, where everybody has a good time, but nobody! Leaves! Alive!" She threw her head back, emitting a sadistic cackle that would have fit perfectly in any number of Disney villain movies. Shinji had taught her well.
"It's the verbal infernal, burnin' you up with the compulsion that drives you to involuntary bodily convulsion. My silvery delivery is wigglin' your waistlines! I'm wreckin' you, injecting you with heckin' sexy bass lines!"
Ranko began waving her arms fluidly, moving her fingers as if she were manipulating a pair of marionettes. On either side of her and a few steps forward, Hitomi and Emi effected a jerky, almost lifeless stagger into their dance, as if their bodies were no longer moving of their own volition. Their heads lolled limply to the sides as Ranko seemingly took command of their spines.
"I'm gonna make you dance until your limbs go limp, impelling impromptu impetus like an impudent imp! Now, the masses shake their asses rockin' under my thrall - I've got most of 'em already, but I'm coming for you ALL!"
The redhead raised her arms, her fingers splayed as if still dangling puppet strings. As she did, she rocked her hips, rolling her body from her knees up through her hips and into her spine. With the exception of her hands, her every motion, every step, every kick, was executed in perfect synchronization by the two young women flanking her, as if Ranko was compelling them to join her dance through her willpower alone.
"I know I didn't warn ya, so I guess it wasn't fair to ya to bury ya in scary tunes and lyrical hysteria. My harmonic, sonic, tonic's got you enraptured. With my iconic, demonic, stereophonic beat, you're captured! The commotion I'm hostin' forces the motion of your vertebra. At least you die smiling when I musically murder ya!"
She giggled, covering her mouth with her hand. She stopped dancing for a moment, and Hitomi and Emi froze limply in place, as if their connection to the person controlling them had been lost and they had no thoughts of their own to resume.
"You know it isn't good for you, but still can't get enough of us! Surrender yourself up unto this sultry, singing succubus!"
Ranko flashed her hands to her sides, waving them in the air as if conducting an orchestra. The two female backup dancers at her sides sang a modified chorus without her, still without raising from their frozen positions bent over with their left hands reaching down to the stage floor.
"You can't help but dance. There's no time to rest! There's a siren on the mic that's got us all possessed! There's nowhere to hide! Nowhere to go!"
Utaru and Sanyo, meanwhile, rushed to the back of the stage. A low rumble shook the speakers as Shinji leaned close to his microphone, dropping his voice to the very bottom of the first octave. His subharmonic tones were more of a growl than notes being sung, and they shook in the chest of every person in the crowd like a thunderclap.
"NO ESCAPING FROM THE DEMON IN YOUR RA-A-DI-O!"
Hitomi and Emi both dropped limply to their knees and held their hands to their ears as if cowed by the disembodied voice crashing into their skulls. As they did, Sanyo and Utaru charged forward in their red leather armor, flanking Ranko. Each had a long spear with a false tip in their hands, and they whirled the weapons around their bodies with a martial artist's skill and deftness. The technique had been taught to them by a true master of Anything-Goes Martial Arts: Ranko Tendo, the grandmaster's youngest daughter. At least, her adoptive father was grandmaster until he retired, when he would pass the school down to Ranko's secret wife.
"I've got'cha bad already, but it's only gonna worsen, 'cause this final verse is just dispersed when Ranko's here in person! Now, the demon's out the radio, and up here on the stage! I've made you all my pets, and now, the dance floor is your cage!"
Again, Ranko raised her arms to her sides, and Utaru and Sanyo, having divested themselves of their spears, rushed to her sides. Hitomi and Emi rose from their knees to join at the outer edges of a chevron with Ranko at its point. As the devilish songstress writhed sultrily on the stage, all four of the backup dancers joined her in lockstep choreography.
"Yeah, I'm downright despotic with my melodic possession, as my body and my rhyme combine in hellish obsession. With the dying multiplying, you'll be crying for your mommies once deliciously malicious pitches turn you into zombies!"
All four backup dancers extended their arms outward at the shoulders, shambling two steps forward with dead eyes.
"I beat out every ghost and ghoul, laid waste to all of the liches, for the right to come to Seoul and make you all my dancing bitches!"
Ranko raised her right hand to the height of her shoulder, snapping her fingers just next to her ear. As she did, a jet of flame shot up from the stage floor to her right, barely a meter in front of Hitomi. The orange fire partially concealed the dancer from view, and she collapsed behind it to her knees, then down into a disjointed, motionless heap on the stage as the flame went out.
"Now I'm the only oni with the tones to shake your bones, because you're mine to rock forever, and YOU'RE NEVER! GOING! HOME!"
Ranko raised her left hand to her ear, snapping her fingers. As had just happened with Hitomi, a column of fire shot forth from an emitter at the front left side of the stage, dissipating a moment later to reveal Emi crumpled on the stage, another minion discarded once her mistress had finished with her. Even from four meters away, Ranko could feel the blast of heat on her Cat's Tongue-sensitive skin through her leather outfit, but the temperature was dropping rapidly as night fell in the riverside stadium, and at that distance, she could be grateful for its momentary warmth.
"Abandon all hope; this flow's a slippery slope, guy. So wholly unholy, even my record label's Yokai!"
For now, anyway, Ranko thought with a grimace of concern. I still don't get why they're being so difficult about everything. All I wanna do is make music, live my life in peace, and make them a shitload of money. Seems like a good deal to me.
"Tell the folks lined up outside that we've already locked the doors. I'll claim their souls tomorrow…"
She dropped her voice a full octave as a bright red spotlight illuminated her form, giving her a truly demonic appearance as she finished the final verse.
"... I've already got YOURS!"
Ranko turned her back to the crowd, holding up both of her hands to shoulder level again. She positioned her fingers as if she was threatening to snap them. Sanyo and Utaru dropped to one knee, bowing their heads as if they knew they were seconds from suffering the same immolation fate that the girls had if they did not submit to their musical mistress.
That done, Ranko whipped her head back around to the crowd, a satisfied sneer painted across her face.
"You can't help but dance. There's no time to rest. There's a siren on the mic that's got you all possessed! There's nowhere to hide! Nowhere to go! No escaping from the demon in your ra-a-di-o!"
She took a few steps back toward the band, walking between Utaru and Sanyo. Ranko raised her hands again to the level of her ears, looking down at her feet and snapping her fingers on both hands. Two simultaneous jets of flame spewed forth from the center of the stage, the front pair from the parallel columns that Ranko had been carried between to begin the performance. Standing less than a meter behind of each with Ranko between them, the two male dancers joined Hitomi and Emi in spent, crumpled heaps on the stage floor.
Ranko cackled darkly into her headset, lowering the pitch of her voice again to increase the threat of her words.
"Now that I've got you, I ain't EVER gonna let you go!"
Ranko waved her arm, panning the stage from left to right. As she did, one jet after another of orange fire belched upward from the stage, shooting a good three meters into the air. Each remained lit, such that by the time her arm pointed toward stage right, a curtain of flame concealed much of the whole of the stage from view.
A peal of thunder roared through the stadium's sound system, and a galaxy of white strobe lights flashed all around the stage as the main canister lights blinked out. Shinji's demonic cackle shook the decade-old sports venue as an orange spotlight illuminated the band's lead vocalist from below, in a hellish approximation of the flashlight her birth father had held under his chin when he told scary stories around campfires.
Behind the nine emitters and their combined wall of fire, the four backup dancers scrambled to their feet and scurried back behind the band, where two small areas concealed with black curtains had been set up on either side of the video screen to facilitate quick costume changes. As they ran, they felt Shinji's subharmonic declaration of doom quaking through their rib cages one final time.
"No escaping from the DEMON in your RA-A-DI-O!"