Ranko waved to the raucous crowd with both hands, waiting until the frenzy from the high-energy end of B-O-U-N-C-E had subsided. Sanyo and Utaru jogged to the back of the stage, slipping through the gap in the curtain.
"We're all good down here, Masa!" Norio announced from the dark recesses of the understage.
Emi reached in to offer Ranko a hug. After the brief embrace ended, the blonde began making her way toward the backstage area, freeing Ranko's arms up for another quick hug from Hitomi. Once she, too, was on the way backstage, the redhead turned her attention to the crowd again.
"Confirmed! Ready to go, Scorch! Light 'em up!" replied Kaz Asai as he made his way back up the steps to the main backstage area, rushing to the coffeepot to pour himself another cup. He silently prayed it was still hot.
Behind the band, the video screen faded to black and then began tracing Ranko's signature in hot pink again.
"Deck coming out," Masa said, reaching for the switches that powered the twin winches.
"Let's have the spots on Ranko!" his partner in the booth commanded, raising his voice to ensure the temp workers hired to man the spotlights could hear him over the still-screaming throng. Ariel also dimmed most of the stage lighting, leaving it to the spotlights to keep Ranko - and not much else on the stage - visible to the crowd.
Ranko beamed, letting the crowd revel as long as they liked. She knew they were running out of opportunities to do so, and as vain as it made her feel to admit it, she felt as if she could never get enough. To a girl who could scarcely earn the love of her biological parents, the feeling of basking in the adulation of tens of thousands of new people every night was a drug more potent than heroin.
"Thank you," she said softly once the din had at least mostly settled. "So, listen. It's getting to be about that time. It's getting too freakin' cold out here!"
Got there about two hours ago, she thought, stifling another shiver in her scant costume.
A chorus of disappointed awwwwws rained down on the singer, and she waved her hands downward to help quell it. "But, before we go, we're gonna sing you one more song."
A grateful cheer rose from the stands. It was followed by a murmur of conversation as the amassed Firebirds tried to guess, of all of the songs left in Ranko and the Dapper Dragons' discography, which would be the final number, and which would not be performed at all.
Ranko continued to speak over the buzzing crowd, quieting them nearly instantly. "One of my absolute favorites. Tonight, I've done songs about love, and magic, and dancing, and power. But this last one is about… miracles."
A cheer rose from a smattering of Firebirds who, based on her words, felt confident that the song they had hoped to hear was the one Ranko was referencing.
Ranko strolled the stage slowly as she spoke, giving everyone one last chance to snap a photo if they were so inclined. "Because the thing is… I shouldn't be standing up here tonight. A girl like me has absolutely no freakin' business getting to stand on this stage and hear you shout my name."
"RAN-KO! RAN-KO!" the crowd responded, taking her statement as a cue. After thirty-three shows, Ranko expected it, and she waved her hands downward again to tamp it down. While she couldn't get enough of crowds cheering for her, she always felt a little guilty when she felt like she'd forced their adulation by directly asking for it.
"I wish I could say I've dreamed of this since I was a little girl, but I can't." The young singer chuckled to herself under her breath. Hell, I wish I could say I ever got to be a little girl in the first place, Ranko silently mused. "But when every other door in my life was slammed in my face - when I was homeless and hopeless, afraid and alone, something intervened. Call it luck, fate, the gods… who knows. But all at once, it was like the storm clouds parted, and the sun started shining on me for the first time in my life. And it all started because I found people who could love me the way I am… and because I learned how to use one of these." She smiled, softly tapping the earpiece of her headset microphone.
"And so, before we go, I just wanna say thank you. Not just to all of you that buy our CDs, and watch our videos, and freeze your asses off to come out here four days before Christmas to watch us sing… but to whatever force out there in the universe that put me on this path. That took a regular girl who had nothing - who arguably deserved nothing - and decided to give her more than she could have even dared to wish for."
The screen behind the band lit up. It displayed a video recording of Ranko climbing the steps of the Minato train station, shot on a handheld camcorder from behind. She wore a red tang shirt and a pair of battered black gi pants, her hair tied in a tight single braid running down her back.
Jacob began to play a melody that was familiar, and yet not, to most of the audience. Despite the instrument voice being labeled as bright piano on his Yamaha DX-7 keyboard, the song it played was slower, softer, and somehow more introspective than the version that had won three Japan Record Awards.
Ranko waited until the cheering of the crowd and the whirlwind of camera flashes died down, letting Jacob repeat the almost mournful instrumental introduction to the song a second time. But, once the audio cue came around again, she took a deep breath and softly began to sing.
"Story opens on a cold, dark street, with a girl who was frightened, hungry, broke, and beat. Goin' nowhere fast. Running from her past. No one to turn to."
The twin spotlights followed Ranko as she paced around the stage, making no effort to dance after having converted one of her more high-energy hits into a soulful ballad. The screen behind her still showed Ranko, with the camera following a few steps behind, as she reached out for the brass handle of a tinted glass double door. She pulled it open, walking into the empty main room of the Phoenix.
"Don't know how she managed to get that far, but somehow, she stumbled into an old dive bar. Didn't know how to change or grow, but was about to learn to."
The video board cross-faded to another scene, this one of Hana and her daughters huddled around Ranko, taking turns hugging her. They were speaking to her, but there was no audio accompanying the scene. Notably absent were Akane and Sakura, neither of whom had been present on the fateful day Ranko's first verse described.
Emi handed her nearly-empty foam coffee cup to Utaru, hurrying back through the gap in the curtain to linger in the dark next to Crash. Hitomi was already positioned to Shinji's immediate right. All of the instruments save Jacob's remained silent.
"Who could imagine what the hands of fate had decided they would scribble on her blank slate? Who could see all that her destiny was just about to bring 'er?"
The redheaded girl in the video scoffed at some unheard statement, waving it off with the back of her hand. She took two steps closer to the camera, but stopped suddenly when Yui reached out, gripping the smaller girl by the shoulders. Yui spun her around, pointing her back away from the camera, and giving her a little nudge.
Hitomi nodded to Sanyo as the stocky young dancer joined her in the shadowed space between Shinji and Zoe.
"If you'd have told her then, she'd have said, 'you're ly-ying!' She could barely crawl; couldn't imagine fly-y-ying."
The meek young girl in the video trudged up the two steps, ascending to the stage platform. The camera, which had continued to follow from just a few steps behind, panned down slightly and orbited her to the left in order to include her hands in the shot.
"Not naive enough to believe she could become a singer…"
Mei met Ranko at the edge of the steps in the video. The camera followed the blue-pigtailed girl's hands as they reached down, depositing a handheld dynamic microphone in the trembling left hand of her youngest sister.
The second the microphone touched Ranko's hand on the screen, the entire front edge of the stage exploded in orange flame. All nine jets roared to their maximum output after their long slumber.
Jacob's instrument changed its tone from a bright piano to a more electronic synthesizer voice. A loud squeal of Crash's guitar, a deep thrum from Shinji's bass, and a furious run on Zoe's drums quadrupled the energy level of Ranko's most decorated hits in half a heartbeat.
The stage lights all came up at once, revealing the full band in brighter light than they had been shown in since the opening of Demon in Your Radio. Hitomi, Emi, Sanyo and Utaru all rushed forward, forming a triangle with Ranko at its forwardmost vertex.
There were twenty-four thousand, two hundred and fifteen people in the stands of Jamsil Baseball Stadium that night. As Ariel scanned the crowd through the glass of his control booth, he doubted he could count ten that were still in their seats, and fewer still who were not screaming.
"ONCE UPON A RHYME, not so far away, there lived a little girl who had lost her way! Her fairy tale had been an EPIC FAIL from! The! Be-gin-ning!"
Ranko knew she could not waste the enthusiasm of the crowd's reaction to the song's sudden explosion of energy, so she simply belted the first line of her award-winning song's chorus as loudly as she possibly could. All five dancers made windmills with their arms, stepping forward in lockstep and bending their knees to swing their bodies down low to the stage floor.
The eight-meter-tall video board showed Ranko, in the same red and black outfit that had all but been her second skin when she was known as Ranma Saotome, singing her heart out into the microphone Mei had handed her.
"Her heroes taught her how to make her stand. Went and put a microphone in her hand! They turned the page, put her up on stage, and now! She's! WINNING!"
Ranko thrust her fist skyward. Directly in front of her, the center most of the nine flame emitters ignited. The wave of flame spread from there in both directions, passing from one emitter to the next away from the center until only the far left and far right jets fired up and quickly puffed out.
"Sure, it seems just like a fantasy, that fate would reach backward for a girl like me…"
Ranko folded her hands over her heart. All four of her backup dancers threw themselves backward into back handsprings that expanded the distance between them and the lead vocalist.
"... but now, my happy ever after happens… whoa-o-a-all the ti-i-i-ime!"
Ranko's voice fell into a softer, quieter tone again. "Once upon a rhy-y-y-yme."
The video screen began displaying a new scene: Ranko walking through the snow-covered alley behind the Phoenix in a yellow sundress. Somehow, she had felt warmer that night than her real-life counterpart did on the stage in Seoul. Ranko was glad Akane had shot the video when she did, as three days later, the Dapper Dragons' lead singer had badly torn the ligaments in her knee in the finale of a martial arts tournament. By the time Ranko next walked without crutches, the snow was long gone.
The band maintained the faster pace of the song, and Ranko threw herself into the second verse with the same gusto she had used to end the first chorus. "Some time later, fin'lly doin' alright, when magic came knockin' one December night. When someone from the past she'd run from came and found her."
While Hitomi and Emi each paired off with one of the boys and mirrored their movements, Ranko danced alone, trying to keep her eyes forward. It infuriated her that, although the entire second verse of the song that essentially summarized all of the joys in her life was about Akane, her beloved wife could not appear in the video without incurring the wrath of the suits at Yokai Records back in Shibuya.
"And it came as such a big surprise that she could see eternity in those brown eyes, and knew that she'd always have a need for those arms around her."
The video screen showed Ranko in the same yellow dress, standing in her immaculately clean bedroom. She and Akane had spent hours ensuring nothing was visible that could betray that the room was shared by two lesbians, and not by a husband and wife. The singer in the video picked up a heart-shaped frame from the dresser, smiling down at it. As the scene was filmed from the open bathroom door, the back of the frame faced the camera, so the audience could not see that it contained a Polaroid photo of Ranko and Akane sitting on the bed together on their first afternoon in their new home.
"Started slow, but they both wanted more. They rented an apartment on the second floor. They both grew, and as they did, they knew the way things were pro-o-gressing."
The recording of Ranko hugged the frame tight against her chest, giggling and twirling in place with joy.
"Barely had a yen between 'em to their name, but every day, it felt like they had won the game! Didn't take long 'fore that little girl's mom was asked to give her blessing!"
With a loud puff sound, a blizzard of dried grains of white rice blasted out of the confetti cannons positioned just in front of the stage. On the screen, a hyper-fast mashup of the wedding scenes from the video that had played during There Are No Words zoomed by, showing several different images each second.
"Once upon a rhyme, not so far a-wa-aay, there lived a little girl who had lost her way! Her fairy tale had been an epic fail from the beginning!"
In an attempt to mimic the formality of a wedding, the four backup dancers joined hands and conducted a few steps of a waltz - just enough to get through the unique line in the second chorus that tied it to its preceding verse.
"Her heroes taught her how to make her stand! An angel came and put a ring on her left hand!"
Ranko lifted her left hand, wiggling her third finger proudly for the crowd.
"Ring, ring, ring," Hitomi and Emi sang so quietly as to almost be mumbled, providing a callback to celebrate the fact that the wish Ranko made in that song had been granted.
"She turned the page, got back up on stage, and now, she's winning!"
Ranko spread her arms wide, panning the crowd with them in an attempt to convey to them that their very presence was a tremendous part of what she considered winning in her life.
"And sure, it seems just like a fantasy that fate would reach backward for a girl like me… but now, my happy ever after happens… whoa-oo-oaall the ti-i-i-ime!"
Another wave of flame flashed across the front edge of the stage, beginning at the center and spreading to its far wings.
"Once upon a rhy-y-y-yme."
The screen hanging from the trusses above the stage cut to a new scene, this one of Ranko in a plain heather gray hoodie. A calf-length black skirt billowed out from under it and down her legs, almost entirely camouflaging the nylon waitress half-apron she was wearing over it. She was bent over a table slightly, listening to an order and noting it down on a ticket pad. Her face was entirely devoid of emotion.
"She found her dream, and started giving chase, but kismet led our girl into a real dark place. And, she found out she'd begun to doubt that she could ever make it."
An arm in a black leather jacket sleeve entered the frame. When the hand attached to it touched Ranko's back, she straightened her posture. The camera panned with her, revealing Crash standing behind her. His black nylon guitar case was strapped to his back.
Leaving her backup dancers to continue the choreography without her, Ranko began walking a circuit along the back edge of the stage, first making her way to Crash. Without interrupting her singing or impeding his hands on his cherry red instrument, she leaned in and hugged him tight around his waist.
"Then, a friend walked into that dive bar, armed with just a hug, and an electric guitar."
Ranko made her way toward stage right, walking around the keyboard stand to squeeze Jacob around his shoulders.
"Let her scream, but promised her the dream, if she could only take it."
Her path rightward continued until she could lean down and place a gentle arm over Zoe's shoulders. She dared not risk a full hug, as the drummer's arms moved too wildly on their instrument to safely interrupt. While Zoe had not been a part of the contingent of Dapper Dragons she described, original drummer Ken Hirata was not on stage with her that night. Ranko would have given anything if he could have been.
"When her faith had all but reached its end…"
Ranko approached Shinji Yokota from behind, giving him a quick squeeze around his midsection. The video board showed Ranko walking into a dirty old mechanic shop. Crash and Shinji flanked her as they escorted her past a beat-up old Toyota on a lift and toward an oil-stained rug, where a quartet of well-worn secondhand instruments were arrayed. The girl in the video reached out timidly for the handheld microphone that awaited her on a stand just in front of the drum set.
"... that guitarist introduced her to his friends…"
Before she had fully finished the line, Ranko disappeared behind the black curtain into the backstage area. While she could not embrace all four of the original Dapper Dragons, there was a third one in the building that was not on the stage at all.At least, she could acknowledge him.
"Hey! Ranko?! What are you…" Kazuki's eyes were as wide as saucers in shock at the sight of their star retreating behind the curtain in the middle of one of her greatest hits.
"... and those guys wrote a song called RISE that they performed to-o-gether," Ranko sang without breaking stride.
All nine Dapper Dragons on the stage shouted the name of Ranko's first hit, just as they had repeatedly done during its chorus twelve songs prior.
"What the hell is she doing?!" Ariel demanded, rocketing out of his seat.
Ignoring his protests, which were only faintly picked up on her still-hot microphone, Ranko grabbed Kaz by the wrist. She dragged the poleaxed roadie back through the gap in the curtain and directly into the glow of a pair of spotlights.
"Who could have expected such a charmed outcome?!"Ranko sang as she offered Kaz a hug of his own.
It's time, she thought as she released Kaz from her embrace, flitting quickly around to the front of the drum set. He's earned the right to be acknowledged as one of us again. She pointed down at the front of Zoe's bass drum, turning her eyes back to the crowd with an incredulous gleam in her eyes.
"They spray-painted her name on the front of their drum!"
"Okay, it's official. That girl's gonna give me a fucking heart attack before I'm thirty!" Ariel slumped down into his creaky old office chair. "Can you believe thi…"
"Not now, Ari,"Masa insisted. He was hunched over his controls with an intense focus. The safety of everyone on stage depended on it. He slammed two full banks of switches on the console on his right upright, rapidly swiveling back to his main pyrotechnic control panel.
"Right, sor… oh, shit!" Ariel reached forward, slamming his hand down urgently on the video feed switch for the display board. In his distraction, he had been a few beats late doing so. The screen ceased displaying the recorded video, switching again to a live camera feed. This one, however, came not from the pivoting cameras mounted above the stage, but a stationary one positioned less than a meter over Ariel's head. The wide-angle lens captured the entire width of the stage and most of the lower bowl of the stadium's seats, as well as the temporary seating on the field itself. It was positioned a bit low, such that the stage was at the very top of the frame, and the video board was not visible in the camera angle, thus preventing what Masa had called an infinity mirror effect.
"... And they decided that this CRAZY RIDE WAS GONNA LAST FO-OR-E-E-EVER!"
Zoe stood behind their drum set, stomping on the pedal driving their bass drum once, then again, and then three more times in much more rapid succession. The third of the three was bolstered by more than a dozen sonic booms. The entire upper rim of the stadium glowed in pink and orange light as fireworks from each of the twelve launchers positioned between the stadium lights above the top rows of seats exploded overhead in celebration of the Wildfire Tour's big finale.
"Once upon a rhyme, not so far away…" Ranko sang over the deafening roar of twenty thousand plus Firebirds. Nearly no one was still in their seat.
So focused was the crowd on Ranko and the inferno swirling about her, nearly none of them noticed Sanyo and Utaru slip through the curtain and disappear backstage.
"... there lived a little girl who had lost her way! Her fairy tale had been an EPIC FAIL from! The! Be-e-gin-ning!"
Ranko rejoined her backup dancers at center stage, launching herself skyward just as her friends did as well. In less than a quarter-second, she had reintegrated herself into the choreography as seamlessly as if she had never left it. Another wave of orange flame pulsed outward from the center front edge of the stage.
"Her heroes taught her how to make her stand!"
Ranko turned toward the back of the stage, spreading her arms to draw the crowd's attention to her eight fellow performers.
"And now, that little girl is in HER OWN ROCK BAND! They turned the page, and they're still on stage, and now, they're winning!"
Another volley of fireworks shook the concrete shell of the building with the concussive force of its explosions, not that the nearly-universally standing horde of fans needed much help to achieve that effect.
"And sure, it seems just like a fantasy that fate would reach backward for a girl li-ike me…"
Ranko strode forward on the stage, tapping her chest with both hands as she approached its edge. She was careful to stay far enough back to not step into the path of the nine flamethrowers Masa commanded, not that she was sure she wouldn't prefer being on fire to the chill that had inhabited her spine for the better part of two hours.
"But now, my happy ever after happens whoa-o-oh-ohA-ALL THE TI-I-I-IME!"
With Zoe and Jacob having risen to their feet, the entire contingent of seven permanent Dapper Dragons prepared to close out the show. Led by Jake's keyboard, the song changed to a higher key for the final chorus, which Ranko had customized for every unique locale on the Wildfire Tour.
"Once upon a rhyme, not so far a-a-WA-AY, our girl came to Korea with some songs to play!"
Ranko strode the front of the stage from right to left, waving goodbye to the crowd. She tried in vain to make eye contact with each and every one of the half-frozen Firebirds still celebrating with her in the closing few seconds of the show.
"She's out here slingin' words… freezing with her Firebirds, and hey, she just got going!"
An outbreak of laughter broke through the cheers as the energy built for the climax of the concert.
"She's found family, friends, and true romance. Doesn't know how she deserved the gifts she got by chance… but her fresh start has filled up her heart until it's o-o-ver-flo-o-o-wing!"
A hurricane of white strobe lights blinked on and out in the span of a half-second, nearly blinding anyone whose eyes were focused anywhere but on the stage itself.
There were not many.
"Okay, spots. I want one of you on lead guitar, and the other, standby on the bassist," Ariel commanded, dimming the stage lights by forty percent from his control board.
"That's our show, everybody! Thank you so much for coming out tonight, Seoul! 우리는 당신을 사랑해요, 서울!"
The rhythm of the song repeated as one of the spotlights re-illuminated, highlighting Crash as he thrashed his guitar into a showy riff.
"On guitar, my best friend in the whole world! Mister! Crash! Matsuyama!" Ranko pointed to Crash with both hands, clapping her hands loudly for him until the crowd had finished doing the same.
The spotlight on the right side of the booth bathed Shinji in a beam of white light. It never ceased to amaze Ranko how it had never turned him into dust, like a vampire that accidentally wandered out into the sun.
"On bass and sax… Shinji! Yooooooookota!" Ranko wound up her arms as she extended the pronunciation of his name, as if she were a pitcher about to hurl a fastball. She pointed to the bassist with both hands, and a low, demonic cackle rose from his throat as his bass guitar deviated from the repeating through line of Once Upon a Rhyme for a moment.
Utaru and Sanyo emerged from backstage, both having changed clothes. Utaru wore a jeweltone green button down dress shirt over tan slacks. Sanyo had on a red polo shirt and a pair of faded blue jeans.
"On the drums, my friend and yours… Zoooooooooe Kiiiing!" Ranko pointed back to the drummer with both hands. Zoe crossed their glowing pink drumsticks over their head before raining them down in a furious drum solo that lasted for nearly ten seconds.
While the pink-haired percussionist had their moment to show off for the cheering crowd, Sanyo tapped Ranko on the shoulder from behind.
"Not now, dude! Can't you see I'm busy?!" Ranko scoffed audibly, plucking Sanyo's hand off of her shoulder and tossing it aside. "Anyway! Making the ivories sound awfully lively! Let me hear it for Jaaaaaaaacob! Fletcher! Trrrrrrriimmmmble!"
The standing crowd's volume, which had started to wane in its confusion over Sanyo's interruption, ratcheted back to its full intensity as Jacob tickled his keyboard in a showy series of arpeggios.
Ranko growled into her headset as Sanyo tapped her shoulder again, this time from the other side. "Look, man! I told you! I'm. Not. Interested! Now, leave me alone!"
Huffing loudly, Ranko turned back toward the befuddled, and growingly concerned, crowd. "Where was I?!" She scurried forward on the stage and reached her arms out to her sides. Emi and Hitomi rushed up, ducking under her arms and embracing her at center stage.
"These are the best backup singers, dancers, and friends a girl could ever ask for! Let me hear you scream for Emi Kimoto…"
Ranko reached around Emi's back, taking her free arm and lifting it skyward. Only once the cheer began to die down did she do the same with Hitomi's. "... and Hitomi! Uuuuuuyeeeenooo!"
The three girls all took a bow together at center stage. As the new surge in applause for Hitomi began to die down, Ranko split from the girls and strode forward alone.
"Give some love to our crew! We couldn't do this thing without them! Backstage, Norio Anzai and Kazuki Asai!"
The cheers continued as both young men emerged from backstage, staying only long enough to wave to the crowd before slipping back behind the curtain.
They, unlike the roaring Firebirds packing the stadium, knew what was coming next.
"And, up in the booth… give it up for our everything engineer, Ariel Wright! And, our very own fire lord, Masa! Tabata!" Ranko gestured up with an outstretched arm to the small concrete booth at the center of the upper deck.
Both men stood and waved, but only very briefly. They still had work to do.
"And my boys! Our amazing Wildfire Tour dancers… Utaru Tsuchidaaaa!" Ranko pointed to the young man as he waved to the crowd.
Don't gag, Ranko coached herself. "Isn't he just the cutest thing ev-"
Her voice trailed off as Sanyo lunged forward, grabbing her firmly by the wrist. Jacob and Zoe quickly retook their seats behind their instruments.
Ranko whirled on her heel, driving both hands hard into Sanyo's chest. He stumbled backward nearly a meter, crashing down onto his back on the stage floor. A loud gasp and a worried murmur rose from the stands, almost entirely obscuring the thump from Zoe's bass drum that emphasized his impact on the stage.
"I! Have had! ENOUGH!" Ranko roared.
The crowd was stunned into silence. Of all the things they might have expected when they'd purchased their tickets to a pop concert months ago, a fight on the stage between the star and one of her backup dancers was not among them.
But then, a new sound pierced the silence - a quiet, sing-song taunt flowing from Hitomi and Emi's microphones.
"Na, na-na, na! Na, na-na, nuh-uh!"
However cold she was, however loudly her hyperesthesic skin screamed for respite, Ranko had never been so grateful to be performing in an outdoor stadium in her life.
If there had been a roof on Jamsil Baseball Stadium that night, the sheer concussive force of its inhabitants' sudden, exuberant cheers would have blown it clean off.