Still seated on the borrowed stool in front of Jacob's keyboard, Ranko raised her left hand to her lips. Lowering her head, she closed her eyes and planted a soft, extended kiss on the engraved silver band coiled around her third finger. It was the same ritual she'd performed after every performance of You're My Song on the tour save one - an abnormal performance in Medan where she'd invited a lucky Firebird onstage to sing with her as part of his grand plan to propose to his now-fiancée.
I love you, Akane. I'll be home soon. I miss you. I'm so sorry I can't tell them the truth about us.
"Hey, Ran-chan?" Ariel's voice in her earpiece startled Ranko out of her reflection. "Listen, they're having a little trouble with the pyro. Everything's gonna be safe, don't sweat it, but they're gonna need a minute to get it sorted. We need you to stall."
Sure, guys, Ranko thought with a barely-disguised roll of her eyes. Make me sit here and freeze for a few minutes longer, when there's enough gas under my feet to launch a fucking rocketship. She stood, walking around the keyboard to the front edge of the stage.
With a halting breath, she shrugged Crash's jacket higher onto her shoulders, wrapping it tighter around her stomach. "Ya know, guys… You've known I was coming here since, like, March. You couldn't turn the thermostat up on the whole country for a couple of days for me?! It's freakin' freezing out here!" She laughed along with the crowd. "I hope you're having a good time, though! Everybody staying warm out there?"
Ranko laughed as the crowd cheered in confirmation. "Well, yeah. I'd guess you would be; you aren't up here in a short little dress like me." She flashed the audience a spritely smile. "You're worth it, though." She lifted the collar of her borrowed jacket, both to emphasize its presence and to use its flaps to guard her neck somewhat from the breeze. "I told you Crash was a good dude. Honestly, one of the best guys I've ever met."
She wagged her finger at no one in particular, her eyes settling somewhere in the middle-left of the fourth row. "I see the way you're looking at him, girls. Don't even think about it. He's taken! His girlfriend's freakin' awesome, too. One of my oldest friends. Great cook, too. She makes these things called okonomiyaki - it's like a cross between an omelette and a crepe, and it's amazing."
In the control booth, Ariel flipped a toggle switch, ensuring his radio would only be heard by the stage crew and not the performers. "Talk to me, Kaz!" Ariel growled into his headset. "Another two minutes, and she's gonna be standing up there reading off her recipe for fucking blueberry muffins!"
With a grunt through his gritted teeth, the Dragons' new roadie turned the long shaft of the wrench again. "Almost… got it! It's just…"
Masa turned in his chair, waving angrily at Ariel. He punched at the mute control for his headset. "Don't rush him! I know you want to keep the show on track, but it's just stupidly dangerous for everyone on the stage if he doesn't get it tight enough!" He flicked the switch again to unmute his headset, activating its microphone. "You're doing great, Kaz. Just get that fitting good and tight, alright? Don't worry about the time. The fans will wait."
Jacob and Zoe strode out from behind the curtain, and the keyboardist walked out to center stage to retrieve his instrument. He deliberately slowed his movements on his way back to the rest of the band, hoping to buy more time for the Dragon he replaced in the band to work beneath the platform.
"Do I need to come back there and help, little man?" came another voice in Kazuki's headset.
With one final grunt, Kazuki pushed the wrench through another quarter-turn, finding that it would go no more and there was no exposed threading left on the gasket. He dropped the wrench on the ground, shaking his hands in the air to warm them and hopefully alleviate some of the soreness from pushing so hard. "I'm good, Lance. I got it! Go for green!"
"That's what I like to hear! Good work, Kaz! Get your ass up topside and grab you some hot coffee or something." Masa began flipping up the safety caps over his pyrotechnic control board's buttons and switches. He glanced down at the stage, where Ranko stood shivering in Crash's coat and bantering with the crowd. Don't worry, Ranko. We're gonna get you warmed up right quick, girl. Masa's bringing the heat for you right now.
He reached to his side, where another small panel awaited, and began uncovering its switches as well. He nodded to Ariel, who toggled the switch patching the crew audio into the performers' earpieces again. "Okay, Ranko. We're go for launch. Sorry 'bout that. Light 'em up, girl!"
About fucking time, guys, Ranko thought, smiling to the crowd and returning to her scripted dialogue. "Ya know… the thing about me and my baby is… yeah. We're great together. Couldn't ask for better. It wasn't always that way, though. Hell, there was a time when we barely could talk to each other. Sometimes, fate just needs a little… nudge." She held up her pinched fingers to indicate a small amount.
"Alright, Nori. We're back in business. Gimme my smoke." Ariel sat up in his seat, stretching his arms skyward with a quiet groan. Man, Masa was right. I gotta start bringing my own chair to shows. These things suck.
Ranko grinned broadly as the crowd roared in response to her. "Oh! Ohhhhh! I see how it is!" She hesitated for a moment, letting the anticipation build in the audience. "You guys… know what's coming! Don't you, Firebirds?!" Laughing as the crowd thundered its reply, she strode to the back left corner of the stage, pulling Crash's jacket off of her shoulders and tossing it back to the guitarist with a mouthed thanks. The shivering songstress waved - only slightly jealously - to Emi as she and Hitomi emerged from backstage in their iridescent purple dresses and black leggings.
The vocalist completed a circuit along the back third of the stage, making eye contact with each of her bandmates in a silent soundoff to ensure that everyone was ready to continue the show. She received nods from each in turn, and Shinji lifted his saxophone up a few centimeters in salute.
"Alright, Seoul! You want it? You got it! Halftime's over! Let's make some magic!"
The stage began to fill with a thin, lingering mist that glowed faintly with the white canister lights pointed down from the trusses, courtesy of Norio's fog machines. Jacob's keyboard broke its silence first with a fast, upbeat melody. It was still singing in its electronic emulation of a piano from Ranko's rendition of You're My Song.
Shit… that was the last thing I needed! The freaking mist machines. Now I'm cold, and wet, too! Fuck! Fuckfuckfuck. Gotta move. Gotta move. Let's go, blood flow. Ranko started hopping on the balls of her feet as Shinji's saxophone joined the rhythm. The video screen behind the band remained dark.
Utaru walked across the front edge of the stage, again wearing a dapper gray pinstriped suit and matching skinny tie. Hitomi clung to his arm, miming an unheard conversation. The pair appeared to be having the time of their lives, as if they were on a date that was going very well.
Ranko gazed at the pair, a forlorn expression in her eyes, from across the stage. "Whoa-oh-oh, oh, whoa-oh-oo-oh!" she vocalized in an almost hauntingly empty tone.
"Whoa-oh-oh, oh, whoa-oh-oo-oh!" came the reply from Emi, her audio having been run through Ariel's processing equipment to give it a distant, echoing quality, as if the spirits of the nether realm were echoing Ranko's call from across the great beyond.
Cupping her hands over her mouth in a pantomimed sob, Ranko began to sing.
"I could never find the right words to say. Every day, I would pray, as I watched you walk away."
She turned her back on the couple, who continued laughing as they joined hands and danced together with the music as if they were at a swing club of the 1930's.
"Wanted to tell you the way I feel," Ranko sang as she took a few slow, dejected steps away from the dancers. "Here's the deal: dreamin' we'll be together soon, for real." Emi joined in for the second line of the pair, resting a comforting hand on Ranko's back as they harmonized.
The redhead turned her head to glance over her shoulder at the reveling pair, an absolutely heartbroken expression on her face. As she watched in pantomimed horror, Hitomi leaned forward, falling into Utaru's arms as the pair entered a long stage kiss.
"Saw her sneak up on you from behind. And, it kinda blew my mind, seein' your lips intertwined."
Each of the quartets of rhymes were delivered in under four seconds, a repetitive bounce to the rhythm despite the sorrow with which the words were sung. Ranko hung her head, staring down at her empty hands in forlorn misery.
"That's when I knew we could never be. Finally, I could see that'cha didn't care for me."
"Whoa-oh-oh, oh, whoa-oh-oo-oh!" punctuated Emi in a mournful, ghostlike vocalization.
The video board began to glow. It opened on the view of a back street of a smaller Japanese town, the camera jostling left and right as its operator sprinted forward down the sidewalk. Ranko ran just ahead of the camera in the video, wearing a black high school uniform with white trim around the collar and a matching tie.
"I ran when I couldn't watch anymore. Wasn't sure quite what for; I just picked a random door."
The Ranko on the video screen crashed through an opaque, heavy wooden door, and the camera entered the cavernous store behind her. It was two stories tall, with all of the second floor except its edges open to the first below. All four walls on both floors were crammed tight with books of every description, most appearing to be at least fifty years old. On the ground floor, more shelves were haphazardly arrayed this way and that, leaving aisles between them barely wide enough for Ranko to pass without shimmying down them sideways. Dust particles, picked up by the light mounted on the front of Mei's camera, sparkled as they lazily drifted through the air.
Emi hurried to the back of the stage, collecting a small item Jacob had concealed near his keyboard.
"I found a shop full of all these antique books. Just a look's all it took; found myself completely hooked."
The girl on the video screen made her way to a disorganized bookshelf, all full of leather-bound books. None bore any labels on their spines. She picked up a small black volume, opening it and beginning to thumb through it. The camera's angle could not pick up what was written on the pages. As she read, the desperate sadness in her eyes began to fade, as if the key to all of her problems had been written in the book's musty old pages just for her.
"I found a leather book bound all in black, in a stack, in the back, on the metaphysics rack." As Ranko sang, Emi handed her the object she had retrieved from the shadows, and Ranko opened the same book she had cracked in the video at almost exactly the same moment. She grinned widely as her eyes scanned its pages, the despair in her voice giving way to excited, exuberant hope in time for the next line.
"And I found instructions for brewing a potion for filling the subject with total DE-VO-TIOOOOOOOOON!"
Masa sat up in his chair, reaching for his control board. Okay, Kaz, here's hoping you got that thing tight enough.
"And now, I got that witch-cra-aaaaaaaft…" Ranko slammed the book shut hard. At the same instant, the center jet of flame ignited, burning in a sickly green thanks to the boric acid mixed into the fuel supplies Norio and Kazuki had changed. As the quick burst of flame extinguished, the two jets to its left and right ignited, and on the wave went until it reached the jets mounted to the far edges of the stage. The canister lights switched to green as well, painting the whole of the stage in a lime-colored murk.
Ranko began to sway on the stage, as if she had just now noticed there was music playing behind her. Her victorious little dance caught Emi's notice, and the blonde joined her in the choreography. For her part, the redhead raised her hands over her head, holding the black book aloft as she celebrated her 'discovery'.
The version of her on the video screen was gone, but the background of the musty old store remained. It had taken Nabiki days of research to find the eclectic bookseller in a suburb of Sendai, and another week of phone calls to convince its owner to let them film the video segment in his normally quiet shop.
"... and I'm fin'lly gettin' through to you, through to you, with the voodoo that I brew!"
Emi and Utaru stopped their dancing, turning to stare at Ranko as if they were witnessing a train wreck.
"Witch-cra-aaaaaaft!" Ranko stomped her foot hard to the left, and as she did, another cascade of green fire erupted from the center jet and spread to the edges of the stage. She turned to Utaru, curling her finger toward herself in a "come here" gesture. The young man shambled toward her, a blank, mystified expression on his face. Hitomi, for her part, play-acted the jilted girlfriend, glaring at Ranko in jealous rage with her fists hands on her hips.
"And, I'm decidin' what to do with you, do with you, since my love is new to you."
Ranko reached out and wrapped her arms around Utaru's neck, still clutching the little black book behind his head, and he whirled her into a couples swing dance at a furious pace. He all but held her weight in his arms so he could manipulate her, freeing her lung capacity up to continue singing.
"Ya never would'a messed with me before I found the recipe…" Ranko sang as he dipped her low over his left arm, her hair dangling far enough to touch the stage. Each note was a bit lower than the last, giving the chorus the subtle effect of dragging the listener down with it into the pits of hell. Utaru lifted her back to an upright position, and she released his neck, giving his nose a gentle poke with her empty hand. "... but now, I've got you under my spe-ell…"
Utaru spun her around himself, releasing her at the height of his momentum. Ranko sprung upward as he let go, twirling in the air twice in a move she had done a thousand times as captain of the Yusue Technical High School cheerleading squad. She landed facing him, holding up the pentacle-inscribed book and waving it at him almost threateningly.
"And so, I'll change around your destiny and make you wind up next to me!"
Ranko tossed the book over her shoulder nonchalantly. Emi caught it, scurrying to the back of the stage to return it to the shelf under Jacob's Yamaha synthesizer.
"Together, we'll be hotter than hell!"
Another cascade of green flame exploded from the center of the stage's edge and spread to its sides.
Somewhat obscured by the thin mist hanging in the air, Kazuki rushed forward, wheeling a large cauldron toward the center of the stage. He carefully scanned the stage floor through the murk until he spotted a cross made with fluorescent orange tape. From there, it was a quick search to find three others less than a half-meter away, forming the corners of a square. Kaz positioned the four wheels supporting the cauldron directly on its four delineated marks, pushing the aluminum lever down to lock the caster wheels in place. The crowd, however, was focused on Ranko and Utaru dancing a lively jive in time with Shinji's saxophone at the front of the stage and paid the roadie's actions little mind.
"It's locked," Kaz said into his headset once he was again safely concealed by the curtains. "I'm clear."
Ariel reached to his left, flicking a series of switches in sequence. "Heard. Opening the panels." With each toggle he flipped, a pneumatic servo pulled open another of the protective covers that prevented Ranko and the other dancers from stepping into the pyrotechnic emitters that formed the outline of a heart embedded into the stage floor. "Done! And, popping the trap."
With a final punch of his finger, a larger panel in the stage floor, this one directly beneath the cauldron, swung out of place. It hung by its hinges in the hole, where Norio was waiting. He reached up through the hole into the cauldron, grabbing a thin chain that ran loosely through a set of eye hooks secured to the inner surface of the hollow vessel. "Ready!" he announced into his headset, stepping to the side to offer a clear path from the hole in the stage to the ground below.
In the control booth, Ariel jabbed at another button with his finger. "Heard!"
Zoe glanced up at the control booth. Just beneath it, a bright red light blinked out, and a green one took its place. The other three instrumentalists noticed it, too. It silently alerted them that the stagehands' work was done, and they did not need to perform another repetition of the fourteen-second instrumental loop of music that made up the bridge. When they neared the end of it, Crash pinched the D string of his guitar with his picking thumb to make a loud rock squeal, cueing the dancers who were spinning too quickly to notice the visual signal to break out of their own loops and resume the normal choreography. When they did, Utaru released Ranko from his arms, and she spun around twice as she separated from him.
Sanyo emerged from behind the curtain in a matching suit to Utaru's, jogging up behind Hitomi on the right side of the stage.
"Just like that…" Ranko sang, punctuating her words with a snap of her fingers. "... you belong to me!" She strode forward, resting her hand on Utaru's chest and pushing him toward the newly-installed cauldron at center stage. With each step, she popped her hips side to side, swishing her white sparkly A-line dress around her thighs in the fog.
"Utterly, endlessly, hopelessly in ecstasy," Hitomi sang in tandem with Ranko as Sanyo began pulling her into an energetic jive of their own.
"And now, you're right beside me everywhere I go! Every show. Rain or snow. Not like you can tell me no!"
Ranko linked arms with Utaru, and practically skipped across the stage moving right to left with him. As she passed through Emi's dagger-filled glare of jealous rage, she made a mocking point at her blonde friend.
"Now, it's your old girl who's constantly missin' you. She's the one crying, and I'm the one kissing youuuuuu…"
Ranko giggled audibly into her microphone as Utaru dipped her in her arms, bringing his face mere centimeters from hers. With his back to the crowd, it appeared as if he was kissing Ranko, but he did not do so. This was both because he did not want to impede her singing, and because he greatly preferred not having a broken nose.
Utaru lifted her back into a standing position, taking her hand, and the pair ran up to the cauldron. He quickly placed his hands on her hips, lifting her overhead until her feet touched the clear plexiglass covering the hollow and the hole down into the floor of the stage.
The video screen behind Ranko cross-faded into a sea of green flame, stopping when both images were superimposed atop each other. The result gave the appearance that the sleepy little bookstore in Sendai had been set aflame by the power of Ranko's dark magic.
Hitomi and Emi both joined Sanyo, and he danced with the pair of them at the front center of the stage, alternating partners every few steps. They were positioned well clear of the cauldron and the unsheathed array of cannons surrounding it.
"And now, I got that witch-cra-aaaaaaaaaaft!" Ranko sang at the top of her lungs. She stomped forward with her right foot, bringing it down hard on the plexiglass. A few milliseconds after, all of the flamethrowers on the stage - both those at the stage's edge and those surrounding the cauldron - belched a volley of chartreuse flame three meters into the December night sky.
"And I'm fin'lly gettin' through to you! Through to you, with the voodoo that I brew!"
She raised her foot for another stomp, thrashing her hips to the side sassily and throwing her arms out to her sides, conducting the flames as if they were an orchestra. A few meters away, safely clear of the heart-shaped wreath of fire, Utaru looked on, spellbound.
"Witch-cra-aaaaaaaft!" she belted again. "And I'm decidin' what to do with you! Do with you! At least a date or two with you!"
Hitomi and Emi each latched onto one of Sanyo's arms, as if they were playing tug-of-war to determine which of them would take him home. "You never would'a messed with me," Hitomi sang, and Sanyo turned to face her as her voice descended down the octave.
"Before I found the recipe," Emi continued, drawing Sanyo's attention away from her girlfriend.
"But now, I've got you under my spe-eell!" Ranko concluded, clawing her hand in front of her face as if she held Utaru's still-beating heart in her grasp.
The redhead punched skyward with her right arm, stomping down again as if the very force of her foot striking the cauldron was igniting the flames rising around her and her friends. "But now I've got the recipe to make you wind up next to me! Together, babe, we're hotter than hell!"
Ranko whirled on her heels atop the cauldron, smirking victoriously to the crowd as she stroked her chin thoughtfully. "Whad'da we got, Firebirds? Sing it with me!" She scooped her hands down to her knees, raising them to the sky. As she did, the jets of fire at the front edge of the stage slowly rose in parallel, as if she was summoning their wrath from the bowels of hell itself by her mere will.
"Yeah, I got that witch-cra-aaaaaaaaaaft!" Ranko belted, supported by nearly nine thousand Firebirds. "And I've fin'lly gotten through to you, through to you, with the voodoo that I brew!" As with every previous repetition of the song's title, she stomped her right foot forward, commanding the ring of flame surrounding the cauldron to ignite anew.
The decade-old baseball stadium rumbled with another call of "WITCH-CRA-AAAAAAAFT!" from nearly eleven thousand voices at once, led by the mercurial redhead holding court at center stage. When the word ended, all of the jets of green flame snuffed out at once.
"And I've decided what to do with you! Do with you! I'll spend my whole life through with you!"
Ariel reached for his board as well, his fingers extended a centimeter above a red plastic button that had begun to glow when Kazuki connected the cable connected to the cauldron. "Ready!"
"You never would'a messed with me before I found the recipe, but now, I've got you under my spell!" All three of the women sang the line together, punctuated by another blast of flame from the center ring of jets at the word spell. The word lingered in the air for a few moments after Ranko finished singing it, on thousands of other voices.
Masa reached to his right, uncapping a new series of switches. "Ready!" He hovered his hands over the controls, splaying his fingers so he could toggle eight switches simultaneously.
"And so, I changed around your destiny, and made you wind up next to me!" Ranko sang, throwing her head back in preparation for the longest and most prolonged belt of the entire Wildfire Tour.
"To-ge-ther! We'll be ho-o-o-tte-e-e-r! Than! HE-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-E-ELL!" Ranko bellowed the word hell in a four-octave slide lasting more than two seconds, starting in the fifth octave and cratering her pitch until it was in the mid-second. She held her right fist skyward with a revelry that could easily have led someone to believe she actually did hold in it the power over life, and love, itself.
"Three," Ariel announced with a nod to Masa.
Ranko's backup singers sang over her vocal eruption, offering a summarized version of the chorus: "But now, I've got the recipe to make you wind up next to me…"
"Two," the young technician in the booth intoned. This was Masa's cue to flick his own bank of switches, as the devices he commanded took a few seconds to execute their mission.
"Together, we'll be hotter than hell." Ranko sang in almost a speaking voice, cocking her head to the side with a little smirk. She cast her right hand downward toward her feet, as if hurling whatever had been concealed in her hand - the final ingredient to activate her dark concoction - into the brew as hard as she could possibly throw it.
Each of the jets ignited to their maximum output, wreathing the performers in a lime-green inferno. The green canister lights went out, and green- and white-colored strobes alternated in their place, making the mist surrounding the cauldron come alive with flashing light as if the denizens of hell were breaking through the floor of the stage to answer their mistress' command.
"Hit it, Nori!"
At Ariel's command, Norio yanked hard on the thin length of chain dangling from the interior of the cauldron, and the latch holding the two halves of the plexiglass panel under Ranko's feet disengaged. They collapsed inward, and the redhead disappeared into the basin, falling through it, then through the hole in the stage floor below, and into Norio's waiting arms on the ground beneath the stage platform.
The sound it made was masked by the delayed sonic booms of green-tinged fireworks erupting all around the rim of the stadium's upper deck.