章 247: Storming the Castle
"YES, MISTRESS!"
Ranko gave an evil laugh as she strode the Phoenix stage heel-over-toe in her black leather pants and red leather boots. As strange as it was whenever she really thought about the use of that word to describe herself, she loved how into it the crowd got. It made her feel like the lyrics were true - that she really had possessed them and entranced them into loving her, and she supposed she had, albeit with music rather than magic.
"You can't help but dance! There's no time to rest! There's a siren on the mic that's makin' you possessed! There's nowhere to hide! Nowhere to go! No escapin' from the demon in your ra-a-di-o!"
The singer holding court on the Phoenix' stage grinned excitedly. They'd never tried out this new system live before, and she couldn't wait to see the crowd's reaction. She bent her elbows, holding her open, claw-formed hands up at eye level as she bowed her head and closed her eyes. A cold mist, tinged red by the stage lighting and punctuated with intermittent white flashes like lightning, surrounded her and her bandmates. The effect gave a demonic appearance to the band's lead singer, but more importantly, it obscured the black wires running to the ceiling trusses on each side of her. As she raised her arms with another dark laugh - Shinji had been helping her practice - Hitomi and Emi rose into the air from the stage on guide wires pulled backstage by Ariel and Kaito. They reached almost a meter off the stage platform, writhing in their matching red minidresses as if Ranko was choking the life out of them like something out of Star Wars.
She sang the final line of the song over the shocked roar of the crowd at the new effect.
"Now that I've got you, I ain't ever gonna let you go! No escaping from the DEMON in your ra-a-di-o!"She threw her hands outward to her sides, flaring out her fingers, and Ariel and Kaito both lowered her backup dancers to the stage as quickly as possible without hurting them. When they hit the platform, both girls crumpled to the floor, selling the performance until the room plunged into pitch darkness and Shinji's laughter rained down on the ecstatic, and inebriated, crowd.
When the lights came back up, Ranko was laying across the top of table three, on her side, her right leg crossed over her left with her foot on the table and her hand on her hip, staring into the eyes of a very shocked pair of young college boys whose pizza had yet to be delivered. "BOO!" The crowd laughed as the patrons jumped back and the singer slid to her feet, waving in no direction in particular as she made her way to the bar, where Mei had a glass of soda waiting for her. Meanwhile, continuing to sell the performance even after it ended, Crash and Shinji carried the limp forms of Hitomi and Emi off of the stage as if they truly had died.
"If you're gonna keep doing that, we'll have to hire some stage hands. I don't think Kaito can do this five nights a week."
Ranko nodded to Izumi. "I know, but the effect was so cool! Did it look as awesome from down here as it did up there? Wish Akane could'a been here to see it!"
Izzi grinned, sipping at her orange juice. "Yeah, not gonna lie, it was pretty rad."
In fact, Ranko's fiancee was back in their little shoebox apartment studying for an anatomy exam. Ranko had no idea how Akane could have so much trouble naming all of the bones, considering how many of them she'd broken on one perverted boy or another. But because her betrothed wasn't in the building, she was a little taken by surprise at the feel of a hand on her back. She looked up from her perch at the service bar, ready to either smile at Crash or flatten some drunken fan, to find not Akane, but her older sister.
"Ranko, good show tonight." Nabiki winked, tipping her Dragonfire cocktail in her future sister's direction. "You got a minute to talk?"
The songstress nodded, taking a soda glass that Mei had quickly refilled for her and following Nabiki through the blue saloon door to the back room. She expected to be taken upstairs to her old apartment, the de facto venue for private conversations in the Phoenix, but instead, she was led into Hana's ever-cluttered office.
"Okay, Nabiki, what's this about? Kinda freakin' me out a little bit."
Nabiki waved her hand dismissively, lifting her gray slacks slightly on her hips as she made herself comfortable on Hana's cracked leather couch. "Nothing to worry about. Just scored you a gig."
"Yeah?" Ranko hopped up onto the corner of Hana's desk with a grin, sitting with her ankles crossed despite having no concern about showing herself off in her black leather pants. "That radio commercial thing finally happening?"
Her sister and agent shook her head. "No, honey. Way better. Way better. It might be the biggest crowd you've ever performed for at once. But it's in just a few days. I heard they were looking for somebody with your… look, who could sing, and I gave them a call. Bitch and a half to negotiate, this one. These people's lawyers have lawyers."
Ranko glanced over the contract she was handed, which was easily thirty pages of tiny English print. Her eyes widened when she found the venue information. "You've gotta be shitting me."
Nabiki gave her a little tsk. "Gonna have to watch your language for this one. I'm afraid Not Yours, Don't Touch is a no-go, little sister."
"But… this is at their amusement park?!"
Nabiki grinned. "Yep. Outdoor amphitheater. Seats about five, six thousand people, not counting kids on laps, and they said they were gonna do temporary seating to expand it. They want you to do a photo shoot with them beforehand. Some sort of promo for a new movie they have coming out. They said you look kinda like the main character."
Ranko flipped to the next page of the contract with wide eyes. "Nabiki, did you see the date on this? June twelfth?"
Her agent nodded. "Yep. Akane's birthday. I know. That's why I got them to throw in a bunch of extra tickets. Figured you could take your bridesmaids, and it'd be the bridesmaid gift you girls have been stressing about, and it doesn't cost you anything. Make a day of it."
Ranko looked up from the paperwork with a flat expression. "And you're sure you're not just suggesting that because you're one of our bridesmaids?"
The girl in the gray slacks shook her head. "Honey, I could buy my own ticket anytime if I wanted to. This is about you."
Ranko frowned, setting the paperwork down. "I don't know, Nabiki. It sounds cool and all, but I don't know what Akane wants to do for her birthday, and it's just a couple weeks before the wedding. I honestly think Shinji might burst into flames walking through the front door of this joint. And while I'm sure they don't want to do nothin' gross, the idea of a photo shoot kinda creeps me out still after the whole Tashima thing."
With a shake of her head, Nabiki stood, closing the distance and turning to page fourteen, pointing to a fairly large number. "Look, kid sister. I'm gonna be real with you. Akane hasn't been saying anything while you've been in mama drama land, but you girls are flat broke. You're getting married in four weeks. You need the money, and this will expose you to a whole different crowd from the bar scene besides. Sign the fucking paper, and go have a good time, Ranko." She handed Ranko up a cheap black ballpoint pen.
"But, I haven't even read the whole thing!" Ranko groaned. So much pressure.
Nabiki shook her head. "I have. Twice. You'll be fine. Now, write your damn name, girl, so I can go start getting stuff ready."
Sighing, Ranko snatched the pen from Nabiki's hand. "I hope you know what you're doing, big sister."
Nabiki smirked, her amusement becoming more evident with each stroke of Ranko's pen. "Don't I always?"
~~~
"I don't know, Akane. I didn't even get to read half of it. Your sister shoved it into my hand, told me we needed the money, and I signed it. How come you didn't tell me how short we were?" She pulled her arms out of the red leather jacket she wore, tossing it onto the bed weakly.
Ranko yawned, sitting on the yellow duvet cover at the foot of her immaculately-made queen-sized bed while Akane read through the contract at their study desk with wide, red-tinged eyes. She hadn't slept properly in days; the classes to prepare her for chiropractic clinicals were positively grueling.
Apparently, Akane was excited by what she was reading, because she no longer looked half as exhausted as she should have for half past two in the morning. "I didn't want to stress you out. Between the wedding, school, the new songs and Nodoka, there's just no more room in your poor brain for more bullshit." Akane flipped to the next page. "Ranko, this is… we'll be able to finish the wedding budget with this!"
Ranko smiled, watching the stress lift off of her lover's shoulders in real time like steam from a sword pulled from the fire and quenched in water. "That's what Nabiki said. Hopefully now you can unclench your ass a little bit, and just enjoy marrying me."
Akane smirked. "Are you saying you don't like me having a tight ass?"
The singer chuckled exhaustedly. "Babe, there's nothin' about you I don't like. I hope it'll help, honestly. I don't like seein' you worry and not being able to help. The show's on your birthday, though. I'm sorry about that. Nabiki said she got them to throw in some extra tickets for our bridesmaids and stuff, for their present."
Ranko's fiancee nodded, rolling her eyes slightly. "That's cool and all, but, are there any of our sisters that really need a nudge to see you in concert? Okay, maybe Kasumi? Show tickets don't seem like a very good gift."
Ranko snorted. "Page eighteen, Akane."
Her betrothed flipped a few more pages, getting to the venue information. She looked up with wide, glistening eyes. "Tokyo freakin' Disneyland?! On my birthday?!"
The redhead nodded with a satisfied smile. Looks like she's cool with it after all. "I know. Fuckin' crazy, right? Like, have they even heard my music?"
Akane squealed with excitement, rocketing out of her wooden chair and closing the two steps to the bed, squeezing Ranko tight. "Oh, Ranko, this is amazing! Great for my birthday, great for money, great for the girls, and great for your career too! Nabiki's a friggin' genius!"
Smiling as she kissed the woman who was less than a month from being her wife, Ranko pulled back and took the document that hung limply in Akane's hand. Turning to page twenty-one, she pointed to a paragraph. "We won't get the whole day to ourselves, though. They want me to do some kind of a picture thing before the show. Some advertising thing for their new movie. It's kinda freaking me out, though. Like, what's this word?" She pointed to a seven-character English word near the bottom of the photo shoot section. "I don't know why they couldn't give us the contract in friggin' Japanese like normal people. Could they not afford a translator?"
Akane looked, and began laughing hysterically, covering her mouth in a vain attempt to stifle it.
Ranko's pupils widened with worry. "Akane! I'm serious! What does it mean?!"
With an incredibly devious grin on her face, Akane leaned down and kissed Ranko on the temple, staying close to her ear. She was going to enjoy this.
"Mermaid."
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