"Take it in, princess. Last time for a while." Akane rubbed Ranko's back through her blood-red leather jacket as the singer checked herself over one last time in the dressing room mirror.
Ranko nodded, swallowing hard as she made eye contact with herself in the mirror. "I'm not too worried about that. I mean, my dressing room at the new club is almost this intense. Just… this is big. People gave up their Christmas to be here. And… the freaking Tokyo Dome?! I don't even want to think of how many people are out there…"
"Forty-five thousand, two hundred and sixty-eight," came an announcement in a low rumbling voice from one of the couches in the back half of the room. "Not counting the stadium staff, the press, or anybody else who didn't need a ticket."
Ranko whirled on her heel, stomping her foot. "Dammit, Shin! I just said I didn't want to think about how many!"
Shinji shrugged, going back to idly strumming on his backup bass. "Were you planning on going on stage blindfolded? Otherwise, I don't know how we would have kept it from you for another…" He glanced up at the digital countdown clock over the door. "... half an hour or so. This is the big leagues. Time to sack up, girl."
Oh, Shin, if you think I'd even have considered doing this shit when I still had a sack… Ranko sighed. "Yeah, yeah. I know."
"Would you stop fussing with that?" Hitomi reached around her girlfriend's torso, grasping for her mascara brush. "You look great! Leave it alone!"
"You don't understand, 'Tomi." Emi sighed, throwing the brush down on the illuminated vanity. "My mom is out there tonight! I've gotta be…"
"Ems, your mom is half-blind. I think they made her last pair of glasses out of leftover parts from an ISAS telescope! You could go out there wearing eye black like a rugby player and she'd have no fucking idea! Relax." Hitomi wrapped her arms around Emi's forearm. "Seriously, you look perfect, babe."
Zoe chuckled, latching the buckle of a spiked pink dog collar behind their neck. "I'd be more worried she'd 'ave a sook seein' ya swing on a pole like a peeler, mate."
Three raps on the door drew the attention of the bandmates. Without waiting for acknowledgement, Norio entered the dressing room, an array of wireless headsets draped down the length of his arm. He handed one to Shinji on the couch by the door with his free hand, reaching into the plastic bag dangling from his wrist for a battery pack to accompany it. "How we doing, Dragons? Ready to do this thing one last time?"
"As we're gonna be," Ranko muttered, exhaling heavily through her teeth. "Is it as crazy as I think it is out there?"
Norio waved her words off, handing her a headset. "No way. It's crazier. Not an empty seat in the joint except the ones they covered behind the stage. The Emperor himself is here tonight."
"HE…. WHAT?!"
Norio laughed, shaking his head at Ranko's outburst. "Hey! Chill! I'm just fucking with you. I think, anyway!" He grinned disarmingly at the redhead. Man, I'm gonna miss working with this crew after tonight. It's been hard, but it's been fun, he mused. "Before you ask, I checked on your family for you. They were able to move them over a few seats to accommodate your grandfather's wheelchair, no problem."
Ranko smiled softly, nodding her thanks to her roadie. However nervous I am, I just gotta remember that. Mom, Dad, my sisters, Grandfather Ito, and most of my friends are here. I can do anything with them here to support me. She bent down, planting a kiss on the back of the hand that held hers. You most of all, Akane.
"I, um… I should probably let you know," Norio said nervously as he handed Jacob and Crash their headsets. "Kondo is here. Front row on your right."
Ranko chuckled darkly. "Of course he is. I don't know how he's not too hung over to get out of bed." If Crash and Ukyo hadn't shown up when they did last night, he'd probably still be in the emergency room, she added mentally. "Guess I'm gonna have to shake my ass a little harder on that side of the stage, so he knows exactly what he ain't getting, huh?"
"Just be careful," Crash coached, a look of regret on his face. "I know you're pissed at him, and you have every right to be after that stunt he pulled last night. But, try to put him out of your mind. Don't make eye contact with him. It'll just fuck with your head."
Ranko nodded. "Good idea. And I won't be able to lock-stare at Akane, because she'll be behind me."
"Always, princess," Akane cooed supportively. "Always."
"Heeeey!" Ranko's cheeks flushed crimson. "I didn't mean it like…"
Akane reached out, flicking at the silver heart dangling from Ranko's black lace choker. "I know. But I did."
Still blushing, Ranko squeezed Akane's hand tighter for a moment to wordlessly indicate she needed her hand to be released. Once it was, Ranko made her way to the middle of the room. "Hey, everybody?" she asked, waiting quietly until she had everyone's attention. Norio finished his headset distribution by providing Hitomi and Emi theirs before turning to face her as well.
"Before we go out there, I just wanna say…" Ranko gulped down another bundle of nerves. "... thank you. What we're gonna do tonight, and what we've been doing these last… hell, few years now? I couldn't ever have imagined it. They're gonna chant my name out there in a few minutes, but I just… I couldn't have gotten here without every single one of you doing exactly what you do. There is no Ranko without the Dapper Dragons. And I just…"
Crash nodded, stepping forward and putting his arm around his friend's shoulders. "We know. We love you too. Merry Christmas, Ran-chan. And, hey! We did it, girl! World tour, done! In a few more hours, anyway!"
Ranko nodded, a wide smile spreading across her lips. "Damn right we did! Merry Chr-"
She was interrupted by another hard rap at the door. "Come in?" Ranko called out.
The door swung open, and the imposing figure of Lance Riker, clad in a sleek black turtleneck and black slacks, stepped into the room. "Hey. Sorry to interrupt you guys. There's… somebody out here to see you. He has an expired hard pass. Did you want to…?"
Crash nodded. "Send him in please, Lance. We've got a few minutes."
"You got it." Lance stepped back out through the door he had closed behind him, conversing briefly in the hallway with the unscheduled visitor.
There was a cloud of worry forming in Ranko's eyes, but it vanished immediately once she recognized the young man who entered the dressing room. "Ryo! Hey, buddy! Merry Christmas!"
She rushed forward to hug him, but the young man did not lift his arms to return the gesture. Rather, he just fell forward into her embrace.
It took the redhead a moment to process that something was amiss. When she did, she stepped back, looking her friend over. "Hey! What's going on, man?"
"I'm… I'm sorry." Ryo said, not lifting his head to make eye contact with the young singer. His voice was quiet and empty, and it quavered slightly as he spoke. "I know you're gonna go on in a few minutes, and I just… I shouldn't have come. I'm really sorry, guys. I just… I didn't have anywhere else to go. There… there was nobody else who…"
A pregnant silence fell over the once-boisterous dressing room. Crash stepped forward first, swallowing hard. He did not suspect he wanted the answer, but someone had to ask the question.
"... Ken?"
Ryo said nothing, but his face broke into a heavy sob. It was all he could do to nod.
"... No..." Hitomi's lips moved, but they made no sound. Her legs buckled. She collapsed back into her makeup chair as if she had been shot by a cannon, covering her mouth with her hands.
Shinji bit his lip hard, his whole body stiffening as he fought to maintain his composure. He nodded in acknowledgement, his voice soft and low. "When?"
Ryo sniffled, trying to claw back his tears enough to speak. "This m-morning. I called the hospital to wish him a m-merry Christmas, and…"
"GOD DAMN IT!" Jacob screamed at the top of his lungs, striking the dressing room wall with his fist and leaving a massive cavitation in the periwinkle-painted drywall. Zoe laid a comforting hand on his shoulder, hoping to defuse their partner before he did further damage to the stadium, or to his hands.
The door to the dressing room burst open again, but Ranko raised her hand to halt her friend's urgent approach. "We're okay, Lance." Physically, at least. "Just don't let anybody else in for a minute, okay?"
Utaru reached out, grasping Sanyo on the shoulder from behind to get his attention. "We should… give them a minute," he whispered. Like Sanyo, Utaru was not officially part of the band, and at that moment, he felt as if he were intruding on family business. Sanyo nodded his assent, and the pair exited behind Lance, closing the door behind them.
Zoe swallowed hard. Unlike their bandmates, Zoe barely knew the person they had replaced behind the Dapper Dragons' drum set, and so a part of them felt as if it fell to them to serve as the voice of reality.
"Um, mates? I hate t'be the one to say it, but…" Zoe gestured up to the digital clock on the wall. "... what are we gonna do about the show?"
Jacob shook his head, whirling angrily to face his partner. "Do you really think any of us give a FUCK about the SHOW right now, Zo?!"
Lowering her eyes to the floor, Ranko sighed heavily. "Zo's right. We have to talk about it."
Crash looked Ryo over, having thrown his arm over him to support the grieving young man. "I think we have to cancel. We can't perform like this. Not after…"
"That's not what Ken would want!" Emi insisted. "Remember in Australia, how sick he was, and he still wanted us to go on?"
"This is different!" Jacob yelled, tearing at his green fauxhawk with his hands. "How the fuck are we supposed to go out there and sing and dance and play and wish those people out there a happy fuckin' Christmas when… when our friend is…" He couldn't bring himself to finish his sentence, and it faded into a sound somewhere between anguished wail and a berserker's cry of rage.
"Guys, don't get me wrong. I'm heartbroken too," Shinji added, wiping his damp eyes on his sleeve. "You know I am. Ken was…" He let out a low growl, as if trying to convert his sadness into anger so that he could compartmentalize it differently. "He was my fuckin' brother,man! I loved that little shit like you wouldn't believe!But… they're already in their seats out there! Forty-five thousand of them! On Christmas!" Shinji argued, gesturing wildly in the general direction from which the sound of anticipatory cheering was already coming after slumping back onto the dressing room sofa. "And besides, Yokai lost their shit when we canceled in Sydney!"
Akane clung supportively to Ranko's left forearm. Ranko's wife had said nothing, as the decision was not hers to make, but she wanted Ranko to know that she was - as she had just promised moments before - behind her.
Hitomi approached Ranko, resting her hand gently on her friend's right shoulder. "You guys… look." She swallowed hard, panning the room with her eyes to make sincere eye contact with each of her bandmates in turn. She reached up, brushing a fresh batch of mascara-tinted tears from her cheek. "I know how hard this is for all of us. Gods,I do. All I wanna do right now is curl up in a ball and cry all night."
Ranko nodded in agreement, sniffling back tears of her own.
"But," Hitomi continued, stepping forward and turning to face the band's lead vocalist. "Ems and I can cry during the songs we're not on stage for. Crash and Jake and Shin can cry in the dark while they play, even if you guys have to go through the motions a little bit. Ranko,though…"Hitomi sighed heavily. "She has to put her emotions on her sleeve for the whole show, with no breaks, front and center. She's the focus of attention, and the one it's gonna be hardest on out of all of us if we do this. If you ask me, it's her call. If she says we cancel, we have Nori go get Nabiki out of the crowd. We tell her what happened, and let her work it out with Yokai somehow."
"Bloody right!" Jacob yelled. "Wecan't…"
The brunette offered a supportive nod as Ranko's eyes widened. She sensed a panic in her friend's expression, as if she feared making the decision on behalf of her bandmates. Interrupting the band's keyboardist, she continued.
"But, if she says we go, then we take a few minutes to get our heads on straight, we fix our makeup, and we strap the fuck in. We go out there on that stage, and we blow the fucking roof off of this building tonight! We put on a show like we NEVER have before!" She sniffled again, wiping her dripping nose on her wrist. "For Ken," she added in barely a whimper, her voice breaking with her tears as the resolve drained from her tone at the thought of her lost friend. Emi hugged her from behind, and Hitomi turned in her arms to cry on her shoulder again.
Ranko stepped forward solemnly. One by one, she looked up at her bandmates, receiving nods of assent from each in turn that the decision was hers alone to make.
"It's okay to take a minute to think," Akane whispered behind her partner. "The crowd will wait."
The redhead took two more steps forward, clasping Ryo on both of his shoulders with her hands. The grieving young man, who clearly had not expected to be engaged again, snapped his eyes up to her in shock at the sudden physical contact.
"Ryo, you knew him better than any of us. You loved him more than…" Ranko shook her head hard, as if trying to eject a series of intrusive thoughts from her brain through her ears. "What do I do?"
Ryo nodded his head sternly, seeming to will himself to discover an as-yet-hidden reservoir of strength so that he could rejoin the conversation. "For tonight? I don't know. Whatever you guys need. I know… I know he loved you all, too. He told me all the time. He wouldn't want things to be hard for you. I just… I have one request, whenever you do decide to go back out there."
Ranko nodded softly, biting her lip. Her voice was soft and quiet, and she did her best to smile for him. "Anything, Ryo. Anything at all."
Ryo lifted his arm, gesturing to the wall behind Ranko. Beyond it, the roar of the crowd continued to build, coalescing here and there into a chant of the songstress' chosen name.
"Don't… don't let them forget about him?" The dam broke again, and Ryo fell forward, burying his face in the shoulder of Ranko's red leather jacket. Racked with sobs, he could only manage one more word. "P… please?"
Ranko held him for a few seconds, patting him on the back. She then released his shoulders and took two big steps backward. While her cheeks were still streaked with black rivers of tears, the eyes that had produced them had become a wall of blue ice.
Akane knew the look in her partner's eyes all too well. That's her war face, she thought as Ranko bent forward at the waist. She's made up her mind.
"Ryo, on my honor…"Ranko said, bowing as low as she could given her restrictive costume and the wires running down her back from her headset.
"... the world will never forget the name Ken Hirata."
She sniffled loudly. With both of her arms rigid at her sides in the formal bow, she had no choice but to let her tears drip freely to the floor.
"Never. I swear it."
She rose from her bow after a long moment, glancing up again at the red digital clock flashing over the dressing room door. It read 19:28. Ranko reached down to the waistband of her leather pants, flicking the switch to power on her headset. "Ariel?" she intoned quietly, trying to regulate her breathing to keep her crying under control. "Can you come down to the dressing room for a minute, please?"
"Ha, ha," the band's lead technician replied sardonically in her earpiece. "A little last-show humor, huh? We're on in two minutes, dummy!"
Ranko's gaze turned to Akane. For a brief moment, the glacial resolve in her eyes thawed, and what Akane saw beneath it was a mixture of yawning emptiness, desperate sadness, and sheer terror. Akane gave her a sharp nod, reaching down wordlessly and taking her wife's hand. I'm here, Ranko. I love you, and I'm here for you, Akane thought, willing the message to pass through her eyes and directly into her lover's heart. Always. No matter what.
"Just get down here," Ranko said quietly, seeming to draw the strength to speak out of her partner's loving eyes in real time. "You'd better bring Kaz, too." Ranko sighed at the thought of having to break the news to the final original member of the Dapper Dragons.
"We're gonna start a few minutes late."