Man, thirty-some shows in, this still feels weird, Ranko thought as she adjusted herself in her seated position. It's part of the show. Don't think about their hands. She crossed her ankles, pressing her leather-wrapped thighs tightly together. She knew the boys meant nothing by it, but her position gave her a feeling of vulnerability that she just couldn't shake, especially in the near-pitch darkness of the blacked-out baseball stadium. Not even the light of the waning crescent moon hanging lazily over the open-air arena lent much aid, so she could only just barely make out the faint outlines of the two men holding her tightly against themselves.
"Okay, team. Sound off. Is everybody ready?"Ariel Wright's excited voice crackled in the earpiece mounted to the singer's left ear. "Audio, check!"
"Ready,"came Crash's voice in Ranko's ear.
The Dapper Dragons' bassist was next to reply. "Ready!"Shinji announced.
"Kaz and I are in position and all set,"said Norio Anzai from his position in the hollow catacombs the pair had constructed beneath the stage platform to manage the technical practical effects.
"I'm good,"came the spritely response from Hitomi Uyeno in Ranko's earpiece, followed by an echo of the sentiment from her girlfriend at the opposite end of the stage.
"Pyro's good,"proclaimed Masaki Tabata.
"Check,"came the Aussie twang from Jacob Trimble through the microphone mounted above his synthesizer keyboard.
His longtime partner replied next, in a Brisbane drawl, from behind their drum set. "Me, too."
"Heard, everybody. That just leaves you, Ran-chan. You guys set?"In the control booth, Ariel positioned his hands on the faders for the microphones, readying to raise their volume in the massive speakers surrounding the arena.
"Whaddya think, guys? We ready?" Ranko smiled down excitedly at the two men on whose shoulders she was seated. She received a nod of assent from Sanyo Arima on her left, and then Utaru Tsuchida on her right. Reaching behind herself and lifting the back of her jacket, she flicked the power switch on the battery pack clipped to the waistband of her blood-red leather pants.
"Let's do this, Dragons!"
A flicker of strobe lights began to wave from one side of the stage to the other, and a rumble began to build from the packed arena as the audience readied for the show. The video board behind the stage lit up, displaying a black background. With a light tinkling sound, a fuschia line began curving its way across the screen as if it were being drawn by an invisible hand holding a giant invisible marker. Over the course of three seconds, the unseen scribe spelled out Ranko's pink signature. Gold and silver sparkles rained down from the point where the tip of the pen would be touching the massive screen as it wrote. The heart at the end of her signature appeared all at once with a liquid plop sound.
"자리에 앉으세요. 곧 공연이 시작됩니다. 잠실 야구장과 Yokai Records 가 자랑스럽게 선보입니다… Ranko and the Dapper Dragons! 환영합니다!"
Ranko sat up bolt-straight at the sound of the public address announcer's voice booming through the darkened arena's massive speakers over the raucous audience. Putting the feel of the four strong hands on her hips and ass out of her mind, she beamed in the darkness. That's eleven. I couldn't get Pop to say my name, but I've heard people announcing it in eleven different languages: Japanese, English, Filipino, Indonesian, Malay, Khmer, Thai, Vietnamese, Cantonese, Mandarin, and Korean. Suck on that, old man.
Though the announcer spoke Korean, the more than twenty-four thousand revelers packing Seoul's Jamsil Baseball Stadium on that chilly Monday night in December needed no translation for their response.
"RAN-KO! RAN-KO! RAN-KO! RAN-KO!"
The video board went blank. For several seconds, the crowd waited in anticipation, the chant finally dying down. A few moments more, and the crowd began to show signs of unrest, as they had been promised the start of a show but it had not yet occurred.
It was precisely the reaction Ariel Wright was waiting for. "Okay, team. Kicking it off in three… two…one…"
A blaze of white strobe lights placed throughout the covered seats behind the stage blinked on. From both sides of the stage, banks of lights flashed for just the briefest of instants as they cascaded closer to the center. The lights in the stands eventually gave way to those on the stage, and when they reached the center, the video board lit up with a numeral 3 wreathed in flame positioned in the center of the black background.
Ranko's pre-recorded speaking voice played through the speakers.
"Tick."
The video screen lit up, displaying a black-and-white video recorded during the first leg of the Wildfire Tour. In it, Norio reached down from the ladder he stood on, catching the bundle of audio cable that Lance Riker, Ranko's new personal protector and former roadie, had tossed up to him.
Ranko's recorded speaking voice narrated the video, and while the words were not sung, there was a certain rhythm and meter to the delivery of them.
"Close my eyes. There's a rumble forming under my feet. Heart is pounding with the sound, try'na sync up with the beat."
The video scene changed, now showing Masaki meticulously checking the fuel connections of the pyrotechnic emitters being installed under the stage floor.
"In the darkness of the backstage," Ranko's recorded verse continued, "like a still and moonless night, half a second from igniting in a blaze of colored light."
The video showed a pair of women, employees of the Sydney Entertainment Center in Australia, unpacking a large pile of tee shirts from a plastic tote and beginning to array them on the tabletop that would soon become one of the merchandise sales counters in the wings of the famous concert hall.
"The lyrics haven't started on the set list's leadoff track, but my stomach's doing somersaults, sweat dripping down my back."
The video cut to another black-and-white scene, this one showing Ariel and original Dapper Dragon Kazuki Asai wiring up the mixing boards in the control room. The clip had replaced one of Ariel and Lance doing the same thing, as Ranko did not want the band's former keyboardist to feel left out of the hype reel once he had rejoined her entourage.
"A few more heartbeats now, and I'll be pure exhilaration. But all I have 'til then's a buzz of raw anticipation."
The screen went black. Again, the cascade of strobe lights ignited in the stands, pulsing inward toward the stage. The screen went black again, displaying a flaming numeral two.
"Tick." Ranko's voice repeated in an almost whisper.
The video returned to a black and white motion shot, the camera panning across a vanity counter in the dressing room of Aloha Stadium in Hawai'i. Hitomi and Emi sat next to each other, tittering as they applied their makeup.
Again, Ranko's metered voiceover played over the video of the band's preparations.
"Nervous glances from Hitomi as the band steps into view, and the countdown in my heart drops from a three down to a two."
The video board displayed tour backup dancers Utaru and Sanyo as the pair stretched their hamstrings, wearing skin-tight black shirts and matching pants. Both men, in the present, wore the same outfits under their leather armor as they stood backstage, supporting Ranko on their shoulders.
"But, instead of fire erupting from a rocket bound for space, it's a cold sweat try'na wash away the makeup from my face."
In the control room, Ariel cracked his knuckles loudly, leaning over his board. "Okay, boys, you in position?"
The several-meter-tall grayscale image of Noboyuki Matsuyama reached down to the stage floor, picking up a black length of cable and inserting the connector into the output port on the bottom of his electric guitar. A few meters away, the eternally black-clad Shinji Yokota plucked at the strings of his bass guitar to check its tuning.
"The boys in the control room check their knobs and flick their switches. The goosebumps on my skin are so pronounced, it almost itches," Ranko's hauntingly emotionless meter continued.
In another scene, this one on a stage in Brisbane, the Dapper Dragons' keyboardist laughed behind his instrument, throwing his arm over the drummer that was also his partner. Jacob held his head back, mindful not to poke Zoe in the eye with the spikes of his gel-hardened mohawk.
"Just waiting on the launch pad after days spent on the road," Ranko narrated. "Someone, please, push the button, 'fore this rocket ship explodes."
Norio tapped the button on the battery pack clipped to his waistband twice, ensuring his headset was again set to broadcast. "Clear for pyro."
The video screen went black, but the dim of the December night was pierced by another pulsing cascade of white strobe lights rushing from the wings to meet at center stage. The video board displayed a black background and a fiery number 1.
"Tick," Ranko's voice said again. There was a hard emphasis on the k sound, as if Ranko were trying to make her voice sound as severe and mechanical as a clock.
The display again changed to a black-and-white image, finally showing Ranko herself for the first time. She stood alone in a narrow concrete hallway, wearing a leather jacket and matching pants. The space was stark, as the service corridors of the Tokyo Budokan were not expected to be on public display when they had been designed. In fact, Ranko had traversed that particular hallway just a few months prior in the arms of her former rival Tatewaki Kuno. The wannabe samurai – and actual bumbling idiot – had carried her down it in search of medical attention after tearing the ligaments in her knee during a martial arts tournament.
The redhead in the video clip's eyes were closed, her head bowed. While her lips did not move, her voice spoke to the crowd regardless. "Announcer tries to quell the crowd -- or hype them; it's not clear. Emi tries to tell me something. Don't know what, 'cause I can't hear."
Ariel's headset crackled to life again, this time with the voice of Kazuki. "Clear for pyro!"
The Ranko on the video screen stood still as a rail as the narration continued. The one currently seated on the shoulders of two men backstage, however, squirmed in anticipation. It's never gonna stop feeling like this, Ranko thought as she listened to her own voice, muddled though it was from backstage. At least, I hope not.
"The frenzy building in the stands, ten thousand voices strong. I try to take it in, because it never lasts too long."
"Alright, team," Masa announced from his control booth into the earpieces of all twelve other members of the Dapper Dragons' entourage. "Going in three."
"And then, they start to organize, 'til everyone's the same; the language makes no difference when they're just chanting my name." The grayscale girl on the video screen shifted her weight ever so slightly on her feet, as if she were struggling to stand still due to a surplus of nervous energy.
Ariel punched a few buttons on his control board, leaning back in his chair. "Okay! Mics are hot, everybody. Have a great show. Give 'em hell, Ranko! Catch you on the flip side!"
The black-and-white Ranko on the video screen remained unmoving in the hallway, her head still bowed and her eyes still closed. The camera pushed in closer, but only slightly.
"The lights are on. The stage is set. The curtain's pulled away. The music starts. My heart ignites."
Ranko's narration paused for a moment. On the screen, Ranko looked up directly into the camera, opening her eyes. An excitedly mischievous smirk crossed her lips.
"Game on," the voiceover said, even though the girl on the screen's lips did not move. "It's time to play."
The strobe lights blazed to life again, this time cascading in the opposite direction, away from center stage to the left and right. When they finished their journey, all artificial light in the bowl of the stadium blinked out, save the emergency lighting on the stairways and a muted glow coming from the video display behind the stage, which projected an all-black background to minimize its light output.
Ranko's whispered voice pierced the darkness.
"Boom."