Ranko closed her eyes, crouching on her mark. She rested her hand on the stage floor, taking a deep breath and preparing herself for the suddenness of what she knew was coming.
Three.
Even with her headset mitigating it, the man-made earthquake of the capacity crowd roaring in appreciation of her first hit pounded in her ears. The sound was backed by the delayed sonic booms of the single volley of orange and red fireworks that erupted around the rim of the stadium in time with the final note of Rise.
Two.
A half-second earlier than she expected, the floor panel below her popped open on a hinge, and she fell downward beneath the bowels of the stage. Before her feet even hit the ground, she felt a strong pair of arms wrap around her in the dark, steadying her on her feet.
"Gotcha, girl," Sanyo said, releasing her as soon as he was confident she wouldn't topple over. He turned his back to her, reaching up to his ear and pressing his headset tight against his left eardrum in a vain effort to hear it over the twenty-some-thousand Firebirds roaring above him. Only a few small lamps, and the orange haze from the geysers of flame still belching from the stage floor that glinted off of Sanyo's forehead through the open square hole, illuminated the little space between the pyro emitters under the stage floor.
"I've got her," he announced into his wireless headset.
The microsecond her temporary bandmate's back was turned, Ranko set about her task with a frantic urgency. She yanked her headset from her head and shrugged off the crimson leather jacket she wore, letting both fall to the ground. The black sequined camisole she wore under it soon joined it on the grass beneath the stage. The sweat-soaked shirt had caused the white sports bra she wore underneath it to curl up on her back when it was peeled from her skin.
"Left bank, check!"Kazuki Asai's voice announced in the speaker strapped to Sanyo's right ear.
"You know," Sanyo mused as the starlet stripped behind him, "this would be a lot easier if you let somebody help you with the costume changes." He ducked as one of Ranko's sparkly black boots rocketed over his right shoulder, grateful she had grunted slightly when throwing it to warn him.
"Probably!" Ranko unclipped the battery pack from the waistband of her red leather pants, setting about unbuttoning them at the waist and wriggling out of them. "But then I'd need all of my backup dancers to be girls, and you wouldn't have a job." She stuffed the battery pack down the back of the white nylon compression shorts she wore under her pants, securing it to the elastic waistband just over her left hip with a spring-loaded clip.
"Right bank fuel change, done!" said Norio, crackling through the earpiece of Ranko's headset on the ground.
Sanyo chuckled, shaking his head at his short-sightedness. "Good point. I take it back. How's it coming back there?"
"Almost done!" Ranko said, throwing the Velcro brace she'd torn from her left knee to the ground. "Just need to… okay!"
By the time her handsome companion had turned back to face the harried vocalist, she'd finished slipping into a shimmering white A-line dress, and was still adjusting it over her sweat-slick frame. She leaned against one of the poles supporting the stage floor from below, sliding on the first of two heavy, unwieldy white platform heels. Fuck, I hate these things, but they sure look cool, she thought as she strapped it to the top of her left foot. While she worked, Sanyo reached over her from behind, plopping her headset back onto the crown of her head.
"Center bank, good!" Kazuki shouted through the earpiece just as it was re-affixed to the starlet's head.
"My hair okay?" Ranko asked as she started working on her right shoe.
"How we looking, team?"squawked Masa's voice in both of their headsets. "The girls are in position. Deck's on the way in."
Sanyo adjusted the boom of her microphone, assuring it sat at the appropriate angle against her cheek. "Fabulous as always. You ready?"
"Almost. Just a sec." Ranko reached for a plastic water bottle, unscrewing its cap and tossing it to the ground. She tilted the bottle back, gulping down half of its contents as quickly as she could. Despite it having not been refrigerated, it was so cold as to sting her throat as she swallowed. She set the half-empty bottle down on an empty crate, shooting Sanyo a nod of assent.
Sanyo reactivated his microphone with the flick of a switch on the pack clipped to his belt. "I'm putting her up now."
He bent down low, creating a basket with his interlaced fingers. "My lady?"
Ranko stepped into his conjoined palms, just as she'd done hundreds of times before in her various cheerleading practices and performances.
With a quiet grunt, Sanyo boosted her overhead until his palms were almost level with the stage floor. From there, Ranko took a step forward to transfer her weight back to the stage, leaving her right foot in Sanyo's hands.
Sanyo quickly peeled a piece of bright green masking tape from the bottom of her heel, keeping his hand cupped over it. He gave her foot a slight bounce to indicate to her that his work was completed, and Ranko stepped forward onto the stage floor. She kicked her left heel back, and he repeated the procedure with it.
I gotta be some kind of idiot, performing around this much open flame. Stupid fucking Cat's Tongue. Next time we do a tour, we're theming it on, like, cuddly bunnies or something. Fuck this Wildfire shit. Ranko sighed, trying to ignore the trickle of fresh sweat snaking its way down her back under her light satin dress. At least when I'm burning, I'm not freezing. I thought Hitomi was gonna shake out of her freakin' dress, she was shivering so bad.
As soon as both of Ranko's feet were firmly planted on the stage, Sanyo ducked down. "She's up! Close it! Close it!" At the command of a switch in the control booth, a pneumatic hiss squealed over his head, and the panel slid back into place to cover the square hole in the stage floor through which Ranko had fallen. Sanyo reached up, jiggling it lightly with his hand to ensure it did not move. "We're secure!"
"Okay, Dragons! We're going in three! Two!" Masa reached for his control board. To his left, Ariel pressed a series of buttons on his own board, and the video screen at the back of the stage, which still displayed the word RISE in a flaming block font, erupted into a full-screen sea of orange flame.
A few meters to stage left from the flaming heart that warmed her bones through the thin, shimmering multi-layered orange dress she wore, Hitomi sucked in a deep breath. She released it into her microphone in three words, more screamed than sung, that pierced the low murmur of the crowd.
"I! AM! FIRE!"
Ariel and Masa both reached for their control boards, the first note of Hitomi's voice having been their cue to do so. The jets of flame that made up the heart surrounding Ranko onstage puffed out.
Ranko strode forward in her sparkling white dress, heel-over-toe like any number of runway models her sister Izumi had fawned over, stealing only an occasional glance at her feet to ensure she wasn't about to step through one of the gaps in the stage floor that exposed the remaining jets. Not trying to blow my feet off in these fuckin' things, she thought. Having cleared the tricky section of the stage, she smiled wide, waving excitedly to the frenetic audience packing Jamsil Baseball Stadium. "You ready, Firebirds?! I don't think you are! Better take those jackets off! It's about to get awfully fuckin' HOT in here!"
A heavy, but fast, rock beat pierced the December air, and Crash Matsuyama stepped forward out of the shadows at the darkened back of the stage, bouncing on his toes with the beat and thrashing his head forward over his electric guitar. A hurricane of pink neon rained down on Zoe's drums.
"You're tantalized by my blue eyes beneath these perfect lashes. But then you realize this smokey eye's a shadow made of ashes. If you wanna get with me, boy, you'd better be quicker! The last boy who got close burned up before he saw the flicker!"
Ranko slid her hands down her torso to her hips, slowly and sensually. The intent was to rile up the crowd, but with the Full-Body Cat's Tongue having already ratcheted her hypersensitive nerves to their maximum between the crisp December air and the periodic blasts of flame, it was all she could do not to whimper into her microphone at her own touch through the thin satin dress. It was cute, and she loved performing in it, but it was a lot harder to do so in the final leg of the tour. Her spring and summer trips had not forced her to perform in outdoor venues in the cold, and it made her miss the warmth of the red leather outfit Sanyo was currently putting away beneath her feet.
"I leave 'em smoldering inside a flaming, molten crater. The inferno inside me is a heart incinerator! My body is the match and gas, your soul a box of tinder. I recommend that you haul ass, before you're turned to cinder! I am…"
A loud whoosh roared behind her as three jets of flame - those that had made up the front point of the heart that obscured her quick change a moment ago - blasted upward from the stage floor behind her.
"FIRE! I can't help but…"
A second belch of flame spewed forward from the three jets behind her. She took a half-step backward, closer to the jets. The sudden hot flash made her cheeks flush, but at least it was a half-heartbeat's worth of time in which she wasn't cold.
"BURN!"
Hitomi and Emi, both having changed into matching orange sequined dresses with cascading layers of skirts designed to evoke flames, reached down to the stage floor, just touching it with their fingertips. They leaned to the side, collapsing to the platform and rolling on the floor, executing the choreography they had been taught in primary school during any number of fire drills.
"I know you wanna play with me, but try, you're gonna learn! Throwin' off an orange glow and makin' people nervous. Spreading out of all control, engulfing every surface!"
Ranko lifted her right leg, kicking at the back of her left shoe with her toes. She repeated the gesture to the other side. Here we go, she thought as the fire imagery on the video board behind her went out, leaving instead a plain gray background that looked not unlike a piece of drywall.
She lifted her arms, crossing her wrists over her head, closing her eyes just as a flash of orange light bathed her face from the edge of the stage. It cast a silhouette thrice her height on the dimmed screen behind her.
"Hypnotizing…"
The stage-level lamp on stage left ignited to replace the one on stage right, projecting Ranko's silhouette slightly to the right from where it had been before on the video screen even though her feet had not moved. Ranko assumed a new pose, her hip popped to the left.
"Mesmerizing…"
A third light, this one directly in front of her, blinked on in the darkness, shifting her projected silhouette straight back onto the video screen. Ranko extended her arm, letting her hand dangle limply from her wrist as if she were waiting for the back of her hand to be kissed by some dashing gentleman.
"Unbound and untamed."
The three lights strobed together, casting a trio of dim, sultry shadows against the back wall. She whirled her arms around herself, allowing the shadow forms behind her to dance with her rather than remain stationary. Yeah, Pop, when you taught me all these kung fu forms, I betcha never thought I was gonna do this with 'em, she thought with a grin.
"Every single obstacle consumed by wicked flame!"
The lead singer's hands explored her body again, her hips thrashing side to side as the trio of orange lamps projected her shadow backup dancers behind her. Meanwhile, her movements were also echoed by her two flesh-and-blood dancers as well, Hitomi on her right and Emi on her left. All three women were careful to keep their feet planted, knowing that Ranko could not move hers without prematurely giving away the secret concealed in her sparkling, transparent heels.
"Dancing so seductively, a flicker in the smoke. Dazzling from a distance, but up close?"
The three lamps at the edge of the stage went out, but the seven performers onstage were still bathed in an orange glow courtesy of another brief blast of flame spewing forth from the emitters embedded in the stage floor. Ranko clenched her fist just under her chin, as if crushing the windpipe of a ghost.
"You're gonna choke!"
Ranko twisted in place, letting the hem of her dress tickle her thighs just above her knees as she sang. Very little in her world made her feel as feminine as that feeling, the subtle reminder - made far less subtle by the Cat's Tongue - that she was dressed like a lady. She didn't remember exactly when it started making her feel joy rather than self-consciousness, but she knew it had been long ago.
"Turn around and run, before this stage becomes your pyre! This human torch is gonna scorch you!"
The orange lamp on Ranko's right ignited, and she froze in place.
"I!"
The middle lamp took over, teleporting the shadow on the video screen behind her a bit to the right. The three syllables of the song's title boomed through the Jamsil Baseball Stadium sound system, amplified by the bass voice of Shinji Yokota and Crash's tenor buoying Ranko's shouted declaration.
"AM!"
The left can light flickered orange, moving Ranko's shadow the rest of the way to the right side of the display from the perspective of the audience.
"FIRE!"
The video board at the back of the stage went dark and the stage lights dropped to their minimum intensity, leaving the audience straining to see the performers in the riverside moonlight. Emi rushed to the back of the stage, reaching out urgently with her hand as she approached Jacob's keyboard. Her green-haired friend carefully picked up a small, orange paper fan, handing it over his instrument to Emi in the brief moment between the end of the first chorus and the start of the second verse.
As Emi vacated the back third of the stage, which had largely been reserved for the four instruments and their masters, Ranko approached it, walking heel-over-toe toward Zoe's drum set. She made a point to drag her feet slightly backward with each step, turning the wheel sparkers embedded in the soles of her shoes enough to ignite the little puddles of ethanol that dripped from the holes in her hollow chunky heels onto the metal stage floor.
Thus, a ghostly trail of blue flame footprints followed the songstress around the stage, each lingering for but a few moments in the dark before the fuel burned off. The audience, who had already been roaring at the introduction of yet another song set to release with Ranko's third album, Behind Bars, exploded in cheers at the practical effect.
"It seems you've got more guts than brains. You don't know what you're doin'. When I get done, nothing remains but blackened husks and ruin!"
In the control booth, Masa flicked another switch. He had not spoken since the song began, focusing his full attention on the complex pyrotechnic effects he had scripted for Ranko's most fire-centric song.
The chevron of jets at the center of the stage ignited behind the young singer. Prompted by the whoosh of the fuel igniting and the sudden blast of heat at her back, she glanced down at her fingernails, checking them casually as if she did not seem to notice that the stage was burning a few meters from her feet. The video board resumed displaying a sea of orange flame that filled its entire frame.
After a moment, a recorded Ranko strode into frame on the video board from the left side. She wore a skin-tight red microdress, and carried a white placard in her hand. She smirked, popping her hip to the side and holding the sign up to face the camera. It read, in bold red block English lettering, WARNING: CONTENTS WILL BE HOT.
"Ignorin' all the warning signs, and getting even closer, but pretty soon, you'll realize that I'm about to roast ya!"
Ranko crossed her arms behind her back, rocking her hips at the back center of the stage. Emi and Hitomi rushed up to join her, their hands exploring her body as she moved as if they, too, couldn't get enough of the ravishing redhead. It only made Ranko blush further when she considered how all-too-willing the pansexual couple would be to welcome her into their bed, if only Ranko would consent to join them there.
"You can't resist the moves I've got. A dance that's so seductive…"
The Ranko on the video screen waved to the camera, walking out of frame to the right. The flaming background remained.
Emi's left hand slid down Ranko's back, and when it passed her bra strap, Ranko opened her hand at her waist. The tall blonde deposited the fan she'd taken from Jacob into her hand, pushing off of her back and spinning away from Ranko in time with Hitomi doing the same in the opposite direction.
Ranko whipped the orange hand fan open, waving it lazily in front of her face. Last thing I need is help getting colder, she thought.
"You keep thinkin' I'll make you hot, forgetting I'm…"
Her thumbnail flicked at the thin strip of wood protruding from the base of the fan. It caused the match folded into the edge of the fan to spark, and the orange flash paper fan ignited in an instant. Ranko waved it twice in front of herself before tossing it over her shoulder, as if she didn't care in the slightest whether it started a wildfire behind her. Of course, she knew that the fan would fully burn to cinder before it ever touched the ground, having gotten very accustomed to the incineration speed of flash paper when she'd burned an evening gown made of the stuff off of her back on national television after accepting one of her four Japan Record Awards.
"... destructive! There's not enough protective gear to keep you safe from harm…"
Ranko whirled on her heels, turning her back to the crowd. Her every step was calculated and deliberate. By stepping only her toes, she was able to prevent the sparkers embedded in the soles of her shoes from triggering and igniting the pools of ethanol where her feet had been a moment ago. She rolled her hips, letting both of her hands find her backside through her thin white dress.
"... 'cause when I move my ass up here, it triggers five alarms!"
She turned, striding confidently across the stage in an exaggerated model stomp, wisps of blue flame trailing behind her as she moved. With every step, she swished a bit, letting her dress dance around her legs as she moved. Each motion required her concentration, as the weight of her shoes changed slightly every time her heels contacted the floor and more of the liquid fuel within was expelled. With half the fuel expended, the remaining liquid sloshed about in its container as she moved, further distracting her with every motion of her legs.
"I AM FIRE! I can't help but BURN!"
As she moved across the stage from left to right, the jets of flames behind her ignited in a cascade, as if the ground itself was erupting in reaction to her approach. She was constantly backlit in orange fire as the chorus continued.
"I know you wanna play with me, but try, you're gonna learn!"
She doubled back toward the center of the stage, leaving burning blue footprints in her wake. Every move she made, the flame jets followed, igniting the two or three meters behind her as she surveyed the little kingdom Kaz and Norio had built for her in the heart of Seoul.
"Throwin' off an orange glow and makin' people nervous…"
When Ranko reached the center of the stage, she spread her arms at her hips, and in addition to the center jet that was already lit, the entire heart-shaped bank of pyro emitters ignited, a cascade of flame expanding across the stage behind her in response to her unspoken command. The sea of fire on the video board collapsed into a single point along its bottom edge, as if it had receded to fuel the explosive backdraft that had blasted forth from the stage floor. Only the plain gray background remained.
"Spreading out of all control, engulfing every surface!"
Again, the trio of orange lights mounted to the front of the stage ticked on one at a time, projecting Ranko's silhouette onto the blank video board behind and ticking it from left to right on the screen.
"Hypnotizing! Mesmerizing! Unbound and untamed!"
All three can lights came on at once, casting Ranko's shadow in triplicate against the back of the stage.
"Every single obstacle consumed by wicked flame!"
Ranko turned her back to the crowd, crossing her wrists overhead and slowly writhing her backside side to side in her short, sparkling dress.
"Dancing so seductively, a flicker in the smoke. Dazzling from a distance…"
Emi and Hitomi, who had been crossing the stage side-by-side toward her, stopped short as Ranko whipped around to face them, clenching her hand in a claw-like motion under her chin. Both of the backup dancers froze in place and reached up, grasping at their throats as if being strangled by invisible ropes.
"... but up close, you're gonna choke!"
Ranko closed the distance to the girls in a moment, resting her left hand on Emi's chest and sliding down her body like a firepole as she wiggled her backside.
"Turn around and run, before this stage becomes your pyre!"
She slid back up to a standing position, striding away from Emi and Hitomi and leaving a trail of wispy cyan footprints of flame lazily smoldering on the stage floor. Her backup dancers scurried quickly in the opposite direction, seeming to heed her warning.
"This human torch is gonna scorch you!" Ranko planted her feet at center stage, closing her eyes a heartbeat before the first of the three orange canister lights sliced through the darkness to begin the same left-to-right sequence that had ended each of the previous choruses.
"I! AM! FIRE!" she sang, with Shinji and Crash's voices bolstering hers.
The two guitarists began playing the song's short, wordless bridge, and Ranko flitted toward the back of the stage. A thundering rill from Zoe's drums punctuated another explosion of fire from the stage floor, obscuring the songstress long enough for her to kick at the backs of her heels again, triggering the springloaded mechanism embedded within to cut off the flow of fuel from the nearly-empty reservoirs in her shoes.
That done, she stepped up onto the riser platform again, slipping between Hitomi and Emi at its center. Her backup dancers had both been secured to the via hidden safety harnesses they wore under their dresses, but the lifelong martial artist leading the Dapper Dragons eschewed one of her own. Ranko threw her hands skyward, prompting Ariel to reach for his console and command the platform to rise nearly three meters from the stage floor.
"I don't think you've got a shot, but boy, I'm worth the pain, though!"
Hitomi and Emi turned their backs on the dancing woman between them, glancing back over their shoulders at her and fanning their faces with their hands.
"You'll only find a girl this hot deep down in a volcano!"
Ranko slashed her hand forward across her body, as if swatting away an annoying fly. All of the jets embedded in the stage floor - save the nine lining the front edge of the stage that had yet to be used in the song's pyrotechnic arsenal - exploded upward at once.
Both of her backup dancers dropped to their knees on the platform. Emi winced slightly. The rough anti-slip surface of the platform scratched uncomfortably at her skin under the short flame-styled dress she wore.
"The backdraft blows you off your feet and puts you on your knees, 'cause now, we're turning up the heat to three THOUSAND degrees!"
The video screen behind the girls, partially obscured by the raised platform and their bodies, flashed to a view of a digital Celsius thermometer over the full-screen flaming background. Its four green digits rapidly ticked upward from zero until it stopped at 3000. Once there, the digits flashed several times, like an alarm clock that had lost power in a storm and needed to be reset, before the pewter-colored thermometer seemed to melt into a pool of molten plastic dripping toward the bottom of the video screen.
"I'm a conflagration, when you thought I was a candle! Hey, in my estimation, I'm too hot for you to handle!"
"Clear on the front bank," Masa announced to the crew through his headset. "Going in five. Four."
"You're wanting me to keep you warm and cozy by the fire," Ranko sang, hugging herself for warmth. The gesture wasn't entirely for show. It was one thing for her to adjust to the cold, and another to acclimate to the nearly unbearable heat when she stood close to the pyrotechnics, but switching back and forth between them as often and as rapidly as the song demanded denied her the opportunity to get used to either extreme. She was grateful that the next song in the set list would give her exhausted nerves a rest. Just gotta get through one more chorus, she encouraged herself.
"Two. One," Masa continued. In the dark patch of grass separating the crowd from the stage, Lance Riker took two steps forward, his eyes never parting from the sea of humanity for a moment.
"But, can you stand the firestorm when violence meets desire?!"
To Ranko's left, a trio of deep red canister lights mounted on the front edge of the truss over the stage clicked on, pointed downward at the front edge of the stage. A set of three lights with sickly green gels ignited from the same position on Ranko's right, and the three orange lights that had cast her silhouette against the back of the stage came on again as well.
In time with the word desire, the nine flame emitters mounted to the front of the stage all ignited at once. The bank of three on stage right burned not with an orange flame, but a green one, courtesy of a boric acid additive that had been added to their fuel during Ranko's costume change. The three on the left burned bright red owing to the strontium compound Kaz had added to their fuel, and the three center jets remained their natural orange hue. The colors were deepened further by the matching lights shining in their directions.
"I am FIRE! I can't help but BURN!"
As the crowd gasped in amazement, the heights of the nine jets of flames began to fluctuate, dancing along with every note Crash and the band played as if a giant graphic equalizer had been constructed out of fire and perfectly synchronized to the one Ariel Wright was monitoring in the control booth to ensure a good audio mix. Ranko bopped on the raised platform between Emi and Hitomi, commanding the flames with her hands like the conductor of a symphony of demons.
"I've left a trail of ashes, and I guess, now, it's your turn!"
Each time one of the jets receded, the hazy smoke that lingered in the space its fiery output had vacated glowed with the colored light being directed at it. It was not unlike the modern stereos that many of the Firebirds in the audience had at home, where the highest bar of any one column on the equalizer display would remain illuminated for an extra beat or two after the ones below it had gone out.
"Casting sultry shadows all around me when I dance," Ranko sang. The video board, which had been switched back to its flat gray display mode to avoid distracting the audience's attention from the pyrotechnic wizardry being conducted at stage front, was shadowed with the silhouettes of Ranko and her two backup dancers as they moved in lockstep with one another.
"You can sense the danger, but it doesn't break the trance!"
A loud sound sample blasted through the massive speakers alongside the band's instruments, a warbling effect commonly used in television shows to indicate hypnotic effects. A spiral of flame formed briefly on the video screen behind the trio of girls.
"People can't distinguish love from fear, so don't expect it. I'll never be extinguished, so you'd best RUN FOR THE EXIT!" Ranko pointed across the packed baseball field toward the far end of the stadium, punctuating her command to evacuate the building.
No one heeded it.
"Every moment that you stare, the flames are getting higher!"
The fire emitters embedded in the stage floor erupted, and all nine of the flaming columns at the front of the stage roared to their maximum output as well.
"Try approaching if you dare…"
All four musical instruments onstage fell silent at once. In an instant, all of the pyrotechnics shut off at once, as if clearing the path for anyone brave enough to attempt an approach. It only lasted a moment, however, before Ranko, Hitomi, and Emi all punched their right fists skyward.
"I!" shouted all seven performers on the stage. A quick burst of fire belched from every jet on the stage before quickly extinguishing again.
"AM!" they all shouted, throwing their fists in the air again. This time, however, the chorus of seven voices had grown to more than eight thousand. Again, the jets ignited in unison, producing a single puff of flame.
"FIRE!"
The video screen exploded in fire, and every flame emitter roared to its peak output. Ranko lowered her fist and leaned forward over the steel railing at the front of the raised platform, holding out an upturned palm toward the crowd. She pursed her strawberry-glazed lips, emitting a single puff of air from her lungs as if blowing a kiss to the crowd.
The video screen went black, and every light mounted to the stage shut down as well. With a loud natural whoosh, reinforced by a matching sound effect played through the state-of-the-art stadium sound system, every flame under Masa's control blinked out at once, leaving Ranko and her entire retinue of Dapper Dragons frozen in the dark.