"I mean, if you're gonna go through with something like that," Ranko said, chuckling to herself as she strode forward out of the embrace of her friends, "you want it to stick, right? I know I do."
The vexed vocalist glanced down at her left hand again. Stick to the script, dumbass. Get out of your own head. There's twenty-some thousand people staring at you right now. She sighed, lowering her hand and forcing herself to look up at the audience that hung on every word. Forcing a stage smile onto her lips, she glanced back at her blond friend as he stepped forward toward her. Fuck, I should have listened to Hitomi, and done Noise instead of You Don't Know Me, she thought. It wouldn't have fucked with my head like this every night.
"The thing is," she said, her eyes still locked on Crash behind her. I can't look at the crowd when I say it. The words make me sick to my stomach, and I can't maintain the poker face. "As much as I love him, I still have a hard time believing I deserve him. I mean he's just… amazing, and I'm just a regular girl, right?" The crowd whooped in excitement at her having teased the line from another of her popular songs, but it wasn't the one she intended to perform; at least, not yet.
Perhaps sensing the sadness in her eyes, Crash reached out and rested his hand on Ranko's shoulder. He smiled broadly at her, trying to pass off his gesture as one of simple friendship. His wordless touch rocketed through Ranko's nervous system like ripples in a pond, but in reverse, quelling the roiling storm in her mind somewhat.
Thanks, Crash. I needed that. And, you know what? "Everybody," Ranko said, shaking her head as if trying to eject the cobwebs from her mind through her ears. "This guy here?" She turned back to the crowd, a brighter smile on her cheeks as she gestured over her shoulder with her left thumb. "This is Crash Matsuyama."
"Uhh, guys?" Ariel sat forward in his seat. "What's she doing?! This isn't…" He flipped a switch, allowing his audio to be broadcast into Ranko's earpiece. "Uh, Ranko, you're drifting. Be careful!"
Ranko nodded in acknowledgement of the voice in her head, clapping her hands along with the crowd as they roared in appreciation of the Dapper Dragons' guitarist and primary musical composer. "That's right, you guys. Let him hear it. Without this man, there is no Ranko and the Dapper Dragons." She shrugged her shoulders. "I'm not sure there's even a Ranko Tendo. At least, not one anybody's ever heard of." Ranko turned back toward the young man, a more genuine smile in her eyes.
I don't do enough to tell him how much I owe him, she thought. So many little things, besides the huge ones.
"He's my best friend in the world, and I love him to death." Ranko reached for the neck of Crash's guitar, but not for its frets and strings. Rather, she rested her hand gently atop his. "And I don't deserve him, either. So, it's kind of crazy that he's the one that helped me write this song." She gave him a subtle nod, doing her best to wordlessly communicate that his efforts to calm her nerves had been successful. "You wanna sing it with me, bro?"
Crash nodded, reaching down with his free hand and switching on the battery pack on his belt, activating his headset microphone.
"Okay," Ariel said, sighing in relief and slumping back into her chair. He punched the switch again, disconnecting the crew audio from the performers' headsets while continuing to broadcast to the stage crew. "We're back on track. Let's set her up, guys." He ran his fingers through his mousey brown hair, groaning in Masa's direction. "I swear to God, that girl's gonna give me a heart attack one day doing shit like that."
Shinji set his saxophone carefully in its cradle, scooping his bass guitar up and sliding his arm through the shoulder strap. Groaning, he took off the black sunglasses he'd worn throughout the performance of Just This Once, stuffing them in his pocket. I can't see shit in these things back here, he lamented as he hurried back to his mark on the stage. His steps were energized by the power ballad that began emanating from Crash's guitar.
"Two more shows," Masa said, chuckling. He reached to his left in the darkened control booth, gripping Ariel's shoulder reassuringly. "You'll get used to it eventually, kid. Stars are gonna do what stars are gonna do. They don't go off the rails. They just make new ones, and it's all us gearheads can do to hang on."
Ranko hurried to the back of the stage at a near-run as Crash walked the edge of the stage, hammering at the strings of his guitar with his pick as he moved. She gestured hurriedly to herself with both hands, grabbing her loose hair and holding it out of the way as Norio reached over her head to equip her for the show's only duet.
"Wha-wa, whoa, oh-oh, ah," Crash vocalized in his tenor tone as he made his way back to center stage. He knew the increased buzz rising from the crowd behind him was not because of his guitar solo, but because it was about to end. Approaching him from the rear of the stage was Ranko Tendo, an acoustic guitar styled like a flaming bird in flight strapped over her breasts.
"Mm-mm-mmm…" Ranko hummed, adding the instrument in her throat, but not yet the one dangling from her neck, to the melody Crash had begun. She reached down over her guitar with both hands as Jacob Trimble's synthesizer began to sing, clenching her left hand into a loose fist. Swaying her hips gently with the beat, she crossed her right hand over the left, rubbing the back of it thrice in a circular motion.
For you, Akane. Always for you.
"When I met you…" Ranko sang, turning her eyes to Crash. "I was a mess, and it made total sense to me that you'd be un-im-pressed!" The redhead swayed gently at the waist, her mobility somewhat limited by the addition of her guitar.
I mean, that part, at least, is true of him too, Ranko thought, smirking a bit at her friend.
"And ever since, I've tried to grow…" Ranko glanced down at her shiny heels, putting on an air of shyness for the benefit of the song's narrative. "... hoping I could find a way to be someone you'd wanna know."
"Fuck!" Hitomi spat the invective as she rubbed her backside, shaking her head in disgust. "Who the hell left this cable here?!"
With an apologetic sigh, Kaz reached down, offering the diminutive brunette a hand up from the floor backstage. "Sorry about that. Should've taped it down. I promise, I'll…"
"We know," Emi said, parting the black curtain shrouding the women's changing area that had been cordoned off on the left side of the backstage area for her partner. "Blubber about it later. Right now, we gotta move."
"You took my hand," Ranko sang, reaching out and resting her hand softly on Crash's wrist. She was careful to apply no real pressure, not wanting to impede the motion of his fingers over the strings of his guitar. "I don't know why. Don't think I'll ever understand it…"
She turned to face the crowd, crossing her hands over her heart in sincerity as she threw her head back, her voice rising from a tremulous, timid ballad to a full-throated belt. "... but, I'm damn sure gonna try!"
Shrugging in mimed resignation, Ranko put a few steps of distance between herself and Crash, glancing back over her shoulder at him with a wistful emptiness in her eyes. "I don't know what you see in me, but I'm terrified that, one day, you'll find out it's not in me."
Behind her, the video board flashed to life again, showing a clip from the music video for Worthy of You. It featured Ranko, wearing khaki shorts and a matching vest over a black tee shirt. Twin braided pigtails decorated with black ribbons dangled out from under her fedora, swaying over her shoulders as she climbed a rock formation. Behind her, a wide mountain shot that had been digitally inserted over a green screen scrolled past. She carried a black compound bow in her left hand.
"So I'm gonna climb every mountain! I'm gonna walk on the moon!"
Ranko turned, pointing up at the waning crescent hanging lazily in the sky through the haze of smoke from the most recent volley of fireworks. "When I come back, maybe I'll feel like I deserve to be in this room!"
A roar from the crowd reassured her that she already did.
"I'll become a superhero. I'm gonna take to the skies!" Ranko stretched her arms over her as-yet-unplayed guitar, parallel to the stage floor, as if she were Superman in flight.
"Then, maybe I won't feel so weak when I see myself in your eyes!"
Ranko stepped back, turning to Crash and crossing her hands over her heart. She was careful not to let her elbows strike the strings of her guitar.
"And when it all is through, and I've done all that I can do…"
On the video screen, Ranko - clad in a skin-tight magenta catsuit with a matching mask covering her eyes and nose, rose from a crouch. She reached up to her face, snatching the mask off and casting it aside, before reaching out for the blond man in the black leather jacket that stood on the darkened rooftop set with her.
"I'm gonna be… a little closer… to believing that I'm worthy of you!"
The last three words of the chorus were sung not just by Ranko, but also by the selfsame guitarist that held her tight in his arms on the video board behind the duo.
I wonder how many people think I'm actually with him, Ranko mused as she smirked at the video display. Probably more than Akane would prefer. I guess it's good cover, at least.
"I don't think that you'd expect it - don't think it would do much good…" Crash sang in his gravelly tenor, "... but, I'd arm-wrestle a dragon if you asked, just to prove I would."
He flexed his bicep in his creaky black leather coat, pointing to it with his left hand. The crowd whooped loudly in approval as his hands found their way back to his guitar, both his instrument and Ranko's singing the melody as one.
"When you're with me, I feel strong, like I could challenge the gods!" Ranko sang, smirking devilishly. She pulled her left hand from the neck of her guitar, flexing her arm just as Crash had done. The juxtaposition of the diminutive redhead in the sparkly white dress asserting her strength in the same way the leather-clad man to her right had done was not lost on her, but the crowd thundered its approval nonetheless.
"I had luck enough to find you…" Ranko sang, throwing her head back and belting at the top of her lungs. "... so, I think I like my odds!"
Crash leaned to his side, pointing the neck of his guitar skyward as he played alongside his best friend. "I'll take any reckless gamble. I'll do any daring deed! There is nothing I won't risk to know I'm everything you need!"
"Remind me to kill Izumi when we get home," Emi moaned, a slight shudder in her voice as she huddled close to the small space heater Norio had set up for them backstage. "She could have gotten us some jackets, or something!"
She purred quietly as Hitomi rubbed her back vigorously. "At least we're in jeans for the next set," Hitomi asserted as she motioned with her neck to the redhead that crooned alongside Crash at center stage. "She's in that little dress, and she's got that skin thing, besides. I don't know how she manages to sing with her friggin' teeth chattering."
"So, I'm gonna jump over a building! I'm gonna run a million miles, if that's all it takes to feel like I've earned just one of your smiles!" Crash and Ranko sang together.
In the video projected on the board mounted to the trusses above Zoe's drum set, the pair stood embracing in an open meadow - the same one Ranko had laid in during the photo shoot for the Wild Orchid album cover art - in the dark. The camera orbited the pair from slightly below their waists, showing the backdrop of the starry night sky over their shoulders.
"I'm gonna fly on up to space. I'm gonna capture a star. Then, I'll wish on it, and hope it makes me half of what you are!" Crash's voice dropped as low as he could manage for the last five notes, contrasting with the high run Ranko finished the line with. He continued alone, as Ranko clung to his bicep, looking up at him with starry eyes.
"And when it all is through, and I've done all that I can do… I'm gonna be a little closer to believing that I'm…"
Ranko nodded, smiling up at her best friend as she rejoined the chorus for its final three words. "... worthy of you."
She carried the last word for more than a second in a fourth–octave vocal run. When it ended, she stepped away from Crash, strumming her acoustic guitar as Crash's fell silent. Where the sharp electric twang of his instrument failed, the acoustic thrum of his stage partner's picked up in a seamless transition. Ranko had suggested the change from the album version of the song during the tour rehearsals. She thought it was a nice touch: the idea that whenever he sang, she would play; that each of the partners in the ostensible couple would support the other. Where one led, the other would follow in harmony.
A sour thrum growled through the sound system, lasting almost two beats before it suddenly cut out, and the bass guitar with it.
"Shit!" Shinji growled after reaching back under his jacket to switch off his headset's battery pack. He tossed the black audio cable to the stage floor in disgust and jogged to the right wing of the stage. "Kaz!" he shouted.
"So, I'm gonna wander every desert. I'm gonna sail every sea," Crash sang, as his doppelganger on the video screen trudged through a sandy expanse, covering his face with a cloth and shielding his eyes from the sandstorm that had been digitally added into the clip. Unlike Ranko, who was used to being emotive with her movements as she sang, Crash stood mostly still. It was still something of a foreign sensation for him to be on stage without his fingers strumming the six strings that were never far from his chest.
Kazuzi hurried from his position to meet Shinji at the edge of the stage, just behind the curtain out of view of the crowd. "What happened, man?! You good?"
"All I'm searchin' for's a reason you'd be proud to be with me!" Crash continued over the sound of Ranko's custom, left-handed firebird guitar. He glanced over his shoulder, searching for, and not finding, the band's missing instrument when he noticed it missing from the mix playing in his right ear.
"Fuckin' string broke!" Shinji urgently thrust his Yamaha BBN4 bass guitar into his former bandmate's hand. Its G string dangled limply from the fret. "Gimme my spare, and get this restrung, man! Quick!"
Despite flashing Ranko a befuddled glance, Crash had no choice to continue his solo verse. "I'll explore a deep, dark jungle. Search the depths of every cave. Sure, I'm scared, but you fill my heart up enough to make me brave!" On the screen behind him, Ranko, still in her black-and-khaki adventuring outfit, peered into the entrance of a spooky-looking cavern.
The Dapper Dragons' new roadie scurried into the wings to search for Shinji's personal instrument, the Ibanez Destroyer II that had been the bassist's constant companion up until Yokai Records had purchased the band new instruments for the studio recordings of Phoenix Rising.
As Kazuki rummaged through the piles of gear, Ariel's voice crackled in his headset. "Uhhh, Kaz?" Ariel asked, no small measure of concern in his voice. "You seem to have misplaced my bassist. Any idea where I might find him?!"
"Got it!" Kaz exclaimed, pulling the black vinyl carrying case out from behind an aluminum rack of costumes that awaited Hitomi and Emi for the latter half of the show. "Sorry, boss," he said. "Shin broke a string. Getting him a backup. Give us just a sec."
"I'm gonna go on an adventure! I'm gonna cast away my fears!" Crash turned to Ranko, an adoring smile on his face that was more than halfway sincere. "Gonna earn my place beside you, if it takes a thousand years!"
Crash sighed silently with relief, the tension evaporating from his shoulders as Shinji's Ibanez joined the melody in his monitor mix.
"There is so much I'm reaching for," Crash declared in his half of the bridge. "You always say that I'm enough, but you deserve much more." His hands reached again for the strings of his guitar, his instrument and Ranko's chasing each other over the melody in its minor key variant.
Ranko stepped closer to Crash, her cheeks alight with a smile as she took her turn to sing. While both singers' hands were occupied with their guitars, the pair held hands on the video screen behind them in the meadow full of orchids.
"Now, this impossible romance… makes me desperate not to get complacent; waste my chance…"
Grumbling to himself, Kaz frantically threw aside the pair of red wings that had been strapped to Hitomi's back earlier in the evening. He dug through the remaining pile of cast off costumes and unused cables, using a pocket flashlight to search in the dark. "Where the hell is my…" He grinned, nodding his thanks to Sanyo as the young dancer waved an orange-handled Philips screwdriver in front of his face. "Yeah. That."
"Don't want to ever leave your side!" Crash meant it. Beyond Ranko's status as his best friend - a position she had supplanted Shinji in some time ago - she was the single most important reason that he was playing his guitar for more than twenty thousand fans in Korea, and not a half a dozen drunks in a bar in Shibuya. Hell, before her, we weren't even good enough to get booked in a joint like the Phoenix, he reminisced. That little fireball changed everything for us. I'm never gonna let her forget how much it means to us all.
"But if I screw it all up anyway…"
Ranko interrupted, throwing her head back and belting into her microphone, her arms spread wide as she turned to face the crowd. "... I need to know I tried!"
Her voice softened in pitch and volume both, until it was quieter and meeker than it had been at any previous part of the song. She affected a slight tremble in her voice, as if she were fighting off tears.
"And when it all is through…"
Crash's voice, however, did not shrink. It rose, becoming almost defiant in tone, embodying the determined lover that would not stop until his partner understood the true depths of his devotion.
"... And I've done all that I can do… I'm gonna be… a little closer… to believin' that I'm…"
"Worthy of you…" the duet sang together, Crash in as low a register as his voice could produce, and Ranko as high.
Both singers let their instruments come to rest on their chests, dangling from their straps. With only Jacob's keyboard and Shinji's bass remaining to carry the melody, they turned to face each other and joined hands, just as their counterparts in the video behind them were doing.
"So, I promise you, it's true," Ranko sang quietly, standing on her tiptoes and leaning closer to her friend.
"... the only thing I wanna do…" Crash added, squeezing both of his friend and onetime crush's hands gently in his own.
"... is be a little closer to believin' that I'm worthy of you…" Ranko and Crash sang in harmony.
Crash smiled down at his friend, squeezing her tight around the shoulders. "Of yooooooooooooou!" he sang as loudly as he could.
"Of you-hoo-hoo, HOOOO, ooh-ooh-ooh!" the young redhead vocalized into her headset at the highest end of her vocal range, eschewing her guitar to hug Crash around the torso just above his instrument.
The pair stepped back from the hug, joining hands as the video screen behind then faded to black on a picture of them doing much the same in the flowery meadow.
"Worthy… of… you…"