As soon as the backlight was shut off, Ranko began yanking the flouncy pink skirt down her legs. By the time she'd stepped out of it, Sanyo had collected her white fuku top from the wooden table tucked to the side of the changing screen and was holding it open over her head. The canister lights illuminating the bedroom scene from the front blinked out as well, leaving Ranko with little more than the moonlight to dress by.
Ranko thrust her arms upward, and Sanyo slipped the shimmering white shirt over her head. She shivered hard, both from the caress of satin sliding down her hypersensitive skin and the subzero ambient temperature. The space heater that had been set up behind the changing screen was hardly sufficient to offset the chilly river breeze swirling in the bowl of the stadium and biting into the slender girl's very bones.
In the dark corridors under the stage, Kaz and Norio released the pneumatic jacks they had locked into place and allowed them to contract. Slowly, the metal poles retracted through the holes in the stage floor until they could be unpinned from their bases and stowed.
Animated sparks continued to rain from the video screen behind the stage, following the red laser beam that traced Ranko's signature as if it were burning her name into the display itself.
"Gotta go, gotta go!" Hitomi urged herself, wiggling into a navy blue pleated school uniform skirt that fell to the middle of her calves. To her left, Emi struggled to peel her sparkly gold tube top off of her sweat-slick skin.
The audience, seeming to realize a brief intermission had been reached, coalesced their cheers and applause into a familiar chant. "RAN-KO! RAN-KO!" they shouted en masse as the female performers frantically navigated their final wardrobe change of the evening.
Emi lifted the wide blue flap that made up the collar of Hitomi's uniform shirt, tucking the long red ribbon tie in her hands under it. She yanked the tails forward hard, pulling her lover off balance and forward into her embrace.
"Hey! We don't have time for… mmph!" Hitomi's protest was muffled by the sudden, furious exploration of her mouth performed by Emi's tongue.
The blonde pulled back after taking her fill of Hitomi's lips, snickering quietly. "It'll go faster if you don't waste time bitching about it, babe!" She quickly tied the two satin tails into a large bow just above Hitomi's breasts. Hitomi set about doing the same for Emi, who had begun dressing in a matching high school uniform.
"Bringing in the deck," Masa announced, reaching over to Ariel's side of the booth and punching at the controls that activated the electric winches above the stage. The catwalk slowly began lowering from the trusses again, making its way down until it came to rest on the stage floor.
Ranko stepped into the short blue pleated skirt of her sailor fuku, silently cursing the fact that, like most of the costumes she'd worn throughout the performance, her mock school uniform exposed considerably more of her skin than did those of her backup dancers. Freakin' stupid being the star bullshit. Now I gotta freeze my tits off again, and they get to be toasty warm, she thought as she adjusted the miniskirt around her waist over her pink bodysuit.
Sanyo scurried off, slipping behind another black curtain backstage and beginning to disrobe. A blue and white track suit with a red stripe down the pant legs awaited him on a hanger overhead. Utaru, having not been onstage for the previous song, had already changed into his.
At the command of Masa's control board, a trio of large fans began generating an artificial crossbreeze over the stage area. The mist from the fog machines had already largely cleared since they'd been deactivated, owing to the natural breeze whipping its way through the arena, and the fans made quick work of the rest. Without the smoke to give the laser beams definition, they were of little value, so Ariel turned them off once Ranko's full signature was displayed on the giant video board behind the four instrumentalists. A repetitive, somewhat generic chord progression prerecorded from Jacob's synthesizer keyboard began to play through the stadium's massive speakers.
Ranko finished tying the red ribbon around her own collar into a bow just as she felt a firm yank on her hair from behind. She winced, inhaling sharply through her discomfort as Hitomi marshalled her windswept red coif into a pair of high, loose pigtails originating just above her ears.
"How we looking?" Ariel all but shouted into his headset, knowing the earsplitting chanting would make it hard for his crew to hear him.
"Thirty seconds," Hitomi announced, jamming an alligator clip through a fistful of Ranko's hair to affix a large red bow to the base of her left pigtail.
Kazuki's voice was next to crackle through Ariel's earpiece. "Emi and the guys are set. Just waiting on Ranko."
Hitomi rushed to look her friend over from head to toe, making only minor adjustments to her hair and outfit where she found them warranted. "Alright, Ari. She's good." Hitomi rubbed her hand firmly along Ranko's back while the latter wet her whistle with a sip of ice-cold water, trying to confer even the smallest measure of warmth on the half-frozen songstress before sending her back out into the cold. "We're almost done, Ran-chan. You're doing great."
"You say that," Ranko said through chattering teeth with a roll of her eyes. "But the only thing keeping me from turning into a fuckin' popsicle out there is that I'm missing the stick up my ass."
Tittering, Hitomi gestured over her shoulder in the direction of the rightmost of the four musicians that awaited them onstage. "You could always borrow Shin's."
"Okay, spots, gimme a search pattern. Follow her once she's out." Ariel swiveled his chair to face the control board for the video screen, commanding it to fade to black. Two bright white circles began traversing the stage and the back curtain at seemingly random angles and intervals, as if looking for something concealed in the darkness.
After rubbing her hands together in front of the little electric heater one last time, Ranko emerged from behind the changing screen in her blue, white and red uniform. Instantly, both spotlights converged on her, tracking her as she strode to the front edge of the stage and waved to the crowd.
"You guys didn't think we were done, did you?" Ranko giggled into her microphone as the video screen behind her faded to black. She paused, giving the cheers and chants a few moments to die down before continuing. "Not yet. But I do think it's about time we get you out of your seats, before your asses freeze to 'em."
She grinned widely. While the next song she was due to perform had yet to be officially released, with Behind Bars not due to be mass-manufactured for another few weeks, its music video had already amassed a fair bit of popularity. "So, with that in mind, I have a question for all of my new Seoul mates out there."
Crash cracked his knuckles, preparing to begin the furious guitar riff that would serve as the opening salvo of one of the band's highest-energy songs as soon as Ranko gave the cue.
"Are you guys ready…" The redhead hesitated for a moment, scanning the audience with her eyes. She couldn't help but take in the anticipation in her fans' eyes, basking in the pregnant moment. Potential energy, her old science teacher used to call it. That instant where everything was possible. The powder keg was ready, and she needed only to provide a spark to ignite it.
"... to bounce?!"
The building erupted like a volcano of sound, with thousands of Firebirds roaring in approval and rocketing out of their seats. Crash's pick flashed across the six strings of his electric guitar with a speed nearly the equal of Ranko's deadly Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire technique.
Ranko raised her arms over her head, clapping her hands once. A few beats later, she did again, but clapped twice. As the musical intro continued, Ranko alternated between one and two claps on every fourth beat. Hitomi, Sanyo, Emi and Utaru all emerged from behind the curtain, the girls in their faux school uniforms and the boys in their athletic track suits. The four of them formed a line behind Ranko, leaving a gap at its center so that none of them were obscured from view by Ranko herself. Each continued the clapping pattern Ranko had begun, even after the lead vocalist herself had stopped.
The video display behind the performers lit up again, displaying an animation of the bleachers at one end of a packed stadium during some unseen sporting event. At the top of the screen, a large scoreboard proclaimed that a team called the Dragons had scored fifty points, but their opponents, the Pandas, had scored zero. Featureless faces dotted the cartoon bleachers, periodically bobbing about or standing to cheer.
"Nine o'clock on Friday, and they're playin' my song! I'm so ready! I've been waitin' for this all week long!"
Ranko raised her arms skyward, violently twisting her hips and thrashing her pleated skirt around her waist as if she were on the dance floor at Steam. She turned to face the quartet of backup dancers, reaching out and grabbing Utaru by the wrist. The young songstress dragged him forward into the spotlight at center stage, despite his pantomimed resistance.
"There's no time for talkin', or sittin' round gawkin'! I don't wanna stop to e-eat!"
She planted her feet assertively, pointing down at the stage floor without breaking eye contact with Utaru.
"The only things I need tonight are a rhythm and a beat!"
Ranko took both of Utaru's hands, sliding between them and turning her back to the wiry young man. She began writhing in place, wrapping his arms around her own neck as if they were a scarf meant to keep her warm. Ranko did her best to give the appearance of grinding against Utaru's torso while making as little contact as possible. Showbiz or not, wriggling her backside against a boy's crotch was not her idea of a good time.
"You know what I came out to do! You gotta shake it with me before I'll shout for you!"
The singer whirled to face her reluctant dance partner, exaggerated frustration painted across her face. She rolled her eyes with a shake of her head and a shrug of her shoulders.
"I guess you're gonna make me spell the whole thing out! For! You-uuuuuuu!"
"C'mon, Firebirds! You know what to do! You ready?! Here we go!" Ranko clapped her hands overhead again as the video screen's content quickly wiped to the left, leaving only a solid background of dark crimson visible in place of the stadium scene.
"I gotta…"
"BE!" shouted all nine performers on stage at once. Behind them, a large letter B in a bold white block font appeared over the blood-red background. Each of the five dancers took a half-step back, gesturing to themselves with both of their thumbs. Their elbows were crooked almost at waist level.
"... the one that's rockin' out the hardest in the club!" As Ranko continued the chorus, the dancers pumped their hands forward and back, alternating them so one of their thumbs was always moving closer to their chests as the other moved away. Each dancer pivoted slightly on their heels from right to left a little more with each note, giving everyone in the audience an opportunity to be faced directly.
"OH!" the nine Dapper Dragons bellowed next, supported by a great many Firebirds in the crowd. A letter O took the place of the B on the overhead screen. Each of the dancers extended their hands upward until they were at about the level of their ears, wiggling their fingers with their palms facing outward at the crowd. Each rocked their hips side to side as they continued the dance steps as proscribed in the song's music video.
"... we're gonna go until the sun! Comes! Up!" With each of the final three staccato words, the five dancers' arms extended upward a little further in a somewhat jittery manner. At the conclusion of the word up, they were stretched as high as they could go, their elbows locked with their arms straightened.
"YOU!" shouted half the arena, prompted by the video board changing to display yet another letter. The dancers' hands fell forward on their wrists, pointing out at the crowd with two fingers on each hand while their arms remained upraised.
"... know what you gotta do, and who you gotta do it with!"
The performers wiggled their hips without lowering their arms. Ranko, in particular, made a point to thrash her skirt about her body.
"AN… yone can do it, if you're not afraid to wiggle it!"
A block letter N appeared on the video board. The dancers bounced their hands up and down at the wrists, panning their pointing fingers right to left a little more with each beat. At least a third of the crowd had risen from their seats, and performed the choreography along with the performers on the stage.
"You SEE me on the floor, givin' it all that I got, so…"
Ranko led her legion in lowering her arms from overhead. Instead, she leveled her right hand just over her eyes, as if trying to block out the spotlights and spy something out in the crowd. Each dancer panned the audience left to right, backlit by the large white C displayed on the video screen.
"EEE-ven if you're tired…"
Hitomi turned her right wrist upward, resting the back of her hand on her forehead and slumping a bit on her feet, pantomiming a state of pure exhaustion.
"... pound your drink…"
Sanyo and the other dancers cupped their left hands as if holding an invisible glass in them. In synchronized motion, they lowered their right hands from their foreheads and slammed their left hands upward to their mouths as if slamming a shot of tequila.
"... and take your shot!"
Utaru and his companions launched their left hands upward from their lips, punching skyward forcefully.
"... I feel the thump of the bass…"
Ranko and her supporting cast of Dapper Dragons planted her feet, thrusting both of her fists forward at breast level with her shoulders squared. It was a move she had picked up from her high school rugby team, when a smaller person needed to block a larger one.
"... and I'll be up in your face…"
Hitomi turned left, and Emi right, in order to face Ranko in the center between them. All three girls lifted one of their legs, bending them such that the soles of the lifted feet were parallel with their straightened knees. They arched their backs slightly, reaching up and slightly back with whichever of their arms faced toward the crowd. While Ranko merely adopted the pose, Emi and Hitomi had the necessary props to demonstrate the true intent of the gesture to the crowd. They curled their raised hands around the backs of the male dancers' necks, looking up at them over their shoulders.
The two men spun their partners forward until all five dancers faced forward again. Each raised their arms skyward.
"... ya gotta shake it with me, right where it counts! Counts! Counts!"
Each repetition of the word counts was punctuated with a hard shift of the dancers' hips, rocking their bodies side to side.
"So, if you wanna be with me…" Ranko sang, as the video board behind her displayed all six romaji letters that made up the name of the song.
"B! O! U! N! C! E!" shouted seven Japanese performers, two Australian ones, and some nine thousand Korean spectators all at once. A rapid-fire repetition of the dance steps associated with each letter accompanied the spelled-out notes.
"YEAH! You need a little bit of BOUNCE!"
The prescribed choreography completed, Ranko charged forward out of the line of dancers to the front edge of the stage. "You're doing great, Firebirds! If you don't know the dance, don't worry - we'll teach you! Here we go! Here we go!" She bounced excitedly on the balls of her feet, swishing her body side to side as she did. The video board behind her switched back to the night club scene that had been displayed during Turn Me Off/Turn Me On.
"You got the jacket, man?!" Norio slipped the spaghetti straps of the silver dress Ranko had worn throughout Self-Rescuing Princess onto a plastic coathanger.
Kaz walked up behind his partner, holding up Ranko's red leather jacket on another purple hanger. "Right here." He reached out, and Norio handed him the dress. Kaz carried both garments out onto the stage in the darkened right corner, placing both in the armoire alongside the wedding dress already hanging in it. He also deposited Ranko's black boots and the hollow heels she'd donned for I Am Fire, emptied of the remaining few drops of accelerant, on the shelf inside, ensuring it was closed behind him before scurrying offstage.
"Standin' in the corner, and I'm hangin' on your elbow. You ask me if I'm good to skip another one, but…"
"HELL, NO!" the audience shouted, all but drowning out the young songstress who sang the same.
"You're gaspin' for air, but I just let down my hair! The night is just beginning!"
Norio passed Kazuki on his way out to the stage, sliding a black leather messenger bag under the bed in the dark. He had to crawl under the bed to ensure the bag was positioned correctly. It needed to be all the way forward so it could easily be picked up from the side of the bed facing the crowd, and right next to the footboard so there was plenty of room under the rest of the mattress.
Ranko pinched at her faux school uniform, peeling it up away from her skin as if it had been drenched in a rainstorm and clung to her body. Behind her, Utaru and Hitomi looped around to the back third of the stage, stepping up onto the catwalk that had been lowered down to the stage floor. Utaru reached up the back of Hitomi's uniform shirt, attaching a carabiner to the safety harness she wore under it.
"My dress is soaked with so much sweat, it looks like I went swimming!"
Hitomi fastened another steel cable to the back of the safety belt Utaru had pulled through the belt loops Izumi had added to his track suit. She turned back to the darkened corner of the stage behind Shinji, nodding sharply to the bald stagehand that was peering out at her from behind the edge of the curtain.
"Hey there, mister deejay, c'mon, spin up a song!" Ranko sang. She held her hands out with her palms down, sliding them left and right as if scratching a record on a turnstile. Whenever her hands moved, her hips went with them, as if the waistline of her skirt was the vinyl being spun.
"They're on," Kaz announced in his headset after retreating back behind the curtain.
Masa flipped a pair of switches, causing the catwalk to begin slowly rising back into the air above the stage. "Heard, Kaz. Bringing them up."
"Get me back out on the dance floor, where ya know I belong!" Ranko pointed down at her feet, as if to illustrate that the spot she currently stood - a stage twelve hundred miles from home, watched by thousands - was where destiny itself had demanded she reside. She only wished destiny would have turned up the thermostat a little bit for her.
"My date's worn out, but I'm still good to shake it all! Night! Lo-oooong!"
Ranko clapped her hands emphatically over her head, rolling her hips and bouncing on her feet in full cheerleader mode. "Okay! Here we go! Watch the screen!"
The video board cut to a scene of Hitomi, shot on the stage of the Phoenix. She wore a black pencil skirt and a fuschia tank top that read yes, mistress in white script. Emi stood next to her, holding a stack of black signs in her hands. The one she currently displayed featured a bold letter B in white paint.
"I gotta BE the one that's rockin' out the hardest in the club!"
Again, all nine of the performers shouted the letter sound at once, and no shortage of Firebirds accompanied them. As each of the five dancers pointed to themselves with their thumbs, the recorded Hitomi on the video board did as well, the camera zooming in slightly to focus on her hands and allow the crowd to follow her movements. The dancers, even those on the catwalk that now hovered above one side of the stage where it did not block the line of sight to the video board for most of the audience, began swiveling to their left in place with each beat.
"OH! We're gonna go until the…"
"SUN! COMES! UP!" The chorus of enthusiastic Firebirds rumbled through the upper deck of the baseball stadium. The two spotlights slowly raised upward from Ranko toward Hitomi and Utaru on the catwalk. Coupled with the orange-red hue coming from the canister lights, it gave the effect of a twin sunrise at half-past-nine in the evening.
"YOU know what ya gotta, do, and who ya gotta do it with!"
The video board showed Hitomi pointing forward with both hands overhead, demonstrating the dance step to the audience as her girlfriend held up a letter U next to her. Hundreds of new fans rose from their seats, deciding to attempt the dance steps even if they were a few beats behind owing to their unfamiliarity with the moves.
"AN-yone can do it, if you're not afraid to wiggle it!"
Ranko certainly was not afraid. She spun her hips with nearly enough force to drill her feet through the stage floor, her fingers pointing out toward her fans overhead. Indeed, many of them had found enough bravery to attempt the dance for the first time, guided by Hitomi and Emi on the video board.
"Ya SEE me on the floor, givin' it all that I got, so EEE-ven if you're tired, pound your drink and take your shot!"
Guided by Hitomi on the video board, another few hundred freezing Firebirds joined in with Ranko and her crew with each step of the dance.
"I feel the…"
Shinji's booming basso profundo picked up the next few words in the first octave. "... thump of the bass…" The building quaked as some twelve thousand fans stomped forward at their seats, jabbing their fists forward carefully so as not to hit the people in front of them in the backs of the heads.
"... and I'll be up in your face!"
The Hitomi on the video board reached up and behind her for an invisible date's neck. Meanwhile, Emi took two steps forward, peering into the camera lens from less than a half-meter away with a goofy grin on her face.
"Ya gotta shake it with me right where it COUNTS! COUNTS! COUNTS!"
With each repetition of the word, Ranko hopped on her feet, jabbing her hips side-to-side in midair.
"So, if you wanna be with me…" Ranko held up her hand to her ear for a half-beat, indicating that she wanted to hear the crowd. As she led her fellow Dragons in the rapid-fire repetition of the dance steps, the audience spelled out the name of her song loudly enough to be clearly heard in the parking lot.
"B! O! U! N! C! E!"
"Damn straight! You need a little bit o' bounce!" Ranko clapped her hands, practically skipping across the front edge of the stage and raising her arms to the sky repeatedly. "C'mon! Everybody up! Let me hear you SCREAM!"
Ranko bellowed over the blast of sound washing over her from her legion of loyal Firebirds. "That's right! We're not gonna stop dancing! Never! Here we go!"
The video board changed back to the nightclub scene. Emi and Hitomi both turned to their male partners, wrapping their arms around the boys' necks and lifting one leg to rest their knees against their hips.
"The bass is thumpin', place is jumpin'. No time for a slow one! The song comes on, and babe, I'm gone, and I'm stoppin' for no one!"
Ranko squared her stance at center stage, reaching up with both hands and gripping at the base of her twin pigtails as if she were suddenly suffering a migraine. She shook her hand softly in her hands.
"Seven days' worth of pain all built up in my brain. Only one way it gets released."
She raised her arms over her head, crossing them at the wrists, and began repeatedly bobbing her head with the beat.
"So, my head starts movin' north and south…"
Continuing to bounce her head, she added a deep knee bend, twisting on her heels to shake her backside back and forth hard enough to flip her pleated skirt up in the breeze and expose the pink body suit she wore under it.
"... and my ass goes west and east!"
Ranko tittered into her microphone as she raised herself back into a standing position to the roaring approval of the capacity crowd.
"Honestly, babe, I've given you plenty of leeway."
Emi slipped out of Sanyo's grasp, rushing to the back of the stage. She leaned over the keyboard stand, extending her butt out as far as she could toward the crowd without putting any weight on Jacob's instrument. She reached over the keyboard, running her hand down the keyboardist's cheek.
It's part of the show, Zoe thought, grumbling as they whacked the snare drum in front of them a bit harder than usual with their pink glowing drumsticks.
"If this keeps up…" Ranko shrugged her shoulders as if to imply that she was helpless to control what came next. "... I'm prob'ly gonna have to go home with the deejay."
Masaki Tabata swiveled his chair to the right, uncapping a series of nine switches in a row. A long strip of masking tape was affixed to the control board above them, labeled with the number 15. Under the switches, three smaller strips of tape identified the leftmost trio as group A, the middle group as B, and the three on the far right as group C. "Ready," the pyrotechnician announced.
"And it'll happen so damn rapidly, you'll have to watch on re-plaa-aay!" Ranko roared, again running the full length of the stage and gesturing upward with her hands to encourage the crowd to rise. "Here we go! Here we go!"
Commanded by Ariel, the video board resumed displaying the instructional video of Hitomi and Emi demonstrating the dance Ranko hoped to popularize.
"I've gotta…"
"BEEEEE!" shouted more than half the packed stadium stands while Ranko and her dance troupe gestured to themselves with their thumbs.
"... the one that's rockin' out the hardest in the club, and…"
"OHHHH!" the crowd roared, exactly as they had been trained to do, many of them joining Ranko and the other performers in wiggling their fingers in the air.
"... we're gonna go until the SUN! COMES! UP!"
A booming "YOOOOUUUU!" rolled down the bleachers like the sound of an approaching stampede of buffalo as the five dancers pointed out at the crowd.
"... know what ya gotta do, and who ya gotta do it with!"
"N!" came the next thundering response from the frenzied Firebirds, prompted by Emi's sign on the video board, as the dancers all panned the crowd with their hands.
Unlike the previous letters, Ranko joined the audience in singing the N sound, only because it was needed to complete the first word of the subsequent line. "An… yone can do it, if you're not afraid to wiggle it! Ya…"
"SEEEE!" shouted countless revelers, their hands shielding their eyes like a regiment of soldiers saluting their general.
"... me on the floor givin' it all that I got, so…"
"EEEEEE!"
Ranko nodded, again singing the sound with the crowd so that she could complete the word it began. "EEE… ven if you're tired, pound your drink and take your shot!" The songstress punched upward with her right arm this time, instead dragging her left wrist across her face as if wiping her lips dry after the invisible shot of liquor she had just thrown back.
"I feel the thump of the bass," Emi sang, jamming her arms forward with a hard downward stomp.
"... and I'll be up in your face," Hitomi sang in a near-purr, reaching up behind her for Utaru's neck as the two danced on the catwalk.
"You gotta shake it with me, right where it…" Ranko sang, pointing out to the crowd and gesturing toward herself.
The audience understood, shouting the words as loudly as they could. "COUNTS! COUNTS! COUNTS!"
Ranko rewarded them with the most forceful thrashing of her hips she could manage, her back turned to the crowd. She glanced back over her shoulder at them, flashing them a coy smile. "So, if ya wanna be with me…" Ranko hopped up, quickly spinning in the air to plant her feet forward just in time to execute the sped-up repetition of the chorus' main choreography.
"B! O! U! N! C! EEEEE!"
Ranko was not due to play in Sapporo, Japan for another two days, but she was relatively certain that if Kumiko Iwata opened the window of her dorm room at the animation college there, she could have heard the manmade earthquake that accompanied the end of each chorus.
"You need a little bit o' bounce!"
Led by Crash and followed quickly by Jacob, the key of the dance beat dropped a third of an octave and sped up. Hitomi gripped onto the rail at the back of the catwalk as it began lowering to the stage floor again.
Ranko dropped out of her singing voice, performing the start of the final verse in a fast-paced rap. She reduced her dancing to a mere sway of her hips as she did.
"So if you think I'm slowin' down, you're probably dreamin'. They're gonna have to drag me off this dance floor kickin' and screamin'. No time for restin' our feet, 'cause they're still pumpin' the beat, and I love how it feels!"
The flirtatious redhead turned to the side, kicking one of her legs up behind her until her sparkling silver shoe made contact with the back of her fuku skirt.
"I've partied at least twice as hard as you tonight… and I did it in heels!"
Hitomi stepped off of the catwalk onto the stage platform as soon as Utaru had freed her from the safety cable. "Ba-da-ba-bop," she sang, sashaying to join Ranko on her right at center stage.
"Tonight, I'm shakin' off my sorrows!" Ranko sang, returning to her singing voice and wiggling in place like a puppy that had just come in out of the rain.
"Ba-da-ba-bop!" Emi parroted as she split from Sanyo to flank Ranko on her left.
"So even if I'm broke and gotta beg and borrow…"
Ranko reached into the hip pocket of her skirt, fishing around in it for a moment before yanking her hand out and throwing it upward. In time with her gesture, two confetti cannons belched a torrent of multicolored slips of paper that had been printed to resemble money from the board game Monopoly over the first twenty rows of the audience.
"I'll plop down another cover; do it all! Again! To-mor-ROW!"
The frenzied crowd roared as the video board switched to a view from the camera mounted above the stage, which had not been used since the end of Self-Rescuing Princess. It panned over the crowd, seeming to indicate that after multiple repetitions of the instructions, Ranko and her retinue trusted them to execute the dance on their own.
"ONE MORE TIME!" Ranko jumped as high as she could, punching at the air as Shinji and Zoe transitioned into the rhythm backing the chorus.
"I gotta BE! the one that's rockin' out the hardest in the club!" Ranko roared, gesturing to herself with both of her thumbs.
In the control booth, Masa flipped the three switches marked A. He bobbed his head once to indicate the passage of a single beat, then flipping the switches for group B. After one more beat, the three switches for group C were activated as well.
"OHH!!! We're gonna go until the…"
An eruption of orange flame lit up the night sky above the stadium as three fireworks exploded in the air, ballooning into a starburst that illuminated the space.
"SUN!"
A second trio of explosions boomed overhead in time with the beat.
"COMES!"
A third set of blasts rained even more sparks down from the sky. The smoky haze in the air glowed a dull orange, as if Ranko Tendo had commanded the sun itself to peek down on Jamsil Baseball Stadium in the middle of a cold December night.
"UP! YOU know what you gotta do, and who you wanna do it with!" Ranko all but shouted as she pointed out with the crowd flanked by her backup dancers. She wasn't certain if the crowd could even hear her between the sonic booms of the fireworks and the thundering din of their own cheers.
"AN-YONE can do it, if you're not afraid to wiggle it!" All three of the women slashed their hips this way and that. Hitomi's longer skirt wrapped around her legs, almost tripping her. Ranko did not have that problem, though given how cold she was with her thighs exposed in her shorter skirt, she would have happily traded with her brunette friend.
"You SEE me on the floor givin' it all that I got, so EEEEE-ven if you're tired, pound your drink and take your shot!"
Ariel panned the camera across the crowd, zooming it out to fit as many dancing Firebirds on the video screen as he could.
"I feel the thump of the bass…" Emi sang, thrashing her head to face Hitomi as if trying to hand her the crowd's attention as she stomped forward on her heels.
"... and I'll beup in your face!" Hitomi continued as she and Emi both languidly reached up over their shoulders to embrace their invisible boyfriends one final time.
Ranko raised both her hands to the sky, shimmying her hips hard with each heavy hit of Zoe's bass drum without moving her feet. "You gotta shake it with us right where it…"
"COUNTS! COUNTS! COUNTS!" the stadium roared back.
"So if you wanna be with me…" Ranko sang, but she did not start on the shortened version of the choreography as she had with the previous three choruses.
Masa uncapped another nine switches on his control board. All of them were arrayed under a strip of masking tape labeled 15D. "Three. Two," he droned into his headset.
"B! O! U! N! C! E!" the crowd shouted in unison, though they seemed surprised that Ranko and her cohorts had stopped dancing.
"So if you wanna be with me…" Ranko repeated, a mischievous grin on her face. Again, she stood still.
"B! O! U! N! C! E!" came an even louder retort, the crowd having taken Ranko's repetition as a challenge to increase their intensity for the end of the song.
"So, if you wanna be with me…" Ranko said in a speaking voice, indicating to the crowd that it was not a call to repeat the spelled-out song title a third time. "... then, listen carefully…"
Scooping both of his hands under the exposed bank of switches, Masa thrust them all upward at once.
"You need a little bit o' bounce!"
The sky above the stadium exploded in colored light, illuminating all five dancers as they leapt into the air.