"Na, na-na, nah! Na, na-na, not yours!"
"Okay, here we go! Spot A, stay on Ranko, no matter what!" Ariel commanded.
Utaru rushed to the back right corner of the stage, ducking behind the canvas changing screen that had remained there since the ending of Self-Rescuing Princess.
The four instruments threw themselves into the hard-hitting beat, with Crash's guitar squealing into the lead. Sanyo slowly started scrambling backward on his hands, sliding his backside a little further away from the raging redhead with each push. He flailed his legs somewhat as if trying, and failing in his state of panic, to clamor to his feet. The spotlights followed the singer and her prey, the rest of the stage and the video screen behind it still mostly shrouded in darkness.
Ranko took a deep breath, smirking with delight at the crowd's excitement for the surprise encore song. And you guys literally don't know the half of it yet, she thought as she opened her mouth and began rocketing through the first rapped verse of the Wildfire Tour's true finale.
"I guess you thought that if you followed me around, then I'd give in to you? I probably should tell ya straight: I'm really not that into you! The way you drive me nuts on stage is gettin' kinda scary, so…"
Ranko turned her back to the prone performer, stretching out her arms to gesture to her legion of loyal listeners.
"... we're gonna send the message to ya CLEARLY, and IN STEREO!"
In fact, with some twenty thousand cheering voices raining down on her from both decks of the mostly-round baseball stadium, it was a lot closer to surround sound.
"You must see how I look, and think that I'm a perfect angel, 'cause…" Ranko rapped, flashing her Firebirds a cherubic smile and folding her hands in front of her chest like any number of Roman Renaissance-era statues she'd seen in her humanities textbooks. A white canister light blinked on almost directly over her head, giving her an almost angelic glow.
"'... you didn't seem concerned that, when I'm mad…"
The redhead took two running steps in Sanyo's direction, leaping high into the air. She drove her leg downward as hard as she could, stomping down on the stage floor with the heel of her sparkling silver pumps mere centimeters from Sanyo's head.
At the instant her foot touched the ground, the entire front edge of the stage erupted in a wall of orange flames.
"... I'm FUCKING DANGEROUS!"
The redhead laughed sardonically, rolling her eyes with a shrug as she glared down at the prone dancer.
"You wanna be the guy for me?! Oh, man! You must be jokin'!"
Sanyo rolled over on the stage floor, trying to put a little distance between himself and Ranko. She charged after him, the spotlight following her every move. The rest of the stage remained dark.
Emi and Hitomi hurried to the back right of the stage. Hitomi nodded to Utaru as he returned from backstage, now dressed in a pair of gray slacks and a lavender polo shirt. He made his way to the bedroom set that had remained shrouded in darkness since the end of Turn Me Off/Turn Me On, flopping onto the bed and propping his cheek up on his hand. Hitomi and Emi dropped to their hands and knees, crawling under the bed facing the crowd - though both were hidden by the oversized purple comforter that hung all the way to the stage floor.
"And if I feel your fingers on my ass again…" Ranko lifted her leg high, until it was almost completely perpendicular to the stage floor. She drove her leg down hard, again mere centimeters from Sanyo's right hand. She was careful to ensure her toes hit the stage first, after the incident in Kuala Lumpur where the heel of her shoe had broken during the maneuver.
"... they'll wind up broken!"
With a few deft motions on the control board to Ariel's right, the video screen came to life again. It displayed the same bedroom wall backdrop that had been shown during the opening of There Are No Words, complete with the photo of Ranko's full family at the release party for Phoenix Rising. Through the window, however, a thunderstorm could be seen. The band let the rhythm of Not Yours, Don't Touch fall silent after a few trailing notes.
The spotlight followed Ranko toward the bedroom setup. When she neared the bed, Ariel reactivated the canister lights above the furniture, revealing Utaru waiting on the bed for her. Ranko sighed, letting herself flop to the bed with a truly exasperated expression on her face. She scooped her beloved stuffed unicorn into her arms, giving Starlight a tight squeeze in her lap. Ranko gazed down longingly at the purple down comforter covering the bed, intensely wishing she could crawl under it to escape the bitter cold. Just a few more minutes, Ranko, she coaxed herself.
"Hey. What's the matter, babe?" Utaru sat up on the bed, rubbing her shoulders reassuringly through the thin top of her school uniform.
Normally, Ranko had to block out her desire to shudder at his tender touch, but at the moment, she was so cold that she was grateful for it. "You don't really wanna talk about it, Utaru. Just leave it alone." She hugged Starlight tighter, hoping the unicorn's plush body could at least block the cuttingly frigid air from reaching her chest for a few moments. Her voice was almost entirely devoid of emotion.
A low murmur arose from the audience at the strange developments onstage. Ranko had performed a scant single verse of one of her most popular hits. The bedroom scene was lit and staged as if it were part of the performance rather than a spontaneous conversation, but to what end, they could not ascertain.
"Come on," Utaru urged, his voice being picked up by the directional microphone hidden between the pillows on the wheeled bed. "What's going on?!"
Ranko rocketed to her feet, leaving Starlight in the indentation in the plush bedcovers that her backside had vacated. She whirled on her heels, defiantly resting her fists on the waistband of her pleated navy skirt. She spoke in a new tone of voice - and it implied danger in every syllable she spat at the man on the bed. "I'm warning you, Utaru… If you ask me again…"
A loud crack of thunder blasted through the massive speakers, and the animated window on the video board flashed with white light. A quick flicker of the white strobe lights surrounding the stage helped to bolster the effect.
"... I'm gonna answer you."
Utaru slipped his backside off of the bed, letting his feet come to rest on the stage on the far side of the bed from the perspective of the audience. He turned to face the songstress, leaning forward on the mattress with both hands. "Would you please just talk to me?!"
"Alright. But you asked for it!" Another audio sample of a thunderclap crashed through the arena. Before the flash of white light that accompanied it had blinked out, Crash's guitar and Jacob's keyboard had resumed playing. It was not the rhythm of Not Yours, Don't Touch they played, however.
The capacity crowd recognized the bouncy tune nonetheless, erupting in an explosion of cheers as they realized that they would not be receiving one of the greatest hits from the Dapper Dragons' first studio album as an encore performance, but two at once.
"You say… you're not… sorry that we're lovers, babe! Why'd you… hide me…"
Ranko grabbed the purple blanket, throwing it back and uncovering the pillows as if she expected to find another girl hiding under it. She was careful not to slide the puffy comforter further back, however, and risk exposing Hitomi and Emi hiding under the wheeled bed frame.
"... underneath the covers, then?! You tell me I don't have any flaws, but then…"
Ranko stalked over to the armoire, throwing both of its doors open violently. Not only was the wedding dress still hanging in it from There Are No Words, but the silver dress she had worn through Self-Rescuing Princess and the red leather jacket she'd opened the show in hung beside it as well.
"... why's my stuff still locked up in your closet, then?!"
Utaru darted around the foot of the bed, reaching out for Ranko as if to hug her. Ranko extended her arm, jabbing it into his sternum and pushing him over the headboard back onto the mattress.
"You tell everybody that there's no one here, and lock the door and touch me - and it sends me to the stratosphere."
The young man crawled up the mattress toward the headboard as Ranko strode around to the front of the bed.
"I don't understand the need for this mysti-i-i-ique!" Ranko turned her back to the bed, waving dismissively over her shoulder at the young man as she faced the crowd.
"If I'm so good for you, WHY do you sneak?!"
Utaru yanked the duvet cover back, rolling away from the edge with it toward the middle of the bed like a sleeping bag.
Ranko's two backup singers, now exposed under the bed in their faux school uniforms, launched directly into Sneak's chorus supported by the band behind them.
"Sneak, baby! Sneak, baby! Don't get caught!"
As Utaru freed himself from the blanket, he found Ranko wagging her finger in his face. "You don't want anyone to know about this thing we've got!" she sang.
Hitomi swayed her head side to side, rocking her body on her elbows in the claustrophobic space under the bed. Emi's body never broke contact with hers, wiggling in unison with her partner as the pair continued the chorus in a call-and-response style.
"Sneak, baby! Sneak, baby! Don't tell yet…"
Ranko leaned forward, reaching out and wiping Utaru's forehead with the back of her hand. She threw her hand toward the stage hard as if trying to shake off the sweat that she'd removed from his brow.
"... and let 'em think it's just the temperature that makes you sweat!"
She was fairly certain, with the thermometer backstage having dipped below minus-two degrees Celsius, that it was not.
The spotlight trailed Ranko as she made her way back to the middle of the stage. The main stage lights remained dimmed, allowing Hitomi and Emi to extract themselves from under the bed under cover of darkness. Again, the four instruments on the stage fell silent.
"Sorry about that, everybody!" Ranko sighed, shrugging her shoulders as she addressed her audience in a slightly perturbed speaking voice. "Freakin' boys, right? Can't live with 'em, can't live without 'em. Sometimes, ya just wanna…"
Ariel unmuted his headset, blanking the video screen again from his control board. "Give me a follow spot on Sanyo, right now!"
"There you are!" Sanyo jogged over to Ranko from the right side of the stage, where he had been waiting near Shinji as the bassist played the tune of Sneak. He reached for her shoulder.
Ranko stepped forward quickly, causing the dancer to grasp at air. She rolled her eyes skyward, her shoulders slumping as she groaned into her microphone in disgust. The frustrated grunt was the band's cue to resume playing the melody of Not Yours, Don't Touch as the mashup oscillated back to its first constituent song. The video screen lit up anew, showing a slow-motion version of the video that had played during Hey, Jerk! that featured Ranko, Hitomi and Emi tearing up the pictures of boys.
"I'm gonna tell you one more time…" Ranko rapped, whirling to face the current source of her irritation. "... and maaaaaybe I'll get through to you."
She yanked at both of her beribboned pigtails, throwing them back over her shoulders. "... 'cause, it's painfully obvious: you DON'T know who you're talking to!"
Ranko again turned to address the crowd, jabbing over her shoulder with her thumb at the scapegoated dancer meant to stand in for Saburo Kimura. She threw a side-eye hard enough to tilt over a ten-deck cruise ship.
"He thinks that he can corner me on stage, and get my kisses, but he's just the type'a guy who tries to hit the floor…"
The singer turned her body again to face Sanyo, but she let her head droop down, shaking it in amused disbelief as she looked down at her feet.
"... and misses."
Her voice was backstopped by Shinji's, echoing the last word in his booming bass tone.
She looked up at the young man, clicking her tongue at him with a little tsk. "I honestly can say, I've never met someone more lame than you."
Ranko held out her hand, making a fist over it with her right hand and rocking it in her palm as if using an unseen arcade machine joystick.
"It's pretty sad when Super Mario has way more game than you!"
Hitomi and Emi rushed up behind Ranko, taking positions on either of her hips.
"Dubba-dubba-dubba," Shinji intoned deeply into his headset microphone, beatboxing the introduction to the famous music from the castle levels of Super Mario Bros.
Emi rocked her hips to the side, away from Ranko, with her hands finding their way to her waist. "We think that you should take a beat." she half-rapped, half-sang.
"Examine your priorities!" Hitomi added, turning her back to Emi and leaning back until their shoulders touched. She crossed her arms over her chest defiantly.
"Buy tickets for t'morrow if you're tryin' to see more of me!" Ranko finished, pushing her way between the two girls. "... 'Cause, I know that you want me, boy! I un-der-stand!"
The crowd roared in appreciation as the fan-favorite chorus of Not Yours, Don't Touch began at long last. Emi hopped on the balls of her feet, frantically gesturing skyward with her arms to indicate that they should get more involved. Having done so thrice, she joined Hitomi in circling Sanyo like sharks sensing blood in the water.
"But, we're gonna have to ask you, boy, to…" Hitomi sang. Before she could reach the end of the line, Emi pointed emphatically out at the thousands of standing concertgoers.
They clearly understood the assignment.
"WATCH! YOUR! HAAANDS!" the half-frozen Firebirds screamed.
Ariel surveyed the stage as best he could in the dark from his vantage point high above the stage. "Okay, spot B, standby on the guitar position."
"You should know by now, that isn't so polite. To. Do!" Emi admonished, wagging her finger back and forth in Sanyo's face as she crossed between him and Ranko.
Hitomi nodded, cocking her head with an expression of disappointment and almost mocking pity as she regarded the poor backup dancer that had been selected to receive the brunt of the trio's musical ire. "Keep your fingers off'a things that don't belong! To! You!"
Ranko folded her arms, leaning on Hitomi's shoulder and staring down Sanyo over it. She thrashed her backside with the music in her short pleated uniform skirt as she sang.
"Boy, I never really liked you that much!"
Emi pointed out at the raucous crowd again, this time with both hands. Some fifteen thousand voices finished the chorus that the performers themselves did not.
"NOT YOURS! DON'T TOUCH!"
Each of the four words was accompanied by a short burst of orange flame belched out of all nine of the jets mounted on the front edge of the stage.
"And, go for spot B. Spot A, stay with Ranko." Ariel punched up the next scene on the video board, summoning an idyllic vista depicting a tree-covered walkway in the park surrounding the Tokyo Metropolitan Library.
The spotlight illuminated Utaru as he huddled with Crash and Shinji. Both of the instrumentalists still bore their guitars, but neither were playing them, as the music had again been suspended during the transition between songs in the epic finale mashup.
Ranko led her cadre of dancers toward center stage, leaving Sanyo behind. As soon as Sanyo was cloaked in darkness, he scurried backstage to change his clothes again.
"So, you guys wanna hit up a bar around here somewhere later? I've heard good things about the soju in this town." Utaru laughed, reaching out to give Crash a playful punch on the arm.
The audience whooped in support of their local libation of choice.
Shinji crinkled his nose, shaking his head slightly. "I don't know, man. It's awfully cold!" He crossed his arms over his chest for warmth, resting his elbows on the top of his bass guitar. "Tomorrow for sure, though!"
With a nod, Crash gestured over his shoulder with his thumb at Ranko, Hitomi and Emi, who stood at center stage merely a meter and a half away. "Yeah! You should ask Emi to come with! I'm pretty sure she likes you!"
Hitomi frowned at Crash's words, throwing her arm over Ranko's shoulder and pulling her away from the group. "Hey," she said in a quiet, conciliatory voice into her microphone. "Don't worry about it. They don't know."
"And, spot B, stick with Utaru!" Ariel commanded, orchestrating the scene from his ratty chair in the control booth.
Utaru walked away from the group, pausing a few meters away from both the instrumentalists and the girls. The two guitarists fell back into darkness, and Crash and Shinji hurried back to their positions. Their hands returned to their instruments, and the rhythm of Sneak began anew - but in a lower, almost mournful key.
Ranko nodded absently, looking down at her hands as if trying to make sense of the wedding band on her left hand.
"You tell me you've started hearin' wedding bells. Still, your friends try to hook you up with someone else."
With the spotlight following him, Utaru made his way toward the three women.
"When you talk to them, it's like you don't know I'm alive."
Ranko's eyes brightened and she smiled widely as soon as Utaru reached down for her hand.
"The second that they look away, you push me into overdrive. I can't help it, fallin' underneath your spell."
She released his hand, taking a few steps back and crossing her arms defensively over her chest.
"You're the best at kiss, and kiss, and never tell! We're living in a game of hide and seek."
The redhead walked away, heading back to the bed in the back right corner of the stage. She flopped down on it, scooping Starlight up in her arms. She held the little stuffed unicorn by its front legs, making it dance along with Hitomi and Emi's words:
"If she's so good for you, why do you sneak?!"
"Kill spot B, and standby on Sanyo," Ariel said, quickly changing the video board's output back to the bedroom wall scene.
Ranko rolled over onto her back on the bed, kicking her legs over the headboard in time with the music as she played with Starlight.
"Sneak, baby! Sneak, baby! No one knows… how many nights I've lay here beggin' you to hold me close."
She set the unicorn down on one of the pillows, beginning to trace her fingers tauntingly up her goosebump-pocked legs toward the hemline of her skirt. Even the whisper-soft touch of her own hand was painful on her hypersensitive skin, given the blistering cold she continued to endure. Just a few more minutes, she coaxed herself.
"Sneak, baby! Sneak, baby! Tell those lies, and don't admit the way my body leaves ya hypnotized!"
Backstage, Norio unplugged one of the space heaters Kaz had installed earlier in the evening. "Ari, I'm gonna run back to the girls' dressing room and set up one of the heaters on full blast, so they can get warm as soon as they get done," he announced into his headset radio. He adjusted his volume halfway through the sentence, as he no longer needed to shout over the music. Only Shinji continued to play, a low, repetitive thrum that kept the pace between scenes.
Ranko slipped off of the bed on the side facing the crowd. She bent down, holding the footboard for balance, and lifted the purple blanket covering the mattress. There, she found the black school satchel Norio had left for her, pulling it out and clutching its handle in both of her hands. The display board switched back to the park scene as Ranko scurried to center stage to join Hitomi and Emi.
"Good call, Nori," Ariel replied as he released the controls for the screen. "Aaand, spot B, c'mon back and give me Sanyo."
"'Sup, girls?" Ranko waved to the pair, grinning as Hitomi gave her an arm hug. The three took off walking together toward stage left.
They only made it a few steps before Sanyo was bathed in light, directly in their path. He walked up to the three of them, now wearing a boys' school uniform in the same colors as the girls', complete with a skinny necktie. "Hey! How's it goin', Ranko?! Can we talk a minute?"
Figures, he gets a freakin' jacket, Ranko thought jealously. It made it easier for her to play-act anger to project at the strapping young dancer. "Really, dude?! I mean…" She sighed, rolling her eyes and letting her head slump forward in disgust. It was the band's cue to resume play, and they again launched into Not Yours, Don't Touch's taunting meter.
"I understand you're thinking, dude." Ranko ran her hands down her body, smoothing out her skirt and giving her hip a hard thrust to the side. "You're diggin' my aesthetic, but the problem is…"
She turned to face him again, motioning to him with both of her hands as she moved them downward in the air as if trying to encapsulate the entire aura coming off of his body.
"... your vibe is comin' off as just… pathetic."
Ranko fanned her face with her right hand, despite the fact that cooling off was the absolute last thing she wanted to do at the moment. With her left, she pointed up at the video board. The park scene quickly crossfaded into a sea of orange flame. On the screen, a recording of Ranko strolled into frame from the left and held up the placard that read WARNING: CONTENTS WILL BE HOT, just as it had done during the performance of I Am Fire.
"I'm too hot for you to handle!Should've read the warning label! Forget being unsexy…"
The redhead on the stage pulled down the hand that was pointing at the screen, instead tracing loops around her left temple with an outstretched index finger. Seeming to sense that she was no longer needed, the Ranko on the video screen strolled out of frame toward stage right.
"... what you're doing is unstable!"
Sanyo approached Ranko, gesturing with his arms as if he sought to plead his case.
Tittering loudly, Hitomi stepped between the slack-jawed young man and Ranko. "The fact you even think you're in her league is just adorable!" she rapped, waving him off with the back of her hand.
Ranko nodded her head at Sanyo, standing on her tiptoes to ensure he could see her over the shorter girl's shoulder. Her face looked as if she had just finished a full platter of four-day old sushi.
"Dude, I've seen you at your best, and, boy, your best is fucking horrible!"
Hitomi turned to face Ranko, resting her hand on the redhead's sternum and gently pushing her backward away from her overzealous suitor.
Sanyo attempted to follow, but this time Emi blocked his path, wagging her finger in his face. "So, think about the way you act, and maybe re-evaluate."
"Okay! Spot B, back to Utaru!" Again, Ariel reached for the control board to restore the bedroom wall image to the video screen. I wish the timing was the same every time, so we could have pre-cut this whole video rather than doing it live every time, he thought with a low growl. Freaking girl likes to ad-lib way too damned much for that, especially when she knows the show is about to end.
Ranko nodded, waving him off dismissively as she turned her back to him and began making her way back toward the bedroom set. "You can't get with me for a second, let alone a second date!"
The band, less Shinji's bass guitar, paused for yet another song transition. Ranko flopped heavily onto the bed near the footboard as the second spotlight flashed into her face. The white canister light above the bed came on again as well, revealing Utaru laying on the bed behind Ranko. He scooted up toward the headboard, sitting up with his back against it. Ranko turned to face him, crossing her legs on the mattress at the ankles.
Utaru opened his mouth to speak, but Ranko beat him to it. She leaned forward, leaning over both pairs of legs to rest her left index finger over his lips. As she did, the backing rhythm of Sneak resumed, driven primarily by Crash and Jacob.
Ranko lifted her right hand, holding up her index finger over her mouth to shush herself as well as her stage partner. She clicked her tongue twice, as if to pass judgement on something entirely naughty she had witnessed.
Sanyo peeled off his necktie, jogging to the back corner of the stage and quickly tossing it behind the curtain. The choreography called for him to also strip off his navy coat, but he opted not to do so.
"You made me your dirty little secret. Then…"
She pulled back the hand that covered Utaru's lips, letting it instead travel agonizingly slowly up the half-frozen bare skin of her left leg.
"... you made me your dirty little freak again!"
The audience, most of whom had still yet to retake their seats since the song had begun, whooped and cheered at the sultry purr with which the salacious songstress emitted the line. There were a goodly number of catcalling whistles as well, but Ranko had long ago learned to tune them out.
"I'm a good girl! Prim and proper innocence!" Ranko sang, affecting her tone of voice as if to protest that the crowd's reaction to the spiciest verse of Sneak thus far was, indeed, entirely unwarranted. She put on the most angelic, adorable face she could manage, recalling the thousands of times she had used the same tactic to score herself free food from unsuspecting street vendors in the months she had spent homeless.
The sentiment was immediately belied by her left hand finally completing its journey up her leg. There, the very tip of her thumb slipped ever so slightly under the hem of her pleated navy school uniform skirt.
"They don't see your fingers creepin' up my dress!"
The roar of the crowd assured Ranko that, in fact, they had definitely noticed.
"I'll keep quiet for ya, baby. It's okay." She hovered her left hand over her mouth, leaving just enough space under it for the microphone arm of her headset. Her right hand clasped over it, joining in the vain effort to silence that which had to be said.
"Hold my breath…"
Ranko cupped her hands, inhaling deeply through her mouth. The gasping sound was clearly picked up by the microphone, and when she resumed singing, it was in a breathy bedroom whisper.
"... so they don't hear you take my breath away.*
The singer let her body slump backward over the footboard of the bed. It was all she could do to keep from audibly yelping as the bare skin on the back of her neck contacted the cold metal. Her twin pigtails fell back until they nearly touched the stage floor.
"The way you move my body makes me weak."
Utaru remained in his seated position. His role was simple enough throughout Sneak's third verse; all he needed to do was sit still and look entirely ashamed. He acquitted himself at this brilliantly, occasionally rubbing his temples or slumping heavily as Ranko's words struck home.
Ranko balled both of her hands into fists, pounding them down on the mattress at her sides in frustration.
"If I'm so good for you, why do you sneak?!"
She launched herself back up to a seated position, sending her pigtails flying forward over her shoulders hard enough to slightly dislodge the red bow clipped into the right one. Ranko spun on her backside to face the crowd, letting her legs dangle off the bed with her ankles crossed.
"Sneak, baby! Sneak, baby! Hide your face…"
She held her hands up in front of her face again, creating a wall to shield her eyes from view.
"... so no one figures out it's you touchin' my…"
She gasped loudly again, and her hands moved from her face to the narrow space between her thighs. Her gesture eliminated every scintilla of vaguery that the radio-safe lyrics were intended to create.
"... special place!"
Ranko reached behind her on the bed, scooping Starlight up into her arms. She swayed on the bed, using her hands to make the stuffed unicorn kick its front legs in time with her movements as if it were a one-plushie chorus line.
"Sneak, baby! Sneak, baby! You're my dream!"
"Okay, Spot B. Stick with me. Standby on Hitomi," Ariel commanded. He did not worry about its absence prematurely darkening the bedroom scene, as the canister lamp directly above it still beamed down from the trusswork.
She hugged Starlight close to her chest, lowering her chin and squealing loudly into the unicorn's back. The sound was still carried clearly through her microphone, as was the lascivious tone with which she completed the verse.
"That's why I'm buried in my pillow when you make me SCREAM!"
Ranko kicked her legs back and forth excitedly, as if she had just received the best news of her life. She set Starlight down on the mattress, waving cutely to her before hopping to her feet and dashing toward center stage.
Ariel triggered the next transition on the video board, this time to the animated castle background last seen during Self-Rescuing Princess. The character Kumiko had created was not present, merely the environment itself. "Go, spot!"
This time, Jacob's keyboard did not cease. The tune it played was neither the bouncy spy movie-themed rhythm of Sneak, nor the lilting, sing-song melody of Not Yours, Don't Touch - but something in between them. Zoe and Shinji continued to support the throughline of the rhythm to keep the tempo as the songs continued to blend, leaving only Crash's electric guitar and the vocalists to alternate between songs. Both did so, slamming directly into the main hook of the taunting tune as the second spotlight ignited to reveal Emi and Hitomi physically pushing Sanyo back on the stage to make room for Ranko to advance.
"You thought that you'd convince me, and I'd play your little scene?!" Ranko stomped her foot, pointing up at the video screen just as the animated princess made her way into the courtyard of the castle.
"Well, you're in MY castle now!"
Hitomi continued to make a show of restraining Sanyo, but her companion turned her back to him, gesturing wildly to the crowd with both of her arms as Ranko continued the verse.
"And, on THIS stage?!"
Emi extended her arms outward, pointing with two fingers on each hand. She wordlessly conducted an orchestra of human instruments, commanding them to play their part in the symphony that was Sanyo's aural annihilation.
They responded accordingly.
"ALL HAIL THE QUEEN!" roared some twenty thousand voices that blended into one. On the video screen, the anime princess gripped at her skirts, bending her knees into a low, respectful curtsey.
"Stay with Sanyo now, spot," Ariel coaxed.
"Hey!" Hitomi all but shouted, pulling her arm back after having driven Sanyo back until nearly a third of the stage's width separated him from Ranko. She sneered at him, cocking her head and regarding him with some combination of amusement and pity. "Are you okay? You're lookin' like your confidence is laggin'!"
Ranko shrugged as she regarded the crowd, making a thumbs down gesture and snickering audibly as Hitomi finished her line. "Guess that's just the price you pay when losers try to dance with Dragons!"
She stalked after Hitomi, jabbing her hand forward accusingly at Sanyo as she approached him. "Dude, I don't know what went through your head."
Ranko lifted her hand, folding her hand over into the shape of a duck bill at shoulder level. With her voice rising into a high, nasal register, she moved her fingers up and down over her thumb as if she were manipulating a sock puppet. "She's hot! I'm gonna date her!" she rapped in the mocking tone.
The cartoon princess on the video screen jumped up in the air, beads of sweat flying off of her forehead as she turned to stage left and ran out of the frame. She flailed her arms in the air as if she were utterly terrified of whatever chased her. In an instant, a wipe cut from the right engulfed the entire screen in animated orange flame.
"Boy, my…"
"RISE!" shouted all seven of the permanent Dapper Dragons at once, just as they had during the performance of Ranko's first-ever original song. Likewise, the word RISE emerged again from the flame on the video display in brimstone block letters.
"... was meteoric!"
The four romaji letters on the screen seemed to melt, coalescing into a fiery ball of rock and fire. It seemed to suck up all the flame of the background as well, until the molten meteor lingered in the upper left hand corner of the massive screen against a dark starfield. The cartoon comet roared down the screen diagonally to the right, screaming directly toward where Shinji stood at the lower right corner.
"Now, I'll leave you in a crater!"
As soon as the animated meteor exited the frame in the corner of the display, all nine of the fire jets at the front edge of the stage erupted to their maximum output. A thundering boom sound sample played over Zoe's furious kicks on the bass drum pedal, shaking the concrete foundations of the decade-old sporting venue. All of the stage lights flickered red and orange, as if the whole of the Jamsil Baseball Stadium field had been ignited in an inferno summoned from the heavens by Ranko's verbal command alone. A new wall of fire began rising on the bottom of the video screen, growing higher with each passing beat.
"Your lines are tired and laughable!" Ranko insisted, holding up her duckbill-formed hand. Again, she taunted Sanyo in her nasal, mocking tone, moving her fingers as if her hand and not her mouth was spitting the lyrics. "I'm burning with desire!" she croaked.
The animated fire on the video board seemed to congeal in its center into a majestic flaming phoenix in flight, which soared up to the middle of the screen and spread its wings wide.
"Bitch, you're talking to a PHOENIX!" Ranko roared. With a loud screeeeee that nearly drowned out the instruments, the firebird dove down toward the stage. It disappeared from the frame, and the nonet of flamethrowers at the stage's front edge blasted skyward again.
"I was FUCKING BORN IN FIRE!"
Ranko continued directly into the chorus, raising her voice to do so over the absolutely deafening clamor of her legion of Firebirds. The nine flamethrowers remained lit, casting otherworldly shadows of Ranko and her backup dancers as they advanced on Sanyo together.
"I know that you want me, boy! I un-der-stand!" Ranko sang. "But I'm gonna have to ask you, boy, to watch your hands!"
She grinned as countless concertgoers sang the final three words along with her, just as they had been prompted to do in the previous iteration of the chorus. "You should know by now, that isn't so polite to do. Keep your fingers off'a things that don't belong to you!"
It was not Ranko, or even her backup singers, that uttered the next line, but Crash and Shinji - the former in his rich tenor, and the latter in an earth-shattering subharmonic bass tone. With the sound coming from the shadowed back third of the stage rather than the spotlighted performers, it had the effect of implying that the voices came from nowhere at all and yet everywhere at once, as if nature itself had judged Sanyo to be unworthy of the prize he sought.
"Dude, she's never gonna like you that much!"
Leaning forward and wagging her finger side-to-side, Hitomi tittered tauntingly into her microphone. She raised her voice into a higher octave, affecting a cutesy tone as if speaking to a toddler. "Not yo-ours!"
"Don't TOUCH!" Emi added in a sharp, scolding tone. She extended her arm outward like a crossing guard at a busy intersection, indicating Sanyo should come no further.
The flamethrowers blinked out. So, too, did Sanyo's spotlight. The video screen, which had been blank since the firebird exploded, began displaying the nightclub scene that had accompanied Turn Me Off/Turn Me On. It had been changed from a view of the Phoenix's stage, as that video clip had backdropped You Don't Know Me in the first two legs of the tour. Once Ranko replaced the song with Just This Once in the set list, the callback to the cut song had been rendered somewhat meaningless.
Again, only Crash's guitar changed from one song to the other, the other three instruments having settled comfortably into their new, hybrid melody that blended the key elements of both songs.
"Where the fuck is my smoke, guys?!" Ariel hunched over his control boards, frantically orchestrating the complex marathon performance. He felt as if he had not blinked once in six minutes. "Spot, back to Utaru!"
Kazuki glared down at the fog machine he had just activated backstage, resisting the urge to kick it. "They're running, Ari! The mist just isn't spreading like it's s'posedta!"
With a wave of his hand over Ariel's controls to get his attention, Masa shook his head. "It's normal, guys. Smoke moves slower in cold air. It'll be there when it's time, and if not, the beams are just gonna be a little fainter. It's not the end of the world."
"You… don't… seem… to… notice how it gets to me that you… won't… let… them… know you're sleepin' next to me!" Ranko sang, hurling the words like daggers at Utaru as she shrugged off his attempt to hug her.
Zoe slammed hard on the bass drum pedal twice, pausing for a pair of beats before doing it again. The pink-haired drummer repeated the pattern throughout the remainder of Ranko's next line, emulating a thumping heartbeat.
"Every heartbeat, I am under your command," Ranko asserted, offering her arms out to Utaru. Her hands were clenched tightly in fists, and her wrists were upturned and touching, as if she were bound with invisible handcuffs.
She dropped her right hand, turning her left one downward and offering it to her stage boyfriend.
"What I'd give if you'd let them see you hold my hand."
When Utaru did not take her hand, Ranko grabbed his, forcefully pulling him a step forward by the wrist. She slipped her forearm between his arm and his body, trapping it such that he had no choice but to walk alongside her with their elbows linked.
"I'm your candy. Baby, drip me off your arm."
The young man wrested his arm free, yanking it back and using it to hide his face from the crowd as if the spotlight that followed him was blinding him.
"Let them talk, babe!" Ranko stepped closer to him again, resting her hand on the dancer's shoulder reassuringly. It was the first conciliatory gesture she had made toward either of the male dancers throughout the entire mashup finale thus far. "We ain't doin' nothin' wrong!"
Still, Utaru pulled away, waving the crowd off as he turned his back to them, and to Ranko.
The redhead's loving gaze instantly gave way to a new wave of rage, and she stomped her foot angrily on the stage floor behind her pretend lover.
"You say you think I'm perfect and unique. If I'm so good for you, why do you sneak?!"
Ariel reached for the lighting controls, powering up the array of canister lights to bathe the entire stage in light for the first time in several minutes. "Okay. Spot B, you're on Hitomi the rest of the way."
"Hey, Ranko! C'mere!" Sanyo tried to approach the songstress, waving to her over the heads of Hitomi and Emi.
The duet insistently blocked his path, wagging their fingers in his face. "Na, na-na, na! Na, na-na, nuh-uh! Na, na-na, na! Na, na-na, not yours!" they sang.
Crash's guitar remained quiet, having fallen silent after the end of the previous verse of Sneak.
"Na, na-na, na! Na, na-na, nuh-uh! Na, na-na, na! Na, na-na, not yours!" continued Emi and Hitomi, continuing to keep Sanyo at bay so that Ranko could continue to navigate the situation with Utaru.
Only then did Crash resume playing. He joined his bandmates in the new, blended rhythm that picked up both the underlying lilt of Sneak with the jaunty bounce of Not Yours, Don't Touch. The two songs had, at last, fully merged into one.
Her words seemingly still unheeded, Ranko let her legs buckle inward. She collapsed heavily onto the stage surface on her knees at Utaru's feet, reaching up for him in desperate supplication.
"Speak, baby! Speak, baby!" she begged in song. "Tell them, please, the way your whisper in my ear can put me on my knees."
Without breaking eye contact with Utaru, Ranko threw her right arm backward, motioning to the crowd as if trying to alert him to their presence.
"Speak, baby! Speak, baby! Say it's true that you're okay with people knowing I belong to you!"
Sanyo jumped in place, hopping up to try and spy on Ranko's activity over the barrier Hitomi and Emi made with their bodies. "What the heck is going on over there?"
Hitomi and Emi were all too happy to answer, continuing to impede his approach. "Na, na-na, na! Na, na-na, nuh-uh! Na, na-na, na! Na, na-na, not yours! Na, na-na, na! Na, na-na, nuh-uh! Na, na-na, na! Na, na-na, not yours!"
Ranko, meanwhile, retook her feet. She grabbed for Utaru's forearm again, displaying an urgency that seemed to be building a little more with every movement she made.
"Speak, baby! Speak, baby! Say you're mine, and send another little shiver up and down my spine!"
Ranko wiggled her backside to illustrate her point. She seemed to move more seductively as the verse progressed, as if she had decided to try and appeal to Utaru's more carnal desires after discovering that her emotional argument had gone unanswered.
"Speak, baby! Speak, baby! Say I'm yours, and I don't hafta be your lover just behind closed doors!"
The video screen changed scenes, displaying the shopping mall interior that had not been seen since the end of Ring, Ring, Ring. The still image was slightly washed out by the white light diffusing through the thin mist that had finally managed to make its way onto the stage from the quartet of smoke machines backstage.
Emi pressed forward with Hitomi at her side, driving Sanyo into the darkened back corner of the stage near where Shinji stood. With him expelled from the limelight for the time being, they hurried back to Ranko's side at center stage.
And now, the big finish, Ranko thought with a smirk. The new verses. And then, big cheers, hooray, hooray, boom go the fireworks. We bow to the crowd, get our shit, and get the fuck out of the freezer. For real, I'm about fifteen seconds from lighting Zoe's freaking hair spray on fire for warmth.
Continuing in the meter of Sneak, Ranko chased after Utaru as he fled toward the bedroom scene. "Not sure how you think we're gonna hide this thing!"
She rushed in front of Utaru and held up her left hand centimeters from the young man's nose, pointing insistently at the sparkling diamond on her third finger.
"I'm damn sure not takin' off my wedding ring!"
The electrified audience, already buzzing louder than ever as the mashup began to break new lyrical ground, erupted in a supportive cheer of Ranko's assertion that her marriage did not deserve to be kept hidden. If only I could believe you guys would feel that way if you knew who actually put that ring on my hand, Ranko thought. She shook her head, hoping to dislodge the intrusive thought before it derailed the ending of her marathon performance.
Ranko dove onto the bed, rolling onto her back and grabbing the bottom of the headboard where it met the mattress.
"Hold me down, 'cause it's gettin' hard to explain all those claw marks dug into the mattress frame."
A loud whoooooooooooop rose from the crowd at Ranko's salacious lyrics and alluring vocal affectation. It only intensified when Ranko emitted a desperate whine, making her best effort to duplicate the types of sounds she made when receiving the carnal attention of one Akane Tendo.
Well, the first five minutes of a night with Akane, anyway, Ranko mused with a smirk. I strongly doubt you guys could handle the rest of it. I honestly can't believe it hasn't straight up killed Mr. Gao yet. And, speaking of which…
"I can't keep our love a secret anymore. I know they can hear me screaming from next door!"
Emi nodded as she and Hitomi made their way to the side of the bed, cocking her head and wincing slightly as if she was hesitant to admit what needed to be said. "Yeah, every time you make the headboard creak…"
Hitomi gave a what are ya gonna do sort of shrug, letting her hands clap to her sides. "... it gets a bit more obvious you sneak!" She reached down, offering Ranko her hand. Emi did the same, and the two pulled her up to her feet.
The trio rushed away from the bed to center stage, and Sanyo charged forward to meet them there. His body language was choreographed to make it clear to the audience that his patience at having been rejected and humiliated was entirely spent.
The stadium scene that had backdropped B-O-U-N-C-E took the place of the night club scene on the video display. Ranko smirked at the scoreboard in the animation. That's right. Dragons win, Pandas lose. Ain't that right, Pop? She had not explained the inside joke to Kumiko when her friend had animated the scene, but it brought her no end of amusement.
Utaru rushed after Ranko, coming face-to-face with Sanyo. The two men lunged at each other from a meter and a half apart, with Emi holding Utaru back and Hitomi blocking Sanyo's advance. This left Ranko standing between the two, the object of their romantic tug-of-war at center stage.
Ranko faced Sanyo first, a look of exasperated disgust painted across her face as she launched into the newly-added verse of Not Yours, Don't Touch. Unlike the final verse of Sneak, which had made its debut at the release party for the Dapper Dragons' first album, the new lyrics for the other song in the mashup had been written specifically to address the scenario the finale of the Wildfire Tour had established.
"Just saying no should be enough, no matter what the reason is!"
Ranko stomped her foot defiantly again, throwing both of her hands down at her sides in fury.
"I shouldn't have to prove to you I won't be yours…"
She whirled on her heels, thrusting both of her hands in Utaru's direction.
"... by being his!"
Ranko raised her voice to be heard over the raucous audience. She stepped forward, jabbing at Sanyo's temple with her extended index finger.
"So, get it through your head, because this girl is off the menu! Take your greasy hair…"
The redhead pulled her hand back from Sanyo's hair. She looked down at her hand as if it were covered in raw sewage, sticking her tongue out and convulsing her body forward as if she was gagging. As she continued to rap, she wiped her hand off on the browbeaten dancer's white shirt.
"... and pervert stares, and find another venue!"
Ranko stepped forward toward the crowd, as if she were trying to escape the attention of both men on stage at once. She cupped her left hand over her mouth, doubling over and bracing her belly with her right as if she were about to be sick right there on the stage in front of twenty-four thousand people.
"The thought of laying next to you just makes me wanna vomit!"
The stadium on the video board faded to black, and a myriad of stars began appearing on the darkened background. As it had earlier in the song, an animated meteor streaked across the screen from upper left to lower right.
"I deserve someone who makes me come…"
Ranko slid her hand seductively down her side, writhing under her own touch and affecting a sultry purr in her tone. Her demeanor seemed at odds with the stage dressing, which erupted in orange light and nine columns of flame as the meteor disappeared from the right edge of the video display.
"... more often than a comet!"
A mostly-feminine cacophony of cheers and jeers rose from the standing multitudes as they watched the vexatious vocalist complete her rhythmic disassembly of poor Sanyo Arima. The video screen changed scenes again. The meteor had apparently crashed through the boundary between worlds itself, as the display again served as a portal into the front yard of hell itself, just as it had during the opening performance of the tour during Demon in Your Radio. Rivers of flame and lava snaked through orange-red chasms of despair, carrying with them chunks of molten brimstone that periodically dipped below the surface of the magma.
"It's time for you to let this go, and stop all this insanity!"
Ranko whirled on Sanyo again, pointing to herself with her left hand.
"If I were the last girl alive…"
She pointed to Sanyo over Hitomi's shoulder, rotating her wrist so that her splayed fingers indicated the entirety of Sanyo's face.
"... your face would END HUMANITY!"
Without so much as a pause to catch her breath, Ranko switched back into the cadence of Sneak. She turned toward Utaru, reaching down and taking both of his hands as she continued to sing. Emi stepped aside to clear her path.
"Sneak, baby! Sneak, baby! You don't mind, but I'm dying inside trying to deny you're mine!"
Emi joined her lover in challenging Sanyo, this time menacing him with words rather than just body language.
"We know that you want her, boy! We understand! But we're gonna have to ask you, boy, to watch your hands…"
Ranko thrust her arm behind her, motioning in Sanyo's direction without taking her eyes off of Utaru's face. She stomped forward again, her building frustration evident in every note and motion.
"Sneak, baby! Sneak, baby! Hey, we tried! But, I have to deal with this shit every day we hide!"
Emi and Hitomi backed up a little as Sanyo advanced, each holding one of his arms in an attempt to keep him restrained. They seized the opportunity afforded them by the end of Ranko's line, launching into their own in another bid to verbally subdue their opponent.
"You should know by now that isn't so polite to do, and even if she could, she wouldn't wanna be with you!"
Ranko took two steps forward, smiling brightly to the frenzied crowd. She was nearly out of opportunities to do so.
"I've done my best at playing mild and meek," Ranko sang. Rather than indicating either of the men on stage, she instead traced the contours of her body with her own hands, starting at the sides of her breasts and slowly snaking all the way down to her hips. "... but, the guys can't take their eyes off my physique!"
A predominantly male cheer confirmed her assertion as Ranko spun to face back at Utaru and Sanyo. She addressed Utaru first, gesturing at him with an open hand.
"All I want is you beside me!"
Without turning to face Sanyo, she moved her arm right to indicate him. Still, however, her words were directed at the man pretending to be her partner.
"All they want's to be INSIDE me!"
Ranko turned back toward the crowd, cocking her head with an emphatic shrug of her shoulders. "Do you see what I go through because we sneak?!"
"Alright, team! Let's bring it home!" Ariel stood from his seat, punching at his controls with a fury. To his right, Masa did the same. "Kill the spots!"
The video board went blank, and a red laser beam fired toward it from the back of the stadium. The beam of light began etching Ranko's hot pink signature into the display one final time, raining gold and silver sparks down from the leading edge of the writing.
The four instrumentalists changed the tune they played once more, resuming not Sneak, nor Not Yours, Don't Touch, but the song that both halves of the epic encore had originally interrupted.
Ranko strode quickly over to Sanyo, pulling him into a hug. She faced the crowd and smiled brightly as she did, hoping to make it clear to them that the preceding ten-minute evisceration had been part of the show, and not indicative of her true feelings toward him. "Sanyo Arima, everybody! Give the poor guy some love! We put him through hell up here tonight!"
Sanyo did not notice any difference in the volume of the cheers that quaked Jamsil Baseball Stadium to its foundation, but he did not expect to. He could not fathom how a group of people could possibly get louder than the capacity crowd already was.
Ranko broke the hug, walking along the edge of the stage one more time. She waved as excitedly as she could, making eye contact with as many Firebirds as possible in the short few bars she had to complete her circuit. A blizzard of camera flashes threatened to blind her as she returned to center stage and took her place at the front of her four backup dancers.
She pulled in as deep of a breath as she could manage with the frigid air burning her lungs and opened her mouth to sing. She would do so one last time, in order to complete the song she'd promised would be the last one performed. Ranko belted the line as loudly as she possibly could, and still was not sure the thundering crowd could hear her.
"Now, she's living out her FANTASY! Don't know how it happened to a GIRL LIKE ME, but now, my HAPPY EVER AFTER happens… whoa-oh-oh-ooAAAAAAAALLL THE TI-I-I-IME!"
Ranko pulled both of her hands down to her lips, blowing a pair of kisses out to the twenty-four thousand, two hundred and fifteen Firebirds that still roared in appreciation for two hours and twenty-eight minutes of heart-pounding entertainment.
"That's our show! Thanks so much for coming out! We love you, Seoul! Get home safe, get warm, and merry Christmas! 잘 자요! 사랑해요!"
Masa Tabata turned to the huge array of switches to his right. The last two rows of twelve switches each were the only ones that had not yet been activated. He slid one of his forearms under each of the two rows, pushing upward with his toes and raising his arms so that all twenty-four switches could be flipped at the exact same instant. The rocket launchers surrounding the upper rim of the stadium received the signal a few microseconds later, and as commanded, emptied the entirety of their remaining payloads into the crisp, clear night sky.
As the centermost laser finished carving the last letter of Ranko's signature on the video screen behind her, every one of the twenty remaining beams ignited. They blazed their red and green paths through the white smoke to the outer edges of the stage, and then gimballed upward from there until they all pointed skyward.
In sharp contrast to the thousands of words Ranko had belted - and in some cases, screamed - that evening, her final four of the performance were delivered in a hauntingly quiet, sanguine tone indicative of the happiness the song itself declared her to have achieved.
"Once upon a rhyme."
The canister lights blinked out all at once. All nine flamethrowers lining the front edge of the stage belched a final volley of fireballs into the December night sky. A loud, liquid plop sound gurgled through the speakers as the fuschia heart at the end of Ranko's signature appeared on the video board.
Twenty-four concussive sonic booms shook the moonlit skyline of Seoul as the night air above Jamsil Baseball Stadium exploded in a rainbow of fire.