"Excuse me. Pardon me." Norio sighed, rolling his eyes as he waited for the slow-moving group of women to pass. Of course they aren't responding. They don't freaking speak Japanese, ya dumbass, he admonished himself. His path finally cleared, he resumed his trek down the packed concourse on the west side of Jamsil Baseball Stadium. There was a chill in the air, and if the previous night's performance had been any indication, it was going to be another brutally cold night in the outdoor stadium on the banks of the Han River.
Dragging his dolly behind him, he wove his way carefully through the throng of faithful Firebirds. Every one of them he passed, especially the younger girls, seemed ready to explode with excitement and there was still more than an hour to go until curtain. Man, I wish Ranko could come out and see this sometime, he thought.
Finally spotting his destination, Norio made a beeline for the acrylic booth that had been hastily erected in the widest part of the concourse. A line three people deep snaked around a maze of belt stanchions, all waiting to reach the twin folding tables at its terminus.
Doing his best to beg pardon with hand gestures alone, the young roadie circled the queue and approached the table. "Okay," he announced in English. "I've got your restock." He bent over his cart, having a heavy, clear plastic tote full of sweatshirts onto a bare spot on the merchandise table. A pair of stadium staff began unpacking it, quickly sorting the garments by style and size and starting to replenish the booth's rapidly-depleting inventory.
Two more plastic tubs, one filled with CD copies of Phoenix Rising and the other with its follow-up album, Wild Orchid, soon made their way to the table as well. "That's the last stop for the night," Norio announced.
The retail staffers did not reply. One of the cashiers, a slightly overweight woman in her mid-forties wearing a black tee shirt printed with The girl I am is so much stronger than the ghost I was held one copy each of the two newly-restocked albums high overhead. The roar of appreciation rising from the queued shoppers turned the heads of many passers-by in the concourse, but Norio was already on his way to his next destination.
There was no time to waste.
"How are we looking, guys?" Masa Tabata asked as he strolled along the outer ridge of the stadium, reminding himself not to look over its edge.
A musclebound man in his late twenties jogged over to join the master pyrotechnician, pulling off the thick earmuffs he wore to protect his hearing. "Hey there, Mr. Tabata! We're all set here!" He patted the primed rocket launcher Masa was inspecting with a fleece-lined glove. "You're all reloaded and ready to rock!"
Masa nodded, reaching for the clipboard in the contractor's other hand. "Listen, I just wanted to make sure you got the work order. Last night, launcher eight wasn't responding to the controls. Everything seemed fine from the booth, but no joy."
The firework vendor gave an apologetic bow, handing over the purchase order. "Yes sir. We're so sorry about that. We dug into it this morning, and it looks like the control cable was bad. We replaced the whole lot of them this morning, and test-fired them all. You should be set to jet."
"I hope so," Masa replied skeptically as he signed his name to the bottom of the document and offered it back to the contractor. "Mind if I check it over myself, too?"
The fleece-clad vendor offered his hearing protection to the portly technician. "Of course not, sir. C'mon, I'll show it to you. And then we can get you downstairs. It's gonna get awfully cold out here again tonight."
*Aww, yeah. That's the stuff." Kazuki Asai held out both of his hands to the brand-new space heater positioned behind the changing curtain on the right side of the backstage area. After performing in subzero temperatures the night before, Crash had asked the team to pick up a few of the devices to mitigate the cold for their second show. Having plugged in the fifth and final heater, Kaz gathered its empty packing material and rushed off to find a trash receptacle to deposit it in.
"Alright. Now that those are in, let's work on the real hot stuff," the Dapper Dragons' newest stagehand and former keyboardist said aloud to himself. He rounded the thin aluminum railing and descended a flight of hastily-constructed steps that led down to the field surface below the raised stage platform.
A grid of shop lights guided his path as he made his way to the center of the understage. There, an array of tall metal canisters waited. Kaz picked up the first of fifteen, checking its label to confirm it was not one of the fuel tanks that had been laced with strontium or boric acid to alter the color of the flames it would emit when burned. He lifted it over his shoulder, carrying it to the front edge of the stage and slipping out onto the baseball field through a narrow access door. Affixed to the front of the stage was a row of nine equidistant flamethrowers.
The bald stagehand carefully placed the fuel canister in the cradle of the rightmost flame emitter. He reached into his back pocket, withdrawing his pipe wrench and setting about connecting the tank.
"Speakers, check. Let's see… video."
The massive display screen suspended from the trusses above the stage began to glow dimly. The black background was pierced with a shock of hot pink, with gold and silver animated sparks raining down from its point. The burning line of pink flame shot upward, forming the shape of a romaji letter R before swooping into a cursive lowercase A.
"Okay, board looks good," Ariel Wright said, drawing a checkmark on his procedure list with a black marker. "Now, for the cameras." Swiveling to his left, he powered on another small control panel. A black-and-white monitor resting behind it on the counter began to glow, displaying an array of empty seats. Ariel reached for the rubberized joystick jutting out of the control panel, ensuring that whatever direction he moved it in, the camera mounted to the truss above the stage followed.
"Okay, good, and now the back one…" With a flick of another switch, the display on the monitor changed to a view from the opposite direction. It was quite similar to the scene Ariel could see through the glass of the control booth at the front edge of the upper deck, as the camera was mounted immediately below it facing the stage.
Turning back to the controls for the video board, he punched another button. The animation of Ranko's signature vanished on the eight-meter display, replaced instead with the panoramic view of the empty stage fed from the camera in real time.
"Nice!" With a few more tick marks added to his checklist, Ariel powered down the video screen. "Time for my lasers!" He rolled his chair to the center of the countertop, reaching for yet another bank of controls. Without the fog machines that had yet to be engaged, the green and red beams of light he commanded were not visible, but he could see the individual colored dots on the black velvet backdrop where each ended. He cycled through each bank of lasers, ensuring that the dark surfaces they had been aimed at for testing glowed as he expected them to.
"Yes sir! Alright, nothing left except the lights." He pulled a fourth black control panel forward on the countertop, beginning to play with its sliders to observe the effects on the stage.
Lance Riker tapped the clipboard in his hand, holding it up high so his audience could all clearly view the color-coded map of Jamsil Baseball Stadium. "So, to recap, for those of you who weren't with us last night. I want one person in each of these corridors between the sections. Keep in constant communication with each other, and cover each other in the event of any incidents in your section. We're gonna have teams of two in each of the tunnels coming out into the bowl of the stadium." He stabbed at a red rectangle in the middle of the stadium diagram, where home plate would be during a baseball game. "I want a minimum of four people around the back perimeter of the stage, and your two best guys in the front with me, watching the crowd."
Crammed shoulder to shoulder into a nondescript concrete passageway under the east side of the stadium, an army of nearly a hundred guards clad in banana yellow shirts and black pants listened attentively to their instructions.
Lance tossed the clipboard down into the seat of a plastic chair that rested against the cinder block wall behind him. "And, another thing." He reached down to the breast of his black shirt, pulling his laminated badge forward on its retracting lanyard. "This is an all-access pass. Which means all access. Last night, somebody stopped one of my stagehands trying to get into position, and it delayed the start of the whole show by almost eight minutes. Something like that happens again tonight, I'm gonna have somebody's ass for breakfast. Is that understood?"
A mishmash of affirmative responses rose from the assembled security personnel.
"Alright. Good! We're gonna have a good time tonight, everybody." Lance smiled, trying to reassure the guards after his less-than-subtle corrective admonitions. "Listen, it's supposed to get cold again tonight. We should have, if everybody's here, about ten percent more people than we have positions. I want you all sounding off on your radios when you need to cycle out and get inside for a little bit to warm up. Crew chiefs, be ready to cover if you run out of backup personnel. I don't want anybody getting sick out there tonight."
"That's the last of them," Kaz said into his headset. He pocketed the burned-out canister light bulb he had just replaced, looking out over the stands of the baseball stadium. A slow, but steady stream of Firebirds were slowly making their way to their seats, despite the fact that it was still nearly 40 minutes from showtime.
Ariel nodded, reaching for his control board. Having confirmed that the full complement of stage lights had been rendered operational, he turned them off again. "Good work, Kaz."
"Listen, guys," Kazuki said, slipping back through the gap in the black velvet curtain behind the video board. "I'm really worried about them out there, especially the girls. It's fucking cold out here, dude, and it's only gonna get worse as it gets later."
Sighing, Masa reached down to the battery pack on his belt and activated his own headset. "I know. The weather report said it could get down to something like negative three degrees tonight. I want you and Nori doing everything you can to help them stay warm when they're backstage. Blankets, hot coffee, the heaters, whatever you can think of."
"Sure, that works for everybody else. But what about Ranko? The only time she's off is when she's changing costumes, and she only gets a few seconds to do that." Kaz rubbed his bald head pensively, wishing he had thought to buy himself a toboggan when he picked up the heaters. "And besides, she's got that hyper… ya know, the skin thing."
Not to mention, some of her outfits are a little bit of nothing, Kaz mentally added.
Ariel sighed heavily. You'd think Yokai would have planned better than to book outdoor shows four days before Christmas. Then again, they've fucked up everything else about this tour, so why start getting anything right now?
"Do the best you can, both of you. If it gets too bad, let us know, and we'll come up with something."
Norio replied from one of the many nondescript concrete corridors running through the outer rim of the baseball stadium's lower level. "We'll try. Besides, Ranko's a tough cookie. We'll get her through it." He muted his headset, waving to a hulking man standing between the doors of his twin destinations with his free arm. "Hey, Lance."
The Dapper Dragons' head of security flashed Norio a welcoming smile, opening the door on his left and holding it open. "You guys all set?"
Norio shrugged with his right shoulder. His entire left arm was draped with nine identical wireless headsets, and a full plastic shopping bag dangled from his wrist. "Good as it's gonna get, I think!" Norio stepped into the room to find a flurry of activity within.
Jacob Trimble was perched on a stool in front of a mirror-backed counter, applying styling gel to his lime green fauxhawk. This he did with his right arm, as his left was wrapped around Zoe's waist. His partner squirmed on his lap, wearing a clear plastic dress like a raincoat over a pair of black jeans and a raspberry-colored shirt that read yes, mistress in white English script.
In the far corner, Sanyo stood with his knee bent and his foot up on the vinyl seat of the leftmost stool. He wore a blood-red leather cuirass, molded to appear as if it were a rib cage covered with blood and viscera, over a long-sleeved black shirt and black pants. He also sported a matching pair of crimson leather bracers on his forearms. Utaru, identically clad, was down on one knee in front of Sanyo's stool, tightening the straps of a shin guard to Sanyo's leg. It, too, looked as if Sanyo's very flesh had been flayed from his body to reveal the bones and muscles of his lower leg.
"How's it lookin' out there?" Crash Matsuyama rose from the blue vinyl couch he shared with Shinji, approaching Norio and taking one of the headsets off of his arm. The Dragons' lead guitarist slipped it over his spiky blond hair, adjusting the microphone on his cheek. He fished in the bag on Norio's wrist, withdrawing a battery pack from it and clipping it to the waistband of his jeans. "Testing," he said after plugging in the headset and turning it on.
"Heard, Crash," Ariel replied from the booth as he continued his pre-show checks.
Norio grinned. "Lot of energy in the crowd tonight already. I think it's gonna be a good one." He pulled another headset from his wrist, handing it down to Shinji.
The bassist looked up from his magazine, wordlessly taking the device and the battery pack that was subsequently offered.
"Too right! An' in a joint like 'issun, big as it is an' outside an' all, we can give 'em the whole lot." Zoe slipped off of their partner's lap, padding over to Norio in their black combat boots and collecting two headsets.
Norio nodded, passing the Dapper Dragons' drummer a pair of battery packs. "You know it! Fireworks, the lasers, smoke, full pyro. Damn, these are fun. Hey, one thing though. Dress as warm as you can. It's gonna be even colder than yesterday, I think."
"Fuck me!" Jake took his headset from Zoe, carefully weaving its thin metal band between two of the spikes of his newly-cemented hairdo. "The girls are gonna freeze their tits off in those dresses."
The roadie sighed as he handed Utaru and Sanyo their microphones. "I know. We've got the heaters going, and we'll do everything else we can too. I'll put a little extra gas in the jets for 'em." Having divested himself of six of the headsets, he lifted his free arm, passing a wave around to the room's occupants. "Alright, guys. We'll see you out there!"
As each of the band members activated their headsets and traded test messages with Ariel, Norio exited the room. Lance knocked thrice on the door on his right. "Everybody decent in there?"
"C'mon in!" Hitomi shouted from behind the door, and Lance opened it for Norio.
"I think we're gonna need to get Nabiki to send some more merch to Sapporo," Emi said, daubing a bit of her foundation on a cotton makeup pad in front of her corner of the vanity counter. "At least, if it's moving as fast tonight as last night."
Norio grinned, nodding emphatically as he set the blonde's headset on the countertop next to her lipstick. "Oh, for sure. I resupplied the booths about forty-five minutes ago. That was the last of both of the CDs, two of the poster designs and at least two or three sizes of a few of the shirts. And there were lines fifty, sixty people deep at all four stalls."
"I'll call home after the show," Ranko said, scrunching her hair in her hands to help it form waves before the hair spray in it had a chance to dry. She wore a pair of deep maroon leather pants over a black glittery shirt, and a pair of sparkly black boots awaited her under her section of countertop.
"Don't even sweat it," Nori said, leaving a headset and a battery pack at her station. "Kaz already called Nabiki with a whole shopping list."
Hitomi giggled, pulling up the strap of her sparkly red dress. "Ah, I love a boy who has their shit together. So hard to find these days!" She glanced in the mirror, frowning with the realization that the little red horns Izumi had sculpted from resin had been knocked slightly askew in her mousey brown hair.
What can I say? Ranko thought with a smirk. All the best boys just become girls, I guess. She slipped her headset over her crimson coif, powering it on. "Speak for yourself. I already found Mister Wright, and he's listening to me right now. How do I sound, Ari?"
Ariel's laughter resounded in the ears of every band member at once. "Amazing as always, Ranko. This place is off the charts tonight. Crowd seems even more hyped than yesterday."
Ranko beamed. "That's what I like to hear! Did Masa get the thing with the fireworks straightened out?"
"Yes, ma'am!" the band's master pyrotechnician responded in her headset. "Inspected the whole setup myself about thirty minutes ago."
The redhead stood, picking up her red leather jacket from the back of her stool. "You guys rock. You know that? I don't tell you near enough, but it's true."
Ariel blushed behind his console, trying to hide his flustered stammering behind a chuckle. "Just doing our jobs, girl. You guys about ready?"
Ranko slipped her jacket on, careful not to unplug her headset from the battery pack clipped to her waistband. "We're good in here."
"Us, too," replied Shinji over their radios. "Kaz?"
The stagehand flicked the red plastic switch on the last device he had installed backstage. With a low gurgling sound, the coffeepot began percolating and a slow drop of steaming liquid began pooling in its glass carafe. "I think we're good." He peeked out from behind the curtain. "Crowd's probably seventy, eighty percent in their seats."
"Alright," Ranko said, flicking her hair back over her shoulder. "Let's roll."
She didn't even reach the door of her dressing room before Lance pulled it open for her. "Thank you, sir," she said with a giggle and a bit of a flourish.
Ranko looked up, smiling at the concrete ceiling of the corridor. A low rumble was building overhead as more and more of her beloved Firebirds took their seats. Her distraction prevented her from noticing the door to the other dressing room opening outward. "Oof!" she grunted as the doorknob struck her wrist.
"Shit! You okay?!" Crash grimaced, peering sheepishly around the half-opened wooden door.
Ranko nodded, rubbing her arm firmly through her jacket sleeve. "I'll live. I'm just glad you got your klutz move in before we got out there!"
Laughing, her guitarist and best friend threw his arm over her shoulder. "Bold of you to assume I'm gonna have just the one!"
With Lance and Norio leading the way, the full contingent of nine Dapper Dragons weaved down the corridor, emerging into a tunnel made of pop-up tents erected to hide the performers from the eyes of the crowd until they made it to the back of the stage.
"F-f-fuck!" Ranko exclaimed, shivering violently as soon as the chill outdoor air made contact with her skin. "Cold!"
Hitomi rubbed her friend's back through her jacket. "Just try to put it out of your mind. Focus on the crowd."
Ranko nodded, taking the handrail and beginning to ascend the steps to the back half of the stage platform that had been erected atop the home plate area of the baseball field.
Shinji picked up his bass guitar, slipping the strap over his neck. "Ari, wanna hit the lights?"
"With pleasure." Ariel flicked a series of switches, and all of the artificial light on the stage blinked out. A loud roar from the twenty-four thousand, two hundred and fifteen Firebirds packing Jamsil Baseball Stadium indicated that they, too, realized that the show they had waited for since purchasing their tickets in March was about to begin.
Norio bounded down the steps to the understage, making his way to his assigned bank of flame emitters. "Starting final pyro checks," he announced.
"See you out there, girl." Emi gave Ranko a quick arm hug before slipping her arm through the harness bearing her crimson wings. That done, she pushed through the curtain to take her place on the darkened stage.
Zoe picked up their drumsticks, following Crash and Jacob out onto the stage to take their places.
"My lady?" Sanyo dropped to one knee. Utaru did the same next to him, close enough that their shoulders were touching.
Ranko carefully sat on their shoulders, one of her leather-clad thighs touching each of the backup dancers' ears. "Why, thank you, kind sirs!" she replied with a spritely laugh and her most regal tone of voice.
"Three. Two. One. Up!" The boys stood together on Sanyo's command, careful to rise together and not spill their cargo backward on her head. They each stabilized her with their free hands until they were confident that everyone's balance was true.
"I'm in position," Ranko announced, resting one of her hands on each of the young men's heads. She beamed with the realization that she had needed to all but scream the declaration, because the frenzy on the other side of the velvet drape had built to an absolute fever pitch.
Somehow, she thought with a wide grin, I have a feeling it's gonna be one hell of a show tonight.