Dancing With Dragons

"Come on. It's okay."

Jacob reached behind himself, taking Zoe's hand even though most of it was obscured in the purple and black striped sleeve of their shirt. He gave a gentle tug, willing his partner past the stack of aluminum equipment cases that obscured the left side entrance to the stage of the Brisbane Entertainment Center.

Zoe's eyes were the size of the snare drum at center stage as Jacob led his partner out into the empty arena. Jake gave a polite wave to Norio as he jogged across the stage, an orange extension cable of some sort in hand.

"Christ on a pogo stick. It looks so much bigger from this side." Zoe's voice was an awed whisper uttered with their jaw hanging slack.

Jake laughed, wrapping his arms around his lover's waist from behind. "What, this? This is actually the smallest place we've played on the tour so far, and it ain't close. Hawai'i was four times this size."

"FOUR TI - how do you… like, I'd be hidin' behind the bass drum, huggin' me knees and cryin' for me mum!" Zoe's eyes scanned the empty seats as if the fill-in drummer thought someone would jump out at any moment and declare the whole thing a prank for one of those shows on TV that made asses out of people for sport.

"Yeah, well…" Jake pulled Zoe forward toward the drum set. "You get used to it, I guess. I know we're kinda throwing ya in the deep end here, babe, but we really need ya." He motioned to the stool behind the bass drum emblazoned with his band's logo. "Go on. Give it a try. It won't bite."

"Aye, but I might!" Zoe tentatively slid onto the black vinyl seat of the stool, surveying the drum set from behind as if they were afraid to touch anything.

Jacob laughed, taking a few steps to his right and hopping onto another stool, this one behind his synthesizer. He gestured to his instrument with both hands. "Look, Zo. I'll be right here the whole time. I can even scoot closer if you want. Go on, get your sticks out! Give it a go."

Zoe's eyes glared even as their mouth smiled. "You come any closer, an' I might ought to brain you with me sticks just for makin' me do this loony shit in the first." They dropped their worn, olive drab backpack to the stage floor, bending down and fighting with the zipper. After several forceful yanks, the metal zipper tab broke free of the loose string it was caught on and the bag opened, spilling the clothes they and Jacob had swung by their flat to obtain on the way from the hotel and the performance venue into the stage floor. Digging to the bottom of the bag, Zoe withdrew a pair of pink plastic sticks, each nearly the length of their forearm.

"And introducing, from Brisbane, Queensland, the incredible drummer, the talented, the astounding, the sexy as fuck, Zooooooeeeee Kiiiiiiiiing!" Jacob affected his voice to sound like a public address announcer, cupping his hands over his mouth to make the sound of his voice reverberate slightly.

As Jacob breathed heavily into his hands to simulate the roar of a crowd, Zoe giggled, making a tentative swipe at one of the cymbals with the stick in their left hand. They quickly pulled their hand back at the loud tsssss sound emanating from the brass disc.

"See? Just like your set at home, Zo-zo. Nothin' to it. Go on, babes. Don't be shy." He motioned to his partner's hands. "Light 'em up."

Zoe took a deep breath, closing their eyes. They started at their right side, swinging both sticks and thumping on the floor tom several times as they swiveled leftward on their stool. Their pass peppered both of the tom-toms with sharp raps, springing the sticks in Zoe's hands backward to prepare them to rocket into the next strike. As Zoe's black-booted ankle worked the pedal controlling the bass drum bearing the band's logo, their sticks found their way to the snare drum on the far left. Having completed the circuit around the drums, Zoe reached forward with both arms, slamming their sticks down onto the high hats on both sides of the drum set.

When Zoe opened their eyes, Jacob was standing just opposite the snare drum, smiling down at his partner. "I told you, Zo. You got this. If this is gonna work, you need to stop thinking you're sitting in Ken's seat. You need to own these cans tonight. Ken can have 'em back tomorrow." He reached down, cupping Zoe's cheek in his hand. "But tonight, babes, you are a Dragon."

Zoe blushed, flashing a coy smile up at their lover, tracing his chest with their fingers over the snare drum. "Guess that's a step up from Dragon rider, eh?"

The keyboardist laughed loudly. "Oh, nobody said you're getting out of that."

"I better don't," Zoe said with a chuckle. "I like it too much, yeah?" They looked around the empty arena, exhaling slowly as they came to terms with what they were about to do in seven short hours. "I think I wanna sit and practice for a bit, a'ight?"

Jake nodded. "Sure. We gotta clear off about five when they start letting people in, but you got almost five hours 'til then. I think Shin has a tape of at least one or two of the new songs. You brought your tape player, right?"

Zoe reached down into their olive backpack, producing a battered black cassette deck that had to be ten years old, plastered with stickers overlapping each other on every conceivable surface. It was already loaded with a tape of the Wild Orchid album. "See what ya can do, babes."

The green-haired keyboardist nodded, stepping around the drum set and leaning down, giving his partner a kiss on their forehead. "Hey. You look good down there, Zo-zo. It suits you. Show those things who's boss, yeah?"

Zoe nodded, pulling their headphones over their spiky pink hair, careful not to stretch the band too much and strain the thick wrap of black electrical tape that held the arch of the headband together. They left their right ear uncovered so they could still hear the drums as they played, and after reaching down for the button on the far right of the device, Jacob could hear Demon in Your Radio beginning to spill out of the unused right earpiece.

Wrapping their fists around their drumsticks, Zoe slammed the back ends of them down hard onto their thighs. It pushed the buttons on the backs of the sticks, and both began to glow with a bright neon pink light.

"There's nowhere to hide, nowhere to go," they sang - not especially well - along with Ranko as their glowing pink sticks rained down on the heads of the drums. Jacob smiled, throwing his partner a wave and heading backstage.

* * * 

"Just like that, you belong to me - utterly, endlessly, hopelessly in ecstasy…"

Hitomi stage-glared at her friend as Ranko backed Utaru up on the stage in her sparkly white A-line dress, the same one she'd changed into onstage in a wreath of flame between Rise and Hey, Jerk! She popped her hips playfully left and right with every step, her right hand resting gently on Utaru's chest as her skirt swished about her thighs.

Sanyo had not returned to the stage after the previous song, in which none of the backup dancers had performed. The prior song had also been a break for all of the musicians save Jacob, who had played You're My Song in a light, intimate piano voice from his synthesizer. There had been a guitar accompanying Jake's keyboard, but it was the phoenix-styled acoustic instrument Ranko herself had played, rather than Crash's electric or Shinji's bass.

"And now, you're right beside me everywhere I go: every show, rain or snow. Not like you can tell me no. Now it's your old girl who's constantly missin' you. She's the one crying, and I'm the one kissing yoooooooooooouuuuu…"

Ranko hurried to center stage, flanked by Hitomi on her right and Emi on her left. She faced the crowd, planting her feet and smiling brightly to the audience as she shimmied her legs slightly. The twisting motion wasn't the most comfortable on her still-strengthening left knee, but she put it out of her mind. As she uttered the name of the song in the chorus, she threw her arms upward, as if summoning, by some mystic power, the jets of sickly green flame that blasted forth from the fourth and eighth emitters mounted into the front of the stage.

"And now, I got that witchcraaaaaaaaa-aft!"

Ranko spread her arms wide, and the lime-green flame that began at the fourth and eighth jets at the front of the stage spread left to the first through third, and right from the ninth through twelfth, leaving a gap in the middle of the two walls of fire for the audience to see Ranko and her backup dancers.

"And I'm fin'lly gettin' through to you!"

The jets of fire all went out.

"Through to you, with the voodoo that I brew!"

Again, Ranko reached down to knee level, as if summoning another belch of fire from the bowels of hell itself. She raised her arms as she sang, again coaxing columns of green flame from the fourth and eighth jets before gesturing to spread the curtains of fire around the edges of the stage.

"Witchcra-aaaaaaaft! And I'm decidin' what to do with you, do with you! At least a date or two with you!"

Ranko stalked back to the array of instruments against the back wall of the stage, which was lit by the giant screen projecting the image of an old-timey antique book store piled high with rustic leather-bound tomes on shelves so tall that rolling ladders were required to access the upper rows of books. The whole scene had a fantasy quality to it, as if it would not be at all surprising to find a fairy napping atop one of the thicker books.

She leaned forward, her back to the audience, as she rested her hands on the bass drum, flashing Zoe King a bright smile as she sang. While nothing felt quite the same without Ken on stage with her, Zoe had acquitted themselves brilliantly throughout the first eight songs of the show. After the mostly acoustic performance of You're My Song where the drums were not required, their emergency drummer was again holding their own, despite fewer than ten hours of preparation. Ranko doubted, had she not mentioned it to the crowd when introducing the band, that many would have noticed a significant dropoff from the Dapper Dragons' usual drummer.

Ranko shook her backside toward the crowd as she shot Zoe a wink, doing her best to encourage her new friend and tell them how great a job they were doing without being able to speak to them directly.

"You never would'a messed with me before I found the recipe, but now, I gotcha under my spe-eeeeell! So, I'll change around your destiny, and make you wind up next to me! Together, babe, we're hotter than hell!"

Ranko peeled away from the drums, waving with a smile to Jacob as she circled back around to the back right of the stage, just between Jake and Shin. There, a large cauldron, perhaps a meter wide and just over waist-high to Ranko, had sat throughout the performance, having been brought out by Norio in the dark while the spotlights singled out Ranko during her soulful rendition of You're My Song. The song had hit Ranko harder on tour these last few nights, as it reminded her of just how desperately she loved Akane, and how heartbroken she was about the fact that they'd still not spoken since their argument in the hotel in Hawai'i twelve days ago. Four more days, and I'll be home, and we'll fix this, Akane. I promise.

Dry ice stored under the cauldron created a thick, cold mist around it, and a pair of green-hued stage lights pointed at it gave the entire thing an eerie, otherworldly glow, as one might expect in the lair of any evil Disney witch.

"Yeah! I got that witchcra-aaaaaaaft! And I'm fin'lly gettin' through to you, through to you, with the voodoo that I brew!"

Her hips rocked side-to-side like a ringing bell on each of the two through to you lines, with Hitomi and Emi joining her at her sides.

"Witchcra-aaaaaaaft! And I've decided what to do with you! Do with you! I'll spend my whole life through with you!"

As she sang, Hitomi and Emi split off, taking positions near the center of the stage, with Utaru closely following Hitomi. Ranko planted her foot on a single step that had been built into the back of the cauldron. Another step up, and Ranko had climbed atop the large, glowing basin, over which a plexiglass cover had been erected to support her weight. The green glow from beneath her, caught in the glitter of her white dress, made her look like an apparition straight out of the veil between the worlds of life and death.

Ranko took a firm stance, her sparkly heels a half-meter apart on the plexiglass covering the cauldron. She raised her left hand, her fingers splayed out, catching some of the green-tinged mist in the air and pulling it upward.

"You never would'a messed with me…"

She repeated the gesture with her right hand, surrounding herself with more of the inky, verdant vapor.

"Before I found the recipe…"

As Ranko posed innocently atop the cauldron in which she had supposedly brewed her love potion, Hitomi and Emi sang the next line of the final chorus without her.

"But now, she's got you under her speeeeee-ell!"

Ranko swung her arm forward as if swinging an invisible whip, in the direction of Utaru and Hitomi. As she did, Utaru froze, stiffening his body as if he had just been electrocuted.

"'Cause I changed around your destiny…"

Ranko yanked left arm back, her hand in a fist, and Utaru spun thrice in rapid succession as he returned to the side of the cauldron, as if the redhead standing atop it had yanked him back by his leash.

"And made you wind up next to me…"

The singer reached down, crouching with her knees bent, ruffling Utaru's hair almost condescendingly with the fingers of her right hand, as one might reward a puppy for bringing their slippers.

"Togetheeeeeer… we'll be ho-o-o-otte-e-er… tha-a-a-a-an…"

Hitomi and Emi huddled around Utaru as he took one step forward between them. "But now I've got the recipe to make you wind up next to me," the two girls sang, but Ranko did not join them.

Instead, she cupped her hands upward at knee level, slowly rising to a standing position from her crouch as she sang. In the single syllable, she began in the fifth octave, sliding it downward through the fourth, third, and finally into the second as she rose, lifting her arms until they eventually were extended fully skyward as if bringing the subject of the word she sang out of the depths of the underworld and onto the stage with her.

"HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELLLLLL!!!"

Ranko and both girls sang the final line together with no backing from any of the four instruments on stage. "Together, we'll be hotter than hell!"

Ranko winked to the crowd, blowing a kiss forward in her left hand. She then cocked her hand back in a fist, throwing it downward forcefully and opening her fingers as if casting some final ingredient downward into the cauldron beneath her feet to complete her sinister spell.

The area around the cauldron erupted in green-tinged mist with a loud boom, nearly obscuring it from the view of the audience. All twelve flame jets along the front edge of the stage belched green fire three meters into the air of the Brisbane Entertainment Center. As they did, the two halves of the plexiglass under Ranko's feet fell inward, and Ranko disappeared into the cauldron's basin.

* * *

"Dude, Zoe, are you kidding? You were amazing!" Ranko threw her arm around Jacob's partner, squeezing them tight around the shoulders, as the group entered the hotel lobby.

Jake nodded, ruffling his fingers in his partner's spiky pink hair. "I fuckin' told you you could do it, Zo-zo! How'd it feel, being up there like that?"

"Not gonna lie… pretty bloody fuckin' great," Zoe said, beaming despite their exhaustion. After seven hours of drum play, they thought their arms might fall off at the shoulders at any moment. "I get why ya lot love doin' it so much now. It's intoxicatin', hearin' em all screamin' like 'at."

Shin nodded. "Of course, they don't chant our names…" He nudged Ranko in the shoulder gently with his fist.

Ranko turned, walking backward into the lobby as she faced Shinji. "Well, next time, you sing the lyrics, maybe throw on a nice, short dress, and I bet they'll love you too, Shin. Oh, better work on shakin' that ass a little!"

"Ooooh!" Hitomi giggled, covering her mouth as she realized how loud her laughter echoed in the mostly-empty hotel lobby at just before eleven at night. "Got 'em!"

Leaning down and planting a kiss on Zoe's forehead, Jake looked up to Crash. "I'm gonna run upstairs and check on Ken real quick."

"Tell him we love him," Ranko called after Jacob just before the elevator doors closed behind him.

* * *

"Guys, it's not good." Jake sighed, slumping onto one of the sofas in the lobby that had become the band's de facto meeting room over the last two days. "The doctor at the walk-in joint said it's probably the flu or some sort of stomach bug, and he's probably gonna be down for a couple days, maybe as long as a week."

"Fuck," Crash said, drooping his head back to rest on the back of the loveseat. "That fucking sucks. Dude's gotta be dying up there. Nothing they can really do about that sort of thing either, he's just gotta wait it out. Shit, he might as well just fly back to Tokyo and rest up at home, I guess. But then what are we gonna do about the Sydney shows?"

Ranko tried to push her disappointment for Ken out of her mind, putting on a hopeful smile as she turned from Crash to look at Jacob and his couchmate. "I don't know, guys. Where could we ever find a badass drummer on short notice to get us through Sunday and Monday nights?"

"I think that's you, babes," Jacob said with a chuckle. "Whaddya say? You got two more nights of being a rock star in ya?"

"I dunno, mate," Zoe said, beaming as they shook their head. "Lemme just check my social sched… fuck yeah, I'm ready! Let's do this shit!"

The band, less their ill drummer, whooped in excitement. "ZO-E! ZO-E," the group chanted as the temporary Dragon blushed a brighter shade of pink than their hair.