Once Upon a Rhyme

One, takoyaki. Hot. Hothothot. Fuck. Don't breathe. Don't move. Don't scream. Fuck, don't scream. How did I let her talk me into this?

Ranko gritted her teeth, whimpering quietly as she dug her fingernails deep into her palms, holding her bare forearms away from her flaming clothing. Every muscle in her body was locked in place, tensed to its very maximum.

Two, takoyaki. Fuck! Almost there. Fuckfuckfuck. One more second. You can do it, Ranko. Be strong. It's only gonna hurt for one more damn second. Not sure if Ariel was able to get them to turn the mic off in time. Don't you dare fucking scream, girl.

The thundering applause told her it was safe to open her eyes.

Three.

Her mint green floral dress had entirely vanished. In its place was a shorter, skin-tight dress in a shimmering, mirror-shiny silver, as if it were made entirely of aluminum foil. It matched the calf-length boots she wore perfectly, her skirt almost meeting it with only her knees exposed between. Ranko reached behind herself, checking to ensure the jade chopsticks pinning her hair back remained in place and that her hair had not caught fire as had befallen Michael Jackson during a commercial shoot a few years ago.

She stood quivering on the stage, trying to steady her breathing. Well, I'll be a son of a bitch. I didn't die after all. Come on, nerves. Reboot. We gotta go sing now.

Every soul in the building roared in awe of the shocking surprise they'd just witnessed.

Every soul save one.

"What the f… HOW?! I'm going to fucking kill Izumi, scaring me like that!" Akane growled in Ukyo's direction as she retook her seat.

Ranko pulled on the headset microphone Hitomi brought her, resting it gently in front of the chopsticks holding back her hair and positioning the boom microphone on her cheek. She exhaled heavily, taking a second more to regain her composure before donning her brightest stage smile, her chest still heaving. "There! That's better! Now we can do a show!"

She turned her back to the crowd, turning the battery pack off again before striding back to the performance stage as Emi and Hitomi flanked her from the sides, having already changed into their own silver dresses backstage.

"Dude, Ran-chan, that was fucking legendary," Emi marveled. "How?!"

Ranko shrugged, smiling sheepishly. "Izzi's a fuckin' wizard."

~~~

"What in the shit?! Izzi, how did she do that?!"

The brunette giggled, hugging Mei excitedly. "It WORKED!"

"You mean, immolating our little sister on live television? Yeah, I'd say! Mother fuck, girl! Just, how?!" Mei rolled her eyes, shaking her head as she cocked her head skyward.

Izumi reached into her pocket, pulling out a crinkly square of translucent white paper. "Flash paper. The same stuff that came in Hoshi's little magician kit." She waved it over the blue flame flickering atop the Dragonfire cocktail in Mei's hand, and the little square caught fire immediately. Izumi held it up at shoulder level and dropped it to spare her fingers the bright orange flame, but by the time it would have reached the hardwood floor, the paper had entirely vanished without a trace. "Two thousand and sixty-eight individual flowers made out of it, dyed green, and sewn together."

"But it's still hot! How did you not cook the poor thing to death?! She's squeamish about the damn torch for the drinks, for fuck's sake!" Mei dropped the cocktail off at table nineteen, Izumi following her to continue the conversation.

Izumi smirked proudly, clearly amused with her own ingenuity. "Nomex. It's the stuff they make firefighter suits out of. It's fire and heat resistant for up to about a minute, and we only needed a few seconds. I made her performance dress and her boots out of it. Masa, Ranko's new pyrotechnician, was able to score me some. As for the heat, it was probably uncomfortable as hell, but she only had to tolerate it for a second or two until the flash paper burned off."

"What's going on?" The bar's new server sidled over between the two girls, a curious expression on his face.

Mei shook her head, a grin forming on her lips as she chuckled at the young man passing her with a handful of empty red plastic appetizer baskets. "Oh, nothin', Seiichi. Just realizing my sister's a fucking psychopath."

~~~

Here we go, Ranko thought with a nervous giggle as Jacob's fingers began to tickle his Yamaha DX-7 synthesizer, coaxing a bright, tinkling beat out of it that Ken and Shinji quickly underpinned with a fast-paced bassline.

Ranko flipped the switch on the battery pack for her headset, whirling to face the crowd. Her face was aglow with excitement as she stalked forward on the stage, Hitomi and Emi flanking her in their matching silver dresses. Theirs, at least, weren't quite as itchy, owing to not needing to be constructed of flame-retardant fibers. As she whirled, Ranko caught a whiff of her flame-red hair pinned tight behind her head, and nearly choked.

I cannot freaking wait to wash this crap out of my hair. It friggin' stinks. I get why Izzi did it; that Borax shit is supposed to keep stuff from catching fire, but man, it's so gross.

Despite her discomfort, Ranko's joy could not be denied, and the song for which she'd won two Japan Record Awards thus far was about to declare it to the largest audience she'd ever performed for.

"Story opens on a cold, dark street, with a girl who was frightened, hungry, broke and beat. Goin' nowhere fast, running from her past, no one to turn to."

"You okay, Ak… Aki?" Ukyo reached across the table, resting her gloved hand on Akane's left sleeve.

Akane nodded, setting the empty water glass that had been Crash's back on the white tablecloth with a slightly quivering hand. "Yeah, just… that scared the ever-living fuck out of me. I can't believe she didn't tell me she was gonna do that."

The dolled-up okonomiyaki chef scoffed playfully. "Would you have let her do it if she had?"

"Not in a million years," Akane said, a smile cracking the serious expression she wore as she chuckled with her realization. "And that's why she didn't warn me, isn't it?"

Ukyo giggled. "Now you're catchin' on, honey."

~~~

"Started slow, but they both wanted more. Rented an apartment on the second floor. They both grew, and as they did, they knew the way things were progressing…"

Mei looked up from her swishing skirt as she danced with herself behind the service bar in time with her sister's performance on the television, shooting a skeptical glance at the new server as he passed her with a flaming drink in his hand. "Where you going with that?"

Seiichi motioned to the blonde sitting alone at the round table closest to the empty stage. "VIP."

The blue-haired girl snatched the Dragonfire from his hand, blowing the blue flame out with a quick puff. "Nuh-uh. She's cut off for the night. Tell her I said so."

The heavy-set man cringed, shaking his head in the negative. "I'm not telling her that. I don't really wanna piss her off. She's in a mood. That's not really how I'm looking to end my first week. Or, ya know, my life."

Mei sighed. We gotta get her over this somehow. "Gimme your notepad a second."

She took the pad that Seiichi offered, writing a few characters on it with a disposable blue ballpoint pen she found on the countertop. Mei tore the top page of the pad off, folding it in half and handing it to the new hire. "Bring her this."

~~~

"Once upon a rhyme, not so far away, there lived a little girl who had lost her way. Her fairy tale had been an epic fail from the beginning. Her heroes taught her how to make a stand, and now, that girl is in her own rock band! Turned the page, and they're still on stage…"

She reached behind the glass podium, which had been wheeled off to the side of the stage for her performance, picking up the orange-and-gold plaque with her band's name engraved at the bottom. She held it up to the closest of the eight television cameras pointed at the stage, pointing to it with an incredulous expression on her face.

"And now, they're winning!"

Ranko returned the award to the podium, dancing merrily over between Hitomi and Emi before blowing a kiss back over her shoulder to the steadicam with a cute little wave as it swooped past her on the stage.

"Sure, it seems just like a fantasy that fate would reach backward for a girl like me…"

It really is ridiculous that I'm even here. The universe does some weird shit sometimes, but damned if I'm not grateful for it. Ranko grinned, opting to eschew the award-winning song's coda in favor of something one-off that better captured the occasion.

"Once upon a rhyme, not so far away, our girl got asked to kick it at the J.R.A.'s! And here she is, with the best in the biz, and she cannot believe it!"

Ranko covered her cheeks with her hands as the audience roared, gasping playfully for the cameras in an effort to convey how entirely surreal the moment felt to the young starlet who, just over two years ago, had been a homeless, friendless waif of a girl, and just over three years ago, had been an cocksure, arrogant bastard of a boy.

"If you would've told her just a few months back that her life was gonna end up on this whole new track, she'd have said you're not right in the head; she could not conceive it."

Hey, Ranko-of-a-year-ago! You're gonna win a Japan Record Award. We're gonna put you on national TV in a formal dress while Akane, who you married and who is also legally your sister, watches. In a tuxedo. You're gonna love it! Oh, and by the way, you're gonna set yourself on fucking fire. Yeah, sorry, not buying it.

The redhead laughed to herself as she flitted to the side of the stage, leaning into one of the tripod-mounted cameras. She rested her hand on the side of the device, pointing with her other hand into its lens, then to herself, and then shrugging with an excited, if entirely disbelieving, expression on her face.

"But now, she's rocking out! On LIVE TV! Don't know why the gods decided they would smile on me, but now, my happy ever after happens whoa-aaaaaaall the time…"

~~~

At least one of us is getting their happily ever after, Ran-chan. Glad somebody is.

Yui sighed, picking up the Collins glass of soda Seiichi had brought her instead of the cocktail she'd requested and sipping from it dejectedly. She glared down at the creased green order slip her drink had been resting on, the blue ink slightly running from the condensation ring it left on the paper. Still, Mei's handwriting was clearly legible, the words just fucking call her staring mockingly up at her from the tabletop.

Yeah, that'll do.

Setting the glass down with a quarter of its contents missing, Yui reached into the pocket of her jeans, withdrawing a small silver flask and surreptitiously adding a splash of rum to the drink.

It's no Dragonfire, but it'll do in a pinch, she thought as she stirred the glass with a chopstick.

~~~

"I'm really sorry you didn't get the best song award, babe. You deserved it."

The young singer shrugged in her silver dress as she strode through the open concrete entranceway of the Budokan, shivering a bit in the chill of the first hour of January 1992 without the benefit of the top layer of dress that she'd burned to a cinder live on stage. Ranko smiled warmly as Akane draped her black tuxedo jacket over shoulders, snuggling into it. It smelled like Akane. It was nice. It felt like home.

"We won four awards. I got nothin' to be ashamed of, Aki. Besides, Ai wa Katsu's a fantastic song. I don't mind losing to a song that deserved to win. We'll get 'em next time."

Akane nodded, smiling warmly at her lover. "So, I think I've got most of it figured out. Just one thing about your little stunt that's still throwing me. How the hell did you trigger it?"

Ranko giggled, holding out her right hand and turning it up so Akane could see her fingers. A tiny glint of metal was just barely visible on the tip of her middle finger, and a small square of flint, the edges of which were still covered with foundation to help disguise it, was stuck to the tip of her thumb.

"Flint and some steel wool, and a little bit of epoxy. Just like a cigarette lighter. Rub 'em together, and…" She snapped her fingers, and a tiny spark ejected out from between them. "Iz put some sort of chemical in the bow to make it super flammable, and from there, it was just letting the flash paper do its thing."

Akane nodded, shaking her head. "You really are a crazy girl, you know that?"

"Ranko! My gods, how did you…" came a shout from a few dozen meters away.

The redhead bit her lip coyly with a sweet smicker as she slipped her left hand out of Akane's, answering her lover quietly as she stepped backward a few times toward the source of the voice calling her while still facing her wife. "Just crazy about you."

Without giving Akane a chance to answer, she turned and bounded excitedly back to the fashion magazine's booth, shrugging off Akane's coat and placing a hand on her hip with an almost cocky expression on her face as the flabbergasted reporter she'd met earlier snapped photo after photo, the flashes blinding Ranko as she tried to face Akane. The singer had a much easier time smiling when she was looking at her wife.

A second reporter had joined the wide-eyed blonde in the little stall during the gala, an attractive woman in a flowing pink gown and almost dangerously tall stiletto heels. She stepped forward between the commercial video camera on the heavy-duty tripod behind her and the celebrity she was preparing to interview, thrusting a handheld microphone with her company's logo on a red square shroud around its base into the singer's face. "Ranko, people will be talking about that costume change for years! How did you pull it off? We simply have to know!"

That's why she went looking for these guys, Akane thought with a smirk. Clever girl.

"Oh, this?" Ranko motioned to her second costume of the evening. "It's nothin' when you have a truly gifted designer. Her name's Izumi Sando, and her studio's in Minato. Everybody should really check her out! Fair warning though; I get first dibs on her time, 'cause she's my big sister."