Woman Up

Eye shadow. Eye shadow. Where the fuck are you?!

Ranko groaned in frustration, frantically flinging cosmetic products around the surface of the small vanity counter in her hotel room.

I've gotta be at the venue in less than two hours. I don't have time for this shit. 

It was only once she stopped digging about in her large red and white polka-dotted cosmetic bag that she realized her hands were trembling.

I've done this hundreds of times. Hell, I wear at least a little makeup almost every day now… weird as that is to actually think about. I mean, I never know when people are gonna run up to me and start taking pictures and shit. There's no such thing as a quick run to the store where nobody's gonna notice me anymore. 

So, why the fuck am I so nervous?

She sighed, glancing out through the open hotel curtains. From her eighth-story hotel room, she could see the stadium where she would perform that evening. If she stood up, she could even make out the trusses supporting the lights above of the stage Masa, Ariel and the roadies had constructed the day before. Behind them, her eyes panned across the east side of the stadium's seating, around the upper rim of the shallow bowl surrounding the athletic field on which her temporary stage had been built.

It was already filling up with people.

Maybe because I've never done this by myself before for a show bigger than the couple hundred people that fit into the Phoenix, and this one's damn near twenty-three thousand! There's gonna be cameras showing my face three meters high on the video screens all night, she thought, swallowing hard. Can't exactly get away with fucked up lipstick. Or missing eye shadow! Fuck, where the hell did I put that?!

Because there were an odd number of girls - she'd chosen to believe that was the reason and not that Nabiki had given her special treatment as both the star and her sister when making the arrangements - Ranko had a private hotel room booked for her in every city they would play during the Wildfire Tour.

I hope nobody thinks I'm being a diva or anything. I wouldn't have minded sharing. I slept in a public park for a while. I shared a room with Pop for years. I'm used to not having privacy.

The rest of the tour's traveling entourage was booked two to a room. For the guys, Crash roomed with Shinji, Jacob with Ariel, Masa with Norio, Sanyo with Utaru, and Lance with Ken. As the only other girls, and as they were a couple anyway, Hitomi and Emi shared the room next door to Ranko's.

She glanced up at the narrow pink door to the right of her little vanity on the south wall of her room. It was deadbolted, but she could hear giggling on the other side of it. As she had discovered the previous evening, the walls between the adjoining rooms were thin. Now I know how Mr. Gao feels. The sounds of a couple… coupling in the next room over had only made her first night without her wife that much harder to bear. The little door led directly into the adjoining room, presumably installed to enable parents who had booked the room next door for their children to easily check on them.

Steeling her nerves with a deep breath that she let escape slowly through pursed lips, Ranko softly rapped on the door.

"Yeah, Ran-chan?" The singer recognized Hitomi's sing-song voice through the door.

"Hey, 'Tomi. You… mind if I come in a second? You girls decent?" Ranko sighed. I feel like an idiot, asking for help. They don't even know how relatively new I am at all this, like Akane and my sisters do. 

Ranko heard a little click as the deadbolt on Hitomi's side of the door was released, and it swung open to reveal the brunette already wearing her first stage costume. "Hey, hon. What's up," Hitomi asked with a bright smile.

"Do you, ummm…" Ranko fidgeted with her hands. The timidity she felt would have been more suited for a first date. "Would it be okay if I… got ready with you girls? I'm a nervous wreck."

Over Hitomi's shoulder, Emi giggled, waving toward herself with an open hand. "Of course! Get in here, girl." 

Ranko blushed, entering slowly and taking a seat on the blue vinyl loveseat in the corner of the girls' room. The room had two twin-sized beds in it, but her backup dancers had dragged the nightstand that should have been between them into the far corner of the room and pushed them together. The singer made a mental note to ask Nabiki if she could change their rooms at the hotels in Australia so the couple could share a single, bigger bed, like the one Ranko's room had as a single occupancy.

Who knows. Maybe I'll need it. Maybe Akane will miss me and show up after all. I wonder what she's doing right now. She glanced up at the little black digital alarm clock on the nightstand in the corner, finding its face blank. They must not have plugged it back in when they moved it, she concluded. It was starting to get dark outside the window, so even without the clock, Ranko knew Akane was almost certainly already at work. I hope she's having a good night. I wish I could call, but I don't have time. Besides, it's a Saturday, so they're probably slammed right now.

"Thanks," Ranko mumbled. "Between my sisters and Akane, I guess I'm just used to being swarmed with girls all the time, and it feels kinda lonely getting ready by myself." It was a partial lie, but close enough to the truth that she felt no guilt in telling it.

Emi grinned, scoffing dismissively as she jammed the peg at the back of a cascade of silver dangling stars through a piercing in her left ear lobe. "Please. Don't sweat it. You're welcome in here anytime."

Ranko blushed, glancing back at the two mated twin beds. "Well, maybe not any time…"

The blonde shrugged matter-of-factly, tilting her head to move her hair out of the way so she could insert her other earring. "Eh. I said what I said."

Ranko's cheeks darkened much more, and she suddenly found herself very interested in examining the contours of the silver dragon coiled around her left wrist. "I, um, well… uhhhh… thanks, I guess?"

Hitomi giggled in her seat at the vanity, applying a purplish mascara with a practiced hand and blowing a kiss to the blonde walking behind her in the mirror. "Aww, don't fluster the poor girl, Ems! Ya don't wanna run her off, do ya?"

"You two are so bad," Ranko said with a giggle. "Literally, do either of you ever think about anything except flirting?"

"Oh, that's rich. Look who's talking," Emi said, as Hitomi cackled behind her so hard that she had to pause working with her mascara brush to avoid poking herself in the eye. "What with the little tramp that you are."

Ranko grew lightheaded from the blood flow to her face, and even more so once she caught a glimpse of it in the mirrored sliding door of the closet in the hotel room. She turned her head from the mirror to look incredulously over at her friend and backup singer. "What the hell are you even on about now, Ems?!"

Hitomi smirked, capping her mascara and tossing it to the vanity counter. "Oh, please. Like we didn't all see you and Crash holding hands on the plane. We weren't even off the fucking runway yet and you were already gettin' into that shit."

The redhead sputtered, and not from all the hair spray in the air. "It was nothing like that! Come on! You know me better than that!"

Hitomi tittered, puckering her lips as she began to run the tip of her blood-red lipstick tube over them. "Of course not. You just dropped something in his palm, and had to go looking for it. Perfectly innocent!"

"Nuh-uh…" Ranko swallowed hard. Might be less embarrassing to let them think that than have to admit the truth. They'd probably go easier on me about it. But if they tell Akane…

"Well, what then?" Emi passed Hitomi's chair, dragging her fingers nonchalantly over the brunette's bare shoulders as she headed to the rack where her yellow suitcase rested to search for her hair dryer.

"I…" She sighed, hugging her knees to her chest defensively. "I'd never been on a plane before, okay? I was…" Ranko sighed, her cheeks a redder shade than the magenta in her eye shadow tray could ever produce. If I could friggin' find it. "I was scared, alright?! There was all that noise, and then like the seat and everything starts shakin' like that, and then the feel of the ground is just sort of gone…"

The blonde reached over, grabbing the back of the loveseat and giving it a hard shake. "Oh, I bet you felt the earth move under you, alright…"

Ranko's eyes widened as she bolted back to an upright position in her seat. "If you're just gonna pick on me, I'm gonna go back to my room." Ranko stood from the rocking two-seater couch, but Emi shook her head, motioning her to the empty bench she'd pulled up for herself in front of the mirrored closet door. 

"Oh, c'mere. Sit, sit. We're just teasin' ya. You're on tour. As far as me and 'Tomi are concerned, what happens out here stays out here. Honestly, it's really none of our business anyway. It's not like we're gonna go runnin' to Akane and stirrin' up shit for ya!"

Ranko swallowed hard, shaking her head defiantly. "I'm not gonna fuckin' mess around on my wife!"

Hitomi laughed, swiveling her legs around the blue vinyl ottoman she sat on in her sparkling red devil minidress. "Famous last words."

Emi cackled teasingly. "You'd better get your butt over there and get the rest of your face on though, or Norio's gonna clobber you long before Akane does." 

The redhead nodded. She strode back into her hotel room, taking a brief moment to breathe through her embarrassment before sweeping the cosmetics strewn about her vanity into her red-and-white bag with her forearm. Without zipping it closed, she threw the strap over her shoulder before slipping back through the door into her backup singers' room and making her way over to the little tan bench in front of the closet door mirror. She plopped down on it, her red leather pants squeaking loudly against its vinyl covering. 

She tossed the cosmetic bag to the floor, fumbling in it with her left hand until she produced a tube of lipstick. She greatly preferred gloss; it tasted better and didn't feel quite so heavy and viscous on her Cat's Tongue-addled lips, but it didn't show up as well, especially at distance. It was a deep wine red, and Akane said it worked with her skin tone. Ranko's preference was generally for a brighter red that matched her hair better.

When did I start having serious opinions about this stuff? No zealot like a convert, I guess.

She puckered her lips, beginning to paint them with the little maroon tube in her hand as Emi fired up her blow dryer in the bathroom, fluffing out her bombshell blonde hair. "Do we have a meet and greet at this one?"

"I think so," Emi called over the noise of her hair dryer. "I don't think it's too bad though, if memory serves. Maybe thirty or so VIPs."

"Great," Ranko moaned with a sigh. "More boys bringing me flowers." At least they don't get too grabby at these things, since we started asking Lance to hang out in the lounge after the show. 

Hitomi laughed, rolling her eyes. "Well, any of them you don't want, you just send them my way." She threw her redheaded friend a wink and a smirk. "The boys, not the flowers."

"I guess," the songstress replied almost dejectedly, tossing her lipstick into her bag and beginning to apply her mascara. Her hands shook slightly, but she was still pleased with how the effect was coming out. "I just wish they'd figure out I'm married and leave me alone."

Emi emerged from the bathroom, resting the back of her hand over forehead and bending her knees slightly in mock despair belied by her tittering. The move was straight out of the choreography from B-O-U-N-C-E. "Ohhhh! Poor me! I'm too hot for my own good!" 

Ranko giggled, stopping her hand and turning to the girls. "How the hell do you expect me to get the look right on this when you keep makin' me blush?"

The brunette smirked, touching up the concealer on a spot on her chin. "With as often as you do it, maybe you ought to just plan for it."

"Fuck off, 'Tomi," Ranko retorted with a self-conscious giggle, but her blushing being called out did nothing but intensify it. But as she turned back to look at herself in the mirrored door of her friends' closet, her smile softened into one of pride. 

I… I did it! I actually look good, and I did it all by myself. Maybe I really can do this. Maybe I'm gonna be okay. Except for that fuckin'...

Her thought was interrupted by Emi's hand on her shoulder. 

"Oh! Ran-chan, I almost forgot! Did you need that eye shadow you gave me in Kyoto back?"