Take What's Yours

"Come on, not even one hint?!"

Izumi shook her head, smirking devilishly at her youngest sister's wife. "No. I told you, Akane. I'm not spoiling anything. You're just going to have to sit back and enjoy it, like any other fan."

"But…" Akane sighed, swiveling in her seat. She opened her mouth to speak, but was shushed with a raised hand before she could make a sound.

"Not a chance, little sister," Nabiki said. "I'm sworn to secrecy." The brunette gave her sister a wink, and a little bit of a grin. "I'll tell you this, though - you're in for one hell of a show."

"It's not fair! You two got to see the rehearsals, but she never let me come!" Akane pouted, crossing her arms over the white lace dress she wore, embroidered with little white roses everywhere. In Akane's mind, wearing her lover's favorite dress was a way to be closer to her, even though she knew Ranko could not acknowledge her directly on stage in front of some nearly fourteen thousand people.

Izumi giggled. "Well, between me and Nabiki, we all but planned the damn thing." She grinned proudly; other than for one costume change, she had designed every outfit worn by Ranko or any of her four backup dancers throughout the entire Wildfire Tour performance, and hand-made more than half of them. Along with helping out at the Phoenix when she could, it had been her full-time job for months. She'd even hired one of her former classmates from her fashion design school to help with the sewing.

Akane sat up in her seat, looking left and right down the first row of seats at the Tokyo Budokan. One of the stipulations Nabiki had negotiated as part of Ranko's tour compensation was that, for the first show, the entire front row of the martial arts arena would be reserved for her family and friends, and those of her bandmates. In attendance were Soun Tendo and all six sisters Akane and Ranko shared, as well as Kaito, Seiichi and Dr. Tofu. Hana was there, as was Nodoka, though she and Kasumi both wore earplugs to help them tolerate the incredibly loud music. To the far right side of the row, Shiori Nagata sat with eleven of Ranko's thirteen Ranko's Yusue High cheerleading squadmates, as well as Kumiko's boyfriend Hideo. To the far left, Ryo Kajiwara sat with Crash's parents and his little brother Obu, and even Shinji's father was in attendance. Both of Hitomi's fathers were there as well, as was Emi's mom and her younger sister Chiasa. There were a few people there Akane did not recognize; she assumed they were guests of the new backup dancers, Sanyo and Utaru. She felt bad that no one from Jacob's family was in attendance for the first show, but given that the entire production would be moving to Australia in a few weeks, it made little practical sense for them all to make an intercontinental trip to see a show that they'd be able to catch in their backyard soon enough.

We're all here for you, princess. We're all so damn proud of you.

* * * 

"Whoa-ohhhh! It's a passion! Whoa-oh! You can feel it in the air! Whoa-ohhh…"

Ranko paced in the VIP lounge backstage as the cover band played onstage. Her fingers drummed nervously against her thighs, and her breathing was quickened.

"Hey. Why are you so freaked out? Not only have you played shows this size before, but you've played this exact building before. Twice, in just the last six months." Crash rested his hand gently on his best friend's back through her leather jacket.

Yeah. And the last time I was in this building, I damn near tore my leg in half, Crash.

The redhead nodded, brushing her hair out of her eyes. She stopped her stalking, looking up into the blonde man's kind eyes. "I know, but it just… it feels different this time. Maybe 'cause it doesn't feel like a regular show, but like, the start of something. The start of everything."

Crash nodded sagely. "I mean, it is. But that's a good thing. This is everything we've worked for."

Ranko sighed in despair. "Everything you've worked for. I don't feel like I did enough. I'm not ready. I didn't get anywhere near enough time to rehearse 'cause of my stupid knee. What if I screw up? What if I fall down in the middle of a song? What if…"

Her words cut off as Crash pulled her into a tight hug. "You've got this, Ranko. You might not have gotten to practice the dances much, but you fuckin' designed 'em. You may not have sung the songs every day in that warehouse, but you wrote 'em." He extended his arms, holding her out from his body again so he could look down into her face.

"Every single person in that audience paid good money to be here tonight because they love you. They love us. They're not here to judge you. They're here to celebrate you. They're here to party with you. They're here to see you be the incredible performer you are, and I know you well enough to know they're not going to be disappointed."

Ranko nodded. "But what about my knee? What about the fi…"

Her friend waved her words away with his hand. "Your knee's held up fine in rehearsals. You've done this whole show start to finish a half a dozen times already. Plus, we did the show at your school and the farewell show at the Phoenix, and you were all good there, too. You're wearing your brace, right?"

The redhead nodded.

"Okay. And as for the fire, you told Masa about your… thing, and he made all the adjustments you asked for. You're gonna be okay, Ran-chan. I promise. We won't let anything happen to you out there." He smiled warmly down to her. "The whole front row, and the whole stage, are gonna be jammed full of people who would lay down and die for you, girl. You couldn't be in a safer place."

"Damn straight," Hitomi said, giving Ranko a very gentle nudge on the arm with her fist as she walked by, her sparkling red heels clacking on the tile floor like a ticking clock.

Ranko glanced around, her shoulders relaxing a little bit. "You're right. You guys won't let me fuck it all up, will ya?"

Crash shook his head, flashing her a soft, reassuring smile. "You won't, but we've got your back anyway. There's absolutely nothing to be nervous about!"

"Wait… where's Ken?" Ranko's eyes scanned the room, confirming it to be one Dapper Dragon short.

With an exasperated scoff, Shinji shook his head and motioned to a closed door on his right from the purple couch he was perched on. "He's still in there throwing up."

* * *

"Don't forget, check out your local record store and pick up our first single, Stars at Noon!"

Shut up, Akane thought as she glowered up at the lead singer of the opening act from her seat, dead-center in the front row.

We sat through four songs. Shut. Up. Get your shit, and get the fuck off my girl's stage.

"Thank you so much, Tokyo! We're Four for Friday! We love…"

The bleach-blonde in the sparkling gold minidress fell silent, as did everything else coming from the stage, as a loud thud shook the building so hard that Akane felt the rumble through her seat cushion. In an instant, the entire building fell to pitch blackness and absolute silence; only the tiny emergency lights on the stairs were lit. Akane could not even see her hand in front of her face.

Oh, no. Not a power outage! Not tonight! It's not fair, gods! It's her first show!

"Nabiki, do something! Can you call the elec…"

Whatever else Akane said, it was buried under a sound that split the air of the darkened arena. It was so loud that Kasumi winced even with her earplugs muffling it somewhat.

"MWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAA…."

The deep, evil cackle crackled through the darkness like a bolt of lightning, and the confusion in the audience turned to electric excitement in an instant.

"Ran-ko! Ran-ko!" The singular cheer came from the far right of the front row.

Akane grinned, joining in the chant of her wife's name with Kumiko, and in an instant, some thirteen thousand other voices.

"RAN-KO! RAN-KO! RAN-KO! RAN-KO!"

I remember the girl that wanted to be invisible. Who wanted to hide from everything and everyone in shame for the rest of her life. Who didn't even want Akane to know her name. Ranko smiled nervously to herself in the darkness as the audience roared her name, her outfit creaking audibly with her every move as she adjusted her weight on her perch.

Well, Ranko, time to meet the whole damn world. Ready or not, here we fucking go.

Akane rocked back hard in her seat as, at the far right side of the stage, a bright jet of orange flame exploded from the stage floor, nearly three meters high. It projected a silhouette of a girl standing in front of it in a short dress, but the bright flame against the absolute ambient darkness of the arena made it impossible to make out more detail. After nearly a minute in total darkness, it hurt Akane's eyes somewhat to even look at it.

"Whoa-oh-oh, uh-oh! Look out! Look out!"

Hitomi rocked her body to the right, extending her leg outward and resting both of her hands on her knee as if bowing in deference to the center of the stage. It was only then that Akane noticed a new detail in the silhouette of the young woman backlit by a jet of flame.

She had wings.

As Akane shielded her eyes, and the audience behind her erupted in cheers, a second jet of flame spewed from the floor on the far left of the stage, revealing another nearly identical winged silhouette, if slightly taller.

"Whoa-oh-oh, uh-oh! She's gonna make you shout!"

Emi rocked into the opposite cowed pose, only for a moment, before both spouts of flame went out, returning the room to total darkness.

After a four-count in the silence and the dark, a new jet of flame belched forth from the stage floor, this one again on the right side, but closer to the center. Again, it backlit Hitomi Uyeno as her wings bounced gently behind her back.

"Whoa-oh-oh! Uh-oh! Beware the flow!"

A fourth jet of flame blasted upward from the stage, this one a third of the stage's width from stage left, about ten meters from Hitomi's new position. Emi struck a pose in front of it, rocking her hips in silhouette.

"Whoa-oh-oh! Uh-oh! TURN OFF THE RADIO!"

Both columns of fire behind the female dancers remained lit, but then a second pair lit a few meters behind them. No music played, but a half-second later, a third pair of flames blasted upward from the stage floor, the two parallel trios of controlled conflagration creating an aisle ten meters wide down the middle of stage.

Holy shit, Akane thought, swallowing hard. That's… a lot of fucking fire. Hope you know what you're doing, Masa.

A pair of tall men marched forward in lockstep out of the darkness at center stage, illuminated only by the firelight. They moved as one, close enough for their shoulders to touch. The duo wore what appeared to be leather armor, dyed a sickly blood red. The pattern of the leather molded around their torsos made them appear less like soldiers ready for battle, and more like demons who'd had their flesh flayed from them in the bowels of hell to reveal their ribs and viscera.

Seated on their enjoined shoulders and supported by their opposite hands was a stunning young woman in dark, blood-red leather pants and a matching leather jacket over a scintillating sequined black camisole. Her shirt matched the sparkling of her glitter-encrusted black heeled boots, which covered the ankles of her pants and rose came to the middle of her calves.

"Holy shit!" Yui gasped, rocking forward in her seat and covering her gaping mouth with her hand.

"I told you," Izumi said, smirking to her right at her elder sister. "Little sister didn't come to play."

Crash did, however, and he began thrashing at his guitar in the darkness alongside his bandmates. We did it, guys. We said we were gonna need a miracle if we were ever gonna make it this far, and we found one. He grinned brightly, slamming his fingers down hard over the strings of his cherry-red instrument.

Her name is Ranko.

"It's the legendary lyricist, the Phoenix rose! I'm here to shake your body from your hair down to your toes! It starts in your hips, and flows down your spine; works its way into your hips until it makes you mine!"

Whoooooa, hot-hot-hot, Ranko thought as her eyes surveyed the geysers of flame surrounding her perch atop her two male backup dancers. We're okay. It's uncomfortable, but it can't burn me. It's too far away. Masa will turn it off in a second. You're safe, Ranko. Just sing.

Illuminated only by the six columns of orange fire, the redhead sang at the maximum volume her lungs could produce; even with the power of untold thousands of watts of sound equipment, she worried the crowd would not be able to hear her over her cheering. She uncrossed her ankles as Sanyo and Utaru carried her down the burning corridor, safely distant from the flames. Her hands swayed in front of her, gesturing wildly as if preparing to cast some magic spell.

"Oozes down into your heart, and it infects your soul, until your whole, entire body starts to lose control! 'Cause the second you start hearing my hypnotic groove, you'll forget how to think…"

As Hitomi and Emi ran to join Sanyo and Utaru at the second pair of flaming pillars, Ranko lifted her feet, placing the soles of her boots flat on the chest plates of the young mens' armor. She tried to ignore their strong hands on her backside as they hurled her forward, and she kicked off with all the force her newly-repaired leg could produce, executing a single forward layout in the air.

"... and you can only…"

She landed in a crouch between the frontmost two columns of fire, her left leg extended fully to protect her knee from the impact. Ranko balled her fist, driving it down into the stage floor. As it made contact, all eight jets of flame - as well as four new ones along the front edge of the stage - came to life at once, each of them gaining almost a meter in height as Masa increased their fuel supply from the audiovisual booth. At the same instant, Ariel Wright flipped a series of switches, bringing the stage lighting up to reveal Ranko, her four dancers, and the four musicians behind them in their full glory.

Behind the nine Dapper Dragons, a giant backlit screen flashed to life. It showed a fiery orange, glowing crack forming, and then spreading, across the back wall of the stage. A quick animation played of the black background shattering like obsidian glass, a corresponding sound sample of breaking glass playing atop the music through the gargantuan speakers around the arena. The animated shards of the matte black background image rained downward out of the screen's frame to reveal a hellish scene of brimstone and fire, as if Ranko had blasted the back wall of the building out and created a window looking out onto the devil's front yard in the depths of Hades itself.

"MOVE!"

* * * 

"When they said 'once upon a time', that time is now! So, chase your glory! Just pick up the pen and start again; this time, you write the story!"

Ranko rocked across the stage in a scintillating silver empire dress that fell to the middle of her calves. She'd removed her knee brace as part of the costume change, so there was no visible evidence of the injury that had hobbled her for most of the last three months. She strode left to right, waving to the audience as she bounced excitedly across the stage in a pair of entirely transparent, short heels that made her look as if she were dancing barefoot on her tiptoes if one didn't look closely enough.

"You have always been your heroine; no damsel in distress! You are a non-compliant! Strong! DEFIANT!"

The capacity crowd of the Tokyo Budokan, led by the love of Ranko Tendo's life, sang the last three words of the chorus back to her.

"SELF-RESCUING PRINCESS!"

"Yeah! You got it," Ranko said into her headset microphone as she bopped across the stage. There wasn't as much choreography to Self-Rescuing Princess, owing to both the complex costuming, and the need for a breather between a few of Ranko's more performance-intensive songs. Her knee was throbbing slightly, but it was holding. More than an hour into the performance, the crowd was still electrified.

She was radiant.

"Hey there, Snow White! Somewhere, there's a mirror on the wall, and I hope one day, it swears that you're the bravest of them all! They might say you're overzealous when you're makin' your own way, but it's only 'cause they're jealous of the girl you'll be someday!"

Emi and Hitomi, both in sparkling yellow gowns that had been quickly fastened over their prior costumes much as Ranko's first act costume in Phantom of the Opera had been, continued dancing in a sort of pop-infused waltz with Sanyo and Utaru, respectively. Both boys wore long green brocade coats adorned with gold trim over the black pants they'd already had on from the previous costume change, giving them the look of princes done up for a formal ball.

"So, let this be your 'I want it' song, and shout it to the rafters! You have waited far too long to start your happy ever after!"

"YEAAAAAAAAAAHH!" Kumiko roared, throwing her fist in the air as she cheered for her best friend.

"When they said 'once upon a time', that time is now! So, chase your glory! Just pick up the pen and start again; this time, you write the story! You have always been your heroine! No damsel in distress! You are a…"

Ranko gestured with an upraised left hand, cupping her right to her ear as if straining to hear, as she faced the bank of three rows of seating on stage left.

"NON-COMPLIANT!"

As the left side of the arena roared the word, Ranko whipped her body to the right, performing the same gesture as she looked up to the third deck of seating on the north side of the arena.

"STRONG!"

Ranko leveled both her hands to gesture to the floor seating directly in front of the stage.

"DEFIANT!" Akane bellowed from her standing position in the front row, less than a meter from the stage and less than five meters from where the love of her life commanded an orchestra of humanity with her voice. She had not sat down in nearly twenty minutes.

Ranko spread her arms wide, beaming as she invited the entire arena to finish the chorus for her.

They did.

"SELF-RESCUING PRINCESS!"

Ranko grinned giddily. I've got a crowd at my back. Everyone I've ever loved is watching me sing. I don't think I've ever felt like this. I don't ever want this night to end.

The young singer giggled into her headset microphone. "You guys are so great! Where my princesses at?!"

A mostly effeminate whooooooooo rose from the crowd as the redhead snapped her head forward.

She thought about the character she'd played at Tokyo Disneyland on Akane's twentieth birthday, the literal fish out of water that was Ariel. She had only just gotten familiar with the character in a single caffeine-fueled viewing of the source film the night before she'd performed the song the first time. Even still, she had definitely understood how Ariel must have felt, stepping into a world that was not her own and having to learn how to navigate it in order to find a way to capture the destiny that she knew awaited her there.

"Hey there, little mermaid! Come on, crawl out of the sea! It's high time you figured out exactly who you're s'posed to be!"

The audience thundered in excitement for a new verse, as they already had for Demon in Your Radio.

"Nobody said it's easy, fighting self-doubt and deceit. But if you wanna stand your ground, you've gotta find your feet!"

Ranko glanced down at her sparkling clear heels, giving a little shrug as if she were surprised to discover they were there.

We're not at Disneyland anymore, girls, Ranko thought with a smirk. We're in my castle now. Here, I get to be a bad girl if I want.

"It's scary, and it's risky, life on unfamiliar shores. But, find your voice, and make your choice, and FUCKING TAKE WHAT'S YOURS!"

With no pause in the lyrics, Ranko belted the chorus over the thundering adulation of the crowd, thrusting her fist in the air victoriously.

"When they said 'once upon a time', that time is NOW! So, CHASE YOUR GLORY!"

She mimed writing in the air with an invisible quill as Sanyo and Utaru both tossed their dance partners skyward in their arms.

"Just pick up the pen, and start again! This time, YOU write the story! You have always been your heroine; no damsel in distress! You are a…"

Leaving the crowd unprompted to finish the chorus as she "threw" the imaginary pen to the floor, Ranko bent her knee and lifted her left leg off the ground to almost waist height. She reached down, carefully slipping off her left shoe.

"NON-COMPLIANT!"

She held it up at eye level, contemplating the transparent heel.

"STRONG! DEFIANT!"

Ranko turned it in her hand as she stepped out of her other shoe and left it on the stage, marveling at the footwear in her hand as if it were the key to a whole new life, as it had been for Cinderella.

"SELF-RESCUING PRINCESS!"

"Hmm." Ranko gave a devious little smirk to the crowd, crinkling her nose with an unimpressed, almost bored expression on her face. She shrugged, nonchalantly tossing her left shoe backward over her shoulder.

The glass slipper shattered on contact with the stage floor.