Groaning, Ranko slumped back heavily in her chair. She pushed the celluloid photo in front of her away with a heavy sigh, capping the metallic silver marker in her hand and tossing it to the tabletop with a loud clatter that carried in the air of the nearly-empty bar room. She pressed her right thumb into the space between the two bones of her forearm, massaging her wrist with a wince and a sharp inhale through her teeth. "Done! Finally! I swear, Natsu, I don't do this much writing in friggin' college."
"Well, not quite done," the chipper blonde seated across from Ranko replied, picking up the autographed photo and waving it in the air to help the signature scrawled across Ranko's chest dry more quickly. She added the picture to a stack of more than a hundred others Ranko had signed before picking up the whole pile, tapping each edge on the tabletop to align them more neatly. "You've still got email to do."
"E… what?!" Ranko blinked in confusion, leaning over the table and resting her elbows on the tabletop. "No way. You said we were just doing the fan letters today! And I did. For hours! I must'a signed two hundred of those fucking things!" She cringed as a revolting thought crossed her mind. "How do we know nobody is asking for those pictures to do something… nasty with them, anyway?"
The president of the Dapper Dragons' fan club shrugged, stuffing the thick stack of photos into a large manila envelope with a thinly-veiled cringe. "We just hope for the best and don't ask too many questions, I guess."
Ranko sighed heavily, cradling her head in her hands. "I swear, life was simpler when the plan was to beat the piss out of people for a living."
"Doesn't pay anywhere near as good, though," Nabiki Tendo chimed in, popping her chewing gum in her mouth to punctuate her words. "Believe me when I tell you. I manage Daddy's expenses."
"So! Emails!"Natsuko reached under the table, grunting with effort as she lifted a bulging yellow messenger bag from the floor and hauled it onto the tabletop. The heavy bag's impact shook the table so violently that Ranko had to quickly catch her soda glass in order to keep it from spilling and ruining the fruits of her two-hour morning autograph session.
Noticing the still-mystified expression on her younger sister and client's face, Nabiki chimed in. "It's the thing where you send messages to people on the computer, like Akane does with her professors and stuff."
"But…" Ranko looked at the bulky gray portable computer Natsuko had hauled out of her bag as if she worried it would bite her. "I don't have… one of those. Do I?!" She cocked her head to the side, a quizzical look on her face, and Natsuko began giggling uncontrollably. "Hey! What's your damage?!"
The blonde swirled her hand in the air in front of Ranko's face. "Just, the way you looked at me when you said that, you looked just like my cocker spaniel when I only pretend to throw her ball."
Ranko growled angrily under her breath as she set about wiping the fine mist of Sprite that had just spewed out of Nabiki's nostrils off of her forearm with a coarse brown paper towel. She glared at her de facto publicist as Natsuko devolved into another fit of giggling. "NOW what?!"
"I… I said you reminded me… of my dog…" Natsuko sputtered, struggling to stop laughing long enough to catch her breath. "And, your response… was… togrowl at me?!" She wheezed loudly, fumbling in the depths of her overflowing messenger bag for a pale blue rescue inhaler and puffing twice on it.
"Careful," Mei called out from behind the bar counter, tossing both halves of a bifurcated lemon into a metal tray on the service bar. "With as busy as Akane's been this week getting ready for the trip and finals, Ran-chan's probably pretty hard up. Don't be shocked if she starts humping your leg next!"
"I am gonna… fucking…" Ranko picked up a wooden coaster from the lacquered tabletop, hurling it like a shuriken in her sister's direction. "... KILL you, Mei!"
The short, blue-haired girl ducked behind the bar counter, and the coaster sailed harmlessly by. She picked it up from the countertop behind the service bar, rising from under the counter and winging it deliberately over Ranko's head into one of the red vinyl booths lining the far wall beyond. "Go on! Go get it, girl! Fetch!"
Ranko started to glare, but even she broke into laughter at the sound of a loud thwump that was reminiscent of a bag of potatoes being dropped on the floor. Nabiki, who had been seated on the back of a chair with her feet on the seat, lay rolling on the hardwood floor laughing hysterically.
"Aaaaanyway," Natsuko said through a squeaky wheeze, her breathing finally starting to normalize. "Yeah, Ranko. We set up contact addresses for the band on a couple of the big online services, and announced them in last month's Blaze." She waved the four-page packet of coral-colored copy paper that she'd extracted from her messenger bag over her head. "Do you not even read the newsletters we send out?!"
The redhead shrugged, standing from her seat and heading to the bar with her empty soda glass in hand. "I mean, it's not like any of the stuff in it is news to me. I freakin' lived it!" She reached over the bar counter, grabbing the soda gun and stretching the hose over the counter to begin refilling her glass. "So what do I gotta do with this computer mail shit, anyhow?"
Natsuko turned her portable computer to show Ranko a few paragraphs of text on a white background. "It's easy! It's just like sending regular letters, except they get delivered online instead of having to print them and mail them. We've only got a few, and I'll take care of the computer part for you."
"Gimme that," Ranko said, reaching out for the laptop computer. "I'm not a total idiot!" She pulled it in front of herself, reading the message Natsuko had pulled up on the screen aloud.
"Dear Ranko, I hope you get this! I've been a Firebird since the Rise single, and I can't wait for your next album!"
The young starlet paused, looking up at the sound of the front door opening. She waved to the newcomer, motioning to the empty chair next to her. "Hey, Zozo! We're doing fan mail!"
Zoe took another bite of the crisp red apple in their hand, waving and chewing as they approached the table. "Bonzer, mate! What we got?" they queried, their mouth still full, as they took a perch on the bar countertop.
"I wanted to ask you," Ranko continued reading aloud. "You are really good at writing mean stuff about bad people in songs, like you did with Not Yours, Don't Touch and You Don't Know Me. Would you please write a song like that about my sister? I know you're a nice person and don't want to be mean to people you don't know, but last week, I caught my sister kissing my boyfriend, so she totally deserves it. Please? Signed, Layla Holt, age fifteen, Auckland, New Zealand."
Ranko chuckled, shaking her head. "Oh, come on! Is this even serious?! How am I even supposed to… oh! Wait, nevermind. P.S.," she continued to read. "My sister's name is Mackenzie. Sorry, I know it doesn't rhyme with much."
With a resolved sigh, the redhead gazed over the keyboard, beginning to haltingly peck out a reply one keystroke at a time. "Dear… Lay… la… I'm… not… sure…" she narrated aloud as she painfully entered her response with only her left index finger.
"Oh, Christ on a pogo stick! The lil' ankle biter'll be keeled over with old age 'fore you're done! Give'at here!" Zoe reached over Ranko's shoulder, grabbing the laptop computer and carrying it to the bar. They cracked their knuckles in their fingerless mesh gloves, gazing over the keyboard. "A'ight, let's see. G'day, Layla! This is Zoe. Sounds like this Mackenzie's a right cunt, yeah?!" Their black-painted fingernails darted over the keyboard more quickly than even Natsuko could manage.
With a loud gasp, Natsuko rocketed out of her chair. "Zoe King! You can't talk to a fan like that! Especially not a freakin' kid!"
The pink-haired drummer gestured with their hand toward the screen. "Why not? I mean, the cheeky wee bligh'er done asked for it special, didn'ay?"
"Okay, that's it!" Natsuko snatched her computer back from the bartop, hauling it back to the table. "No more public relations work for you!"
Zoe scoffed, chomping down on their apple again. "I dinna have no relations with the public, I just wanna send 'em a bloody message!"
With a defeated groan and a dismayed shake of her head, Natsuko reopened her laptop computer on the table in front of her. "Okay. From now on, I'll do the typing. Ranko, you tell me what you want to say, and I'll make sure nobody makes an ass of themselves in the process. As for our friend Layla, I vote we just don't answer this one at all."
Ranko batted her publicist's suggestion out of the air with the back of her hand. "No way. If we're gonna have fanmail, we answer everybody. They took the time to write to us, after all. But, as for the song, can we just tell her I'm too busy?"
Nodding, Natsuko slipped off her baby pink cardigan and draped it over the back of her chair. "Yeah, I think I can work with that," she said, reaching for the keyboard. "Dear Layla," she narrated as she typed. "I'm sorry to hear that your sister upset you. Hopefully, it was just a misunderstanding."
Natsuko glanced up at the wall, grinning at the framed photograph of Ranko and her sisters at the block party to celebrate the release of Phoenix Rising.
"As someone with sisters myself, I know that sometimes they can get on your nerves, and misunderstandings and arguments happen. But, at the end of the day, that's your family, and you've got to try to love them in spite of all of that. So, I don't think it's a good idea for me to write a dis track about Mackenzie for you. Besides, I'm working really hard between the Wildfire Tour and the last studio recordings for Behind Bars, so there's really not a lot of time to devote to this right now."
"Oooh, that's good," Mei said, leaning over the bar counter and resting her elbows on its acacia surface.
Ranko giggled, her eyes shifting between Mei and Nabiki. "Especially the part about sisters being annoying little shits." After taking a long swig of her soda, Ranko wiped her lips on the sleeve of her gray Minato Mystics cheerleading hoodie. "How do we send it?"
Natsuko expertly reached for a combination of keys, and the text disappeared from the screen. "We just push this, and it goes in our outbox. It'll send when I get home and log on to the service. Ready for another one?" She pressed the down arrow key on her keyboard, following it with the Enter key to select the next message. "Uhhhh… I'm… just gonna… delete this one real quick."
"Don't you dare," Ranko asserted, sitting up in her chair. "I said I wanna answer everybody. Now, what did our next Firebird have to say?"
"Okay. You asked for it," Natsuko muttered, sighing and slumping her shoulders. "Hey, gorgeous! I love all your stuff - I'm probably your biggest fan. Like, I've got the Wild Orchid poster tacked to the ceiling above my bed and everything. I look at it like, every night, and dream about being with you. Now that you're coming to Sapporo next month, I think we should hook up. Get some lunch somewhere, and see what happens after. I'll show you an incredible time. I promise, I'll be gentle; I know you have to dance, and we can't have you getting too sore to move!"
A quiet gagging sound emanated from the blue-haired girl behind the counter. "Ugh! Gross! Who even thinks it's normal to talk to people like that?!"
Seriously, Ranko thought, her stomach roiling. I used to be a guy, and I still don't get where guys get off thinking they can do shit like that to women. It's freakin' disgusting.
"Well? Go on, girl! After all, you said everybody gets a response." Nabiki waved Ranko toward the computer with the backs of both her hands, sneering darkly. "Get to it."
Sighing, Ranko rose to her feet and reached over Natsuko's shoulder. She poked at the E key on the laptop's mechanical keyboard with a loud clack, followed by the W. "Okay, send it."
"E.W.? Is that some sort of code for something? What's it stand for?" The ditzy young blonde reached for the keyboard, holding down the Control key and pressing S.
"Stand for?!It stands for ewwwww, dummy!" Ranko groaned, pacing around the table and fidgeting with her hair. "Just forget it. Read the next one."
Natsuko nodded, selecting the next message in the inbox with her keyboard. "Oh! This is much better. Jaqui K. asks: Which of your songs, other than the big hits, is your favorite?"
With a happy little purr, Ranko plopped back in her chair. "See? That's more like it. Okay." She sat up straighter in the chair, as if her body language needed to adopt a greater formality when dictating letters to the public than it did shooting the breeze with her friends. "Dear Jaqui. It's hard to pick a favorite - it'd be like asking my mom to pick her favorite daughter!" She turned in her chair, shooting a snicker in Mei's direction as the barkeep restocked bottles of vodka behind the service bar. "Just kidding. We all know it's me."
"I don't know how to tell you this, Ran-chan, but I think Yui's got us both beat," Mei shot back without looking up from her work.
Ranko rolled her eyes, choosing to ignore Mei's assertion in large part because she agreed with it. She turned back to Natsuko, continuing to dictate her response with a soft smile. "I think, for me, it would have to be There Are No Words. I wrote it for my wife on our wedding day, and it's just so special to me. There's so much feeli…" Her words trailed off when she noticed that Natsuko had stopped typing. When she realized why, she crumpled back in her chair as if she'd been shot in the chest with a cannon. "I… can't say that, can I?"
Nabiki walked up behind Ranko's chair, wordlessly resting a gentle hand of comfort on her younger sister's shoulder.
As the redhead curled her knees under herself in the chair, Zoe motioned to Natsuko to get her attention. "Oi! Say it's Self-Rescuing Princess." They tossed their depleted apple core in the open trash can behind the bar, giving Ranko a resolute nod as she turned to face the president of the Dapper Dragons' official fan club. "If Blue can't tell 'em she won the fight, let's at least tell 'em she's a fuckin' fighter, yeah?"
Cracking a hint of a smile at the suggestion, Natsuko nodded, her fingers beginning to fly over the keyboard. The rapid clacks of the keys sounded like a string of firecrackers going off in the mostly empty bar. "Okay. Done. Sorry about that, Ranko. The next one's gotta be a good one, right? You ready?"
She said nothing, but Ranko sat back up in her chair, dabbing at her eyes with her sweatshirt sleeve again.
"Yeah, see?" Natsuko pointed to the screen, although with it being turned away from her companions, the gesture was illustrative to no one. "Ami says: Your songs span several genres of music. What would you consider your favorite style, and why? Also, why did you choose to write your lyrics in English rather than Japanese?"
Ranko bit her lip gently, managing the faintest hint of a smile despite her sudden onset of melancholy. "I gotta say pop. I get to really put some musicality into it, have some fun with the vocals, stuff like that. It's the easiest to do really big, evocative choreography for, too.
"As for English… I mean…" Ranko motioned to her general surroundings with both of her hands. "I started my music career in a Western-themed bar. Like, Hibari Misora's not exactly getting a lot of play in a joint like this. It just made sense." She waved her fingers in the air as if she were prestidigitating to cast a magic spell. "Can you, like, fancy up the words for me, Natsu? My brain's just not… yeah." The songstress sighed quietly, the sadness from her previous answer still lingering on her face.
"Of course, hon," Natsuko said softly, setting her fingers to work on the keyboard. While she typed, Ranko tried, with gentle support from Nabiki, to steady her emotions. "Okay, and… sent. Next one… no signature, but it's from user Hammermouse."
"Okay, what?!" Ranko chuckled quietly, grateful for the moment of levity.
Natsuko shrugged, pressing Enter to open the message. "Your guess is as good as mine. We get all kinds of interesting names. Witches, princesses, video game characters, a 'Lady of the Tea Leaves', you name it. Anyway. Hammermouse's question is: have you considered branching out past music, into other creative talents like acting?"
The redhead's cheeks flushed, and she covered them with her hands. "Yeah, a little. I'm taking a minor in acting in school. I think it might be fun! I doubt I'd be very good, though. My family is always telling me what a shitty liar I am."
Now, maybe, if the casting's done by Eiji Kanda, I've got a shot, Ranko thought behind a devious smirk.
Natsuko clacked away at her keyboard, nodding with gratitude as Mei handed her another glass of root beer. "Alright. Next one… wait, what the hell?!"
Ranko rocketed forward in her chair with a mien of concern falling over her face. "What is it now? More perverts?!"
"Worse," Nabiki said, smirking at Ranko after peering over the perplexed publicist's shoulder to read her screen. "It's from friggin' Shinji!"
The redhead recoiled in her seat, a befuddled fog crossing her eyes. "Why the heck would Shin message us? Couldn't he, just, talk to me? What's it say?!"
"This account is obviously fake. Ranko barely knows how to use a computer. Anyone who knows her knows she's kind of a ditz. I don't know who you are doing this, but you should be ashamed of yourself." Natsuko shrugged. "I guess Shin doesn't read Blaze, either. Oh, well. I know Jake takes a couple copies every month, at least."
Zoe nodded as they picked at their fingernails. "Yeah. He puts 'em in the cage for the 'amster. We used'ta shred up newspapers, but hey, these are free. Sorry t' burst yer bubble, mate."
"Ouch!"Mei muttered, shaking her head in disbelief as she scrubbed out the well behind the main bar. Even if it's true, some things, you just don't have to tell people out loud.
Ranko scooted her chair closer to Natsuko's so she could see the screen. A murderously devious snicker dripped from her lips as she read the text of Shinji's message, confirming it was real. "Wait… are these things private, or can everybody see 'em?"
Natsuko tapped the left arrow key a few times, showing Ranko the list of messages. "Nope, each one is just between us, and whoever sent it."
"Okay, Natsu. I want you to type what I say, exactly." Ranko giggled mischievously, flashing a conspiratorial grin up at Zoe as the latter sipped at a bottle of hard cider at the bar.
Natsuko readied her fingers on the home row of her keyboard. "Ready. Just talk a little more slowly so I can keep up, okay?"
The songstress giggled, nodding in the affirmative. "Dear Shinji," Ranko began, twirling the tips of her flame-red hair in her fingers. "This is absolutely real. Natsuko is here with me, helping me send the messages. And, to prove to everyone it's really me, I'll tell you a story that most Firebirds don't know about. We were in Melbourne, earlier this year, and you met a girl in a bar. Paige, I think her name was? Anyway, you were drinking too much, and one thing apparently led to another, because you two disappeared from the bar together."
Zoe swiveled around on their barstool, their interest suddenly piqued. "Hol'up, Blue. I dunno if I heard this one, either."
"It was before you joined us, Zo." Ranko turned back to Natsuko, gesturing to the computer to inform her publicist that she was again dictating. "Anyway, before you went to the bar, you started a load of laundry in the hotel's washing machine. Since you were drunk, and preoccupied with Paige, you never moved it over to the dryer. The next morning, you overslept, and didn't have time to dry the clothes and pick them up before you had to be at the airport to catch our flight back to Brisbane. All of your underwear was in the washer, you couldn't pack it wet, and you couldn't find the pair you had on the night before in the dark.
"So, you stole Paige's panties while she slept, and put them on under your jeans so you could try to make it to the airport. You were still late, and by the time you got to the terminal, you were walking so funny, we all thought you shit your pants. Jake had to spend an hour and a half dragging your ass all over downtown Brisbane trying to find a store that was open at six in the morning and sold boxer shorts. I wonder - did poor Miss Paige ever get her pink thong back?"
A loud, boisterous cackle rose from behind the bar. "Oh, fuck, Ranko! Please, please, tell me that story's true!" Mei leaned forward, doubled over the bar counter in mirth and schadenfreude at her ex-boyfriend's misadventures. A loud, metallic clatter split the air as the cocktail shaker she'd been in the process of removing from the dishwasher fell to the hardwood floor.
"Every word," Ranko reiterated, smirking victoriously. "Dude must've had the atomic wedgie from hell the whole flight. You should've heard Ken bitching; he couldn't get any sleep on the plane because Shin was in the seat next to him and couldn't sit still for a freakin' second."
Zoe scoffed, hopping down from their stool to retrieve the shaker tin that had fallen to the customer side of the bar for Mei. "Pro'lly cut off blood flow to his donger, yeah?"
Mei shrugged, gratefully accepting the metal cup and slotting it back into the dishwasher after deciding to wash it again rather than put it away after it had made contact with the floor. "I honestly don't know how he'd even notice. It's not like it could shrivel up any more!"
While the air still filled with laughter, the front door of the bar rattled open. "Okay?" Crash chuckled, pulling the glass door closed behind himself and making his way to the bar. "What did I miss? It must've been good!" Natsuko handed her laptop up to the newcomer, letting him read the screen, and soon, a sixth, more masculine, voice joined the chorus of laughter.
It was short-lived, though, as Crash's mind returned to the important task at hand. "Hey, Ran-chan? I need to talk to you and Nabiki for a minute. It's… kind of important."
The redhead sat back down, concern beginning to cloud her face. "Does everybody else need to go?"
The guitarist shook his head, grabbing another of the wooden chairs surrounding the table. He turned it around, straddling it and resting his forearms on its back between the two Tendo sisters. "Nah, we're good. So, listen, girls. I know we've been having a hard time replacing Lance for this leg of the trip. Have we had any luck? We're about out of time if we want to get somebody trained before we go."
Nabiki slumped her shoulders, frowning in dismay. "Not really, and I'm starting to get really worried about it. Maybe we should have let Yokai handle it after all. Nobody with any experience is available at short notice to travel internationally for a month, especially right before Christmas. I hate to say it, but we might have to ask Lance to pull double duty to get us through the month."
Ranko cringed, scrunching her nose. "We can't do that to him! We promised him we'd handle it, and he does so much for us already. If anything, I'd say he could just be a roadie for that time and not shadow me, but you know Akane would lose her fucking mind if we suggested it."
"So, that's the thing, Ran-chan. I… actually have somebody. But…"
The redhead sat up straight in her seat, interrupting Crash with an urgency in her voice. "Well, let's get 'em in! Get 'em to reach out to Nabiki, and let's get this done! You know I trust you. Any friend of yours is a friend of mine."
Cringing a bit at her words, Crash tipped the bottle of beer Mei had just handed him to his lips, mostly to buy himself a moment to consider his response. "Yeah, that's the thing, though. I'm not… entirely sure that's true this time."
"Ruh-oh. Incoming band drama," Natsuko mumbled idly in an almost robotic voice as she continued busying herself scanning through Ranko's remaining fanmail on her computer.
"Crash… what are you saying? Do I know this person?" Ranko's brow scrunched with a perplexed expression as she searched her memory for anyone that might concern her enough to countermand her best friend's good judgement.
He nodded, taking another long draught of the liquid courage in his hand before replying. "Yeah, you could say that. He almost killed you."
Oh, shit, Ranko thought. You can't pick him. We'd fly to Beijing to set up a stage, and by showtime, he'd wander off and end up in fucking Kathmandu trying to find a roll of duct tape.
"Wait… you don't mean…" Mei looked up from her work, tossing the rubber floor mat she'd picked up to mop the area behind the counter over the back of a stool after walking around the bar to join the conversation. There was a dread in her eyes that terrified Ranko to behold.
Crash's shoulders slumped at Mei's reaction. "Yeah, Mei. I'm talking about Kaz."
"Kaz?!" Ranko's face took on an air of relief. Oh, thank the gods. "But I thou…"
"No way! I forbid it!" Mei stepped forward, physically positioning herself between her sister and Crash. "You're not letting that scumbag within a kilometer of my sister! You hear me, Matsuyama?!"
Crash held up his hands non-threateningly, trying to project calm on his face despite the fury pouring out of the tiny woman. "Mei, listen to me. I get it, but… he's changed. He got help. He's okay. Just hear us out, okay?"
"Us?"
Ranko's question was answered with a nod, and a gesture toward the front door of the bar. "Yeah. He's outside. I told him to wait until I could bring it up with you. If you don't wanna see him, I get it, but…"
Mei briskly paced the length of the bar counter, hands on her hips and rage in her eyes. "I don't like this, Ranko! Not at all. Akane would flip her shit, too, and you know it!"
Natsuko peeked out from behind the laptop computer that had thus far shielded her from the conflict. "I mean… at the very least, I'd love to meet him! One of the original Dapper Dragons?! What self-respecting fangirl wouldn't?!"
The young redhead turned to Nabiki. While Ranko's lips said nothing, her eyes clearly read please help me.
Nabiki held up her hands in surrender, palms facing her sister. "Hey, don't look at me. You're the boss, Ranko. It's your call."
"I…" Ranko gazed down at the toes of her silver cheerleading sneakers for a long moment, as if all the answers to the universe's questions could be found there if she only searched hard enough. "No promises, but… I wanna hear him out."
Crash bobbed his head with a tentative smile, standing from his chair. "I'll go get him." He hurried to the door, and returned a few moments later with a bald man in tow behind him.
Kazuki Asai wore a black tee shirt bearing the faded logo for the heavy metal band Anthem and a pair of blue jeans that looked brand new. The Dapper Dragons' former keyboardist sported a jet-black moustache that curled all the way around his mouth until it joined his goatee. He looked eerily familiar to Ranko, and yet, entirely different - as if the body was much the same, but the soul was something new.
"Hey, everybody," he said meekly, standing a few meters away from them and gazing nervously over the cohort as if they were a tribunal. "Ranko."
Ranko stood, closing the distance to her one-time friend, and reaching for his wrist with a gentle hand. "Kaz… It's… It's good to see you, man."
Mei scoffed, waving her hand over her shoulder in dismissal as she turned her back and slipped back behind the bar. Yui always says this counter gives you power if you know how to use it right, she thought, resting both her hands on it and putting on the most authoritative face she could manage between a pair of shoulder-length pigtails dyed cotton candy blue. She glanced down, confirming that Yui's baseball bat was still in its brace under the cash register drawer, and slid over a half-meter behind the counter to ensure that she could reach it if she had to.
"Yeah. You too, kid," Kazuki said, allowing himself a bit of a smile.
"Well, you're here," Mei demanded, impatiently drumming her fingernails on the acacia bartop in rapid succession. "Hurry up and spew your bullshit. We've got shit to do."
Kazuki nodded, swallowing hard. "Gods, where do I even start?" He raised his eyes from the floor for the first time since he'd entered the bar, seeking and receiving an encouraging glance from Crash. "So, look. After… what happened, I got messed up. Real bad. You all thought I was bad before, but without the band to keep me at least a little grounded, I just… pshooooo. I was using all the time, whatever I could get my hands on. Pills, coke, heroin, didn't matter. And then…"
He looked down to the floor again, his stance shifting on the floor. Ranko could have sworn he was shaking.
"One night, I'm walking home from my dealer's joint, right past this place, and I couldn't get down the street. The cops had it blocked off for a big street party. The last thing I wanted to do with a backpack full of dope was mess with the cops, so I took the long way around. Took me almost twenty more minutes to get home, and that whole time, I could hear what was going on at the party, and… I knew."
Ranko winced. "Phoenix Rising," she muttered in a soft, sympathetic tone. "The release party."
The Dapper Dragons' former keyboardist nodded sadly. "Yeah. And that whole walk home, all I could think of was that it should've been me up on that stage, dropping an album with my friends, but I pissed it all away. I got back to my apartment, but I only live a block from here, and… I could still hear it. Not a lot, enough to make out the words or anything, but enough that I couldn't escape the fact that it was still going on. So, I tried to drown it out the only way I knew how."
Mei winced, looking away. She covered her mouth with her hand, the tiny girl seeming to shrink even further in stature as the story continued. She looked like she might cry, or be sick, and was having a hard time deciding which one to do first.
"Well, I hadn't worked in months. Hard to get a job when you're strung out all the time, and so I was broke as hell. Every yen I could scrounge up went toward getting my next hit. It was all I could think about. My landlord came banging on the door looking for two months' back rent, and…" He shrugged his shoulders, seeming to diminish somehow with his every word. "Another twenty minutes, and I probably would've been dead."
The rugged-looking man's voice quavered slightly, and he nodded with appreciation for the steadying hand Crash clasped on his shoulder. He swallowed hard and continued speaking.
"When I got out of the hospital, the court ordered me to go get some help. I was away for a couple of months, getting clean. I swear to all the gods, I haven't had so much as an aspirin in over a year. I haven't been able to find work, though. Nobody wants to touch you when you've got a record like that." He scoffed, shaking his head in disgust. "I'm almost thirty years old, and I live on my mom's fuckin' couch."
Seeming to find a little more steel to reinforce her spine, Mei slammed her hands down on the bar counter at the sight of the sympathetic expression on her sister's face. "I don't like this, Ranko. Are you forgetting the fact that he almost killed you?!"
"No, he didn't," Ranko said, turning to address her sister. "I did. He didn't force those pills down my throat, Mei. I asked for them. I took them. If he hadn't given them to me, I'd have found somewhere else to get them. I'm not proud of it, but I had my reasons at the time."
Shit, Natsuko thought, watching the whole exchange silently with wide eyes. When the dust settles from all of this, I'm gonna have questions for days.
"I don't buy it, okay?! Once a junkie, always a junkie!" Mei growled darkly at the browbeaten man. "Nobody comes back from that world, okay?! I ref…" Her voice trailed off at the gentle touch of Ranko's hand on the back of her own.
"Mei… you did." Ranko gently stroked the back of her sister's hand, her voice soft and soothing. "And that means there's hope, if somebody wants it bad enough."
The bald man dropped to his knees, bowing until his palms and his forehead touched the floor. "I can't take back what happened. What I did. But, for whatever it's worth, I'm glad I at least got the chance to say I'm so sorry. Yeah, Ranko, you asked for those pills, but you were just a kid. I should've known better. I let you down, and before that, I let the whole band down time and time again, showing up late for gigs and shit. I was a fucking mess."
Ranko reached down, offering the prostrated man a hand. "C'mon. Get up from there. It's gotta be sticky. Mei hadn't finished mopping yet."
"Look, Ranko, everybody," Kaz said, rising to his feet. "All I'm asking for is a way to be close to music, put a little scratch in my pocket, and feel like I get to be part of the world again, just for a little while."
The redhead stroked her chin thoughtfully. She glanced into Nabiki's eyes, seeking guidance, and in them she saw a measure of compassion that was relatively rare for her - at least, when addressing someone other than one of the other Tendo girls. "If we did this - and that's a mountain-sized if - there would be ground rules. No drugs. Stay the hell away from Shinji's freakin' cookies. All of it. I couldn't even think about doing this without buyoff from the rest of the band, too. I shouldn't make this decision on my own; it's gotta be unanimous." She gestured with her neck to her best friend. "I know we have Crash's vote."
Crash nodded emphatically. "Before he left the band, Kaz was one of my best friends, Ran-chan. I've been hanging out with him off and on for the last few months. He's telling you the truth. He's clean."
Zoe swiveled on their stool, joining the conversation more fully now that they felt as if they had been invited into it. "I dunno the bloke, so fer me, I'm gon' stand with Jakey on this one, Blue. Whatever he says, I say."
"You need to understand," Ranko said, continuing to direct her comments to Kazuki. "You would be there to help run the stage. That's it. Jake has been with us every step of the way on keyboard." Ranko motioned to the pink-haired occupant of the last barstool on her left. "This is Zoe, his partner. They're our drummer now, ever since Ken got sick. Point being, Jake's a huge part of the Dapper Dragons, and he's not going anywhere. So, if you think you're gonna get your old spot back, you need to know, that can't happen."
Kazuki bowed low again, a hopeful glint in his eyes. "I'll walk Shinji's fuckin' dog if that's what you want me to do. I just want an opportunity to prove to myself and my friends that I'm not that loser anymore. That's all I ask."
"Then you're in luck," Ranko said, grinning past him at the glass double door through which he had entered, and the freshly-repainted firebird obscuring most of the top half of it.
"You're standing in the grand temple of second chances."