When she finished, she checked her messages on the way to the grocery store. There was another note from Kiri that said, "Today is going well, but I may miss the opportunity to talk to you. Try, but don't worry if you can't get through, and I'll sleep as soon as we finish tonight, likely about 3am."

She also had six missed calls and a message from Ryuske that said, "Call me as soon as you get this, or just come to my place." That was weird enough that she abandoned the grocery shopping, got off downtown and hopped on the route that went to the apartment building he and Hatsuharu lived in.

She called on the way. Ryuske answered immediately and said without even a greeting, "We're in trouble, Rin and Hatsuharu are already here, can you come?"

"I'm on my way," Hikaru replied. "Trouble how?"

"I'll show you when you get here," he said.

"OK," she replied anxiously.

They ended the call and Hikaru thought up and discarded a hundred possible troubles.

She called Kiri, who picked up, but said, "Hi, love you, but only have a minute, literally."

"I love you too. In that case, I'll just wish you goodnight now," Hikaru said unhappily.

"I'm sorry," he apologized.

"It's OK," she replied.

"Got to go, message if you want, I'll reply before bed," he said quickly and ended the call.

When she got to Ryuske's place he pulled her in and over to where Rin and Hatsuharu were sitting in front of his computer.

"We're being shanghaied by pirates!" Rin announced.

Hatsuharu leaned forward and restarted the video on the screen. In it, Mirage played the second song they'd played at the competition. Footage from other performances had been mixed in.

Hikaru said doubtfully, "It's not a great music video, but it's not terrible. I don't understand what's wrong?"

"That!" declared Ryuske reaching forward to pause the video on the production company credit.

Rin explained, "This company published a music video and put out a single of this song for sale, off of the live recording from the competition."

Hatsuharu added, "Without a contract with us."

And Ryuske continued angrily, "And they sent me an apology saying that there'd been a misunderstanding in the publication department and asking that we please sign the contract as soon as possible!"

"What contract?" Hikaru asked.

Ryuske ran his hands through his hair and replied, "A rep from the company brought a fairly decent offer yesterday, and I said we'd talk about it and get back to them next week."

"How could they accidently publish a video and an album so fast, without us?" Hikaru asked with confusion. "It's only been three days."

"They couldn't do it accidently," Rin told her a little grimly. "And I bet they somehow bought out the footage and sound feed from the competition in advance, it's not usually recorded with this quality."

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

Ryuske slammed his hand against the table, making Hikaru and Hatsuharu jump. "They mixed the competition recording with the demo recording off our fanclub site to smooth the quality. You can hear the spot where Rin kicked the stool accidently. They took footage from fan submissions too. They're trying to force us into signing with them," he said grimly.

"But we haven't signed with them, so they have no right to sell our song," Hikaru protested.

Hatsuharu said calmly, "That's true, but the fact is that they are. And we only really have three options: sign with them, sue them, or ignore them."

"The problem is that if we sue them, we'd likely win eventually, but it would probably cost more than we'd win and it would almost guarantee that no one else would sign us on," Ryuske said despairingly.

Hatsuharu looked at Hikaru's offended expression and said, "Exactly, and that's why they've done this."

Rin said regretfully, "If the offer is any good, maybe we should take it."

Ryuske said bitterly, "No, I don't want to take any offer without full veto rights on what gets published. And a company that pulls this kind of stunt, even if they put it in the contract, I wouldn't trust them."

"We've been going around and around on this," Hatsuharu explained.

"What happens if we just ignore them?" Hikaru asked.

"They make free money off us," Rin said.

"But it's publicity, and we could make a better video than that easily enough, and better recordings?" Hikaru pointed out.

"We could, if we had a company to back us," Ryuske said unhappily.

"I thought we were going to submit to companies anyway?" she asked.

Rin said, "It'll be harder with it looking like we already sold one song to a rival."

"What about self publishing after all," Hatsuharu asked.

"I don't think we have the resources to make music videos, despite the fanclub increase," Ryuske said with a sigh.

"Fanclub increase?" Hikaru asked.

Rin thumped her shoulder, and said with a grin, "Slacker, aren't you supposed to log in every couple days?"

Hatsuharu and Ryuske grinned at her suddenly as well.

"I've been a little busy," Hikaru said defensively.

Ryuske brought up their website, and showed her the fanclub total, it had jumped from less than 400 to over 1000. "We've been successful in that at least," he said wryly.

Hikaru stared in shock. After a moment she said, "But that means Mirage's account gained over thirty thousand!?"

Everyone nodded.

"And we can't afford to make music videos?" she asked dubiously.

Ryuske shrugged and said, "Not professional quality."

"I know a guy who might be able to film them, I'm not sure, his still pictures are good enough," Hikaru said uncertainly.

Rin shrugged and said, "That's beside the point right now."

"I don't like the idea of letting them get away with it, but it seems like our best course is to ignore them," Hatsuharu said reluctantly.

Rin nodded unhappily.

Hikaru looked at Ryuske.

"Probably," he agreed with angry frustration.

Hikaru asked hesitantly and with qualifiers, "You don't have to answer or consider it, but what was the contract Inline offered like? And who offered it, because it wasn't Kiri."

Ryuske looked at her with such a hurt expression that she said, "Nevermind, sorry."

He covered his face and said, "No, I'm sorry, it's a reasonable question. It wasn't a contract, just the offer to talk about one. And it was given by a man named Takeda Hoshimaru."

"Did you work with him before?" Hikaru asked.

"No," Ryuske looked up at her and added bitterly, "you want me to consider it?"

Hikaru shrugged.

"You trust your boyfriend so much?" he asked.

Hikaru looked at him, startled, and replied, "Kiri? Yes." She hesitated and said, "But he doesn't want to work with us, and you don't want to work with his company, so nevermind, I just wondered."

Ryuske said, "If I didn't consider anything but Mirage, I should be considering it. If we had a contract with Inline, they could fight out the legal battle easily."

Hikaru frowned at him and said, "You are part of Mirage."

"Yes, leader, you can't consider Mirage without considering yourself," Rin agreed.

Hatsuharu nodded as well and Ryuske laughed painfully. "I shouldn't have asked," Hikaru said unhappily.

"Yes, you should have," Ryuske said. He said nothing and stared at the wall for awhile. "What does your boyfriend have to say about Takeda-san?" he asked after a bit.

"I don't know," Hikaru replied and messaged Kiri, 'What do you know about Takeda Hoshimaru?' She added, "Kiri is busy and might not be able to reply right away."

"Why do you want to know, Ryuske?" Rin asked, flicking his long hair back. "If we won't work with them, it doesn't matter."

"I always thought Inline screwed us over. But they never resorted to crap like this, and they never lied about the crap they were pulling," Ryuske said bitterly.

Kiri messaged, 'Why? Is he bothering you somehow? He's one of our best managers, older, said he's going to retire this year.'

Hikaru read it aloud and replied quickly to the message, 'He's not bothering us, he's the one that approached Ryuske. Mirage is being shanghaied by another company, we're talking about what to do.'

'I don't understand, and I don't have time, if you need advice, Takeda-san has more experience than I do,' Kiri sent. Ryuske read it out over Hikaru's shoulder.

"Why would a guy who's retiring approach a new group?" Rin asked.

Ryuske ran his hands through his hair and said, "let's ask him." He picked up his own phone under their surprised stares.

Hikaru, Rin and Hatsuharu watched him anxiously as he placed the call.

"This is Kobayashi Ryuske, you contacted me about a possible contract with Inline." Ryuske said.