True to Crash’s word, as soon as Ranko’s first foot touched the stage, the building shook like it was in an earthquake. Akane whooped loudly, clapping her hands. Mei and Yui both watched wordlessly from their positions, and Hana emerged from the kitchen to see what the commotion was about.
Standing on the stage, her body quivering, she looked down at Akane, then across the bar at Hana. Her eyes darted up to Yui, and then down to Crash, who had hopped down from the stage to take a position at his table on its right. Ranko looked over to Mei, who had taken her place in her little perch surrounded by a forest of blinking electronics controlling the audio system and lights. The blue-haired girl gestured to her to come and select a song. Her blue eyes scanned the crowd, some hundred and sixty strong waiting with bated breath to see what she would do next. The drinks were good, the food was cheap, but they had come for her, and thanks to Crash, now she knew it.
She forgot about her test scores, forgot about a career. The future could take care of itself. Right now, in this moment, she could have everything she’d wanted from the moment she got here. This second, standing here in front of a crowd of people she could dare to call fans, with her sisters and Akane by her side, made everything worth it. Everything she’d gone through in Nerima. Everything she’d battled through with Mikado. Her father’s constant neglect. Months spent homeless and alone. Everything Takao and Katsuo said and did to her. Everything that had tried to defeat her and nearly succeeded. Having to rebuild herself from her name up, almost entirely on her own.
All of it had led her here. To this place. With these people. On this stage. Right now.
Maybe the dream really was there for the taking. Maybe it wasn’t. Either way, she could not let everything she had fought for be for nothing. She would not let down the people who had invested themselves in her. No. She refused. She would not be denied. Not this time.
She had hidden from her mother for thirteen years. She’d fled from the Amazons. From the Tendos. From her father. From the curse. From school. From martial arts. From Akane. From Mikado. From Takao. And now, from the stage.
She was done running.
All this time, she’d been singing pretty songs. Trendy songs. Popular songs. But she’d been saying the words, rather than experiencing them. She sang what she thought the people wanted to hear, and not what she needed to say. She had been singing karaoke, and singing it well, but it was always someone else’s feelings in the lyrics. Crash had taught her the most important thing about music – it was supposed to come from your heart. Come what may, if she was going to do this tonight, she would make the world hear her.
Taking a deep breath and exhaling it slowly, she stalked to the edge of the stage, hopping down behind the table where Mei was working. She pulled a box of older cassettes out from under the table, sifting through it quickly and carelessly throwing the rejected ones aside onto the floor. The redhead pulled the tape she wanted out of the box at last, tossing it to her sister. “Track two. Trust me.”
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Mei looked down at it and grinned. “I love it.”
She took a single running step and vaulted back over the low table containing the cheap little audio processing board, landing on the stage in a crouch and snatching her microphone back from the floor just as the first note of the backing track hit. A howling cheer rose from the crowd as she snapped her body back to a standing position.
She leaned into the microphone, balling her left hand up in a fist, roaring into the lyrics with a melodic fury in her voice.
“You could never know what it’s like; your blood like winter, freezes just like ice, and there’s a cold, lonely light that shines from you…”
The crowd went berserk, and Ranko barely noticed. She had a message for her father. And Mousse. And Ryoga. And Shampoo. And Happosai. And Mikado. And Takao. And everyone else who had ever hurt her. Ever doubted her. Herself first and foremost.
Whereas the original song had been about somebody’s ex-girlfriend or something, this performance was an act of cosmic rebellion. A break-up song with karma itself. Fate had done its worst to her, and she was finished backing down from it.
“I’m still standing, better than I ever did! Looking like a true survivor! Feeling like a little kid! And I’m still standing after all this time, picking up the pieces of my life without you on my mind!”
The crowd quickly picked up on the defiant energy she brought to the song. When she belted, “I’m still standing!” to end the chorus, the floorboards shook with the crowd responding, “YEAH, YEAH, YEAH!”
Three minutes and two seconds. It felt like an hour. An eternity of spitting her heart out one note at a time onto the little silver ball at the end of her microphone.
As the last note of the song faded from the rafters, she slumped heavily onto her knees on the stage. She had given every scintilla of emotion she could summon, and her soul was spent. At first, there was no cheering. No clapping. But then, perhaps sensing something about the true nature of her performance, the crowd began to echo the end of the chorus to her.
“YEAH, YEAH, YEAH!”
Ranko looked up, her chest heaving, somewhere between exhaustion and explosion. Tears ran down her cheeks, blurring her vision and giving the colored stage lights little halos in her eyes.
“YEAH, YEAH, YEAH!”
They were calling for her to respond, and the song itself had told her how.
“YEAH, YEAH, YEAH!”
Pushing off wearily from the stage, she scrambled back to her feet, and the crowd’s reaction was deafening. Her eyes navigated the crowd again, almost as if she had just realized they were still there.
Akane was standing. And clapping. And cheering. And crying. Crash bellowed her name through cupped hands from his table.
Hana and Yui had stopped what they were doing. No cocktails were being shaken. No food being delivered. Mei just sat at her little table, covering her gaping mouth with her hand.
For three minutes and two seconds, it was as if the Earth itself had interrupted its orbit to grant Ranko Tendo an audience. She had used it to declare war.