Looking Forward, Looking Back

"Man, that was good!" Jacob stretched, leaning back on the wooden bench with his bare feet in the sand, the taste of roast pork and pineapple still dancing on his tongue. "I'm gonna miss this place. It's so peaceful here."

Crash chuckled, tossing a stick into the fire as he gazed out over the water of 'Aiea Bay, the sky above it beginning its transition from blue to pink with the first hints of sunset. In the distance, several surfers frolicked in the waves, their voices too far away to carry. "Somehow, I'm sure Zoe's gonna make it up to you when you see them next week."

The keyboardist grinned, bobbing his head. "Yeah, that's gonna be great. You guys are gonna love them."

Shinji glanced up at the little boardwalk surrounding the beachfront counter-service restaurant, where the crowd was beginning to thin. No doubt, they were beginning to make the trek toward Aloha Stadium, which despite covering some of the seating due to distance from the stage or - in the case of the north side of the bowl, being behind it - was set to receive just north of thirty thousand fans in just under two hours for a concert. "We should probably think about getting over to the venue."

"In a few minutes," the girl in the orange-and-yellow floral dress said, smiling lovingly at the redhead in white to her right. "I'm not ready for this to end yet."

Ranko turned, cupping Akane's cheek in her hand and pulling her into a kiss in the firelight.

"Me either."

"Hey, hey," Shinji groaned, gesturing at the girls with his open beer bottle. "Easy with that shit in public, yeah?"

The songstress sighed, releasing Akane and sitting up straight. She nodded sadly as she played with the strand of white flowers dangling around her neck and over her breasts. "Yeah, you're right. Sorry." She fiddled with her fingers in her lap, turning to Akane. "I, um… pulled some strings, and scored you a seat up front for the show." Ranko blushed, giving her wife a little nudge. "That is, if you even wanna come. I mean, you've seen it before, after all."

Akane squeezed her wife tight around the forearm. "I wouldn't miss it for all the world, princess. And I'm not likely to get a chance to see it again for a few months after tonight."

Ranko's shoulders slumped. "So… you're still going home, then?"

Her wife nodded softly. "In the morning. I have to, baby. We talked about this. But don't get all mopey about it, okay? We still have tonight."

The redhead exhaled heavily, as if Akane was watching the light leave her heart in real time. "Yeah. I guess we do." She stood, letting go of Akane's hand. "Shin's right. We should get over to the stadium and start getting ready."

"Ranko, I…" Akane reached up for her, sighing. The timbre of her voice raised with concern.

Ranko interrupted her, not taking the hand that was offered. "It's getting late. We've gotta go."

* * *

"No shadow can claim you! No challenge can tame you! You're stronger than you realize! There isn't a thing which could ever extinguish the INFERNO that burns IN YOUR EYES!"

The video board behind Ranko flickered in torrents of animated flame, wreathing an empty black background in the center. Each time the name of the song was screamed by Ranko, all four musicians and both of her backup singers, the word also flashed in the center of the screen in huge orange block letters. The 31,204 people packing the west, south and east sides of the open-air football stadium needed no reminder of what they should be chanting alongside the songstress and her friends, however.

"RISE like a dragon and RISE from the agony! RISE and rekindle the fla-a-a-ame!"

With each shout, Ranko thrust her arm up and forward, punching at the air with her right fist in her red leather jacket. She wore it over a black sequined camisole, her red leather pants and her glittery black boots, the same costume she'd opened the show and performed the first four songs in. All twelve of the fuel jets mounted to the front of the stage belched skyward every time she said the word, sending streams of orange flame three meters skyward with each repetition as if Ranko herself were controlling the flame with her fist under the waxing crescent moon.

"When LIFE turns to ashes, you GO get the matches, and SEAR away all of the sha-a-a-ame!"

The redheaded firebrand stalked the back edge of the stage, as far away from the wall of flame as she could be without tripping over Jacob and Ken's instruments. To her left, Hitomi and Sanyo raised their arms urgently, summoning the west side of the stadium to its feet. Emi and Utaru did the same on the right. The male dancers had changed out of their blood-red leather demon armor, and into form-fitting black tee shirts and matching pants, during the show's second number. Hitomi and Emi had swapped out their red sparkly dresses for black knee-length jean skirts and hot pink princess vests under black denim half-jackets just before the start of Freak.

"BURN like a demon, and EARN what you're dreamin'! The Phoenix inside never dies!"

Ranko strode to the center of the stage, glancing down at her feet to check her positioning. Don't wanna screw this up, or it's gonna be an awfully short tour. Sanyo and Hitomi charged up to join her on her left, Emi and Utaru on the right, and the five dancers kicked their legs up like baseball pitchers, punching at the air as they launched back into their group choreography.

"RISE like a dragon and RISE from the agony! RISE and rekindle the fla-a-a-ame!"

Sing it, baby, Akane thought as she roared the song's title from her seat at stage left. The best Ranko had been able to secure on short notice was a seat in the third row back, but the angle she had to the stage was oddly reminiscent of her vantage back at her little round VIP table at the Phoenix. It made her smile.

How far you've come from there, Ranko.

"When LIFE turns to ashes, you GO get the matches, and SEAR away all of the sha-a-a-ame! BURN like a demon, and EARN what you're dreamin'!"

The loud screech of a bird of prey roared through the speakers over the music, and an animation of a giant firebird began to circle the giant screen clockwise behind Ranko and her fellow performers.

"The Phoenix inside never dies!"

"Never dies," Crash sang as Sanyo picked Hitomi up by the waist, whirling her into his arms and tossing her toward the front left of the stage.

"Never dies!" Shinji slammed his fingers down on the strings of his bass guitar in time with his words, as Emi landed from her own twisting throw on the right side of the stage, taking a position a third of the way from both the right and front edges of the platform.

"Never dies!" Jacob glanced up at the performers as Utaru and Sanyo scattered closer to Hitomi and Emi on the stage's wings, leaving Ranko alone and giving her a wide berth at the center of the stage platform.

"Never dies!" Ken's voice, high-pitched for a man, was joined by Hitomi and Emi through their headset microphones.

The flaming orange bird dove abruptly downward through the center of the screen, and as it disappeared from the bottom of the image, a wall of flame spewed upward in the animation as if the bird had struck the stage floor and lit the whole of it afire behind Jacob and Ken. The fiery jets along the stage's front edge all exploded to life as well.

Here we go, Ranko thought, gritting her teeth. Deep breath. Deep breath. It can't get me. It can't get me.

"YOU IGNITE, AND YOU RISE!"

From a narrow groove cut into the stage floor, covered with steel mesh grating to keep the performers from tripping in it, a column of orange fire blasted skyward a few meters behind Ranko. The flame spread around her, curving and following the grooves in the floor around the singer's position until it fully surrounded her in a wide, lopsided heart-shaped curtain of flame encompassing nearly half the width of the stage that obscured her entirely from the view of the crowd. The outline was an identical match to the heart at the end of her signature, as if it had been inscribed on the stage with a fountain pen that used napalm for ink.

The stadium erupted as the fire blasted from the stage floor, cheering and chanting the songstress' name for nearly a full minute. Then, all at once, the jets extinguished, revealing Ranko standing in the same place she had been a moment before, now wearing a glittery white A-line dress that came to her knees and left her arms exposed. Her forehead glistened with sweat from the heat of the flame she'd endured to protect her from the view of over thirty thousand Firebirds as she'd changed her clothes on the stage.

She stalked forward on her sparkly silver heels, waving to the crowd as their cheers intensified and giving them a moment to die down before continuing.

"Yeah! That's right! Sometimes, life just shits on ya, and it's on you to get up, dust yourself off, and move on. It could be anything. Bad day at work, bullshit with your family…"

Crash's guitar began playing an angry rhythm unfamiliar to the crowd - the second time they'd heard a song that night that had appeared on neither of Ranko and the Dapper Dragons' two studio albums. Their excitement was palpable.

"... or a total jerk of a boy…"

* * *

"And you wonder why I never even miss you, dude!"

The video screen behind Ranko showed a bright pink silhouette of a woman in a puffy dress, in the style popular in America in the fifties. She thrust her hand up, stiff-arming a teal silhouette of a man before turning and walking away from him, holding her skirts up off the ground. Because Hey, Jerk! had been a fairly late add to the set list, the animation team that had worked on the rest of the graphics for the video screen had not produced the little cartoon. Instead, it had been rushed into existence over the course of a caffeine-fueled three-day weekend by an aspiring mangaka named Kumiko Iwata.

"Now I'm happy, and I'm thriving! Havin' so much fun! All I had to do was say that you and me are done!"

Ranko gave a dismissive wave over her shoulder at Shinji, not unlike the one the animated girl on the screen was doing, as Hitomi and Emi both distanced themselves from their dance partners with disgusted glares on their faces. The music cut out, leaving Ranko's voice as the only instrument still carried on the light Hawaiian breeze off the bay.

"So yeah! It's true! Hey, jerk! I'm never going back to being jerked around by you!"

The singer waved to the crowd over their enthusiastic cheers, smiling brightly. She stole a quick glance to the left side of the stage, ensuring Akane was still in the seat she'd procured for her wife at the last minute due to her surprise arrival.

"Right? Can you believe that guy? I mean, honestly! Who would do that kind of shit to a cute girl like me?!"

A jerk of a boy, raised by a bigger jerk of a father, who didn't know better. Who didn't know his own heart, and was too afraid to listen to it, Akane thought darkly. She understood Ranko's motivation for writing Hey, Jerk!, but she didn't like the song at all. Hearing her wife sing it unsettled her far more than Sneak, and that lyrical warhead had been directed at her personally.

I wish she could forgive herself, Akane thought. I hate that she's put in a position to have to beat herself up on stage like that every night. She deserves better. I could throttle that bitch at Yokai who told her she had to write a song about a boy.

Akane sat forward in her seat, smiling to herself. While Hey, Jerk! always left a pit in her stomach, Worthy of You, the next song in the set list from the shows she'd seen in Tokyo and Osaka, tended to make her smile. She still wished Ranko hadn't been quite so self-deprecating in it, but Ranko had admitted to her privately that the tone of the song had been more Crash's vision for the duet than her own.

"You know, though… thinking back on things, I haven't always been the best at relationships, either." Ranko turned, her eyes falling directly on Akane. "I've grown enough as a person that I can admit when I was wrong."

Ranko, baby, Akane wondered, sitting up in her seat again. What are you doing?

Crash did not step forward, as he normally did at the start of the duet. Akane cocked her head slightly in curiosity as a sad, if not necessarily slow-paced, rhythm began to rise from Jacob's synthesizer keyboard, singing in its grand piano voice.

"I wasn't perfect. Wasn't perfect, no-oh!"

As Hitomi and Emi sang the intro, Ranko reached out her right hand, balled into a loose fist that she rubbed three times in a circular motion with the fingers of her left, her diamond wedding ring reflecting the green and blue stage lighting.

"I wasn't perfect. Wasn't perfect, no-oh-oh, oh," Emi and Hitomi repeated as they criss-crossed the stage. The screen behind Ranko displayed her band's logo, as no graphics had been prepared for the impromptu performance of the song that the repeated performances of Hey, Jerk! had inspired Ranko to write.

Ranma hurt me bad, to be sure, Ranko thought. But I wasn't the only one.

The redhead's soft, almost pleading eyes were deadlocked with Akane's in the audience as she opened her mouth to sing.

"Hey, I'm sorry for the way that I was back then! If I had it to do over, wouldn't do it again! I've lost count of the amount of hours I've spent wishin' I could just go back a little, make a few better decisions…"

Akane sat all the way forward in her seat, leaning her weight on her knees. Is this… for me?

Ranko did not have much planned in the way of choreography for the new song, so she swayed in place as the song began. She had to remind herself to occasionally make eye contact with her fans and not just single Akane out in the crowd.

"Sure, I made a few mistakes - okay, more than a few - but there's nothing I regret more than the way I treated you. Looking back on how it happened, I don't know what's more surprising: that you ever took me back, or that I stopped apologizing."

In the third row, Akane rocked back into her seat, covering her mouth with hands that formed a little tent over her nose. Oh, Ranko… I don't hold you responsible for those things. Not anymore.

Crash's guitar came to life, introducing a more upbeat pop melody for the length of the chorus atop Jacob's piano.

"Back then, I really hurt you. Back then, I couldn't see just how little I deserved you being close to me. Back then, I wasn't perfect. Back then, I wasn't smart. It seems like all I ever did was go and break your heart…"

Ranko began moving into a series of basic dance steps. While Sanyo and Utaru had left the stage at the end of Hey, Jerk! owing to having no choreography prepared for them for Back Then, Hitomi and Emi remained for their backup singing roles. They recognized the steps Ranko had begun as something they had done before at the Phoenix, and were able to join in, improvising somewhat as they went to account for the larger stage and the slight differences in the beat.

"Hey, I'm sorry for the things that I said back then. Could've been a better lover, and a better friend. Shoulda figured out way earlier that what was missin' was that I could never shut up long enough to listen."

Akane smiled softly, if a bit wistfully. You? Needing to have the loudest voice in the room? She craned her neck to look at the other thirty-one thousand people in the football stadium hanging on Ranko's every word. Naaww. Not my girl.

Ranko shook her head on the stage, sighing quietly in the quarter-second gap between lines of the song. "I said lots of stupid stuff back then I didn't mean. Wish I knew what I know now, back when I was sixteen. Looking back, I really hate the way that I ignored you all those times you really needed me to be there for you…"

Akane sighed in her seat, biting her lip. I wasn't much better, baby. If everything you were talking about in Hey, Jerk! happened - if you were really hurting like that, struggling like that - I should have seen it. I should have been there to listen. To help. It's no wonder you were angry all the time. You were fighting against your own heart, and you didn't even really understand why.

"I wasn't perfect. Wasn't perfect, no-oh! I wasn't perfect, baby, wasn't perfect, no-oh-oh-oh whoa!" Hitomi and Emi leaned in to each other, shaking their heads as they sang and crouching with their hands on their knees as if singing into a shared stand microphone even though both wore headsets.

She stalked across the front of the stage in her sparkling silver heels, greeting the audience more closely than she'd been able to during the pyrotechnic displays across the stage's leading edge that had been so prevalent in the earlier songs of the set list. Ranko alternated between waving to the crowd and wiping her eyes carefully with her black-painted fingertips.

"Hey, I'm sorry for the feelings I hid back then. I was way more cold and callous than I should've been. At the time, I knew I loved you, but I let you doubt it, and denied it when you asked until we fought about it."

Ranko's eyes fell directly on Akane, and she clasped her hands over her heart in her sparkly white dress.

I swear, baby, Akane thought, wiping a tear of her own in her seat. I could sing this song right back to you, and it would sound exactly the same. I'm sorry, too, princess.

Ranko shook her head as if denying something, her blown-out red hair cascading over her bare shoulders.

"When they caught me making eyes, I said it wasn't true; there was no way I could be falling for someone like you. Looking back, I wish I'd told the truth of how I felt. Wonder how it would've changed the hands that we were dealt."

The redhead bit her lip. If Pop and Dad hadn't pushed us so hard, who knows what might've happened. I mean, we made it, and I'm happy, but… so much lost time. For both of us. She tried to put on a smile, swishing her hips and letting the white dress flare around her hips. Gotta try and remember to put on a show, too.

However little she was dancing, judging by their cheers, the crowd did not seem to mind.

Ranko pinched at her forehead with her right thumb and first finger, her other three fingers extended as she winced slightly. She flattened her hand into an open palm facing her left, with her fingers tight together and her thumb touching her forehead, before then moving it forward in the direction of a certain black-haired girl seated in the third row.

Akane nodded in sad acknowledgement. She had enlisted her wife's help to study for her Japanese Sign Language elective class at Minato University more than enough times for both girls to have memorized the sign for I'm sorry.

"Hey, I'm sorry for the way I made you feel back then. I've been treating you like crap since, gods, I don't know when!"

Ranko looked up as she felt a hand on her back. She hadn't even realized she'd stopped dancing, but Emi's gentle touch of support gave her a measure of comfort as she worked through the worst of the guilt she felt about her past with her now-wife.

"Every time that you got close to me, I got unnerved. Pushed you away from me with insults you did not deserve. I was trying to deny the way I felt for you. Thought maybe I could love you less somehow, if you did, too. Looking back, I don't know how we ever found romance, when I never found a way to give you half a chance…"

Emi turned to Hitomi, giving her a wild gesture with her hands and motioning to Ranko. Understanding her partner's unspoken directive, Hitomi joined Emi in singing the full chorus without their front woman, giving Ranko a much-needed moment to compose herself.

Ranko, princess… It's one thing to bare your heart like this on stage at the Phoenix, with a couple hundred drunk people and your family all around us. But here? In front of all these people? This might be the bravest thing I've ever seen, Akane thought as her eyes scanned the thousands of souls surrounding her in the packed arena.

I'm so proud of you, Ranko. And I forgave you a long time ago.

"Gods, I can't believe how far we've come since way back then. Who'd have guessed I'd ever wind up more than your girlfriend?"

The idea of looking to the future rather than the past seemed to brighten Ranko's spirits. She'd managed to wipe away her tears expertly enough to avoid entirely destroying her makeup. She flashed Akane a bright smile, wiggling her hips with her hands folded over her heart.

"Who'd have ever thought we had a chance to last this long? That you ever would forgive me for all I did wrong? Every day I wake up next to you, I need a minute to believe it's not a dream that the bed has you in it."

The singer looked down at her fingers, gazing adoringly at her left hand. I am where I belong now. No matter what sort of crazy bullshit we put each other through to get here, we're here. At least for tonight.

"Looking back, sometimes the hardest thing is that I know, if I wasn't cruel, we could have done this years ago."

Ranko forced a smile, her eyes panning the crowd. Come on, Ranko, get your head in the game. Big finish, and let's move on with the show. I should've realized how much harder this was gonna be in front of a crowd this size. Crash was right. He usually is, when it comes to shit like this.

"Back then, I was bad for you. Back then, I was flat wrong. The worst part is, I think I prob'lly knew it all along. Back then, I wasn't perfect. Back then, I made mistakes. I swear, I'll make it up to you, don't care how long it takes."

As the music ended, Ranko's eyes raised to seek out the love of her life. Akane, like most everyone in Aloha Stadium at that moment, was on her feet.

She was cheering.

She was smiling.

She was rubbing the back of her right fist with her left hand.

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

"So, yeah. I screw up just like everybody else," Ranko said as the crowd finally died down after the second back-to-back unreleased song they'd heard that April night. The singer took a deep breath, letting it out slowly through pursed lips. Dial it in, Ranko.

"I think sometimes people think singers, musicians, stuff like that are somehow perfect, but I gotta tell ya, I fuck my life up at least as much as anybody else here does. After all…" She turned to her right, giving Emi a sharp nod.

As Hitomi gave Ranko's hand a quick squeeze, Emi crossed the stage on her white chunky heels, letting her voice rise to the very top of the fourth octave.

"She's just a regular, a simple, regular… a normal, regular gi-i-i-irl!"

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