Categories > Anime/Manga > Revolutionary Girl Utena > The Princes of Misanthropy
Cha Is More Flamboyant
0 reviewsThe Princes of Misanthropy are - for some reason - invited to a rock festival.
1Funny
Tuesday night was Open Mike Night at the Dark Goddess Lounge, which meant two things: Vincent Valentine very seriously intoning his own poetry into a microphone with Squall Leonhart supporting on a set of exotic drums, and a young man in a long coat and oversized face-concealing hat pushing his way into the front row. Squall knew there was only one way this could end. Vincent, however, held out as much hope as Vincent ever did.
"...the silent pain of stillborn blood and fading snow. Amen," Vincent announced, and having thus completed /Damnation, Absolution, and Necessary Blood/, he took the deep, soulful breath that signalled that he was about to begin /The Sanguine Necessity of Absolving the Damned/.
At that precise moment, barely in his seat, the oversized-hatted man stood, pointed, and shouted his own performance.
"You suck! You /suuuuck/! You're a terrible excuse for a performance and you /suck/! This is aimed particularly at leather-boy but can apply to demon-wuss as well! Because you /both suck/!"
And with that, he ran to the nearest exit, as a newly-infuriated Vincent rose to the ceiling on the leathery wings that exploded from his back. Having been thus tried at every performance, no matter what security measures he or the Dark Goddess Lounge tried, made Vincent Valentine very easy to Limit Break.
Seifer considered that he was providing a public service. Awful poetry was always boring, but could be much improved by the poet's transformation into a giant demon that would then destroy the venue.
The Dark Goddess Lounge had, as yet, not managed to track him down and make him pay the construction costs. As yet, he owed enough to buy a small continent.
*
Mail arrived at the Princes of Misanthropy's apartment every day at six A.M., and after Seifer had tried many systems of mail calling, the one that was finally agreed upon was "whoever gets there first gets the mail". As Saionji was the only one of them who was ever awake before ten, he heartily agreed with that system, and had so far spent three of Seifer's Garden pension checks on maintaining his motorcycle. Seifer, as yet, did not know he received a pension from Garden.
Saionji carefully concealed the latest of said checks in his newly laundered Student Council jacket, discarded another telegram for Spike to commemorate another of his mortal identies' hundredth birthday, and finally paused on a letter from "The Rocking Rock Festival Of Rock!!!!!". After considering the envelope for several minutes, he finally opened and read it.
Two hours later, Seifer passed him on the way to get ridiculously sugared cereal, and grumbled.
Half an hour after that, Spike passed him on the way to get ridiculously sugared cereal and blood, and Saionji called over his shoulder, "We've been invited to a festival concert."
Spike paused. "Does it have 'palooza' in its name?" he asked.
Saionji checked the letter. "It does," he confirmed. "Worralorrapalooza."
"Worralorrapalooza?"
"Worralorrapalooza, the Rocking Rock Festival of Rock. Then five exclamation marks."
"We're not going," Spike said.
*
"We're not going," Spike said again, as Seifer confirmed their attendance online.
*
"We're not going," Spike repeated, as Saionji confirmed their reservation with the festival's booked hotel.
*
"We're not going," Spike noted, as Seifer booked them a van and driver.
*
"We're not going," Spike suggested, as Seifer and Saionji discussed whether they should unveil new material or stick to the tried and true.
*
"We're not going," Spike told himself, as they tightened the straps on their backpacks and loaded their instruments into the back of the van.
*
"Worralorrapalooza?" Oz asked, looking back over his shoulder at the three Princes of Misanthropy.
"We're not going," Spike sulked.
"Yes we are," Seifer confirmed.
*
Seated amongst dozens of other bands, who were relaxing and watching the other acts, the Princes of Misanthropy were mainly sulking. Spike mentioned several times that he didn't even want to be here. Saionji was dour as a matter of course. Seifer, on the other hand, saw his future unfolding in a parade of red carpet and sparkling stars and his name on every marquee and Saionji and Spike - dumped long since - staring at his so-famous visage on the television and wishing they'd been good enough to keep up with him, and was just on the verge of overjoyed. He even clapped, and heartily, when the master of ceremonies announced "the pinkest princess of bubblegum pop - Wakaba Shinohara!"
"What's she doing at a rock festival?" Spike grumbled, as Wakaba cartwheeled on stage, grabbed the microphone, and announced that she was so super-pleased to see them all that she was going to sing her favourite song, /When You Know It's A Beautiful Day (No Matter How Your Friends Feel About It)/.
"I was into her before she sold out," Saionji announced.
"No you weren't," Seifer said.
"I dated her before she was famous," Saionji continued.
"No you didn't," Spike said. "You are full of crap, and it doesn't make you look cool. I told you we shouldn't have come."
When Wakaba called the last line of the song into her microphone - "Be HAPPY!" - she seemed to call it directly into the faces of the Princes of Misanthropy, who could only be called happy relative to Sisyphus.
*
"Wakaba," Super Duper Selphie Booyaka Tilmitt announced, as Me And My Rocket Launcher unpacked in their hotel room, "is soooo cool. I think we should ask if we can cover one of her songs, and then we can open for her at one of her concerts, and it'll be great."
"Sefie, we play pop-punk with an edge of indie," Yuffie said, matter-of-factly stuffing the towels into one of her many suitcases. "She plays bubblegum pop designed solely to hit the top 40. I just don't think our style is compatible with hers."
Before Selphie could deliver her affirming, ever-happy answer, a loud thump came from the room next to them, as of a human body thrown into a wall at great speed.
"Who's in there?" Shiori asked, frowning at the wall.
"Princes of Misanthropy," Yuffie replied, with great certainty. She'd already been in there and stolen their towels.
"Figures," Shiori replied, turning back to her book.
"Why did you want them to open for us before, anyway, Sefie?" Harmony asked, laying out her drumsticks very carefully.
"I just think what they're doing is really great!" Selphie enthused. "I think it's really great that Seifer's working out his energy through music, instead of through blowing up my home town again!"
"Yeah, but," Harmony asked, getting swiftly to the meat of the problem, "you know he sucks, right?"
"Yes, but I think he should be given a chance!" While talking, and while performing some odd kind of dance, Selphie managed to sort her tap shoes by volume and size. "Either that or killed quickly and painlessly," she added, considering.
*
In the next room, Seifer was in no danger of quick and painless death. Saionji, on the other hand, was in a reasonably vicious headlock, and Spike seemed to be attempting to squeeze his head off with vampire strength.
"I've got a problem with /Feuerkreuz, Totenkreuz/," Seifer said, looking at their song sheets.
Spike looked up from his current occupation, ignoring the fact that Saionji was gnawing on his forearm in a desperate attempt to free himself. "Yeah?"
"It's in /German/," Seifer said.
"Only the chorus," Spike replied. Saionji twisted a leg around to kick him in the base of the spine.
"There is only a chorus," Seifer protested. "The verse goes 'fa na la na sa-da-da za'."
"'Sa-da-da cha'," Spike corrected him, attempting to step on Saionji's head.
"What's the difference?"
"Well, 'za' is aggressive," Spike pointed out, delivering booted justice to Saionji's abdomen. "'Cha' is more flamboyant."
"The title of the song is 'Cross of Fire, Cross of Death'."
"And?"
"Look," Seifer said, frustrated, "you say 'I do English, that's what I do', so I adapt, I do the songs in English, and suddenly I have to learn German for /this one song/..."
Spike turned his attention away from Saionji for a moment. "The chorus is 'Feuerkreuz, totenkreuz; feuerkreuz, totenkreuz; feuerkreuz, totenkreuz; tötung macht mich froh'. Doesn't strike me as being too hard."
After a pause, Seifer decided that he had lost the argument, and acted accordingly by jabbing his thumb into a pressure point on Spike's shoulder, affecting Saionji's immediate release.
In the brawl that followed, the Princes of Misanthropy broke nearly their entire minibar. Saionji later said that it was worth it, and paid for it with one of Seifer's pension checks.
*
Seifer had a bottle of vodka.
Neither of the other two had seen him acquire it, or for that matter managed to get any vodka of their own. The last they'd seen him in relation to vodka was staring moodily at the wreckage of the minibar, pawing through broken glass and not getting cut, much to Saionji's disappointment. Now, however, he was waving a half-empty bottle of Rosen Queen Netherworld Vodka: 30,000 ATK Against Your Liver! and apparently having the time of his life.
"Where'd you get that?" Spike finally asked.
"Called it up from room service," Seifer said, nodding gravely.
"Room service? As in 'just hand over the wallet and make it easy on yourself'? How much was it?"
"I dunno. Like I know what kinda money they use here. I just gave 'em some gil."
"How much gil?"
"Thirty thousand."
Spike spontaneously manifested vampire-face.
"It's OK, it's OK," Seifer said, soothingly. "I put it all on the room account."
"We have to pay the room account!" Spike growled.
"No no no no. Saionji has to pay the room account."
Spike reverted to humanity. "Yeah, you're right."
Saionji was trying to decide which of them to kill first - Seifer was drunk and thus wouldn't be a problem, but would it therefore be better to kill him quickly or kill Spike before he could interfere? - when the announcement system distracted him by suddenly flaring to life. "OK, next technical rehearsal, we've got it all set up. This is, uh, number seventeen - Me And My Rocket Launcher."
"You go for it Sefie!" shouted Seifer, waving the bottle in the air.
Me And My Rocket Launcher reported on stage with far more than the recommended levels of perk - even more, Saionji thought, than Shinohara Wakaba had managed to bring to bear. He feared earthquakes.
"OK, guys!" Selphie shouted. "I know this is a rehearsal but I hope you guys have super fun anyway! We're playing this first song for Seifer Almasy and the Princes of Misanthropy - you keep living the dream, guys!"
"You're the greatest, Sefie!" Seifer shouted, standing on his lawn chair and, predictably enough, toppling it over.
On stage, Me And My Rocket Launcher leapt into their song, performing with an enviable communion that the Princes of Misanthropy could rarely equal. For example, at that precise moment, both Saionji and Spike had their heads tilted to the side, concerned expressions on their faces, while Seifer was staring blissfully into the sky and counting clouds.
"Does this sound familiar to you?" Spike asked.
"Sort of. But I don't think I've heard them perform."
"Look, try to hear it without the keyboard..."
"I'm already trying. Shiori's worse than you are."
"Shut up."
A moment later, Selphie began to sing, and on her first line - "fa na la na sa-da-da za" - the other shoe dropped, as did the jaws of two thirds of the Princes of Misanthropy.
"She stole our song!" Saionji protested.
"It's bloody damn /cha/!" Spike added. "/Cha/! This is /not hard/!"
"Guys," Seifer said with great solemnity, pulling himself back up, "I'm gonna give up drinking. It sounds like we're already up there, and I'm still pretty sure we're in the audience."
"We are in the audience," Saionji growled. "Selphie Tilmitt stole our song."
Seifer thought on this for a moment. "Oh," he concluded, swigged from the vodka bottle, and passed out. Spike stole the bottle.
"/Cha/," he grumbled, taking a swig himself. "They're butcherin' my music."
Saionji stood. "I'm going to go talk to their manager."
"Give him a resounding slap of justice for me." Spike swigged from the bottle again. "Hey, thanks for buying this."
Thus fuming, Saionji stalked to the 'backstage' area, in which those bands who had pamphlets, managers, and recording sessions - that was to say, not the Princes of Misanthropy - had official-looking trailers set up. Going on a hunch from the old pamphlet Seifer had presented him, Saionji stalked the trailers, looking for "Me And My Rocket Launcher" on a door. He hoped they had one. If not, he would have to talk to Selphie directly, and he was trying to avoid violence against women half his size ever since one of them had broken his spine in seven places.
Finally, he reached the right trailer, drew in a deep and hopefully masculine breath, and wrenched the trailer door open. "I demand to speak with the manager!" he bellowed.
"Mm?" Miki Kaoru looked up from his paperwork. "Oh, Saionji-senpai!"
"...What are you doing here?" Saionji said, his thunder decidedly stolen.
"I'm the secretary for Seitokai Records," Miki replied, gesturing at the stacks of paper. "We're new, but we already have quite a few bands signed. It means lots of work for me, of course."
Randomly, as ever, he clicked off a stopwatch that Saionji hadn't even noticed was running.
"Are you going to ask what I'm doing here?" Saionji asked.
"Oh, I think I know what you're doing here, Saionji-senpai. Didn't you say you're here to see the manager?"
Something clicked in Saionji's abused and overworked brain, something involving the combination of 'see the manager' and 'Seitokai Records', and came up with 'be somewhere else now'. "No, no," he announced, "that's not important, glad to see you're keeping busy, Kaoru, we'll have to catch up some time, have a drink, anyway, I'll see you later."
Saionji turned around and walked, very quickly, towards the open door. He heard the door to the main section of the trailer open behind him, and hoped like hell he could walk faster than the speed of light or at least of sound...
"How pleasant to see you again, my dear friend."
Crap. Saionji reflected, as he turned around, on whether it would be faster and simpler to kill himself or to kill Touga. Far preferable, of course, would be to kill everybody in the world, but one must keep one's dreams realistic. Miki clicked off another stopwatch, and Saionji lined him dutifully up against his mental wall.
"You look well," Touga said. His shirt was, of course, missing. "Very hard rock. I see you can still find that conditioner you love so much."
"You look well, also," Saionji replied, keeping an edge of frost in his voice. "I see you're managing Me And My Rocket Launcher now. How many of them are you sleeping with?"
"Only two. I think I might be losing my touch." Touga paused for a moment, considering a matter of applicability. "Well... three, if you count Miki."
Miki's face fell into the paperwork, spreading short blue hair over an invoice for an electric guitar Selphie had overenthusiastically tapdanced on.
"Well. It's good to see you still have a great deal of money and sex. I would hate to see you try to adjust to doing without. I'll be going, then."
"Come now," Touga said, in that tone that had always made Saionji want to break his jaw - an urge he had given in to on one memorable occasion. "Didn't you have some reason to see me in my official capacity?"
"Oh, I'm sure you'd love me to visit you in your unofficial capacity."
"There is a very comfortable couch in my office."
"Your band stole my band's song!"
Touga spent a moment in thought. "Which one?" he finally asked. "'I Am Awesome, Hear Me Be Awesome'?"
"No."
"'These Boots Were Made For Kicking You In The Crotch'?"
"No."
Touga clicked his tongue. "Not that horrible German monstrosity," he said, in a tone Saionji had last heard in Ohtori. He had been being extremely degrading about Debussy. Then, Saionji had of course agreed entirely with Touga. Now, he told himself, it was time to stand up, be a man, and punch him in the face.
".../I/ didn't write it," he protested, both hands remarkably remaining unfisted.
"No, I didn't think you had. It doesn't have that horrid 'kiss/bliss' rhyme you always use." He sighed. "Selphie came up to me this morning and told me that she absolutely had to do it, and that if I didn't approve it she was going to take her band and go to Dark Goddess Records."
"Would they take her?"
"I don't believe they would. She doesn't have the required four-to-one adjective-to-noun ratio. Something else you never got around to correcting in your own work..."
"What did you do with my exchange diary?" Saionji asked, frowning. It surprised him that this had only just occurred to him.
"It was stolen," Touga said blandly, without batting an eyelash. "Then a dog ate it. Then the dog fell into a furnace."
Saionji experienced a moment of odd duality. On the one hand, he didn't believe a word of it, especially not the furnace bit. On the other, he felt very sorry for the poor dog. "But, look," he said, moving on to safer ground, "it's about the song..."
"And what an awful piece of tacky faux-metal it is, too."
"...yeah, well, I just wanted to point it out."
"You weren't, perhaps, going to protest my band's use of it, then?"
"No! No, hell no, it's an awful piece of tacky faux-metal, you're welcome to it."
"Very well. Would you like some sex before you go?"
Saionji glared.
Touga shrugged. "Can't blame a man for trying."
As Saionji left, Miki clicked off yet another stopwatch, and Saionji decided that he would come back at midnight and steal every timepiece in the trailer /just to show them/.
"...the silent pain of stillborn blood and fading snow. Amen," Vincent announced, and having thus completed /Damnation, Absolution, and Necessary Blood/, he took the deep, soulful breath that signalled that he was about to begin /The Sanguine Necessity of Absolving the Damned/.
At that precise moment, barely in his seat, the oversized-hatted man stood, pointed, and shouted his own performance.
"You suck! You /suuuuck/! You're a terrible excuse for a performance and you /suck/! This is aimed particularly at leather-boy but can apply to demon-wuss as well! Because you /both suck/!"
And with that, he ran to the nearest exit, as a newly-infuriated Vincent rose to the ceiling on the leathery wings that exploded from his back. Having been thus tried at every performance, no matter what security measures he or the Dark Goddess Lounge tried, made Vincent Valentine very easy to Limit Break.
Seifer considered that he was providing a public service. Awful poetry was always boring, but could be much improved by the poet's transformation into a giant demon that would then destroy the venue.
The Dark Goddess Lounge had, as yet, not managed to track him down and make him pay the construction costs. As yet, he owed enough to buy a small continent.
*
Mail arrived at the Princes of Misanthropy's apartment every day at six A.M., and after Seifer had tried many systems of mail calling, the one that was finally agreed upon was "whoever gets there first gets the mail". As Saionji was the only one of them who was ever awake before ten, he heartily agreed with that system, and had so far spent three of Seifer's Garden pension checks on maintaining his motorcycle. Seifer, as yet, did not know he received a pension from Garden.
Saionji carefully concealed the latest of said checks in his newly laundered Student Council jacket, discarded another telegram for Spike to commemorate another of his mortal identies' hundredth birthday, and finally paused on a letter from "The Rocking Rock Festival Of Rock!!!!!". After considering the envelope for several minutes, he finally opened and read it.
Two hours later, Seifer passed him on the way to get ridiculously sugared cereal, and grumbled.
Half an hour after that, Spike passed him on the way to get ridiculously sugared cereal and blood, and Saionji called over his shoulder, "We've been invited to a festival concert."
Spike paused. "Does it have 'palooza' in its name?" he asked.
Saionji checked the letter. "It does," he confirmed. "Worralorrapalooza."
"Worralorrapalooza?"
"Worralorrapalooza, the Rocking Rock Festival of Rock. Then five exclamation marks."
"We're not going," Spike said.
*
"We're not going," Spike said again, as Seifer confirmed their attendance online.
*
"We're not going," Spike repeated, as Saionji confirmed their reservation with the festival's booked hotel.
*
"We're not going," Spike noted, as Seifer booked them a van and driver.
*
"We're not going," Spike suggested, as Seifer and Saionji discussed whether they should unveil new material or stick to the tried and true.
*
"We're not going," Spike told himself, as they tightened the straps on their backpacks and loaded their instruments into the back of the van.
*
"Worralorrapalooza?" Oz asked, looking back over his shoulder at the three Princes of Misanthropy.
"We're not going," Spike sulked.
"Yes we are," Seifer confirmed.
*
Seated amongst dozens of other bands, who were relaxing and watching the other acts, the Princes of Misanthropy were mainly sulking. Spike mentioned several times that he didn't even want to be here. Saionji was dour as a matter of course. Seifer, on the other hand, saw his future unfolding in a parade of red carpet and sparkling stars and his name on every marquee and Saionji and Spike - dumped long since - staring at his so-famous visage on the television and wishing they'd been good enough to keep up with him, and was just on the verge of overjoyed. He even clapped, and heartily, when the master of ceremonies announced "the pinkest princess of bubblegum pop - Wakaba Shinohara!"
"What's she doing at a rock festival?" Spike grumbled, as Wakaba cartwheeled on stage, grabbed the microphone, and announced that she was so super-pleased to see them all that she was going to sing her favourite song, /When You Know It's A Beautiful Day (No Matter How Your Friends Feel About It)/.
"I was into her before she sold out," Saionji announced.
"No you weren't," Seifer said.
"I dated her before she was famous," Saionji continued.
"No you didn't," Spike said. "You are full of crap, and it doesn't make you look cool. I told you we shouldn't have come."
When Wakaba called the last line of the song into her microphone - "Be HAPPY!" - she seemed to call it directly into the faces of the Princes of Misanthropy, who could only be called happy relative to Sisyphus.
*
"Wakaba," Super Duper Selphie Booyaka Tilmitt announced, as Me And My Rocket Launcher unpacked in their hotel room, "is soooo cool. I think we should ask if we can cover one of her songs, and then we can open for her at one of her concerts, and it'll be great."
"Sefie, we play pop-punk with an edge of indie," Yuffie said, matter-of-factly stuffing the towels into one of her many suitcases. "She plays bubblegum pop designed solely to hit the top 40. I just don't think our style is compatible with hers."
Before Selphie could deliver her affirming, ever-happy answer, a loud thump came from the room next to them, as of a human body thrown into a wall at great speed.
"Who's in there?" Shiori asked, frowning at the wall.
"Princes of Misanthropy," Yuffie replied, with great certainty. She'd already been in there and stolen their towels.
"Figures," Shiori replied, turning back to her book.
"Why did you want them to open for us before, anyway, Sefie?" Harmony asked, laying out her drumsticks very carefully.
"I just think what they're doing is really great!" Selphie enthused. "I think it's really great that Seifer's working out his energy through music, instead of through blowing up my home town again!"
"Yeah, but," Harmony asked, getting swiftly to the meat of the problem, "you know he sucks, right?"
"Yes, but I think he should be given a chance!" While talking, and while performing some odd kind of dance, Selphie managed to sort her tap shoes by volume and size. "Either that or killed quickly and painlessly," she added, considering.
*
In the next room, Seifer was in no danger of quick and painless death. Saionji, on the other hand, was in a reasonably vicious headlock, and Spike seemed to be attempting to squeeze his head off with vampire strength.
"I've got a problem with /Feuerkreuz, Totenkreuz/," Seifer said, looking at their song sheets.
Spike looked up from his current occupation, ignoring the fact that Saionji was gnawing on his forearm in a desperate attempt to free himself. "Yeah?"
"It's in /German/," Seifer said.
"Only the chorus," Spike replied. Saionji twisted a leg around to kick him in the base of the spine.
"There is only a chorus," Seifer protested. "The verse goes 'fa na la na sa-da-da za'."
"'Sa-da-da cha'," Spike corrected him, attempting to step on Saionji's head.
"What's the difference?"
"Well, 'za' is aggressive," Spike pointed out, delivering booted justice to Saionji's abdomen. "'Cha' is more flamboyant."
"The title of the song is 'Cross of Fire, Cross of Death'."
"And?"
"Look," Seifer said, frustrated, "you say 'I do English, that's what I do', so I adapt, I do the songs in English, and suddenly I have to learn German for /this one song/..."
Spike turned his attention away from Saionji for a moment. "The chorus is 'Feuerkreuz, totenkreuz; feuerkreuz, totenkreuz; feuerkreuz, totenkreuz; tötung macht mich froh'. Doesn't strike me as being too hard."
After a pause, Seifer decided that he had lost the argument, and acted accordingly by jabbing his thumb into a pressure point on Spike's shoulder, affecting Saionji's immediate release.
In the brawl that followed, the Princes of Misanthropy broke nearly their entire minibar. Saionji later said that it was worth it, and paid for it with one of Seifer's pension checks.
*
Seifer had a bottle of vodka.
Neither of the other two had seen him acquire it, or for that matter managed to get any vodka of their own. The last they'd seen him in relation to vodka was staring moodily at the wreckage of the minibar, pawing through broken glass and not getting cut, much to Saionji's disappointment. Now, however, he was waving a half-empty bottle of Rosen Queen Netherworld Vodka: 30,000 ATK Against Your Liver! and apparently having the time of his life.
"Where'd you get that?" Spike finally asked.
"Called it up from room service," Seifer said, nodding gravely.
"Room service? As in 'just hand over the wallet and make it easy on yourself'? How much was it?"
"I dunno. Like I know what kinda money they use here. I just gave 'em some gil."
"How much gil?"
"Thirty thousand."
Spike spontaneously manifested vampire-face.
"It's OK, it's OK," Seifer said, soothingly. "I put it all on the room account."
"We have to pay the room account!" Spike growled.
"No no no no. Saionji has to pay the room account."
Spike reverted to humanity. "Yeah, you're right."
Saionji was trying to decide which of them to kill first - Seifer was drunk and thus wouldn't be a problem, but would it therefore be better to kill him quickly or kill Spike before he could interfere? - when the announcement system distracted him by suddenly flaring to life. "OK, next technical rehearsal, we've got it all set up. This is, uh, number seventeen - Me And My Rocket Launcher."
"You go for it Sefie!" shouted Seifer, waving the bottle in the air.
Me And My Rocket Launcher reported on stage with far more than the recommended levels of perk - even more, Saionji thought, than Shinohara Wakaba had managed to bring to bear. He feared earthquakes.
"OK, guys!" Selphie shouted. "I know this is a rehearsal but I hope you guys have super fun anyway! We're playing this first song for Seifer Almasy and the Princes of Misanthropy - you keep living the dream, guys!"
"You're the greatest, Sefie!" Seifer shouted, standing on his lawn chair and, predictably enough, toppling it over.
On stage, Me And My Rocket Launcher leapt into their song, performing with an enviable communion that the Princes of Misanthropy could rarely equal. For example, at that precise moment, both Saionji and Spike had their heads tilted to the side, concerned expressions on their faces, while Seifer was staring blissfully into the sky and counting clouds.
"Does this sound familiar to you?" Spike asked.
"Sort of. But I don't think I've heard them perform."
"Look, try to hear it without the keyboard..."
"I'm already trying. Shiori's worse than you are."
"Shut up."
A moment later, Selphie began to sing, and on her first line - "fa na la na sa-da-da za" - the other shoe dropped, as did the jaws of two thirds of the Princes of Misanthropy.
"She stole our song!" Saionji protested.
"It's bloody damn /cha/!" Spike added. "/Cha/! This is /not hard/!"
"Guys," Seifer said with great solemnity, pulling himself back up, "I'm gonna give up drinking. It sounds like we're already up there, and I'm still pretty sure we're in the audience."
"We are in the audience," Saionji growled. "Selphie Tilmitt stole our song."
Seifer thought on this for a moment. "Oh," he concluded, swigged from the vodka bottle, and passed out. Spike stole the bottle.
"/Cha/," he grumbled, taking a swig himself. "They're butcherin' my music."
Saionji stood. "I'm going to go talk to their manager."
"Give him a resounding slap of justice for me." Spike swigged from the bottle again. "Hey, thanks for buying this."
Thus fuming, Saionji stalked to the 'backstage' area, in which those bands who had pamphlets, managers, and recording sessions - that was to say, not the Princes of Misanthropy - had official-looking trailers set up. Going on a hunch from the old pamphlet Seifer had presented him, Saionji stalked the trailers, looking for "Me And My Rocket Launcher" on a door. He hoped they had one. If not, he would have to talk to Selphie directly, and he was trying to avoid violence against women half his size ever since one of them had broken his spine in seven places.
Finally, he reached the right trailer, drew in a deep and hopefully masculine breath, and wrenched the trailer door open. "I demand to speak with the manager!" he bellowed.
"Mm?" Miki Kaoru looked up from his paperwork. "Oh, Saionji-senpai!"
"...What are you doing here?" Saionji said, his thunder decidedly stolen.
"I'm the secretary for Seitokai Records," Miki replied, gesturing at the stacks of paper. "We're new, but we already have quite a few bands signed. It means lots of work for me, of course."
Randomly, as ever, he clicked off a stopwatch that Saionji hadn't even noticed was running.
"Are you going to ask what I'm doing here?" Saionji asked.
"Oh, I think I know what you're doing here, Saionji-senpai. Didn't you say you're here to see the manager?"
Something clicked in Saionji's abused and overworked brain, something involving the combination of 'see the manager' and 'Seitokai Records', and came up with 'be somewhere else now'. "No, no," he announced, "that's not important, glad to see you're keeping busy, Kaoru, we'll have to catch up some time, have a drink, anyway, I'll see you later."
Saionji turned around and walked, very quickly, towards the open door. He heard the door to the main section of the trailer open behind him, and hoped like hell he could walk faster than the speed of light or at least of sound...
"How pleasant to see you again, my dear friend."
Crap. Saionji reflected, as he turned around, on whether it would be faster and simpler to kill himself or to kill Touga. Far preferable, of course, would be to kill everybody in the world, but one must keep one's dreams realistic. Miki clicked off another stopwatch, and Saionji lined him dutifully up against his mental wall.
"You look well," Touga said. His shirt was, of course, missing. "Very hard rock. I see you can still find that conditioner you love so much."
"You look well, also," Saionji replied, keeping an edge of frost in his voice. "I see you're managing Me And My Rocket Launcher now. How many of them are you sleeping with?"
"Only two. I think I might be losing my touch." Touga paused for a moment, considering a matter of applicability. "Well... three, if you count Miki."
Miki's face fell into the paperwork, spreading short blue hair over an invoice for an electric guitar Selphie had overenthusiastically tapdanced on.
"Well. It's good to see you still have a great deal of money and sex. I would hate to see you try to adjust to doing without. I'll be going, then."
"Come now," Touga said, in that tone that had always made Saionji want to break his jaw - an urge he had given in to on one memorable occasion. "Didn't you have some reason to see me in my official capacity?"
"Oh, I'm sure you'd love me to visit you in your unofficial capacity."
"There is a very comfortable couch in my office."
"Your band stole my band's song!"
Touga spent a moment in thought. "Which one?" he finally asked. "'I Am Awesome, Hear Me Be Awesome'?"
"No."
"'These Boots Were Made For Kicking You In The Crotch'?"
"No."
Touga clicked his tongue. "Not that horrible German monstrosity," he said, in a tone Saionji had last heard in Ohtori. He had been being extremely degrading about Debussy. Then, Saionji had of course agreed entirely with Touga. Now, he told himself, it was time to stand up, be a man, and punch him in the face.
".../I/ didn't write it," he protested, both hands remarkably remaining unfisted.
"No, I didn't think you had. It doesn't have that horrid 'kiss/bliss' rhyme you always use." He sighed. "Selphie came up to me this morning and told me that she absolutely had to do it, and that if I didn't approve it she was going to take her band and go to Dark Goddess Records."
"Would they take her?"
"I don't believe they would. She doesn't have the required four-to-one adjective-to-noun ratio. Something else you never got around to correcting in your own work..."
"What did you do with my exchange diary?" Saionji asked, frowning. It surprised him that this had only just occurred to him.
"It was stolen," Touga said blandly, without batting an eyelash. "Then a dog ate it. Then the dog fell into a furnace."
Saionji experienced a moment of odd duality. On the one hand, he didn't believe a word of it, especially not the furnace bit. On the other, he felt very sorry for the poor dog. "But, look," he said, moving on to safer ground, "it's about the song..."
"And what an awful piece of tacky faux-metal it is, too."
"...yeah, well, I just wanted to point it out."
"You weren't, perhaps, going to protest my band's use of it, then?"
"No! No, hell no, it's an awful piece of tacky faux-metal, you're welcome to it."
"Very well. Would you like some sex before you go?"
Saionji glared.
Touga shrugged. "Can't blame a man for trying."
As Saionji left, Miki clicked off yet another stopwatch, and Saionji decided that he would come back at midnight and steal every timepiece in the trailer /just to show them/.
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