Fire&Ice - 1

    Yorukai reached the bottom of the shrine's stairs and paused to address the silver-haired man following him. "Hey, do you think she's going to be okay by herself?"

    "...Of course. Have you forgotten who we're talking about?" Kouhei replied quickly, "She can take care of herself. We should just get out of her way."

    "I guess so," Yorukai sighed. "But she didn't look fine when we left her."

    "Look," Kouhei grunted in annoyance. "If Ame-san wanted our concern, you can be certain that she would ask for it. Otherwise, you should respect her privacy and let her be. Do you understand, Chikawa-san?"

    "Yeah, I know." Yorukai retreated to his motorcycle and turned the key. "Hey, you'd better leave her alone too. If I hear that you've done something to make her more upset..."

     Kouhei smiled coldly. "You have nothing to worry about from me. I assure you."

    Yorukai's reply was to shower Kouhei with gravel as he revved the engine and tore down the road. He knew that Kouhei was wrong. Visiting her would have answered quite a few questions.

    Amefuri had been acting strange ever since she returned from the Edo Dreamscape. Something changed her. Any attempt to draw her from the grounds had failed and she retreated within the honden, where even head priests and priestesses rarely entered, abandoning the outside world. 

    At first this behaviour was tolerated since she had just returned from a trying ordeal, but, when Yorukai stopped by the following week, he found that Amefuri had yet to emerge from the innermost chamber of the shrine. The grounds were completely devoid of life, and if he hadn't noticed the faint scent of tea coming from the honden, he would have thought that Amefuri had left the shrine. She never had that many possessions to begin with, so it wouldn't have been hard to mistake the shrine as abandoned.

    "Damn it!" Yorukai yelled into the deafening roar of wind. The engine's voice climbed to a high-pitch scream as the wheels bit into the loose earth, grinding dirt and rock into a fine cloud that chased the bike down the trail to the main road. The world disappeared into a blur of green, brown and blue as the engine was pushed to its limits.

*    *    *

    By the time Yorukai had regained his peace of mind, he had already been driving aimlessly through Tokyo's streets for several hours. In short, he was lost. Now Yorukai normally had a very good sense of direction but one tends to miss street signs when travelling several hundred kilometres over the speed limit with no set destination in mind.  Now the daylight was fading, giving way to the artificial yellow of the street lights.

    Needless to say, any good humour that Yorukai recovered was fading quickly.

    "Aw...geez," Yorukai irritably ran a hand through his hair. "I can't believe I got lost in my own city, how pathetic is that? I guess I'll just have to drive around until I find the highway." He climbed back on the motorcycle and turned the key. The engine sputtered weakly. "....unless I used up all the gas...." A quick pat of his jacket confirmed his fears. "...and was stupid enough to lose my wallet, so not only can I NOT buy gas to get home, I've lost all my ID cards too. Great. This is just....great." 

    Yorukai glared death at the motorcycle, desperately hoping that he could force it to start by intimidating it with sheer willpower. Of course, he knew that it was an exercise in futility but he really could not care less about how stupid he looked. The only thought present in his mind was to find a way to contact Akuma and beg for a ride home. No...wait. Scratch that. Doing that would mean that Yorukai would never hear the end of it from his arrogant roommate.

    Okay, so if he couldn't call for help, now what?

    He was seriously considering the therapeutic benefits of throwing a rather loud and childish tantrum when a strange young man wearing a highly reflective black outfit ran up to Yorukai, seized his arm and shouted joyfully to his friends in what sounded like heavily accented Japanese. The young man had amber-brown eyes and hair that had been bleached gold at some point but the original black had been allowed to return, leaving only the tips of the spikes coloured gold. Yorukai only had time to stutter words of confusion before he was physically dragged into a rather imposing office building and introduced the young men that were milling around the lobby. 

    "This is the group!" The strange young man said, "The one with the glasses is the bassist Ryuji, the one looks like a Yakuza is our drummer Huang, the menacing guy with the 'shades is the guitarist Shinja, and I'm the other guitarist, Toura!  ...So what do you want to be called?"

    "What?" Yorukai answered intelligently. 

    "Hey," The guitarist, Shinja, squinted over the top of his glasses at Yorukai. "Since Masui has gone and disappeared on us, why don't we call this guy Masui?"

    "Yeah, that could work!" Huang agreed, clapping his hands joyfully. "And they look almost exactly the same! We could really pull it off!"

    "And here I was thinking that we'd have to cancel! You're a lifesaver!" Ryuji grasped Yorukai's hand in a crushing handshake. "Hey Toura, great eye! I can't believe you managed to see this guy outside!"

    Toura laughed and ran a hand through his already messy hair. "Hey, hey...shouldn't we ask the guy if he's actually going to help us or not?"    

    Yorukai added, "I thi...." 

    "Of course he'll help!" Huang retorted. "He looks like the kinda nice-guy that'll help strangers, no problem!"

    Ryuji adjusted his glasses and grinned. "Now that you mention it, yeah. He does look the type. Good for us, eh?"

    Yorukai tried speak but was interrupted by Shinja.

    "I think you're all forgetting something." Shinja frowned, "Can this guy even sing? What good'll a look-alike be to us if he's tone-deaf?"

    The four young men looked at each other. 

    "You've got a point there," Ryuji said slowly.

    "I didn't think of that...." Huang agreed. 

    Ryuji said, "But at least he could stand in for the photo shoot, right?" 

    "Hmm... that is possible," Shinja said.

    Toura waved his hands at them, his words were becoming almost impossible to discern through the accent that had gotten thicker in his agitation. "Why.......don't.... sing........ that guy...!" 

    Yorukai stared blankly at Toura. He had to strain his ears pick up a few words through Toura's accent, but it appear as if his friends were able to fully understand the words. In unison, they all replied with varying degrees of agreement and embarrassment. 

    "Yeah, didn't think of that," Ryuji nodded.

    Huang looked embarrassed. "You have a point there."

    "Sounds good to me," Shinja said.

    "Hey..." Yorukai tried to get their attention again. "What did you agree on? What's a good idea?"

    Everyone turned to face him at once, as if they had just remembered the presence of the person whose future they had been planning. A full second passed in silence. Then, the four men turned back to each other and spoke quickly in hushed tones. 

    Now Yorukai had not exactly had the most enjoyable day and was, in fact, in an awfully bad mood. This bad mood would have been defeated by that high-speed tour of Tokyo if he didn't run out of gas and lose his wallet. Furthermore, now that the shock of the events was wearing off, his mood was darkening with every word the four uttered. 

    "HEY!" Yorukai shouted. "Just who are you people?!"

    They all stopped and looked up at him.

    "...Didn't I already introduce everyone to you?" Toura asked. "That's Ryuji...that's Hua--

    "I didn't mean that!" Yorukai snapped, "I mean, what is this 'replacement for Matsui' thing you're all going on about? What do I have to do with it?"

    "You're going to replace the lead vocalist, of course!" Huang replied cheerfully.

    ".............what?" 

    "Yeah, but first, we have to make sure you can actually sing," Ryuji said.

    "Details, details!" Toura said, "We just need you to stand in until Masui gets his voice back!"   

    "That shouldn't take more than three or four weeks, right?" Ryuji asked.

    "Something like that," Huang replied. "Well, six weeks at the most."

    "Good thing they look and sound alike, eh?" Toura beamed.

    "Although they look alike," Shinja said, "If he can't sing in tune, you're going to be in quite a bit of trouble."

    "Me?!" Toura exclaimed, "Why me?"

    Yorukai blinked slowly. "....so all I have to do is sing and you'll let me go?"

    "See?" Huang exclaimed triumphantly, "I told you he'd agree!"

    "Good," Shinja said, "Because our next concert is in a week." 

    "W...what?! But I didn't agree to anything yet!" Yorukai exclaimed, "Can't I just call my friend for a ride home? ...please?"

    "Nope! Here you go!" Toura shoved a thick pile of music into Yorukai's hands. "Masui's part is the one underlined in green."

    Yorukai stared fearfully at the waiting faces around him. If there was some way for him to gracefully bow out of this task (and anything short of running screaming from the hall would have been considered graceful by this point), he would have. In a second. Without hesitation. Absolutely none at all. But there was this nagging voice in the back of his head that told him that it wouldn't be right to just run away. Sometimes, Yorukai really hated having a conscience. 

    "Ooo...okay. I guess that it can't hurt to try..." Yorukai cleared his throat and hoped that he wasn't making a mistake that become one of those tales you tell when trying to win a horror stories battle. 
 

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