Okay. For those of you who aren’t familiar with what a show choir is, I am going to describe exactly how they work. I believe that show choir is by far the greatest extracurricular activity ever conceived. A show choir consists of a band and students that sing and dance to the music the band plays on a stage. Every year, a school’s show choir has a show consisting of about 5 songs. They go to annual competitions at other schools, some of which are very far away. Some competitions feature over thirty schools. The point of these competitions: to try to win awards. If they don’t get a big, shiny trophy, every choir at least gets a participation plaque. Show choirs often wear sequins, but not always. The personal opinion of some of my friends, also in the show choir, is that the amount of makeup females are required to wear makes them look like… well, a whore. I take their word for it, but I personally don’t know what one looks like. Besides, I’m in the band. Each choir is allotted a certain amount of time to perform their show before an audience, and judges give points on things like sound quality, quality of the choreography, overall effect of the show, diction, facials, etc.
Well, I suppose that’s all you need to know. Now, the story. And read at your own risk.
Reanna stands at the entrance to a random school, with a garment bag and bass guitar case slung over her back. But she’s not alone. If anyone were to look in her general direction, they would also see a young woman with impossibly orange and curly hair, a boy with lavender hair and dressed in red (who is looking kind of sick, coughing every few seconds) standing by a lanky man with shoulder-length pink hair (who is gazing lovingly into the flame at the tip of the lighter he’s holding), a dark-skinned girl with purple hair and impossibly large glasses (with a purple monkey-thing on her shoulder) next to a pink-haired girl wearing black and red (with a brown-haired girl glomped onto her back), a young, slender boy with blue hair holding a stopwatch next to a purple-haired girl who is holding *him,* and an incredibly tall young man with red hair the likes of which have never been seen before, even at a show choir competition (he’s carrying a kitten and is talking baby talk to it), and a blonde-haired young girl, who is clinging affectionately to the red-haired boy, and is surrounded by three other girls and one blonde boy. Also is a man with dark skin and lavender hair in a ponytail, wearing a long-sleeved red shirt and a blonde young woman directly next to him, a blue haired young man, who is trying to engage in a tickle fight with a man with this *weird* dark green hair, who holds a crocodile on a leash. In short, the majority of the cast of Utena.
“Now,” Reanna says to the large group around her. “I’ve got to get ready to perform, so why don’t you all go into the auditorium and sit down somewhere?”
“Where?” they all ask in perfect unison.
Reanna sweatdrops. “Uh… anywhere.”
“Reanna!” a voice calls. “Hurry up! We warm up in forty minutes!”
“Reanna! Is your bass tuned?”
“Reanna! Where’s the amp?”
“I’M COMING!!!” Reanna cries, the force of her voice blowing away anyone less than ten feet away. And with that, Reanna runs off, leaving the somewhat out of place anime characters to do what they do: cause chaos.
“That’s not true!” Utena says. “We have every intention of behaving ourselves and not getting into any trouble.”
“Do we?” a few of the students around her ask.
Utena shrugs. “Well… for a little while, anyway.”
Well, a few minutes later, they manage to enter the auditorium… minus two.
“Who’s missing?”
“Kanae and Akio.”
There is a loud *SLAP* and Akio enters behind them.
“Where were you?” Utena asks.
“The girls’ dressing room.”
“Oh were you?” a voice asks, and Akio finds himself hit over the head with a frying pan. Akio seems not to notice that it was his fiancée, Kanae that heard what he had said, but he does notice something else.
“Weren’t you blonde when we came in here?”
“I got tired of it.” Indeed, her hair is now day-glo orange.
Just then, the lights dim. The only light comes from the stage and Kanae’s luminescent hair. Everyone quickly sits down on a set of bleachers and glue their eyes to the stage… but find it hard when everyone around them is staring at them. Likewise, the people around them find it difficult to concentrate on what was going on on the stage with so many… interesting… people nearby.
Well… it all starts the moment the members of the first performing show choir step onto the platforms up on the stage, when Miki clicks his stopwatch… but blushes when he is shushed by several people. This causes Touga’s kawaii kitten to hiss.
“Oosie! Who’s a naughty little kitty?” Touga coos. “Yes, you are! Yes, you are! Ooh-doodoodoodoodoo! Who’s the cutest kitty-cat?”
“YOU DIRTY LITTLE CAT!” Nanami roars. “YOU WON’T HAVE MY ONISAM—Moooo…” People around Nanami gape. They’ve never seen a girl turn into a cow before.
“SHHHH!!!!”
Ruka leans forward to where Juri is sitting in the seat in front of him and whispers, “Tickle fight!” and starts tickling her sides.
“WHAT THE HELL DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?” Juri roars, turning around, and is met with the angry faces of several people who don’t appreciate this sort of thing while they’re trying to watch a show choir performance.
“WELL?! WHAT ARE YOU LOOKING AT?!”
In the ultimate example of bad timing, the performing show choir starts performing “Crocodile Rock,” and Saionji’s pet crocodile goes… kinda nuts. It’s certainly an interesting sight, to be sure; no one had ever seen a crocodile dance before. But when Saionji gets up and starts dancing alongside it, a man behind them gets up.
“Sit down! We’re trying to watch the show!”
Saionji growls and whips out his kendo sword. “Wanna say that again?” he hisses.
Meanwhile, Akio and Kozue, attracted by the oh-so-alluring dancing of the choir, head up to the front of the crowd with fistfuls of dollar bills, trying to decide which dancers to reward by shoving money into their dress/pants while Aiko, Yuuko and Keiko try to sell rather uh *cough* hentai photographs of various Ootori students to members of the audience.
In another example of bad timing, the choir starts performing “We Didn’t Start the Fire.” Mikage whips out his lighter and holds the little flame above his head. Somehow, this gets the sprinklers in the auditorium going, and soon the entire gym and all inside it is soaked. In the meantime, poor Mamiya is throwing up into one of the many airsick bags he keeps with him, whilst Ruka tries to start a tickle fight with a more willing person.
And so, chaos ensues.
“Crocodile! There’s a crocodile in here!”
“Somebody get that green guy to sit down!”
“I HAVE THE RIGHT TO DANCE IF I DAMN WELL WANNA AND SO DOES MY CROCODILE! ANYONE WHO DOESN’T AGREE CAN EAT KENDO BLADE!”
“Hey, Green Guy! Nice skirt!”
“Tickle, tickle, tickle…”
*click*
“Ooh, kitty kitty kitty! You so cute! You so cute yes you are!”
“Moooo…”
“Yesss!!! Fire! Fire! Fire!”
“Yeah baby shake it up!”
“Oog… I don’t feel so good…”
“Kanae… your hair… bright green… wasn’t it orange?”
“ONIISAMAAAAAA!!!”
“I know. I got tired of it.”
“Heeheeheehee! Rukaaaaa! Stoppit!”
By the time Reanna’s choir, the Altoona Locomotion, walks onto the stage, the entire gym is in an uproar. The director, Mr. Moses, looks *pissed* and all the hair that he’s managed to grow falls out immediately.
Reanna, still wearing her bass, stomps over in a flash of black sequins to where Kozue stands before the stage. “What the HELL is going on here?!”
Kozue shrugs nonchalantly. “I dunno. I’ve been up here the whole time.”
Reanna hears a high-pitched scream and looks up in time to see Miki clawing his way out of a small crowd and stumbling toward them, his hair disheveled and his uniform torn in several places.
“Miki-chan! What happened?”
“Music…” he managed. “Teachers…” And he collapses into Reanna’s arms.
As Kozue goes off to beat the living sh** out of the offending music instructors, Reanna looks around the gym, and all the utter chaos going on inside it, in a daze. “But—but… what… how… all this… you guys…” And Reanna faints, right there on the stage.
Meanwhile, the cast is guided out of the auditorium by several hall monitors… some enjoying it more than others. Miki and Mikage have been taken over to the side, where a couple of guys are trying to confiscate their stopwatch and lighter, respectively.
“Hand it over,” a guy says to Miki.
“Iie…” Miki murmurs, holding the precious timepiece lovingly to his chest.
And so the men before them realize that they have another problem: the fact that these trouble makers don’t even speak English.
Meanwhile, no one had ever seen Mikage looking so pathetic, for his precious fire has been taken away, and can now be compared to a pathetic sobbing pink mass, while the other guy is finding that Miki can be pretty darn stubborn when provoked. However, soon Miki has lost the watch… the only option left for Miki and Mikage is to sob on each other’s shoulders, suddenly being able to relate to each other.
Reanna then arrives on the scene, still wearing her black sequin dress. “Can’t I leave you guys alone for just an hour?” She looks around. “Wait… who’s missing here? Where are Akio and Kanae?”
*POW!* Akio stumbles onto the scene with a black eye.
“Where were you?”
“The boys’ changing room.”
Kanae arrives with bright blue hair.
“Kanae… your hair…”
“I know. I—“
“GOT TIRED OF IT. WE KNOW,” everyone finishes.
Reanna sees the anguished looks on the faces of Mikage and Miki. “Mikage? Miki-chan? What’s wrong?”
Simultaneously, with quivering lower lips and tearful eyes, they both point at the men who confiscated their possessions, who shrug.
Just then, a bishounen with a head of impossibly curly hair walks by Reanna, holding a stopwatch, which he clicks constantly. She stops him.
“Mike, can I borrow that?”
“What for?”
Reanna points to Miki. “Stopwatch withdrawal.”
So, having been promised to get his watch back after the show and until then being allowed to borrow Mike Rambo’s stopwatch, Miki is for the moment content.
“What about me?” Mikage pouts.
“Hey,” Keiko says to one of the men. “Wanna buy a picture?”
As the two men eagerly shell out the money, Reanna takes a look at the pictures. “Wha… where did you get all these?”
“Nanami… Kozue… Akio… Touga… Sunday and Kotori…”
“GIMME THOSE!” Reanna looks at the pictures with a look of disgust, until… “Ooh… how much for this one?”
Just then, Wakaba is surprised to find that a girl has glomped onto her back.
“Hiiiii!!” the young redhead says perkily. “Hi, Wakaba!”
Reanna looks at Becka Trombly. “You mean you know Wakaba?”
Wakaba smiles. “Of course. We’re both members of Perky Teenagers International.”
Reanna notices that Mamiya is turning several pretty but unnatural hues and directs him to the men’s room.
“No, no, Mamiya, that’s the girls’ room…”
Reanna turns to all the various Utena cast members that stand before her: Mamiya, Juri, Chu Chu, Anthy, Kozue, Miki, Nanami, Touga, Mikage, Akio, Kanae, Yuuko, Aiko, Keiko, Saionji, Ruka, Mitsuru, Wakaba and Utena.
“I have to go now. Can you please, please, please stay out of trouble?” Reanna begs. Without bothering to wait for an answer, she runs off. “I know I can count on you! I’ll see you at the awards ceremony!”
Wakaba’s eyes light up. “Gather around, minna-san! I’ve got an idea…”
The Utena cast sits around in an isolated room.
“We’re almost set,” Wakaba says. “We just need instruments.”
Utena thinks. “Hmm… Anthy, come here.”
“Hai, Utena-sama.”
Utena bends Anthy over backwards and pulls out the Trombone of Dios, the Drum Kit of Dios, the Trumpet of Dios, the Rhythm Guitar of Dios, the Bass Guitar of Dios, the Saxophone of Dios, etc.
“I think we’re ready,” Wakaba says proudly.
Reanna sits along with the rest of the Altoona Locomotion on the bleachers, waiting for the awards ceremony to start. Everyone applauds as the master of ceremonies steps out.
“We’ll get best back-up band award this time, I know it,” Reanna whispers to Kelly Groves, who sits in front of her.
“It appears,” the master of ceremonies says into the microphone, “that we have a last minute entry from…” he looks at a piece of paper, and his eyes widen in surprise. “Ootori Academy, in Japan.”
Atsushi Soma applauds.
Reanna begins feeling faint. “Oh, no…”
“What’s wrong?” Katie Humrickhouse asks.
“Please welcome Ootori Academy’s “Sequin Revolution!”
Reanna hides her face in her hands.
“Oh, one more thing… the Ootori Academy show choir would like to give their special thanks to Reanna King!”
The entire Altoona Locomotion, after a pause, applauds.
Reanna looks for the tallest object to hide behind—Phil Coogan.
As the audience applauds politely, several Utena cast members walk calmly onstage, wearing a slight modification of their school uniforms, but with sequins. They seem orderly.
Reanna peeks out from behind Phil. “Maybe this won’t be so bad.”
Saionji begins banging on the drums. *This really suits me, I’m not sure why,* he thinks. The band begins playing, and the dancers dance as Akio takes center stage and begins singing. Girls throughout the auditorium scream with delight. Some even pass out.
“Hey!” Reanna smiles. “He’s got a great singing voice!” Then, she listens to Akio’s lyrics. Akio’s… original… lyrics. “They… they… wrote their own songs?”
All around her, her fellow show choir members are left agape at the lyrics.
“YEAH!” Mike Hibbard cheers.
“You say you know these guys?” Richard Hibbard whispers.
“No. Not at all.”
Akio’s song ends beautifully… sort of. The audience is silent. Matt Prissel applauds wildly.
Since no one is making any moves to stop them, they begin their next number: “It’s the End of the World.” The dancing and singing are so good, that the audience soon forgets about the previous number.
But then things get out of hand. Touga gets a little carried away and removes his shirt and flings it out into the audience. Nanami glomps onto Touga’s back, knocking several other students over like dominoes while Saionji’s crocodile chases Touga’s kitten around the stage. Saionji picks up a drumstick and tries to challenge Utena to a duel while Mamiya is throwing up into the bass drum.
“It’s the end of the world all right…” Reanna moans.
She’s almost afraid to look… but she figures she’ll need to know what was going on when she testifies. Ruka is trying to have a tickle fight with Miki. Miki finds it hard to fight off Kozue when he’s rolling on the floor, laughing.
“Come on, Oniisan! Touga did it!” She said as she yanked at Miki’s shirt.
“Rukaaaa!! Kozue!”
The band is going to hell, because Utena is fighting off Saionji with the Bass of Dios, and Juri has just decided to have a saxophone solo. Also, Mikage has just set fire to the Piano of Dios.
“Ah, hell,” she mutters, and throws the Saxophone of Dios away and starts singing, “I Kissed a Girl.”
But in the middle of Juri’s beautiful singing, another sound is heard… as if someone is pounding on a piano keyboard. And someone is; a now shirtless Miki is trying to put out the fire that is consuming the piano, screaming threateningly at Mikage asking him how he would dare set fire to a piano.
Juri growls, stomps offstage, picks up Miki by he waist and sets him down in front of the microphone. “YOU try singing!” She screams at him.
SUDDENLY the entire auditorium is quiet. Miki looks out at the audience, blushing furiously. He idly takes out Mike Rambo’s stopwatch and clicks it… “Uh… erm… uh…” he whimpers. “Well…” He sings, “This thing… called love… I just… can’t handle it…”
For the first time during Ootori’s performance, Reanna cheers as Miki continues “Crazy Little Thing Called Love,” adding an additional verse about a “Shining Thing.”
At the end of the number comes a wild applause. Reanna smiles weakly and crosses her fingers, hoping that the final number will be decent.
No such luck. Reanna tries to identify the song, but the band doesn’t start together, and even if they had, Reanna gets the feeling that it would be unidentifiable anyway. Touga is wrestling Saionji’s crocodile for eating his kitten, inspiring Saionji to use Touga’s head as a snare drum. Kanae’s hair is now a color never seen by any human being before, causing half the audience to (mercifully) go half blind.
Nanami runs over to Saionji and starts pounding on him. “GET AWAY FROM MY ONIISA—Moo… moo…”
Utena pulls the Microphone of Dios out of Anthy and starts singing “Someday My Prince Will Come” but collapses into laughter when Ruka starts tickling her with Shiori, looking like the cabbage fairy without the wings, glomped onto him. Mamiya is breaking out in multicolored spots, and all Anthy is doing is watching and murmuring, “Look, Chu Chu, what pretty colors…”
Wakaba meanwhile is running back and forth across the stage holding a streamer saying “SEQUIN REVOLUTION” on it, while Mitsuru leads a kangaroo onto the stage. Juri has several times over pierced the speaker on the bass amp with her fencing sword, and it is now smoking, looking ready to explode. The sprinklers going full blast because of the flaming piano isn’t helping either. Keiko, Yuuko and Aiko have gone down into the audience to hand out free samples of their “creative” photographic work. Kozue has just pantsed Miki, causing to turn a red the intensity of which has never been seen before. Mikage is looking for a victim to sacrifice to the fire gods, while Akio has decided to “go all out.”
“No, no, no, no, please kami no…” Reanna moans.
Just then, the amplifier explodes. When the smoke and debris clear, the disheveled and slightly charred Ootori students look out at the audience, turn calmly to the hundreds of people in front of them, and bow calmly before walking off the stage. All those members of the audience who were capable of doing so applauded hesitantly. Then, as if on cue, the entire audience rose up in a standing ovation, cheering and applauding. A few even asked for more. Reanna looked around in a daze and hesitantly applauded.
After the awards ceremony, the Locomotion exits the school with all their equipment and their trophy, on which was inscribed, “grand champion.” (WISHFUL THINKING!) The members of the Sequin Revolution follow behind Reanna, oohing and ahhing over their participation award.
“So…” Wakaba said, “what all did we get disqualified for again?”
Miki thinks for a moment, counting off his fingers. “Uh… setting fire to instruments, injuring members of the audience, indecent lyrics, suggestive dance moves…”
“Aw, shut up,” Saionji mutters. “What a dumb idea.”
“I think it was fun!” Wakaba grins. She waves to Becka Trombly. “See you next year, Becka!”
“NEXT YEAR?!” Reanna whimpers, and faints.
End
I’d like to thank all of the –real—people that I used in this story.