Notes: I originally posted this over in my LJ and, on a whim, didn't feel like posting it here. But now I do? This was written for Canadian Ninja, and ending aside, I quite like it. ... Also, I need to churn out something other than crack one of these days.

Disclaimer: I do not own Fire Emblem or any song referenced.

Five Reasons Soren Would Not Belt "My Immortal" at the Idiotically Planned Concert
(Regardless of Bribes or Extenuating Circumstances)

1. The band's conception was nothing short of stupid.

Ranulf had been invited over to their flat without Soren's knowledge. He apparently had dropped by because "It's Caturday!" and Ike had nothing better to do than let him in. Ranulf then proceeded to indiscreetly shuffle him porn, insisting that Ike was a fertile man of nineteen and he was definitely lacking libido for his years.

But trufax: flipping through porn with Ike is boring.

"Can you still play bass?" Ranulf asked, gazing blankly at the ceiling.

"I guess. I haven't taken lessons for a year, but I still pick it up every now and then." Of course, every now and then was defined in adolescent terms, which meant that he had perhaps played once three months ago to humor Mist.

"Sweet." Ranulf continued to stare at the ceiling, eying Ike lazily as he rejected another magazine. "Is there anything to do around here?"

"Not really. Soren passes the time by moping in the shower." He gestured to the bathroom, and Ranulf noted that indeed the shower had been running since he had arrived.

"Who pulled his tail, anyway?" Ike threw a magazine at Ranulf and rolled his eyes at the badly inserted cat joke. "Hey, hey, I don't care if you don't like them, don't throw them at me!"

Ike sighed at his friend and picked up the next magazine in the pile, arching an eyebrow and asking, "Men?"

"For a change of pace."

Ike threw that one at Ranulf, too.

After they were through with their 'catfight', Ranulf tidily re-organized his stack and slipped it into his backpack. "There's nothing to do here," he complained.

"Yeah, I guess. But I didn't invite you."

They stared at the couch, at the ceiling, at each other. Ike turned on the TV and flipped through the channels with disinterest. Ranulf fingered a half-solved Rubix Cube on the coffee table and managed to screw it up.

Then, suddenly setting down the puzzle, he said, "We should start a band."

"What?"

And at this moment, Soren stepped out of the bathroom in bath robes with a towel around his head, humming lightly. He stopped, giving Ranulf a look, asking pointedly, "Why is he here?"

"Soren can be the singer," Ranulf suggested. He was then thrown out of the apartment under the threat of dismemberment.

2. Field trips by elementary schools from impoverished areas have had better funding.

"That's out of tune, Ike," Soren grated for the third time, deciding to keep his fingers in his ears. Ike muttered an apology and messed with the strings again. "I think it's time accept that your bass has been permanently ruined by improper storage."

"It's probably just the strings. I can get new ones."

"You don't even have a paycheck. And you're not using my money." He clenched his fists in his hair as another off-tune note rang through the air. "Did you just... attempt to play an E?"

"Yeah. How off is that one?"

Soren showed him the tuner, registering an F sharp. "Ike, I'm telling you..."

"New strings."

"We're two months behind on rent." They stared each other down, and in hindsight, Soren thought to himself that he should've quit while he was ahead. But instead, he had to 'wittily' remark, "What, are you going to open a lemonade stand?"

And the next thing Soren knew, it was hot, it was humid, and he was sulking behind a booth, pretending that he was not selling lemonade.

3. They came up with their band name at the last minute. (Here, time-space is twisted. 'They' does not equal 'they' and 'their band' does not equal 'their band'.)

Ranulf showed Ike posters of a possible place to hold a gig, and to Soren's horror, Ike was completely for it. "But we have no songs, we haven't picked who we want as the guitarist, and we haven't even held auditions for the vocalist." Then Soren bit his tongue and realized that he had made a mistake in acknowledging the validity of the band in the first place.

"Uh, we can do covers, I think the short hyper kid will do fine ("Is it even legal to include him?" Soren protested.), and you're singing." Ike then forcibly hauled him away from the computer and towards the car, Ranulf following with an amused grin.

"You know, though," Ranulf suggested in the car, "there's that friend of yours who was into opera, wasn't there?"

"Friend? Opera?" Ike blanked and remembered at the last moment to hit the brakes at a red light. The car behind them honked. "... Oh. Kieran."

"Yeah, Kieran can sing for us. Soren can play piano, right?" Then Ranulf paused and continued, as if a perfectly logical train of thought, "We should save Soren's voice for the emo songs." Soren pretended not to hear him.

They resolved to pick up all the participants on the way to the applications. Tormod agreeably hopped on the car at short notice, and Soren edged over on the backseat, giving him and his unwieldy guitar a distrusting look. Then they dragged Kieran in the picture, and suddenly, sitting directly next to someone seemed like a much larger deal than it actually was. Soren rolled down a window as Tormod flailed around excitedly with complete disregard for his personal space.

"Ike, how much farther is it?" he asked, hair getting all over his face with the wind.

"Not much furth... shit." Flashing police lights alerted to the fact that they would be taking a lengthy and time-consuming detour. Soren set his head on the car door and wondered if they had any plastic bags to vomit in.

At long last, they arrived at the advertised spot, and they pooled out to sit on cheap folding chairs while Ike gallantly strode up and pretended to know what to do. For some reason, Tormod had been under the impression that he needed his guitar, and proceeded to take it out, figuring that hey, he had brought it along anyway.

"Um," Ike started, as if it had occurred to him for the first time as he stared at the application for time at a concert hall, "we need a band name." A twang vaguely resembling an A minor chord filled the silence.

Soren resisted the urge to snatch the guitar out of Tormod's hands and smack him over the head over it. For a wannabe band, it seemed as if everyone else was lacking any sense of tuning. "Ike, you mean you've never considered it before?"

"... No." Ike shot them all sheepish looks, and Tormod began to strum the opening measures of Stairway to Heaven for the fiftieth time.

"You hid goddamn tapes in the bathroom in an attempt to catch me singing, but you didn't think about a band name?" he grated, and Ike thought that perhaps when they returned, he would be dealing with a very hostile roommate for the rest of the month. Possibly foaming at the mouth.

"That's brilliant," said Kieran suddenly from his corner. They turned to stare at him. "'Ike Hid Goddamn Tapes in the Bathroom.' It's brilliant!"

4. What does Ranulf actually do for the band, anyway?

Incidentally, this wasn't a problem for anyone until they actually earned funds from poor, misguided local sponsors.

Then Ranulf insisted that he should have an equal cut, and Soren shot him a look of pure venom. "You don't do anything," he snapped. "You lie around the 'studio' and take naps."

"Catnaps." Soren swatted at him, and Ranulf stepped back and began, "Well, see, firstly, I'm your artistic muse! I inspired this, you see."

"No thanks to you."

"And... I'm your manager! I keep track of things like schedules, mmhmm."

"No. I keep track of things like schedules. You sign us up for every other ridiculous event that flies your way."

Ranulf considered his next statement sagely and brought up a hand to his imaginary beard. He thought for so long that Soren thought he might actually give a valid reason.

Then he opened his mouth and said, "You know how our downfall will inevitably be someone's tragic drug problem? I'm taking the blow for you all with my catnip."

Soren stared, stuffed Ranulf's cut of the money into his own pocket, and smacked him.

Soren failed to come up with a fifth reason in time that was not a variant of one of the above or an ad hominem attack (known to most people as 'insult', and by most accounts, perfectly acceptable in this type of situation). Defeated and feeling something amiss, he stood on the stage, done with the song, wishing that the lights would mysteriously malfunction and he could flee from the stage before his face turned entirely red.

It was then that a single cry rose from the audience, and as Tormod gleefully maimed the solo, Kieran grabbed the mic and Soren went to hide his face behind a piano. The final reason, the one that would've saved him from this in the first place, occurred to him all too late.

5. Those bastards will yell "Freebird".