Author 's Note: I should mention that not all the details about the actual landscape and such is accurate. I just make educated guesses or try to find credible information. Creeping around on Google Earth also helps.

Also, HUGE THANK YOU to my only reviewer for the last chapter KrAzY-LiTtLe-ImP! You rock! Seriously, you do.

Disclaimer: I only own the plot of this story and the unrecognizable characters. I write to entertain random people.

Warnings: Rated for excessive swearing and later scenes involving violence and sexual stuffs.


Gigs from Hell

Chapter 9 – Rollercoaster Without Safety Bars


We were only two hours away from Salt Lake City so we figured that rather than enter the city and try to find a quiet area to sleep at we would pull over while still in the countryside.

Now, getting comfortable in a van with four other people is a tricky thing. Since I was driving I currently had first pick of where I would sleep so of course I choose somewhere besides behind the steering wheel. Its bad enough I spent most of the day there but the night too? No way. So I put dibs on the back seat. It was more or less empty since most of our equipment was in the trailer save for a few cables and such.

We drew straws of different lengths for who would get the next pick. We got the straws from a fast food joint we stopped at a couple hours ago for nourishment since it was well past dinner. These straws were already used (obviously) but whatever, we're eco-friendly. We recycle things.

So I held the straws out for everyone to pick. It didn't matter who drew first so everyone kind of grabbed one at the same time. Then everyone compared.

"Ha! Mine's the biggest! I call passenger side!" Ryusuke yells. Believe it or not this was actually the second most comfortable spot in the van.

"But you've been sitting there all day!" Chiba wails. He has the second shortest straw. Sucks to be him right now because he'll probably get the one side of the middle of the van that's all lumpy and has seatbelts sticking out which will be poking him all night long.

"I call the good side of the middle," Saku says with the second longest straw.

"Ahh man, I got the shortest one," Koyuki mutters. Poor kid, he never lucks out.

We climb back into the van and Koyuki takes my place behind the wheel. I feel sorry for the kid but my remorse is dampened slightly by the fact that I'm deathly tired and ready to pass out. Ryusuke probably feels bad for the kid too but, like me, he's too tired to give a rat's ass about it. Besides, where else would Koyuki sleep?

"This is uncomfortable," I hear Chiba mutter to himself.

With my eyes firmly shut to try and induce sleep I reply, "Then go sleep on the roof."

A long pause and then, "I might just do that."

In the darkness I make out his body moving around, opening the side door and slipping out. But, I don't care because as I've mentioned before it's 2AM and I'm fucking tired and sweaty because it's 5000 fucking degrees out there. Chiba's mad for stepping outside of the vehicle. He'll be back inside when the bugs eat him alive.

With that comforting thought I slip into dreamland.


"FFUUUUUUUUUUCCCCKKK!"

Ryusuke's screaming his skinny little ass off. Saku has jolted awake, like me, and has banged his head on the side window. And then there's Chiba who is at this moment sliding down the front of the van in broad daylight having fallen off the roof in his fright.

All of this because sometime this morning Koyuki shifted in his slumber and ended up landing on the van's horn. It was a chain of events really.

Ryusuke has jumped out of the van. A look out the window shows me an unpleasant sight seeing as he's puking up his innards all over the side of the road. I'd forgotten that he'd had some alcohol in that bar we'd played yesterday to get our van fixed. That little gig was a flop but whatever; it broke up the tension in the tour by allowing us a working van.

I find a bit of spare cloth in the back and tell Saku to press it to the back of his bloodied head. He must have caught something when he jolted awake besides the window. It's not bleeding too much but still, unexplained bloodstains in our van wouldn't look good if any police officer ever pulled us over.

I clamber out of the van as quickly as my seized muscles will allow. I think I slept on my fretting hand because my wrist is killing me. It feels like it's dislocated but I can't be sure since I've never actually dislocated anything before. Besides if it were dislocated I'm sure it would've turned a shade of blue. Or is it purple? I don't remember what I learned in that health course I took in high school except to put pressure on wounds.

"Saku, just keep holding the towel to your head," I say vigilantly. I don't want him to bleed to death, not when we're two hours from an urban area.

"It's not a towel; it's Koyuki's shirt," Saku says.

"Sit down and stop talking gibberish. It's a towel," I insist.

He obeys me with an inconspicuous roll of his eyes. Huh, so they actually are brown after all. I figured they were but until about five seconds ago I've never confirmed this. I suppose you would call me as blind as a bat in daytime. I don't notice the small things being as scatterbrained as I am.

I watch Chiba as he grunts, twists and swears before finally asking for some assistance on getting unstuck from the windshield wipers. Some screw has caught on the fabric of his shirt when he fell off the roof and its not coming out without a fight so in the end we just rip it. For those out there keeping track we now have a bloody shirt and a ripped shirt. At least we can still wear the ripped shirt and not receive weird looks.

"Who's coming with me to check on the Flux?" I ask with a yawn after we get out the munchy-somewhat-nutritious-snacks. When we stopped at the fast food joint we also visited the grocery store to grab some random junk to feast upon anytime. If we lived on fast food for every meal we'd be sick within the day. And after Ryusuke hurling his guts this morning I've had enough icky-ness to last me the rest of this tour.

"Not me," Ryusuke grumbles. He's paler than ever with his hang-over. "I don't need to see angry half-naked chicks this early in the morning, thanks."

I flush; they very well could be half naked and asleep in their van. A certain body part quivers embarrassingly enough.

Purple undergarments, you haunt me so.

"I'll go!" Chiba pipes up with his hands in the air. I agree to his accompaniment and in seconds we're walking down the road to where the Flux's van is parked in the distance. This is before I realize that Chiba just wants to go to see potentially naked chicks.

"You're a pervert," I tell him with a perturbed frown.

He grins implicatively and punches me lightly in the arm. "So are you, man. This was your suggestion."

I sputter preposterously, "W-whatever." Not true! Or at least partially not true…

We approach the van with caution. Before we left Ryusuke said to us, "Don't peer into their windows, girls tend to dislike 'Peeping Toms'. They'll go all apeshit on your ass. I don't want to peel your dead carcasses off the freeway today, thanks."

He's encouraging, isn't he? Of course, he is right. I'm not going to look inside the van. I'll just…kick the door to wake them up. But, if Chiba decides to have a quick looksie…I'll probably be screwed anyway, right?

Alas, I don't have to give it any more thought anyway. Deranged members of the all-female band have emerged from behind the van. We lock eyes and I swear Chiba falters in his steps with the pensive glare he receives from Ritsu burning into his mind. Jeez, she's scary.

Regardless Chiba's the first one to speak, "Oh, you guys are already awake?"

"Yeah, some idiot honked their horn and scared the shit out of us. If only Ritsu had a gun," Chi shakes her head trying to rid herself of gruesome pictures. "She's got plenty of different ways to kill people otherwise though."

I shudder slightly and turn to Chiba in time to see him swallow nervously. We exchange a 'look' and say nothing about Koyuki. It's very likely that whatever pain Ryusuke can deal him Ritsu can quadruple.

"You have the directions to get to the venue, right?" Rylie asks me. I nod; we do have the directions to the venue in Salt Lake City that we'll be playing at. "Because once we get into the city there's a good chance we'll lose sight of you guys and not be able to follow."

That would be tragic. "Here, Saku's got the directions back at our van."

Chi and Rylie follow us back and chat it up with Saku, Mr. Map Man. Now with a renewed sense of purpose and refreshed memory on how to get to our venue we embark.

The highway is devoid of life in the morning. We don't start passing cars until a good hour has passed and by that time we're all hungry for some kind of sustenance other than what we have laying around on the bottom of the van.

I should also mention one other thing. Chiba is driving. I wanted a break and Ryusuke didn't want to drive so I conned Chiba into taking the wheel by stating that he would've been stuck to the van's windshield all day if it weren't for me.

Chiba's not a bad driver but he's a little erratic in the sense that he never stays at the speed limit and passes people whenever he can. Only now we're in skyscraper-land and that means traffic is more frequent. So frequent in fact that we're almost late getting to the venue. When we pull in Beck doesn't wait up for the Flux to arrive: we unpack our gear and set up. I'm not sure when we lost the girls but it must've been when we started hitting traffic lights.

I keep glancing outside into the parking lot. Ryusuke sidles up to me and tenuously whispers, "Dude, try not to look so freaked out; you're scaring Koyuki and Saku. And that's the last thing we need."

"Sorry," I mutter, "I just hope they haven't gotten badly lost."

Ryusuke rolls his eyes, "I guess. Call them then."

"Yeah, good idea!" I exclaim, a little too happy to be healthy, pulling out that dingy cell phone of mine. I flip open the phone and gaze at the screen which is suffering from water damage. I once accidentally put it through the washing machine. But, at least it still works.

"Glad to be of assistance. Now, I need to piss so if you'll excuse me."

Once Ryusuke wanders off to find a restroom I dial Rylie's number and wait. One ring, two rings, three rings, "Hello?"

"Rylie, it's Taira, where are you?"

"Oh, this is Kim, sorry. " I hear some scuffling in the background and a "here, take it" before I'm transferred to Rylie.

"Taira? Where are you? We're at a gas station filling up on gas. I think the meter on our van is screwed up because we had an empty tank and yet it said it was full. Stupid thing."

"We're at the Cat's Cradle sound checking the instruments right now!"

"Okay, we'll be there in about twenty minutes," Rylie says. And then in a quieter voice I hear her say, "hopefully." My heart sinks.

She doesn't bother saying bye and before I get the dial tone I hear a, "Chi, drive faster!"


Ugh. My everything ached upon waking up. Oddly enough when I open my eyes all I see is a black blob. I blink a few times and it registers as greasy hair shining in the dim morning sun. I move my head to the side to see this blob at a different angle. Huh.

For some reason or other Ryusuke has fallen asleep on my left arm.

I don't hesitate to push him out of my personal bubble but as I do I catch a glimpse of something else. Specifically, brown curls cascading down milky skin.

Oh, wonderful. Rylie has fallen asleep on me as well. Go figure.

Why is this? Oh. Oh crap. Last night. The gig at Cat's Cradle; it's coming back to me in waves… and I'm glad that even though we all got drunk out of our minds that nobody fucked one another…at least I'm pretty sure nobody did.

My pants are on. Ryusuke's pants are on. And a quick glance around the hotel room shows me that everyone else has clothing on to some degree. Thank God. Bands fucking one another on tour are so cliché.

And now I remember just why all of my band mates plus all of Rylie's are in the same room asleep. That was because the manager of this hotel gave our room away to another paying customer because we didn't put a down payment or something. Ugh. Right. And then Rylie and her band mates felt sorry for us and we were all drunk out of our skulls and bloody tired from playing hard that they offered to let us stay with them on a whim. Otherwise we would've been stuck in the van for another night and nobody wanted that.

Fast forward to now.

I pushed Ryusuke to the far side of the bed and I didn't bother trying to be sneaky about it either since I honestly didn't care if he woke up or not. Rylie on the other hand… I'm not keen on having her freak out on me this early in the morning. I mean, it's not like we 'slept slept' together, we just slept in the same bed. Only, our positions are kind of suggestive. Any onlooker would've drawn a very crude conclusion. So I suppose it's good that Ryusuke's still snoring.

Her whole arm is draped across my torso, clinging to the other side of my waist possessively and she's snuggled into my side. And the worst part? Somehow one of her legs has wedged itself between mine and its rubbing my crotch as she breathes. In, and out. In, and out. It's very arousing which, coupled with the fact that it is indeed morning, is not good if I want to keep my reputation.

Why is it that every time she's around, my pants feel tighter? One would've thought I'd gotten better at keeping myself in check as this tour progresses, but no. It gets harder because everyday the need for sexual relief becomes greater. Wow, that sounds incredibly dramatic but it's true. I'm a lusty teenager. There, I said it.

It's especially bad when her hand trails across my chest while she sleeps, marking an invisible path ever so daintily. Why oh why did I have to throw my shirt away into the screaming crowd at the end of the show last night! I never did get it back. Some lucky fan got that shirt and in thirty years if Beck becomes famous I might see it on eBay.

Speaking of shirts hers has fallen from her shoulder on one side (it's a wide cut top) and now exposes some of her lacy underthingers.

Yummy.

Indeed…I mean, no. No. That's taking advantage of her.

Please, don't try feeding me that bullcrap! You're not even looking away from her!

What? No! Besides, I thought I got rid of you!

Dude, like I said before I'm your fucking hormones! You can't get rid of me!

Ugh, it's too early in the morning to be arguing with myself.

You got that right monk boy. Now shut up and let's enjoy the view. Get our hand to move our stupid hair out of our eyes.

I lie there, on my back, staring at Rylie. I'm tempted to reach out and touch her, her hair, her skin, her rosy lips…a couple other body parts I'll refrain from mentioning. It's tantalizing.

But her slight movements start becoming recurrent and with a start I realize she's waking up. I should have spent less time staring like a lovesick teenager and more time getting her off of me without waking her. Embarrassingly enough I make a whimpering puppy noise as I try in vain to quickly creep out from under her. This sudden bit of movement causes her eyes to flutter open.

"Hmm…Taira?"

Good morning sleeping beauty. You're looking exceptionally stunning today. "Err, hi?" Argh, the thoughts were all there but I just didn't put them to good use! If she weren't still lying on me I'd bang my head against the wall right now.

"Wha…why are you naked?" She asks suddenly as soon as it dawns on her that she's lying on top of me give or take a little flesh.

"What! I'm not naked!" I 'whisper yell', trying not to wake up everyone else in the room. This situation is awkward enough all ready without the underage boys getting a glimpse of me with the Flux's leader sprawled on top of my chest. I don't want to put ideas into Saku and Koyuki's heads. They're still kids!

As I say this she shoots up like a heroin addict and breaks away from me, checking herself over at the same time to see if she's naked. She quickly adjusts her top which covers up any traces of her bra. We're both blushing red and I'm happy that it's at least slightly dark in here since someone with enough sense last night drew the curtains on the windows.

"I'm sorry," I say compulsively.

"Why are you apologizing?" Rylie asks bewildered. I'm disappointed that she's holding her arms across her chest like a shield. This is so awkward for the both of us.

"Um…" I dunno. I don't think telling her that I was apologizing for staring at her everlasting beauty would get me any brownie points. "I just felt the need to say it. I mean, your band has been so nice to us…letting us stay here for the night instead of in our van."

"Oh, well. You can consider it as us settling the debt we owe you. You've been letting me us your amp for the past couple shows…" she fidgets nervously at the end of the bed where she's standing, speaking to me as if I were a complete stranger.

Really? She's just settling a debt to me? That's all? I'm actually kind of hurt that she didn't say it was out of the goodness of her band's hearts.

"…and my band mates and I really like you and the guys. You're a lot easier to get along with than some of the other bands we've met."

I shrug, "Seriously? Ritsu always seems to want to punch Chiba's lights out. Then there's Kim who hasn't said more than fifty words to us all this entire tour. Chi's the only friendly one."

Rylie snickers, "Ritsu has a sort of grudging respect for Chiba, she's a very competitive fighter and she won't stand to lose to anyone. As for Kim, you guys shouldn't take it personally. It's not my place to say what plagues her." She pauses and smiles, a seducing smile that makes me glad that I pulled the bed covers up past my nether regions. "And is Chi really the only friendly one?"

Okay, here's the part where you get up and kiss her.

What! Now? This is our first heartfelt conversation under the cloak of semi-darkness and you want me to potentially ruin it with a sloppy kiss?

What are you talking about! Romeo had one conversation with Juliet and then they made out! This is like your billionth conversation with the girl, kiss her already.

But this isn't an old fashioned Shakespeare tragedy play and I'm not a fifteen year old star-crossed lover for crying out loud!

Someone hasn't jerked off in a while. Jeez, don't take your anger out on me. It's not my fault you almost failed your language class in high school.

"Yeah, I'm glad I have your friendship," I force myself to say. Rylie smiles hesitantly before picking up some clothes and going into the bathroom to get ready for the day.

Friendship? Yeah, because you're definitely going to be satisfied with that.

Shut up. I'm just waiting for a window of opportunity.

Window of opportunity? Dude, that was your window of opportunity!

I groan softly and flop over on the bed defeated by my inner voice. I lie on my stomach and put my face into the pillow. It smells like sweat. Damn. This is harder than I thought it would be. I'm afraid to take risks which I suppose is understandable since Ryusuke nearly got us all killed by Leon Sykes a while back. That's a risk I never want to take again.

Later on, after we get on the road again to the next city on the list, Denver, Colorado, we pass a marquee with the words: "If you're not living on the edge you're taking up too much space."

This gets the wheels in my head thinking. I'm used to anchoring myself down to something as opposed to floating around aimlessly. People call me practical for doing this. Chiba, however, is the exact opposite of myself; he isn't afraid to let people know what he thinks of them. If they smell like rotten turnips he'll tell them exactly that while I on the other hand will dance around the issue and drop hints. I move around the problem carefully instead of face it head on. This seems to be what I do with relationships as well.

My band mates, my own friends, couldn't write a book about me. Hell, they couldn't even write a short story of my life. I haven't told them much about myself. Which brings me to question myself further. This is not good, I'm ragging on myself.

"Hey Taira, can I drive sometime?" Koyuki pipes up out of the blue, effectively breaking my train of thought. "Saku's been teaching me a few things, since he's going to apply for a licence as soon as we get back to Japan."

This befuddles me. To let the kid drive or to not (To be or not to be?)? He is technically the legal driving age here in the U.S.A. but he isn't exactly qualified. I look to Ryusuke to see what he thinks and he just shrugs passively.

"He's got to learn some time," Ryusuke says. I suppose he's right but still…after witnessing him coming crashing through Ryusuke's fence back in Japan on his bike I've always felt he'd be a scary driver to ride with. It was something about the way he went flying over the handle bars of the bike to land face first in a puddle of mud that kind of unnerved me.

Of course I'm eager to sit back and relax and let someone else have a go at driving. I'm not going to weigh the pros and cons in this situation. "Okay, when we grab food you can drive for the next two hours. That should give you some experience."

Sooner rather than later I have Ryusuke give the Flux a call and tell them we're stopping for lunch. We settle on the nearest little alcove off the side of the highway and eat deli subs. They taste a lot better than regular fast food but I can still feel my body resisting the heavily processed food. Cheese is especially hard for me to digest. So I don't order anything with cheese. It's also partly to blame on the bad memories involving the need for Pepto-Bismol, a gooey pink substance I hope nobody on this trip has to experience.

After eating I pull over to the opposite side of the deli for gas and my confidence is dropped off along with the fast food wrappers that littered the bottom of the van. Now Koyuki grips the wheel white-knuckled. Saku sits next to me in the back seat acting as his coach.

"So just ease the van out of-holy crap!" explodes Saku as Koyuki just narrowly misses clipping a stop sign on the way out of the crowded parking lot. "I'm sorry. It's just that that was a little close."

After making a series of illegal turns, Koyuki gets onto the highway. Traffic is heavy and barely moving. At least, most of it isn't. It becomes apparent before long that Koyuki isn't suited to this kind of driving in the hustling city. During a stop in traffic Chiba switches spots with Koyuki who clambers into the back seat with me and Saku. Now the van swerves in and out of the fast lane, darting around slower-moving vehicles like a madman is driving. Which is true, Chiba has just revealed his inner road rage persona.

"Hey Taira, does this thing have air bags?" asks Ryusuke casually as he sifts through a magazine he'd picked up from a store we'd stopped at for washroom breaks. And here I thought he'd been oblivious to the fact that Chiba's going to get us killed. Before I can answer him both Saku and Koyuki let out terrified yelps after we make an agonizingly close call with a chunky muscle car. The old man driving it blares his horn at us. I sink lower in my seat with the ensuing shame. I feel as though there's a huge flashing beacon over my head pointing to me like this is my fault. I can't help but think it is since I'm the one who allowed first Koyuki and then Chiba to drive. Never again will I allow Chiba to drive in a metropolitan area. Country, yes, city, no.

"God, I hope so," I say to Ryusuke through my teeth as he picks up another magazine, this time an old Rolling Stone with Freddie Mercury on the cover. I'm tempted to grab that mag and cover the younger boys' eyes with it. They're scared stiff beside me clutching their seatbelts like lifelines. Koyuki also happens to have one hand gripping my arm, his fingers holding on for dear life as he clamps his eyes shut, unconcerned that my arm is loosing circulation and turning a funky shade of purple. Getting on a rollercoaster without the safety bars has about the same effect as Chiba speeding down the highway and trying not to miss the exits. I'm just thankful that I had taken the time to ask the salesman at the beginning of the tour if the van had its brakes replaced not long ago.

After a series of swearing courtesy of Chiba's potty mouth we pull into the parking lot of a gas station. At least Chiba has the sense to listen to the van as it beeps, letting the occupants, us, know we're almost running on empty. It's been many hours since I woke up this morning and all this terrifying driving has me dog-tired.

When Chiba cuts the engine Saku practically leaps out of the van and lies face down kissing the pavement so passionately it's almost as if he's making love to it. Koyuki and I pull him up from his affair with solid ground while Ryusuke heads into the corner store to get junk food and other useless shit to add to the bottom of the van.

"Sorry about my less than stellar driving skills," Koyuki says to me meekly.

I laugh a little since he looks like a kicked puppy. "That's okay Koyuki, you just need to take lessons and this isn't even the right country for that."

He brightens considerably, "As soon as we get back I think I'll take lessons with Saku! That way, on our next tour, I can drive!" He's pretty adamant about this. Well, don't we know that when Koyuki has his heart set on something nothing will be able to take him down.

"According to the map we're only about two and a half hours away from Denver, Colorado," Saku says, spreading the map down on the asphalt and tracing our destination back to where we are. I'm really glad somebody in the van knows how to read a map because if it were up to me to find our way we'd all be doomed.

"I'll drive the final leg, alright Taira?" Ryusuke says, emerging from the store with a couple bags of chips. He also has what looks to be an energy drink. He's still American at heart, haha.

"Cool," I reply. Ryusuke can drive, I trust him. For all his slime-ball actions he is decent driver.

We pile into the van and I swear I see a van just like the Flux's pass us by. Then again about another twenty-million vans are passing us by so maybe not. I think too much, that or Rylie has seriously affected my brain.

That or I'm tired. That could be more likely since I've been clutching a seat and staring wide-eyed at the road rolling out in front of the van so intently that I exhausted myself. Yeah, that's it. I'm just drained of all my energy; in fact I may shut my eyes for a couple seconds.

The picture of the world dims and colours bleed out as I doze off.


"Wake up dough-head! The van's smoking really, really, really, REALLY bad!" Chiba chants into my ear. I smack his face away with the back of my hand. But he's persistent, "Taira! The van's on fire!"

This jolts me awake, "What! Where, how, RYUSUKE!"

"Woah, woah, chill man! I'm right here!" Ryusuke yells. Finally my eyes adjust to the light and I find myself staring at my dark-haired friends. Ryusuke has just put Chiba in a headlock, "And fucking hell Chiba! The van is not on fire!"

"You said you wanted me to wake him up," Chiba mutters.

I sit up and wince as my back cracks. Usually this makes a person feel better but at the moment my back is so sore that it feels even worse. "Why did you guys have to say that?" My masculine voice allows this one to come off as more of a question than a whine.

"Actually, the van just stopped smoking. I dunno, it's like what happened last time only not as bad. Still, it started just a half hour ago. We're at the hotel now. Why else do you think we woke you up? We need you to help move equipment." Ryusuke lays down the facts as I look around at my surroundings. Huh, it's a lot greener since the last time I was awake. A lot darker too in fact. It's well after dinner, at least that's what my stomach is telling me.

"Ffffooooooooood," Moans Saku, impersonating a zombie and voicing my stomach's thoughts. Koyuki sees this as a game and moans along with Saku, "FFFFOOOOOOOOOOOOOOODDD!" They continue to howl out their desires and Chiba just laughs.

"Shut up you two," Ryusuke grumbles, rubbing his head. Judging from the rings of dark skin under his eyes he's worn-out from their antics while driving. Thinking about how Saku and Koyuki could've annoyed him while I was asleep brings a smile to my muddled face.

"Let's just get food. I don't know about you guys but I can eat as much as an elephant right now!" Chiba affirms. He pounds his stomach like a true caveman.

"We're on a budget," Ryusuke says to that one. Sometimes he can be such a kill-joy. I must have rubbed off on him.


A.N: And so Taira's horny hormones return to us. I love writing his inner thoughts, it's kind of fun actually. And don't worry; the more intense scenes are hopefully coming either in the next instalment or the one after that. I have it already written and let's just say it involves Chiba kicking some serious ass.

I hope you like this chapter as much as I do and please, please don't forget to review!

ReikiConvulsion