I did not own Gakuen Alice
Warning: characters may be slightly OOC
Superstars
Chapter 2
This chapter was dedicated to DappleSora & sapphireangel09, thanks for your review!
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Freezing breeze kept hitting the jacket. The sound of wind and the engine noise formed a symphony that gave an indescribable feeling of weightlessness, empowerment and contentment. This was a four-lane driveway around a small mountain; the winding roads were excellent for people who enjoyed driving. With a brake, everything stopped, and a figure stepped out of the vehicle. Taking off the helmet, the person held it in hand, and walked across the road, leaving the motorcycle at the roadside. Dim lights that shone on the road revealed a feminine figure with bright-pink hair.
Reaching the opposite side of the road, she stood behind the fence and looked down from the height. A marvelous night view of a city was under her feet. Some distant sounds of racing cars were heard, but they did not ruin the tranquility. She closed the eyes to feel the current of air beating the face and body. With her long hair dancing lively in the air, she could feel a combination of exhilaration and freedom.
Yet, the noises got louder and louder. Some racers were probably rallying in this driveway and they were coming nearer. But who cared. They came and they left. The woman remained at the same position and took pleasure in what was seen and felt, until a loud crash was heard.
BANG!
She swung around and saw the motorcycle lied flat on the grass land dozens of feet away from its original spot. That position was indeed occupied by a Honda NSX.
"Holy crap!!! My V-Rod Muscle!"
The motorcycle owner immediately rushed to the poor vehicle to check its damage. An orange-hair man came out of the Honda NSX and started yelling, "What the heck! Why did you stop the motorcycle here?"
What the! How come the one hitting others yelled before the victim did.
Before the victim said anything, few more cars stopped by the side. Some cars were modified ones for speeding. All drivers came out of their cars and approached the party involved.
"What's going on?" said by one of the car owners.
"This bitch stopped her motorcycle on the roadside, blocking the road." The man continued his accusation.
The woman looked at the men surrounding her with disdain. Judging from their exaggerated way of dressing, they were probably a gang of hooligans. It seemed there was no room for negotiation. She calmly took out her cell-phone and started recoding. All the men were dumbfounded. It took them few seconds before they realized what she was doing. The orange-hair man marched forward to block the lens, "What are you doing? Stop! Don't record!"
The woman rapidly stepped backward and immediately recorded her voice coolly, "The time is now a quarter to two in the morning, and this is the Chestnut Hill Driveway. I stopped a silvery 2009 Harley-Davidson V-Rod Muscle at the roadside, and then a red Honda NSX hit its back…"
"Hey! Stop! If not, huh, don't blame us!" The orange-hair man glared angrily at the woman, showing her his clenched fist.
"This is the driver of the Honda NSX, he is now threatening me." The woman fearlessly moved the cell-phone in front of the man to video-tape his face, and she continued calmly, "Since you are the one hitting me, you should be responsible for my compensation."
"What?! You dare to ask me to pay? You want to die early, don't you?" The orange-hair man wrinkled up his nose scornfully.
"Then, let's call the police," replied the woman confidently.
Another long-wavy-hair man tried to stop her at once, "Don't think that we won't beat you up just because you are a woman." He approached her, planning to take the cell-phone away from her. The woman secretly prepared to defend herself with karate.
However, this was interrupted by a dark-hair man, "Don't be rude to ladies."
The angry long-wavy-hair man immediately became obedient, "Yes." And he retreated.
The short-hair man inspected the scene for a while. The red car was stopping outside the road, and the motorcycle lying on the grassland in front. There were braking marks behind the car, but none for the motorcycle. He made a decision, and said to the woman, "Miss, this is our fault, and we will pay for the repair of your motorcycle."
"What?! Tsu-" the dark-hair man raised his hand to cut short the orange-hair man.
"If we are compensating, is it okay if we don't call the police?" the dark-hair man asked.
The woman remained silent, and the dark-hair man took her silence as not-rejecting. He picked up his cell-phone and called, "Uncle Sam, I am sorry for calling this late, um… I just had a car accident, would you please come to Chestnut Hill Driveway? By the way, please call a cab to come here as well…"
All of them remained silent while they were waiting. The dark-hair man glanced at the bold woman, who rode a stylish motorcycle. With the cars' headlight, he realized that she was wearing leather boot and jacket, and she had a shocking hair color, pink. Maybe she was belonged to one of the gangs.
"Miss, may I have your name please?" He asked politely.
She hesitated a moment, and replied, "Misaki."
Within ten minutes, a middle-aged man wearing a suit came to take care of the incident. He gave a name card to Misaki. She looked at it, and saw he was from a company that owned a number of recognized pubs in the country. It did not take long for the cab to come and drive her home.
After watching Misaki's departure, the dark-hair man smiled and murmured to himself, "Misaki, what a beautiful name for a strong lady."
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Let's move the clock to several hours before Misaki's accident.
While Misaki was enjoying her ride on her motorcycle, another female member of the Hyuuga's family was wandering aimlessly on the street in the Shibuya area of the Tokyo city.
It was Hotaru's custom to walk on the street when she finished her jobs. Unlike Misaki and Natsume who were good at discovering talented singers, she had more expertise or instinct in spotting out beauty that had high potentials. Even though she had a number of models or actresses in hand, she was not too satisfied with the ones she was managing now.
Well, they were all popular and successful enough to make a good living and superb earning reports for her. However, if you asked Hotaru to rate them, she would give a 70 out of 100 at most. No matter how one portrayed them, it was the lack of an inborn allure that caused them not "overwhelming" enough to rock the world. Therefore it was her ambition to discover someone who had potential to be worth 100 in her eyes.
This night was not a successful one again. Being raised in the Hyuuga family, whenever she was at home, she had the privilege to look at attractive people, her siblings. On the other hand, this so-called benefit was the reason why she became very demanding about a person's appearance and disposition.
Hotaru was about to take a cab home, when she saw something shiny at the edge of her eyes. Someone had once asked her how she decided if a person had potentials to be a star, nevertheless, her answer was difficult to understand or imagine. She said she could see some "gold pieces" on the person that made them reflect light like gold. (Can you visualize what she was saying? I personally don't.) After seeing something shiny, she hopped out of the cab at once, and traced the shining source.
That was incredible.
In her eyes, she saw a golden statue walking on the street. "Oh my God!" She heard the exclamation in her head. She instantaneously followed the golden figure.
Using the eyes or ordinary people, the figure Hotaru saw was indeed belonged to a tall lady with shiny long blonde hair. Despite the fact that she was wearing low-heel shoes, she was at least 6' tall. She did not have a huge breast, but her overall body shape was impressive. She was wearing a skirt that exhibited her long slender legs.
The most appealing feature of this lady was her face. She wore a pretty heavy make-up, but unbelievably, one would not think that she was flirtatious. Rather, one would sense a feeling of innocence from her. In addition, Hotaru was confident that the lady was not covering any blemishes of hers. Hotaru even had a hunch that the lady was masking something better behind the cosmetics. Hotaru admitted to herself that this did not sound logical at all, but that was her intuition. That was why she was going to meet this lady by all means.
Hotaru followed the lady into a skyscraper. The lady went into an elevator, and it was too late for Hotaru to catch the lift. She could only watch the elevator moving away from her with pity. Using the television screen that showed the cabinet inside the lift, she figured out the lady's destination was the 18th floor. While she was waiting for the lift, she looked at the directory on the wall to see what kind of place that floor was…
The Metropolitan Club of the Tokyo City
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…
…
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It was 8 a.m., Natsume was working in his office, dealing with the administrative work. Natsume worked as a manager as well as an executive. He was able to manage both because he had few artistes under his management. It was Natsume's philosophy to focus on quality over quantity. He actually had contracts with two artistes only. One of them was his father, who was enjoying his "endless" vacation with his wife now. The other one was a well-established singer. He decided to take a "break" after holding a regional tour of concerts. He was planning to open a restaurant, and no one knew when he would return to the stage again.
Everyone wondered how come the five siblings could know how to be managers in such a young age. Since they were young, they had been following their parents to learn about the entertainment industry. In fact, the Hyuuga Entertainment Limited was established seven years ago, the very first job for the company was to organize the farewell concerts for their father, as well as his regional tours around Asia. Under the supervision of their father's manager, i.e. their aunt, Natsume was the core coordinator in that job, and the four siblings helped along. It was when they further developed their networking. Their father's performance before "retirement" was a tremendous success; the Hyuuga siblings established good reputations.
Back to the present, Natsume worked diligently in his office. Administrative work included the preparation of quarter and annual reports for the company, monitoring the expenses, handling documentary work etc. Being the one in charge of the company, Natsume was (obviously) not the one doing the real work, he was the one supervising. He had more to do in deciding the development of the company. The work was tedious, but he rather did this than spend time catering artistes who did not meet his standards. While he was looking for potential new stars, he was involved in the expansion of the corporation.
The Hyuuga Entertainment Limited was first formed as a company offering managers' service. The fundamental job for such managers was to think of strategies to advertise the artiste to the public effectively. The technical details of their jobs included: organizing the schedules and handling relations with co-workers on behalf of the artistes; as well as negotiating salaries and striving for artiste's benefits with cooperative partners. For example, if the artiste was an actor, the manager mainly needed to work on schedules and salaries negotiation with movie or drama producers. If the artiste was a singer, the manager would have to deal with music companies about many aspects, such as the singer's image, the production and release of CDs, the distribution of profits etc. Apart from all this, whenever the artistes were involved in scandals, the managers had to think of ways to protect the artistes. Outside work, it would be helpful if the managers and the artistes had good relations between each other.
Last year, he decided to found a Music Production branch and an Image Design branch for the Hyuuga Entertainment Limited. Both branches were developed well. Three months ago, they started to provide assistance to the company's contractual artistes, and offer services to external parties.
So far so good, things went on well. Natsume laid back on his chair for relaxation, when an image of an amber-hair girl tiptoed its way into his mind…
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Sakura Mikan had a five-year contract with the Boom Limited. After the release of her first album, her fresh image of the girl next door won popularity easily, especially among teenagers. She received the Award of the Most Promising Singer in the very first year she started her singing career. Continuing with the trend, the company wanted to consolidate her pop idol position among the young. Many songs that were suitable for the karaoke were designed for her. These songs had melodies that were less complicated and lyrics that matched up with the mentality of the adolescents. An album was released in the second year and it sold well.
However, things started going downhill in the following year. Her third album had reduced sales. She faced a fierce competition by a newcomer, Koizumi Luna. Luna was a dance-oriented singer who also targeted to the teenagers' market. She came from a rich family, which allowed her to have overwhelming advertisements everywhere, on top of the amazing choreography and marvelous clothes in MTVs and shows. Luna became very popular right away.
Mikan had no album released in the subsequent year; only a single was put into the market, and its sale was beaten down by Luna's. The Boom Limited started to let Mikan have more engagement in advertisements, soap dramas and TV shows to maintain her fame. Besides, the company strongly encouraged Mikan to change from being the girl next door to one with a raunchier image. After all, Mikan was more a singer than an actress, and she wanted to have more time and flexibility in music. Moreover, Mikan was highly resentful of the new image idea.
Last year, things became even more troublesome. The discussion of the contract renewal with the Boom Limited began, but the attempt was in vain. Due to the failures to meet an agreement on idol image and time allocation for music production, Mikan's manager, Nobara, started to contact other companies for contracts. This resulted in Mikan's abandonment by the Boom Limited. Her album preparation was stopped abruptly.
Worse still, three months ago, before a new contract was settled, scandals that Sakura Mikan was dating Nendo Ryoga, a pop star who had lots of fan girls, started to spread. Mikan's popularity dropped tremendously. There was accusation that she was pretentious, and she was flirty in nature so that Nendo Ryoga dated her. Many companies started to hesitate whether Mikan's joining would be to their advantages.
"Maybe it's a time to change her image and musical style, but no one knows if the change will be successful... Her current fans may not accept her change..."
"Her popularity has gone down a lot, maybe there is no turning back anymore..."
"Koizumi Luna was dominating the market for the young, Sakura Mikan had low chance to beat Luna. The investment on Mikan may not pay off..."
"It was rumored that she was dating Nendo Ryoga, the famous girl-magnet. Having such scandal was never a good thing for a pop star..."
While Nobara continued her job to find a reasonable contract for Mikan's singing career, a new worry came about. All of a sudden, Nobara had her personal matter, which made her plan to end her career as a manager. This meant that she would have to leave Mikan alone.
Nobara discovered Mikan in a singing contest at Mikan's school. Mikan's singing impressed Nobara so much that she decided to help fulfilling Mikan's dream as a singer. That time, the Boom Limited was willing to spend money to build up a new star, therefore Mikan had her debut via the company. Nobara did not want to sacrifice her personal life, but Mikan was a sister to her, and she wanted to make sure that Mikan was well taken care of after she left her.
Suddenly, a thought came to her mind.
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It took some time to describe the background & setting...
I appreciate your patience...
Next chapter, Natsume & Mikan will meet each other again...
Please review!