A Battlefield For Idols - SCP Foundation

Miss Marika Yazawa in her debut costume, illustrated by the famous fan and artist breaddddd.

The Hung Hom Coliseum, Hong Kong's most famous and premier performance venue, is the holy grail for local singers.

Despite the cloudy sky, the Coliseum was packed to the rafters as usual today, and the singer who took the stage was a rare Japanese.

Marika Yazawa, a popular idol from Sparking Color Idol Project, with her cute appearance, clear voice, and top-notch singing and dancing skills, had swept the Japanese music industry with her hit song Koi no Makiri in just one year after her debut, winning numerous fans around the world and becoming another legendary idol created by Sparking Color Idol Project after Shirona Kisaragi.

The news of Marika's visit to Hong Kong immediately went viral on local discussion forums, and pre-sale tickets sold out in just two hours. The few tickets that were available for scalping were quickly speculated to be more than three times the original price. As everyone knows, Miss Marika's schedule is always unpredictable: after finishing a performance in New York, she announced a performance in Chiang Mai, Thailand, less than two days later, surprising everyone with the tight schedule and unexpected location. Her next performance in Hong Kong was already three months away.

On the day of the performance, with more than 10,000 spectators waiting, Marika Yazawa, in the words of Hong Kong's most famous gossip magazine, "arrived at the Coliseum amidst the joyful acclamations of her devoted and faithful fans".

Marika's entrance was not a fancy one, with the keyboardist, drummer, guitarist, bassist and disc jockey wandering through the darkness of the stage under the cover of the crowd's commotion. After they were in place, all the lights in the arena suddenly came on and pointed to the center of the stage, where Marika, dressed in a fancy dress and wearing an earpiece, quietly appeared on stage and greeted the wave of cheers with a smile.

"Daai gaa hou!"

The short, awkward three words, spoken in Cantonese, pushed the already heated atmosphere to a new peak, which came to an abrupt end with Marika's hand gesture.

"For, today's, meeting, with you, Marika, in addition to rehearsals, also made an effort, to learn a little Chinese!"

"Cantonese, Mandarin, I have learned, in order, to better understand, each other!"

"This is not, the first foreign language, I have learned, nor will it be, the last. One day, friends all over the world, will be able to cross the language, bar…rier, and listen to me sing, together!"

Though Marika spoke incoherent Cantonese full of mispronunciations and even forgot her words at one point, her voice was the only one that echoed in the arena without a single murmur interrupting her speech.

"I'm sure, you've been, waiting a long time, right?" Marika looked around the arena, satisfied with the applause, and started the performance with her catchphrase: Saa! Raibu hajimaru yo!

Then the Muse, again, came down to earth.

Chow Mei-tou was no fan of Marika. As a self-confessed "Mong Kok girl" she would not have been pursuing a goddess - but unfortunately the "dream guy" she was chasing happened to be Marika's big fan and bought her an extra ticket to the show, making her one of the few exceptions in the venue.

Obviously, she was supposed to be indifferent to the stage, complaining to her friends on her cell phone while dealing with the taste of her dream guy, but the sudden blast of music drew her attention back to the stage.

Then Mei-tou could not take her eyes off Marika.

Marika wore a beautiful dress, bright but not flashy, so that people could easily appreciate her appearance, and the lightly powdered face took away Mei-tou's vanity in an instant.

Mei-tou had never studied Japanese and could not understand the meaning of Marika's lyrics, but the voice coming from the stage easily evoked her emotions and melted her into the atmosphere around her.

Amidst the complex interaction of the instruments, Marika danced to the rhythm. Every movement was precise, as if every hand and foot was in the right place at the right time, and even with such intense movement, her beautiful voice continued to flow from her mouth without the slightest disturbance in her breathing.

As Marika's hit song, Koi no Makiri did not have a complicated structure. It lasted only about four minutes in a simple ABAB form. When the song was over, the accumulated fervor in the arena immediately exploded. Mei-tou jumped up and pinched the arm next to her, screaming her idol's name as her companion looked on in disbelief. In just four minutes, Marika Yazawa had won a new fan.

Mei-tou, the companion who successfully won a fan for his idol, and the others who were caught up in the excitement, did not notice anything strange on stage: the unusual blush on Marika's face as she thanked the fans, the band's musical instruments that were just plastic replicas, and the dark clouds that hovered over the Coliseum and covered the entire Kowloon Peninsula, which silently disappeared without a sound…

Two and a half hours later, idol Marika, who had performed her last encore, returned to the dressing room after the audience's farewell and caught a plastic bottle thrown by a man in a suit with her hand raised.

"Thank you! Producer-san!" Marika thanked the man in her native language and then gulped down the energy drink from the bottle.

"Etiquette, etiquette! It's not good to be caught on camera!"

"It's okay! Didn't you say the paparazzi couldn't get here because of the cognitohazard thing?"

"Well… you are an idol…" The man called Producer-san shook his head with a sigh and then clapped his hands to call the band members who had arrived backstage earlier.

Keyboardist, drummer, guitarist, bassist and disc jockey, the five musicians stood solemnly in a row with plastic instruments behind their backs like sheathed swords.

Marika put down her drink as well. She walked between the musicians and the producer and stood at attention.

"You have worked hard for today's ritual. Ms. Mo's informant just told me that the anomalous particle tremors in Hong Kong have subsided. The mission is complete.

"It is time to dismiss. We'll have a celebration dinner tonight at the usual place. Don't get drunk again!" As soon as the producer said this, the room filled with cheers and the musicians soon left the room to enjoy themselves.

Marika and the producer left the room from the other side and walked out of the venue side by side - a car was waiting for them at a secret place.

"That situation was a bit dangerous." The producer sighed as the blush on Marika's face had not yet faded, a symptom of the recoil experienced when the Singing Spell was working.

"I'm fine! It's not like I've never been in something more dangerous."

"You are different from us. You're a civilian who volunteers to work with us. If something happens to us, it's fine, but if something happens to you, it will prick our conscience."

"I said I'm fine! I knew when I signed the contract with you guys that this job was more dangerous than a normal idol, so I'm fine! Yeah!"

"You should at least take it more seriously … You can really die if it's dangerous …"

In the empty corridor, the idol in white and the producer in black walked side by side. No one disturbed them. No one noticed them.

Suddenly the producer seemed to think of something and turned to Marika.

"By the way, you are different from Kisaragi. She studied the Sound Attack at a paranormal school and was already one of us before joining Sparking Color, but why did you, an art school student who accidentally sent us a resume, decide to stay after learning the truth?"

"Well, what would you think if I told you that I would rather be a normal idol?"

"As I said from the beginning, we can rewrite your memories and induce your audience. If you decide to quit, you'll wake up as a famous idol who has nothing to do with us. You can still make that choice now."

"I'm kidding! Just kidding! I really wanted to be a normal idol or something, but now I can't let go of my experiences. An ordinary Marika who just sings and dances is not a good one, right?"

"What do you mean… Even without the accompaniment of the Sound Attackers, without the Sound Attack and the Singing Spell, you're still the best idol I've ever seen. Don't belittle yourself." The producer patted Marika on the head and continued as she cradled her head in her hands with an aww.

"This ritual works better than expected, so there's no need for the next two rituals. Enjoy your time on stage as a top idol!"

"Hooray!"

As the idol cheered, they reached the end of the corridor. Suddenly, Marika thought of something and asked the producer:

"By the way, Producer-san, I was shocked at first when you said we were a task force of a foundation. But isn't it a talent agency? Why did you call it a special force?"

"Oh, because we do what a special force does." The producer laughed.

"When people in the Foundation think of task forces, they always think of Men in Black and super soldiers, but there are things they can't do that we need to solve, so why can't we be a task force?"

The captain and producer of Mobile Task Force な-65 "Sparking Color Project" walked off the battlefield for idols side by side with his teammate and ace idol.