Did you know that the disclaimers people put in their stories are not only unnecessary but haven’t been needed since I was an admin? Besides, the disclaimers recommend against doing stuff depicted in the stories, but if you get a chance to perform with a Nightwish vocalist, past or present? You totally should! Almost certainly not exactly in the manner depicted here, but still…
“I still can’t believe we’re actually getting to perform with Floor Jansen!” Michelle Massey grinned as she stepped off the tour bus. It was a hot July afternoon in the north of France and the sun beat down on her the moment she left the air-conditioned comfort (such as it was) and placed one foot on the dry grass.
“You still get star struck? Just how long have you been doing this now?” scoffed keys player and new girl Letitia Piers as she followed the rhythm guitarist out of the bus.
Becky Jerome was next out, with one of her usual giggles. “If you think she’s bad now, wait until she actually meets her!”
“Oh shut up, Becks!” Michelle turned a bright red, laughing nervously. There was some truth to what Becky and Letitia were saying. The band had met many famous faces over the years, and it was usually Michelle who felt the most in awe of them. To some extent, she felt unworthy of her place among them, even if her place in the world suggested otherwise.
“If you can’t handle that, how can you handle performing with her?” added Becky.
Michelle buried her head in her hands, trying to not think about it. Her heart raced at the thought that in a few hours, she would be performing on-stage with the (current at the time of writing) Nightwish singer. While the rest of The Kayotics liked the band to some extent or another, Michelle was easily their biggest fan and the one most into symphonic metal in general. She thought it was amazing enough that Floor had (through the wonders of the internet) contributed vocals to their latest single!
Moving her hands away from her face, Michelle took a deep breath. “It’s fine. I usually play with four better musicians than myself. What’s one more?”
“Don’t be so down on yourself, Shelly! If you were that bad, we would have kicked you out by now!” giggled Becky.
Some hours later, Michelle was mingling backstage as rock stars do. Becky’s words weren’t of much comfort. She reached into her handbag and brought out a sheet of paper with a list printed on it.
Entrance (Rally Cry)
1: Hail Destruction
Introduction
2: Wake Up in a Coma
3: Immersion
Guitar change
4: Kunoichi
5: It’s Never Over
6: Apocalypse
Guitar change, enter Floor
7: Slay the Vampire
8: Come Cover Me
Exit Floor
9: Queen of Steel
All in all, it was a fairly typical Kayotics set, were it not for the presence of one specific song and two little words: “enter Floor”. The songs were not particularly demanding of her guitar skills, and she was more than familiar with them. After all, she had writing credits on eight of them and the other was one she spent a great chunk of her life listening to. She’d got this! Well, so she tried to convince herself, anyway.
“Hi! I take it you’re one of the Kayotics?”
Michelle’s head shot upright as the voice of what sounded like (and indeed was) a rather tall and striking Dutch woman reached her ears. It was Floor Jansen, the very same person whom Michelle was both anticipating and dreading the prospect of performing with. The Dutch songstress had really dressed for the occasion too, with a well-fitting faux-leather jacket and corset, with some denim shorts. She almost seemed to tower over Michelle (whom herself was known as one of the taller women in metal), no doubt in part thanks to the impressive boots she had on. Michelle’s jaw quivered a little. “Y-yeah! I’m Michelle Massey, the rhythm guitarist.”
“I’m Floor Jansen. Nice to meet you!” Seeing the setlist in Michelle’s left hand, Floor offered the right.
Michelle’s right hand trembled its way into Floor’s. “Ye… yeah, I know. I’m a huge fan!” she said, her heart racing, beads of sweat forming on her brow. Part of the sweat she could blame on the heat, but it wasn’t like Floor was burning up in her fake leather. Michelle’s dress, while no less black, was at least a relatively breathable polyester. “Sorry, I just can’t believe you’re actually here!” she said, smiling as nervously as she was breathing.
“Well, I’m booked to perform with you tonight and with Nightwish tomorrow. Where else would I be?” she chuckled.
Michelle laughed nervously. “That’s true! So are you ready for it?”
Floor nodded. “I think so. It’s two songs, right? Slay the Vampire and a Nightwish song, right?”
“Yeah, Come Cover Me,” said Michelle, handing Floor the setlist. “We’ve kept it fairly true to how you play it. Same key, same tempo, same structure. We’ve changed it a little bit instrumentally but nothing drastic.” She reached into her handbag and brought out her phone, opened a music app and brought up a recording she and the rest of the Kayotics had made for one of their B-sides. While it was a bit tinny through the phone speakers, it was fairly clearly the same song with slightly more prominent guitars.
Floor listened intently, picking up on some of the small alterations. “Sounds good!” she smiled. “Who’s singing on it?”
“Yumiko on lead, Letitia on most of the backing vocals. I’m there in the chorus,” Michelle said, a tear starting to form in her eye. Her idol thought a version of one of her favourite songs that she played and sang backing on actually sounded good!
Before anyone could say anything more, a familiar voice came from behind Michelle. “Yo, try not to fangirl too much, Chelle!” Michelle turned around and saw Yumiko Yamazaki-Green standing behind her with bandmates Kassidy Harvey and Letitia Piers. “We were going to sneak out to watch some of the other bands. You two can join us if you want to, though you might want a disguise” said the bassist. The three of them were dressed rather plainly in sunglasses, Kayotics t-shirts, and shorts.
“You’re wearing your own band’s shirts as a disguise?” Floor asked, raising an eyebrow.
Letitia nodded. “Yeah, and it usually works. What band would wear their own t-shirt, after all?”
“Plus we look pretty damn good wearing them, so it’s also advertising,” added Kassidy.
“We are nothing if not resourceful!” Yumiko nodded.
Michelle shook her head. “I was helping Floor with prep for tonight’s show, actually.”
“Oh yeah?” Kassidy smirked. “How’s that going? Has Michelle actually been able to say anything?”
Floor chuckled a little, then embraced Michelle in her right arm. “She’s been pretty enlightening so far, actually! She’s great!”
Michelle’s heart pounded triple time as she found her face gently pressed into Floor’s pleather. “Ah… glad you think so…” she said, almost a whisper.
Yumiko, Kassidy and Letitia did their best to not giggle at their bandmate’s awkwardness. They found it rather hilarious that Michelle seemed less like a professional musician and more like a shy teenager, and Floor seemed to have picked up on it. “Well, I’m going to leave you both a bit of advice. Michelle, I know you have a massive lady-boner for Floor and Nightwish in general, but for tonight she’s an honourary Kayotic. Treat her as such, you know? And Floor, make sure you’ve got a towel. See you both later!”
“A towel?” Floor scoffed, but before Yumiko could answer, she had left with Kassidy and Letitia. The Dutch woman let go of Michelle. “Do you know what she meant, Michelle?”
“I have a few ideas, ranging from stuff you can’t know to stuff you don’t want to know. Now, as for Slay the Vampire…”
“For I am overlord of this apocalypse!!” Yumiko’s words roared through the crowd as the band tore through the ending of their sixth song. The lights went down, making it hard for anyone to see anything but the spotlight that shone down on the bassist-singer. The cover of darkness was rather welcome for Michelle, who stepped to the side of the stage. There stood Floor, who greeted her with a wink and a wave of her right hand. She was gripping a wireless microphone in the left. Michelle smiled nervously and waved. So far she had been on-point with her playing, and she had no intention of that changing just because of what was going to happen next. She took a rather pretty, rather rounded silver and white guitar from a stagehand and returned to the stage while Yumiko made an announcement. “So according to the bit of paper by my mic stand, we’ve got a song that we released recently that features someone on guest vocals. Here’s that someone – Floor Jansen!”
Floor ran onto the stage and walked to the centre under a white spotlight. She was carrying a microphone and stand with her and had left her jacket in her dressing room. Her striking physique was there for all to see in the corset top. “Bonjour, France! It’s an honour to play here for you with these wonderful women!”
“An honour that’s ours!” Yumiko added. “Hope you’re ready because right now it’s time to…”
“Slay the Vampire!” the two singers announced in unison.
The song was one of the darkest and heaviest songs The Kayotics had ever created, with some dark lyrics which were a metaphor for escaping a controlling and abusive relationship. Floor and Yumiko had a verse each, with them sharing the choruses and bridge. All of this was backed with some frantic guitar and drum work and eerie string chords. It fitted in nicely with the band’s pre-existing metal songs but also had a strong gothic tinge to it even without Floor. Michelle tried to not to let Floor’s presence put her off too much, even during Becky’s solo when the Dutch singer started dancing right in front of her. The way her body swayed to the music and her hair seemed to almost gracefully wave was hypnotic, and Michelle clearly enjoyed every moment of it. The song was over before too long, however, and Yumiko was about to address the crowd.
“Since we’ve got the wonderful Floor Jansen up here and she very kindly sang a Kayotics song, why don’t we do a Nightwish song?” Yumiko said to the crowd, somehow managing to pretend that it wasn’t the plan anyway. Of course, the crowd responded with a huge cheer. “Alright then! Tish, take it!”
With Letitia’s rendition of the glittery intro, the song burst into life. Everything was coming together wonderfully, with Floor stood at the front behind a microphone stand. The band had instructed her not to stray from that spot much, even though she rarely did when performing the song with Nightwish. After all, it suited the emotionally-driven symphonic metal song.
As the song began to reach its conclusion, Michelle stood at her pedal board and placed her booted left foot on one of the pedals. At a distance, it didn’t look too different from anything else on the board – fairly small, quite boxy, a couple of dials at the top which meant little to the uninformed but clearly had a lot of relevance to those in the know. However, a closer look showed that it wasn’t actually hooked up to the rest of the pedals on the board. “Well, we’re certainly about to cover you in something!” she whispered, hoping her mic wouldn’t pick up her tacky little quip.
“Come cover me, cooooooome~” Floor gracefully crooned as the song moved into its proper outro. Her eyes shut, she didn’t see exactly what Michelle’s extra pedal had activated. A large clear plastic tube descended from the front stage catwalk, with a few little holes in the bottom. Inside (though not for very long) was some kind of clear liquid, the same lurid lime green colour of Michelle’s pedal. The crowd gasped, then immediately cheered as the liquid cascaded out of the tube, down onto Floor!
Floor gasped. So, this is what Yumiko must have meant earlier about needing a towel! The liquid was thick, cold and quite opaque. It coursed through her long dark hair and over her facial features, trickling down slowly and leaving nothing exposed to the cool evening air. Her mouth hung open in shock as the green sludge ran down her head and onto her body. It coated her inked arms, running over her black polished fingernails and dripping onto the stage. The audience could only see the slime that went over her top, but she shuddered at the feeling of a good amount of it sliding inside. There was little the singer could do but grin and bear it. Floor could feel it running down her bare legs and seeping into her boots. She raised her right leg to try and stem the flow a bit, but it didn’t help. The sheer volume of it, which seemed like a lot more than was in the tank, meant that nothing was going to stop gravity from doing its job and leaving the boots covered – inside and out! The sheer weight of the boots, with their claggy coating and filthy filling, was just too much and Floor put her foot back down. Even lead guitarist and gunge fanatic Becky was impressed. She found herself blushing and grinning wildly as the sludge kept on pouring over Floor until she had been utterly trashed by the downpour.
With the sliming finally over, Floor flicked some of the gunge from her fingertips and wiped her eyes, looking down at herself. “You awful people!” she laughed, loosening her boots a little and stepping out of them, placing her bare feet into the big puddle on the stage with a rather loud squelch. She tipped them over to empty the gunk out, but found that the sludge didn’t pour any faster out of the boots than they did from the hopper.
“Green is definitely your colour, Floor! Thanks for playing with us!” Yumiko smirked. While it wasn’t the first time The Kayotics had given someone a surprise gunging on stage, Floor was by far the biggest name they had gunged and it looked like they had just about gotten away with it. “Give it up for Floor Jansen, everyone. Great singer, great sport and as it turns out, great gunge target!”
Despite her very unexpected shower of slime, Floor enjoyed the opportunity to perform with The Kayotics and found the addition of an extra guitarist in particular to be a great addition. An idea began to form, but she wasn’t sure quite what the rest of Nightwish would make of it. After all, Tuomas was a pretty serious individual.
She watched The Kayotics’ last song from the side of the stage, draped in a large green towel. It hadn’t really done much to get the gunge off, but it did mean she had an extra layer to wear until she hit the showers. As they finished, the three guitar players threw their picks into the crowd, followed by Kassidy throwing her sticks. Michelle passed her guitar to a stagehand. Floor stepped forwards and up to the rhythm guitarist. “That was fun!”
“Oh! Uh, glad you enjoyed it!” Michelle smiled, blushing as much as she had when they first spoke. It was something of a relief to her that Floor wasn’t mad.
“So I was thinking I might talk to the rest of Nightwish about bringing you on stage tomorrow to play a couple of songs. A bit of a returning the favour thing…” Floor smirked.
Michelle greyed out for a second, almost falling to the ground in shock at the idea. Floor reaching out with her left arm to catch her didn’t help. “S-sorry! I’m fine! I just thought you said something about playing some songs…”
“I did.”
Still dizzy from the initial shock at the idea of performing with her heroes, Michelle squealed a reply “Oh my God yeeesssss!!!” she beamed as she threw her arms around Floor, not caring a bit about how slimy her idol was.
Floor chuckled and reciprocated the slimy embrace, holding Michelle tight and wiping her arms all over the brunette guitarist to get some of the gunk off. “I’ll see you tomorrow then!” she said, pecking Michelle on the cheek and letting go, walking off
Michelle was still trying to quite process what had just happened when felt someone tap her on the shoulder. There was Becky, her face almost as red as Michelle’s had been, though she seemed a little bit annoyed – certainly extremely envious! “You lucky bitch!”
To be continued…