"Do you need anything, Papa?"
Ito Ganawa smiled up at Hana as she began to fold up his wheelchair. "Hannie, sit down, honey. Stop fussin' over me. I'm gonna be fine." He beamed up at his adopted daughter from his seat of honor at the VIP table at stage left - a stage that hadn't even existed when he'd opened the bar then known as the Bottle and Brewforty years to the day ago. "I don't need a thing. I'm home."
"He's right, you know." Mei grinned, cocking her head to the side with a little wink. "You don't work here anymore, either. You are both emeritus proprietors now." She reached up, tweaking the black bow tie she wore around the collar of her stiff white tuxedo shirt. "So, miss, may I take your order?"
Ito glanced up at the stage. A black curtain hung from the trusses suspended from the ceiling, obscuring the back third of the narrow stage floor. A plain white square bedsheet was layered just over it at the center, and Ariel Wright was standing on a chair adjusting it. "Is it this much of a production here every night?" He chuckled, watching as a young blond man in a black leather jacket tested the tuning of his cherry-red electric guitar.
Mei shrugged. "More or less. But don't worry! You still get special treatment, Granddad." She giggled, craning her neck toward the front door of the bar. "Wait 'til you see what it's like when Sakura opens those doors. This place is gonna go apesh…"
A shrill whistle interrupted the young server, and she turned toward the main bar to identify its source.
"Everybody?! Bring it in!" Yui shouted, clapping her hands sharply. She, too, wore a white tuxedo shirt and a black bow tie, but unlike her sisters' black knee-length pencil skirts, she had paired it with black tailored dress slacks and black loafers. As the proprietress, she was also the only member of the staff with a jacket, a black tuxedo coat with a yellow rose boutonniere.
Hana started to rise from her seat, but paused when she felt a quivering hand rest on her forearm.
"It's their show now, Hana," Ito coaxed soothingly. "Let them go."
"But, it's such a big night for them!"Hana fretted as Sakura, Akane, Seiichi and Izumi made their way toward the bar. "How the hell am I supposed to just sit here and not do anything?!"
With a hearty chuckle, the old man patted Hana's arm again through the sleeve of her leather jacket. "You're doing the most important thing you can do as a parent. Watching them, and being proud."
Sakura slipped behind the bar, wrapping both of her arms around Yui's elbow. "Get us ready, boss," she said with a grin.
Yui smiled broadly, surveying the room with her eyes. Everything looked perfect - no detail had been missed, no matter how trivial. "Okay, everybody. No table service tonight, except for VIP, obviously," she began, motioning to the empty dance floor. "But, Akane and Seiichi, you're working the crowd running drinks." The pair nodded in acknowledgement. "You'll still be working out of the service bar, and that's Miss Izzi's domain."
The brunette crossed her ankles, giving a cute little knee bend of a curtsey in response. "Izumi Sando, at your service!"
"Mei, you're our kitchen mistress tonight. Don't wait for orders, just keep cranking out cheese pizzas and chicken tenders as fast as you can. Somebody'll eat 'em, don't worry." Yui reached out, ruffling her little sister's electric blue hair between her pigtails. "Holler for us if you need help, and we'll rotate somebody back there to pitch in."
Scoffing, Mei brushed off her sister's concern with the back of her hand. "Please! I got this, sis!"
Yui turned to her left, her focused eyes taking on more of a doeish softness as she regarded her wife. "Sake, you're our floater. Bar back, pitch in where you can, and relieve people if they need a break."
"Enjoy that bossiness while you can, Yui. Somethin' tells me it isn't gonna last once you get home," the proprietress' eldest sister shot back with a playful sneer.
Laughing, Yui rolled her eyes, hoping her foundation did enough to conceal the blush forming on her cheeks. "Better not get too sassy, Aya. After all, you're the old lady around here nowadays. You think you can keep up with me tonight behind the bar?"
"I like my chances." Ayako reached out, clasping hands with her sister. "Wonder twins, activate!"
"Remember, we're going to let the place settle for about twenty minutes after we open the door, and then it's gonna be sudden," Ariel said, pulling his shaggy brown hair out from under the microphone cable that was draped around his neck. "Don't get startled." As he spoke, a loud strum from Shinji's bass guitar indicated that the band was almost finished preparing their instruments.
"I guess that just leaves one of us," Yui said, turning behind her. There, a slender redhead in a black pleated miniskirt, a hot pink tuxedo shirt left unbuttoned enough to show the collar of a blood-red tee shirt underneath, and a blood-red leather jacket leaned in the archway separating the bar room from the hall leading back to the kitchen.
"And your job, baby sister…" Yui reached out, putting her arm around Ranko's shoulder. "... is to make sure they're talking about tonight for the next forty years."
"Yeah, let me get a negroni and a Dragonfire, please?" A heavyset man in his mid-thirties waved a 2,000 yen note overhead, using it to get the bartender's attention.
His words still lingered in the air when they were joined there by a spinning aluminum cocktail shaker. "You got it, sugar!" Ayako winked, splashing two ounces of jalapeño-infused pineapple juice into a thick mixing glass in the time it took gravity to return the shaker to her hand.
An impatient murmur had started near the front edge of the stage, which remained empty. Only a small wooden table sat on the stage, off to the left side. On it, an old-timey radio rested, but no music came from it. The bar was not without music, however, as Ariel's control board was piping popular American rock songs through the twelve Electro-Voice speakers mounted to the bar's ceiling.
I can't freakin' wait for them to open the new club next door, Ariel thought as he checked over his knobs and switches. All that time out on the road in stadiums has made me appreciate not having to work with this dinosaur gear. Ranko had personally used the last of the lump-sum payout she'd negotiated from Yokai Records for the Wildfire Tour to invest in Club Firebird's sound system, ensuring everything would be as top-of-the-line as they could afford. It had yet to be installed - but then again, Kaito and his crew had barely run electricity through the interior walls of the entertainment venue yet.
"Here you go, honey," Ayako said, handing a glass of yellowish liquid over the bar. It glowed with a flicker of blue flame dancing on its surface, courtesy of the floated quarter-ounce of 151-proof rum that she had ignited. "Enj…"
The bar lights all went out with a loud thunk. In the darkness, the face of Ayako's customer was illuminated only by the cyan firelight dancing on his cocktail. A loud whooooooooooooo! rose from the dim, packed bar room.
The white sheet hung over the dark curtain at the center of the stage lit up in the glow from the projector Ariel had mounted to one of the wooden crossbeams of the ceiling. It displayed a black-and-white video of a handsome man in his early fifties, looking smart in a pressed dark tuxedo with a long tailcoat. The loud whir-clack-whir of the film projector was the only sound as the silent video's cameraman moved through a room that looked eerily familiar, and yet wildly unrecognizable, to the capacity-plus audience.
Advertisements for long-extinct brands of beer lined the walls, a billiards table lined in a dark fabric dominated the space where the VIP table now stood, and a brand-new Wurlitzer jukebox glowed against the back wall. Here and there, another impeccably-dressed man darted through the frame, holding a round tray overhead laden with bottles of craft beer. But it was the slender woman with her long, black hair tied back in pigtails that caught Izumi's attention. Izumi watched, enraptured, as the twin braids danced over the waitress' white dress shirt, reaching nearly to the waistband of her black skirt as she bent over a round wooden table to reach the far side of it and hand a glass of soju to her customer.
"Is that… Mama?!" Izumi asked in the darkness, covering her gasping, gaping mouth with both of her hands.
Yui grinned, nodding to her sister. "When she was Ranko's age."
Indeed, though no one could see it in the blacked-out bar, Hana and her adoptive father were holding hands, reminiscing together as the video centered on a large hand-painted cloth banner hung over the glass double doors on the front of the brick building. It read GRAND OPENING TONIGHT.
The makeshift projector screen began showing frames of empty film as the end of the reel was reached, and in a moment, the screen went dark. A pinpoint spotlight shone from the ceiling onto the little round table and the vintage radio it bore, and Hibari Misora's O-Matsuri Mambo began playing through the bar's sound system.
The song played for a full thirty seconds, and the crowd waited with an intense curiosity. Something was coming, but no one seemed to be able to figure out what.
Okay. Here we go, Ranko thought, cocking her head to the side and tensing her shoulders. Her neck popped in three places, and she repeated the move on the other side. Let's do this.
She stepped forward.
And fell.
It was about a four-meter drop from her perch on the crossbeam, and it took less than a half-second for her feet to hit the radio below. The device, which Mei had purchased in already-broken condition from a secondhand market a few weeks prior, splintered into pieces. Akane had pre-weakened the table by sawing most of the way through the tops of the legs, and so it easily gave way as well. Ranko crashed to the stage floor in a crouch. The whole stage erupted in orange light.
"Oh!" Ito rocked back in his seat, his mouth agape.
The 1950's music stopped suddenly as the radio shattered, and the sound of an explosion blared through the speakers, followed by a long, demonic cackle.
The curtain behind Ranko parted, and out stepped Emi Kimoto and Hitomi Uyeno, both wearing blue jeans with long slashes cut through the legs. The curtain continued to recede until it revealed Crash and Shinji holding their guitars. Jacob Trimble was seated at his synthesizer keyboard, and his partner Zoe's face was illuminated by the neon pink glow from their plastic drumsticks.
"Whoa-oh-oh! Uh-oh! Look out! Look out! Whoa-oh-oh! Uh-oh! She's gonna make you shout!" Hitomi and Emi crisscrossed the stage, kicking the remaining debris from the table and radio back behind the curtain as they sang.
Ranko slowly rose from her crouch, grinning at the roar that accompanied it from nearly four hundred Firebirds. Damn, Yui, she thought as she packed her lungs for the first rapid-fire verse of her favorite song to begin a show. Hope the fire marshal doesn't see this crowd, or she's gonna shut us down for sure.
"Four decades ago tonight, right here, the Phoenix rose!" Ranko pointed to the spot on the stage just beneath her feet. "I'm here to party like they did back forty years ago!"
Ranko strode to the left edge of the stage, waving to her mother and grandfather. There was a sassy swagger of confidence in her every movement and facial expression, born of performing for hundreds of thousands for the better part of a year, that Hana Takahashi could never have dreamed she would one day see from the half-starved and terrified girl that had crawled through the front door of her bar eight days shy of three years ago.
"Back then, folks sat at their tables drinking whiskey and wine. But we do shit a little different now; this place is mine!"
If Ranko wasn't sure of the statement she'd made, the rapt attention of every soul in the Phoenix that night - even the staff and her family - left her no doubt.
"Used to have to feed the jukebox if you wanted to groove. But this is nineteen ninety-two now, and it's time to…"
Hitomi, Shinji, and Emi's voices all joined Ranko's as she thrust her left fist in the air. The orange stage lighting glinted from the ever-present silver dragon coiled around her wrist.
"MOVE!"
* * *
"Ice! I need ice!" Ayako waved overhead before scooping the last few cubes out of her steel well and depositing them into the Collins glass in her hand.
With wide eyes, Sakura hustled behind the bar counter. "Already?! It hasn't been a half hour yet! Alright, I'm on it!" She grabbed a large white bucket from the floor under the well, hurrying through the blue saloon door to the ice machine in the hallway.
"Even if you don't wanna be dancin', you're forced to be, so cower to my power of seductive sonic sorcery!" Ranko strode the stage in her sparkling black boots, holding court with her backup singers and friends at her side. "You're totally enchanted, so give in to the hex. You ain't gettin' with me, and so it's better than sex!"
"She's incredible, Hannie!"Ito said, leaning over in his chair toward Hana to be heard even though he was speaking at the loudest volume his aged frame could produce. "And the people really love her."
Hana chuckled, shaking her head. "I told you, Papa! But, just wait. You're gonna love this."
As if on cue, four hundred voices behind Hana shouted two English words at the tops of their lungs.
"YES, MISTRESS!"
Ranko posed on the stage, popping her hip to the side and resting her fist on it with a wink as the crowd adulated her.
"You can't help but dance. There's no time to rest. There's a siren on the mic that's makin' you possessed! There's nowhere to hide! Nowhere to go! No escapin' from the…" Ranko lifted her hand to her ear, as if straining to hear the people watching her.
"DEMON IN YOUR RADIO!" the crowd roared back.
The songstress lifted her arm, her hand clenched in a claw-like position. She slowly drew her fingers into a tight fist, as if choking a ghost to death.
"Now that I've got you, I ain't ever gonna let you go! No escapin' from the demon in your radio!"
As the music died out, the old brick building in the Minato harbor district of Tokyo began to quake under the repetition of a single word.
"RAN-KO! RAN-KO! RAN-KO!"
The redhead blushed as she noticed one of the revelers join the chant, feebly shaking a gaunt, pale fist in the air. She leaned forward, blowing a kiss in the direction of its source at the VIP table.
Shinji picked up his microphone stand, heading to the leftmost edge of the stage. His bandmates all moved three steps forward, carrying their instruments. Hitomi and Emi rushed back to help Zoe gather the various components of their drum set and moved them not just forward, but to their right, behind Shinji's usual position on the stage. Jacob wheeled the keyboard stand bearing his synthesizer with the assistance of Crash, moving it just behind the guitarist's normal mark and creating a gap at center stage between him and Zoe. Once all of the other band members had repositioned themselves, Shinji pulled a black nylon cord hanging from the trusses above the stage, and the black curtain and its white sheet overlay that had been used as a projector screen slid back into place behind the musicians.
"Forty years ago tonight, those doors behind you opened for the first time," Ranko said, her chest still heaving from exertion after her performance of the final verse of the album version of Demon in Your Radio. "It was a different time. The place had a different name, a different staff. Not a single person who's working here tonight was even born yet. But… something else was born here that night. This place. Our home. Our family. Forty years and an hour ago, a bright light of love and hope started glowing from the middle of Minato, and it hasn't stopped since."
Ranko shook her head, a toothy grin overtaking her face. It rarely took more than making eye contact with her wife, as she had just done while Akane rushed a pair of beers to someone pressed against the far wall, to bring a smile to her lips. "And you know what, Firebirds? We're just getting started! Tonight, we're going to celebrate not just the last forty years, but the next forty, too!"
She strode to her left, moving close to the edge of the stage. The slender redhead nearly loomed over the VIP table. "And so, for the very first time in year forty-one…"
Ranko held up both hands. On her right hand, four fingers were extended, and on the left, just her index finger was. She bellowed into her headset microphone as loudly as her still-aching lungs would permit. "WELCOME! TO! THE!"
"PHOEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEENIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIX!" the crowd screamed back. Ranko, Hitomi, and Emi - as well as every member of the Phoenix' staff - all joined them. The Dapper Dragons' backup singers had made their way to stage right, leaving the center of the stage empty to avoid obscuring the curtain-and-sheet combination that had been redeployed as a projector screen.
The redhead nodded back to Crash. "One! Two!" A jaunty rhythm began flowing from the six strings of her best friend's electric guitar.
"This one's for you," Ranko said, gesturing with an open hand to the old man seated with her mother at the only table still present in the bar room that night. The projector flickered back to life with a whir-click-whir sound, and the lights illuminating the stage - less two small lights highlighting the positions of Ranko and her backup singers - dimmed to less than half their usual intensity. The gels had been switched from orange back to white after the fiery introduction of Demon in Your Radio.
The prodigal daughter of the Phoenix began to sing. On the screen, the first few frames of the black-and-white film played again, showing a much-younger Ito celebrating the grand opening of the bar in which she had been reborn.
"It was opened by a guy named Ito, back on November tenth of fifty-two." Ranko pointed down at her feet, as if to signify that the date was right here, right now.
"That first night, the servers wore tuxedos…" She reached down with both hands, grabbing her open pink dress shirt and tugging it upward just below the lapels to emphasize her choice of wardrobe. "And, for one night, they still do!"
Groaning, Akane scratched at her neck under her collar as she pushed her way to the back of the bar, a milky white Snakebite cocktail in hand. You don't gotta remind me, babe. Ugh. So itchy.
"They served sake and soju, cheap whiskey, and a few craft beers," Ranko continued. "Now, that dive bar is the place to go to…"
Ranko slid the right sleeve of her leather jacket up slightly, turning her hand up to glance at the underside of her wrist. The black Casio digital watch she had borrowed from the love of her life displayed 19:03.
"And it will be for the NEXT forty years!"
The crowd thundered with cheers of affirmation.
"My grandfather's kind and decent…" Ranko sang, a glow in both her eyes and her smile as she extended her open hand toward the VIP table in presentation. "... and he's here with us tonight…"
Ranko lifted her hand, extending three fingers. She kept singing to keep with the beat, though she had to raise her voice to remain consistently heard over the appreciative whoops the capacity crowd afforded the patriarch of her clan. The lighting on the stage again took on a deep orange-red hue.
"... to watch this third-generation Phoenix blaze his bar in FIRELIGHT!"
Ito clapped his hands, laughing in enjoyment as he took in the spectacle.
"HEY!" Ranko threw her arms up in the air, and the capacity-plus audience knew exactly what to do, joining her and her friends on stage in shouting both the title of the song and the theme of the evening.
"WELCOME TO THE PHOENIX!" they bellowed in one voice composed of four hundred.
Ranko nodded, beaming as she pumped her right fist in the air. "We've been here for a while! We may not always make a difference, but we'll always make you smile! It's the place the locals swear by, and it has been since back in the day! HEY!"
"WELCOME TO THE PHOENIX!" the revelers echoed again.
"C'mon in, and enjoy your stay!" Ranko winked mischievously down at her mother as she carried the last note in a little run.
At the VIP table, Hana swallowed hard, her eyes nervously scanning the room. Oh, shit. I know that look in her eyes. What is that girl up to now?!
The projector's display changed from black and white to a grainy, washed-out color scene, its sepia tint attesting to the clip's age. It showed a woman in her early forties with jet black hair, wearing a heather gray tee shirt splattered with red paint over a pair of skinny jeans. She was laughing with whomever was behind the camera, but the video did not have accompanying sound to reveal the joke. Rather, it was left to the woman's youngest daughter to narrate the scene.
"The place was left to Miss Hana in September of seventy-four. That first night, she smoked some marijuana and painted that firebird on the door."
Hana covered her gaping mouth with her hands, gasping in shock. "Where the hell did she get that?!"
He said nothing, but the victorious smirk and the pat on Hana's forearm from the man who had given her a home and a purpose all those years ago answered her question just the same.
"She wanted people to know it was somewhere to go when the times were at their worst, and she knew it always had been," Ranko crooned, giving a nod of respect to the old man seated to her mother's right. "'Cause, way back when, she'd been the first. HEY!"
"WELCOME TO THE PHOENIX!" the crowd sang with her.
"We're glad you stopped on in…" Ranko sang, reaching up to the second button of her pink tuxedo shirt and resting her hand on her chest in sincerity. "... to this place where nightmares go to die, and fairytales begin."
As she continued the second permutation of the chorus, Ranko began unbuttoning her heavily-starched fuschia dress shirt. The effort was not lost on the audience's male cohort, which whooped more loudly with each button that slipped loose of its hole.
"We're here for drunks who've lost their jobs, and girls who've lost their way…"
Down at the VIP table, Hana gently took her father's hand, giving him a bright smile of appreciation.
"HEY! WELCOME TO THE PHOENIX! C'mon in, and enjoy your stay!"
The Dapper Dragons' lead singer parted the two halves of her dress shirt and her red leather jacket, exposing the sweat-soaked maroon tee shirt she wore under both. A large black trapezoid containing a large firebird with its head cocked to the right, and the name of the bar above its head, were screen-printed on the shirt. The ink color had faded and cracked somewhat through three years of wear and washing since the night Hana Takahashi and her daughters had given it to her and taken her in out of the rain.
The video projector changed again, this time not to video, but to a much clearer and more vibrant still photo. It featured a terrified-looking teenager with long, loose red hair, wearing a lavender sundress. She was all but cowering behind a handheld microphone on a small triangular platform jammed into the corner of the bar, a neon sign advertising Kirin beer glowing red just over her right shoulder.
"We couldn't even fit a band up on that worn-out corner stage…" Ranko smiled, extending an arm back to the bar counter with an open palm. The blue-pigtailed kitchen manager for the evening had emerged from her domain for a moment to watch the performance and was leaning into a hug from her big sister Ayako.
"Until Mei stuck a microphone in my hand on the night I came of age," Ranko reminisced in song. "Now, four or five nights every week, I'm singing, sometimes strummin'..."
The white screen behind the band lit up with a new picture, this one of Ranko in a black leather jacket and matching skirt, standing in the alley behind the bar surrounded by four men in black jackets and matching jeans. Three of the men were on the stage behind her, and she dearly missed the fourth. The cover art of her first single bore the logo for Ranko and the Dapper Dragons, and a single word was printed in blocky English letters above the quintet's heads.
"First, there was Rise…"
The screen faded to black, and in a split second, a new image appeared, this one of Ranko and a young man known to the bar's staff as Aki lying together atop a plush green duvet covering a large bed. Ranko was wearing a baby pink satin nightgown, and her companion was clad in a kelly green polo shirt. The vocalist all but glowed as she glanced up at the image of the boy she had married less than two weeks ago, who was known only to her family and closest friends to be none other than her wife of a year and a half, Akane Tendo.
"And then came Sneak, and the hits just…"
"KEEP!" the crowd roared. As they did, the screen changed to an image consisting of four colored squares making up a larger one. On the upper left, in front of a cherry-red backdrop, Ranko posed in the same black leather jacket she'd worn on the cover of the Rise single. Hana smiled at the sight of it, remembering the day the photo was taken, and her daughter rushing in from the alley to ask her if she could borrow the leather coat Hana wore at that very moment. The upper right quadrant featured a bright blue background against which Ranko posed in a white school uniform with a red bow drooping under the navy collar. The outfit was completed with a matching navy skirt. The lower left featured the redhead against a deep royal purple backdrop, her makeup done to sharpen her features and give her an almost demonic appearance. She clenched her hand like a claw just below her chin. The final quadrant showed Ranko against an orange background, wearing a black qipao with a line of red and orange flames running up the right side of her torso. At the bottom of the image, two English words were printed: Phoenix Rising.
"ON!" Ranko sang with the crowd. The image changed to one of a tranquil meadow bursting with purple orchids in bloom. In the foreground, Ranko lay amongst the flowers on her stomach in a white lace dress and a matching wide-brimmed hat with a lavender ribbon band, tied in a loose bow that dangled lazily to one side. Her chin was propped up in her left palm, her elbow on the grass. The silver guardian dragon that slumbered perpetually around her left wrist and concealed the scar from Ranma Saotome's mortal wound glinted in the afternoon sun. At the bottom of the image, partially obscuring her outstretched right hand, the words Wild Orchid were written in a white script. The O in Orchid circled a silver ring on Ranko's right hand, set with tiny sapphire chips.
"COMING!"
The image changed again, this time to one that had yet to be unveiled to even the most dedicated of Firebirds. It featured Hitomi, Ranko, and Emi standing behind the main bar counter of the Phoenix, though the mirrored wall behind the bar had been covered with a thin piece of wood paneling spray-painted with the logo for Ranko and the Dapper Dragons in pink and white. Emi and her girlfriend were both mixing drinks, but Ranko stared straight forward into the camera, a forlorn expression in her eyes. All three girls wore matching white button-down dress shirts and black slacks. A trio of bottles were arranged on the bar counter just in front of Ranko. Due to a clever trick of the light, the shadows of the bottles projected three dark vertical bars on each of the girls' shirts. Seated on the stools at the front of the bar, Jacob, Zoe, Crash and Shinji all awaited their drinks in casual attire, predominantly in black other than Jacob's jewel tone blue dress shirt. In the lower right corner of the image, the words Behind Bars were printed: Behind in a font that looked as if it were stamped out of weathered, rusted diamond plate steel, and Bars in a pink script below it similar to the one used in the title for Wild Orchid.
"Hey,WELCOME TO THE PHOENIX!" Ranko repeated with the aid of her four hundred enthusiastic volunteer backup singers.
"We're glad you came around…" The vocalist gestured back to herself with both of her thumbs. "... to watch this silly girl get to shake your world with eighteen thousand watts of sound! C'mon, pull up a chair, order some hot wings to share…"
Ranko turned to her side, motioning behind her with her hand as if to present her friends and bandmates to the audience for the first time since their introductions in the first verse of Demon in Your Radio.
"... while you watch the Dragons play! HEY! WELCOME TO THE PHOENIX!" Ranko grinned back at the crowd as the projection flickering on the white sheet behind her began to briskly cycle through a series of still images and short video snippets, each featuring Ranko or one of her sisters at work serving customers in the bar.
"C'mon in, and enjoy your stay!"
At the only free-standing table in the bar that night, the Phoenix's recently-retired former proprietress gently squeezed Ito's hand as she watched the collection of memories, all of her daughters following in her footsteps, flashing in rapid succession behind the performing band. The video collage included not only Ayako, Yui, Izumi, Mei and Ranko, but Akane and Sakura as well.
"We want you to relax, so please wear casual attire. Take a load off and kick back with a shrimp pizza and a Dragonfire. We take more pride in every beer than most'a those other dives…"
A new image appeared on the screen, this one a photo taken in a cramped apartment. At its center, Hana was seated on a worn, goldenrod-colored couch. She was holding hands with the same aged, but entirely undiminished, companion that presently shared the VIP table with her. Over Hana's right shoulder behind the couch, Ayako stood next to her husband Kage, holding her infant son Jun in her arms. Yui stood to Kage's left. Sakura peeked over her shoulder, her arms wrapped tight around Yui's waist and her raven hair cascading over the front of Yui's cardigan. Between Hana and Ito's heads, Izumi and Kaito could be seen standing behind the center of the couch, with young Hoshi leaning over the back of the couch in front of them and making a silly face at the camera. The couple's nearly two-year-old daughter Mioko was seated on Kaito's shoulders, her ankles firmly held by her father for safety. Mei stood to Kaito's left, holding her boyfriend Seiichi's hand. Standing on the far right of the photo, Ranko and Akane's smiles both radiated joy. Akane was leaning into Ranko's side with her arm draped behind the redhead's back.
The photo had been taken just the night before.
"Because, for everyone who pours one here…" Ranko spread her arms wide and gestured around the room to her surroundings in general, as if to indicate the entire building. "... these four walls saved their lives. HEY! Welcome to the Phoenix!"
Ito reached up with a trembling right hand, brushing a bit of moisture from the corner of his eye. "Hannie, you did so good by those kids. I'm so, so proud of you,"he said, regretting how loudly he had to speak to be heard over the music - and the crowd joining in again with the singing of the song's title - by the woman sitting less than thirty centimeters to his left.
Ranko smiled over the heads of the assembled revelers in the direction of her sisters, nearly all of whom had brought their work to a standstill to watch the youngest of the Phoenix girls celebrate their haphazard, unconventional, and yet absolutely perfect family. "You're just fine as you are. We're equal parts an orphanage, a temple, and a party bar."
The singer spread the two halves of her unbuttoned dress shirt, holding down the bottom hem of her red Phoenix staff tee shirt with her right hand to ensure the logo was clearly visible as she pointed to it with her left.
"And I'm one of the lucky ones, who gets to stand here and say, hey! Welcome to the Phoenix! C'mon in, and enjoy your stay!"
* * *
"I am beautiful," Ranko asserted in a soft, tremulous singing voice. "... and not just in my face."
The ballad of gentle gratitude was a welcome respite for Ranko after having performed four high-energy songs in a row to start the show, with a fifth soon to come. As she sang the final chorus of All the Things, she descended the three steps on stage left to the bar floor, walking heel-over-toe toward the VIP table. A pinpoint spotlight, controlled by the Dapper Dragons' longtime audiovisual technician Ariel Wright, followed her as she approached the subject of the song.
"Though I may make mistakes, I have what it takes, and I'll whoa-a-always have a place!"
Ranko walked around the round table, singing into her headset microphone as she moved.
"The dreams I never dared to dream are starting to come true, thanks to the things… all the things… whoa-a-a-all the thi-i-i-i-ngs… I've learned from you."
She hopped up, resting her backside on the tabletop to her mother's left side. She reached down with her manicured right hand, slipping it into Hana's calloused left palm.
"When people hear these words, I'm glad that they will learn 'em too: all the things… all the things… yeah, all the thi-i-i-i-i-ings…"
Ranko nodded to her mother, her eyes closed in sincerity.
"She learned…"
The change of but a single word in the lyrics had been added on the fly, but it carried enormous significance in Ranko's eyes. She hoped to acknowledge not only her mother's ever-present love and guiding hand in her young life, but the fact that even Hana's goodness, generosity and wisdom had an origin of its own, itself worthy of celebration and gratitude. As it just so happened, the man who had inspired such magnanimity in Ranko's savior - a man Ranko never thought she would get to meet when she'd written the song originally - was present in the main room of the Phoenix for the first time in years. For however long the ninety-three-year-old man had left to live, Ranko wanted him to know that his light and his legacy was being shared every day with hundreds of thousands - maybe millions - of people who needed it, carried on radio waves and performed in stadiums across southeastern Asia in the notes of his youngest granddaughter's music.
The singer opened her eyes and turned her head to the left, leaning forward and bowing low toward her grandfather from her seated position on the wood tabletop.
"... from you."
As the crowd cheered and the piano voice of Jacob's synthesizer came to a rest, Ranko squeezed Hana's hand. She released it after a moment, extending her arm across the tabletop and giving Ito's hand a gentle squeeze as well, careful not to apply too much pressure to his arthritic joints. "I love you both," Ranko said, panning the two elders of the Phoenix clan with her eyes and a bright smile. Ito and Hana only heard her due to the aid of the live microphone boom extended over her cheek.
They both answered, but the singer could not hear their replies over the deafening whoops and cheers of the audience. She didn't need to, though. Of all the myriad ways her life had changed for the better since stumbling bruised and broken through the tempered glass double doors of the Phoenix, there was none she valued more than that.
Despite the unending travails and misfortunes, neglect and abuse she had experienced in her former life, Ranko Tendo had come to know one thing for absolute certain in her new family's care: she knew, beyond the faintest inkling of a shadow of a doubt, that she was loved.
"Babe… the customers?" Sakura urged quietly, snapping her partner out of her affectionate stare in her youngest sister's direction.
Behind the main bar, Yui stiffened with a start as Sakura tugged on her elbow. She inhaled sharply, shaking her head. "Right! Shit!" She wiped her eye with her fingertips, stepping forward to the counter and reaching for the metal cocktail shaker in front of her with a renewed urgency in her movements. "Sorry about that, hon! What are you drinking?" she asked a bombshell brunette in a skin-tight purple microdress.
"Fuckin' deer in headlights," Ayako said with a giggle, nudging her fellow bartender in the shoulder with her fist. "And you said I couldn't keep up."
"Okay!" Ranko clapped her hands sharply together before pushing off of the tabletop with both hands and sliding her backside forward until she dropped to her feet. "Now that we got the mushy stuff out of the way, what say we shake this place, Firebirds?! Are you ready to make some noise?!" She jogged back to the trio of narrow stairs cut into the left side of the stage, ascending them to rejoin her bandmates. The stage lights returned to their full white luminosity.
The songstress tapped her foot on the stage impatiently, crossing her arms over her breasts. The creak of her crimson leather jacket was picked up on her microphone. She waited for the crowd's response to die down before she spoke again. "Really, you guys?! We waited forty years for THAT?! I asked you a question! I said, ARE YOU READY TO MAKE SOME NOISE?!"
While the young vocalist's disappointment at the audience's first response had been disingenuous, their much louder response was given in earnest nonetheless. Ranko cringed, glancing up at the wall to her right with a nervous expression on her face.
"That's more like it, Firebirds! I gotta tell you, it's a good thing we're gonna tear that wall down in a couple weeks anyway, 'cause you almost shook it to the fucking ground!" Ranko laughed, giving Shinji a nod as she took her position between Emi and Hitomi on the stage.
Taking his cue from Ranko, Shinji flashed his fingers over the strings of his bass guitar. The single chord seemed to crack the dam, and from it, an explosion of sound began all at once from the four instruments on the stage. An obscenely fast Euro-style electronic dance beat began pouring from the synthesizer under the command of Jacob Trimble, and his longtime partner Zoe could barely keep up with the rhythm on the bass drum pedal under their black combat boot.
"Whoa-oh-oh-oh! Whoa-oh-OH-oh-oh-uhoh!" Emi vocalized, grinning down at Hitomi as she tucked her long, wavy blonde hair behind her ears.
"Here we go, Firebirds! Are you ready?!" Ranko hopped on her toes excitedly, packing her lungs with air. Why, oh why, did I go and write a rap that's even faster than fucking Demon, she fretted, preparing her respiratory system for the absolute onslaught it was about to undergo. "You know what I'm gonna do?!"
The redhead continued to bounce on her toes, grateful as always for the black nylon compression shorts she wore under her pleated skirt. Without them, the young men standing barely two meters from the edge of the stage would have gotten far more of a show than they'd paid for, and probably an angry glare from a very jealous martial-artist-turned-waitress besides.
"I'm gonna make some NOISE up in here with the BOYS up in here! You got no CHOICE up in here! You gotta move it, move it, move it, move it!" Ranko sang, never stopping her energetic bouncing. Her cheerleading background had accustomed her to it, and it was easy to do on stage and appear active and lively while conserving most of her energy for the vocals.
"NOISE in the club, 'til we POISON the club with some JOY in the club! When the rhythm starts to hit 'em, then there's nothin' to it!" Each time Ranko hit the song's title or one of the words in the chorus that rhymed with it, Hitomi and Emi sang it with her at a near shout.
Here we go, Ranko, the singer thought, pulling air in through her nose until her lungs felt as if they would burst in her chest.
"You've been there all week, non-stop, with your nose to the grindstone at your dead-end job! Wishin' for permission to give up and drop! Welcome to the party, people!"
All traces of singing had evaporated from Ranko's voice, and what remained was a rapid-fire rap over the nearly 190-beat-per-minute dance track. It was all she could do to enunciate the English words at that speed and move a little bit on stage, let alone carry notes. Most of the rhyming words were delivered staccato, both to keep the rhyme structure from becoming muddled with the speed of its delivery, and to keep her from getting tongue-tied. She panned the crowd with her hand, crouching down low and shimmying her shoulders.
"Nobody knows your name; you're just one'a the crowd! Let it go, let it go, and put the bullshit down! Can't even feel your headache throbbing when the speakers pound!"
Emi approached Ranko from her left, lifting her leg and resting her knee on Ranko's thigh. Her hand rested on Ranko's chest just above her left breast, her fingers splayed. Hitomi reached up and draped her left arm over Ranko's shoulders, jabbing at the air between them with her right thumb pointed toward her. All three girls finished the couplet together.
"Ranko's parties know no equal!"
The two backup singers split from Ranko, making their way toward the front corners of the stage. Both rested the backs of their wrists on their foreheads, slumping their shoulders and miming expressions of pure exhaustion on their faces.
"So, every week, when you've had all that you can take, Friday comes around! You feel the whole town shake! Looks like you found the epicenter of the whole earthquake!"
As the lyrics rocketed from Ranko's strawberry-glazed lips, her backup dancers held out their arms with their palms pointed toward the ground, tensing their muscles and vibrating their bodies as if they were trying to keep their balance while the stage shook beneath their feet.
"Welcome to the Phoenix, baby!"
The audience roared at the inclusion of the phrase that had so galvanized them five songs prior.
Ranko slid the right sleeve of her jacket up slightly on her forearm, turning it palm-up and tapping the face of Akane's watch twice with her finger.
"Eighteen on the clock, and so we start the show! Run out on the stage so I can say, hello!"
The ebullient performer grinned widely, smiling with her eyes and lips both as she waved her hand over head in greeting to the crowd.
"Everybody screaming when they see Ranko!" Hitomi added, holding up her left hand as if hiding from Ranko the fact that her right was pointing toward her. The phrenetic revelers confirmed Hitomi's assertion in a deafening shout of acclaim.
"Time to drop a remix, baby!" The redhead kicked her leg out to the side as, just for a few notes, Jacob changed the key of the high-energy dance beat coming from his keyboard. By the next word Ranko rapped, it had returned to the original key.
Ranko reached up to her neck, clasping her hand in a loose fist just in front of where her Adam's apple had once been, back five years and a visit to a cursed training ground in northwestern China ago. She wiggled her hand back and forth, pulling it down toward her navel as she did as if loosening an invisible necktie.
"Tie comes off, 'cause you're off duty. Get your butt out on the floor and shake that booty!"
The vivacious vocalist spun on her heel, striding back toward the musicians at the back of the stage. "Can the Dragons get your body moving?!" she asked her friends, spreading her arms wide.
Her question was hypothetical, but they answered it anyway. "Absolutely!" came the reply from all six of Ranko's bandmates in one voice.
"Ain't no stoppin', no delayin'..." The leather-clad lyricist strode assertively toward the front edge of the stage, pointing with an open hand to the left side of the standing-room-only crowd. "Yeah, you better get ready…" Her right hand rose from her side, similarly gesticulating to the right side of the room. "... and you better get set!"
She grabbed both lapels of her leather jacket, lifting it and shrugging it back a bit on her shoulders with an air of confidence bordering on arrogance. "Ranko's cookin' somethin' up you're never gonna forget!"
A satisfied grin crossed her lips as she bobbed her head along with the lightning-fast beat. "I've made your asses shake before…"
Her blue eyes sparkled in the white stage lighting as she scrunched up her nose, shaking her head side to side. Her wavy red locks cascaded over her shoulders as she thrashed her head back and forth emphatically with a spritely smile.
"... but you ain't seen nothin' yet! Time to get the dance mix playin'!"
Her chest heaving with exhaustion, Ranko was all smiles as she beheld the roar of the crowd. And that's why I wrote a song faster than Demon, she thought as she basked in the audience's adulation.
"Whoa-oh-oh-oh! Whoa-oh-OH-oh-oh-uhoh!" Emi sang again, giving Ranko a desperately-needed moment to catch her breath before the chorus began again.
In the bridge between verses, Hitomi took center stage and began a rave dance solo. Far from the girl who had two left feet when Ranko had met her at the abusive Tashima Talent Agency three years prior, Hitomi Uyeno had blossomed into an excellent dancer. All it had taken was time, practice, and for her passion for music to return unbridled by overbearing and predatory men that sought to control it. It broke Hitomi's heart that her best friend, who had used the very first scintilla of star power she'd ever earned to pry open the lecherous grasp of Takao Tashima and free her and Emi both, still ached for such freedom for herself. Worse still, there was nothing she and the rest of the Dapper Dragons could do to help her.
While most of the revelers' eyes were affixed on the winded Ranko Tendo and her friends, Ito Ganawa's head had instead turned to follow her wife. Akane darted past the table, holding a black metal basin full of bubbling greenish liquid overhead as she rushed to deliver it to a customer. "What in the world is…" He reached out to catch Akane by the wrist as she passed, his eyes wide as he beheld the roiling concoction.
Akane smiled warmly at her new grandfather. "It's called the Voodoo Brew. It's a cocktail! One of the ones Yui and I made up and themed to Ranko's songs," she added proudly.
"I'm gonna make some NOISE up in here with the BOYS up in here! You got no CHOICE up in here! You gotta move it, move it, move it, move it!" Ranko repeated, reaching down with an open hand to just barely touch the outstretched fingertips of the Firebirds standing closest to the stage as she stalked its front edge.
"Well, I'll never! We didn't serve anything like that back when I had the place!" Ito scoffed, looking over the Rocktail in Akane's left hand with a chuckle.
"NOISE in the club, 'til we POISON the club with some JOY in the club! When the rhythm starts to hit 'em, then there's nothin' to it!" the trio of vocalists continued.
Akane bowed her head in deference, fighting her inclination to lower her voice in respect in order to be heard over the chorus and the pounding bass. "I understand, Grandfather. I'm sorry. It's just that, to appeal to a younger demographic, we needed to…" Her eyes widened in shock as Ito gave her right wrist a light smack. It didn't hurt - least of all, to a trained martial artist such as herself, but it surprised her nonetheless. "Huh?"
"Younger crowd, my foot!" The nonagenarian laughed merrily, pointing toward the service bar. "Listen here, miss Akane! You go and get me one of those, this instant! I've gotta try it!"
"I…" Akane laughed off her short-lived anxiety, shaking her head with an amused roll of her eyes. "Of course, Grandfather. Right away!"
On the stage, Ranko motioned toward a folding table on the floor to her left, its right edge butted perpendicular against the thin wall separating the bar room from the men's restroom. Behind the array of electronic sliders and buttons on it that gave him command of the performance on the stage, Ariel ducked down, running his fingers nervously through his mousey brown hair. After years of near-total obscurity as the Dapper Dragons' audio technician - which Ariel quite welcomed - it was awkward for him to be the focus of attention even for a moment.
"Give it up for my boy!" Ranko commanded with the beat as she drew the crowd's eyes toward her friend. "His name is Ariel Wright! Tell him to turn the volume knob up all the way to the right, and break it off there, so the Phoenix rumbles ALL! DAMN! NIGHT!"
"Tables shakin'!" Hitomi asserted, even though there was but one in the room that night.
"Bass is thumpin'!" Emi concurred as she crisscrossed her girlfriend's path on the stage in a full model stomp.
Ranko leaned forward, affecting a strained expression on her face as she cupped her hand to her ear in the direction of the crowd.
"People talkin' to ya, but you just can't hear! Order you a Rocktail or a cold craft beer!"
Emi and Hitomi both raised their arms skyward, whooping excitedly as Ranko finished the line. "Live a little! There's a party going off in here!" they said in all-but-cheering voices.
"Time to get your body jumpin'!' Ranko said, punctuating the rhyme with more bouncing on the balls of her feet.
Hitomi fanned her face with her hand as if she were overheated, collapsing to her side. Emi caught her in her arms, holding her girlfriend's limp form at a forty-five degree angle from the stage.
"I know that you're tired, and your ass is draggin'," Ranko spat, nodding to her backup dancers as if the line had been directed at them. The lead vocalist crossed her wrists over her breasts, resting her hands on her shoulders and turning her back to the crowd. Bending her knees, she writhed her backside playfully in the direction of the audience, eliciting an ear-splitting roar of approval from the partygoers.
"Let's put on somethin' hot, and get that tailbone waggin'!"
She straightened her back and knees, striding toward the rear of the stage. When she reached the midpoint, Ranko turned to face the crowd, but continued retreating backward toward the dormant white screen hanging behind the band. She bent her elbows, gesturing over both of her shoulders with her thumbs pointed back in the directions of Zoe and Jacob.
"Gotta be the new one from the Dapper Dragons! Nothin' else could do it to ya!"
The vibrant redhead rotated her wrists slightly so that her thumbs pointed not directly back at Jake and Zoe, but in a wider angle to target the other two musicians in the band.
"Crash and Shinji pick 'em up and start to play! All your cares and worries seem to fall away!"
Ranko waved her hand dismissively, as if casting aside an unvoiced concern. Indeed, even if a concern had been voiced, she'd never have been able to pick it out of the cacophony of cheering voices in the packed bar room.
"We got'cha, baby! We can do this shit ALL DAY! Feel that bassline shake right through ya!"
Ranko bopped toward Hitomi and Emi, alternating the shoulder she led with as she moved with every other step.
"It feels like an eternity in corporate towers, but out there on the floor, you're like…" She glanced down at her borrowed watch again, recoiling from the sight of her wrist in feigned shock. "It's been eight hours?!"
Ranko gestured forward with an open, upturned palm, continuing to mimic surprise with her eyes wide and her mouth slightly agape. "And Ranko's still out rockin'?! Girl's got superpowers!"
"I don't want this night to end!" Hitomi sang rather than rapped, shaking her head with an almost pleading expression directed at Ranko.
The playful performer hunched over a bit, walking slowly with a shuffle in her feet as she made her way across the stage. "But, morning comes around, and now your ass is hobblin'. You can barely stand, because your legs are wobblin'."
Still doubled over at the waist, Ranko drew her arms up until her hands hung at shoulder level, bending her elbows tight against her chest and clawing out her fingers. She shambled across the stage with a sort of hop-shuffle, as if she were a wildly over-caffeinated zombie. When she designed the choreography, Ranko had intended it to evoke the hunchback Igor from Mei's old vampire movies, or perhaps a Tyrannosaurus rex.
"Stiff and sore, you're walkin' like some kind o' goblin!"
Emi rushed up behind Ranko, crashing into her back. Her girlfriend slammed into the huddle a half-beat later, and the two shook Ranko's body excitedly with their hands. "Time to do it all again!" they screeched excitedly. "Whoa-oh-oh-oh! Whoa-oh-OH-oh-oh-uhoh!"
"Let's make some NOISE up in here with the BOYS up in here! You got no CHOICE up in here! You gotta move it, move it, move it, move it!" The songstress seemed to come alive, snapping out of her shambolic shuffle and resuming an energetic dance flanked by Hitomi and Emi, who moved as one with her.
"NOISE in the club, 'til we POISON the club with some JOY in the club! When the rhythm starts to hit 'em, then there's nothin' to it!"