Ranma 1/2 Fan Fiction ❯ Phoenix: Reignited Edition ❯ 2.18: Sleigh, Girl ( Chapter 42 )

“Alright, that’s Mei and Izzi done! What you thinkin’ next, superstar? Yui, maybe?” Ayako grinned at her family’s youngest charge as the pair exited the mall’s only store specializing in video games. She looks like she’s having so much fun. I can tell how badly she wanted to do this, and she just didn’t want to ask for help to pull it off.

She sighed happily, an easy smile forming on her slightly-chapped lips as she remembered a very similar shopping trip she’d been on in the very same mall three Christmases prior. Poor Mei was in the middle of detoxing, and she still had the time of her life that day. I’m so grateful to Mama for suggesting I take her back then. I guess me doing it twice with the new girl before her first Christmas with us makes it officially a family tradition.

Ranko shrugged in her sister’s direction. “I am completely drawing a blank on her, Aya. She just doesn’t talk to me about anything except work, and… well, me, I guess. But, she’s been so good to me. I really want to do something special for her, and I don’t even know where to start.” She strode the mall’s cavernous interior central corridor at a brisk pace alongside her companion as she spoke.

“Don’t take it personally, sis. Yui’s a tough nut to crack. She’s…” Ayako sighed as the happy memory was replaced with a sadder one, brushing her rail-straight black hair out of her eyes and trying not to let the plastic bag dangling from her wrist whack her in the face. “She’s not in as good of shape as she lets on, sometimes. I know you look at us, coming to us as you did, like we’re all these paragons of wisdom and shit-put-together-ness, but the reality is, all of us are still healing from the circumstances that brought us together in the first place, too. We probably always will be, in some form or another. And Yui… she had a deep friggin’ hole to dig out of, and… she just doesn’t really like to scratch at the surface of it too much, so she just glosses over it and hides behind that bar seven days a week.”

The redhead nodded, motioning to the two shopping bags hanging from her sister’s wrist. “You sure you don’t want me to carry that stuff?” Receiving a shake of Ayako’s head in the negative by way of reply, she continued. “You seem to be closer to her than any of us. How did you manage it?”

Ayako sighed, looking up at the mall’s frosted glass ceiling as she walked as if trying to hide from the memories for another moment. “I mean, part of that is just because we were the first two. We’ve been together the longest. Yui was my first sibling, and vice-versa, and all we had was each other and Mama. Beyond that… well, you may have noticed we’ve all but gone at you with a jackhammer trying to get you to open up about things. Me and Mama both tried that with Yui when she first came to us, too, with mixed results. Not gonna lie, it was hard sledding for a while, for sure.”

“So, what did it take to get her to finally open up to you? Hugs? The mantra?” Ranko watched her sister intently, eager for Ayako’s help and guidance to connect with the woman that was rapidly becoming her favorite of her four sisters - not that Ranko would ever in a thousand years have admitted as much to Ayako, Izumi, or Mei.

A dark chuckle came in reply. “Vast quantities of Tennessee bourbon.”

Ranko giggled spritely. “So that’s why she calls Jack Daniels lip lube sometimes!”

“You got it, kiddo!” As Ayako answered, the last few notes of We Wish You a Merry Christmas faded from the public address speakers overhead.

A lively rock guitar tune began blaring from them in its place. A bank of brass instruments - probably trumpets, Ranko thought, quickly joined in. She’d performed the song during her Christmas concert that had saved the Phoenix not two full days prior. The young redhead raised her arms over her head, crossing her wrists and beginning to rock her hips in her reddish-purple sweater dress. She thrashed her head to the left to face her sister, wearing a smile that dwarfed the noonday sun in radiance. Her ponytail flew up behind, nearly coiling itself around her right bicep. “Oh, I freakin’ love this song!”

“Out of all the reindeers, you know you’re the mastermind! Run, run, Rudolph! Randolph ain’t too far behind!”

The impromptu performance escalated, with Ranko slashing back and forth on her ankles in front of her sister. With every step, she launched the chunky heels of her black stage boots - the warmest shoes she owned - up high enough behind her to almost kick herself in the ass as she danced. Her hips moved like they were full of water; always fluid, and never for a moment still.

“Get it, girl! Wooooo!” Ayako laughed as she watched her sister dance, noticing that a trickle of other shoppers had begun to stop and watch as well.

“Said Santa to a boy child, ‘What have you been longin’ for?’ … Whoa, ‘All I want for Christmas is a rock n’ roll electric guitar!’...”

Ranko giggled as she bopped through the mall’s tiled center concourse, the infectious guitar animating her body like a musical marionette. “It’s not my fault! I can’t help it! It’s just too much freakin’ fun!”

It was only then that she noticed the first few people who had paused their shopping trip to watch her. She blushed, but the quiet, timid part of her that coaxed her to stop embarrassing herself was immediately shouted down by the thundering demand in her heart. I am a performer. Aya said so herself.

“And then, away went Rudolph, whizzin’ like a shoo-oo-tin’ star!”

She blinked in surprise as she felt a pair of strong hands on her rocking hips from behind. Ranko’s hand came down from its position, raised in front of her face with her fingers splayed wide over her thousand-watt smile. She clenched her fingers tight, preparing to throw a punch on instinct at whomever had grabbed her. She flashed her eyes behind her, and they landed on Ayako just as her much taller sister lifted her slender frame up off of the floor. Ranko was deposited on her feet, her black heeled boots resting on the edge of a raised concrete planter that stood about waist high to the redhead.

The assembling shoppers whooped as Ranko was elevated, and Ranko beamed as she realized why she’d been lifted up from the mall concourse floor.

Aya gave me a stage.

The jubilant redhead had already been the picture of joy, but the simple realization that she was entertaining a crowd rocketed through her soul like a quadruple shot of espresso. She smiled so broadly it hurt her cheeks as she reached over her shoulder behind herself, pulling the white ribbon out of her ponytail and letting it fall to the white tile floor off the edge of the planter. As the gathering crowd cheered, she thrashed her head back and forth, letting her newly-freed hair fly in flaming waves over her shoulders as they cascaded out from the faux fur-trimmed bottom of her green Santa hat. She cared not for the few strands of hair that caught on the backs of the golden heart studs in her earlobes that were almost ready to be replaced.

“Run, run, Rudolph! Santa’s gotta make it to town, yeah! Santa, make him hurry! Tell him he can take the freeway down! And then, away went Rudolph, whizzin’ like a merry-go-round!”

The young performer had no microphone, so she made no effort to sing along with the jaunty tune. Her black leather purse clapped repeatedly against her left hip as she moved. Screw it. I’ll use it, she decided in the space between heartbeats. She playfully swatted the bag back against her thigh with her open palm in time with the beat as she bopped across the three-meter-wide square planter.

Even Ayako, easily the least extroverted of the Phoenix’ quintet of wayward girls, bopped in place with the beat, dropping Ranko’s purchases at her feet and clapping her hands as she watched. The bottom hem of her cinnamon-colored peacoat swayed around the hips of her black jeans like a heavy skirt as she danced along with her sister. She was far from the only onlooker to do so.

“Said Santa to a girl child, ‘What would you like most to get?’ ‘Whoa, I want a baby doll that can cry, drink, and scream, whoa, yeah! And then away went Rudolph, whizzin’ like a Saber jet!”

Ranko stalked the edge of the square concrete planter as if it were her own personal runway, wiggling and giggling as she rested her hand on the thin braided trunk of the Guiana chestnut tree planted in its center. She rocked her backside in her tight sweater dress as she made a full orbit around the tree trunk, waving to people on all four sides of her makeshift stage. It was as if the tree had been planted there years ago for the explicit purpose of being Ranko Tendo’s dance prop on some random Friday morning in some future December.

The song ended, and Ranko gave a bow at the waist to the sixty or so assembled onlookers. Two large men, both of whom had been watching with their wives, approached the planter, offering up their hands to her.

What the… Ranko blinked, watching them skeptically. What the heck do you guys want?

“C’mon, let us help you down,” the tall blond man on Ranko's left coaxed. “Long way to jump in those heels.”

The redhead’s face caught fire. They wanna… help me? Like, don't they know who I am? I'm a world-class martial artist, buddy. I can run on chain-link fences. I can do capoeira blindfolded. I'm freaking unstoppable - until you hit me, anyway. Then I'm… low key kinda fucked. But anyway. Let’s not worry about that too much right now. In any case, I'm not helpless! I can get down off of a half-meter ledge, dude!

She was about to swat the blond man’s hand away when she spied Ayako in the corner of her eye. Ranko’s sister gave her a go ahead gesture with a flick of her wrist, as if shooing a child off to school.

Ranko sighed, trying not to let the men see it. Oh, merciful fuck. She's right. Gotta keep up appearances. Dainty little airhead mode, go, I guess. Forcing herself into a tittering smile, she offered her hands down to the two gentlemen. “Omigods! Thanks, you guys!”

Each man took one of her hands and lifted her by the arms, finding it effortless to support the weight of the slender performer. She had not been particularly heavy even before leaving the Tendo home, but her body had yet to fully return to its normal weight after two months of barely subsisting on the occasional rice ball from the subway station vending machines.

Ranko felt the man on her left reach behind her. Dude, if you grab my ass, I swear, I'm gonna fuck you up right here in front of your kids, she thought with a defensive glare. The man’s strong hand landed respectfully on the small of her back, however, helping to support her as she was lowered to the mall concourse floor. The sensation of his hand sliding on her skin through her soft sweater dress sent a shiver up her spine, which Ranko did her best to block from her mind.

“Isn't that the girl from Phoenix bar, in Minato?!” A hopeful-looking college student, a shlubby-looking boy maybe two years her senior, approached as the two gentlemen released Ranko's hands. Ranko noticed that one or two of his words had been slightly misspoken, but she was able to parse his meaning. His accent definitely was not Japanese.

Ranko’s cheeks could have fried an egg. People recognize me? Like, this far away from the bar?! She beamed, nodding emphatically. “That's me! Ranko Tendo, cocktail waitress extraordinaire and singer… well, regular ordinaire, I guess!”

The trepidatious collegiate fumbled in his green plastic bag, bearing the logo of the same video game store where Ranko had bought Mei”s Christmas gift. He produced from it a long receipt on crinkly thermal paper. “Would you… sign?” He held the coiling scroll out to her in a trembling hand.

“Oh, I…” Ranko covered her mouth with her splayed fingers. “I… sure! Does anyone have a pen or something?”

Ayako approached, digging in her burgundy leather purse for a fine-point black marker and handing it to her sister.

Ranko looked the man over as she took the receipt paper from his hand, noticing the rainbow logo on his shirt. “University of Hawai’i, huh?”

The young fan nodded, smiling through a nervous chuckle. “Yep! First time in Japan. Checking it in on my Christmas break.”

With a bright grin, Ranko laid the receipt flat on the edge of the planter that had just been pressed into service as her makeshift stage. Let’s try this, she thought as she began to write. A moment later, she handed the thin, translucent strip of paper back to the young gentleman.

“What does…” He held it up to her, gesturing to the seven katakana symbols she had written in a tight row above her romaji signature.

Ranko giggled brightly. “Just read them out loud, if you can?”

With the slow, careful consideration it took for a non-native Japanese speaker to recognize each symbol, he began to pronounce the symbols in order. “Me. Re. Ka. Ri. Ki. Ma. Ka.”

The redhead nodded, beaming in pride. “Yep! That's how you say Merry Christmas in Hawai’i, right?!” Look at me! I'm so freaking smart.

The Hawaiian man laughed, his grin widening. “Close enough!” He reached back into his bag for a thick, magazine-sized paperback book, a strategy guide for Final Fantasy II. He opened the book to a page near its middle, pressing the receipt between the pages to protect it as he slipped it back into the plastic bag. “Thank you so much!”

“You got it! Thanks for watching!” Ranko turned back to Ayako as the autograph-seeker disappeared back into the bustling holiday crowd, capping the marker and reaching out to hand it back to her sister. “Thanks, Aya. I can't believe somebody way out in freaking Shibuya is asking me to sign shit. Like, what?!”

Ayako giggled, shaking her head and gesturing back toward Ranko with her neck. “Keep it in your purse.” She reached out, draping her arm over her diminutive sister’s shoulders.

“Something tells me you're gonna need it, kiddo.”