The Phoenix Saga

"Gyuh!" 

With a mighty heave, Lance Riker thrust the steel bar upward until his arms were fully extended. He locked his elbows for a brief moment, letting the round plates balanced on either end of the bar settle before lowering the metal bar back to his chest with a loud clank. It wasn't much of a workout - the hotel fitness centers never seemed to have enough weight plates available to give him much of a challenge - but it was better than nothing. Maintaining peak physical condition was no easy feat on the road, eating crap food at whatever hole-in-the-wall greasy spoon they could find. At least most of the worst Asian cuisine still involved vegetables, rice, things like that; during the band's stint in Australia, he was pretty sure he'd actually eaten a deep-fried deep fryer at one point.

Exhaling through pursed lips as if blowing the weight back toward the ceiling, he extended his arms to their maximum length again. "Twenty." He started to swing the bench press bar back over his head to rack it, and was surprised when a slender pair of hands reached out and grabbed it. The feminine fingers guided the bar back into the pair of hooks mounted above the bench.

Who the hell does weight training with pink glitter nail polish on?

Lance sat up, looking forward at the mirrored wall of the hotel gymnasium. The room was poorly-equipped, sporting only a dilapidated exercise bike, the bench press rack, and a small assortment of dumbbells and kettle weights on a small stand in the corner. The torn black vinyl covering the bench he'd been laying on scratched at his skin through his backside as he moved. Not the greatest hotel, but far from the worst place I've spent a night in Vietnam, he thought with a sigh. 

"Julie says you're s'posed to have a spotter when you work out, ya know." 

While his seated form still nearly entirely eclipsed the woman standing behind the bench, he easily recognized the shock of red hair poking out just beyond his left shoulder. He smiled, swiveling on the bench and reaching down for his plastic sports bottle. "Hey, Ran-chan. Nobody else was up. I like to get my workouts in early. I think I'll probably be okay, though."

Ranko smiled down at her friend, in his gray Navy tank top and athletic shorts. He was more than ten years her senior, and no one looking at his form would have ever guessed it. The mammoth of a man looked like he could jump in the ring with the heavyweight boxing champion of the world and not look remotely out of place. "Fair enough. The Army probably does a better job teaching people about this stuff than college cheerleading. You can probably lift all that with like, two fingers anyway."

Ranko's roadie and de facto bodyguard laughed merrily. "Careful now, girl. Calling a Navy man Army can be a good way to get ya hurt around some o' the folks I know."

She winced visibly, resting her hand over her heart in a gesture of sincerity. "Fuck, Lance. I'm so sorry! I didn't mean to…"

Lance waved her off with his hand and an easy smile. "It's okay. Don't worry 'bout it." Ranko's friend laughed loudly. "Anyway, I'm surprised to see you down here. How you feeling?"

"I'm okay, I think. Better when I don't think about everything." She was doing a bit better - physically, at least. Her show in Bangkok, performed less than twenty hours after she had been drugged and almost violated in a Thai nightclub, had been far from her best performance. Between the incessant throbbing in her head and the intermittent equilibrium challenges she was still experiencing when she took the stage in Bangkok, she'd had to cut her personal choreography back a bit. As a precaution, Masa had decided to skip some of the pyrotechnics and all of the stuff on the moving platforms, owing to Ranko not trusting her balance fully. Beyond that, she had toned down some of her more provocative dance moves for the evening, having a hard time feeling comfortable with behaving in a sexy manner so soon after the incident at the bar. While she felt awful that the Thai crowd had gotten an inferior show, the Firebirds in attendance certainly had not seemed to mind. Hitomi, Emi, Sanyo, and Utaru had all taken on some extra choreography to help compensate for Ranko's somewhat muted performance.

As he tossed his empty water bottle down to the rubber floor mat, Lance frowned softly up at his friend. "I get it. Sometimes, you gotta put your emotional shit away, and just get through it. Survive. Just make it to sunrise somehow, and worry about what comes next tomorrow. But, you're gonna have to think about it eventually. It's okay to say you aren't ready to deal with it yet, just don't kid yourself into thinking you can put it away forever. I've seen a lot of good guys I served with that just kept kickin' the can down the road. Eventually, the bill comes due when you least expect it, ready or not. If you wait and let it come to you, when that happens… it don't go gentle. So, just… be smart about it, is all I'm saying."

The redhead nodded solemnly. While she had never been in a war zone like Lance had, she certainly had her share of experience with banking trauma for a later date and having it sneak up on her out of the shadows at the moments when she was least ready to deal with it. "That's really good advice, Lance. Thanks." 

She walked around the weight bench to make it more comfortable for him to look at her from his seated position. She wore a pair of purple Minato University mesh athletic shorts and a teal tank top from her concert merch stand. The front bore a simple English phrase in a lowercase cursive font: self-rescuing princess. Her workout outfit was completed with her white cheer sneakers, white ankle socks and a black neoprene brace on her left knee, with her hair tied back in a tight ponytail with a white ribbon and a black hair elastic. 

"Lance… what happened to him? The guy who…" She could not bear to finish her sentence. Ranko placed her palms against the mirrored wall, extending her left leg backward and bending her right knee to stretch her hamstring. She watched her teammate in the mirror over her shoulder.

Ranko's dark-skinned friend chuckled darkly. "That's nothing you need to worry your pretty head about, now."

She turned, leaning her back on the mirror. "Lance… I'm asking. Please."

The veteran shrugged his shoulders nonchalantly. "He's somewhere that he's never gonna hurt the people I care about again, and that's all that matters to me. And it ought to be all that matters to you, too. Don't worry about him. He's in the past, and he can't get ya from back there."

Oh, you'd be surprised at how effective the past has been at jumping out of the bushes and kicking my ass, Ranko thought with a grim countenance. Still, the expression on Lance's face told her that, like other things that had come up in their many conversations over the last few months, the topic was closed and no amount of further prying would re-open it. She frowned in begrudging acceptance. Ranko kicked her right leg high into the air, until it was almost parallel with the left one on which she stood, grasping the back of her hamstring as she stretched. "They teach you martial arts in the arm… sorry, navy, right?"

Lance chuckled a bit, standing from the bench. He was a little uncomfortable discussing his skills; it was the sort of thing the military had taught him not to brag about. "Yeah, I guess a few things, here and there."

Ranko nodded, her ponytail bobbing over her bare shoulders. "Do you ever spar?"

The bald man laughed loudly, smacking his brick-solid abs with his hand as if to punctuate his point. The sound reverberated a bit in the small mirrored room. "Not really. Not a lot of folks see all o' this and are in a great big hurry to tangle with it, if ya get me."

The young redhead smiled warmly, gesturing toward herself with her hand. "Come on, then. You and me. Scoot the bench out of the way, and there should be plenty of room."

Lance's mirth was palpable, and he emitted a belly laugh that echoed loudly in the mostly-empty room. "Ranko, no offense, but… you… wanna fight me? I mean… you sure about that, girl?"

Eh, what the hell. If he hits me even once, I'll be hurtin' for certain, but it's a friendly spar, so he won't actually injure me or anything. "Sure! Maybe watch the face, though. I don't wanna have to tell seventeen thousand people you're the reason I don't look all cute on stage tomorrow."

"Ha! Fair enough!" Lance finished dragging the weight bench to the far corner of the room, striding back to its center to rejoin his friend. As he did, Ranko gave him a deep, formal bow of respect.

The large man returned it with a smile, watching the tiny redhead with some measure of amusement. He was surprised to see her drop into a perfect muay thai defensive stance. "Well, all right! Not bad, not bad!" He chuckled as he took a loose stance, dancing about a bit on the balls of his feet. 

"Brazilian jiu jitsu? Wouldn't expect to see that out of American training," Ranko said with a smirk. 

Lance laughed loudly, dancing around her to his left. "What did you think they'd teach us? There's not really any American martial arts styles. Am I just supposed to go around slapping somebody across the face with a double cheeseburger or somethin'?"

The redhead giggled loudly, watching her friend closely. "You figure out how to turn that into a martial art, and my sister Mei will be a grandmaster by Wednesday." She motioned toward herself, still watching his eyes intently. "You gonna come at me, or what? What's the matter? Don't tell me, you don't hit girls?"

Lance smirked, watching Ranko both in her true form, and in her reflection in the mirrored wall behind her. "I don't hit friends."

"Yeah, well, this is a friendly spar, so… kiai!" Ranko's right leg flashed upward, her foot flashing in front of her face at nearly eye level. She had aimed the kick for his shoulder, but he swatted it away at the level of his elbows with ease. 

Oooookay. If I wanna try that again, I'm probably gonna need to go find a pair of meter-high stilettos first. Fuck, he's big. Ranko utilized the momentum from his pushing her leg aside to add speed to her spin, dropping low and sweeping outward with her still-whirling leg. She smirked when she felt it connect with his shin. Gotch… owww! 

While her kick had solidly landed, it felt like Ranko had kicked the stump of a two hundred year old oak. There was no give in her opponent's leg whatsoever. She fell backward, landing on her butt on the black rubber floor mat.

"What the fuck are you made of, dude?" Ranko laughed as she kick-flipped back to her feet. This guy makes Ryoga look like friggin' Kasumi.

Lance laughed deeply, his guffaw echoing in the mirrored little hotel gym. "Cheeseburgers, mostly. That's what we do with them instead of the martial arts thing."

Ranko giggled at his callback joke. "Well, whatever you're doing with them, keep fucking doing it. Gods, man." She dropped into a new stance, this time opting for taekwondo. "Come on, aren't you gonna at least let me dodge one?"

I better freaking dodge it. This guy hits me at half his strength, and they're still gonna be finding my teeth in the parking lot of this place when Hoshi's a freaking grandfather. But I gotta do this. I gotta show him.

"Alright, Ran-chan. You asked for it, girl!" Lance high-stepped toward her, lunging forward with his left fist. She ducked it easily, backing off a step toward the corner of the room formed by the mirrored north and east walls. When she popped up to reset, she'd shifted from taekwondo to a krav maga forward stance.

Lance chuckled with a wide grin. "Wow, krav maga? They teach that in Israeli special forces, and also in cheerleading class?"

Ranko giggled, bending the fingers of her leading right hand into a grasping claw, almost as she'd done in the choreography for Viper. "You know what they say, Riker. Mess with the cat…" 

She slashed forward with her hand, getting him to take half a step back. With the extra room afforded her, she leapt backward, planting the sole of her left sneaker on the mirrored wall behind her. Ranko kicked off the glass, not toward Lance, but toward the corner to her right. She pivoted her body in the air somewhat as she reached the apex of her wall kick. Thrusting her right foot backward almost hard enough to crack the glass, she kicked off of the room's mirrored north wall to gain even more height. With three copies of the agile redhead in his field of vision, Lance struggled to identify which to block. He swiped at the air with his open hand, but Ranko's foot sailed well over his block. The additional height advantage gained from her second climbing wall kick had allowed her to propel herself forward at the head of the gregarious giant. 

She rolled in mid-air into a flying scissor kick with her left leg, striking Lance on the chin as she wrapped her ankles around his neck. Ranko bent her right knee, torquing her entire body weight downward to the left as hard as she could. The twisting force toppled her friend onto his back on the rubber mat, and Ranko reached out with her right leg at the last moment to distribute her weight to the black rubber floor mat before the sum of her fifty-five kilogram frame landed on Lance's chin.

"... you get the claws." Ranko smirked, reaching down over her floored friend and slashing at the air a few centimeters from his nose with her clawed left hand.

Lance laughed loudly from his back, shaking his bald head. "What the hell sort of freaky spider monkey bullshit was that?!" 

He reached up a hand, and Ranko bent down to grasp his wrist. Me, and a couple of commercial construction cranes, bud, she thought as she strained to help heave her sparring partner back to his feet. 

"Anything goes, buddy!" Ranko grinned at having felled the giant, offering him a deep bow to indicate the end of the spar. "Had to try somethin' out of the box! I left my beanstalk in my other shorts."

Lance laughed, returning her bow as he rubbed his jaw. "Damn. I don't remember the last time somebody put me on my ass like that. Probably not since Coronado. Not bad. Not freakin' bad at all, Tendo."

Ranko cracked another, smaller smile, having earned exactly the outcome she'd desired. "Thanks. I just… I needed to show you. I needed you to see that I'm not just some helpless little airhead that can't take care of herself." In truth, her need to prove it to herself was far greater. Her confident posture had been shattered two days ago in the time it had taken her to drink half of a cocktail. 

The giant man shook his head, waving off her words with his hand. "Ranko, nobody thought that about you. I didn't, anyway. Somebody got the drop on you. It happens. That's one of the other things they teach you in the service - you're only as good as the guy watchin' your back. Nobody can have their head on a swivel all the time. Next time, maybe it'll be your turn to snatch my ass out of the fire. I hope so. You got moves, kid."

The redhead shrugged, slumping her shoulders and turning away from him a bit. The gesture did little to hide the shame in her eyes considering she was surrounded by mirrors. "I don't know that you'd wanna count on me. For me to fall for something like that… I feel so stupid."

Lance sighed, wiping his face with a gray towel from his black gym bag. "Don't. Don't beat yourself up over it. You had a close call. Thank whatever you pray to, learn from it, and move forward. That's all you can do." 

Ranko took a tentative step toward him, then another, and then rushed forward, wrapping her arms tight around Lance's ribs as best she could. Her fingers could barely meet on the other side of his bulky frame. She rested her cheek on his ribs through his sweaty gray tank top, letting him feel her muscles relax. It was something she'd discovered with Akane, a wordless means to communicate what words often could not: the innate understanding that she felt entirely safe in his presence. It was hard for her to feel that in the presence of men in general of late, but with Lance, as with Crash, she felt entirely at ease.

"Thank you, Lance. Thank you for saving me. Thank you for being the guy that had my back. Just… thank you." 

Her roadie, bodyguard and friend engulfed her tightly in his arms. In the span of just a few moments, Lance had watched the young redhead transform from the brash, confident martial artist who had just bested him in a spar back into the scared little girl she'd been for the majority of the last few days. As the memory of what Lance's watchful eye had saved her from took center stage in her conscious mind again, she trembled against his powerful form. 

Lance squeezed her so firmly that she could barely breathe, a playful little growl rumbling from his throat as he rocked her in his arms. He lowered his head between his massive biceps, planting the gentlest of platonic kisses on top of her head through her ribbon-bound red hair. 

"Anytime, hon. Anybody wants to hurt you, they're gonna have to go through me, and I don't intend to make that easy." He squeezed her even tighter, to the point that it hurt a little, but Ranko didn't mind. At least she felt safe. 

"Hey. It's okay. You're alright. I got you, girl." His voice was soft and soothing, a low bass rumble in the giant's chest. His eyes widened at the feel of something buzzing against his thigh. "Huh? That you?" Lance released Ranko from his grasp, and she reached down into the pocket of her purple mesh shorts, producing a sparkly pink pager.

The redhead tapped the black button on the pager's face, needing to do so a second time after the first only served to reactivate the display. "It's Akane. I… I'd better go call her. I'll see you at the venue, bud." 

"You haven't told her yet, have you?"

Ranko did not answer her friend as she slipped through the glass door into the hotel's wood-paneled hallway.