The Phoenix Saga

"Add spices to taste. Let's see… I bet cinnamon goes good in oatmeal!" Akane grinned, reaching for a small glass bottle full of brown ground spice in the front of the pantry. She pulled the little paper cup out of the microwave, removing the plastic wrap from the top and tossing it atop the overflowing trash can. "Holy hell, that's hot!" She set the cup on the counter, waving over it with her hand to help facilitate airflow. When the steam billowing from the instant oatmeal mix had begun to dissipate, she upended the bottle over the grayish mush, giving it several hard shakes. She mixed the powder thoroughly into the mixture with a red ceramic soup spoon, looking down at it with a nonplussed expression. Three more days, and I get real food again, she thought as she lifted the spoon to her lips.

Coughing and sputtering, Akane spat the grayish-brown slurry into the sink without swallowing. She barely got it out of her mouth with enough force to avoid dribbling it onto her yellow sundress. "What the… Izumi makes cinnamon oatmeal for the kids all the time! How can this be so… Oh, come on!" She turned the little glass vial around in her hand, reading the label again. "Chili powder?!"

She upended the paper cup into the trash, sighing in disgust and frustration as she threw the spoon in the sink with a loud clatter. Well, now what the hell am I gonna eat? 

Akane had been searching the pantry in vain for nearly three minutes when the beige telephone receiver on the wall next to the refrigerator began to ring. She answered it on the second tone, propping it against her ear with her shoulder as she resumed foraging in the kitchen. "Tendo residence, hello!"

"Hey, Akane."

The elder girl's face brightened, the frustration of her most recent kitchen misadventure entirely forgotten. "Ranko! Hey, princess! How's my girl?"

"I… I'm okay, I guess. I'll be better when I'm back home with you. I need one of your hugs so freakin' bad right now, Akane." Ranko sighed, laying back on the queen-sized bed of her Vietnamese hotel room, idly watching the bamboo ceiling fan spinning lazily in the breeze from the open window. She crossed her left ankle over her right knee, beginning to unstrap the black brace she'd used to support her knee while sparring with Lance. "It… hasn't been a real good trip this time."

Akane bit her lip, slumping into one of the four white wooden chairs surrounding the girls' dining room table in Tokyo. "I know, baby. I've been able to hear it in your voice for weeks. This is why your mom didn't want you to know what was going on here."

Ranko sighed in relief as she finished undoing the Velcro on her sweaty knee brace, tossing it to the floor at the foot of her bed. "I get that, but… it's my home, too, Akane. I had a right to know, even if there wasn't much I could do from all the way out here. Has there been any change?"

I agree, Ranko. You did have a right to know. But I had to give Hana my word I wouldn't tell you. She made me promise, but I also made a promise to you that I wouldn't keep things from you. Good thing Mom didn't say anything about not letting it slip in front of Natsuko. The black-haired girl looked balefully at the two cardboard boxes piled on the floor next to the front door. "Not really. The cheapest place they can find to rent is almost twice the rent Mom's paying now, for barely more than half the size. There was one place we might have been able to afford, but there was no room for a stage, and Mom said no deal right off the bat."

Ranko slumped in her bed, rolling over with the phone in her hand. She propped the phone against her pillow, wrapping her arms tight around Starlight. "Maybe she should have considered it."

"Mom's exact words: It won't be the Phoenix if there's no place for Ranko to play." Akane sighed quietly. "You're not expendable to them, silly girl, no matter how much you seem to think you should be."

The redhead stroked her stuffed unicorn softly as Akane spoke. "There's nothing I have that I don't owe them. Which means there's nothing I have that they're not entitled to take back if they need to." 

Akane sighed softly. She knew where Ranko's real hangup was, and it broke her heart. "Ranko, you gotta stop thinking you're somehow different in their eyes. Hearing you talk, it's like you think there's going to come a day when they say they can't take care of extra people anymore and cut you loose. You're not their houseguest, princess. You're their family. Izumi and Yui and Mei all came to them the same way you did, and I bet none of them are thinking Hana should sacrifice them to save the rest. And besides, you've put so much into that bar already. I promise, Mei's pizzas aren't bringing in the customers the way your music does. Nobody thinks you had a debt, but if you did, you paid it off with interest a long time ago."

Ranko swallowed hard, sniffling a bit against her unicorn's pink mane. She sat quietly for several seconds, trying to build up a reserve of courage. "Akane, I need to talk to you about…"

"Ranko… We started packing the place up last night." It broke her heart to tell Ranko, but the truth would out eventually anyway. As she spoke, she began flipping through an intimidating stack of envelopes on the dining room table. She'd been collecting the mail on the way in from class every day, but hadn't actually found a moment to sit and go through it in nearly a week. 

Ranko's voice trailed off as Akane's broke through the half-duplex telephone connection. By the time Akane had finished her sentence, Ranko had lost the nerve to continue hers. 

"I… I'm honestly surprised you guys waited this long. I'm so sorry I can't be there, Akane. Please tell everybody I love them, and I'm trying so hard to help as best I can from here. I'll be home the day after tomorrow, and then I'll…"

Akane sighed, reaching over to the pile of cardboard cartons next to her, and the orange plaque laying on top of them. She blinked a tear from her eyes as she ran her fingers over the engraved kanji that spelled out her wife's name on the 1991 Japan Record Award for Best Lyrics. "We left the stage set up. Mei wouldn't let them touch a single cable. She made everybody swear. You'll at least get to have a last show."

"Have the girls had any luck with jobs," Ranko asked hopefully, glaring at her suitcase. She'd not even unpacked it after arriving in Vietnam, as if leaving it ready to depart at a moment's notice would somehow hasten the show in Hàng Đẫy Stadium the following night, and the takeoff of her flight back to Tokyo the morning after. All she wanted in the world was to hug her sisters and disappear into Hana and Akane's arms and cry for a month.

Akane flipped through the stack of junk mail on the table, ensuring there was nothing of value mixed into it. "Mei got an offer at that marketing place. She's not particularly excited about it, but it's at least something. Apparently, Sakura quitting without any notice at her old gig didn't go over real well, and now she's striking out everywhere like she's been blackballed from the industry or something. And Yui… She's just angry, Ranko. Like, she just resents everything that's happening, and she keeps, like, snapping and cussing people out at the interviews."

Thousands of kilometers away, Ranko could only manage a quiet scoff and a grim chuckle. "Yeah, that's Yui alright." Can't say as I blame her.

"Akane, I really need to tell you so…"

Ranko rolled her eyes as she felt a vibration against her hip, reaching down into the pocket of her shorts and pulling out her pager. She pressed the button to display the number, wincing as she sucked air in through her teeth. Oh, hell. "Uh, Akane? I gotta run. I love you so much. Two more days, and I get to kiss you again."

"I can't wait. I love you too, princess. Whatever it is, we can talk about it when you get home. Have a great show tomorrow!" 

"Yeah, I'll try. Bye, Akane." Ranko reached over to the nightstand, clicking the button in the phone cradle to disconnect the call. Oh, fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. I'm in trouble now. I forgot they'd send it to… Ranko sighed heavily, looking with disdain down at her pager again. It still displayed her father's phone number, but with three asterisks trailing it. It was the code her family had devised to indicate that a call was an emergency. 

"Let's get this over with, I guess," Ranko said glumly to no one in particular, dialing 9 to access the hotel's external phone system and then entering the number for the Tendo residence on the keypad. The call failed to connect. With a sigh, Ranko re-dialed the number for her father's home, this time remembering to add the 81 first for international dialing to Japan. Always freaking screw that up.

"Hello? Tendo residence." 

Ranko swallowed hard, giggling nervously. "Hey, Nabiki! What's…"

"WHAT THE HELL WERE YOU THINKING, RANKO?!"

The redhead sighed, hugging Starlight to her chest. "Now, look, Nabiki, before you get mad, just hear me out."

"Mad?! Oh, no no, little sister, I passed mad twenty minutes ago, right about the time I opened up this check from Yokai right alongside your copy of your little agreement. We are now approaching supremely pissed. Are you out of your fucking head, girl?! We had a plan!" Ranko could almost feel her spittle in her ear through the telephone receiver. 

Ranko sighed heavily. "Look, I'm sorry, okay? My mom and my sisters are in real trouble. I had to do something, Nabiki, and fast. I owe them everything. I owe them my life. Compared to that, nothing else mattered."

Nabiki growled loudly into the phone. "Well first off, the money you bargained away wasn't just yours to give. Everybody in the band was supposed to get a cut of that, and so was I! Did you at least talk to them about it? Don't even answer that. I know you. Of fucking course you didn't! When you get home, we're restructuring the band's holding company so you can't sign anything binding by yourself. Clearly, you need a fucking adult!"

"Please watch your language, Nabiki," came a softer voice that Ranko could barely make out through the telephone receiver.

"I will watch my language when our idiot little sister starts listening to people and not screwing herself and everyone around her, Kasumi! Because now, not only has she given away a bunch of revenue she didn't have to, she's also pissed away our only leverage on a new album deal! And I'll bet all the yen in my pocket that she didn't even bother to tell her wife that she was going to sign a legal fucking agreement denying she exists!"

Ranko winced, hugging Starlight closer to her body. "Nabiki, I fucked up. I know I did. I was just desperate. What would you have done if it was Kasumi in trouble, or Dad? You'd have done everything you could to help. You know you would."

Nabiki sighed heavily into the phone. "I'm not saying you shouldn't have helped them, dummy! I'm saying you should have called me. And I'd have told ya you were being stupid, and then you'd have given me the big pouty voice and went on this big boo-hoo screed about honor and owing people and all that stuff, and then I'd have figured out a way to get you what you needed without selling yourself and your friends down the fucking river! How am I supposed to help you, if you go behind my back like this?!"

The young singer sat in silence for a moment, rocking her stuffed unicorn in her arms. Nabiki was right to be angry, but the last thing she needed at the moment was negativity from yet another source. She felt as if she was under siege as it was. 

"Nabiki, I'm sorry. I know it was dumb. I… I just… everything I care about was falling apart, and I felt so alone and helpless out here, and…"

Nabiki frowned, leaning heavily on the kitchen counter. She's got a heart of gold. She just needs to figure out how to run it and her brain at the same time. "I'll figure it out, Ranko. I always do. But in the meantime, you've made your bed, and you're gonna have to lie in it for a while. You're gonna need to be really fucking careful now, because if Yokai catches wind at all about Akane now, you are fucked up one side and down the other. No more sucking face in public at the Phoenix. No more Steam ladies' night. No more telling stories in TV interviews with holes in them big enough to fly a freakin' jumbo jet through. At least, not until I come up with a way to get you out of this mess you made. Do you understand me, girl?" 

Ranko cringed a little more with each little bit of her freedom that was chipped away by Nabiki's words. "I understand. I really am sorry, Nabiki." 

The singer's sister and agent exhaled in another heavy sigh through the telephone receiver, her voice only now seeming to lose some of its fury. "I know you are, Ranko. We'll fix it. I just need a little time."

"Is there at least enough money there to keep my family afloat for a couple of months until we figure out what to do," Ranko asked hopefully. Please, gods, don't let this be for nothing…

Nabiki scoffed softly. "I think probably, yeah."