Ranko looked down at her feet, taking three steps to her right, crossing her ankles with each. She followed with three steps back to the left in the same grapevine pattern, tapping her toe on the stage. She leaned back on her heel, sliding her feet back once, twice, and bumping into the back wall behind the stage as she ran out of real estate.

The bar’s resident entertainer grumbled loudly in frustration. “I told you, Mei, this dance is dumb. Can’t we do something else tonight?”

Her de facto manager shook her head, her blue pigtails bouncing about her shoulders. “It’s popular, sis. You’re gonna need to know it eventually. Sorry!”

“Popular or not, I still say the whole thing sucks. I feel like I’m in a cowboy bar or something. Electric, my ass.” She sighed, picking up her glass of room-temperature water from the stool nearby and swigging from it.

Yui cringed, leaning into Mei as she inventoried the liquor bottles. She spoke in a quiet, sing-song voice. “Some-body’s grum-py…”

Ranko hopped on her left foot, turning ninety degrees to her left in mid-air. As she did, the front door slammed open with a loud bang! Startled by the noise, she missed her landing, her foot landing awkwardly on the edge of the stage, and she tumbled the short distance down to the floor. “Shit! What the?!”

Even before the songstress could pick herself up off the floor, she could tell something was wrong. Someone was crying, and she was pretty sure she recognized who.

“Akane? What’s wrong?!” She scrambled to her feet. Between the older girl’s sobbing, and the fact that she’d shown up in the middle of the school day, she was immediately very concerned.

Akane didn’t even stop to answer. She ran straight through the bar, throwing herself into Ranko’s arms, and it was all Ranko could do to hold her still with how hard she was shaking.

“Hey. Hey. Talk to me. What happened?”

Yui made wide eyes at Mei, and then motioned with her neck to the saloon door. Mei, taking the hint, joined her in heading to the back room and giving the couple some privacy.

It took more than a minute for Akane to be able to speak. “It’s… it’s my dad.”

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Ranko cringed. Did the guy finally drink himself to death? She waited for more, and it eventually came.

“Ranko, what am I gonna do? What are we gonna do?”

The redhead stroked her hair soothingly. “The first thing you’re gonna do is take a deep breath and calm down, so you can tell me what happened, and I can try to help.”

“How am I supposed to calm down?! Ranko, I’m engaged again!”

Ranko blinked as if she’d been hit in the face with a board. “Wait, what?!”

Akane sniffled. “Last night. Kuno came to the house. Freaking Kuno! He offered Dad some crazy deal. I don’t even know what it was. Talking all this crazy stuff about how he knew I wasn’t engaged to you any more, because he had it on good authority Ranma was dead. It was all Dad could talk about this morning. It’s not official yet, but it might as well be!

“I can’t lose you, Ranko! And I can’t survive living with him!”

Ranko let go of her girlfriend, slumping into a chair.

“Akane… I… this is my fault. I’m so sorry.”

The distraught girl shrieked back. “How could it be your fault?!”

Ranko sighed, pulling out a chair next to herself for Akane, who took it. “He was here the other day. Kuno. Took me totally by surprise. I have no idea how he even found me, but he tried this same stuff with me. Trying to take me back with him, all that. You know how he is. He started all this stuff about looking for Ranma. I’m the one who told him Ranma was dead. I told him I wasn’t interested in him, and he should find somebody else to be with. I should have known he was up to something when he took that lying down! Gods, Akane, I’m so sorry, baby.”

She expected Akane to be furious with her, maybe even take a swing at her, but all her girlfriend could do was cry. “What am I gonna do?”

Ranko stood up, turning and squatting in front of Akane’s chair to look into her eyes. “You listen to me, Akane. Listen to me. I did this, and I am gonna fix it. I don’t know how, but I promise you. I am going to make this right. You’re not gonna spend one second with that freak, I swear.” She tilted Akane’s chin up with her fingers. “I fought too damn hard for you to lose you to that creep.”

Akane sniffled. “There’s nothing you can do. It’s all but done. You can’t even fight him anymore.”

Ranko forced herself to smile, for Akane’s sake, even though her own mind was racing, scrambling for a solution. She leaned in to whisper to her, just in case her sisters were listening from the other room.

“Hey, I went from being the least popular guy in high school to a girly pop idol in five months. When have I ever let anybody tell me what I can’t do?”