Ranko stepped out of her bedroom, blushing at the three women who awaited her in her living room. “I’m sorry it took so long, girls. I’m still not the best at the whole makeup thing.” She nervously smoothed the hot pink sleeveless bodycon dress she wore, mindful of the slit that seemed, by her standards, indecently high on her right hip. When she’d first worn it, the night she debuted the nuclear warhead she called Sneak, she wanted to look painfully sexy, but now, it just made her a little nervous. Carrying the sparkly silver stiletto heels she intended to wear, she strode gingerly forward, shivering with every step courtesy of the nylon stockings Akane had quite devilishly suggested specifically because it would torment her ever so gently with every movement she made.
Akane, who had been leaning against the living room side of the kitchen counter in her yellow skater dress and matching headband, stepped forward to meet her future wife. “It wouldn’t take so long if you’d let me help you more, silly girl.” She poked playfully at the silver heart dangling from the black choker Ranko had been wearing more and more of late.
Ranko nodded, brushing a strand of her loose, wavy hair out of her eyes to reveal her silver earrings. “I know, but I’m never gonna get better if I don’t practice. Do I look okay?”
With a grin, Akane wrapped her arms around her lover’s back, pulling her into a soft kiss, tasting her strawberry lip gloss. “You, my lover, look amazing. Doesn’t she, girls?”
Yui turned her head, opening her eyes. “Sorry, Akane, I was distracted. What?”
Giggling, Sakura gave Yui a little swat on her shoulder with her black clutch. “She was asking if Ranko looks cute. And, yes, she does. Now, get back over here and get back to being distracted.” She wiggled a bit on Yui’s lap, her slight movements causing the sparkling sequins of the sapphire cocktail dress she wore to scintillate as she pulled her girlfriend back into the kiss Akane had interrupted.
“So, we did as we were told. We got all dolled up. Now, do we get to find out where you’re taking us?” Ranko giggled nervously, looking up at her fiancee over her shoulder as Akane wrapped her arms around her waist from behind.
Sakura stood, turning and offering a hand up to her girlfriend. “Oh, I think we can keep the surprise a little bit longer.” She reached her hand back over her head, wrapping it seductively around Yui’s neck and eliciting a quiet purr from the tall blonde. “Unless everyone would rather stay here.”
Rolling her eyes, Yui pulled down at the hem of the black-and-white double-breasted coat she wore over her black pleather pants with a little laugh. “C’mon now, baby. There’ll be plenty of time for that after.”
Sakura looked back at her girlfriend with a pouty expression. “Awwww. So, not during, then?”
Akane giggled, gesturing toward Ranko as she slithered toward the door ever so slightly stiffly, the stockings already driving the poor girl crazy. “Not if you want to hear yourselves think around this one.”
Ranko gasped, whirling with a scandalized expression on her rapidly reddening face. “Akane!”
“What?” Akane grinned, catching up to Ranko just in front of the door and running two fingers gently across her bare back between the straps of her dress and speaking over her quiet whine. “You’re a vocalist. It stands to reason that you’d be… vocal.”
Ranko’s eyes flared. “Hey! I’m gonna get you for that!”
Ranko tried to affect an irritated expression, but Akane saw right through it. “Okay. We’ll see, babe.” Akane turned to Ranko’s sister and her date. “Are we about ready?”
Seeing Yui’s nod, Ranko leaned her back on the wall and pulled on her heels, wrapping her arms around Akane’s forearm. She’d never told Akane the reason, but Ranko loved wearing heels around her. As much as they got uncomfortable after a while, they often gave Ranko a height advantage over Akane, given her fiancee’s preference for flat shoes. It was one of the only things she occasionally missed about being a boy these days, and only when she wasn’t wanting to be the one that felt small. Sometimes, it was nice to be able to envelop Akane in her arms, and other times, all she wanted in the world was to disappear into Akane’s embrace forever.
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“What is this place?” Ranko marveled at the large, dark-colored free-standing building. Club music pounded throughout the doors and spilled out onto the sidewalk beyond. Ranko found herself being ushered with Akane into the back of a queue some twenty people deep leading up to the blacked-out double doors, where a man in a black suit checked ID cards with a flashlight. A large yellow and blue neon sign mounted on the wall outside the building’s second floor identified the place as Steam, and occasional puffs of water vapor vented into a light mist from behind the copper gears that spun in the corner of the establishment’s logo.
Sakura leaned down to her friend, grinning. “It’s me and Yui’s favorite date spot. It’s a really great club.”
“If you wanted to go to a club, why not just hit the Phoenix?” Ranko frowned slightly. She felt as if she were betraying Hana somehow by patronizing another bar, and was more than a little surprised at Yui that she would do so.
“One, because you all work there, so you don’t feel like you can let loose. Two, because your mother is always there, so you really don’t feel like you can let loose. And three… well, you’ll see.” Sakura smirked deviously, and Akane gave Ranko a your guess is as good as mine shrug.
As they approached the bouncer, Ranko pulled her identification card out of her purse. Over a year later, she still smiled just as broadly at the sight of it as she had the first day - maybe more so now, after all she’d just been through to defend her new identity from her father’s machinations. The tall, dark-skinned man flashed his light at her card, then up at Ranko with a hopeful expression on his face.
“Wait, you’re not the Ranko Tendo, are you,” he asked incredulously.
Sakura’s arm reached over Ranko’s shoulder from behind, holding out a folded 5000-yen bill. “No, she’s not. She’s just a regular girl looking to have a good time and not be bothered.”
The man snatched the bill out of Sakura’s hand centimeters from Ranko’s flabbergasted face, slipping it into his pocket before affixing a red paper wristband around Ranko’s right arm, indicating her as being underage to drink. “Right. Of course. My mistake. Right this way, miss.”
Ranko looked back at Sakura incredulously as she stepped into the building, waiting in the entryway until her companions had all joined her. The place was massive, easily four or five times the size of the Phoenix, and it somehow seemed even bigger inside than it did from the exterior. There were three standalone wraparound bars positioned throughout the dance floor, each with three attractive women wearing matching neon green dresses working at them. A currently-empty circular stage jutted out from the back wall, but the place was not hurting for music. The bass thumping from the overhead speakers shook Ranko’s ribs so much that it almost took the place of her heartbeat. A thin water vapor hung in the air, and pink and red laser beams darted through the mist overhead, making the place look a little like a Star Wars gunfight had broken out in the middle of a nightclub.
“Whoa!”
“Pretty rad, huh?” Yui nudged her little sister with her elbow. “Notice anything else interesting?”
Ranko’s wide eyes scanned the room again. Everything was interesting. Her social life had essentially been nonexistent; every day not spent doing cheerleading or homework was pretty much the province of the Phoenix and her band, so a place like the club she stood in was absolutely mind-blowing to her. “It’s… it’s incredible.”
“Sure, kiddo. And you’re gonna be packing places ten times this size any day now. But what about the people?” Yui grinned back to Sakura, waiting for her oblivious sister to pick up on what she was hinting at, but it was Akane who caught on first.
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“The people here… they’re all… girls!”
Sakura giggled, holding up the strawberry daiquiri she’d already procured herself. “Ding ding ding! Hey, she got it! That’s to be expected though, what with it being ladies’ night at the best gay club in Tokyo.”
Ranko spun to look at her, her eyes nearly bulging out of her skull. “The what?!”
Yui nodded, steadying Ranko with a hand on her shoulder. “That’s right, little sister. Everybody here’s like us. So, you and Akane can be yourselves here.”
“But…” Ranko swallowed hard. “The Yokai people said they don’t want me to be public with…” The redhead cringed, looking up at her fiancee, not wanting to admit that it was her she was referring to.
Sakura smiled, sipping at her drink through a neon green bendy straw. “That’s the beautiful thing about this place. In order for anyone to say they saw you at a gay bar, they’d have to admit that they were at a gay bar. So, mutually assured destruction means everybody keeps everybody else’s secrets!”
Yui turned to her girlfriend, grinning. “Well, now that you’ve got your hostess-with-the-mostest duties out of the way, are you gonna shut the fuck up and dance with me?!”
Setting her empty glass on the tray of a passing staff member, Sakura wrapped her arms around Yui’s neck. The laser lights refracting every which way off of the sequins of her sapphire dress made it almost hurt to look at her. “I thought you’d never ask, babe.”
Ranko blinked as the pair flitted off to the dance floor holding hands, turning to Akane. “So, um… what do we do?”
Akane pointed to Ranko’s older sister and her girlfriend. “I mean, it looks like we dance.”
“But…” Ranko looked around the room nervously. There were so many people. “You’re sure this is okay?”
“What’s the matter, Ran-chan?” Akane snickered. “Take you off of your own stage, and you forget how to dance?”
Sheesh, Ranko. Get the stick out of your butt. Gods know you need to let off some steam, after everything that’s happened. Akane bit her lip coyly. “You once said you’d do anything for me. Did you mean it?”
Blushing, Ranko nodded. Somehow, I don’t think I’m going to like where this is going. “Absolutely anything.”
Akane reached out, flicking the little silver heart that swayed from Ranko’s choker. “Good. Then what I want you to do is loosen up. Have fun. I want you to make every single girl in here jealous that I’m the one who gets to take you home tonight. Can you do that for me, princess?”
As she spoke, a snare drum riff and a high-pitched run from a female singer pounded through the speakers with the beginning of a new song. Whether it was the music or Akane’s directive, Ranko seemed to come to life, placing her hand on Akane’s chest between her shoulder and her right breast, slithering her body toward her lover. The more she moved, the more Akane could see the effect her dress and her stockings were having on her sensitive skin evidenced in her girlfriend’s eyes, and Ranko’s desirous gaze followed Akane’s eyes everywhere as she moved.
“Someday! Ooh, someday! The one you gave away will be the only one you’re wishing for…”
Akane pulled Ranko close, swaying with her, the scents of Ranko’s strawberry lip gloss and her own perfume blending as her future wife’s body slid along her own. It was intoxicating. “That’s my girl,” she whispered hoarsely over the music.
For Ranko, it was a different experience than on Valentine’s Day, for certain. For starters, Ranko felt less like she was playing at being some high-society socialite, and more like, well, herself. Akane obviously was getting to be more herself, too, without having to pretend to be a boy. But while that night had been more romantic, and Ranko wouldn’t have traded it for all the world, this was just… fun. She didn’t remember the last time her mind wasn’t full to bursting with expectations and responsibilities, reminders to herself to look or behave a certain way, and constant worries about the task or the fight around the corner.
She was out in public, with the woman she loved. She had fought desperately for the right to own her own life, and she had won. She owed no one anything. Whatever she wanted, right now, in this moment, could happen.
She was free.
Ranko turned her back to Akane, taking her partner’s wrists and wrapping them around her waist like the sleeves of a jacket she’d taken off. She leaned her body back into Akane’s, keeping as much of herself in physical contact with Akane’s as possible as she moved. Every millimeter of her skin screamed for attention. Every breath that carried Akane’s perfume into her lungs filled her with not just the air she needed to live, but with life itself.
“Baby, how could you ever believe that another could replace me, the one and only?”
As the song ended, Ranko lingered in Akane’s arms, not willing to break contact with her just yet. She turned her head to the side, flicking her hair out of Akane’s face and looking back over her shoulder at her. “I love you, Akane Tendo.”
Akane answered not with words, but with her lips. Ranko whimpered quietly into her fiancee’s mouth as she was kissed, not sure whether she didn’t care that people were watching, or that she was excited by the fact that they were.
“Don’t look now, but I think they’ve gotten the idea of this place.” Yui threw her arm around Sakura’s sweat-glistened shoulders as the couple returned from the far side of the dance floor, slamming a shot back into her throat with her free hand.
“Having fun, little sister?” Yui smiled at Ranko, not expecting an answer. The youngest member of the Phoenix clan was still working to catch her breath, and Akane wasn’t entirely certain if it was her dancing or her kissing that had winded her so.
“Thank you girls so much for tonight,” Akane said, her hand still resting softly on Ranko’s backside. “You have no idea how much we both needed this.”
Ranko opened her mouth to concur, but a loud, deep demonic cackle thundered from the speakers and a roar arose from the revelers all around her.
“Oh, shit.” Ranko blushed, looking around. Are they expecting me to…
Akane snapped her fiancee out of her panic by firmly grasping her right wrist, spinning Ranko around and pulling her close as Hitomi’s low-pitched run rained down on them from all directions at once. “Hey! It’s one of my favorite songs! Dance with me, girl!”
“It’s the legendary lyricist, the Phoenix rose, here to shake your body from your hair down to your toes!”
Yui and Sakura stepped closer, forming a triangle around Ranko with Akane as they moved. If Ranko was to be recognized in the dance club, her own song would have been the perfect opportunity, and the girls instinctively sought to shield her from the eyes of the revelers without disrupting her fun by hiding her away in a dark booth somewhere. True to the lyrics, the already-jumping crowd was electrified under Ranko’s command to dance.
Ranko closed her eyes, dancing with herself joyfully in her own little corner of heaven as Akane, Yui and Sakura surrounded her. Is this really how my music makes other people feel? Is this why they love it so much?
“There’s another verse coming, so I’m back from hell to put your shakin’ butt right back under my spell. There’s a slither in my rhythm, shipped in straight from Hades, heatin’ all the boys up…”
Ranko’s face caught fire as nearly every one of the twelve hundred or so women on the expansive blue dance floor, including all three of her companions, shouted the same five words in a single ebullient voice: “And most of the ladies!” Ranko opened her eyes just in time to catch Akane’s wink as she passed in front of her, making way for Sakura to slide into her place.
“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 escaping from the demon in your ra-a-di-o!”
Ranko continued swaying, but her eyes began to wander over the crowd. She was not on stage. No one other than her three companions and the bouncer Sakura had greased knew she was even in the building. But even without her involvement, every one of the women in that bar was having the time of her life, and her music was the reason why. A tear formed in the corner of her eye. Is this… is this really happening all over? Are people really just… playing my songs, on their own, without me there to perform them? Are people who have never been to the Phoenix, or met me at all, having fun like this just because they like the songs I wrote? Did I really do all of this?
She was snapped out of her thoughts by the feel of Akane’s firm hand on her backside, and she purred as Akane’s right arm draped around her waist from behind. Akane sang along with the lyrics in their author’s ear, albeit with a few slight modifications.
“I’m not ready for you, girl. You’re strange and exotic. Diabolically, chaotically, hypnotically erotic.”
Ranko giggled as Akane moved with her, blushing at Akane’s hijacking of her own words to compliment her. She smickered impishly with a devilish thought. That’s okay, Akane. Wanna make me blush? Okay. Two can play that game. I’ll get you back… right… about…
“Even the wallflowers over there, bored and listless, will be crawling on the floor, screaming out…”
Ranko spun around at lightning speed, wrapping her arms tightly around Akane’s neck and whispering breathily in her ear, echoing the same words that flooded the room in her voice. The same words that one thousand, two hundred and sixty-eight partying women screamed at the top of their lungs all around them.
“Yes, mistress.”