With his back pressed against the wall, Petty Officer First Class Lance Riker checked over his weapon. The sleek black handgun seemed ready for more action, and so was he. The thin smoke lingering in the air burned his eyes slightly. It was far from the worst he'd experienced, but it did add visibility challenges in the already-darkened combat zone. The expert operator assessed his situation, waiting to make his move. Alright, there's two up top. One, probably two, holed up in the bunker at the back, and one circling around to the right. That leaves one unaccounted for. Head on a swivel, Riker. The massive naval officer adjusted the ill-fitting equipment vest on his shoulders, letting a deep breath slowly leave his lungs through his lips.
Here we go.
With the explosive athleticism of a professional linebacker, he launched himself out from behind the barricade. Spying one of his targets to his right, he ducked down without sacrificing speed, firing his weapon twice. A flash of red just above the man's right ear indicated that at least one of the shots had hit its mark.
Lance charged forward. Everywhere his eyes went, the barrel of his weapon followed. He crouched behind a low obstacle, peeking over it carefully. Yeah, I think I can get 'em from here, he thought. One… two… He popped up, firing up and to his left twice before panning his weapon to the right. A second man ran away from his fallen comrade and down the raised catwalk, hoping to escape the onslaught. Two more squeezes of Lance Riker's trigger assured that he did not.
The SEAL rushed forward, making for the encampment in the back corner of the engagement zone. He paused for a moment, ducking behind cover and straining to hear over the din.
"You think he's coming?!" one of the men in the bunker asked.
A second answered. "If he is, we'll be ready for him!"
Oh, you think so, do ya? Smirking confidently, Lance emerged from his cover, hustling up to the outer wall of the bunker. Hugging the wall, he whipped his weapon into the doorway, blasting one of the men immediately with two shots to his exposed chest. The second man shot back, and Lance pulled back behind the wall for a moment to protect himself. While he waited, he heard footsteps receding toward the opposite end of the shelter. Oh, no you don't, he thought. He swiveled back out of cover and into the doorway, double-tapping his weapon at the back of the fleeing combatant's head.
Lance entered the bunker, surveying the space and ensuring it was secure. That just leaves the runner, he thought. He peered out one of the glassless windows, but saw no one approaching. Just as he was about to pull back, however, he caught a glimpse of motion - a flash of orange streaking down the right side of the combat zone toward his position. Oh, I see you. He waited for two seconds before leaping through the low window, rolling on the ground on the other side. On feet that were far too silent for a man of his size, he quickly circled around, following the orange blur in the smoke.
The runner reached the shelter, peering inside and finding no one.
"Hiya."
The deep New Orleans drawl came from mere centimeters behind the runner's head. So, too, did the sound of a single shot.
"Christ on a pogo stick!" Zoe pulled the still-beeping laser tag headset off of their ears, letting it dangle from the rented black vest as they whirled to face Lance. "This shit jus' ain't fair!"
A loud, feminine whoop rose from the back of the arena. "That's right, bitches! Where's all that big talk now?!"
"Oh, please!" Sanyo laughed, disconnecting his phaser from its spiral-coiled cable and letting it dangle from the battery pack affixed with velcro to his vest. "You didn't even do anything, Ranko! You just hid back there while your pet ninja wiped the floor with us!"
Giggling, Ranko pointed up to the catwalk, where a defeated Crash and Ariel languidly leaned on the safety railing. "Not just the floor. That thing, too. Besides, that's what teamwork's all about: playing to each other's strengths."
"Okay," Kaz said, slipping his arms out of the black vest as he approached the group. "But if Lance's strength is blasting the crap out of people, what were you in charge of doing?"
The redhead cocked her head to the side, smoothing her crimson skater dress on her hips. "I was playing to mystrength." She shot the roadie a wink and a smirk. "Relaxing and looking amazing."
Lance put his arm around his protectee and friend's shoulder with a loud belly laugh as they exited the laser tag arena into the main arcade area. The cacophony of light and sound was jarring after five minutes spent in the dark with but a single, droning chiptune playing on repeat overhead.
It was a rare day on the Wildfire Tour, in that the entire traveling contingent of Ranko and the Dapper Dragons had the day off. After back-to-back shows on Saturday and Sunday in Beijing, the rabble-rousing retinue had flown to Shanghai early Monday morning and set up for their next two-night stand. But, as the first show in the Shanghai Indoor Stadium was not until Wednesday, it had left the team a full day to relax.
"Where is everybody?" Kaz asked, handing his vest back to the laser tag attendant.
Ariel tousled his brown hair back into shape after removing his headset. "I know Shin and Jake were gonna do the race car thing outside."
Utaru collected the half-empty plastic cup he'd left on the laser tag signup counter, slurping the watered-down liquid through a neon green straw. "That leaves Masa and Nori, who are around here somewhere, and then Hitomi and Emi, and they're gonna be…"
"... at the bar," said Crash, Ranko, Zoe and Utaru all at once.
* * *
A shrill cheer and the crack of wood striking leather split the air.
"Wooooooooo! Yeah, Crash!" Ranko stood up from her seat in the aluminum bleachers behind the batting cages as her best friend landed a clean hit. Her cheerleader mode activated, she waved her hands in the air overhead as if she were wielding invisible pom-poms. Of the four pitches Crash had taken thus far from the twin rubber wheels of the pitching machine, he had hit two. That score was good enough to tie him with Jacob and Utaru for the lead, and he had one ball left.
The attendant, a lithe woman in a blue polo shirt and white denim jeans, reached down into an orange pickle bucket at her feet and removed a baseball. She held the ball overhead to warn Crash that it was coming. Receiving a nod from the batter, she dropped the ball into the mechanism and launched it forward with a low thwump.
Crash stepped into his swing, connecting with the ball. It flew backward, ricocheting off of the chain-link backstop separating the batting area from the bleachers.
"That's foul," the bleach-blonde pitcher announced. "One more." She held up another neon yellow baseball, waiting for Crash to resume his batting stance. Once he had, she inserted the ball into the machine. It fired out of the wheels, and Crash again connected with his wooden bat. The ball skipped twice in the grass, coming to rest at the foot of the narrow wall of fence protecting the pitcher.
"YEAH!" Ranko whooped and hollered, clapping her hands as she descended the bleachers. Crash met her just behind the backstop, still wearing the ill-fitting plastic batting helmet. Ranko raised both her hands, offering and receiving a double high five from her victorious friend.
With a smirk and a scoff, Jacob picked up his denim jacket from the lowest row of bleachers and slid his left arm into the sleeve. "Not sure how this is fair. You got your own cheerleader, man."
Chuckling, Crash threw his arm over Ranko's shoulders. "Hey, not my fault your partner would rather get buzzed with Hitomi than root for ya, man." He turned his eyes down toward the redhead. "You sure you don't want a try?" He offered her the scratched blue helmet.
I shouldn't, Ranko thought behind her smile. Don't wanna embarrass the boys too bad. After all, it's not like they know the chick with the flouncy dress and the pink sparkly fingernails was the best hitter in boys' gym back at Furinkan once upon a time.
"Nah, I'm good. Perfectly happy to be the cheering section."
His jacket donned, Jacob brushed his green-dyed hair upward with his fingers in an effort to restore his fauxhawk to the state it had been in before he smooshed it into a batting helmet. "We should go find Shin and the girls. I think they were talking about doing a round of mini golf."
With a confident smirk, Sanyo took a long draught from the brown glass bottle in his hand. "Challenge me at your own peril. I can't hit a baseball for shit, but I will wreck your day on a putt-putt course."
"It's the clowns," Ranko said, giggling. "They make him feel at home."
"Hey!" Sanyo cackled, wagging the neck of his half-empty beer in the young vocalist's direction. "I resemble that statement!"
The quintet started walking back toward the arcade building, but Crash paused after a few steps. Ranko, who was still tucked under his arm, stopped with him. "We'll catch up in a sec, guys," he called out.
"What's up?" Ranko asked, slipping out from under his armpit.
Crash smiled disarmingly down at his friend, ignoring his own reflection in her pink-tinted sunglasses. "I saw you looking at the baseball thing like you wanted to do it. I've never known you to back down from a challenge. You okay?"
"Fine!" Ranko grinned, making a point to exaggerate her expression in an effort to make it more obvious. "Just don't wanna have to live with all you guys after you get showed up by a girl, 'zall."
The guitarist chuckled, reaching down for her wrist. "Okay. Now I'm not backing down from a challenge. C'mere, you. I'm buying, but I wanna see this supposed pinch-hitting princess in action for myself."
He led her back to the batting cage before digging in his jacket pocket for a crumpled bill and handing it to the attendant. "She's gonna take a swing," he insisted.
Figures, the attendant thought as she pocketed his money. After your friends are gone, now you want to involve your girlfriend all of a sudden. "Sure thing! Grab the bat and the helmet, miss."
Ranko sighed, picking up the battered blue helmet. It had an ear guard on one side. "Fine, but just one ball." She plopped the helmet on her head, careful not to catch her ponytail in it. Ranko took the bat Crash handed her, walking up to the pentagonal plate and starting to take a stance.
"Shit, this isn't gonna work," she said, pulling the helmet off. As it was made for right-handed batters, the helmet's ear guard blocked her line of sight when taking a left-handed batting stance. She turned the headgear backward, resting it on her scalp again. As it was far too large for her, it fit easily even when worn incorrectly.
"Alright. Now, you wanna…" Crash walked up behind Ranko, using his hands to try and reposition her hips in her stance.
"I got it! Get your butt over there and watch, Mr. Grabass! What would Ukyo say?!" Giggling, Ranko adjusted her stance again after Crash stepped back. She nodded to the attendant, who dropped the baseball in her hand into the pitching machine.
Ranko lifted her right leg, power-stepping forward into her swing. The wooden bat struck leather with a satisfying crack. With a bright tittering laugh, Ranko flipped the bat in her hand, catching its shaft at the meatiest point and offering it handle-first to Crash. "Is that how you do it? It's my first time. I'm just a girl,after all."
Punctuated by a metallic crunch and a volley of Chinese curse words, the pitching machine fell backward and crashed to the red clay below. The ball Ranko had hit back at it rolled lackadaisically away from it into the grass.
* * *
"So, you're saying these birds, the…" Zoe waved their hand in the air in a fast circular pattern as if trying to coax their brain matter to rev to a higher intensity.
"Amazons," Ranko interjected.
Zoe nodded, sipping at a tall can of Foster's as they leaned back in the corner booth of the arcade's bar area. "Right! Those cats."
Only one of them is a cat. As far as I know, the only bird was Mu Tsu, and they banished him, Ranko thought. "Yeah. So anyway, they have this crazy rule. Like I was saying, they're super big on like martial arts and weird superstitions and mysticism and shit. It's baked into everything they do. So, they've got this rule, right? If an Amazon woman fights another woman, and she loses, the Amazon basically is honor-bound to try to kill the woman that beat her. But, if the Amazon loses to a dude, she's supposed to marry him."
"Crikey," Zoe said with a scoff, waving to signal the waitress as they spoke. "And, what about if som'uddy that ain't a sheila or a bloke kicks their arse?"
The redhead shrugged. "I don't know. I'm not sure they know people like that exi-"
A loud slurp interrupted Ranko's thought as Hitomi's straw exhausted the last of her margarita and began drawing in air. "Well, it's gotta be somewhere halfway between marriage and murder, so… I'm thinking… really rough sex. With, like, whips and violet wands and shit," Hitomi offered in a hopeful tone.
Chuckling, Zoe passed the empty beer can up over Ranko's head to their overworked young server, accepting a full one in trade. "That's the go, 'en! Blue, ya gotta teach me somma 'at fancy shit you an' the misso do."
"I mean…" Ranko swallowed hard, her eyes shifting nervously away from Zoe. She reached up, brushing her hair back out of her eyes. "It's not like I know where to find them or anything. Like I said, it was just this documentary I saw on the plane." Ranko sighed, corralling her crimson coif again. "Ems, you got a spare hair thing on you? Mine broke when we were doing the baseball stuff, and it's driving me fucking nuts."
Emi groaned, reaching down for her purse. "This is, what, three I've given you since we left home? You do know they sell them in stores, right? You can just like, buy them and have them in your bag. It's like magic!" Giggling, she withdrew an orange hair elastic from the bottom of her knockoff Coach handbag. She plucked a long blonde hair from it before passing it over to her friend.
"I know, I know!" Ranko laughed. She set her drink down on the table before taking the offered hairband. Ranko quickly whipped her hair into her waiting palm, twisting it into a high ponytail. "Just haven't been in a store that had one. Next one I see, I'll get you a whole big thing of 'em, promise."
Emi smirked, zipping her bag closed again. "I'll hold you to that. And you still owe 'Tomi a tube of mascara from Beijing, too."
"Crap, I forgot about that! Sorry! I'll get you guys back, I swear!" Ranko sighed, shaking her head in self-admonition. "I've been a total ditz this whole trip. I don't know what the hell's wrong with me."
Ranko reached for her beverage, but Hitomi reached over the table and pulled the narrow silver can back until it was out of her reach. "Maybe it's 'cause you haven't slept worth a damn since Akane went home. You gotta stop with this shit. It's bad for you!"
Ranko's eyes lit up, having spied someone seated on a bench near the candlepin bowling lanes just outside the bar area. The girl, who could not have been older than thirteen, wore the gray pleated skirt and white blouse of a school uniform, and she was excitedly staring at the chattering group while her friends changed into their rented bowling shoes.
"One sec, guys." Ranko grabbed her purse. She slid out of the green vinyl booth banquette and half-jogged over to the bench. "Nǐ hǎo!" she announced with a fulsome smile and a little wave.
The schoolgirl responded with an exhilarated torrent of words, only a handful of which Ranko understood. Nevertheless, Ranko needed to comprehend just one to confirm her assumption: her own name. With a nod and an even wider smile, the young celebrity pointed down at the brown leather satchel on the floor at the girl's feet. She made a motion with her left hand as if she were writing in the air with an invisible pen.
The young Firebird seemed to get the message. She opened her bag, withdrawing a glossy black folder stuffed full of looseleaf paper. The schoolgirl stood, offering it up to Ranko in both hands with a bow.
Ranko held up her index finger to tell the fan to wait a moment. She unzipped the black velvet purse on her hip, digging around in it for a few seconds before producing a silver marker. Taking the folder from the child, she uncapped the marker with her teeth and inscribed the front cover with her name in large romaji lettering, complete with her trademark outline of a heart at the end. This done, Ranko returned the girl's bow, handing the folder back to her.
A spritely wave followed the brief exchange, and Ranko rejoined her friends in the bar. "Sorry about that. Can I have my drink back now?"
Hitomi growled, holding the half-empty can out of Ranko's reach again. "I'm serious, Ranko. You're gonna hurt yourself."
Scoffing, Ranko fired her hand out with almost supernatural speed. She snatched the can hard enough to cave in its aluminum sides slightly with her fingers. "Oh, please. Like you, of all people, need to lecture me about taking care of myself." She downed the remaining half of the energy drink in a single draught.
"Excuse me?!" Hitomi's voice took on a tone of mock indignation. "What do Iput in my body that's as poisonous as this crap?!"
"Oh, let's see." Ranko extended a finger, tapping it with her opposite hand. "Fried cheese. Soju. Tequila." Another outstretched finger indicated each new item in the list. With a blush and a smirk, Ranko added a fourth digit. "Shinji."
Emi shook her head, giggling as she spoke up to defend her partner. "Hey, that last one shouldn't count! Honestly, it barely qualifies as in!" She punctuated her last word with quotation marks drawn in the air with her fingers.
Zoe rolled their eyes, shaking their head as they set down their beer. "If 'e's swingin' such a wee joystick, why ya keep lettin' 'im poke ya?"
"The same reason the ugly puppy in the litter is the first one adopted," Emi retorted with a smirk. "You just sorta… feel bad for it."
As Emi spoke, a trio of loud beeps emanated from the silver clutch next to her. She excitedly turned to Hitomi, watching as her girlfriend dug around in the bag for her pager. "Is it Yun?!"
Hitomi pushed the button to display the last number, screeching as she read the liquid-crystal display. "I think so! Move, move!" She slid down the banquette as Emi stood to clear her path. Once she was on her feet, Hitomi scanned the bar area. "Where do they keep the…"
Zoe motioned over their shoulder toward the restrooms. "Phones are o'er by the loo, mate."
"Thanks!" The brunette hurried off in the indicated direction.
Ranko turned her eyes to Emi as the blonde retook her seat, an interrogative expression on her face. "So, wanna tell us what that's all about? Who's Yun?"
"I got a hunnit o'dem China-bucks that says it's some bloke they're keen t'shack up wit'," Zoe offered.
Emi smirked at the band's drummer, pushing her empty Collins glass to the edge of the table to alert their server to her need for another cocktail. "Then you'd lose. Yun's a promoter. He works for the local band that's opening for us. We met him yesterday during the walkthrough."
Ranko cocked her head to the side, a befuddled expression on her face. "And why's that so exciting? You girls aren't ditching me to run with the… what the hell are those guys even called again?!"
"The Cartoonicorns, but that's not impo…" Emi trailed off as Hitomi emerged from the narrow hallway leading to the restrooms and all but skipped toward the group. "Give me good news, girl!"
Hitomi squealed excitedly, bouncing on the balls of her feet and clapping her hands. "We're in!" She cast a side glance in the direction of Ranko. "But we need a plus one."
"Okay, would somebody mind telling me what the hell's going on with you two?!" Ranko rolled her eyes. "I swear, I have an easier time getting intel about my Christmas presents out of Mei sometimes!"
Emi rocketed out of the banquette, motioning excitedly for Ranko to join her in doing so. "Come on! Get up! We gotta get out of here! We're kidnapping you tonight! Girls' night! Zo-zo, you wanna…"
The pink-haired drummer laughed, throwing back the last dregs of their beer. "I'm good, mate. Whatever it is, jus' watchin' ya talk about it does me head in."
Ranko stood, clapping both of her hands down on Emi's shoulders. "I swear, girl, if you don't tell me what the heck you are on about…"
"So, here's the deal." Hitomi fidgeted nervously with her fingers as she spoke. "Yun was telling us about this, like, crazy fancy party going on tonight downtown. It's all rich people, artists, musicians, stuff like that. Real high society shit. He tried to get us invitations, but apparently backup dancers don't make the cut."
Emi grinned as the realization began painting itself across Ranko's face. "But, if we show up with you…"
"Hate to disappoint ya, girls, but unless we're planning on breaking back into the arena and grabbing one of my costumes, I can't help you." Ranko shrugged. "Didn't exactly pack a cocktail dress."
Emi scooped Ranko's purse from the table, unceremoniously jamming it into her friend's hand. "We've got three hours. For grandmaster shoppers like us, that's an eternity."
Hitomi waved over her shoulder as she and Emi dragged their reluctant friend toward the door. "Tell the boys we'll see them back at the hotel, okay, Zo?"
Her girlfriend called back to the drummer as she pushed the glass door open with her backside. "And tell them not to wait up!"