The Phoenix Saga

Ranma spun her empty serving tray in her hands, a song in her heart. Hana and the girls had fawned over her so much since the fight, and she couldn't remember a time where she had felt so accepted for who she was. She admitted to herself that they didn't know a good portion of who she was, and those would be some awkward conversations, but for now, she was enjoying feeling like she belonged. She'd even felt comfortable enough in her own skin to brave the lavender sundress she found in her closet, and not entirely because everything other than dresses was in the laundry. She hadn't re-braided her hair since Izumi undid it, and while it had been a bit annoying during the fight, she was enjoying the absence of the ever-present headache from her hair being pulled tight at the scalp. She flushed visibly whenever she thought about it, but she almost - almost - felt cute.
"Oi, Ranko! Table six!"
Ranma scooted over to the bar, picking up three yellowish cocktails and a basket of fried shrimp, smiling brightly at Yui as she did. Yui was grinning too; it was so good to see the poor kid smile. After their conversation the night before, she knew why smiles had been rare on her. She had come off as something of a tomboy since she'd been there, but she guessed she might not feel especially womanly after what she had presumed happened to Ranko, either. Tonight, though, there was an undeniable radiance about her.
It was Izumi's night off, so Ranma was managing table service on her own, with the occasional assist from Hana. She was holding up fairly well, and even for a fairly slow Thursday night, they were serving drinks at a pretty good clip. They had karaoke going on at the tiny corner stage, and while most of it was pretty bad, the guests were having a good time owing to a steady flow of liquid courage. That meant a steady flow of income to the bar and she was glad for it. She picked up the pen she'd left for the last table to sign their credit card receipt, slipping it into her pocket. She was also glad that the dress she was wearing had pockets. She didn't understand why more girls didn't want dresses with pockets; they were so convenient!
Noticing a lull in the needs of her guests, Ranma started piling dirty glasses into the dishwasher. On the stage, a heavyset man in business attire finished his butchering of a Madonna song and sat back at his table to a smattering of polite applause. A trio of young women in matching dresses - a bachelorette party, they'd told Ranma - went on stage together and selected a popular Japanese pop song.
Ranma started the dishwasher, doing a quick scan of her tables to see if anyone seemed to need anything, and headed to the back room to see if Hana had any tasks for her. She found Hana in her office, looking over some paperwork. She seemed kind of worried, and very busy, so Ranma thought it best to leave her to her work. She poured herself a cup of soda, leaning against the wall for a quick moment. She could feel the wall vibrating slightly with the bass from the sound system in the front, and then felt it cease when the song ended.
"Who's next?!" she heard Mei call out to the crowd on the microphone. "Come on, somebody's gotta be brave enough to come up here and sing for us!" It was getting late, and the patrons remaining in the bar had probably all had far too much to drink to carry a tune.
Mei popped her head into the back room. "Hey Ranko, can you come here and help me with something?"
Ranma called back with a "Sure thing!" and finished her soda, walking to the front. As soon as she appeared behind the bar, Mei turned to her with a smile. "Whatcha need, Mei?"
The blue-haired girl said nothing – she just reached out and handed Ranma a small cylinder. Ranma looked down at her hand and her eyes grew wide. "No. Uh-uh. No way."
Mei nudged the microphone in Ranma's hand closer to her. "Come on, I heard you sing the other day. You were great!"
Ranma blushed. "But that was to myself, this is in front of people, who like, paid to be here and stuff."
Mei grinned. "Sounds to me like it's your first concert, rock star."
Ranma shook her head vigorously. "I.. I can't, I need to take care of my tables."
With a mischievous grin, Mei picked up Ranma's serving tray. "I got it." The redhead looked around the room for an excuse - any other excuse - but was running out of ideas fast.
"Leave her be, Mei," Yui called over from the bar.
"No, Yui, you don't understand – I've heard her. She's amazing!" Ranma blushed even deeper as Mei spoke, especially once she realized that the crowd was hearing this conversation over the hot mic in her hand.
Mei pulled Ranma's wrist up, bringing the steel microphone with it. "What do you think, folks? Who wants to hear Ranko sing?" A raucous cry of approval came from the mostly inebriated crowd at the side of the bar closest to the stage; most of the tables at the far side near the front door were still focusing more on their food and conversation.
Ranma thought she would pass out if any more blood flowed to her face. "I will get you for this, Mei Hotaro," she mock-glowered at her antagonist. However, she did tentatively walk in the direction of the stage, mindful of every pair of eyes on her as she stepped up onto the raised platform. Mei, controlling the karaoke machine from the computer at the corner of the bar, selected the song she'd caught Ranma singing a few days ago.
Ranma looked up at Mei like a deer in headlights, but Mei just gave her an encouraging smile and mouthed "you got this" silently. Yui bounced a bottle of tequila across four cocktail glasses at a six-count each. The intro to the song began to play, and Ranma swallowed hard, grateful she'd just had something to drink to counteract the dry mouth her nerves were trying to create.
Ranma took a deep breath and closed her eyes. If she couldn't see them, maybe they couldn't see her. It was ridiculous, she knew, but it gave her just enough courage to hit the first note. Her voice was tentative and quiet, but she made it through the first line, and then a second, and she started to hear the scrape of chairs on the wooden floor. Half a verse and I'm running them off already, she thought to herself. She opened her eyes to witness the carnage, and what she found instead was that nearly every table in the bar had turned their chairs to face the stage. The conversations at the various tables had largely ceased. She blushed again, shrinking a bit in her stature at the attention. As the first verse ended, the crowd, sensing her apprehension, gave her an encouraging round of applause and cheers, and Ranma couldn't help but smile.
Well, to hell with it, she thought to herself. I've already made as big of an ass of myself as I can up here, I might as well have fun with it. When the lyrics of the second verse began to change color on the karaoke monitor to her left, Ranma again began to sing, this time with her full chest voice. It was a fairly slow ballad, and her voice carried hauntingly over the speakers throughout the bar. Mei had stopped to stand behind the bar and Yui put her bar tools down – neither had any customers who wanted to pay attention to them right then anyway.
As Ranma crooned the chorus, the saloon doors swung open and Hana emerged, standing in the doorway and leaning on the archway. Her face showed a look of curiosity at first at how quiet the bar had sounded from her office, but once she saw who was on stage, and the rapt attention of her patrons, she smiled proudly at her youngest ward. Mei leaned over to Yui. "I told you she was great," and Yui could only nod in assent. Her eyes were transfixed on the stage.
Her voice ramped up for the more powerful final verse of the song, adding a few little runs in some of the longer notes. She was still blushing, but she was also smiling broadly. No one had ever adulated her for anything that hadn't resulted in anybody getting their asses kicked before. Now this whole room of people, for whom she was good enough for nothing but fetching their onion rings not ten minutes ago, was enchanted by her voice. It felt strange and glorious and liberating and terrifying all at once, and Ranma channeled all of that emotion into belting the final note of the song, a G4 that lasted a full five seconds. When she lowered the microphone, there was a second or two of stunned silence, and then the assembled patrons began to clap.
And cheer.
And stand.
All of them.
Ranma blushed more furiously than she thought possible, bowing deeply to the crowd in part to hide it. "Thank you," she whispered into the microphone before placing it back into the little clamp at the top of its stand. Mei and Yui were clapping too, but Hana walked out from behind the bar to meet Ranma as she descended from the stage. Ranma looked up at her with a worried expression. "I'm sorry; I know I shouldn't have done that while I was working, Mei asked me…"
She trailed off as Hana hushed her with a raised hand. "Ranko… honey, that was – you are – incredible." She reached out, pulling her teenage charge into a congratulatory hug. Only now was the crowd starting to finish clapping and return to their food or drinks. Ranma couldn't hear it, but more than half the conversations at the tables were about what they had just heard.
Yui grinned at Ranma when Hana released her, hopping up and sitting on the corner of the bar. "You keep that up, Ranko Tendo, and everybody's going to know your name."
Ranma gulped. Not only do they not know my name, but you don't either, she thought to herself, her joy at the adulation fading a bit into shame.
She didn't have time to focus on it, though, because Mei tossed her tray back to her like a frisbee. "Your public awaits, Miss Tendo." With a chuckle and a blush, Ranma headed toward the closest table.
Each table she visited went much the same. There was universally effusive praise for her singing - and her service. The women from the bachelorette party produced a Polaroid camera and asked Ranma to take a picture with them. She squirmed, but Mei walked up behind them and took the camera. "Everybody smile now!" Ranma was amazed at how easy she found it to comply.
Shortly after, last call was announced and the customers began to make their exits. Ranma buzzed around the tables after them, collecting checks and empty glassware. She couldn't stop thinking about what Yui had said. Everyone will know your name. How could that be, when no one did? She had left the name Ranma Saotome behind a week ago, and – she hoped – all the baggage that came with it. All the fights. All the proposals. All the drama. She didn't want any of it anymore. She just wanted a chance to live. Finding a way back to her male body was still a dream, but less of a determination, than it had been since she left the Tendo residence. Perhaps it was that time was robbing her of hope, but she wasn't sure a part of it hadn't been that she was discovering a happiness and an independence as Ranko that Ranma had not known and might never know. That said, she was living a lie, and she knew it.
Ranma caught a glimpse of herself in the mirrored wall behind the liquor display while dropping off a load of empty glasses. She stopped to really look at herself. The bruise on her face was gone. Her hair hung in a loose, wavy curl over her right shoulder, still retaining some of the shape of being trained into a braid for years. The dress wasn't really anything she would have worn before "it" happened. It would have looked ridiculous on Ranma Saotome, but somehow, once she stopped forcing herself to think about it as a boy would have, she found that it suited Ranko a lot better. In fact, Ranma wasn't sure if Akane would recognize her if she walked through the door right then. Just the way she stood was different - her posture was one of poise, and not the perpetual shame of the last few months.
It was all a lie. It wasn't real. Nothing about this was real. She wasn't Ranko, she wasn't a girl, she was… She shook her head, sighing. Maybe it wasn't real, but there was a voice inside of her, the one who didn't care about the dresses as much as she did the hugs and encouragement of friends, that wanted it to be. She wished in that moment, ridiculous as it was, that she could erase her past and make the lies she had told the truth, just so she'd never lose the first real acceptance she'd ever found.
She made a fist, biting her fingernails into her palm. That day on the mountain played through her mind on repeat. The day her life as she knew it had ended for good. When a relationship with Akane had become impossible, and when she knew would never again take a form other than the one she now inhabited. When she no longer felt that she had a place in Nerima, and when Genma and Soun no longer looked at her with even the shred of pride they had managed before. It was, for all intents and purposes, the day a boy named Ranma Saotome died.
And if Ranma had died, then whose life was she living now? Not his, for sure - he'd never be caught dead in this dress, on that stage, with these women. And the young woman in the mirror couldn't think of anything she wanted more. Only the memory of the boy she had once been forbade her from allowing herself to enjoy the life she was building, painfully, brick by brick. She wasn't riding on any of her old tricks, her fighting skill or any of her old connections. Everything good she had experienced over the last few days was built by the slender, feminine hands that she now called her own, probably forever. This new person had earned the happiness she currently felt with her own charm, her own kindness, her own work ethic and determination. It was hers, and that didn't feel like a lie. He had been handed martial arts skill and a fiancee (or four), a place to live and everything. Ranma didn't even do half of his homework on his own, and Nabiki got more than a few new pairs of shoes out of his math classes alone. He owned nothing about his old life. But whatever little this new person had, she owned. It was hers, and it was real, and she deserved it, and she wanted it. She knew now what had to be done.
"Hana, may I be excused for a few minutes?"
The barkeep nodded. "Of course, Ranko." She could see deep thoughts in the girl's eyes, and figured the experience on stage had more profoundly impacted her than she had thought. Ranma pushed through the saloon doors, walking up the stairs and popping open the door to the little apartment she'd been borrowing. She picked up the laundry basket, rummaging through it for her black gi pants. When she found them, she slipped her hand into the pocket and pulled out a well-worn men's leather wallet.
Her hands shaking, she opened it and pulled her student identification card out. She stared into the eyes of her male self in the little square photograph, sitting on the bed. She looked over the address, the name, the school name, the emergency contact information. None of it matched her life any better than the picture did. It felt like a lifetime ago. Someone else's lifetime.
She looked at the blue card in her hand, speaking aloud into the eyes of her former body in the photograph as if they were a Ouija board. "I'm sorry. I am. I tried. I swear I did." Her eyes welled with tears, but not necessarily sad ones. "I fought this as hard as I could, as long as I could, and I lost everything I ever cared about because of it."
She stood, slowly and resolutely, making her way to the little gas cooktop and lighting the pilot light under the kettle. She looked again into her own eyes in celluloid, turning the card slightly. When she did, its glossy coating caught a glint from the ceiling light, causing a reflection of her face to appear. "I have carried you as far as I can. Your ghost is drowning us both. I can't do it anymore. I deserve to live."
She swallowed hard, a tear rolling down her cheek. "I'm sorry I couldn't save you. I'm sorry you didn't get a chance. But I have a chance now, a real one, and just this once, I choose to save myself. I have to." She steeled herself, trying to convince the girl looking back at her in the mirror. "I am wanted, I have worth, and I have people who care about me." She smiled ever so slightly. Yui was right; it did help a little.
The tea kettle whistled, and she picked it up off the burner, placing it on the cold burner next to it. The steam singed her skin, but it didn't give her the same feeling of shame that it used to.
She reached her hand forward, letting the corner of the little blue card make contact with the flame from the pilot light, and it started to catch. She dropped it quickly to avoid the agony of a burn, and watched as it began to shrivel and blacken. She sniffled and simultaneous tears of sadness and relief began to flow from her eyes as the last corner of the card vanished into ash.
As it did, a chime from the alarm clock by the bed indicated the stroke of midnight. She looked back at her mirror, wiped away her tears and smiled at her reflection. "Happy birthday, Ranko."