"She's always late," Ranko grumbled, idly kicking her silver cheerleading sneakers at the brass foot rail under the bar.
Akane sighed, turning the page of her massive hardcover textbook. "Cut her some slack. Remember, she worked 'til close last night."
The redhead groaned, rolling her eyes. "So did I! And I was singing and dancing all night, to boot!" She crossed out the last few characters in her notebook with a disposable ballpoint pen, appending a new ending to the last sentence she had written.
With a shrug, Akane turned another page. "I mean, it's not like you weren't gonna spend the morning working on your paper regardless. It's not a big deal. And besides, we're the ones who asked her to do this on short notice. Be grateful."
"I guess," Ranko muttered defeatedly, shrugging off her black leather jacket and draping it over the brown vinyl back of her barstool. "I'm just…"
"... nervous," the singer's wife concluded on her behalf. "You're gonna do fine. You know she won't let you get hurt."
"Hurt?!" Ranko scoffed dismissively, pushing away her spiral notebook. "Who said anything about getting hurt? I'm gonna be fine. I just worry I'm gonna look stupid."
Akane laughed heartily, turning another page. "And since when would that be a shock to any of your sisters?!"
"I…" Ranko sighed behind an amused smile. "Fair point."
The black-haired woman seated to Ranko's left in the empty bar idly rubbed her right wrist with her thumb, still holding her highlighter in her right hand. "That's what I thought. Good g-" Akane's eyes widened as she read from her medical textbook.
"What is it?!" Ranko stood on the footrests of her stool, trying in vain to peer over Akane's shoulder to see what had prompted her reaction.
"Well, I'll be a son of a bitch!" Akane said, running her green highlighter over a long word Ranko felt entirely unprepared to pronounce. "Hyperesthesia," Akane said slowly and deliberately.
"A hype a who da whadda?" Ranko sputtered, a mystified expression on her face. "Bless you!"
Akane picked up her book, cradling it on her forearm as she swiveled her stool to face her wife and began to read aloud.
"Hyperesthesia is a neurological condition that results in extreme sensitivity to touch, pressure, temperature and pain, occurring due to a failure of the nervous system to process these sensations correctly."
She looked up, smiling victoriously. "Sound familiar?"
Ranko gasped, her hands flying up to cover her gaping mouth. "The… the Cat's Tongue?! It has, like, a doctor name?! Does it say how they fix it?!"
Akane kept reading in silence, shaking her head after a moment before repeating the relevant passage aloud. "There is no known cure, but symptoms can be managed with pain medication."
The young singer shook her head emphatically, disappointment written on her face. "Nuh-uh. No thanks. I don't need to go down that route again."
Her wife nodded, a wave of relief washing over her. After all, the last time Ranko had resorted to opioids to manage the effects of the Full Body Cat's Tongue, they had nearly killed her - and after the previous night's vote, it had been determined that the man who had given them to her would be accompanying Ranko and the Dapper Dragons to China in just a few short days.
"Still, at least you know wha…" Akane trailed off, slamming her book shut as the front door of the bar swung open and revealed two tall, lithe women in zipped-up leather jackets, long pants and motorcycle helmets backlit by the Sunday noonday sun.
"Morning, girls!" the one on the left said, peeling off her yellow helmet and tamping down her short blonde hair. Next to her, Sakura also doffed her helmet, a dark blue and blue shell painted with a galactic starfield.
Ranko slid off of her stool. "It hasn't been morning for almost an hour now, blockhead!" She approached the pair, reaching out and hugging Yui around the waist. "Thanks for doing this, sis."
"You bet," Yui said, looking over her youngest sister analytically. The redhead wore a replica Minato Mystics volleyball jersey bearing the number 3 in white, paired with a pair of black skinny jeans that reached midway down her calves. "You're gonna wanna zip your jacket up, kiddo," she instructed. "And, 'Kane, let me get a look at you."
Akane slipped off of her stool and approached the Phoenix's proprietress for inspection. She was clad in a pair of blue jeans, white high-top sneakers and a black tee shirt printed with the pink and white logo for Ranko and the Dapper Dragons, topped off with a faded blue denim jacket.
"That'll work," Yui said as Sakura set both of their helmets down on the bar counter. "You girls ready for this?"
"As I'm gonna be," Ranko muttered as Sakura gave her a side hug. She gestured to the headgear Sakura had deposited on the acacia countertop. "But we don't have…"
Sakura waved the girl's concern off with the back of her hand. "Yuri and I already got that covered." She crouched behind the bar, opening the cabinet under the back counter and producing two large cube-shaped cardboard boxes. She checked the names written on the bottoms of the boxes before handing one to Ranko and the other to Akane. "Happy early birthday," Sakura said with a smile.
Akane tore into her box first, extracting a motorcycle helmet with a tinted plastic visor. It was mint green, dotted with yellow and white daisies. "Oh, this is cuuuute!" she exclaimed as she set about removing it from the box fully. "Thanks!" She nudged Ranko's shoulder with her hand. "Open yours, baby! I wanna see!"
Ranko popped open the tape on her box, pulling out a helmet similar in shape. Hers had a black shell, though most of it was covered with a field of red and orange flame. The design curved around the side of the helmet like the plumage of a bird made of fire, and the visor itself bore a lenticular image of a pair of narrow eyes like those of a bird of prey. A severe-looking beak traversed the nose and mouth area of the helmet.
"Whooooooa!" Ranko turned the phoenix-styled helmet this way and that, examining it from every angle. "This is so freaking cool, you guys! Thanks!"
Clapping her hands sharply, Yui popped the front door open behind herself with her foot. "Well, alright, ladies! Let's saddle up!"
All four women exited the bar, walking across the street to the near-vacant strip mall parking lot. There, a pair of racing motorcycles awaited: Sakura's Yamaha and Yui's green Suzuki.
"Okay. We're gonna put Akane on Sake's bike, since it's bigger. Ran-chan, you're on mine," Yui instructed. "Helmets on."
Akane straddled the Yamaha, dropping the visor of her new helmet. When she stepped up, the pedal she used to boost herself up to the seat engaged and slid down, roaring the engine to life. Akane slipped her backside onto the leather seat, feeling the engine rumble violently under her. "Whoa, shit! Whoops!"
"You're okay," Sakura said, holding up a disarming hand. "You didn't give it gas, so you're good."
"Akane…" Ranko swallowed hard, still standing at her wife's side. She spoke as quietly as she could while still being heard over the purring engine, her cheeks aflame. "It shakes so much, and I have to put it between my legs. What if I…"
Her wife giggled, shaking her head. "You won't. You'll be fine, babe. Promise. Go on. Get on."
The redhead nervously vaulted onto the seat of Yui's bike. "Are you sure we can't just walk?"
Yui laughed, shaking her head as she approached. She took a moment to tug on the bottom edge of Ranko's helmet, ensuring it was secure. "Okay. Motorcycles one-oh-one, here we go. On the right handlebar, that's your main controls. You twist the handle to give it gas and make it go faster. This little lever here is the front brake, and that pedal down there is the rear. When you want to stop, do the front brake first, and then once you're slowed down some, you do the back. Turn the handlebars like this if you want to turn. You're usually gonna turn them in the opposite direction from the way you're turning, but that can change." She pointed down to a pedal by Ranko's right foot. "That's the kickstarter. You step on it to turn the bike on, like Akane did. Go ahead."
"Now?" Ranko asked, looking over the controls. "There's so much to this. How do you keep it all straight?!"
Sakura shrugged. "You do it for a little bit, and you'll learn to sort of feel the bike under you. It'll tell you what it needs. You just need a little practice. Go ahead and start 'er up, Ran-chan."
As the Suzuki roared to life, Yui pointed to the silver grip lever on the left handlebar. "This is the clutch. It will allow you to shift gears. You'll know when you need to, when the tone of the engine changes to let you know it's struggling a bit. Once you're holding that down, you can kick that pedal down there to adjust the gear. But, for today, we are gonna keep it in first gear, since we are just practicing in the parking lot. The most important thing is to manage your balance. The more you lean, the harder you turn, but it's very easy to go from turning to falling, and you do not want your bike landing on your legs on the road."
Fortunately, where we're gonna be riding, there won't be any roads, Ranko thought as she followed along with her sister's instructions.
"Okay! Akane, let's start with you! Give 'er some gas!" Sakura shouted over the two rumbling bikes.
* * *
"Great job, Ranko! C'mon, turn, turn, turn!" Yui shouted as she jogged alongside her languidly-rolling motorcycle. "Thattagirl! Keep it comin'!"
Ranko beamed behind the intent gaze of the phoenix emblazoned on her helmet visor. Hell yeah! I'm getting it! She turned the handlebars, banking the bike gently to the right around Yui.
Alright, Yui thought with a sigh. Two and a half hours, and we have her up to almost a kilometer an hour. Maybe I should just give her money for a cab. "Good, good! Okay, brake?"
Ranko squeezed the lever on her right handlebar slowly, and the already-creeping motorcycle began to stop. She reached out with her leg for the rest brake pedal, but as she did, the front tire of the bike hit a small divot in the asphalt and jarred the vehicle under her. Her foot missed the pedal and her leg swung backward along the side of the bike. Ranko's ankle, left bare by the short legs of her jeans, made glancing contact with the shiny chrome exhaust pipe. The heat of the metal would have been uncomfortable, maybe even painful, to the motorcycle's owner, but to her sister, it was a different matter altogether.
Over the rumbling motorcycle, Yui could clearly hear her sister scream.
"Whoa, whoa!" Yui grabbed the right handlebar, ensuring Ranko's grip on the front brake did not waver. She hopped up as the bike began to topple toward her, bracing it with her body weight as her left foot stomped down hard on the rear brake. "Shut it off!"
Yui had hopped on one leg alongside the bike three times before Ranko regained her senses enough to turn the key and bring the motorcycle to rest. She peeled off her helmet, her cheeks damp just below her eyes.
"You've got to keep better control than that! You almost laid the bike down!" Yui roared, gesturing wildly to the exhaust pipe as she hopped back down from the bike. "I know it's warm, but it's not like it's gonna burn you! Fuck, Ranko! You're such a pussy sometimes, I swear!"
"It's not my fault," Ranko whimpered, wiping her eyes with the back of the leather glove her sister had loaned her. "I'm sorry, Yui…"
Yui rolled her eyes. "I've never met such a prissy… I swear! You could have wrecked the bike and broken your leg over a little warm met…"
"I got hyper-amnesia," Ranko sputtered. "It's not my fault. Stop yellin' at me!"
The blonde stepped back, a look of stunned confusion on her face that snapped her out of her frustrated rant. "Hyper… what?!"
"Hyperesthesia," Akane corrected, having rushed up to join her wife and sister as the bike began to topple. Wow, she thought, nodding proudly up at Ranko. She actually told them!
Ranko bobbed her head, turning her eyes away from Yui in shame. "Yeah. Like, my skin's all kinds of fucked up. Everything that hurts you a little feels like I'm being peeled alive. Hot and cold, scratchy textures, everything. If something hurts you at a two on a scale of one to ten, I would feel it at a twenty."
Yui's eyes widened in shock, but the surprise on her face melted into a haze of guilt. And I yelled at her. Fuck, I'm an asshole, Yui thought darkly. "Are you… Ranko, how long has this been going on?! Have you seen a d…"
"Almost four years," Ranko murmured without looking up from the gauges on the motorcycle chassis between her legs. "There's nothing anyone can do about it. I'm..."
The blonde gasped. "But that's longer than… All this time?! Gods, Ranko! All the times you were afraid of hot water? When you burned your hands in the fucking pizza oven?! How freaked out you were when Izzi made you that fire dress for New Year's?" Yui gulped hard, stepping forward with a comforting hand. "When you took those pills from Kaz?! It was all… this?!"
Ranko nodded glumly. "I'm so sorry."
Stabilizing the motorcycle with her left hand, Yui motioned toward herself with her right. She flicked the kickstand down with her foot to keep the bike from falling. "C'mere, you. Get down from there. Right now." She supported Ranko's back as the younger girl lifted her leg over the bike and slid off the seat to the pavement below. Ranko's feet had barely touched the ground before her sister's arms engulfed her.
"Honey, why the hell didn't you tell us?"
Because until this morning, I didn't have a way to say it that wasn't funky Amazon voodoo, Ranko thought, wiping her eyes with the back of her wrist. "I was scared. Embarrassed. Ashamed. At first, I didn't want you to know 'cause it was dangerous for anybody to know I was so vulnerable, and by the time I trusted you enough to tell you, I just felt shitty for not saying anything, and so I kept biting my tongue."
Yui released the hug for just a moment, wagging her finger in her sister's face. "You listen here, Ranko Tendo, and you better listen good. We are your family. You don't have to hide anything from us, ever again, you got me?! Nothing, nothing, and nothing you could ever tell us would ever make us think less of you. You - all of you, your flaws and weaknesses and oddities included - are my sister, and I will love you and look out for you, no matter what. All of us will. I know you know that.You know why?"
The redhead managed a meek smile at her sister, her cheeks flushing slightly as she turned her gaze toward her own feet. "I am wanted, I have worth, and I have people who care about me?"
Chuckling, Yui nodded emphatically. "Damn straight, girl! Now…" The blonde reached out, ruffling her sister's wavy, helmet-matted red hair. "... is there anything else you need to tell us about?"
His name is Ranma Saotome, Ranko thought silently, gazing down at the silver dragon coiled around her left wrist. The shadow that chased me my whole life. The one the Full-Body Cat's Tongue finally freed me from.
She shook her head no.