The Phoenix Saga

"Ohhh, fuck! 'kane, I… I'm… I… I… ohhhhhhh!"

Ranko arched her back in her purple sleeping bag, her limbs as stiff as rails. It took her the better part of a minute before her nervous system had rebooted enough to enable conscious thought and deliberate motion. It was as debilitating as being struck by lightning, if lightning were made of endorphins and joy. And if it had in fact been lightning that rocketed through her every cell and synapse, then the goddess of thunder was currently curled up around her legs. She reached down with her hand, stroking her lover's hair just below her waistline. "Fuck, I love you."

"I love you too, beautiful. Did you enjoy that?" Akane's tongue traced the inside of her wife's thigh as she awaited her lover's response.

Blushing, Ranko pulled the sleeping bag up over her head so she could peer down inside of it at its other occupant. "Did I really leave any dou… wait. Did you hear something?!"

A muffled giggle arose from deep within the sleeping bag. "Everything in a ten-kilometer radius heard something, dummy! You are many, many things, my love, but subtle has never been one of them." Akane licked her lips and traced her fingers ever so gently down the slick skin of Ranko's inner thigh. "Now, what say we give the gazelles and shit an encore performance, princess? Hmmmmm?"

"No, I could'a sworn I h…" Ranko's breath caught in her throat. Whatever else had been in her mind to say, it was entirely drowned by the flood of sensory input emanating from the valley between her legs. Within seconds, any attempt to summon a cogent thought was as difficult as grasping for an airborne hundred-yen note in a typhoon. Wave after wave after glorious wave of endorphins ceaselessly buffeted her mind until there was nothing left. There was no rustling sleeping bag and no gravelly soil beneath it. No chill of the November mountain air. No whistling of the breeze whistling through the little valley. No itching sensation on her hand from the ant bite she'd sustained while fishing for their dinner. Her mind was entirely full and entirely empty at once, as if her consciousness reverberated with the concussive force of a thousand clanging iron shrine bells, and yet, impossibly, they made no sound.

There was nothing left.

At least, not until a blunt object jabbed forcefully into Ranko's ribcage through the puffy material of her sleeping bag.

"Owww!" Ranko peeked her head out from the rustling sleeve, and it dropped back to the ground with a thud.

"Ohhh, fuck!"

She scrambled out of the sleeping bag on all fours, silently begging her brain to clear the fog faster as she rose to her feet. On the other side of her sleeping bag, three young women in flowing pastel silk attire assumed fighting stances. One was armed with a wooden staff and one with a pair of oxtail sabers with long red tassels dangling from the hilts. The third carried a burning oil torch in her left hand.

"Ranko?! What's the…" Akane poked her head out of the sleeping bag, gasping as she took note of the intruders in their campsite. She began frantically trying to worm her way out of the bottom of the sleeping bag, finding it difficult to navigate her way out of the puffy tunnel in the dark.

Ranko stepped back, beginning a fluid, half-crouched dance. She shook her head forcefully, willing her mind to free itself of the cobwebs of ecstasy and focus on the threat at hand. Once she had, she found it hard not to react to the sharp gravel stabbing at her feet through her thin cotton socks or shiver as the chill breeze whipped past her body which, save her socks, was bare and sweat-slick from the waist down.

"Stay back, Akane!" Ranko commanded without interrupting her capoeira ginga. "Remember, if you touch them, they'll hunt you forever! Let me handle this!" That's right, girls, focus on me, she thought, her eyes locked on the trio of aggressors. Remember me? I'm the one who fucked up your little buffet all those years ago. Don't even worry about Akane.

"Zhè tài róngyìle. Kàn kàn tā. Tā de tuǐ hái zài chàndǒu!" one of the Amazons said, laughing as she gestured to the half-naked woman her companion had roused from bliss with the end of her staff. Neither Ranko nor Akane understood what she had said.

C'mon, girlie, Ranko thought as she danced in place, her eyes focusing on the Amazon that had spoken. Come to Mama. I need to keep you girls at a distance, though, so I'm gonna go ahead and borrow your little stick for a minute.

The staff-wielding Amazon must have perceived Ranko's glare as a challenge, because she stepped forward, jabbing the end of her staff forward at Ranko's center of mass.

Good girl, Ranko thought with a grin as she stepped forward in her ginga, lunging with her hand outstretched toward the ground just beneath the approaching staff. She inverted her body, kicking up with her bare right leg. She yelped as the staff made impact with her thigh, but she bent her knee over the extended end of the weapon to pull it downward.

Now, she thought icily, gimme that. Ranko jumped, spinning her body parallel to the ground. She swung her left leg around and up, kicking up at the staff just centimeters from the Amazon's hands. The torque of both simultaneous motions tore the wooden pole from its owner's grasp, and it spun up into the air away from the Amazon. Ranko pushed off of the ground with her arm, flipping backward and catching the staff as it whipped toward her.

"There! That's better!" Ranko said with a sneer, whirling the staff around her body to get a sense of its weight and balance. The whoosh sound it made as it cleaved the mountain air echoed in the crags of the valley until it sounded as if a helicopter were hovering just overhead. "Now… come get you some of this." She reached forward with her empty hand, curling her fingers to tauntingly draw her attackers in.

You chicks picked on the wrong girl, she thought as she settled into a crane stance on her right leg, the shaft of her confiscated weapon bisecting her field of vision. You snuck up on me, you scared my wife, and to top it all off, you interrupted up a perfectly good fuck. Now, ya gotta pay.

Akane finally freed herself from the sleeping bag just in time to see the light from the torch in the second Amazon's hand glint from the pair of swords the third whipped in her wife's direction. She gasped as one of the blades bit into Ranko's appropriated staff, but a deft twist of Ranko's wrist wrenched the embedded sword out of the attacker's hand. Ranko snapped a quick side kick at the sword-wielding warrior, knocking her back a step.

On her hands and knees, Akane scurried toward the pair of dirt bikes. She grabbed at the zipper of her duffel bag, yanking on it with enough force to dislodge it from its track. Still, she managed to get the nylon bag open and began to rummage through it hurriedly in the dark.

Gotta assume they've been trained in the Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire technique, Ranko surmised as she waited for the next attack. They might have a counter ready for it. Better stick to the exotic stuff. They're less likely to have seen it. Capoeira, muay thai, krav maga, stuff like that. Nothing Chinese.

The shortest of the three Amazons, a stocky, purple-haired woman, approached first. She swung her torch toward Ranko's face. The redhead leaned backward, wincing as the heat source passed overhead. Thanks for getting me used to standing close to fire, Masa, Ranko thought as she hurried to retake her fighting stance. She spun the staff around her back, striking at the girl's ankles and dropping her onto her back.

Out of the corner of her eye, Ranko noticed the green-haired Amazon begin a charge, brandishing her remaining sword. Ranko drove the end of the staff in her hands down hard into the navel of the downed torch-bearing assailant, leaping forward like a pole vaulter and kicking high at the swordswoman.

The Amazon fell in a heap, but before Ranko could regain her footing, the third aggressor - the one that Ranko had disarmed of her staff - crashed into her back. A series of hard punches rocketed into the redhead's ribs, and Ranko collapsed to her knees.

Fuck, Ranko thought. She ground her teeth together hard, resisting the urge to cry out in agony and expose her weakness to her opponents. Can't ask Akane to help me, it'll haunt her forever. Come on, Ranko. Get up. Somehow, some way, get the fuck u…

"STOP!" Akane screamed, holding her fist high over her head. She was grateful that the pronunciation of the word was the same in both English and Chinese, as she had learned somewhere over the Pacific Ocean just the day before when brushing up on Chinese driving laws before renting the dirt bikes.

Clutched in her hand was a small totem-like figure that could have been passed off as a poppet from the old American West. It was made largely of green-dyed straw, and it bore a golden medallion around its neck. The medallion was engraved with a pair of cranes standing back-to-back, divided by a vertical staff with a knobby crook on one end like a shepherd might carry.

The Amazons froze at the sight of it.

"Bǎ tā gěi wǒ!" the Amazon with the sword yelled.

Shaking her head as she frantically scanned the phrasebook in her hand, Akane shouted back in Japanese. "Do any of you speak Japanese?!"

She received no reply.

"English?!" Ranko gasped from her knees, speaking in the language in question.

The swordswoman nodded, holding up her thumb and first finger pinched a few centimeters apart. "Small," she said in English. She pointed to the totem in Akane's hand. "Give."

Nodding in assent, Akane slowly approached, tossing the strange object to the Amazon as soon as she was within range.

The three Amazons huddled, conferring amongst themselves in Chinese. The purple-haired woman lowered her torch closer to the object to cast more light on it.

"A friendship token?! From them?! But how?!" the green-haired girl asked her companions, her eyes tracking rapidly between the doll and the woman who had thrown it.

"It's Elder Koh Lon's glyph," the silver-haired woman said, tapping at the doll's medallion. "It must be old. She died two summers ago."

"I knew I recognized that red-haired girl!" the torchbearer said, motioning toward Ranko. "That's the girl that stole Xian Pu's feast a few years ago!"

"No way, Lo Shun," the silver-haired girl said. "Xian Pu said she killed her in accordance with our laws."

"Are you okay, Ranko?" Akane patted her lover gently on the back, steadying her on her feet.

Ranko nodded despite still wincing and bracing her ribs with her hands. "I'll live," she murmured. "Just stay clear of them. Who knows what they're talking about."

The green-haired swordswoman shook her head. "Once again, Tsai-Lin Zhel, you have everything backwards. She said the man she was supposed to marry was dead. Mu Tsu killed him." She glanced dismissively at the half-naked redhead slumped in Akane's arms. "If the outsider still lives, and she has Elder Koh Lon's friendship token, then Koh Lon must have granted her mercy. As an elder, it was her right to do so. But… what will the other elders think of her being on our lands now? Should we even honor the token, if the person who gave it to them is dead?"

"Um, babe?" Akane glanced down at her wife's nakedness, handing her the pair of jeans that had been hastily discarded during their earlier lovemaking. "You might wanna…"

The redhead blushed deeply, nodding and snatching the pants from Akane. "Oh, shit! Right!" She leaned on her lover's shoulder for balance as she began to step into her blue jeans.

"Why here?!" the swordswoman shouted to the two Japanese girls in English.

"Well…" Akane swallowed hard, glancing nervously at Ranko. "We were in the mood to do a little camping, and we heard there was really good fishi…"

"Jusenkyo!" Ranko shouted authoritatively at the women. "To train!" I love you to pieces, 'Kane, but fuck, you're a terrible liar, she thought.

"Jusenkyo?! The little princess with the sparkly pink fingernails?!" the silver-haired Amazon said in her native tongue with a cackling laugh. "She won't last a day. A thousand yuan says she's a kangaroo by Sunday."

Lo Shun giggled, waving her hand in the air dismissively. "She disarmed you in about two seconds flat, Tsai-Lin Zhel! She held her own against the three of us. She can't be that helpless." She closed her eyes, shaking her head in amusement. "How do you figure a kangaroo drowned at Jusenkyo, anyway? There aren't even any around here."

The green-haired swordswoman stroked her chin thoughtfully. "Plum told me it fell out of a plane on the way to a zoo. I think she's crazy. It would die before it ever drowned. But I don't have a better explanation, either."

Tsai-Lin Zhel shrugged, a befuddled glaze over her eyes. "Maybe somebody rode it there? Like a horse?"

"Where the hell did you get that… whatever that was, Akane?!" Ranko watched with wide eyes as the three Amazons talked amongst themselves in Chinese.

Akane cringed, a wave of guilt crashing over her at the reminder. "Xian Pu's grandmother gave it to me the day they left to go back to China, in case I ever saw you again. She intended it for you. It's supposed to signify that we're friends to the tribe. She meant it as an apology of sorts, I think."

"... Really?! You actually think people ride kangaroos?! I swear, you have got to be the dumbest Amazon in a thousand generations!" The tall, green-haired woman laughed heartily, a mirthful smile on her lips. "You're damned lucky you're amazing in bed, or I don't know if I could even justify keeping you around."

Ranko rolled her eyes, anger flaring in them. "And you never thought to tell me you had the Amazon get out of one asskicking, do not pass go, do not collect ten thousand yen" card in your pocket this whole fucking time?! What happened to no secrets, Akane?!"

The silver-haired girl gasped at her girlfriend, her face turning bright red. "Mao-Tsu Washuu! You dirty little tw… I can't believe you'd…"

"Do you two really have to bring your sex life up every. Single. Patrol?!" Lo Shun groaned, throwing her hands up in exasperation. "Some of us aren't so lucky, you know!"

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you, Ranko. We can talk about it later if you want," Akane said, watching the Amazons warily. She lowered her voice, leaning in closer to her wife. "I just never wanted you to come back here. It was too dangerous. I wanted you to just stay safe with me, and if you thought they would welcome you back here, I was worried you might try."

Tsai-Lin Zhel shook her head, clapping the purple-haired girl on the shoulder. "It's not our fault you're hard up. We've invited you to join us a hundred times. You need to give him up, Lo Shun. Mu Tsu's not coming back. Koh Lon banished him for killing Xian Pu's betrothed. Accept it. Move on. Besides, he only had eyes for Xian Pu, anyway. Live a little, girl!"

"Can we maybe save the propositioning for after we've dealt with the intruders?" Lo Shun stomped her foot impatiently. She turned to Akane and Ranko, switching back into English. "Seven days. Then you go. No more!"

Ranko nodded. Considering I have to be on stage in Xi'an in six, I think we can agree to that. "Seven days. Promise. Hey, just so you know, I… concede the fight. You girls won." She held up her hands in surrender, showing the Amazons her empty palms. "So, I didn't beat you, and you don't gotta, ya know, kill me or nothin', okay?"

The green-haired woman walked closer to Ranko, holding her hands out non-threateningly. She bent down to the rocky ground, picking up her second curved sword and sliding it into the empty scabbard slung over its full mate on her back. She held out her two hands parallel to the ground, palms up, alternatingly raising them up and down like a balancing scale.

"Um, Akane? Is she trying to say I have big tits or something?" Ranko glared at the gesturing woman as she returned to her companions.

Her wife shrugged in response, but her eyes widened with a sudden burst of understanding. "Draw?!" Akane guessed hopefully in English.

Mao-Tsu Washuu nodded, a toothy grin crossing her cheeks. "Draw."

Thank goodness, Ranko thought with a sigh of relief. Last thing I need is a new pack of crazy Amazons chasing me all over hell.

The silver-haired woman walked up to Ranko, holding out her hand. "Give!" she commanded in English.

Ranko nodded, tossing the staff she'd "borrowed" back into its owner's waiting hand. "You got it. You're pretty good, ya know."

"Seven days. We watch." Lo Shun gestured to her eyes with two fingers, and the three women turned to leave the Japanese duo in peace.

* * *

"A draw?! Seriously?! We had her! Wait 'til we tell Xian Pu!" Tsai-Lin Zhel said incredulously as the trio of Amazons reached the top of the hill.

"I know, babe," the green-haired girl said, a mischievous twinkle in her eyes. "But it'd be a hell of a shame to waste a rack like that."