Ranko leaned back on the bar, surveying the room and waiting for Izumi to finish pouring a dozen shots. “Kinda dead tonight, huh?”

Her sister pulled her brown hair back out of her eyes, bouncing the bottle of peach schnapps across each of the shot glasses. “Yeah, kinda. What’s with the huge table up front, anyway?”

Ranko shrugged, looking over at the twelve women sitting around two round tables that had been pushed together near the front of the stage that was her personal dominion. “They’ve got a bunch of wedding stuff on the table, so I think it might be a bachelorette party or something. Doesn’t seem like they’re having much fun, though.” 

Izzi nodded; after having recently experienced her own bachelorette night, she knew a boring one when she saw it. “At least they’re drinking.” With a shrug, she topped off the last of the shot glasses, beginning to load them onto Ranko’s round tray. “Sucks for them though; that’s a total fail on the maid of honor.” 

With a grin, Ranko scooped up the tray. “Well, they’re not going to have a shit night on my watch.” Izumi smiled warmly. Always the entertainer, that one. It didn’t suck though; not only was the youngest of the five wayward sisters in her adoptive family much happier since she’d started performing, drink sales had been through the roof.

A spring in her step, she carried her tray of libations not to the table that had ordered them, but to the little table next to the stage where her youngest sister maintained the audio equipment. “Hey, Mei… Do me a favor?” Ranko set the tray down on the little table and then leaned over it, whispering something in the ear of the blue-pigtailed girl in the denim overalls. 

Donning the wireless headset microphone carefully to avoid dislodging the ribbon in her ponytail, Ranko strode up the three steps on the right side of the stage. One of the women at the table looked up at her with frustration; she had seen their drinks sitting undelivered on the sound station and yet their server was distracting herself with some other nonsense.

“So, hey! Which one of you’s getting married, anyway?” Ranko sat atop the fuzzy grey casing of a portable amplifier, watching from her perch. Shyly, a blonde at the center of the two tables raised her hand. 

“Great! What’s your name?” Ranko smiled disarmingly, listening intently over the din. “Maki? Right on! Everybody, this is my new friend Maki. Everybody check her out now, she’s gonna be off the market soon!” A chorus of woooos rose from the smattering of revelers from throughout the little barroom. 

Ranko continued to play with the group. “Any of your family with you?” A brunette sitting next to the bride raised her hand. “I’m her big sister!” 

With a smirk, Ranko sat up, perched on her amp. This could be fun. “Oh yeah? So, that means it’s legally your job to embarrass her. You know that, right?” 

The bride hid her blushing face behind an onion ring as her sister clapped. “Hell yeah!” 

The entertainer crossed her ankles, giving an inquisitive look. “So. Tell me. Is Maki any fun?”

Looking over at the bride, the brunette scrunched her nose and shook her head in the negative, eliciting a laugh from the rest of the table. Maki threw a crumpled cocktail napkin in the direction of her sister’s face.

“Well, I’m sorry, ladies. I’m afraid we’re going to need to have ourselves a little intervention.” She hopped down from the amplifier onto her chunky black heels. “See, it’s policy here at the Phoenix that nobody gets out of here without having a good time. So, I’ll see if I can’t give you a hand, Maki.” 

She turned to the audio stand. “Mei?”

The blue-haired girl pushed a few buttons, and an electric guitar began to pour out of the speakers to either side of the stage.

“I come home, in the middle of the night. My mother says, when you gonna live your life right? Oh, mama dear, we’re not the fortunate ones, and girls, they wanna have fu-un…”

Hopping down from the stage and bypassing the steps entirely, Ranko walked to the audio table as she sang, retrieving a silver handheld microphone and her tray of drinks. 

“The phone rings in the middle of the night; my father says, what you gonna do with your life? Oh, daddy dear, you know you’re still number one, but girls, they wanna have fu-un… Yeah, girls just wanna have fun!”

Approaching the paired tables as she approached the bridge of the song and its repetitive chorus, Ranko switched the dynamic microphone in her left hand on, setting her tray at the center of the wooden surface. She picked up one of the drinks, holding it up out of the reach of the raven-haired woman in the red dress at the far end of the table as she reached for it. “Girls just wanna have fun!” 

Ranko pointed the handheld microphone to the woman, waiting with an encouraging smile. It took her a moment, but she tentatively leaned into the microphone and repeated the line. The rest of the women at the table whooped and clapped, and Ranko handed her the shot.

Moving to her left, Ranko repeated the line again in her headset. “Girls just wanna have fun!” Again, she pointed the handheld microphone to the woman in the seat, extracting a repetition of the chorus as her price for the beverage with a grin. 

The pattern continued until she got to the bride, who she skipped over, and finished the rest of the partygoers to the bride’s right. Finally, she came back to the center of the twin tables, offering not a drink, but a hand, to Maki. The bride stood shyly, taking Ranko’s hand, and Ranko led her to the steps on the right side of the stage, crossing her ankles like a model on the runway as she strode. 

“Oh, when the workin’ day is done, oh, girls, they wanna have fu-un… girls, girls just wanna have fun…”

Ranko swung on her heels quickly, the skirt of her silver dress swinging around her hips as she turned to face the bride for the last repetition of the song’s title. “Girls just wanna have fun…”

She turned to face the audience as the music ended. “Everybody! Get your drinks!” She raised the last shot glass in the air, and over a hundred people in the bar turned and raised their glasses. A half-dozen more made their way to the bar to order some. 

“To Maki!” Ranko raised the glass as if she intended to drink it, giggling mockingly and handing it to her blushing companion on the stage as the rest of the bar toasted her. 

Back at the service bar, Izumi leaned to her older sister, who was now frantically mixing four margaritas at once. “Gods, she’s good.” 

Yui snapped her head back, flinging her short blonde bob out of her eyes. “You ain’t lying.”