Standing atop the jagged rock outcropping, Ranko took in her surroundings from her elevated perch. She wore a black tee shirt with a khaki vest over it and a pair of tight, and very short,  khaki shorts. She wasn’t sure why they’d put so many pockets on them; there wasn’t even enough give in the garment to get her hand in one. Her hair protruded from under the beige fedora she wore in twin braids that hung in front of her shoulders, each secured at the end with a thin black ribbon. She shrugged her shoulders, adjusting the weight of the leather bundle strapped to her back. 

“You guys about ready,” she called down from her vantage point some five meters off the ground. 

“Just about,” Yuji Oe called to her from his folding canvas director’s chair. As he did, a slender, severe-looking British man in a green polo shirt and khaki pants walked in front of the cameras, holding up a large whiteboard above its head. The top two-thirds of the placard was dominated by the logo for Ranko’s band, and the bottom third was a grid in which details of the filming had been marked. It included the date, the shot number, and the name of the video being recorded.  

“And… Action!” 

A unseen speaker began to loudly play the scene’s accompanying verse, and Crash’s voice rained down all seventy-four of the personnel in the cavernous soundstage in Yokai Records’ back lot. The vocals were included, as the production crew was not recording audio. They would add the backing track from the studio recording in editing.

“I’ll explore a deep, dark jungle. Search the depths of every cave. Sure, I’m scared, but you fill my heart up enough to make me brave!”

Ranko looked around in all directions, leveling her right hand above her eyes. Anyone who had actually traveled on foot as much as she had would know the gesture was somewhat pointless while wearing a hat designed to shield one’s face from the sun, but the scene had been scripted and she’d seen no real need to fight them on it. She turned her head, gazing briefly at the painted backdrop of mountains with a dense forest in the valley between them and the peak on which she was supposed to be alighting.

“I’m gonna go on an adventure. I’m gonna cast away my fears. Gonna make myself your equal if it takes a…” 

Ranko reached over her shoulder into the black leather quiver at her back, withdrawing one of the five flighted arrows protruding from it. Nocking it against the short black compound bow in her left hand, she drew back the string, aiming high above the cameras. 

“CUT! CUT!” It hadn’t been Yuji’s voice that yelled up at her, but that of the pencil-pusher looking dude holding the whiteboard.

Ranko groaned, rolling her eyes and releasing the tension on the bowstring. “Now what’s your problem, man?!” The studio representative hadn’t been introduced to her, but he’d been talking down to her and getting on her nerves all evening. 

“Girl, you should know better! Playing around with a weapon like that on a set? It’s dangerous! If we needed to shoot the arrow, we’d bring in a weapons professional. People train for years to be able to do this sort of thing properly!”

The costumed redhead gave a frustrated shrug. “I wasn’t gonna let it go! Why the hell you gonna give me a bow in the shot if you don’t want to see it?!”

The balding man in the green polo slumped. Working with kids, I swear! “We do want to see it! We just don’t want to see it handled that way except by an expert! You got it?!”

Ranko gave a little salute over her eyebrow with two extended fingers touched to her temple, the disdain in her eyes partially obscured by the gesture. “You got it, boss! Experts only.”

“Thank you.” He pulled a black dry-erase marker from the pocket of his shirt, incrementing the shot number on his placard from 82 to 83. 

Yuji side-eyed the unknown producer from his canvas chair. “Okay, if you’re done, can I direct my shoot now, please?” Apparently Ranko wasn’t the only one the new producer was annoying.

The balding man answered by holding up the placard above his head again. “Okay,” he yelled, “Worthy of You music video, shot eig…”

THWACK!

The startled man yelped, rocking backward with a sudden impact. He lowered the placard, which seemed to have been the source of both the noise and the force. Protruding through the dead center of the three-centimeter pink heart at the end of Ranko’s signature, the shaft of a black arrow flighted in red plastic still wobbled slightly. 

“JESUS CHRIST! WHAT THE FUCK?!” The terrified man glared incredulously up at the teenage archer atop her perch. 

“Experts only, right?” Ranko scoffed dismissively. Showed you, asshole. 

Yuji said nothing, but he couldn’t help but laugh and shake his head. There’s our little fireball. I was wondering how much further he could push her before she started doing Ranko things.

“Get the fuck down here right now, girl!” The irate producer threw the impaled placard to the ground, pointing to the concrete floor at his feet.

Careful, douchebag. I’ve still got four more arrows, after all. Ranko stepped forward, easily landing on the soundstage floor despite the five-meter drop. 

“Get your ass in here!” The producer stalked toward a small office tucked in the corner. “And somebody fucking get Amaya down here, now!”

Ranko cringed. Damn, he’s really pissed. Not relinquishing her weapon, she followed slowly behind him. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of Shinji giving her a disgusted shake of his head. 

Before the reverberation of the slammed door stopped shaking the framed posters on the office’s front wall, the producer whirled on Ranko. “What in the living fuck is wrong with you?! Are you out of your sodding mind, girl? You SHOT AT ME!” 

Ranko rested her fist on her hip, the daggers in her own eyes matching his. “First off, easy on the girl shit, yeah? You’ve been calling me that all day, and it’s getting really fucking old, man. What’s your problem with me, anyway?! And second, I didn’t shoot at you. I shot at a sign.”

“How in the fucking fuck am I supposed to know that?!” The enraged man shook his arms above his head apoplectically. 

The songstress he berated gave him an arrogant smirk. “You’re still breathing, ain’t ya?”

“This is unbelievable! How am I supposed to…” He stopped mid-sentence as the office door opened again, admitting Amaya Uyehara. The green-suit-clad executive stalked between the two combatants. “Okay, would someone like to tell me what’s going on here? Todd, what’s all this about?!”

The raging man pointed at Ranko, spittle flying from his mouth as he spat his reply. “Your little hellion shot a goddamn arrow at me! You’ve got to control her, Amaya! This is fucking ridiculous!”

The studio executive turned her head to the still-armed songstress, the bow she gripped lending credibility to Todd’s story. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

Ranko shrugged, now entirely disregarding Todd. “Maybe stop hiring sexist pencil-dicks to work on my stuff? After Takao, you guys should know that shit ain’t gonna fly with me, and technically, my contract says I can boot anybody I don’t wanna work with. And if you’re gonna do it anyway, it’s probably not a good idea to give me a weapon first.”

Amaya sighed, shaking her head and supporting it in her palm. “Ranko, this stuff has got to stop.”

“Alright, alright. I want this dude gone, but make that happen, and I’ll see about keeping a lid on my projectiles.” Ranko’s focus was entirely on Amaya even as she motioned to Todd with her right arm, having set her bow down in one of the empty office chairs. 

Amaya sighed, closing her eyes and breathing deeply, steeling herself. “Sit down, Ranko.”

Ranko moved her bow and sat in the chair slowly, her growing anxiety on display as her eyes reconnected with Amaya’s and she saw the angst in them. There was a finality to it. Oh, shit. I might have really stepped in it here. 

“Look, Ranko. It’s not just today. You keep pushing, and pushing, and pushing the boundaries with us. We asked for more upbeat, radio-safe bubblegum pop songs for the second album, and you give us friggin’ You Don’t Know Me? And let’s not even talk about you hearing our instructions to keep your engagement a secret, and then announcing it on national television two weeks later! Plus, the stunt you pulled on the Sneak video, all of it. We’ve given you as much slack as we can, but we just can’t tolerate this kind of defiance any longer.”

“Amaya, are you…” Ranko swallowed hard, squirming in her seat as anxious sweat dripped down her sides. “...firing me?”

Todd smirked victoriously. Not so tough now, are you, girlie?

Amaya sighed, her posture slumping. She really hated confrontation, especially with someone who, despite her flagrant disobedience and occasional diva attitude, she had come to consider a friend. “Not yet. But Ranko, this bullshit ends now. Do you understand me? We don’t just make up rules to make your life miserable. We’ve been doing this for a while, and we have a pretty good idea what we’re doing. Everything we’re doing, we’re doing because we want to make you more successful. Everything we can do to maximize your image helps you, it helps your band, it helps us, it helps your fans, everybody. I know sometimes it can feel like being famous makes you the queen of the world, but it has its uncomfortable drawbacks, too, especially for someone as young as you.”

“O… okay.” Ranko nodded slowly. Fuck, that was close. 

“I can’t believe this! You’re not going to fire her? Come on!” Todd glowered, gesturing wildly to the seated redhead.

“No, Todd, I’m not going to fire her. Not today.” Amaya turned to the incensed Brit. “But I am firing you.”

“What?! She fucking shot at me, Amaya!” The balding man with the goatee stomped his foot behind the cheap aluminum office desk. 

Amaya put up her hand, dismissing any further discussion. “Ranko has said she wants you off the project, and she’s right, her contract gives her that power. But even if it didn’t, Yuji also says he wants you gone. You’ve been abusive to the whole team, and that, we will not tolerate here. I’m sorry, Todd, but please get your things.”

The man stomped around the desk, giving Amaya a bit of a shove to clear a path for himself. “You’ll be hearing from my lawyer!” He crashed through the door, slamming it behind himself hard enough for the framed Rise poster mounted on the wall to fall to the floor.

“Please,” Amaya said, smirking as she turned back to Ranko. “Like he can even afford one.” 

Ranko stood, sighing contritely. “Look, Amaya, I really am sorry. I’m just… I’ve spent my whole life being told what I can’t do, and hiding who I am, and now I feel like I’m finally coming into my own and I want to just be me for once. But I’ll try to rein it in. Please don’t let me mess this up for the guys. They’ve worked so hard.”

The woman in the green skirt suit nodded in understanding. “I get it, Ranko. I really do, more than you think. But that’s got to be up to you now. There are some games we still have to play in this industry, especially as women, even if they aren’t very much fun. And that reminds me – while I’ve got you in the principal’s office, there’s something else I need to talk to you about.”

“Do I need to sit back down?” Ranko took a step back toward her chair, her nerves evident in her eyes and mannerisms both. What now?

Amaya rolled her eyes, half-sitting on the credenza against the little office’s side wall. “I can’t believe they’re making me even bring this up. But apparently some alarmist dick-for-brains in our marketing department has noticed a peculiarity in your lyrics they asked me to poke you about.”

Ranko scoffed, shaking her head. “Yeah, I know. The foul language is a bit strong sometimes. I promise, just as soon as I run out of disrespectful jerks to stick sonic skewers through, I’ll try and clean it up some.”

“It’s… not that.” Amaya blushed. “I’m sorry, I feel so ridiculous even having to talk about this, especially when I just chewed you out for announcing your engagement. Apparently, the marketing folks are concerned that some of your songs seem… how do I say… vague about…”

Ranko groaned impatiently from her seat, the bow now laying across her lap. “Amaya, you’re killing me! Just spit it out, please? I’m sweating bullets… arrows over here!”

The executive’s forehead dropped into her palm, embarrassed by the duty that had fallen to her. “Even after Ring, Ring, Ring, they’ve noticed that you never explicitly call out in your love songs that they’re written about a boy, and they’re concerned that if that trend continues, some people might eventually get the absurd idea that you… prefer girls.”