Rosa Jardine realized her mouth was agape, watching the beautiful woman with long, straight blonde hair hop around the stage in a white jumpsuit on one leg to the disco music playing loudly across the smoky bar. One leg of the jumpsuit was empty, draping loosely from her torso. From the table in the middle of the bar, Sheriff Jebediah Haught rollicked with laughter, slapping the backs of the young officers in light grey uniforms at the table with him. They had various expressions on their face, between awe, awkwardness and bemusement, but as the show continued, they relaxed and started drinking and laughing along with the florid Sheriff. Rosa closed her mouth, and looked back with concern at Kenji Nobu standing behind her. Kenji nodded and took her shoulder to gently guide her towards the door leaving the bar. 

Behind Rosa and Kenji, the bulky figure of Skoaler was pushing both of them forward, showing no interest in the woman on the stage. Skoaler had a determined look on this face and grunted at Rosa and Kenji to keep moving, all the while looking back at the booth in the corner to see his business partner, Hanyo Soon, speaking with the couple who had just come in the bar. Hanyo had an annoyed look on his handsome face, as the couple joined him in the booth. He shot an angry look at Skoaler, who then pressed harder against Kenji and Rosa, making them stumble a step or two forward. 

The dancing girl was pulling seductively on the ring attached to the zipper on the front of her jumpsuit, and started pulling down on it to the loud approval of Sherriff Haught. “Don’t stop there, honey! Show us what else you can pull off!”

The girl spun around on her one leg, her hair sweeping around her waist. She looked down at the group at the table with the Sheriff, and ran her left hand up and down the sleeve of her right arm. As she did with her leg, she grabbed her right arm at the elbow, gave it a quick twist, and pulled out of the sleeve, leaving it drape down the same as her right leg. She grabbed a pole nearby to steady herself, and flung the limb at the table in front of her, making the young men jump back as it scattered the drinks on the table top. The prosthetic rolled to a stop in front of the Sheriff, who was now laughing so hard his beet-red face was pouring with sweat.

“Give her a hand!” he gasped between peals of laughter, and tossed the limb back onto the stage. “Hey, Stumpy! Hey!” he shouted, getting up from his chair and waddled up to the stage. “Lean over and let me help you out, before you don’t have a leg to stand on!”

Just as Jebediah was about to reach up to grab the ring on the end of the zipper on the girl’s jumpsuit, he fell forward onto the stage. He had fallen from the weight of Rosa, who had jumped on his back, pushing him forward. She was pulling on his ears as the Sheriff writhed on the floor of the stage. Rosa hung on to him and trying to hold him down, the print of the crane on her yukata making it look like the bird was angrily trying to beat him down with it’s outstretched wings. The girl in the jumpsuit fell backwards and rolled behind the curtain behind the stage, just in time to avoid the pandemonium that erupted on the bar floor. In just a few leaps, Hanyo was over the booth’s table with the couple sitting on each side of him, and appeared at the stage in a flash. He sidestepped the officers rushing to assist the Sheriff, who was now sputtering in a rage, trying to figure out who was on his back. Before Jebediah could turn over, Hanyo pulled Rosa off his back and was lifted away by Skoaler, leading Kenji and Hanyo in a hasty exit from the chaos in the bar.

The whole group of them ejected themselves from the front door of the bar, and Hanyo shouted to Kenji, “We gotta get out of here fast! Do you have a fast ride to meet us at my plane?” Kenji pointed to the silver Datsun 280Z parked behind the bar, with the heads of a Husky and and a young boy poking up from the rear seat to see what the commotion was all about.

Rosa was still being carried by Skoaler as he lumbered over to the rows of motorcycles, and caught sight of the boy, yelling out to him, “Theo! Get down! Put on your seatbelt, now!” 

Hanyo was on his bike and starting it, shouting to Skoaler and Rosa, “Here, you come with me! Hurry, let’s go! Skoaler, you lead the old man to the airstrip!”

Skoaler dropped Rosa on the seat behind Hanyo, and she wrapped her arms around his jacketed, narrow waist. Skoaler jumped on his motorcycle and kicked down on it, starting it up and shooting it over to the silver sports car that Kenji had gotten in to and was starting up. Hanyo started up his bike, and with all his strength kicked at the row of bikes next to his, making them fall over so that that last few fallen bikes blocked the Sheriff’s car at the end. “That should slow him down!” Hanyo then lurched out of the parking lot onto the highway with Rosa holding tight onto him. 

Skoaler was about to follow his partner, when a side door of the bar opened, and the pretty young woman in the jump suit came hobbling out, having re-attached her leg, and came up to the Datsun carrying a black, square-edged suitcase with her one arm. She shouted at Kenji, “Wait for me!” Kenji reached over and pushed open the passenger door and she fell in to the seat, putting the suitcase at her feet and reached over with her left arm to pull closed the car door. Skoaler revved his motorcycle loudly in warning, as Sherriff Haught stumbled out of the bar, gun drawn. Skoaler raced out of the parking lot, followed by the silver Datsun, all of them spitting gravel as they sped out onto the highway to the sounds of impotent gun shots behind them.

Theo was pressed into his seat, wide-eyed and holding tightly onto the Husky’s neck, who was sitting protectively across the boys lap. “What happened? Where’s Mom? Where are we going?” he asked excitedly and then looked over at the strange woman in the passenger’s seat, “Who are you?”

Kenji focused his attention on the motorbike in the car’s headlights ahead of him on the dark desert highway and didn’t answer the boy’s questions right away until he could glance at the rearview mirror to see that they weren’t being followed yet by the Sheriff yet. “Your mother is ahead of us on the road, and to be honest, I don’t really know where we’re going.” Kenji looked over at the woman sitting next to him in the car, who was zipping up her jumpsuit, “And I don’t really know much about you either, my dear.”

The woman pulled her long, straight dirty-blonde hair to one side over her shoulder and turned around to face Theo and said with an open-hearted smile, “My name is Jola Winters. Otherwise known as ‘Stumpy’, but I’d rather you didn’t call me that. I’d shake your hand, but I haven’t put mine on yet.”

*** This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. ***