Author's Notes: I sorta hate jarring everyone with these at the beginning of every chapter, so I'm just going to drop them, the disclaimer, and the warnings here once and for all. If you don't care, onward!

Disclaimer: I don't own Tokyo Mew Mew. Hell, I don't even own the computer I wrote this on. I guess I own whatever minor characters that might show up for a bit, but if you want to use the lady at the gas station in chapter 5 I reaallly don't mind.

Pairings: The main pairing is Pie/Kish, with secondary IchigoxMasaya, TartXPudding, ambiguous Mint/Zakuro and RyouxLettuce (well, it starts off ambiguous); and one-sided KishxIchigo. There's lots of platonic/friendship pairings, too - I'm not going to list all of those, because those aren't the pairings that will get me killed.

Formatting: The document manager hates anything other than that epic looking grey bar, and I hate that grey bar, so scene changes are denoted with a '-oOo-'. And yes, English spelling of names. I first read the manga, so unfortunately Quiche will always be Kish to me. My bad. The first two chapters are in Pie's POV only; afterwards it switches from from Pie, Kish, and a general 3rd person view of the other characters.

Warnings: Eventual lime, and language. Not too much profanity, but seeing as the characters themselves let out a fair amount of 'damnit's and kuso's (Tart needs his mouth washed out with soap) there will be some. Also, I'm not sure whether I manage to keep everyone in-character. With the changes Pie will definitely behave in a manner that seems OOC but makes sense given the situation - but I want to keep him as IC as possible, even with that changes taking place. If I fail too hard at it, let me know.

Notes: The chapter titles are based on the life cycle of plants, minorly altered in order to give me a few more titles to work with. The story surrounds the emotional development of Pie and the effect it has on everyone else, so I wanted to go with the whole 'growth' motif. I apologize if that's annoying somehow.

I'm basing this mainly on the anime, with a few tidbits of the manga thrown in (namely the 'midget' argument between Ichigo and Tart. Meaning there'll be episodes referenced - the first two chapters directly reference episodes 37-39 before breaking away from canon for good, although I will reference 40 and possibly a few more in passing. I didn't want to dwell on those too long, as I imagine that if you're reading this you're already familiar with the series and the anime episodes, so when I do reference them I sorta skim over the events of the episode. I don't really stick to the actual script, though. *sheepish*

I also reference other series - it's not a direct crossover by any means, but I do make allusions to other magical girl teams based in other areas. Because it's fun!

Does this count as AU? I'm not sure. I do take liberties with how the Deep Blue issue gets resolved.

And yes, it is Pie/Kish; it seems that both characters leave Earth with scars (Kish doesn't even get as much as a goodbye, and Pie leaves having been betrayed by the guy he was loyal to the entire time - hell, Tart's the only one that leaves unscathed.) I wanted to work it out so that everyone gets a happy ending...maybe? Plus, there is the discrepancy between episodes 38 and 39 - 38 leaves off with Kish apparently having a wound that could kill him and Deep Blue telling them to leave him be, but somehow he manages to get better by the time episode 40 rolls around. He had to get that treated somehow, right? : )

Sorry if the pairings offend anyone - it's more shonen-ai than actual yaoi, although there'll be slight lime later on. Please don't leave me any flames for it; don't like the pairing, or hate Masaya so much your eyeballs are going to boil out of your head? Please go read something you'll actually enjoy. :D

Thanks for reading, criticism and commentary is welcome! I want to get better at this writing business!