Characters: Amu Hinamori, Ami Hinamori
Café Buono!: The Heart's Egg (こころのたまご)
It was early in the morning, 7:00 AM on Saturday to be exact. In the Hinamori household, Amu's father was on an extended trip for his photography, so it was just the girls and their mother.
A loud piercing scream shattered the air, reaching the ears of people halfway across the world, screaming, "ONEE-CHAN!"
In Amu's room, Su heard it first, and her egg nearly hit the ceiling before the guardian character popped out and whined, "Quiet down, please! I'm trying to sleep~"
As soon as the sound of the scream reached Amu's ears, the girl screeched and jumped out of her bed in surprise. "W-what was that noise?" Amu asked breathlessly, frazzled from the screech. Her hair was sticking up at odd angles and her eyes were dazed.
The scream sounded again, "ONEE-CHAN!"
Su floated back down and hid her head underneath a pillow from the dollhouse, as Miki muttered curse words from within her egg. Ran remained sleeping however, and Amu jumped and screamed in surprise again, falling off her bed. When she straightened up, she looked around frantically before asking in confusion, "Huh? What's an 'oneechan'?" She repeated the word over and over again before the scream sounded once more and Amu woke up upon realizing, "Oh, 'Onee-chan'!"
Amu then groaned in irritation when the scream sounded again. She marched over to the door, opened it, and shouted, "AMI!-"
"Amu!" The former joker whipped her head around to see her mother, Midori Hinamori, sticking her own head out of her bedroom door and glaring at Amu.
So, a few seconds later, Amu found herself entering her little sister's bedroom to see what the problem was. She had forced Ran, Miki, Su, and Dia to come along, for the reason that she refused to suffer alone.
There, she found Ami, sitting on her bed in her pajamas. The six-year-old was holding something in her hands, and screaming for her sister.
Amu put her hand on Ami's shoulder and forcefully shook her sister back and forth and asked, "Ami, what's wrong?"
Upon seeing her sister, Ami stopped crying, and her eyes lit up in relief as she said, "Onee-chan! Thank goodness you're here, I'm having a crisis?" Before Amu could question her, Ami opened her hands to reveal a round-ish object in her hands and said, "I've given birth, and to an egg, too! It's too early for me to become a mommy!"
"Huh?" Amu took a look at the object in Ami's hands, and recognized it as a guardian egg. The guardian egg was white, but a purple and pink mist design and tiny yellow sparkles made it appear purple-pink. Amu smiled in delight as soon as she recognized it and said, "You've got a guardian egg!"
Ami looked utterly confused as she asked, "Huh? What's that?"
Su popped out from behind Amu's shoulder and said, "We're like little fairies born from your heart's egg!"
Miki poked her head out from behind Su and added, "Your dreams and hopes are what make us, and what trigger us to be born. We're basically born to help you become your would-be/real self."
Ran nodded and waved her pom-poms as she further explained, "Yeah! Only other people with guardian characters or kids with pure hearts can see us, and one is the normal amount each person has."
Realization crossed Ami's face as she looked at Ran, Miki, and Su and said, "So, you guys are Onee-chan's guardian characters? Oh, so no wonder no one else could see you guys!" She looked confused again and asked, "Wait, so why does Onee-chan have so many? And how do you guys do your job? And what happens afterwards? And-"
Miki motioned for her to slow down and said, "Whoa, whoa, one question at a time." She then looked over to Dia.
Dia rose above Amu's head and said, "Amu-chan has four of us, because she's indecisive on what she wants to be. All she knows is that she wants to change herself, so her heart blessed her with four would-be selves narrowed down from millions of other choices." Dia continued on, "We help our bearers in any way we can, performing character changes and transformations when we have to."
Ran grinned and explained, "A character change is when us guardian characters, or sometimes even you, can give you special abilities to become your would-be self temporarily. A character transformation is when we guardian characters merge with you guys to make our power over 120% greater than a character change! Not everyone with a guardian character can transform, it's a special ability."
Dia nodded and added, "Yes, but if our bearers don't believe in us, we disappear, forever. If our bearer doubts their true selves, then their guardian egg or character can turn into an X. As an X, they can rampage and destroy, and only become back to normal if a special transformed character bearer can purify them. When you become an adult and achieve your dreams, then we'll go back into your heart's egg. "
Amu hugged her guardian characters and said reassuringly to Ami, "You'll love them, don't worry."
"That sounds really sad!" Ami said, only remembering the last thing Dia said. She stayed silent for a second before a look of confusion crossed her face, and she asked, "Wait, why does Onee-chan like her guardian characters so much if she's already so cool? And how does being indecisive get you so many guardian characters, if you only have one heart's egg? I don't get it!"
Amu smiled as she reminisced in her fifth and sixth grade year at Seiyo Academy. "Well," she said, "I'm really popular, calm, and cool at school, but I'm really just a normal girl. That cool version of me isn't who I am. I'm a shy and indecisive girl, just because I look cool, doesn't mean that I am. So, I wished to be a different version of myself, like how a bunch of people do."
Amu paused, indicating that she finished talking. Dia noticed that Amu forgot to address Ami's question about indecisiveness, and added, "Yes, absolutely. For the multiple guardian characters, being indecisive means that she can't choose just one, because she doesn't know which one to choose. So, because her heart didn't know which real self to choose, her hearts egg made all of them guardian characters, her true selves." Dia gave a wink as she added, "Besides, just one is boring, don't you think?"
Ami listened to the explanation in awe, before her eyes sparkled as she said, "Wow! Onee-chan is amazing!" She jumped up from her seat on her bed and pointed to the air in excessive determination, "Ami wants to be just like Onee-chan!"
Amu chuckled nervously, "Well, what about the guardian egg you already have?"
Ami, however, ignored her older sister and said to the guardian characters, "I want to see what a character change looks like!"
At that, Ran flew up in excitement and said, "We'll be glad to show you!" Miki and Su floated up beside her and the three chanted separately,
"Hop, Step, Jump!"
"Drew, Draw, Drawn!"
"Chip, Syrup, Whipped cream!"