As Neru entered Ruko's coffee house, she paused in the doorway and took a deep breath. Even in the doorway, the air was rich with the aroma of freshly brewed coffee, along with the pleasantly musty smell of the shelves of books Ruko had collected for her customers to browse.
Neru preferred artifically-flavored carbonated high-fructose corn syrup drinks over any coffee, and she rarely read anything without a battery behind it. But she wasn't quite so self-centered that she wouldn't notice all the cozy comforts of Ruko's coffee house. Almost, but not quite.
In fact, Neru thought, she might actually enjoy visiting Ruko's coffee house... if it weren't for the part where she had to visit with Ruko.
Ruko's odd physical appearance no longer intimidated Neru. After she had got used to Ruko's towering height, heterochromia and unique fashion sense, she realized that Ruko was a stereotypical "gentle giant," a dere-dere who wouldn't dream of hurting anyone. In fact, Ruko was one of the kindest, caring and all-around nicest people Neru had ever met. And Neru simply couldn't stand people like that.
Ruko was busy behind the counter, getting ready for her morning customers. "Hello, Neru!" she said with a friendly wave, as Neru walked up. "Are you here for Haku again?"
"Yeah." Neru set a large thermos on the counter. "Fill 'er up."
"It's so sweet how you bring coffee to Haku, the next morning after she's been drinking," Ruko said. "I know she's your roommate, but she must also be a very good friend."
Neru blushed, crossed her arms, turned her head and huffed angrily. "S— stupid Ruko! It's not like *I* care what you think!..."
Tsundere GET, Ruko thought to herself with glee. But she kept a straight face as she opened Neru's thermos. "Do you want the usual? Black coffee straight from the Bunn?"
Neru frowned. "No... Miku sent me a text, this morning. She said that Haku and Meiko were out drinking together, last night, and that Meiko was in really bad shape, this morning. If Haku drank that much too... well, you'd better give me the strongest stuff you've got."
Ruko froze.
Neru raised an eyebrow. "What?" she snapped.
"Did you just say, 'the strongest stuff I've got'?" Ruko asked sternly.
"Well, goodness, let me think," Neru said sarcastically, holding one finger to her mouth. "...yes, I believe my exact words were, in fact, 'the strongest stuff you've got'."
"Are you sure that's what you want?" Ruko asked with genuine concern.
"Let me put it this way." Neru reached up, grabbed Ruko's tie, yanked her down over the counter, and yelled in her face. "GIVE ME THE STRONGEST STUFF YOU'VE GOT, YOU CRAZY WEIRDO FREAK!"
The unflappable Ruko giggled as she pulled back and straightened her tie. "Now, now," she said kindly. "Don't get all heavy and uncool."
And then, Ruko reached down behind the counter, and pulled out a pair of long insulated black rubber gloves and a gray welder's mask.
Neru face-palmed. "It's too early in the morning for this routine," she grumbled.
Ruko tucked her hair behind the mask and pulled it over her face. "*mumble mumble mumble mumble mumble*" she said.
"What?" said Neru.
"*mumble mumble mumble mumble mumble*" Ruko said again.
"WHAT?" said Neru.
Ruko pushed the mask up. "I said," she said patiently, "you might not be able to understand me after I put on this mask."
Neru held her poor head in her hands. "Ngh... I can't understand you with or without it. Just gimme the coffee, wouldja?"
Ruko pulled on the insulated gloves, turned to the many coffee pots behind her, and picked up one large ominous-looking pot. As she turned back to Neru's thermos, Neru instinctively drew back.
Ruko smoothly filled the thermos without spilling a drop. She set the nearly-empty pot back on its burner, put the stopper in Neru's thermos, and then pulled off her protective gear and put it away.
"What is that stuff, exactly?" Neru asked nervously, while Ruko shook her hair loose after wearing the mask.
"It's a blend that I invented myself," Ruko said proudly. "It's brewed from a special coffee bean that was cross-bred with a habanero pepper."
"Wha!... Ruko, you can't cross-breed coffee beans with habanero peppers!"
"You can do anything, Neru," said Ruko. "All you need is an open mind and love in your heart. Oh, and Gumi helped me with the mad science."
Neru gulped. "Gumi? The quite-possibly-insane goggles-wearing girl-genius Gumi?... Is this stuff safe, Ruko?"
"Oh, of course!" Ruko said. "Haku should like it. She's used to drinking coffee. Now, if you were to drink it—"
"As if!" said Neru as she grabbed the thermos. "I hate coffee! It's nasty, an' vile, an' bitter, an'... nasty!"
Ruko took no offense. "Oh, Neru, you have so much to learn," she said softly, "for you are but a child."
"So says the twelve-year-old VIPpaloid," Neru said as she turned to leave. "Put it on Haku's tab, OK?"
"Thanks for your business!" Ruko said cheerfully. "Please come again soon!"
"Oh, what-ever," Neru replied from the doorway.
"I love serving customers," Ruko said to herself, sincerely and incongruously.
Neru grumbled with every step of the short walk from Ruko's coffee house back to the apartment building where she and Haku lived. Dealing with Ruko had used up all of her non-existent patience and left her in an even more foul mood than usual.
And what's up with this coffee, anyway? Neru thought to herself. If Ruko and Gumi came up with this stuff... it might even... explode!
Neru stopped, held out the thermos at arm's length, closed her eyes and said a prayer to NTT DoCoMo, and opened the thermos.
After a few seconds without any explosions, Neru opened her eyes and took a closer look at the open thermos. It looks just like coffee, she thought, and it smells like coffee. Actually, it smells pretty good.
And after another pause, curiousity got the better of her. Just a taste, she thought as she raised the thermos to her mouth. Maybe this stuff tastes better than... than...
Neru took a sip. Wow, she thought with sudden caffeine-fueled enthusiasm, this is good! This is really really really really really really really really really really good!11!1!1!
She took another sip. That's strange, she thought. I'm having trouble keeping my feet on the ground. I could have sworn that gravity was working, just a moment ago.
And then, she took a big long gulp from the thermos. She slowly lowered the thermos and closed it without looking at it. Her eyes had lost focus and glazed over.
OH GOD, thought Neru, I CAN SEE FOREVER!
Momo and Mako were enjoying a morning walk, chatting about nothing in particular, when Momo suddenly paused. "Is something wrong?" asked Mako.
"My sensors have detected... something near us," the android maid Momo said nervously. "Something that might not be entirely human..."
Mako frowned in concentration. "...yes, I can hear it too. It sounds like a swarm of angry mosquitoes sent through a particle accelerator."
Momo gasped and pointed at a rapidly approaching limbless blur of yellow. "Mako-san! It's coming this way!" she cried.
"Stand back, Momo." Using her l33t ninja sk1llz, Mako grabbed the collar of the thing as it tried to pass between them.
"Is that... Neru-san?" asked Momo.
"I am not sure," Mako said, grimacing with the effort to hold the thing down. "Neru? Are you alright?"
"[humorous gibberish that was removed by FanFiction net's filters for no good reason]," said Neru.
"Did you understand that?" Mako asked Momo. "It was not in any language that *I* recognize."
"I'm afraid not," Momo said. "I'm transmitting it to Professor Momose's laboratory for a full linguistic analysis—"
"This is worse than I expected," said Ruko, having seemingly appeared from out of nowhere, as she often did.
"AAIIIEEEEE!" said Momo and Mako. A startled Mako released Neru's collar, and Neru immediately raced away.
"Ruko!" gasped Mako. "...someday, you must teach me how you sneak up behind people like that, despite your height."
"What did you mean when you said 'worse than I expected'?" asked a worried Momo.
"I wasn't expecting any problems at all," Ruko said calmly, "and so any problems at all are worse than what I expected."
While poor Momo wrestled with that logic, Mako took up the questioning. "Do you know what has happened to Neru?"
"It looks like she drank some of my strongest coffee," Ruko said. "She's not used to coffee, and she's such a tiny girl. Coffee that strong would simply overwhelm her metabolism."
"What should we do?" asked Momo.
"Take a nap," said Ruko.
Mako blinked. "...what."
"Neru will be fine. She just needs to burn off her 'buzz'." A suddenly sleepy Ruko stumbled back towards a nearby bench. "Please excuse me. It's time for my mid-morning siesta."
And then, Yokune Ruko, the "girl who sleeps a lot," lived up to her reputation by curling up on the bench like a cat and quickly falling sound asleep.
Momo smiled indulgently. "Dear Ruko-san. She can't fight her own nature. At least her heart is in the right place."
"Given Ruko's gender-related anatomical ambiguity," said Mako, "we should not assume that any part of her is in the right place."
"...good point," Momo admitted.
"In the meantime," asked Mako, "what should we do about Neru?" As if on cue, Neru raced along the sidewalk across the street, leaving cartoon-like footprints of flame in her wake.
"I think Ruko-san is right," Momo said. "We'll just have to leave Neru-san to work it out of her system."
"I hope no one stands in her way," Mako said with ninja-like foreshadowing.
Ted was also out and about, returning home after a French-bread run. Being an uptight and nerdy young male UTAU, he was, as usual, preoccupied with his lack of success with women.
Fer cryin' out loud, Ted thought to himself, man up and ask Kaiko out! Even if she turns me down, she would be as nice about it as she could. And girls aren't that scary—
Ted's inner monologue was interrupted by Neru, who effortlessly knocked him down and ran over him, and then sped away, leaving him sprawled on the sidewalk.
Correction: Most girls aren't that scary, Ted thought as he struggled to stand again. I wonder what that was all about—
He didn't have much time to wonder, as Neru raced over him again from the other direction, leaving him sprawled again.
I think I'll stay down here on the ground for awhile, Ted thought. I'm getting used to having women walk all over me, anyway.
Teto was reading a manga while waiting for her brother. She looked up to see a bedraggled Ted stumbling in. "What happened to you?" asked Teto.
"I was repeatedly run over by a hyper-caffeinated tsundere," Ted said weakly. He dropped his rather badly mangled bag of French bread on the floor.
"You are so fool," Teto said, incongruously yet predictably.
"WHAT?" yelled Ted. "I was repeatedly run over by a hyper-caffeinated tsundere, and *I* am so fool?"
"While those two states might not have a direct causal relationship," Teto yelled back, "they are by no means exclusive!"
Ted hung his head. "I must be a fool," he said sadly, "to expect any sympathy from my little sister Teto."
"Aw, poor ol' Ted," said Teto. "Let's toast up some of that bread, an' you can tell Teto all about it, 'kay?"
"'kay," Ted said meekly.
After returning to her senses and slowing back down to sub-light speed, Neru brought the still-full thermos to her apartment and let herself in.
Neru peered into the still darkness of the apartment. "Haku?" said Neru. "I brought coffee. It's really good coffee... oh, are you still in bed?"
A small miserable pile of what once might have been a Haku whimpered from under its blanket. "...Neru?" it said weakly. "Please kill me now."
"Nah," said Neru. "Try this instead." She poured a measure of coffee into the thermos' cup-lid and held it out towards Haku.
With trembling hand, Haku reached out from under her blanket and took the coffee from Neru. She took a sip from the cup, and then fell silent.
"Well?" Neru asked expectantly.
"Maybe... just maybe," Haku thought out loud, "life is not a miasma of hopelessness and despair from which death is the only sweet relief."
"Told ya so!" Neru said happily.