Singularity

You know how some of the stupider kinds of humor fics claim to be written at 3 AM or while sugar high? Well, this fic was primarily written on a three-hour bus ride from my house back to my college. Since that's the opposite of a sugar high, you know this is some classy fic. XD

It was created for Rhia-chan8910's OC Oneshot Contest, and was inspired by Sailor Nothing, Cherrie-S. xx's "Searching for Solace," and the Emerald Twilight saga of Green Lantern comics.

Disclaimer: Tokyo Mew Mew belongs to Rei Yoshida and Mia Ikumi, but Nira and Chou are mine.

Aohama Nira slumped down against the side of the dumpster. Her kusari slipped from her hands, sickle and chain clattering to the ground and then disappearing in a flash of blue-green light. Nira gulped garbage-scented air and started checking for injuries. There was a long (but shallow, thankfully) gash along her left forearm, and she was pretty sure she was going to have a black eye in the morning.

It's not that bad, then, she thought, and then immediately felt like an idiot. She shouldn't measure success by whether she broke any bones! Ugh, she just felt sore all over, not to mention bone-tired. She gripped the pendant hanging from her choker, took a deep breath, and detransformed. It was cold for April, and she was shivering in the tank top and shorts that currently constituted her civilian clothes. That was another concession she hated having to make: The stupid, skimpy civilian outfits. But the cold was still better than bleeding through a long-sleeved shirt.

She hated every part of this. The hours, the fighting, the ridiculous costume, the secrecy... Absolutely everything. She couldn't even talk to anyone about it—even if she hadn't been sworn to secrecy by that flying ball of tinfoil, who would believe her? No, there was nothing about being a superhero that she enjoyed.

Hissing with cold and soreness, Nira trudged home. Her house was quiet, which meant it must be later than she thought. Her brother stayed up late, but she was apparently up later. Climbing in through her window meant putting her weight on her wounded arm. She gritted her teeth and did it. Once inside, Nira flopped down on her bed. A little cat-eared metal ball whizzed into her view, chirping incessantly.

"Not now, R2," she groaned, turning away from him.

"How'd it go?" R2 pressed squeakily.

"What do you want me to say, you stupid wad of foil? I beat the chimera, destroyed the parasite. I'm gonna get a black eye, and I don't even have the energy to go clean out this cut so it doesn't get infected. Just let me sleep."

R2 continued chirping at her until she got up from her (soo comfortable, though she felt like one big bruise) bed and padded over to the bathroom to sterilize and bandage her injuries.

By the time she woke up in the morning, it wasn't morning any more. If her parents had tried to wake her up (which she doubted; they were busy people, and they usually left before she was awake anyhow), she'd slept though it. Slept though too much school, too—her clock told her that it was just after noon. Ah, well, no point in going if she'd already missed half the day. Groggily, Nira stumbled over to the bathroom. Her prognosis the night before had been accurate: she was sporting quite a shiner. When she unwrapped the bandages from her arm, though, the cut looked clean. It's not so bad, then, she thought.

"R2, are you sure you don't have any records on Mews before me? I mean, there must have been some, right?" she asked while fixing herself some brunch.

"Negative, Nira. My memory reserves are incomplete; I still do not have access to that information."

"Aw, c'mon! You have to know something. Like, where did you come from? Who built you?"

"I do not—"

"—Have access to that information. I know," she said, waving a dismissive hand. She sighed. "You're not a very helpful little robot, you know that?"

As soon as school was out, she had R2 shrink to cellphone-charm size and headed out with him in her purse. The subway ride to her friend's house was a long one, but that was good—it meant that Chou would be home by the time she got there, and gave her a chance to go over her crazy plan again. Nira reached a hand into her purse and gripped her cellphone reassuringly. R2 was definitely still there. Good.

Walking into Chou Kiyamori's room was like walking into the future. Nira thought she was lucky that her parents bought her a little pocket laptop, but Chou's computer took up almost an entire wall, casting its blueish glow over the whole room. A desk, covered with wires and sundry computer guts that Nira didn't recognize, covered the whole opposite wall.

"Your dad let me in," Nina explained, shutting the door behind her.

"Good for him," Chou muttered, not looking up from whatever she was typing. "What's up, Nira-chan? We haven't talked in forever, and you weren't even in school today."

"I'll explain if you stop doing that. You know it creeps me out."

"Doing what?" Chou asked. Nira couldn't tell if she was being sarcastic or was really oblivious. Either was a possibility with Chou.

"Carrying on a perfectly normal conversation without looking up from that screen. It's freaky!"

"Aah, you're just jealous of my ability to multitask, Nira-chan." Nonetheless, she saved and closed out of... Whatever she was doing. Computer stuff had never been Nira's strong suit.

"Mm, you know I am," she replied, sharing a laugh with her friend. "It's all I dream about."

"Seriously, though, what's up? And what the heck happened to your eye?"

"I wanna tell you, but you have to promise not to flip out or tell anyone, okay?"

Chou's eyes lit up.

"Ooh, big secret? I swear I won't say anything!"

"All right." Nira took a deep breath and pulled out her phone. "See this little guy?"

"Ooh, it's cute! But it's a cell phone charm. So what?"

Without a word, Nira returned R2 to full size. He fluttered out of her hand before noticing that someone else was in the room. When he saw Chou, his mechanical eyes seemed to widen, and he stopped flying, just letting himself plummet until Nira caught him.

"Okay, what was that?" Chou asked with a laugh. "Some new kind of virtual pet?"

"No, he's like an actual, talking robot. I guess he's shy around other people. Aren't you, R2?" She mockingly stroked his back with one finger.

"You should be more shy about jeopardizing your identity like this!" R2 squeaked, unable to resist Nira's bait. Abruptly, he realized what he had done (again), but Nira grabbed him before he could shut down.

"Oh no. You've already blown your cover, so you may as well help me explain this!"

"Help you explain what?" Chou said, still smiling broadly. "If this is some kind of joke, Nira-chan, you've totally got me."

"I don't even know how to explain it. R2?" But the little robot, still apparently upset that it had been tricked into talking, said nothing. "Poor baby, I think he's sulking." Nira sighed. "Okay, Chou-chan. You still promise not to freak out?" Chou nodded quickly. "Mew Nira power!"

In a flash of turquoise light, Nira's brown, wavy hair turned dark green and the sweats she'd thrown on changed into a blue-green swimsuit with two suitcoat-like tails hanging off the back. Royal blue fins sprang out of her forearms, and matching gills fluttered to life on her neck.

"Woah, what are you?"

"I guess it's called a Mew Mew," Nira explained over R2's insistent chirping. "I'm some kind of superhero. I fight aliens and crap."

"Oh yeah! I read about you... I think? Unless there are other superheroes running around Tokyo?"

"I don't think so. But that's actually what I wanted to ask you about. This little guy," she rapped R2 lightly on the head with her knuckles, "won't tell me anything about where these powers come from. I was hoping you could, like, hack him or something and find out if he knows more than he's telling me."

"Woah. Sorry, this all just takes a little getting used to. You know, superheroes, aliens..."

"I could detransform if it'd help you concentrate."

"Don't you dare! This is the coolest thing I've ever seen, and if you change back I might think I dreamed it all."

"Ugh, trust me, it is not the coolest thing. Look how beat up I am, for one thing! I'm pretty much failing school, I haven't gotten a good night's sleep in ages, I never see you any more..."

"Okay, maybe not the coolest thing ever."

"Well, hopefully, you can find a way to fix me. Can you break into R2?"

"Does he have a USB port or anything?" Chou inspected him critically while he tried to avoid her gaze.

"Uh... Yeah, I think so."

Over R2's protests, Nira flipped the little robot over and pressed a seam on his bottom. A USB port popped open. Chou plugged him into her monster of a computer.

"Man, for such a cool piece of tech, this little guy's got, like, no security on him. Let's see, secret files, secret files..."

Chou lapsed into silence, but Nira couldn't tell if that meant that she'd found something, or if she was just really interested in whatever made him tick. After what felt like an hour of this (but was, in truth, no more than ten minutes), Nira was getting fidgety. She told herself to relax, that if Chou found whatever R2 was hiding, maybe Nira wouldn't have to fight this fight any more.

"Got it!" Chou said at last. "The most heavily-encrypted this looks like a video file, but even that... I don't think the little guy could have accessed it internally, but the encryption was a joke from outside. Whoever programmed him, they didn't do a very good job of hiding stuff."

"Can you play the video?"

Chou snorted.

"What do you take me for?"

The video footage was shaky, and shot in grainy, washed-out color that made Chou cringe. But what Nira noticed right away is that there were five girls like her, fighting side by side. A pink one, a blue one, a purple one, a yellow one, and a green one—but bright green, not the turquoise of Nira's costume. The sound was even worse than the video quality, but it sounded like the five other Mews were laughing and joking with each other as they fought the monsters. Nira immediately ached for that kind of companionship, so different than her own lonely tenure as protector of Tokyo.

"Why don't we remember any of this?" Nira asked as she watched the Mews battle a monster atop Tokyo Tower.

"I don't know. I mean, you're all over the crackpot-ier kinds of news outlets, and you haven't done anything nearly this public, have you?" Nira shook her head

As the footage whirred on, the battles got longer, harder—more familiar to Nira. Through it all, though, the five Mews worked as a perfect team, enjoying each other's company even as their situation grew more and more desperate.

Then, all of a sudden, everything changed. Even through the terrible video quality, Nira and Chou could see that the green Mew's uniformed changed, lengthening and turning a deep blue. She turned on the others, and they fell one by one, until only the pink Mew, who seemed to be the leader of the group, remained. The pink girl fought valiantly, but she was obviously the slower and weaker of the two, and eventually, she met her end on the (former) green girl's sword.

Then the video abruptly cut away from the carnage to a still shot of a blonde man in some kind of metallic room.

"If you're watching this video, whoever you are, I am in all probability dead. My name is Shirogane Ryou, and I created the Mew Project along with my associate, Akasaka Keiichiro. We nearly saved Tokyo—but, ah, I'll get to that in a moment. For now, know this: You, whoever you are, are the last of my creations, and Earth's last hope. The others are dead. I am as well, by the time you are watching this. I do not know who you are, but I know this: It's all up to you now.

"Tokyo Mew Mew was created to protect the city—and, indeed, the world—from an invading alien race. By the time you see this, you have no doubt become aware of their servants, the chimera anima. But I... I miscalculated. One of my girls, Midorikawa Retasu, went rogue. Slaughtered the others. In all likelihood, she is coming for me next.

"You probably want to know why you've never heard of Tokyo Mew Mew. We were, after all, pretty famous back in our day. But no one must know that we almost destroyed the world. To that end, I created a machine to remove all memories of us from the populace, and a computer virus to wipe out all other traces of our existence. For all intents and purposes, we no longer exist. You, whoever you are, are the only thing standing between the Earth and those who would enslave it.

"I don't know how much time I have left. The best I can do is attach this video, along with a brief record of our history, to R2000, and hope that you find it before its too late. I hope that, by the time you find this, you're ready for a war. Midorikawa will find you, and if you're not prepared, she will kill you. Good luck, whoever you are, and may God have mercy on both our souls."

After the video cut off, both girls were silent for a moment.

"You can't go through with this, you know," Chou said flatly.

"What are you talking about? You heard what that guy said!"

"I did. Did you? Someone's trying to kill you, Nira-chan. She killed a whole team of people who had the same powers you had: What kind of a chance do you think you've got? Besides, these 'Tokyo Mew Mew people' don't sound any better! Can you imagine brainwashing an entire country, just to cover up the fact that you screwed up? If this Shirogane guy hadn't been so concerned with covering this whole thing up, we could have gotten military support! You might not have even gotten this black eye!"

"But..."

"No buts! We're calling the police, and you're going to show them everything you just showed me! I don't have many friends, Nira-chan, and I'm not going to lose you because some dead guy was too chicken to take responsibility for his actions! Didn't you say you wanted to get out of this? We'll go get the police right now."

She hurried out of the room; Nira didn't follow. Soon enough, this would all be over. Nira could hand her crushing responsibilities off to people who actually had the knowledge and manpower to deal with invasions and finally start putting her life back together.

It all sounded so good. She took a deep breath.

"R2, do you have any of that mind-wiping mojo Shirowhatever was talking about?"

"I... Apparently I do have access to that information. Affirmative, though I obviously lack the power to affect the whole country."

"Can you affect this whole house?"

"Easily."

"Good. Do it."

Through the open door, she heard Chou crumple to the ground. She hurried over to her friend, who had fallen scant feet away from the phone. Nira flipped though the recent call list and breathed a sigh of relief. Chou hadn't made it.

Nira hefted Chou onto her back, and tucked the unconscious girl into bed.

"How long before she wakes up?"

"Several hours. You know..."

"What, R2?"

"The mindwipe may be rendered ineffective from prolonged contact with you. If you don't want Chou to remember, you're going to have to stay away from her."

"Yeah, I figured as much."

Willing herself not to cry, Aohama Nira detransformed, slipped out her former friend's open window, and trudged home.