The Perfect Country and Western Song
This was written for Safaia Bara's Songfic Contest. If K.O. thought that hers was the last entry, she underestimated my powers of procrastination! Sadly, though, that procrastination means that this story is nowhere near as fleshed-out as I'd like it to be. I may update it someday with more detail in the second section. I guess it depends if anyone wants me to.
Anyhow, this fic is ridiculous. If you demand realistic time frames, you should probably leave now, because this will only make you mad. And it's a tiny bit of a filk to boot, though most of the lyrics used are correct, unlike in my usual filks. Also: I don't listen to much country music, but the song I picked is more than 25 years older than any of the other songs. Thanks for making me feel old, guys.
You know who should feel old? Safaia! Not only is she actually older than me, but it's also her birthday on the 28th! Happy birthday, Safaia!
Disclaimer 1: Tokyo Mew Mew belongs to Reiko Yoshida, Mia Ikumi, and Kodansha Ltd.
Disclaimer 2: "You Never Even Called Me by My Name" belongs to Steve Goodman, David Allen Coe, and Columbia Records. Despite what this fic suggests, it was written by Steve Goodman and John Prine, not Kish, Ichigo, or me.
Kish peered through the leafy canopy at Mew Ichigo and her little human friends as they chatted on a park bench. He didn't recognize the other two girls—a blonde and a brunette—but then, all humans look the same to him. Ichigo seemed to like them, though, so he floated as close to the trio as he could without being seen. Maybe he could find a way to use this pair of humans against Ichigo.
"Like, American country music? Why?" the blonde one asked. Ichigo blushed prettily.
"Well," she muttered, sounding deliciously meek. "I don't like it that much..."
"Aw," the blonde replied, patting Ichigo on the shoulder. "I was just teasing you, Ichigo-chan. You shouldn't worry so much about what other people think." She grinned at Ichigo, who rolled her eyes.
"She wouldn't have to worry if you didn't tease her so much, Moe," the brunette said.
"Can we talk about something else?" Ichigo groused, bowing her head and covering her lovely hair with her hands.
"Absolutely not!" the blonde (Kish had already forgotten what the other one had called her) laughed. "Not until you're comfortable admitting the stupid music you like!"
"Fine," Ichigo grumbled. "I like American country music. Happy? I have to go, guys. I'm going to be late for work." She slipped off the bench and walked away toward Café Mew Mew.
As a newly-formed plan stewed in his brain, Kish saw his chance. Once Mew Ichigo was well out of sight, he swooped down and clapped his hands over her two little friends' mouths. They squealed and struggled, but he kept his hold on them.
"Don't scream," he hissed, moving his hands to encircle their waists. The brunette opened her mouth, but he glared at her, and she closed it silently. Without much effort, he floated upward, still carrying a human in each arm."All right, girls. Let's go."
o()o
As soon as the three of them touched down at the ship, Kish led his two captives inside.
"Pai! Pai, do you have the Earth internet working yet?" he called. Pai, looking a little frazzled, leaned out of one of the ship's interior doorways.
"Just barely. What—" The taller alien paused, blinking. "Are those humans? What were you thinking, bringing humans here?"
"They're going to help me learn about Earth country music!" Kish replied brightly.
For their part, the two humans looked dazed and terrified. Neither of them appeared able to formulate questions about just what was going on, which suited Pai just fine. Quickly, his head disappeared from the doorway. He hoped that if he just ignored this whole situation, Deep Blue wouldn't blame him when it inevitably blew up.
Kish corralled the humans into his own quarters, where an Earth computer was all set up. Just by looking at it, Kish could tell that the thing was horribly outdated, but Pai had said there was no way to get the Earth internet on the machines they'd brought with them.
"Who are you? What do you want with us?" the brunette human managed to choke out. Kish smiled in what he hoped was a reassuring manner, which on his planet meant showing all his teeth. He was a little impressed that she'd managed to form two whole coherent thoughts, but more than that, he needed them to be functional in order for his plan to work.
"My name's Kish. And you, little humans, are going to help me write a song for Mew Ichigo!"
"That's the craziest thing I ever—wait, did you say Mew Ichigo? As in, our Ichigo is a Mew Mew?" The blonde looked dumbstruck. "And you want us to write a song for her?"
Kish rankled a little bit at the way the human described his Ichigo—his Ichigo, not theirs—but he couldn't give her the beating she deserved. He really was clueless about this music his kitten liked, and without these humans' help, he'd never be able to learn about it well enough to write anything for her.
"That's about the size of it. I," he said, making a sweeping gesture toward himself, "am not familiar with how this Earth country music functions, but if my Ichigo enjoys it, I'll learn about it for her. Now," he added with another incisor-baring grin, "let's get to work."
o()o
By the time Mew Ichigo hunted them down, Kish was ready. In the few precious hours he'd had to work, the alien had absorbed enough American country music (one of the first things he'd learned was that country music wasn't the same everywhere on Earth, and that he should stop referring to it as such) to synthesize the genre into what he felt was an absolutely spot-on song.
And he had to admit that the human girls had been a big help. Even though they had wasted his precious time in the beginning by screaming and begging him to let them go and generally being unhelpful, they had come around eventually. Perhaps the thrill of working with music had infected them too. Or perhaps it was because Kish had promised to free them if they did good work.
He meant to keep that promise, too. Right now, the girls were locked in containment fields, but that was just a precaution so that Mew Ichigo wouldn't just grab them and go without listening to the song he had worked so hard putting together. And heck, he had even allowed Brunette—he still thought of them as Blonde and Brunette: After all, even though they had helped him, they were still just humans—an acoustic guitar inside her containment field. He needed an accompanist, and he trusted the girl enough to give her access to a potential (if ineffective) weapon.
The ship, of course, was still floating high above the treetops, but Kish had brought the human girls down to the ground so that his kitten wouldn't have any trouble finding them. She came crashing through the bushes, looking peeved in a way that made Kish want to go right up to her and give her a kiss.
But if he did that, of course, she would beat him up, and he wasn't here to fight today. As she levelled her bell weapon at him, he just held his hands out in front of him.
"Woah, woah woah. Relax, Kitten. You can have your little friends back..." He paused for dramatic effect, but it got exactly the wrong response: Ichigo, who had lowered he weapon a fraction, raised it again, as though he was about to threaten her. "As soon as you listen to the song I wrote for you!"
That didn't have the intended effect, either. Mew Ichigo's brow wrinkled in adorable confusion, but her primed weapon didn't move an inch.
"Let them go, Kish!" she called.
He felt a little betrayed that after all they'd been through together, his kitten didn't trust him enough to take him at his word. But he couldn't let him get her down, so he turned to Brunette and nodded. She started strumming her guitar, and after waiting through the intro, Kish began to sing.
o()o
"...And I'll hang around as long as you don't kill me, and you know that I still love you through the pain. But you don't have to call me darling, Kitten! You never even called me by my name!"
Kish bowed as he finished the song. To his disappointment, she didn't applaud him, though his research had said that clapping was the normal response to a performance of this magnitude. Nonetheless, he fished a remote control out of his pocket and deactivated his containment fields, freeing Blonde and Brunette, who just stood there, unsure of what to do. He liked that about them.
"Didn't you like it, Kitten? I know how much you like American country music, so I wrote you the perfect country and Western song!"
"How did you—I don't like it that—" Mew Ichigo shook her head, apparently trying to clear her thoughts. How nice. She liked it so much that she couldn't even form complete sentences. "Anyhow, that wasn't anywhere close to a perfect country and Western song. You didn't say anything about Mama, or trucks, or trains, or prison, or gettin' drunk." She sighed heavily. "Miwa-chan, can you play that again?"
Brunette, who still had her guitar, looked at Ichigo strangely, but nevertheless resumed playing. Mew Ichigo rolled her eyes, as if to say, 'It's pathetic how little you know about country music,' and, staring straight at Kish, she began to sing.
"Well, I was drunk the day my mom got out of prison, and I went to pick her up in the rain, but before I could get to the station in my pickup truck, she got runned over by the damned ol' train! And I can't believe how little you know music, and I can't believe I'm playing your stupid game. And quit it with calling me Kitten, you freak! You never even call me—well, I wonder why you don't call me—why don't you ever call me by my name?"
As Brunette finished up her little outro, Kish applauded wildly.
"Cut that out. I just wanted to show you what a real 'perfect country and Western song' was like. Even though," she added, glancing worriedly at her little human friends, who still looked shellshocked. "I don't actually like country music that much."