Xenophilia
Part 1: Under Glass

Welcome, everybody, to my ultra-transparent attempt to add an X to my fanfiction alphabet. I intended this as a one shot, but I realized partway through writing it that I'm not sure what I want to do with it, and to that end, I thought it'd be helpful to put it up and try to get some feedback. So if you've got anything to say about this story, please do so! Even if you hate it. Especially if you hate it. I'm not sure how I feel about it myself, to be honest.

Believe it or not, this was originally intended as a vampire story, because hell froze over and I guess I write vampire stories now. Thankfully, I think it got too far afield from any traditional depictions of vampires to count, so my reputation is safe.

Oh wait, it's still an AU where the Mews don't have powers. Carry on talking about how I sold out. :P

Also, fun fact, the description of Café Mew Mew's basement and stairs is inspired largely by the century-old house I lived in 'til I was like 10. So enjoy this window into li'l!sakuuya's nightmares.

Disclaimer: I don't own Tokyo Mew Mew. The plot and prose are mine.

Ichigo froze at every little creak that rose from the wooden stairs leading to Café Mew Mew's dark basement. Stupid Ryou—he knew how scary she found the restaurant's largely-unfinished basement, but he'd sent her down here anyway, even though Zakuro and Purin had both been free! Ichigo had opened the basement door with every intention of toughing it out and not letting her jerk of a boss know freaked out she was, but two steps down, she came face-to-face with a positively massive spider, so close that she could see each of its eight beady eyes staring at her.

She considered it a great personal triumph that she didn't scream.

After...that incident...her goals changed from proving how brave she was to taking deep calming breaths and getting the heck out of the basement as soon as possible. But as she descended into the abyss and the light from upstairs receded behind her, every second seemed to stretch out into an eternity. Her eyes' gradual adjustment to the darkness didn't help; the almost-solid-looking wall of blackness was simply replaced by a tenebrous ocean teeming with monolithic creatures. As Ichigo waved her hands around above her, searching for the chain that would activate the basement's single bare lightbulb, she half-expected one of the shadowy shapes to unfold dark wings and swoop down to snatch her.

Finally, her hand closed around the light's chain, and she let out a shaky breath that she hadn't realized she was holding. She yanked the chain, and as the bulb flickered for a second, every monster she'd feared was outlined as though by a lightning strike. Soon, however, the light settled down into a dull yellow glow that...well, Ichigo wouldn't call it not scary, but it was certainly better than no light at all.

Slowly, fearing the lightbulb would give out and betray her but too petrified to move quickly, lest she awake something slumbering in a dark nook somewhere, Ichigo made her way over to the metal shelf that held the huge bags of dry ingredients, peering through the gloom for confectioner's sugar.

Damn, but it was heavy. She tried to hoist it over her shoulder, the way she'd seen Ryou, Keiichiro, and even Zakuro emerge from the basement carrying sacks, but she only succeeded in lifting it to about her knees. Still carrying it like that, and shuffling awkwardly thanks to the way the big bag knocked into her legs when she tried to take longer strides, she turned around, thinking to drag it up to a table and thereby get it up onto her shoulder, where her poor arms wouldn't have to bear all the weight.

Something underfoot rolled her stride enough to send her pitching toward the back of the basement, away from the stairs. The bag of powdered sugar in her hands seemed to move with a mind of its own, dragging poor Ichigo behind it as it flew. She landed in a whumph and a cloud of sugar, then waited breathlessly for the basement to settle down before she stood up. Her clumsiness had sent her sprawling into what she thought of as the sciencey part of the basement, where Ryou worked on god-knew-what, and where she, as a lowly waitress, was definitely not supposed to be. Mysterious lights blinked like tired eyes in the dim light, and all around her, machinery whose functions she couldn't name hummed as if in hibernation.

Behind her, cloth rustled, and she whirled around, unsure whether she was more in dread of some horrible creature or of Ryou catching her trespassing in this part of the basement. In truth, the origin of the noise was a canvas tarp which—surely jarred by her passage—had slipped off a cylindrical glass tank that Ichigo bet would have been big enough to hold an adult human, even the particularly-tall Ryou. The tank glowed blue, in contrast to the predominantly yellow light that suffused the rest of the cellar. When something stirred within it, Ichigo did scream, finally, and she scrambled backwards so fast that she collided with the edge of a metal table, fire blossoming for a moment in her back.

Dust, swirling in untraceable patterns, a benevolently-smiling male face—Ichigo couldn't imagine where she picked up the pictures that now surfaced in her mind (A child, huddling behind cold glass, always bathed in light that burned), but a cocktail of pity and curiosity, unbidden, was shaken up in her, and she left the comforting solidity of the table to creep back toward the tank.

The—boy?—inside was older than Ichigo's strange mental picture of him, but he was curled in on himself in much the same manner. A mother gathering her child into her arms. Okay, that was definitely not her thought. Comfort and safety were the last things she associated with this basement, particularly now.

The calming sound of a little creek, and when she looked up at the tank, the boy inside was staring at her with eyes like melting gold.

"Are you...how are you—?" Static. Voices, talking just too low for Ichigo to make out what they were saying. Maybe he didn't know either.

"Ichigo! Geez, did you get lost down there!?" Ryou's irate voice snapped her out of whatever trance the boy in the tank had put her into. The absolute last thing she wanted was to get caught poking around with whatever the hell Ryou was doing down here.

As she turned away, she saw the boy's golden eyes widen, if that was possible, even further, and he scrambled back as far as he could. In his cylindrical tank, that wasn't far, and the futility of his retreat only made him look more helpless. Ichigo honestly couldn't tell who her sudden mental image of Ryou's furious face originated from, but the wave of pain that accompanied it was definitely not hers, and she flinched when the boy showed her the flat of Ryou's hand, whipping toward her face.

After seeing that, Ichigo was hesitant to turn away from the boy, but she certainly didn't want to incur Ryou's wrath, so she retrieved her wayward sack of sugar and heaved it onto the table, then onto her shoulder.

"I'll come back for you," she whispered before making her ponderous way back to the stairs. The last image she saw before she climbed the protesting stairs back to terra cognita was a slender female hand, proffering what looked like raw meat. The mental smell of it was enough to turn her stomach, and she hurried out of the basement's artificial light.

o()o

She couldn't get the boy in the tube out of her mind. Who on earth was he, and what was he doing trapped in the café's basement?

"Are you daydreaming again?" The answer to the second question, at least, was answered by her boss' voice breaking through her mental haze. The image the boy had shared with her, of Ryou slapping...someone...bubbled to the surface of her mind, and she winced, though his tone wasn't even particularly harsh.

For a moment, she feared that he knew what she'd seen, but now that she knew what he was really like, she doubted he'd be so coy if he thought she knew his secrets. Every suspicion she'd ever had about the blond was true—she worked for some kind of, of mad scientist. And he was willing to imprison people for his sick experiments! Surely if he suspected anything, she'd already be strapped to one of the basement's big metal tables...

"Ichigo, seriously, are you all right?" Ryou pressed, sounding more concerned this time. When Ichigo turned and saw his (admittedly handsome, which must have been how he kept her in the dark for so long) face, it was all she could do to keep from screaming.

"I-I'm fine, really," she said, backing off and holding her hands out in front of her. "Just daydreaming!" She forced a laugh. Ryou cocked his head to one side and raised his eyebrows.

"Whatever you say, Ichigo. Would you please go clear off tables four and seven?"

"Oh, um, of course." She bustled off, glad to be out of her boss' presence.

o()o

It took Ichigo three days to work up the nerve to bring meat for the boy in the basement, sandwiched between cold packs and stuffed in the back of her cubby, behind her coat. Every time she walked past the break room, she could swear that she smelled the ground beef; every time one of her co-workers said anything to her, she expected intense questioning about what on earth she had brought for lunch. She was shocked she remembered to breathe.

About an hour before closing on a miserably stormy day, she got her chance to go back to the basement. She'd been playing a balancing game all day, trying to stay close enough to Ryou to see if he needed anything out of the basement, while also staying far enough away that he wouldn't get suspicious. Finally, finally she overheard him ask Minto to bring up a couple new jars of peanut butter. This was her chance, and she pounced on it like a jungle cat.

"I'll go!" she said, jumping out from behind a potted plant. Minto and Ryou just stared at her. "I mean, you look really busy, Minto..." Oh, surely they saw through that. Minto barely worked anyway—Ichigo had heard rumors that she got away with it because her dad owned the café—and there were no customers now anyway, thanks to the heavy rain.

"Since when are you so eager to go downstairs?" Ryou asked. Play it cool, Ichigo coached herself.

"Since I found out you thought I was such a chicken! I mean, jeez, it's just a basement!"

Ryou laughed at that. "Just a basement, hunh? All right, whatever you want."

"Thanks Ichigo," Minto added, wandering back over to the cup of tea she'd been sipping.

Ichigo went back to watching her boss for a few minutes, to make sure that he wasn't watching her before she retrieved the ground beef from her cubby and, clutching it to her chest despite the slimy texture of the meat, bounded over to the basement and closed the door behind her.

In the darkness, her breath caught in her throat. Why had she thought that the basement would be less scary now? The ground beef felt like a dead man's hand on her chest as she took a careful step forward into the yawning blackness. And then another, and another, trying not to breathe, lest the darkness leech into her lungs where she'd never get free. She tried closing her eyes as she made her careful way down stairs she couldn't see anyway, but there was no difference. After a lifetime, she stumbled as she reached the bottom and tried to step down onto a stair that didn't exist. The meat tumbled out of her hands and hit the floor with a noise that, in the nearly silent basement, sounded like a body falling.

Ichigo fumbled for the light chain, then retrieved the wrapped meat from where it fell. After making her way down the stairs in total darkness, even the wan light from the bare bulb momentarily overwhelmed her eyes. Ignoring the peanut butter, she hurried over to the boy in the glass tube, which was once again covered by the tarp.

"I came back for you," she whispered to the boy she couldn't see, and was rewarded with a daisy blooming. Then, the same image she'd seen last time, the woman's hand with the raw meat. It was a question.

"Yeah, I brought you something to eat. How do I...?" A button that opens a slot in the metal contraption holding the tube. Ichigo lifted up the tarp just enough to press the button, and a slot opened up just like the boy had shown her. She unwrapped the meat, holding it as far away from her own face as possible, and it plopped down onto the tray, which retracted.

The boy's face, smiling beatifically. A canvas tarp falling to the ground.

"I can't. I'm sorry. He's expecting me back upstairs."

Rain, pounding down on cracked pavement.

"I'm so sorry," she said again, then wiped her leaking eyes and hurried back into the bakery section of the basement. While she was sliding a second huge container of peanut butter off its shelf, the basement's single light shut off. She froze, her peanut butter half off the shelf, and listened to the sounds of the dark basement. For a moment, it was as silent as the grave, but then she heard the creeeeak of something coming down the basement stairs. As quietly as she could, Ichigo slid one jar of peanut butter back on the shelf and hefted the other one to throw.

"Ichigo? Are you down here?" Ryou called as he descended the stairs, flicking a flashlight around. "The power went out." Ichigo's eyes darted toward the glass cylinder, but outside of the flashlight's beam, everything was invisible in the velvet darkness.

"You scared me!" she said, which was true.

"Look, I'm sorry I made fun of you about coming down here. I mean, you were here in the dark and didn't freak out at all. I really should stop teasing you so much."

Ichigo swallowed. She itched all over. Ryou was never this nice to her; what was he planning? She swore she saw, through the darkness, Ryou's blue eyes, shining with something cold and unreadable, and she felt chilly sweat on the back of her neck, but no, that couldn't have been right, and when she looked back toward him, he was invisible save for the flashlight he carried.

"Come on," he said when she was silent, "I'll help you with that peanut butter. Let's go back upstairs." He sounded sincere enough, but by now Ichigo knew better than to trust him. She kept a careful eye on him as he led her back upstairs, his flashlight flicking back and forth like a prison searchlight.