Tokyo Ew Ew: On the Rebound
I feel bad about taking so long to post the last chapter of Llamarama, so I wrote up this little one-shot to try to make up for it. This takes place in the TEE universe, so it's an indeterminate point in the TMM timeline. Within the TEE universe, it takes place somewhere between TEE and Llamarama.
Also, if you've read the other two TEE stories, you know what my pairing biases are. That certainly hasn't changed. If you're new to the TEE universe, welcome. It might help to go read Tokyo Ew Ew before you get into this one, but that's certainly not mandatory. If you're just here because you read in the summary that Ichigo breaks up with Masaya, either try to be open-minded or bugger the heck off.
Disclaimer: I gave back Tokyo Mew Mew to its rightful owners during the first TEE story. So there.
"I know you're cheating on me!"
"Whaa?" Masaya sat up groggily as Ichigo flicked on the light in his bedroom.
"I saw you cheating on me! I'm breaking the heck up with you!"
"Ichigo… it's three in the morning. I was sleeping. I still don't know how you got into my house—"
"Climbed in your window. Why'd you leave it open, hunh? Were you planning a midnight rendezvous with your secret girlfriend?"
"Huh? My window wasn't open…" Ichigo took a step back, and broken glass crunched under her shoe.
"Oh."
"Uhhh… I'm too tired to deal with that. And, anyway, I didn't cheat on you. What on earth makes you think I did?" asked Masaya, sounding a little more awake.
"Well, I just got this feeling! And I'm a Mew Mew, y'know, so my feelings of danger are usually pretty accurate. And you haven't called me in like a week!"
"I was at kendo camp. I just got home a few hours ago. You knew that. I—" he broke off for a moment, yawning. "I even sent you a post card…" Ichigo thought hard about this.
"Oh yeah, I got that a couple days ago. It was nice…" Ichigo seemed to calm down for a moment before rushing straight back into crazy-girlfriend-at-three-AM mode. "You said that you 'made a couple new friends'! That's code for 'I slept with some sluts,' isn't it?"
"Ichigo, honey, you're not making any sense. I would never cheat on you. My problem is that I'm too nice, remember?"
"Of course! Anyone that nice HAS to be cheating on me!"
"Get some sleep, Ichigo. If you want, we can talk about this in the morning. Good night." Masaya laid back down.
"If you fall asleep, this relationship is over, do you hear me?" When there was no reply, Ichigo gave a little "hmph!" and jumped back out Masaya's broken window.
The Next Morning…
Despite likely getting no sleep the previous night, Ichigo was still wide awake when she started her shift at Café Mew Mew. The other girls noticed she was acting rather strangely, but chalked it up to some weird new mutation of her powers. Nonetheless, they all stayed out of her way, which in this case meant just shirking their duties and hanging out somewhere else for the day.
Ichigo, who was by now used to having to do all the work at the café, barely even noticed that the other girls were gone. From an outsider's perspective, though, it would seem that the major reason she failed to notice her friends' absence was because she spent all her time staring at a certain blond-haired boy…
Ichigo finally cornered Ryou while he was doing dishes.
"Ryou, I need to talk to you."
"Can it wait?" he asked, gesturing purposefully with his head toward the sink where he was up to his yellow-rubber-gloved elbows in soapy water and dishes.
"No! I want to go out with you!" Ryou looked at her quizzically.
"Isn't it kind of bad to be fooling around while your boyfriend's at kendo camp?"
"He cheated on me while he was at camp! Besides," she added thoughtfully, "he's home now. And we broke up."
"Aoyama doesn't seem the type to cheat…"
"Why the heck does everyone keep saying that? Just accept it, okay? He cheated on me, so now we're broken up. Will you go out with me?"
"Err… That's kind of sudden, isn't it? How long have you two been broken up?"
"What time is it now?" Ryou sighed and covered his eyes with a soapy, gloved hand.
"Look, Ichigo, whatever's going on between you and Aoyama is your business. But even if you two aren't together any more, I'm already in a committed relationship."
"Oh, right," said Ichigo sulkily. "Where is Keiichiro, anyway?"
"I believe he's at kendo camp." Ichigo, at this point, was not about to nitpick about how Ryou's boyfriend didn't even do kendo, and was too old to go to summer camp, anyway. So she pressed her illogical advantage.
"You know, Ryou," she purred in her most seductive voice, "It said in the manga that you were in love with me. Plus, if you'll go out with me, then you're dating the main character… think how much more screentime you'll get…"
The pink-haired girl closed her eyes and leaned in close for a fiery, passionate kiss. Unfortunately, Ryou had other ideas and desperately threw up his hands to ward her off. The end result of all this was that Ichigo ended up kissing one of Ryou's slimy rubber gloves.
To her credit, though, she kissed it mightily before opening her eyes and realizing what she had just tried to French-kiss. She backed off, wild-eyed, and stormed out of the café, vowing vengeance.
Later that Day…
Kish was at the zoo, trying to decide which animal to send against Tokyo Mew Mew next. He was dancing a little bit to his ipod and grinning as the monkeys he was watching copied his movements. He realized with a start that it was almost time for the dolphin show and, because he greatly enjoyed dolphin shows, he began making his way towards the dolphin tank when he came face to face with Ichigo, leader of Tokyo Mew Mew.
"Fancy meeting you here, kitten!" He quickly kissed her on the cheek and stepped hurriedly back, so she wouldn't be able to slap him. To the alien's utter surprise, though, she caught him by the arm and kissed him right back.
"Hi, Kish!" She said with a giggle, batting her eyes coyly. "What're you listening to?" Now, normally Kish wasn't the type to tell his secrets to anyone, but he was so happy because Ichigo had finally responded to his creepy advances that he decided to be magnanimous.
"They're called They Might Be Giants. They're a goofy band from America. Would you like to listen?" He proffered one of his earbuds.
"No, I want to go out with you!" Kish pinched himself to make sure he wasn't dreaming.
"So you finally dumped that loser Aoyama, huh?"
"Yeah, he was cheating on me. And then I went to Ryou, but he didn't want to go out with me, the fool. So finally I came looking for you."
"Wait, so I was your third choice?"
"Mm-hm," Ichigo assented, snuggling closer to the alien. He moved suddenly away from her, angry.
"Why would you go to Ryou first? Did you try Francis the fat cat before me, too?"
"No, Kish-chan, I love you!"
"Yeah, well, not that much, it seems! Find yourself another stalker, because I don't feel like being your third choice anymore!"
With a snarl, Ichigo grabbed his ipod and shoved the whole thing up his ear in a display of superhuman strength. He shook his head confusedly, and then flew away from her, humming to himself.
Ichigo, desperate to get herself a boyfriend, started to chase after him on foot. She hadn't gone more than a few feet, however, when she tripped over a long wooden stick that had been thrust into her path.
From her new position on the ground, she looked up to see Keiichiro, standing over her with a kendo stick in his hand.
"I thought you were at kendo camp…" Ichigo stated bemusedly.
"I'm too old to go to summer camp. Ryou was being sarcastic. Remember Ryou? My boyfriend who you tried to seduce?" He raised the stick above his head, but as he brought it down, another kendo stick appeared and knocked Keiichiro's out of his hand.
Masaya, more awake than he'd been at any point so far in this story, pointed his kendo stick threateningly at Keiichiro.
"Lay off, Akasaka-san. Ichigo's done some stupid things today, but I still love her. I won't let you beat her to a senseless pulp."
"Don't you see?" Keiichiro exclaimed. "Ichigo would never act like this! So this isn't Ichigo!" He reached down and pulled off Ichigo's Ichigo mask with a flourish, revealing an over-pretty girl with orange hair and eyes.
"You're too late!" Kitty crowed. "I've already broken the hearts of all the major male Tokyo Mew Mew characters! Ha!"
Keiichiro looked over at Masaya.
"Is your heart broken?"
"Nope."
Suddenly Ryou walked by, eating some ice cream.
"How about you, Ryou? Did little miss author-surrogate here break your heart?"
"What? Oh, yes. Yes she did. I am heartbroken."
"Hah, you see?" Kitty exclaimed triumphantly.
"I was being sarcastic."
"Curses."
At that moment, Kish floated by.
"You're not the boss of me now, and you're not so big…"
Being too weirded out to find out what the alien meant, everyone just assumed his heart had not been broken, either. Aside from Kitty, who had stopped existing by this point due to general opinion, everyone began to walk off into the sunset. Something was bothering Masaya, though.
"Hey, guys, what happened to the real Ichigo?"
In Another Dimension…
"Hello, my name is Ichigo Momomiya," the pink-haired girl intoned sullenly into the video camera. "I'm not even an OC, but I got stuck in this dimension and was told that I had to make a video. So go ahead and use me in your stupid stories. See if I care."
She turned to the woman operating the camera.
"Can I go now?"
"I don't see why not," the librarian replied. With a flash of pink light, Ichigo was back in her proper universe.
Yeah, I realize that this contradicts a couple of points in Llamarama, but I think the TEE universe makes little enough sense that contradictory information can coexist quite peaceably within it.
And remember the moral of the story: In really OOC fanfiction, Ichigo is just a Canon Sue.
Hopefully I'll have the last chapter of Llamarama up soon!