As with so many arbitrary decisions, the appropriateness of my nickname for Ichigo-san did not occur to me until I was taken off the job and was left to my thoughts among the floating islands.
A 'kitten', a 'toy', my little 'pet'.
My hand closed in a fist that did as little to capture the swirling green fog as it did to charm my favourite little mew mew.
She was such a pretty little thing, tiny, soft, adorable, and delicate. But not to be charmed, at least not by me. This kitten already had plenty of human boys petting and coddling her, and besides, petting was no fun.
So what did that make me? What DID I want from this little kitten?
Simple; I just wanted to play.
Nobody else played with her; at least not properly. I wouldn't have let them if they tried. After all, they'd lost their chances to make her adrenaline jump and her heart pound and give her a place to actually direct all that power and passion they try to lock behind her bland uniform.
I'd never had so much fun with anyone before, let alone a human. And I'd never seen her fight so hard as when she was trying to destroy me.
That's why I wanted to spare her. I didn't want to kill her, not anymore anyway; it occurred to me that keeping my kitten to play with regularly would be more fun.
Fun. Why can't she see that it's fun?
She couldn't possibly be so dense that she actually honestly prefers that flimsy useless human boy. Couldn't she tell the difference between the passing static in her pulse when he talks to her, and the racing lighting in her veins I saw reflected when she was fighting me?
Simply put, she loved to hate me, and I wished she'd hurry up and realise it.
And what about me? Was I in love with hatred for her, too?
Far from it.
I just wanted my kitten all for myself. I wanted to excite her to the point where she dropped from exhaustion, torn and bent but not quite broken. There are times I also thought it might be interesting to pet her back to vitality, while she snarled vainly, but those thoughts are useless; faint and too damn human to be worth keeping.
After all, my hands only caused destruction; and that was proper. If I tried to pat her head, I would end up levelling a block and bruising her skull in the attempt.
Truth told I'd probably have enjoyed watching the terror flare in her eyes and feeling the rush of power more than the sight of her comfortable and happy anyway.
No, petting the little kitten while she sleeps held little to no interest for me.
Kissing her in public on the other hand, could make a smile break across my face with just the thought. I couldn't help it; she looked so terrified! That was my first victory, and when I thought about it, I realised it was probably my only one. I stole her first kiss, and laid a claim to her in doing so.
But even that wasn't enough to drive that thrice-damned human from her mind. Not even the hard, rapid pulse that I could feel through my fingers under her jaw, her breath catching, her eyes widening to twice their usual size, and her face flooding with a blush as she froze in terror.
And she still thought she preferred the boy, the boring boy, the human boy, the boy who didn't even have the brains to figure out the connection between her and Mew Ichigo. I would have tried thinking of better ways to help her realise the thrill I could give her, but it's useless now, because I failed to stop her in favour of keeping my toy in one piece, and I couldn't get near.
What a strange situation I had stuck myself in. And sitting uselessly against a gold pillar, I wondered: if they broke my toy while I'm stuck here, would I ever find another one that could make my heart pound quite like that?