The Calm and Silent Water
This story was written for Soccer-Geek's Alternate Pairings Contest. And you'd better thank your lucky stars that the contest rules forbid slash pairings, because my first idea was for a Deep Blue/Masaya/Blue Knight love triangle. Some of the entries are amazing; I strongly suggest you go check 'em out. (They're all in the Community "Soccer-Geek's Contest Entries.") The sheer variety of entries made this very hard for me, since I wanted to try doing something no one else was doing—in the plot and tone, not so much the pairing—and you guys did not leave me many options! The contest runs until 11:59 p.m. EST on January 7 (that is, 8:59 p.m. site time), so if you're a speedy writer, you may still have time to enter.
The one fabricated detail in this story is the names of the three girls—they don't seem to have names in the Japanese version, and their English dub names would be out of place. The names I picked for them (Ami, Emi, and Umi) are taken from Sailor Nothing by Twoflower, a piece of fiction that I will probably never stop recommending, so you may as well go ahead and read it.
Disclaimer: Tokyo Mew Mew is owned by Mia Ikumi, Rei Yoshida, and Kodansha Ltd. A few lines of dialog are taken directly from the manga and anime. Yeah, both: This story is a deliberate melding of details from the two.
It is the calm and silent water which drowns a man.
– Ashanti proverb
The figure by the fence was indistinct in the darkness, but in Retasu's mind's eye, it had Umi's scowling face and asymmetrical hair. She could see that scowl gradually broaden into a look of horror and disgust, just as she knew would happen when her friends found out what a freak she was. Well, she would wash that look away once and for all.
A huge, swirling column of water rose up from the pool at her metal command and drilled toward the figure, who...dodged out of the way, still wearing that horrible accusatory look, and moved toward her with such grace that it was practically floating. Retasu could barely believe the gall of the thing, rubbing its poise in her face when it knew that she was a monster, forever cut off from that kind of beauty.
As the figured neared, though, still dodging everything Retasu could throw at it, she realized that it wasn't just a trick of the shadows—whoever was approaching her really was floating, and, once it was close enough that she could make out more than a general humanoid shape, it was clearly male, its body all hard angles.
"S-stop right there!" Retasu cried, trying to draw strength from the reassuring weight of her castanets in her hands. "I-I mean it!"
But the figure kept advancing, close enough now that Retasu could see his eyes glowing like sulfur in the night, and she swore she could also make out the glint of fangs.
"Reborn, Lettuce Rush!"
This time, the jet of water hit the figure straight on, and, having nothing to brace against in the air, he was thrown backwards all the way to the fence, which he hit with a rattling crash. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Retasu couldn't shake the feeling that she'd won some victory over her friend Umi.
"Who are you?" she called, her voice a little stronger now that she had the upper hand. "I'll hit you again if you try to do anything!" Twin spires of water shot out of the pool behind her in demonstration.
"I believe you," the figure croaked, obviously winded. "I'm not gonna hurt you. I just wanted to see—"
"Oh, you wanted to see the ghost?" Retasu snarled. The water behind her climbed higher, shining like the tears that had formed unbidden in the corners of her eyes. "Well, here I am! Go ahead and laugh!" Both towers of water surged toward the still-prone figure.
"Why would I laugh? You're amazing."
The water set to crash down on him hovered in midair. Before Retasu could question him further, the figure moved so fast that it was like he just disappeared and reappeared by magic, and all of a sudden he was beside her, floating over the choppy pool. She stiffened as he wrapped his arms around her, but she couldn't move her arms to attack him again, and this close, any pool water she through at him would hit her too.
Over at the fence, two columns of water fell like the wrath of God on the empty pavement.
"Wh-who are you?" Retasu said again. It was hard to remember that she was supposed to be powerful and confident when his body was so warm behind her.
"My name's Kish," he said, leaning close to her ear. "And you don't have to be afraid any more. I'm here for you." He leaned down, dipping her like a dancer, and planted a chaste kiss on her lips.
Retasu sagged. Only Kish's arms around her stopped her from falling into the pool.
o()o
"So no humans care about you at all?" Kish asked, running his fingers through Retasu's long, unbraided hair. The only light as they sat on a bench near the park's pond came from the moon and the glitter of the distant downtown; even the park's lights had been turned off for the night. Initially, Kish had claimed that he only wanted to meet her at night because the daylight hurt his eyes, but he'd soon confessed the truth.
An alien, here to destroy the human race.
She'd suspected that he wasn't human, of course. That first night, he had shown impossible strength, speed, and stamina, not to mention the ability to fly. And he'd comforted her, hadn't been afraid. No, she had always known there was something strange about him. But if he was an alien, what did that make her?
I don't know, he had confessed. I asked my brother, who's smart about stuff like this, and he said you're probably the earth's reaction to humans polluting it for so long. You're like this because you have to fight for your planet against the people who'd destroy it.
And that felt right, in the same way Kish's confession that he wasn't from earth had felt right. She wasn't like humans any more than he was. No wonder she'd been bullied all her life; the people around her must've felt instinctively that she was set in opposition to them, a preserver where they only destroyed, and she had just never found the power to fight back until recently. But then again...
"My p-parents care about me," she offered hesitantly, leaning into his touch.
"Why didn't they ever stop people from being mean to you?" Retasu couldn't see his face, but his voice was sympathetic, devoid of malice.
Her response, that she never told them anything about the teasing, froze in her throat. Surely they must have known? She'd come home with a black eye more than once, and they had never brought it up. In place of a defense, then, she just picked up a pebble and lobbed it halfheartedly into the pond, where it sank with barely a ripple.
"Hey, it's okay, sweetie," Kish said, pulling her closer. "Even if it's just you and me against the world, we'll come out all right. I have work to do very soon."
Retasu bit her lip. The conquest of earth...even knowing everything she did—how Kish's people were dying, somewhere out in space; how terrible humans could be to the environment, not to mention to her—it was hard to be happy about the destruction species that she had grown up amongst, had thought she was a member of until so recently.
As if sensing her mood, Kish took her chin in one pale hand and lifted it (not altogether gently) so that she was looking into his golden eyes. He grinned, showing his fangs.
"What if we started with those three nasty girls you hang out with?"
o()o
It took almost two weeks before Ami, Emi, and Umi became interested enough in the "ghost" at their school that they wanted to send Retasu in to find it. She had to keep spending time with her so-called friends in the meantime, and she found it harder and harder to keep up the pretense that they were the closest thing she had to someone who cared about her.
"...We went to the music and science rooms late at night already," Ami explained, her wavy blonde hair hiding her face like curtains as she leaned over the back of Retasu's chair in the little café. "We'll just go check out the pool and come back." By now, Retasu had a lot of practice keeping up the timid, terrified face that had been her default expression before she met Kish, but even so, she had trouble not smiling.
"You can't back out on us!" Emi interjected. "Aren't you our friend?"
"Y-y-yes?" Retasu managed to quaver. It was shaping up to be a good performance until their klutz of a waitress threw parfaits at the three other girls. With Ami, Emi, and Umi's anger all focused on the redhead who'd spilled on them, Retasu felt safe basking in their humiliation. Just for a moment, she let her mouth pull into a smirk and her watery eyes harden.
She hurriedly readopted her normal pathetic expression when she caught the waitress staring at her. Nevertheless, she carried a lovely warm feeling home with her from the café, and it buoyed her as she prepared to go ghost-hunting with her friends.
o()o
Retasu didn't even need to use her castanets to knock out Emi, leaving her in (Retasu imagined) a slump of tattered clothes and matted black hair. All it took was a sharp blast from a bank of faucets, and now none of them were left to face her. Umi had been washed away by the school fountain, and the sprinkler system had rained water like knives upon Ami. Frankly, Retasu was surprised that Emi kept going after the ghost took out both her friends. She would almost have admired the little human's persistence if she hadn't known that there was nothing at all admirable about Emi, or any of them.
"You did good," Kish said as he appeared behind her. She spun giddily to face him and leaned in for a kiss, but their lips had barely touched when Retasu saw the unmistakable glare of a flashlight in a third-story window, right near the spot where she'd taken Emi out.
"How are they still moving?" Retasu growled as she pulled back.
"What? Oh, yeah, that's weird. Do you want me to go take a look?" He had been absolutely invaluable when it came to determining the three girls' positions—Retasu could control water, but that didn't help her see through walls.
"No, that's okay." She squeezed Kish's hand. "I know right where she is."
It would have been no trouble at all to turn the faucets back on and hit Emi with them again, but that hadn't worked the first time, so Retasu took a deep breath and conjured a spout of water tall enough to reach the top floor of the school and sent it crashing through the roof and out the window. She had intended to bring Emi out with it, but to her surprise, someone jumped out after the rush of water and landed in the concrete pool area with nary a scratch.
Kish had already teleported off somewhere to avoid being seen; Retasu raised more water to hide herself from view. She couldn't see around the swirling serpent of water she'd created, but a second person had joined the jumper—she could hear them shouting back and forth, but their words were lost behind the roar of the water around her, which matched the roar of the blood in her ears.
The first time she smashed the water down on them, they dodged, and before she could try again, one of them threw something that made the whole column come crashing back down into the pool.
Standing before her were not, as she had imagined, two of her miraculously-healthy friends, but a pair of girls she had never seen before, dressed in outlandish costumes, one pink and one blue. Or maybe she had seen them before? They looked vaguely familiar...
"That's the girl from earlier!" the blue one said, as though she had any idea!
"Retasu!"
Retasu nearly tumbled into the pool in surprise when the pink one said her name. Instead of asking how the pink girl could possibly know who she was, she simply summoned her castanets. There was nothing she wanted to say to these people, but she smiled at their slack-jawed expressions.
The blue one found her voice first: "Is she...?"
"She is! She's one of us!" the pink one yelled—whatever that meant—as Retasu moved into attack position.
"Reborn, Lettuce Rush!"
And just like that, the blue one went down hard.
"Why are you attacking your companions?" The pink one was screaming now, but Retasu simply wound up for another attack.
"Reborn, Lettuce Rush!" The pink one was faster on her feet than her friend had been. She dove out of the way just in time. "I won't miss next time," Retasu promised.
"Retasu, stop!"
"No, don't do that, sweetie." Kish had appeared behind her once again, and when Retasu looked over her shoulder, he was staring at the pink girl. "So, there are more of you," he said, grinning. "What a treat!"
"More of...? What do you mean?"
The pink girl had taken advantage of Retasu's momentary confusion to pull something heart-shaped out of her absurd costume; when Retasu looked back at her, she was holding it out in front of herself with both hands.
"And what's your name, kitty cat?" Kish asked, drifting toward her. Now it was Retasu's turn to take advantage of the other girl's confusion.
"Reborn, Lettuce Rush!"
But the pink girl was still holding her heart-shaped trinket, and it formed some kind of protective bubble around her, which Retasu's attack splashed harmlessly against.
"Retasu!" she yelled again. "You don't have to do this! We're on the same side! I know you're upset about the way those girls treated you, but this isn't the way to deal with it!" The niggling sense of familiarity in the back of Retasu's mind fountained into focus.
"The waitress from the café...?" she breathed, then, louder, added, "If you have these powers, you must know that they're for defending the earth against despoilers! Why are you fighting us?"
"Us?" The waitress looked from Retasu to Kish (who, curious, was floating close to her). "N-no! You've got it all mixed up! You're a Mew Mew, like me! We're supposed to defend the planet against aliens and monsters!"
Kish just laughed at that.
"Aren't you a feisty one!" He flew nearer to the pink girl, so close they were almost touching. Retasu's eyes went wide. "You have no idea what you're talking about," he said, and kissed her on the lips, "But you're pretty cute."
Still floating above the pool, Retasu dropped to her knees. The water below her, which had been churning with passion just a moment ago, were now a dead, icy calm, untouched even by the wind.
"How could you?!" she screamed. In an instant, Kish had teleported back over to her.
"Hey, don't be like that, sweetie," he said, still grinning like a child who'd stolen a cookie without being caught. He licked his lips. "You know I don't care about anyone but you."
"Don't listen to him!" The pink girl shot back, wiping her mouth with a gloved hand. "Retasu, he's just like those mean girls you were with! All he's doing is twisting you around so he can use you!"
Retasu looked down, as if seeing herself for the first time. The strange green outfit that appeared whenever she summed her castanets did look an awful lot like the ridiculous pink number the waitress had on. But what kind thing had the pink girl ever done?
She did spill those gross parfaits on Ami and Emi and Umi, without even knowing who Retasu was...
"Reborn, Lettuce Rush!"
At such close proximity, the wedges of water shot Kish up in the air and then slammed into his back, sending him hurtling back down toward the pool, but he vanished the second before he would have hit the water, leaving nothing but a little ripple to show that he'd ever been there.
That ripple was joined by two more, this time created by the tears streaming freely down Retasu's face.
"What have I done?"
"I don't know," the waitress confessed, "But those three girls were still breathing when I found them, if that means anything." She stared down at the spot where Kish had vanished and shuddered. "Ugh. What a jerk. No wonder you're in such bad shape! Still, though..." She flourished the pink heart. "For your evil actions..."
Retasu squeezed her eyes shut, expecting the worst.
"...I will make you pay!" Something bony hit Retasu from the side, and before she knew it, she'd been tackled to the side of the pool by the pink girl, who then proceeded to tickle her.
"Oh, stop it!" Retasu yelped, tears of laughter forming in the corners of her eyes. "Hahaha!"
"Not until you promise not to let any more creeps like that alien guy into your life! Besides... We're already friends, aren't we?"
And Retasu, feeling more at ease with herself than she had in a long time, couldn't help but agree.