Sorry for the late update! And I know some of you will be like: Oh, it's not late, sweetcicily, you should look at how late other people update their stories! But the winter weeks are ending and I have been so BUSY this whole break! I know that most of you will probably have skipped on to the story, but during the winter weeks, I finished my big, 200 page novel (it's not even my first one! I published one before!) which took a very LONG time. Then I had to take it to an editor and I plan on getting it ALL edited by tomorrow. (I'll write the results of this on the next update I put on!) And then I had this huge chinese essay thing that I didn't even remember about until two days ago and it's due on Wednesday. THAT'S HORRIBLE! And then guess what? I just remembered that I ALSO had two giant projects that count for 70% of my grade for 2 of my 4 core classes. THAT I DIDN'T EVEN START ON! Language Arts is due Monday. Social Studies is due Thursday. I HATE YOU MIDDLE SCHOOL! (and yes, this is my first year of middle school and I hate it) Also, we started renovating the house, you know, moving things out, painting, repairing, blah blah blah. So this story might seem a little rushed and bad and weird 'cause I'm so worried about the other stuff and right now, I'm doing two of my three middle school projects. Wow. That was a long glob of random ranting. I do that a lot, if you don't know. Again, I don't own Tokyo Mew Mew (seriously, there's only, like, two people in the whole world who own it and one company that owns it. OF COURSE this little 11 year old that's CHINESE couldn't POSSIBLY OWN IT.) Now, on with the story!

-Heartbroken-

Chapter 3

Ichigo was inside the café. She looked around at the bustling waitresses, the loud chatter of the customers, the chink and clangs of the silverware. It all felt…familiar. Safe. Like a sanctuary.

"ICHIGO!"

That was Ryou. Ichigo sighed. Ryou, all the way from the other side of the café, marched over to her.

"You are late, Ichigo, do you understand me? Late by three hours! I'm going to dock your pay, make you work extra hard, and I don't care how many excuses you give me!"

Normally, Ichigo shouldn't have been fazed by this. She had spent her time working here, being late, cracking dishes, screaming at Mint that she wasn't working that hard. But when Ryou had screamed at her, all hope of a sanctuary, safety, someone who could listen to her, faded.

"Just move out of my way," she mumbled, shoving him to the side. Ryou started screaming at her again.

"Did you just push me? You are going to pay for that, you baka, do you hear me?" Ryou started walking after her to the girls' locker room. "Do you hear me? Stay after work hours today, I need to speak—"

Ichigo ran inside the locker room and slammed the door in his face, leaning on it heavily.

"YOU BAKA! UNLOCK THE DOOR RIGHT NOW!"

Ichigo could hear a sudden silence in the cafe as Ryou pounded on the girls' locker room. No one was talking as he screamed and punched the door repeatedly.

"Go away!" Ichigo yelled from inside. "I don't need to hear your screams right now! Just go away!"

That only made Ryou angrier. He pounded on the door, harder this time, and Ichigo was afraid that it would fall over from all the force he was putting into it.

"S-Shirogane."

The pounding stopped suddenly and Ichigo pressed her ear against the locker room door.

"You're…you're scaring all the customers away…"

Ichigo breathed a sigh of relief. Lettuce would surely get Ryou away from the locker room. Sure enough, Ryou and Lettuce's voices faded away into the distance.

Ichigo got up and walked toward her locker. She opened it easily and found herself face to face with pictures of Masaya.

Ichigo frowned. Had she been this obsessed with Masaya before? Thinking that he was the perfect boy? No one, not even someone like Masaya, could be that perfect for that long of a time.

Suddenly, Ichigo got angry. Angry at Masaya for cheating on you, angry at herself for believing that he would never betray her, angry at that random girl that had already gotten intimate with Masaya in only a short amount of time. Ichigo grabbed the nearest photograph of her and Masaya, ripped it from her locker, and tore it to shreds.

She ripped out the next picture and tore it in half, so that one half had her laughing and the other side had Masaya on it.

'I hate you,' she thought. 'Why did you do this to me?'

After closing hours and it had turned dark, Ichigo was lying in a pile of ripped up, shredded pictures. She picked up each and any pictures she had missed and immediately shredded it to bits. In the middle of angrily crumpling up a picture of Masaya's face, the door banged open. Ryou ran in front of her.

"Ichigo! This is an emergency! The aliens have come back! We need you in the basement, now."

Ichigo nodded her head slowly. Ryou raced back outside the door.

Slowly, Ichigo stood up, leaving the pictures behind. It almost felt like she was leaving Masaya behind, and getting over him.

She slowly crept down the basement, where she could hear the voices of the others echoing up. When she got to the basement, she saw the four Mew Mews looking carefully at a giant computer Ryou was typing on. The screen depicted a large map with a giant red thing headed towards a building labeled Café Mew Mew.

"Those are the aliens?" Lettuce asked, staring at the screen. "That big red thing?"

"Yes." Ryou replied.

"Well, what do you expect us to do?" Mint asked angrily. "We don't have our powers anymore and even if we did, our fighting would be horrible! We haven't fought anything in a year!"

"The DNA will always be in your body! And you can still fight if you need to!"

There was a sudden CRASH outside. Everyone jumped a foot in the air and looked around, scared.

"What do we do?" Pudding asked, scared. "What if they try to come in here to kill us?"

"They won't," Keiichiro said firmly. "Pudding, do you think that Taruto would try to kill you?"

Pudding shook her tiny head back and forth, her short hair flying around.

"So what is there to lose?" Keiichiro asked, grinning. "Now, off you go!"

Everyone froze.

"You mean…" Lettuce asked. "You want us to go out? With that giant spaceship?"

"Someone else should go first!" Pudding said. "So if they die, we'll have a warning!"

The others stared at her.

"Pudding…not exactly optimistic…" Mint grumbled.

"I think we should all go out," Zakuro said. "As a team. Do you agree, Ichigo? You are our leader, after all."

Ichigo hadn't said a word since she had descended downstairs. She didn't even notice that everyone was looking at her, expecting an answer.

"Ichigo?"

This time, Ichigo heard them. She looked up quickly.

"Oh! Yeah…yeah, I agree…"

Everyone looked at her for a moment, then ignored her.

Together, the Mew Mews, along with Ryou and Keiichiro, walked upstairs and outside the safety of the big, pink building.