'Odangoes For Ami?!'
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Words: 1643
Category: Humor, Friendship, Introspective
Characters: Ami Mizuno, Minako Aino, Usagi Tsukino
Type: oneshot
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Kate-Le-Contrary
DISCLAIMER: SAILOR MOON IS OWNED BY TOEI, KODANSHA, AND, MOST IMPORTANTLY, HRH EMPRESS NAOKO TAKEUCHI. FREDDY MERCURY AND 'UNDER PRESSURE' BELONG[ED{, RIP}] TO HIMSELF AND THE BAND QUEEN, AND THE ELEMENT MERCURY BELONGS TO YOU AND ME AND EVERYONE ELSE YAYYYYY WELL THERE ARE REGULATIONS BUT STILLLLL. PLEASE SUPPORT THE ENDEAVORS OF THE ORIGINAL CREATORS.
She's got that kind of hair. That short-cropped short-stop waves-at-the-chin neat-girl hair.
The kind that won't feature in any L'Oreal commercial, the kind that she looked at one day and thought could be a bit bluer.
People don't normally turn to look at her. Nope. If they're looking at her, it's usually because her name is above theirs on the score list and they're mouthing off the syllables of her name in a jealous rumor.
Sweet little Ami-chan can lip read. That's a delicious candy-wrapped piece of knowledge she'll never share with anyone, no matter how high tutors and informants get paid.
Oh, she does remember that day, back in middle school—the double takes people did when they realized she had actually dyed her hair, that uptight good-marks student who for some reason wasn't in a fancy private school. She finds she quite likes the attention, and once she realizes that, Ami does her best to convince herself she only did it because she has an affinity for the color. She doesn't care what people think about her hair—after all, she's fairly fashionable. She hopes no one would be surprised to learn she reads Vogue in the bath…
Well, they don't know that she reads romance novels either, do they?
Eventually, practicality dictates that she might want to stop dyeing it to avoid recognize-ability after she finds out that she's actually an alien. From Mercury.
Mercury—like Freddie Mercury, and Ami rolls her eyes when all the students in the Chemistry pressure unit are singing "Under Pressure" off-key and in atrocious English. Mercury, like a make of car. Mercury: like Hg number 80 on the Periodic Table, the toxic liquid metal. Her armor is blue. She has an affinity for the color, yes.
Here's another: Ami likes to have some shock-factor up her sleeve. No, she's not changing the color any time soon. Perhaps she likes that people don't expect her to look like she does. Ami is a genius, and self-deniability is a skill she treasures. Still going to keep dyeing it. Even if almost no one finds it shocking anymore.
The facts scroll through her 'bluenette' head like they do across her compact computer: dry and useful.
Her life reads like an article to her, the kind that appears on tests but she's already read from her monthly Scientific or Time subscription: until her dynamic turn into the double life of vigilantism, she never had to think about her hair much, her tiny gesture of rebellion from the norm and what people expect of her.
This is how the article would read if she wrote it as a third-personal commentary (like she sometimes does in her diary), she thinks:
"Hair stylists across the globe agree on very few things, but one thing they are all pretty much certain of is that short hair—especially a bob cut—cannot possibly look good in a ponytail. Unless, as the Hollywood haircutters point out, the short hair is aided by extensions. Far be it from them to bring up pigtails, or a bun—heaven forbid a combination of both!"
Of course, Usagi is not a hair stylist—ignoring any snarky remarks that may come from certain people—and is far less touchy on the subject of hair then she pretends to be. And while the high-paying customers of hair designers worldwide might obtain bruised feelings if such (pardon the pun) shortcomings in their hairstyles were pointed out….
…Well, Ami knows that she lacks that certain sensitivity. Entirely. Ami is one to count her shortcomings, related to fashion or otherwise.
That is, until Mina comes along. Mina—well. She fluffles dear Ami's hair almost subconsciously, and Ami notes to herself that Mina isn't one to believe that people have personal 'bubbles'. Ami gets the feeling that Mina isn't shocked at all by 'the prude' with her blue hair, and feels a bit miffed at that.
"Bo—ring," Mina says in a maternal, happy way that might sound mean if it came from Rei's mouth. "Ami is my project!" she chirps in announcement to the other blonde, and they skip down the sidewalk with a perplexed Ami arm-to-arm between them, heading for the large 'historic' mall downtown.
Mina really does have that sort of hair that frames Revlon ads and the sides of billboards, the kind of flowing mane that sells Summer Delight perfume to the offertories of department stores everywhere. With rock star locks, a movie star mane, Mina is wholly convinced that she can impart her beautician-goer's wisdom upon Ami.
Ami is more than shocked when Mina and Usagi bustle her into that first salon, then out again after a loud and embarrassing exclamation about prices, then into the interior of the mall that Ami thinks was designed to somewhat resemble Kuwait.
"Let's just do it ourselves!" Usagi suggests, pushing calm Ami onto the empty bandstand in the middle of the plaza. Out like contraband from what is probably a subspace pocket comes a large makeup bag stuffed with bobby pins and other sharp accessories that Ami herself is sparse with. The bag is emptied messily: what looks to be a billion yen's worth of clips and bobby pins and colored ties decorate Ami's feet and lap. Mina and Usagi step onto the bandstand so as to be higher than Ami, grabbing handfuls of the items strewn at Ami's sides.
And they begin, in a whirlwind of hair-designing knowledge that appears only at slumber parties and boring-hair emergencies like today. Hairspray emerges, bottles upon bottles of product secreted within Minako's 'special pocket'. Artemis would be annoyed if he knew.
Ami experiences the coif, the bouffant, the side-bangs and tiny braids that Usagi and Mina are enthralled with. Really enthralled. Mina and Usagi are shouting encouragement and suggestions at each other, and people have begun to look at them out of the corners of their eyes and edge away surreptitiously. A few kids come nearer in curiosity.
"Oh yes!" Mina beams, "this is wonderful."
Ami bears it, having long-since lost feeling along her hairline where the neat comb (where did that come from?) keeps parting and re-parting. By now, a small crowd of onlookers has formed on the bench across the way—a tourist family, taking pictures of Ami's discomfort and the blondes' glee as they wait for their guide.
That's about when the rest of the tour group shows up, and people start making requests.
Ami is mortified, and pretends not to understand English. Unfortunately, she has forgotten that Minako lived in England for a great number of years, and speaks fluently.
"Sure, we can do a Mohawk on her! That would be so cute and punk! Ami the Yankee!" she squeals, and Ami is mortified. Strangely enough, there is some part of her that is glad that about twenty people are now staring at her. She stifles this feeling, a look of blank endurance crossing her face.
She didn't think it would be possible. Ami sneezes as more hairspray sachets her in a cloud, and tentatively feels for the Mohawk the two blondes have managed to make on her head. Mina slaps Ami's hand away, and eagerly starts on the next request. Usagi is just undoing a spiky crown braid when a little kid starts chanting in English: "buns buns BUNS!" and his mother shushes him ("don't be rude to the performers, Ethan!") but Minako and Usagi's eyes gleam anew at the challenge. Their zeal roars stronger when someone else wordlessly points at Usagi's head.
"Like those?" Minako asks, and the little boy nods.
Ami will never know how it was done. It might have been the still pins-dropping-everywhere almost-silence, or the two blonde hellions at work in Ami's blue locks, but she somehow ends up with two perfect buns on each side of her head. Usagi looks emotional, and Minako clasps her hands in (for once) wordless wonder. Ami grabs a compact and looks at herself in the tiny mirror, not nearly as horrified at this whole ordeal as she might have been a year ago.
Ami knows logic. She knows it very well. And, logically, there is no way on any planet in any dimension that her hair is long enough to look like it does now.
"TENTH WONDER OF THE WORLD!" Minako hollers, and bows to the thick crowd of gawking foreigners with all her effected showmanship. Ami's cheeks heat.
"We've done it!" Usagi cries out to the mall. "ODANGOES FOR AMI!"
"Take a picture, Mina!" Usagi says frantically, but that's when the mall security finally rounds the corner and they are booted unceremoniously from the mall, despite the pleas and screeching protests of Usagi. Ami feels relief.
But Ami's hair has tumbled down—and Usagi and Minako, distraught, wail once they realize they will never have photographic evidence.
Ami ignores the pair of them for once, and feels her cheeks with the back of one hand—huh. She's not blushing so much anymore. Perhaps she's become so used to their shenanigans that she can take public humiliation more coolly now. She looks forward to hearing the second-hand version of what Ami Mizuno and her wild friends did at school. That would show them she wasn't just some predictable A-student for every moment of her life!
And that was the moment in history that Ami would later point to and say was when she fully embraced her sense of scandal.
Ami turned to the two of them and grinned suddenly, an action that startled Usagi into sudden silence.
"That…was sort of fun," she said casually, "Let's go to the mall sometime again." Ami flicked her blue bob-cut so it fell neatly once more, and grabbed her two friends.
The three of them skipped away, beaming.
It was a fairly routine day, after all.
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A/N: Another Ami-centric oneshot, this time the title-inspiring first idea for this anthology! So, I've been working on a slew of SM stories recently, but haven't finished any... I've had a lot of personal stuff going on, and am trying (trying!) to do NaNoWriMo for the third time (and am hopelessly behind, unlike the other two times). These sporadic updates are why I decided to make a huge oneshot bundle in the first place, rather than having a multi-chapter plotathon of epicness that might be left unfinished (no one likes those!). Anyway, hope you enjoy. (Also, I have ho beta, so pardon any spelling errors/grammatical mistakes. I will update with an edited version when I can.) Currently in the works: Rei-centric speculative oneshot, Makoto-centric Western AU...possibly a Sailor V tale that threatens to become multi-chapter. And some drabbles, since I've had absolutely none of those.
Have a good day!
-Kate