Author: Next playlist song is "Tornado" by Little Big Town.
Also, I forgot to mention last chapter. Something About a Peacock now has over 100 reviews! I feel really proud that everyone likes this. :) Let's see if we can make more than 100 in 200, okay? ;)
The limo ride back to Ichigo's house was tense. Minto dropped them off and said nothing to Kyandi when she got out. "Bye, Ichigo," Minto said, making it a point to ignore Kyandi completely. In Minto's mind, Kyandi was compromised. If Minto Aizawa could do anything about it, Kyandi Coffman would no longer be allowed to be a Mew Mew. And Minto Aizawa could do something about it; she was an Aizawa, after all.
Inside Ichigo's house, Kyandi grabbed her suitcase. Then the two girls began to walk to the café, Kyandi pulling her suitcase behind her. The atmosphere was tense. Everyone had seen her hesitate. Everyone now knew just how compromised she was. Even though Zakuro hadn't been there, Kyandi figured the others would tell her soon enough. The Mew-Aqua eyed girl chewed her bottom lip and exhaled through her nose. She wondered how much longer she'd be allowed to remain a Mew Mew.
When they arrived at the café, Ryou and Keiichiro stood there talking to a man with graying hair. Kyandi's heart dropped to her stomach; her suitcase, to the ground. She recognized this man. It was her father.
Ryou made the mistake of glancing in the girls' direction, and Jack Coffman turned and caught sight of his daughter. In a voice completely void of emotion, he spoke. "Kyandi, you're coming home with me."
"The h*ll I am!" the peacock mew spat venomously. "You can't touch me – forget about take me with you – because if you do, Akasaka and Shirogane will report you!" She turned to her saviors, depending on them like never before. "Shirogane-san, tell him!"
Ryou merely pursed his lips, a concerned frown on his face.
"Akasaka-san!" Kyandi pleaded. "Tell this man that he can't have me!"
Keiichiro's eyes softened, and his visage shifted to wear a sorrowful expression. "I'm sorry, Kyandi-san. Abuse is a very serious charge, and – now that your bruises have healed – we have no evidence of what he did to you. We can do nothing."
"W-What?" Kyandi's voice wavered in the same manner as her heart. "You're lying! You must be!" Keiichiro lowered his gaze to the pavement and didn't say a word. "Ryou!" Purposefully using the more intimate name, she gave the blond a pleading look. He refused to meet her eyes.
"There's nothing we can do about it," Ryou said in a voice that was cold with anger. "He's your legal guardian. We can't prevent him from taking you, d*mmit."
Kyandi's expression went blank. Her last security had just deteriorated. Her ice-blue eyes met Jack Coffman's. "Screw you," Kyandi growled. She shifted her gaze to include Keiichiro and Ryou. "All of you!" And then she ran.
Dashing away from the café and into the woods of Inohara Park, this abandoned mew allowed tears to stream down her face. Her mother was dead. Her alien boyfriend had become her alien ex-boyfriend. Her comrades in arms probably would not want her to be a superhero anymore. And now, the only home in which she had ever felt safe was being taken from her. She decided that these were ample reasons to cry. She ran until it was dark and her legs would no longer carry her. Collapsing to her knees, she let the torrent of salt-filled sadness leak out of her as she struggled to regain her strength.
Suddenly, a voice came out of the night. "Why do you sit here and cry like a fool instead of getting rid of what troubles you?"
Kyandi hiccupped in fear. "Who's there?"
"Me?" answered the voice. A dark and faceless silhouette stepped into the moonlight. "I am the Shadow."
Kyandi put up her guard and forced herself to stand. "What do you want?" she snapped defensively.
"You have quite an attitude against the one who has come to help you," he chided.
"Help me?" Kyandi scoffed. "Yeah, right. What's in it for you?"
"Nothing," the figure replied.
"Then why help me?"
"I'm a defender of justice, much like yourself," Shadow explained. "However, I'm not out to save the world. Rather, I prefer to help individuals avenge their pasts. And you, my dear, have a lot in your past that deserves vengeance.
Kyandi glanced at the ground for a moment before looking up at the Shadow again. "What do I have to do to get your help?"
"Not much," he replied. "Just trust me, and…" He touched a nearby tree, causing an unearthly fruit to grow from one of its branches. "… eat this," he finished.
Kyandi scowled at him. "And just why should I trust you?"
Shadow made a scolding noise. "No, no, no dear," he said softly. "The question is: Why shouldn't you? I've given you no reason to distrust me, have I?"
For that, Kyandi had no retort.
"Good. Now that the matter is settled," Shadow told her, "all that's left is for you to eat the fruit. Then I'm yours to command."
Kyandi nodded reluctantly. Tentatively, she reached for the foreign fruit. It looked like a black sea urchin, and she expected its spines to prick her fingers with pain when she plucked the fruit from its branch. But strangely, they did not. Instead, the spines became like tentacles and wrapped themselves around her fingers. At her touch, the urchin fruit let off a subtle red glow. Hesitantly, she bit into its surprisingly tender flesh. The meat of the fruit was sickeningly sweet, and its juice was tantalizingly sour. Kyandi swallowed her first bite and noticed the bitter aftertaste, so she sunk her teeth into the fruit again, wanting to disguise the bitterness with more of the overwhelming flavor. She moaned in pleasure and closed her eyes in bliss as a juice as thick and as red as blood dripped down her chin. The sweet and sour taste filled her mouth as a warm, fiery sensation lit up her stomach. Her eyes rolled backwards in sheer indulgence and she could not contain her satisfaction. "Mmmm!" she moaned as she finished the fruit. When she opened her eyes, they were no longer the pure color of Mew-Aqua blue. Instead, her eyes had become as dark grey as the clouds before a storm. Her thoughts were euphoric. "What was that?"
"That, my dear," the Shadow answered in her mind, "was the taste of power. Our contract is complete. Our thoughts are now one. My lady, what shall we do first?"
Kyandi grinned wickedly, her grey eyes twinkling in the night. "Let's go kill my father."
The Shadow faced her. If he had had a mouth, it would have shared in that sinful grin. He bowed politely and replied, "As you wish."
Kyandi reached for her Mew Mew pendant. When she took it out, she noticed that it had changed. The heart that sat in the middle of the pendant's design was now broken in half. The designs that had been pink were now black. Kyandi decided that she liked it better this way. It was more accurate. She brought the tainted pendant to her lips and kissed it. The transformation phrase had also changed. This time, she shouted, "Mew Mew Hard Candy, METAMORPHOSIS!"
Kyandi was thrown into a world of darkness. Suddenly, cords of thorns came and wrapped themselves around her in the place of her garter, wristband, armbands and choker. Black, ankle-high boots appeared on her feet. Bits of the darkness zoomed toward her and landed on her body, creating a black version of her normal battle dress. Her hair turned black and was piled into its French twist with a strange peacock feather sticking out of it. Where the feather should have been green, it was black. Where the feather should have been purple, blue, and orange, it was now red, grey, and silver. Her eyes turned red. A peacock tail (the feathers of which possessed the same unusual coloration as the feather in her hair) fanned out behind her. The darkness slowly drained away into the Shadow's hand. Mew Hard Candy stood in among the trees, freshly transformed. No longer was she a Mew Mew that brought light and salvation to others. Now she was a self-seeking creature of darkness.
"The transformation is complete," the Shadow said simply. He meant it in more ways than one.
Together, Hard Candy and the Shadow rushed to the place where Kyandi Coffman had once lived. The house's lights were still on. Hard Candy went and peeked in the window. Jack Coffman lay on the couch, face down and motionless, a bottle of whiskey in his left hand, which dangled from the side of the couch. The girl frowned. He was still the same idiot he had always been. "Hard Candy Harp," she summoned. Something that looked almost identical to her former harp appeared, but this one was black with red strings.
"Darling, perhaps you should give him a twister," the Shadow whispered in her mind.
"I can't. I was only able to Ribbon Candy Twist because the Mew Aqua gave me power," she responded.
"Mew Aqua? Ha!" the Shadow said confidently. "You have me now. I'm better than this Mew Aqua." He ran his fingers over the harp strings, and a music that sounded like death itself played for half an instant. "Try it now," he said out loud. "You will not fail."
Hard Candy nodded resolutely. She walked to the center of the front lawn and took her position. She clutched the black harp in her hand and began to spin around in a circle. As she spun, wind began to gather.
Pai saw that Kisshu had failed to regain Mew Candy's affections. He decided that having Mew Candy on their side would be an invaluable asset. He thought that he could persuade her to join them. He would apologize for Kisshu's antics and begin his own methodic flirtations with Candy. Using his computer to find the mew's location, he teleported.
What Pai saw when he arrived was perplexing. Mew Candy was dressed in black and spinning in circles in front of the place that he had confirmed was her former residence. A dark figure whose features Pai couldn't make out stood to the side and watched her. The alien knew immediately that tonight would be a bad night to enact his plan. But still, he stayed and watched at a safe distance. Something worthy of observation was taking place.
The Shadow knew that Pai was there, but he did nothing about it. He didn't care who knew about it. He wanted everyone to know. The Shadow was proud that he had talked this Mew Mew into joining him. If his plan worked, everyone in Tokyo would grow to distrust the Mew Mews and ask for them to be banished. No Mew Mews to fight the aliens meant that Earth would slowly begin to die at the hands of the pointy-eared poor excuses for villains. The Shadow didn't really care if the alien race survived. No. The Shadow's only goal was destroy human-kind. He would use whatever means he could to accomplish that end.
The corrupted mew spun faster. Gradually, she began to lift off of the ground. She spun faster and faster, and the winds gathered around her and began to form a funnel. When the funnel was a satisfying size, Hard Candy rode the winds out of the funnel and floated at the tornado's top. She pointed her harp at the house and shouted, "Ribbon! HARD CANDY TWIST!" The twister barreled into the tiny building, tearing it apart with ease. The ruins of the house lifted and spun inside the funnel along with Jack Coffman's dead body. The wind had ripped his whisky bottle from his hand and crashed it over his head. When the tornado had lifted the couch, he had rolled off of it, but he had still been dressed in his work clothes. His tie caught on one of the springs of the couch and gradually tightened until he was hung. His body flipped around violently with the couch, snapping his neck and decapitating him. His headless body floated around the circle of wind, but his head was still attached to the couch with his necktie.
Hard Candy dropped to the ground and made a slicing motion with her hands, like a conductor ending a symphony. The tornado vanished, and debris began to fall.
"Very good," the Shadow praised. "Our first objective is accomplished. What now?"
Pai could not process what he had just seen. Mew Candy had just killed a human. The Mew Mews existed to protect humans. And then Pai realized: Candy was not exactly a Mew Mew anymore.
Hard Candy looked at the Shadow and yawned. "Actually, I'm rather tired." Her stomach grumbled, and she looked down in embarrassment. "And hungry," she admitted.
"Of course," the Shadow bowed politely once more. He touched the ground with his hand and brought it straight up. His fingers seemed to tear a hole in space itself, and the hole turned into a door of darkness. "Welcome to my abode," he said hospitably. "After you." Shadow gestured to the door. Hard Candy opened the door and walked through it. If the Shadow had had lips, he would have smirked. He followed her and closed the door behind her. The door vanished, and the yard of the Coffman house only contained the debris that followed the storm.
Pai took in a sobering breath. No. He would not get Candy to join Kisshu, Taruto and himself. She was something vicious now, and Pai was scared to get on her bad side. Then he remembered that Kisshu already was. With a nervous gulp, he teleported back to headquarters.
Hard Candy fumbled around in the dark. "Can we please turn some lights on?" she requested.
"My apologies," Shadow answered her. "My home doesn't have light. You see, we are in an alternate dimension now. In this dimension, light does not exist."
"Great," she drawled sarcastically. She finally found a place to lie down. It felt like a sofa. "Can I at least get something to eat?"
The Shadow handed her a bowl of something. She put her hand in it and felt tentacles wrap around her fingers. It was more of those strange sea-urchin fruits. "I'm sorry about the repetition," he told her. "This is the only food that I have."
Author: Interview time! Let's interview um… *picks up list* I'm kind of running out of characters. Well, I know everyone's curious about him, so let's interview the Shadow!
Shadow: I don't do interviews.
Author: Well, maybe you could make an exception for me?
Shadow: I don't make exceptions.
Author: Can you at least tell me where those fruits come from?
Shadow: Those fruits come from a long-dead tree. They also grow in the hearts of every man and woman on Earth.
Author: You're extremely vague.
Shadow: If I were translucent, I would never accomplish my goal. This is why I am darkness.
Author: Sheesh. You're creeping me out. Get out of here!
And yes, this chapter was short. But wasn't it very dramatic? Review!
