Chapter Three

Naming of the Mew

"Sit down girls." Ryou said as soon as the five super heroines entered the café.

"What is it now?" Ichigo asked, her eyes drooping a little from exhaustion, she was always tired these days.

"Why don't you all have a cup of tea and Ryou will explain." Keiichiro said as he carried a tray out of the kitchen. The tray was laden with mini cakes and cups as well as a pot full of tea.

"Mmm, this hit's the spot." Mint said as she sipped her tea.

"Pudding! Be careful with the sugar!" Lettuce yelled as the girl spun the container on a long thin pole. Zakuro on the other hand, stared silently ahead ignoring the monkey-like acrobat's antics and waited for the gentlemen to explain.

"Now girls, before she disappeared, you were warned by Mew Momokio that you had to find another member of your team. Correct?" Ryou said.

"Yeah." Ichigo said. "Your point being?"

"My point being," Ryou replied, "that Keiichiro and I think we found her. Actually," he said, "she found you."

"Could you perhaps explain a little more?" Lettuce asked.

"At that last battle there was a girl on the sidelines." Ryou continued.

"So? There were a lot of people on the sidelines." Mint said with a bored sigh. "What's so special about this one?"

"This one had a reaction to the battle you were fighting." Keiichiro broke in, causing the girls to become surprised.

"Yeah! Yeah!" Pudding rang out. "We got a new partner! We got a new partner! So where is she?" She asked the men, looking around expectantly.

"She's not here." Ryou said calmly. "She actually doesn't even know she's a Mew yet. But here's a picture of what she looks like. You all are going to have to work together on this and persuade her to join your team." He said, pulling up a close-up photo of the girl on a drop-down monitor in front of them.

"Oh my gosh!" Ichigo said, dropping her teacup so that it clattered on the ground, spilling tea all over the place.

"What is it?" Ryou asked.

"I know who she is." Ichigo replied in a whisper. "I can't believe it! It's my cousin. She's been visiting for the summer from America. She's just got here the other day."

"Good, then you can get close to her and convince her." Ryou said easily, closing the matter and signaling the girls to get ready for their shift.

"Yeah, Ichigo, don't hold out on us!" Mint said in her usual manner, putting on her waitressing uniform.

"I'll try, but I won't promise anything." Ichigo said, picking up her apron "She can be stubborn some times."

Ryou walked out of the room calling back to her, "I wonder where she gets it from."

When he was out of the room, he turned around and looked at Ichigo through a crack in the door as she took a tray out and began serving customers that had began filing back in to the reopened café. He sighed to himself, knowing that he could never tell her how he felt, especially now that Masaya was in the hospital. He turned around and went to find Keiichiro. Things were getting complicated, and the discovery of a new Mew meant that it wasn't going to get any easier.

Ryou found Keiichiro in the basement looking over footage of previous battles to see if the mysterious girl was at any of them. Oddly enough, she was at two others, which Keiichiro pointed out to Ryou. "Huh." Ryou said. "This must have been during previous visits to Ichigo." He continued, becoming engulfed in this information. It was a while before he remembered why he had gone down there in the first place.

"Keiichiro, I was wondering if you could do a favor for me." He began quietly.

"Of course Ryou, what is it?" The older gentleman said in a kind voice.

"Ichigo's husband, Masaya is in the hospital." He said with some difficulty. "They can't figure out what's wrong with him, but I thought that you might take a look at him."

Keiichiro smiled slowly. He, like much of the other staff at Café Mew Mew, knew Ryou's feelings toward Ichigo. Ryou didn't know this however, and it was a delicate matter, so Keiichiro didn't bring it up. Instead he smiled at his friend and said, "Of course, I'll go over there on my way home tonight."

"Thanks." Ryou said with a sigh. He was glad that that was over, now he just had about a billion other things to worry about. #1 on the list- making sure Ichigo didn't scare off her cousin.

The pun in the title is "the taming of the shrew" a story by Shakespeare. I changed it a little, and think its cute. MY STORY!