Ichigo put down her curling iron and picked up her hairspray, twirling the hot curl in her finger and spraying it lightly. She was nearly done curling the bottom section of her thick, ruby-red hair. She didn't curl her hair often, but she had a date with Masaya at the downtown botanical garden, and she was excited to dress up on her day off. She released the top section of her hair from a claw clip and sighed. Still so much to go.
Ichigo had been planning her outfit since Wednesday – a pink, flowy midi skirt, a white cropped tank, brown wedge sandals and gold jewelry to match. The weather had cooperated splendidly; the forecast was 21°C and sunny – the perfect spring day.
She finished another curl and tucked it into the volumes of her finished hair. Masaya had only been in Tokyo for a few days, but they had already been on three dates. It didn't matter much to Ichigo – she felt like she could spend ages with Masaya. He was an easy conversationalist, and their dates flowed effortlessly. Ichigo wondered to herself what he would think of her hair; she hoped he would notice.
"Your hair looks different … Wear it like that more often."
She quickly shook the memory of Quiche's remarks out of her head, feeling her face redden. Small, intrusive thoughts about her persistent admirer had found their way into her mind more frequently as of late. The timing couldn't be worse, as Ichigo had only 10 days before Masaya would be gone again to London. The least she could do was keep her mind from wandering.
But I can't help it, she told herself. She set down her curling iron and sprayed another batch of curls with hairspray. How can I control what I think?
Ichigo didn't realize how tense she was until her phone buzzed on her desk and she jumped in surprise. She took a deep breath to calm herself, then set down her hairspray. Someone was calling her. She picked up her phone and glanced at the screen.
Incoming Call
Ryou Shirogane
"Oh no," Ichigo murmured to herself, rolling her eyes. She propped her chin up with one hand and reluctantly took the call.
"What, Shirogane? It's my day off, you know!" she said bluntly. Ichigo heard Ryou sigh on the other end.
"Look, Momomiya, I don't want to be talking to you on your day off either, but we've got some information about the chimeras. We've made a breakthrough after your battle yesterday, and I need to talk to the team about it."
"Talk like, now?" Ichigo interjected. "I have a date in an hour!"
"Don't worry, your boyfriend is invited too," Ryou said gruffly. "We need you down at the café, stat."
"But my hair is only half-curled!" Ichigo whined, glancing up at her reflection in her desk mirror.
"See you there," Ryou said. Ichigo heard a beeping tone – he had hung up.
"Ugh!" Ichigo groaned to herself, slamming her phone down on her desk. She massaged her temples wearily. Her thoughts bounced between concern for what could be so urgent to call in the whole mew team, and how she would fix her hair in the next few minutes. She settled on loosely curling and primping the top part of her hair, then tucking the rest into already-done curls. She set everything in another coat of hairspray, changed into the outfit for her date, and dashed down the stairs.
"Going on my date now! Back tonight!" Ichigo announced to her dad as she rounded the corner towards the front door.
Shintaro Momomiya looked up from his e-reader. He frowned, peering over the top of his glasses. "Wait, where are you going again? When are you back?"
Ichigo groaned and slouched against the front door, one hand on the handle. "The botanical gardens, and I'll be back before 10."
"10? That's late, Ichigo! You know crime rates go up when it's warm out–"
"Call if you need anything! See ya!"
"Wait – are you wearing that shirt that shows your stomach? Wait–WAIT!"
Ichigo swung open the front door and shut it behind her in one fluid motion. She cringed at the thought of all of the angry texts from her dad she was bound to receive later. Beginning her brisk walk in the direction of the café, Ichigo relished the sun on her bare shoulders as she strode. She took delight in how the light, breezy fabric of her skirt swished about her legs.
Just got to get through this stupid meeting, Ichigo reassured herself, ...and then Masaya and I will have the most perfect date ever.
She was pleasantly surprised to find Masaya waiting for her outside the café as she rounded the corner leading up to the walkway. He sat on one of the benches to the side of the café entrance, dressed in a light blue polo and dark slacks. Ichigo noticed his slightly more formal attire and wondered briefly if she should have opted for something nicer.
Masaya was hunched over his phone as Ichigo approached, scrolling through something before he noticed her approaching. He glanced up as she drew closer, then smiled. Ichigo beamed as he stood up to embrace her in a hug.
"You look amazing," Masaya murmured into her hair. Ichigo felt herself blushing as she buried her face in the warmth of his chest.
"Th-thank you," she replied softly. She broke from Masaya and smiled up at his warm expression. "Want to head inside?"
"Sure," Masaya agreed. He took Ichigo's hand in his, then led her to the double doors of the café. He opened the door for Ichigo, then followed in after her through the empty dining room. Ichigo relished the feeling of Masaya's hand in hers. She moved her thumb up and down his hand absent-mindedly as the couple found their way to the basement door. Masaya opened the door for Ichigo then, too, following in after her and down the concrete stairs.
The basement was packed with far too many people. The dingy office was full of computer monitors, miscellaneous tech, posters and filing cabinets, and it felt even more claustrophobic with a dozen people crammed in its tiny square footage. Ichigo and Masaya appeared to be the last ones to arrive – the mews were already chattering amongst themselves, and the alien boys lingered towards the back of the room. Tart was floating nonchalantly with his legs crossed; Quiche was explaining something to him from his perch on top of a filing cabinet. Ryou pointed Pie to something on his open laptop. Ichigo caught Ryou's eye as he looked up from the screen.
"Well, look who decided to show up!" Ryou announced. "For Christ's sake, do you need a map to the café, Momomiya?"
Ichigo scowled and crossed her arms. "Shut it, Shirogane! You're the one who called me in on my day off!"
"Whatever, we're already late so let's just get started," Ryou said. He stood up from his seat at the desk. "Hey, everyone listen up!"
The chatter ceased amongst the occupants of the room. Everyone turned to look at Ryou. Satisfied, Ryou crossed his arms and continued.
"The reason I called all of you in to talk is because Keiichiro, Pie, Quiche, Tart and I believe we have a breakthrough in our research on the recent chimera activity. It's crucial you all know what's going on for your own safety."
"Wait, so chimeras could surprise us at any time?" Pudding interrupted, eyes as wide as saucers. Mint, standing next to the blonde mew, rolled her eyes.
"Not exactly," Ryou replied. "I'm getting to that. First I want to establish a timeline of exactly what's been happening over the past few days.
"So first, we had the small pack of low-leveled leopard chimeras you all took care of on Sunday, about a half-hour before the larger incident on the train. Very shortly after, three things happened very quickly: Quiche, Pie and Tart arrived back on Earth, Aoyama reunited with Momomiya, and the leopard cub on the train with Momomiya and Aoyama suddenly transformed into a larger, very serious threat – much, much more powerful than the small pack of low-leveled chimeras you all fought earlier in the day."
A few of the mews nodded as Ryou paused. Ryou looked steadily around the group. "Something else surprising happened during our battle on the train – Aoyama was able to use some of his leftover power from when he was Deep Blue. He effectively entered a weakened, transformed state for some brief moments. It was enough that he was able to keep Momomiya from drowning by creating a weak force field around them underwater."
Masaya nodded, "That's right. It was...very strange. I've never experienced a resurgence of my power like that."
"We're all glad for it, too!" Berry chimed in enthusiastically. "You're a hero for saving Ichigo!"
Ichigo smiled and gave Masaya's hand a squeeze. Ryou made eye contact with Ichigo for a brief moment before continuing. "Yes, well...since the incident with the chimera on the train, we've been working to identify why chimeras are suddenly reappearing in Tokyo, seemingly unprovoked."
"So no one's controlling them?" Mint asked, concern dotting her tone. "It's not like the Saint Rose Crusaders?"
"No, not that we can tell," Ryou answered. "We've been searching for a common thread. And your battle with another chimera yesterday – another powerful one, at that – gave us more data to analyze. We think we know what's causing them to transform on their own."
Ryou paused, leaving the question hanging in the air as he opened his laptop again. He clicked into a window and flipped the device around so that everyone could see the screen. The rest of the room leaned in to peer at the map on the computer.
It looked like a map of the surrounding areas of Tokyo, with two squiggles – one colored red, one colored green. The lines met in clusters around the map, but sometimes broke off from each other to create loops and clusters elsewhere. Ichigo narrowed her eyes when she recognized the locations on the map.
"Hey wait, the red line is all around my house!" she said, "...and that's the café! What the heck is this?"
"The red line is your location, Momomiya, over the past five days or so," Ryou explained.
"Hey, that's creepy!" Ichigo protested loudly, scowling. "Why didn't you tell me you've been following where I go?"
"Are you going to let me finish, Momomiya? I can't tell you why if you won't let me talk." Ryou said impatiently.
Ichigo crossed her arms and huffed. "Fine."
"Anyway," Ryou continued, "the second line is an approximate location of a second source of energy that we believe was dormant up until recently – the green line is yours, Aoyama."
Masaya tilted his head to one side and narrowed his eyes. "I don't understand," he said in a low tone. "Why would you track Momomiya and I, specifically?"
"We weren't at first," Ryou explained. "We were collecting data on basically anything out of the ordinary – using old data from the Mew Project, we began tracking the atmospheric conditions of basically anything to do with chimeras or alien activity, like we did years ago. We spotted an anomaly almost immediately, but it wasn't until I showed this data to Pie that I was able to understand it fully."
Ryou glanced over to Pie, who was standing off to his left. Pie cleared his throat. "Yes," he began hesitantly. "At first I thought Quiche, Tart and I had a stowaway on our ship when I saw the reading from Shirogane on the energy moving around Tokyo – it looked exactly like one of us three. But when we matched the patterns to Momomiya, we realized it was actually Aoyama."
Everyone in the room glanced over at Masaya. Masaya looked deep in thought, his brow furrowed. "So what you're getting at is that... I have some sort of alien energy still in me? And it's somehow the cause of all of this?"
"Wait," Ichigo interrupted, "Aoyama wasn't even there yesterday when the chimera showed up out of nowhere!"
"Right, this is where it gets complicated," Ryou said. He flipped the laptop back to face away from the group, then typed something in. He flipped the laptop back around. The screen showed something akin to a heat map – with reds and oranges in patches where the red and green lines intersected.
"This is a map showing the strongest readings on Aoyama's power. And this…" Ryou tapped a button, and three white pins appeared on the map, "...are the three different instances of chimera attacks, including the very weak pack of chimeras we fought right before the train incident."
The pins fell within the wide swaths of red and orange patches. Ichigo scowled, trying to quickly wrap her head around the information.
"So if I'm understanding this correctly," Masaya said, still staring into the glowing light of the laptop screen, "The chimeras are appearing at some sort of intersection between Momomiya and I?"
"Essentially," Pie answered. "It's somewhat up to chance, but our current hypothesis is that since your power as the Blue Knight – and as Deep Blue – were both awoken by your attachment to Momomiya, your power only flares up when you are near to each other."
"Think of it like twin magnets," Ryou added. "By being in close contact with each other during this flare-up of Aoyama's power, you're creating a sort of magnetic field all across Tokyo. We're hypothesizing that this energy field between you two may be unintentionally incubating the chimeras in the area."
"It doesn't help that Tokyo is basically a parasite minefield," Quiche chimed in, drawing everyone's attention to where he sat cross-legged on the file cabinet. He was picking at his nails casually. "Even after those 'Crusaders' or whatever came in here and tried to round up all of the leftover chimera parasites, they couldn't get them all."
"Yeah, because Quiche is a dumbass and tried to infect practically anything that moved, at least before Pie and I got here to straighten things out!" Tart added. Quiche reached out and swatted Tart on the back of his head, eliciting an "ow!" from the younger boy.
"I don't buy it," Mint interjected. She put her hands on her hips and scowled as she spoke. "You're telling me that the aliens just happened to show up at the exact time this all started happening, but it's somehow Aoyama's fault?"
"Listen, witch, I don't like what you're getting at, but none of us are out here making chimera animals!" Tart bit back, glaring down Mint.
Mint curled her nose up at Tart. "Right, says you!"
"The only one who can create a chimera animal as strong as the one from yesterday is Quiche, and he's been too busy womanizing all of the chicks in this stupid café to be terrorizing you hags with chimeras," Tart argued loudly.
Smack! Quiche hit Tart over the back of the head again, harder this time. "Ow, what the hell?" Tart whined, glaring up at an annoyed Quiche.
Ryou quickly interjected, "Hey, would you two quit it? Listen, it's a remarkable coincidence, but we're lucky Quiche, Pie and Tart arrived when they did. We wouldn't know any of this new information without their help."
"Wait, so what do we do now?" Ichigo asked. She was still struggling to wrap her mind around all of the new information.
"For now, it's a game of wait-and-see," Ryou replied. He turned to address the whole group. "But we wanted to call all of you here to let you know the circumstances surrounding the chimeras. Based on what we know, the chimeras will only appear when either Aoyama, or Momomiya, or both are present. If you're around one or both of them, be aware of the risk. Otherwise, you should be in the clear."
Ichigo felt a sort of dull rage and sadness brewing in the pit of her stomach. She was essentially a chimera magnet, and it was all because of Masaya visiting her in Tokyo. Her head felt cloudy, like it was full of smoke. She clenched her jaw, trying to piece together how to feel, or what to say. Her only thought, repeating over and over in her head, was how unfair it all was. Unfair. Unfair. Unfair.
"The good news is that once Aoyama skips off to London again, we probably won't have to worry about any of this," Quiche remarked. Ichigo's eyes snapped up to glare at him; he met her angry stare with a smug look. Ichigo felt all of the complicated emotions in the pit of her stomach bubbling up into her words.
"Yeah, I'm sure that's what you...what all of you want now! 'Won't it be great when Masaya leaves?!' You know what, I'm done! With all of this!"
Ichigo abruptly whirled around and shoved her way between her friends standing behind her. She dashed up the stairs and into the light of the café, feeling the prick of incoming tears at the outer corners of her eyes. Unfair, unfair, unfair.
How was she supposed to enjoy the rest of Masaya's time in Tokyo when the fear of chimeras would follow them everywhere they went? How could her friends be excited for Masaya to visit, when his very presence in Tokyo was causing danger all around them? Ichigo wiped angry tears out of her eyes as she pushed open the heavy front doors of the café and stepped out into the afternoon sun.
"Ichigo!" came Masaya's voice from behind her, calling her by her first name. Ichigo sighed into her hands over her face and stopped a few meters from the café. She soon felt a warm hand on her back.
"Are you okay?" Masaya said with concern. He wrapped Ichigo in a slow, comforting hug. Ichigo hesitantly encircled her arms around Masaya's middle. She buried her face in his shirt, feeling her throat tightening itself into a knot. She didn't want him to see her crying.
"I just…" she started slowly. She took a long, shaky breath. "It's all just...so unfair."
"I know," Masaya said, rubbing one hand up and down Ichigo's back. "We'll be okay, though, Momomiya – we always are. You know nothing can keep us apart."
Ichigo nodded into Masaya's shirt, sniffing loudly. "Yeah I know," she murmured. "I just...really wanted to enjoy our time together...before all this happened…"
"And we will," Masaya reassured her. "We'll still do all of the things we planned. We'll make the most out of our time, I promise." He pulled away from Ichigo to smile down at her. Ichigo nodded slowly and wiped her eyes with the back of her hand.
"Okay," she agreed. She smiled weakly at Masaya, who beamed at her with warm, velvety brown eyes. Ichigo felt as though she could swim in the depth of his smile, or wrap herself up in its comfort like a blanket.
Ichigo heard the door swing open again behind her. Soon, the rest of the mews were gathering by her side one by one.
"Ichigo, you okay?" came Lettuce's soft voice from her left. Ichigo nodded, glancing around at the concerned faces of her friends.
"Yeah, I...I'm sorry for the way I acted back there," Ichigo said meekly.
"Don't apologize," came Zakuro's reassuring voice. "That meeting was alarming."
"No kidding!" Pudding chirped. "What a weird meeting! Chimera magnets!"
"Listen, Ichigo, we're your friends – and we're always going to support you and Aoyama, no matter what," Mint said, placing a dainty hand on Ichigo's shoulder. "None of us blame you or Aoyama for what's happening."
Ichigo nodded slowly and let out a deep breath. "Thank you, all. It's just a bit overwhelming, that's all."
"We're a team, you know!" Pudding said, grabbing one of Ichigo's hands. "We're the Mew Mews, and we'll always have each others' backs!" Ichigo smiled and squeezed Pudding's hand.
"Right," Ichigo agreed, glancing up at Masaya with a smile. He returned it with a nod. "We can get through all of this together."
"In the meantime, you're late for a date!" Mint said, giving Ichigo a light push on her back. "Don't waste an outfit like that on a bad day."
Ichigo giggled and wrapped one arm around Masaya. He circled her shoulders with a light squeeze. "We're off, then," Masaya announced to the group. "Thank you all for your support. It means a lot to Momomiya and I."
Ichigo said goodbye to her friends and made her way to the train station with Masaya's hand in hers. Despite the heaviness in the air after the meeting, Ichigo was glad to be by Masaya's side. An air of uneasiness hung over them like a stormcloud, but Ichigo tried her best to shield her thoughts from anything but her joy in her boyfriend's presence.
Only ten days left, Ichigo reminded herself as she boarded the train with Masaya. Make them count.
(A.N./
Dry chapter, I know. Next one is much more exciting, I promise.;) )