March 24, 2010.

A/N: Greetings, fictioners! :D

I know it's been a ridiculously long time since I wrote anything. I would apologise, except I haven't been off avoiding writing in my absence. Actually, I've spent the last few months writing a Minto-based fic that has grown into something freaking epic. And I promised myself when I started it that I wouldn't post it until it was finished. Since it isn't finished yet, it isn't posted XD

So, because I missed this site, I've decided to start posting stories again. This one I've been meaning to write for a while, because the idea was born a good few months ago. I resisted the urge to write it due to the aforementioned Minto-giant, but I'm writing it now, because I want to. Kapische? :)

Also: if you're wanting a fic that's a hybrid mixture of Tokyo Mew Mew and Australian culture, then you've come to the right place.

I'm trying to make this as unique as possible. I don't know how often it will be updated. Whenever I finish a chapter I suppose. I'm going to try to keep them about 4-5 pages in length, so I can update more frequently. And I'm intending on this being quite a short chapter fic. But knowing me, it'll probably grow into a beast XD

All I ask, is that if you do read this, please review it. Please.

Disclaimer: I do not own Tokyo Mew Mew.

Searching for Solace

- ONE -

2000

January

"And a quick re-cap of tonight's headlines: bushfires in Canberra threaten more than one hundred properties as fire-fighters continue to battle the wild blaze, government opposition criticises the Howard Government's decision to implement GST later this year, Britney Spears' first official tour finally draws to a close in America–" channel ten newsreader Sandra Sulley paused and smiled for a moment "–And a so-called 'monster' rears its ugly head in Tokyo, Japan–"

"Sarah, turn it down!" Britney Spears' You Drive Me Crazy blasted from the closed door to her ten-year-old sister's bedroom. "I'm watching TV!"

She waited for a second, listening to hear if her sister would obey, her eyes fixed on the footage enlarged on the screen. From a helicopter hovering low between the skyscrapers, what looked like a mutant, oversized animal was terrorising the streets. Part-horrified and mostly-sceptical, she rolled her eyes and hauled herself up from the couch to storm down the hall.

The volume finally lowered when she pounded her fist against her sister's door, but by the time she got back to the lounge room, the short article had ended, and Sandra Sulley had moved on to Sports Tonight. Apparently the AFL pre-season was starting. Mackenzie dropped back down on the sticky couch and groaned audibly. The relentless summer heat made everything sticky, and the standing fan in the corner wasn't doing much to help. She certainly wasn't feeling cooler yet.

Bored with news, she grabbed the remote and switched to the cartoons on ABC.

June

The bell rang, and Mackenzie sighed internally with relief. School today couldn't be any more boring. She had no idea how the government worked; all she knew was that the leader of Australia was the bald man named John Howard, and his competition was the big angry man named Kim Beazley. That, in the advertisements, liberal was blue and labor was red; which instinctively made her like liberal more, because she didn't really like the colour red. It was associated with anger and evil, and other generally bad things.

"I don't get what GST is," she admitted to her best friend Morgan as they squashed into the bag room between the two grade five portables to get their lunchboxes.

"Me neither," Morgan agreed. "I think it just makes things more expensive."

Mackenzie glanced at her jealously as she fished in her school bag. Morgan had always been smarter than her. It wasn't fair that she always knew what their teacher was talking about and Mackenzie didn't. It was clear she had at least some understanding of what Mrs. Weller had just been explaining to them.

"What do you wanna play today?" Morgan asked, as the two girls wandered outside. They stopped when they spotted Mrs. Matherson by the drinking taps, and quickly (and reluctantly) put on their floppy, wide-brimmed hats, pushing the toggles up under their chins. Mackenzie sat on one of the peeling benches and watched a bunch of grade fours playing Pokémon cards by the breezeway as she chewed her vegemite and cheese sandwich.

"We could play tiggy with everyone else," Morgan continued, sitting beside her. Mackenzie shook her head. She didn't really like tiggy, and she really didn't like Daniel Palmer, who she knew would be playing. He always called her names and threw things at her. She didn't know why, but the others often laughed. They never did it to Morgan.

"We could get some skipping ropes," Morgan suggested, swinging her legs.

"I don't want to skip today." Mackenzie knew she was being difficult, but she was in a bad mood.

"Well, what do you want to do, then?" Morgan asked, getting annoyed. Mackenzie was silent. To be honest, she hadn't really thought about what she felt like playing. Now Morgan was making her feel even more stupid than usual. She stared at her sister as she ran past, squealing with her grade four friends.

"We could be Mew Mews," Morgan suddenly said brightly. Mackenzie stared at her.

"What?"

"Mew Mews," Morgan repeated. "Did you watch Cheez TV today? They were in the news again, after Dragonball Z finished."

"I hate Dragonball Z," Mackenzie grumbled childishly, and irrelevantly.

"I know," Morgan replied. "I didn't really watch it. Mum was making my lunch and made me change the channel so she could watch the news. Those girls were on TV again."

"They're not real," Mackenzie said. "It's stupid."

"I think they're real," Morgan argued. "They actually showed them fighting a monster this time."

Mackenzie shrugged. She was a stubborn girl, and if she didn't think it was real, then it wasn't real. It didn't matter what anyone said to her.

"I like the pink one," Morgan said, typically Morgan. She was such a girl. Everything in her room was bright pink, and fluffy. The only thing that was fluffy in Mackenzie's room was the bear she'd had since she was a baby. And her bedroom was plain white. Feeling inadequate again, because she didn't even know how many of these weird girls there were, let alone what colours they wore, Mackenzie pretended not to hear. It was the only way she knew how to deal with being Morgan's best friend.

"Did you know the blue one can actually fly?"

"Let's play with our Beanie Kids," Mackenzie said suddenly, loudly. Without looking at Morgan she got up and headed back towards the portables. Morgan would happily play with her – she always did. And, bless her, she might be the smartest girl in their grade, but she wouldn't have a clue why her best friend was in a bad mood. She was still young enough that she was naïve and innocent.

September

"Mac! You're missing it!"

Mackenzie put down her book (Paul Jennings and Morris Gleitzman's Wicked, number three) and hauled herself up from the carpet. The rest of her family was sitting out in front of the telly, watching the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games. They were making a big deal out of these Games because they were being held in Australia for the first time since the Melbourne Games in 1956. She only remembered that because her mum had told her ten minutes ago. Already she couldn't remember if it was '56 or '58. She didn't really care.

Her parents were sitting on the couch (her mum with a Coltees cordial, her dad with a can of VB). Sarah was lying on her stomach with her eyes glued to the screen. Mackenzie sat down and crossed her legs. On the TV, the lights in the arena were dimmed and made to have a rippling effect, as though everything was underwater. From the corner of the screen, a small girl with curly hair was pretending to swim; she was belted to one of those trapeze things, and was suspended high above the ground. Oversized fish 'swam' around her.

"Who's that?" Mackenzie asked.

"Nikky something," her mum replied. "She's very young – and so brave. Look how high up she is!"

Mackenzie was more interested in being jealous that Morgan was up in Sydney right now, staying with family. She was sitting somewhere in that crowd as they spoke, watching it all live. She'd been so excited about it that Mackenzie had gotten sick of hearing about the Games. It was all anyone wanted to talk about, and she had no interest in discussing it.

In fact, she wished she hadn't thought about Morgan, because now she didn't feel like watching any more of the ceremony. She got up again.

"I'll be back," she promised, and walked out. Unfortunately, the rest of the house offered little entertainment. She wasn't in the mood for her book anymore, and the toys in her room were boring without Sarah to play with. Their dog, Rusty, a good-natured blue heeler, was lounging in the sun outside, snapping lazily at an occasional bug. She was left with no choice but the beat up old TV in the laundry, which was about the size of a matchbox.

She switched it on and pressed the buttons near the volume dial, flicking around until she found something better than political debates or the Olympic ceremony. Something bright and colourful was happening on channel seven, so she settled for that and made herself comfortable on the almost-broken old stool in the corner, resting her elbows on the ironing board.

She'd thought it was a kids' show, but quickly realised it was a news article featuring colourfully-dressed people. She was sulking about the letdown this was when she caught the headline in the corner: Tokyo's Teen Heroines. It suddenly clicked that these were those girls Morgan was so obsessed with. Instead of changing the channel in search of cartoons, she kept watching.

"The appearance of the oversized animals and the appearance of the girls seem to be linked," the newsreader was saying. "Although the reason of existence of the heroines has yet to be confirmed, there is evidence to suggest that the girls are an experiment. Close examination of the heroines' costumes has revealed animalistic traits like ears and tails, leaving scientists guessing about the authenticity; the notion of a possible scam has been raised multiple times. But the identities of these Japanese heroes remain a mystery." She paused for a moment to look gravely into the camera. "Several names have surfaced as being possibly linked to the experiment, with the most frequent ties being made to a Dr. Shirogane, who perished in a house fire in 1995. Investigations continue at the site of his destroyed laboratory–"

"Mac?" Sarah's voice came from the door. Mackenzie jumped and instinctively switched the TV off; a habit of feeling permanently guilty. Sarah blinked at her, confused. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing," Mackenzie replied shortly. "Why are you following me?"

"Mum wanted to know where you were…"

"Well I'm still in the house!" Mackenzie snapped. Sometimes she just got frustrated that she could never really be alone. Someone always had to know where she was, like they didn't trust that she could sit by herself and not cause trouble. Like she always had to have parental supervision.

"Are you coming?" Sarah asked, not really knowing what else to say. Mackenzie looked at her for a moment, wondering what it would be like if she was an only child. She wouldn't have any little sisters to tail her everywhere like spies, to keep her in check.

A minute later, she was back in the lounge room, her eyes on the screen, her mind on the footage of those colourful girls in Japan. Little did she know, it would be the last she saw or heard of them for a long time.

CULTURE NOTE

the Howard Government - John Howard was the Australian Prime Minister for so long; he was in power before I was born! (I think) He went out of power in 2007, beaten by current Prime Minster Kevin Rudd.

AFL - the Australian Football League. Consists of 16 teams of 22 players who move an oval-shaped football up an oval-field, aiming to kick a 'goal' (worth 6 points) or a point. Goals have four posts; two tall posts flanked by shorter posts. A goal is scored by kicking between the tall posts. Players can handball or kick the ball to each other, and have to bounce it when running. There are lots of ways to get penalties, and the game is generally rough. Basic gist of the game. BEST. SPORT. EVAR!

ABC - Australian Broadcasting Corporation. A channel that shows mostly Australian kid TV shows, educational programmes, and documentaries. Very boring during the middle of the day.

Drinking taps - Drinking fountains/faucets.

Vegemite - If you Americans don't know what Vegemite is, at least, then you're terrible people XD Sandwich spread that is uniquely Australian; very salty, and dark-brown/black in colour. Most tourists can't stomach it XD The stuff is amazing :3

Tiggy - Aussie name for 'tag'; ie: one person is 'it' and chases everyone else around until they tag someone else, at which point the tagged person becomes 'it', and the game continues. In Victoria it's called 'tiggy', in New South Wales it's called 'tips'. Weirdos.

Cheez TV - A channel ten program that used to run every weekday from 7:00 to 8:30am. It showed popular anime series' like Digimon, Dragonball Z, Zoids and Pokemon. It stopped airing in 2004, when it became Toasted TV, which shows a mixture of cartoons, but less anime :( These days, Bratz, Bakugan Battle Brawlers, Yugioh GX, and Robot Chicken are shown :/ Aussie kids used to get up early to watch it before school XD

Mum - 'Mam' in England, 'Mom' in America. We're special, too :)

Beanie Kids - I've also heard them called 'Beanie Babies'... Stuffed bears that came in a colossal range of designs. Lots of people liked to collect them.

Paul Jennings - a popular/famous Australian author.

Morris Gleitzman - as above.

'Wicked' - An excellent, very Australian series of books aimed at older kids, with Aussie heroines that face all sorts of weird stuff and creepy monsters. Another series co-authored by Jennings and Gleitzman is 'Deadly!', which they are currently airing on Saturday arvo TV in cartoon-form :)

Telly - Like the Poms, we call our TVs 'tellies'.

Coltees cordial - A big brand of cordial. Personally, I don't like their products much :/ A big part of an Aussie kid's childhood.

VB - Victoria Bitter. An age-old uniquely Victorian beer :) Comes in a stubby: a short, fat glass bottle.

Blue heeler - a breed of dog used in the police force. The breed is so Australian, they named a police TV show in the '90s after it. It was called 'Blue Heelers', and was very unnecessarily dramatic, like all action dramas are.

TV channels - there are five free-to-air channels in Australia: channel two (ABC), channel seven (7), channel nine (Nine Network), channel ten (Ten), and channel 28 (SBS). Channel ten (I think) is also called 'Win' in rural Victoria... I've never understood why they call it something different out there.

Oh, BTW: Arvo - Afternoon XD

A/N: Holy crap, there's an epic amount of Aussie culture in the first chapter O_O

A/N: Yes, the chapter is a little uneventful. Trust me, it's just serious set up right now.

All the big stuff will happen very fast, and then it'll stay fast XD

Until the next update!

Love,

Cherrie xx