Pride of Sakura

Cheesy Epilogue – No, Really-

AN: Contains so much fucking fluff it can't even qualify as fiction. Christ. Yay.

X X X

"Oatmeal is disgusting," Yuu Sezaburo said one day in a crowded Parum grocery store. "If you purchase it, I am dumping you."

I made a dramatic pouting face, gazing longingly at my grainy breakfast of choice. "B-but it's my favorite. I have it every day! I'll pay for it myself," I fumed, and reached to knock into the cart from the top shelf. Unfortunately my ridiculous breasts brushed against the items below it, thusly knocking about five boxes of not as worthy oatmeal to the ground. I went to pick them up, and bonked my head on the shelf. After a moment of contemplating suicide, I crouched on the floor and clutched my head in pain.

Yuu sighed, kneeling next to me with flat black eyes. "Baka." He helped me pick up the boxes. "Why didn't you let me get it?"

I frowned. "I didn't wanna trouble you," I said, standing up and brushing my knees off.

"It's not a bad thing to ask," he rolled eyes to reach up for the box of oatmeal. Unfortunately as a numan he wasn't much taller than me and his fingertips only brushed it. Gravity then chose to victimize my unfortunate boyfriend, and the box fell directly on his shiny black head.

I think I could have heard crickets chirp in the supermarket as he stood frozen in mortification, tips of his ears going red. I snorted in laughter.

We continued along. It was strange, to see him in such a docile environment. I had seen him on and off in the colony, but most our time spent together was spent bleeding or crying or both. I also felt something like Igor compared to him. He sort of flowed along gracefully, long legs carrying him easily. Myself I sort of trumped along like some sort of irate ginger kid penguin. Sadness.

What most people considered food shopping was somewhat surreal to me though, as it was food shopping for the both of us. Yep, we were moving in together. Astounding, right? I keep expecting this to be another dream that I wake up from with Jenna doing a striptease on my vidscreen when someone was trying to call me. Having to explain that had become a morning ritual.

That and oatmeal.

Which Yuu apparently didn't like.

"So…" I started, and he glanced over at me. I nearly froze. Oh, the hotness. "W-what do you like to eat during the day? Do you like to eat big meals or sorta eat over the course of the day?" Er, wow. Weird question. I was getting ready to palmface when he squinted in thought.

"I guess…one small meal middle of the day, then a nice one for dinner." He shrugged. I nodded.

He also death glared at me suddenly, and I froze. "Among things I hate:-" he cleared his throat. "Oatmeal, cucumbers, radishes, carrots cooked in anything but cilantro and butter, butter most of the time, as a fact, most kinds of grainy bread, all but three brands of white bread, dark meat, soda is disgusting, and I also hate, hate, HATE anything with a squishy texture. Like squash. I don't think I've actually ever eaten it but I'm not going too." He continued listing a massive list of foods he disliked, so basically everything.

I was dumbfounded. "What DO you like?" I blinked.

He was silent.

"Milk. Chocolate. And Ollaka rolls. But not together." He made a face. "I love soup," he added as an afterthought. He then looked at me expectantly. "Anything you dislike?"

I thought hard.

Really hard.

"…Livers?..Tongues… and…Yeah that's it," I said earnestly. "I'm pretty easy."

"Me too!" He added cheerfully. I hope he didn't see the doubt flash across my face. We continued onwards, purchasing our stuff and walking out into the main plaza of sunny Parum.

I turned to look at him, to judge his mood. His face was calm and vaguely apathetic as usual, but he turned to blink at me anyway. "What is it?" He asked.

I took a deep breath to attempt to share my glee at our domestic-ness with him, but ended up walking into someone.

"Gah!" I cried as my bag dropped to the ground with my ass following closely after it.

"Double gah!" Came the response, and I looked in front of me to see a numan man brushing his butt off. "Watch where you're walking, ma'am!"

"Maybe you should watch where YOU'RE goin'!" I yelled in response, standing. He stood too, nose close to mine in a deathglare.

"Hey, hey, hey!" Came a mellow if scratchy female voice, and I turned my head to see a female beast jogging towards us. "Take it easy, y'all." She carefully pulled the numan back. "Easy, Mura," she whispered. He turned to glare at her.

"Leaf! She just crashed into me and acted very rudely!"

The beast blinked at me. "This true, lady?" She glared.

"What of it?" I grumped. I wanted to go home. Who was this duo of stupid?

"How about you two just leave, please," Yuu said icily from behind me. He was just a bit taller than the numan man, but the other didn't seem frightened. In fact, he stepped right up to Yuu and glared.

Uh-oh.

"Not until I get a proper apology!" Mura said, crossing his arms defiantly.

The one called Leaf sighed, but stood resolute. I'm not sure what happened, but it happened within thirty seconds.

Yuu leaned a bit down, putting his hand up to Mura's neck, tucking it in between his fluffy collar, and leaned close, his long pony tail spilling over his shoulder and pooling on the other man's collarbone, whispering something in what I think was their native tongue. The other numan's eyes went very, very wide.

"Huh?" The beast asked, turning pink. Well, it was quite the…suggestive…spectacle. And then as a seemingly final thing, he pulled back both arms and punched each of them in the shoulder.

Howling in pain, they both turned and fled, whining loudly about what a manly punch Yuu had for such a pretty woman.

X X X

When we had finished unpacking, Jenna woke up from recharging to come ridicule us on our choice of food and make fun of my butt in these pants. Life as usual, I guess.

It was about time to make dinner, so I sat and stared.

Uh.

Problem.

"I really don't know how to cook," I said earnestly. "I can do basic stuff, but—"

"Not a problem," he shrugged. "Let's just switch off."

Yay! He's being agreeable and fabulous. I'm so happy. Here we come, sexy giggling young couple status. "Because I'm not eating it if it's gross." He added.

Great.

"Picky manbitch," Jenna added from far below us, sitting on the floor with an open bag of potato chips roughly the same size as her open. She munched thoughtfully. "Just make her do the grunt work." She pointed one tiny greasy hand at me.

So that's how it started. Originally.

But it quickly became nightmarish.

X X X

(Ankh Teano)

Man, things are boring. Yuu's with Lucy now so he's got less time for me. Which is saddening. I guess I was doing the Guardians thing for real now, depressing and corny as it is. Oh well, puts food on the table anyway.

Speaking of food. There was some eerie smelling scent floating amongst this place. Like corn, if corn was made of Satan. I settled down at the table, waiting amiably for my "date".

Five minutes later, two guards appeared with Noriko Yanui in tow. Her eyes were bloodshot, and her usually sleek hair was frizzled.

"They don't give you any conditioner in there?" I teased. She rolled her eyes at me.

"Aren't you dead yet?"

"I wish." I grumbled.

"YOU wish?" She said semi hysterically, photon shackles visible around her hands. "I'd kill you if I could, beast." She spat. "I've told them over and over that you and Sezaburo are the real culprits, but they don't be—".

"Because we aren't stupid…ILLUMINUS TERRORISTS," I said. Hey. No need to get caught this late in the game. I leaned in close to the glass. "We didn't sign our name big and clear on every project and such to get ourselves noticed by Howser-sama ".

She turned away from me, puffing her cheeks up. "I'll be out of here, eventually. And when I am? That Gray bitch is DEAD."

I shrugged. "You can try. I very much doubt Yuu will let you kill her. He's sort of in love with her. In fact, I don't think I'll let you kill her either. If she dies, Yuu's unhappy. If Yuu's unhappy, I'm unhappy."

"Why?" She asked softly, looking down. "What does he see in her?"

I sort of wanted to slap her, but hey. "Well, besides the fact she has great cans?"

"Besides that!" She yelled, flustered. I wonder if Lucy said something to her about her tiny numan chest.

Naw, never.

"Well, she chased him around the star system to try and save him. She fought me to try and save him. She forgave him for shooting her, or trying at least. Fuck, she trusted herself to an S2 rank criminal and boarded a pirate ship to get to him. What have you done? Glued his skin back on and worn a lot of perfume? Oh, big deal." I rolled my eyes while she fumed at me. "That kid liked him from day one."

"I liked him from day one!" She yelled.

I did feel kind of bad for her. But I felt the reason I didn't like her was about to surface in the form of a rude comment. "And he's with some human ape!"

I slammed my fist on the table, watching her jump. "Lucy's not an ape. Humans are ninety percent idiots, yeah. But there are quite a few decent ones. And hey, I've met more humans I like than numans. A human will at least sit down for a couple beers and talk to you before they judge you. You little gits can't even be bothered."

She puffed her cheeks, glaring at me. Oh, glorious life. Man, I'm hungry. I'm gonna go bug Lucy for muffins.

X X X

(Juicy Gay)

In the end, I had ended up stomping away in a rage, after Yuu had basically taken over completely. I guess his robotic arms proved entirely more effective in cutting vegetables with great precision and a lot less blood.

Hey, what if I wanted to put the extra iron in my food?

I ended up back at the Dallgun Viewing Plaza. Wow. It was empty as usual, with only the silent presence of the planets casting a blue glow over the place. I sat down slowly on a bench, putting my elbows on my thighs and resting my head in my hands.

It seemed strange that this place was so calm after all that happened. I was proud to see the scorch mark on the wall in the hallway though. Noriko Yanui and I's fight had been fairly epic, in my mind.

It was like all of that had happened in some dream. I bit my lip. Sure, we were living together now. I mean, we had officially been together over two months. Which was short yeah, but we decided we had been through so much shit that it equaled roughly a year.

Yet in that time we had never done much as a couple. I mean, we went out to dinner and held hands but…Yuu was still very awkward. I didn't wanna push it, y'know? I'd occasionally catch him staring at me with a somewhat haunted expression in his eyes. I don't know what was going on beyond that dreadful look, and I was afraid to ask in case it upset him. So we stayed close but far.

He never pressured me for sex or anything stupid like that, thank god. But at the same time we'd never even done anything past kissing and even that was a bit tentative and ended swiftly. He seemed afraid of anything else. So whatever, he can have his space. That's fine. We let each other have our lives, really. We were both busy with our work as Guardians.

I nearly jumped out of my skin when I realized he was sitting next to me.

I did at least unleash a bloodcurdling scream, causing him to glare at me. "Yeesh," he sighed. "You're as good at zoning out as ever I see."

I smacked him on the arm. Ow. Metal. I shook my hand in pain. His shoulders drooped and he stared ahead at Parum, blue and green spotted and glowing as usual. "A lot has happened here that seems like it hasn't, huh?" He smiled, shocking me by echoing my own thoughts.

"…Yeah," I agreed, staring at his profile. The glow of the planets caught and reflected off his earrings, and bounced off his hair. Man.

I hate him for being so pretty.

"I'm sorry," he said after a minute, surprising me. He turned to look at me, then cast his gaze downwards, shoulders slumped. He sighed. "I was a jerk. Jenna pointed that out." He pointed to a bruise on his collarbone. "I didn't know she could jump that high…"

I snorted and he smiled slowly at me, and I noted it reached his eyes. Carefully, I reached out and put my hand on his cheek. He closed his eyes, leaning his head into it. My heartbeat did a sort of conga. Sexy.

"I was afraid you were afraid to touch me," he said out of nowhere, surprising me. "Which sounds stupid after it all."

"I…was afraid you thought I was gross." I said bleakly. He snorted.

"Right." He opened one eye to gaze at me. "If you're gross. Then I…I don't even know what to say."

I swallowed, summoned up any courage I had stored in my boobs to fight the misfortune, and leaned forward to kiss him. He let me, wrapping his arms around my waist to pull me closer. I really had no idea what I was doing so I recalled my soap operas and went from there. There were lots of girly feelings floating around, like his arms and the way I could smell his hair and cologne, and the fact that his skin was way softer than mine, god dammit. We pulled away when I decided breathing was a good idea, and I decided that this was a terribly romantic place especially because it had once had me half naked kicking rifles around.

I took a deep breath. "Yup," I said with great finality. "That is about how gross I think you are." I then shifted and leaned my head against his shoulder. He leaned his head carefully atop of mine, minding his ears. We stayed like this for quite some time, until I heard some faint footsteps. I looked up, and realized that the beast and numan from before were here.

"With the powers of fangirls and a truly heroic attempt at GAR, a numan!" Mura cried, striking a Sailor Moon-esque pose.

The beast leapt down beside him. "With the power of awkward tan lines and a stupid amount of strength, a beast!" She cried, also striking a pose.

"With our powers combined, we are MOE SQUAD!" They cried, and whipped something out from behind their backs.

"Eat chemical cheese, villain!" The numan cackled.

"Yeah, stupid mean-spirited lesbians!" The beast joined in.

Before we even had time to stand up, we were covered in artificial cheese spray. They threw the cans into the trash can in a rather stylish way, and then ran off screaming about how PDAs were not heroic at all.

Yuu shook with silent rage, cheese especially bright on his black hair.

"Well…we better go show Jenna this so we can not live it down for six months," I said honestly. He stared straight ahead, squeezing my hand almost painfully tight.

"When I find them…"

I pulled him up. "Dinner first, murder after."

He let me pull him along but eventually matched his stride to mine, then bent to kiss the top of my head. "I love you, even if you're covered in cheese."

"I love you too, Yuu."

After that we found Ankh back at our place. He was terribly amused, and Jenna nearly had a system crash from trying to film it and upload on the internet at the same time.

Combined between Ankh and Jenna, we didn't live it down for a year. But that was okay. We had a whole lifetime to be covered in cheese together.

X X X

AN: I TOLD YOU IT WOULD BE CHEESY. /awkward grin

For Mura, who wanted a cameo, and Canopy and him being stupid together.

Mura: *various action poses, adjust goggles* GIRLY MALE CHARACTER BEING PLAYED BY A TINY WOMAN! /FLEX

Canopy: *pulls spear out of cleavage* TOMBOY FEMALE PLAYED BY A TOWERING NERD!

Yuu: *SUV noise*

Mura and Canopy: *RUN THE FUCK AWAY*