Ok, so it's been a while. But I haven't had the time to write much lately. I actually started this before Christmas Eve, so I've been working on it as much as I can! I know my updates are becoming less and less frequent, but I've made it one of my New Year's Resolutions to update quicker.
Anyway, on with the chapter, since it's what you've been waiting for!
Passion: She doesn't own TMM, 'kay?
KKKO: Yay, Passion's being nice for once!
Passion: Yeah, yeah, but I gotta dash, Hana's looking for me again. So I'll -- HEY! WHAT DO YA MEAN BEING NICE FOR--
KKKO: Anyway, you better be leaving. Now for the next chapter!
Passion: HEY KIDDO!! DON'T CUT ME OFF LIKE --
KKKO: Oh HANA! I'VE FOUND PASSION!!
Passion: OH NO! PLEASE TELL ME YOU DIDN'T JUST DO THAT?!
KKKO: Enjoy the story!!
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Chapter 3
Decoration Disasters
"So, let me get this straight. You two are twins, but were separated when you were younger. And you said you used to be exactly identical, both in appearance and personality?"
"Hai, Minto-chan. That's right," Ichigo grinned, hands clasped behind her back in a cheeky manner. After half an hour, the two sisters had finally managed to explain the situation to the other girls (after waking Minto up first) but they had had trouble grasping the concept of their red-headed friend having a double.
And quite rightly so; the idea of two Ichigo's was way too much to handle. Putting up with one ditsy, nearly-always-hyped-up girl wore several of them down at the best of times - like when she wanted to borrow clothes from Minto, or wailed, or had a pointless argument with Minto, or set her mind on something that by now really wasn't going to happen (like getting a raise). And they were only a few things.
"So, anou…how could anyone tell the two of you apart?" Retasu asked, a kind although curious smile dancing on her lips.
"I don't really remember. But I think we were always dressed in different coloured outfits. Though they were matching clothes," Ichigo replied, laughing lightly at the memory of herself and Kiichigo in bright dresses, sitting on the same chair and both refusing to be parted. "Though it was fun when we swapped one time and got everyone confused."
"Wow, na no da! That would've been sooooo much fun! I wanna do that, na no da!!" Purin squealed, bouncing up and down, throwing her fists into the air as she did so.
Ichigo smiled and nodded in agreement before launching into a tale of the incident.
While all this was going on, Kiichigo was beginning to get bored. She stood beside her sister, but decided to move to the side of the room. Leaning her back against the wall, she folded her arms across her chest and sighed. Blowing a few stray locks of hair out of her face, Kiichigo rolled her eyes at Ichigo. Her twin was loving all the questions and reminiscing about their past. True, she had once been like that. Once. Yes, there was a time when she got as easily excited and was as overly energetic and was even as eager, however, things had changed. But she would pretend for now; it would at least keep Ichigo happy.
Closing her brown orbs, she rested her head back on the wall also and listened for a moment to the conversation. After a second, she decided it was meaningless chatter and tuned it out instantly, something she had become quite good at over the years. Though it was something she had been told off about on more than a few occasions.
Unluckily for her, Zakuro had noticed. Turning her back on the gossip also, she made her way towards Kiichigo, once reaching her proceeding to tap her on the shoulder. As the other girl came back to her senses, Zakuro cleared her throat. Almost jumping at the shock of Zakuro standing right in front of her, Kiichigo placed a hand over her chest to steady herself slightly.
"Yes?" she said, a questioning tone to her voice.
"Just curious as to why you're not joining in with Ichigo," Zakuro stated bluntly, raising an eyebrow as she spoke.
"No particular reason. I guess I'm just still tired and anyway, why interrupt? She's having so much fun telling everyone by herself," Kiichigo answered, her reply seeming somewhat reasonable. Yet the elder girl would not budge.
"I'm sure she wouldn't mind you adding on bits and chipping in. At least taking part in their conversation would be appreciated," she said, twisting her head to see if her friends had yet noticed their absence.
At this, Kiichigo's eyes narrowed and she shot a glare at Zakuro. However, she quickly remembered that she was supposed to be acting like Ichigo and wiped her face of the expression as Zakuro turned her attention back to her.
But Zakuro had caught the look. However, she didn't say anything, thinking it would be best to ignore it and keep an eye on Kiichigo for now. Giving her a suspicious glance, she shook her head a little, just enough movement that disabled Kiichigo from seeing it. Then she turned and walked over towards her friends, throwing a small glare at the other girl when she didn't automatically follow her.
"Alright," Zakuro started, cutting off the conversation in mid-flow. "When are we going to start putting up the decorations?"
Instantly two pairs of eyes lit up. Retasu smiled lightly and although she wouldn't admit it, Minto also began to get excited.
"I'm guessing by your faces that would be a 'now'," Zakuro said. Immediately she left the room, the other girls chasing after her. However, Ichigo lingered in the doorway, but only long enough to grin at her sister and call out, "Come on! It's going to be so much fun! Especially if it's anything like last year!"
She dashed off along the corridor to the main part of the café, as happy as could be.
As she entered, her grin widened. All of the boxes packed with decorations had been lifted down from the attic and were now scattered across the floor. Kish, Pai and Tart had joined the buzz of people in the pink castle-like building and were beginning to take everything out of the cardboard holders. However, Ryou, Zakuro and Keiichiro were trying to stop them.
"Don't just unpack everything at once. What happens if someone stands on something and it breaks?" Ryou tried to reason with them.
Tart shrugged in reply and selected a delicately shaped glass angel from the box he was busy riffling through. Turning it over in his hands he admired the soft silk-fabric wings cut into feathery forms and sewn together. They were outlined in a silver glitter paste that sparkled when he gently moved the wings back and forth in his fingers. The polished glass body was adorned in a gown of shimmering white gloss, gleaming in the artificial light of the café. Around the hem of the dress was a pattern of tiny stars, which bewildered the alien boy as to how they got there. So minute were they, that he had difficulty comprehending how on earth any human could've actually painted them on. Yet, as he flipped it over on the bottom was a label. It read 'Hand-painted by '. The name itself was a blur, obviously having been smudged over the years, by water maybe? Anyway, it had been designed by hand so that just left Tart even more confused.
Putting it down beside his right thigh, he continued searching through the box for something else that would catch his interest. Several times he took a figure out; another angel, a four-legged creature with a red nose and weird looking spikes (or were they horns) coming from it's head, an old man wearing bright red and a jolly expression. Despite protests from his friends he kept repeating this over and over again - taking things out and leaving them lying on the floor. It was not until Ryou came up to him and took the box away from him did he stop. Then, without warning, Zakuro and Retasu began to collect the figurines he had surrounding him, picking them up and loading them into the cardboard container. However, Tart managed to shield the glass angel from their sight and therefore was able to keep it from being taken from him.
Pouting like the child he was, he glanced over at Kish. Everyone was having the same problem with him, only Kish was putting up a fight.
"Why do I have to put them back?" he asked, arms crossed and eyebrows raised.
"Because they could get broken if you leave them scattered all over the place," Minto replied exasperatedly.
"Well if no-one comes near them they won't get broken," he argued.
"Oh, someone will find a way, trust me," she countered, placing her hands on her hips.
"And what's that supposed to mean?" Ichigo shouted from the other side of the room.
"That there are some people, mainly red-headed bakas by the name of Ichigo Momomiya, that tend to be clumsy and stupid and are dangerous to everyone and everything around them," Ryou answered with an arrogant smirk.
As he finished his statement he turned to face her, liking the reaction he was getting. Smoke could practically be seen rising from her head. She was fuming, fists clenched at her sides so tightly her knuckles began taking on a white pigment. He teeth were gritted and her gaze was narrowed to a deadly glare that was thrown at the blonde boy. It wouldn't take much to push her over the edge.
Unfortunately for Ryou, he knew just how hard to hit. All he did was utter two words, "Baka Strawberry."
And this was when Ichigo - hypothetically - fell. Her senses crumbled around her as she launched herself at him, sprinting toward him, ready to grab him and tackle him to the ground. She neared him, but at the last second he took a step to the side and she skidded past him. Coming to a stop, she chose a different method of attack: walking. This time he didn't move as she approached.
"You are such a jerk," she said quietly, anger being the only detectable emotion in her voice.
"I know," he replied, just as softly as Ichigo, only he had more of a arrogant tone than an angry one.
She seethed as he backed away from her and sauntered off. He went to one of the sets of decorations, picked it up, faced everyone and announced, "Let's put these up now."
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Half an hour passed…by which point, the chaos had developed. And as Ichigo had hoped, there was currently a repeat of the previous year underway. Purin was swinging on the top tip of the giant synthetic Christmas tree. It was swaying back and forth, back and forth giving the young girl the time of her life. Once again, they had made the mistake of letting her put the star on the top.
At it's base, Keiichiro and Minto were trying to reason with the girl, slightly begging her to come down. Retasu stood a little way off, hands clasped together with worry, concern filling every inch of her mind. Whenever one of the three would call out that swinging on a tree - no matter how big - wasn't safe, Purin would reply with a cheerful, "I'm ok, na no da!"
Zakuro was doing her best to ignore them, though she was anxious to her friend's well-being. However, they were beginning to get on her nerves. She was helping Pai string up the bigger, heavier objects that would hand from the ceiling by unraveling them from their bubble-wrap coat and lifting them high enough for him to grab.
Tart sat on the floor still attempting to unpack everything and leave it around him. He hadn't been on Earth the last time the humans had celebrated this 'Christmas' so it was all new to both him and the other two aliens. He was enjoying himself with this task, however, he kept getting frustrated when Ryou would, every once in a while, walk up to him and gather everything back up and then move the box somewhere else. Although, when this happened, he just picked himself up and followed the older boy until he placed Tart's 'toybox' down. That was when Tart would plop himself back down and begin unloading the contents.
Kish sat at one of the tables doing his job. Sorting out the candy canes and chocolates that would be dotted all over Café Mew Mew. But he had also taken it upon himself to test the sweets out before sorting them. At the moment he was licking a mint-flavoured candy cane - his fifth one so far. He had already consumed just under a dozen interestingly shaped chocolates and several fruit flavoured candy canes. No-one had stopped him, then again, it was because he had yet to be caught.
Ichigo and Kiichigo were busy hanging up the tinsel, laughing and chatting happily as they did so. Unfortunately for the others, the two had stumbled across a whole box filled with only pink tinsel…which was the only thing they were using. The three boxes that contained the different colours were left to one side as the girls concentrated on clothing the café in the pink stuff.
"What are you doing?" came a disgusted voice from behind.
"Decorating the café with tinsel, like we were asked to," Ichigo replied simply and bluntly, knowing far too well that another fight would come out of this.
"The café's pink enough. I don't need you adding to it," the voice said.
"Well then, Shirogane, should've thought twice before leaving us in charge of it and leaving the box with us," she countered. "Anyway, why would you have pink tinsel if you aren't going to use it?"
"Keiichiro made me buy it. Or rather, he bought it and forced me to keep it," Ryou snorted, his face screwed up in a disapproving way. "Take it down and use the other colours," he ordered.
"But it's pink!! I like pink, so therefore I am going to use pink!" she retorted, finally twisting around.
Ryou really wasn't in the mood for her nonsense, so he decided - for once in his life - to compromise with the catgirl. "Fine, but at least take some of it down and use some of the other colours."
"And if I don't?"
There wasn't even a second between her question and his reply. "I'll dock your pay." It was the threat he always used on her to get her to do what he wanted, and like the many previous times, it worked.
She mumbled and muttered insults under her breath as she began to undo some of her hard work.
All the while Kiichigo was silent, watching the blonde carefully as he walked off and grabbed the box and decorations Tart was playing with and moved them somewhere else, the younger boy chasing after him.
"Stupid Shirogane. The jerk."
Kiichigo shook her head and smiled at her sister's immaturity as she continued to complain about her boss. Stepping over Ichigo, she grabbed the container full of blue and green tinsel and opened it, beginning to hang it up where the rest of the shiny stuff had been.
For a moment, a quiet atmosphere swept over the café. Well, until Purin finally managed to make the tree tip further in one direction and topple to the ground.
"That's what you get for letting a girl who's part monkey and completely hyper put the star on top," Ichigo grinned, standing and about to make her way to the rest of her friends who were now gathered around the collapsed, unreal plant. Purin was fine, having jumped out of the branches just before the tree had smashed into the ground.
"Part monkey?" asked her sister, freezing Ichigo in her tracks.
Kiichigo was suspicious and she obviously wanted an answer. Ichigo's head was instantly blanked, cleared of all thought. Except one.
What am I going to do?!
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A/N: It certainly has been a long time since I posted a new chapter hasn't it? Sorry!! But as I said, it's my New Year's Resolution to update quicker! Well, hope you liked the chapter! Plz review!!
Oh, and I'm working on another story, but that won't be up for a while.
Matashita!!
KO xoxo
