A/N: This prompt made me think of Ming-Ming pretty much immediately. I wasn't sure how I was going to execute it until I remembered the ideas I shelved for my Valentine's fics. This would have been the Daichi/Ming-Ming fill. I'm tagging it as the ship because the implication is there, but it's not a shippy piece. I picture this taking place a couple of years past G-Rev, but even then I feel like Daichi would be a little young for anything more. Maybe it's just because I'm an adult now, idk. XP

Day 8 | Daichi/Ming-Ming | Rated: K

Glitter

"Atta boy, Strata Dragoon!" Daichi cried as his beyblade landed one last powerful blow.

The force of the hit sent Ming-Ming's blade flying into the forest, where it embedded in one of the trees with a sickening crunch. A flock of birds fled in a mass of flapping wings and fallen feathers, after which the clearing was strangely quiet.

"Oh, no – Venus!" Ming-Ming ran to free her beyblade as the dust settled.

Daichi recalled Strata Dragoon. It hit his palm forcefully, but his hands were calloused enough that he barely felt it. He gave his blade a cursory once over – a few bumps and bruises, but nothing Kenny couldn't help him iron out – before shoving it back into his pocket and turning his attention to his opponent.

Ming-Ming was delicately picking her way back out of the forest, her beyblade clutched against her chest.

"It's not broken, is it?" he asked when she made it out.

Ming-Ming opened her hand to reveal Venus cradled inside. It looked fine from where Daichi was standing and he breathed a sigh of relief. He didn't need her teammates coming after him about dicing up her beyblade before the tournament had even started. He'd just been so eager for another battle…

"It looks okay…"

Ming-Ming gave him a smile that would make steam come out of Kenny's ears.

"Just a little scratched," she confirmed and slotted her blade back into the case strapped around her leg. She gestured to the wide open space that served as the scene of their battle and said, "The landscape is worse off."

Daichi looked around at the deep trenches their blades had cut into the ground and shrugged. "Nothin' a good rain won't fix."

Ming-Ming giggled. She was always doing that, laughing at him when he didn't mean to be funny. He could tell his confusion was showing on his face, but Ming-Ming didn't bother explaining herself. Instead, she took a deep breath of the sea air and walked to the edge of the lookout.

Daichi joined her. It felt rude to walk away when he'd been the one to invite her here to battle. He should've known she'd want to look at the scenery afterward. Girls liked that kind of junk. He guessed it was nice; the stairs lined with trees, the clearing with benches, and a nice open view of the ocean below. A little polished for his tastes, but nice.

"Do you have a coin?"

"Huh?" Daichi looked up from the pebbles he was kicking past the railing and down into the water.

"For the binoculars," Ming-Ming elaborated with another one of those smiles.

"Oh." Daichi flushed; he felt flustered that she'd caught him not paying attention. He reached deep into his pockets and found one of the coins he kept on hand in case he ran into a really good vending machine. "Here you go."

"Thanks, Daichi." Ming-Ming's hair bounced when she spun back around to face the ocean. Everything about her was bright and bubbly, but it didn't get under his skin as much since BEGA went down. He thought that maybe it was because the leftover annoying traits belonged to her and not the caricature BEGA had splashed all over billboards.

"Yeah, sure." He shrugged and leaned against the rail at the edge of the outlook.

Beside him, he heard the click of the coin dropping into the binoculars, followed by a metallic squeal as she turned them to take in the view.

Daichi sighed and drummed his fingers on the railing. He watched a couple birds floating on an updraft for a while. One of them dove down to snatch a fish out of the water before shooting off into the distance. The ripples it left behind disappeared in seconds, swallowed up by the pattern of the wind on the water.

"It's so pretty here," Ming-Ming said wistfully. The binoculars timed out with a click and she sidestepped closer to Daichi, their elbows brushing. "This would be a perfect location for a music video."

"I guess…" Daichi mumbled. He had no opinion one way or another, but he knew somebody who would. "Hey are you coming out with any new music? Kenny's been wondering since they announced the tournament." Maybe if he brought an answer back, Kenny wouldn't be too mad that he'd let Venus scratch up Strata Dragoon.

Ming-Ming hummed, suddenly stoic. She looked out to the horizon, letting the breeze brush her bangs out of her face and carry the sweet smell of her perfume away with it.

"Kind of."

To Daichi, who'd been waiting for an answer that sounded like one of her old interviews, it was an odd response.

"What do you mean 'kind of'?" he asked, studying her closely.

Ming-Ming looked pensive. She didn't meet his eyes, instead gazing out over the water like she might find the answer to his question on the horizon somewhere.

"It's hard," she said, pausing hesitantly for a brief moment before continuing, "after everything that happened with Boris and BEGA." She sighed and everything from the curls in her hair to the frills on her shorts seemed to droop as her shoulders did.

She was looking down now and Daichi was hoping against hope that she didn't start to cry or something. "That wasn't your fault," he said, hoping she didn't notice how alarmed he got when the next breath she took was shaky.

"My record label thought differently."

Daichi remembered as soon as Ming-Ming said it; Kenny had cried about her label dropping her for weeks! He winced. "I'm sure you could find another one," he said in a hasty effort to backtrack.

"It's not just that," she said, sad brown eyes meeting his. "A handful of labels have reached out. Some even thought we could capitalize on the tournament to boost sales. But all of them expect the Ming-Ming from before, and I don't know if that's who I want to be on stage anymore. I don't know if she exists."

"Oh."

He'd always known that parts of Ming-Ming's persona had to be exaggerated. Nobody was that over-the-top and irritating. But he was just now beginning to realize that a version of her had existed before BEGA, and she had been hurt as much as her other teammates by the whole thing.

"Yeah," Ming-Ming said, smiling again. It didn't reach her eyes. "It doesn't help that every time I try writing songs, I get stuck. None of them come out like they used to."

"Maybe they shouldn't," Daichi said with a shrug. He'd never cared for her old music, anyway. It was all earworms and repetition. She could probably do better.

"What do you mean?"

Daichi gulped, thinking for a second that he'd offended her. But when he snuck a glance, she just looked curious.

"Well…" He trailed off with a frown, furrowing his brows thoughtfully. He didn't know how to elaborate without sounding like a jerk. He scanned the scenery, looking for anything that would help him get his point across so they could go back to normal.

"There!" he called, pointing out at the ocean with one hand. The sun was starting to set now, reflecting in a spray of colors over the surface of the water.

"The ocean?"

"It's pretty, right?" he asked, fixing her with a fierce look.

"It's beautiful." Ming-Ming nodded. "Especially during the sunset."

"Yeah, it's pretty on the surface with the light shining on it and stuff," Daichi scoffed, "but there's more to it than that. There's a whole world underneath that nobody ever gets to see that's way more interesting than some waves and colors that go away after the sun sets.

"Would you rather somebody talk about the sunset over and over? Or learn about everything else hiding under the surface?"

Ming-Ming looked confused. "I don't understand."

"You're all frills and fluff and glitter on the outside and that's what BEGA made you focus on," Daichi said, wrinkling his nose in distaste. He could go his entire life without ever hearing another 'Hey! Hey!'. "But I think all the stuff stuck underneath is probably way more interesting. If all you write is more pop garbage like BEGA made you put out, you're really just writing about the same thing over and over. It's no wonder you're stuck!"

Daichi finished with a firm nod. At some point he'd looked out at the water again. When he turned back to Ming-Ming, she was staring at him like she'd never seen him before. For a second he thought he saw tears shining in her eyes and was ready to hightail it outta there, but then she blinked and they were gone, replaced with some emotion he didn't recognize.

Daichi cleared his throat. "Anyway, that's my two cents," he finished somewhat awkwardly, rocking back on his heels.

"Thank you, Daichi," Ming-Ming said. Then, without warning, she grabbed his shoulders, leaned over, and kissed him on the cheek.

"Hey!" he shouted as she pulled back and started hurrying away. He could feel his face heating up. "What was that for?!"

Ming-Ming didn't answer, but she did turn around once, at the bottom of the stairs, to wave goodbye.

Daichi watched her go until she reached the top and disappeared from sight, feeling completely clueless. Slowly, as if he was in a daze, he reached up and touched his fingers to his cheek. They came away covered in sparkly lip gloss and he snorted to himself.

He should tell her to keep a little glitter in there, too. For Kenny's sake, of course.

A/N: This didn't turn out exactly like I thought it would. I struggled a lot with the dialogue. I knew what I wanted Daichi to say, but not how to make him say it and still sound in character. Didn't help that I was falling asleep writing as I finished it and had to go back and edit more than normal. He and Ming-Ming are both hard for me. In the end, I think it turned out okay.

Thanks for reading!