---
The brunette looked at her, an annoyed face already on his face. “What?”
“Thank you, Taru-Taru! You saved me, na no da!” She was so happy to see him that her old catch-phrase rolled off her tongue. Just like the old times.
The alien scoffed and blushed slightly at his nickname. “Whatever. It was no big deal. But you,” he growled, turning sharply to the girl, “need to watch what you’re doing. That was the stupidest thing to do when there’s all this ice everywhere.”
“It was fun!” she stated happily, ignoring his scolding. The monkey-girl wiped her hands messily on her pants before looking up. “What are you doing out so early, Taru-kun?”
“I’m walking, monkey-girl. You?”
“Same! Heicha woke me up and I couldn’t go back to sleep. So I decided to go on a walk.”
Taruto just grunted.
Pudding smiled at one his favorite responses. She couldn’t help but almost giggle at his expression. His cheeks were bathed in a light flush from the coldness, and his brownish-red hair was ruffled. He, as well as Pudding, had changed since when they had both been fighting for the Earth.
It had been about two years ago when aliens had suddenly showed up back on Earth. The girls had been working in the café during the summer break when the door to the café door had opened and the three aliens had walked in. Beside their brightly colored hair, the rest of the customers basically ignored them because their appearances weren’t all that odd. Despite wearing their normal alien attire, Pai had come up with a pill that caused each of the alien’s to have human-sized ears. Ichigo had come over to the group half expecting a group of girls and had let out an ear-splitting shriek and dropped the menus she had been holding.
Even louder was the scream she released when Kisshu had wrapped himself around her happily while cooing, “Hello, kitten! How’ve you been?”
Next came Lettuce to see what the problem was, and soon after she saw the trio, she promptly fainted. Chaos followed involving the evacuation of disgruntled customers, a fire extinguisher being used to hit Kisshu, a chair being thrown at Kisshu, an amused Pai, a bucket of water to get Lettuce up, a very annoyed and wet Ryou after a missed water throw, and Taruto being strangled by an ecstatic Pudding.
After everyone had calmed down and been settled, the discussion of what had happened took place. Pai, Kisshu, and Taruto had been sent back to Earth the help view over the redevelopment of a better Earth. The Mew Aqua had worked magnificently on their home planet, and the prime minister had sent the three back to watch over as a sort of thank-you gift. Pai had concocted the pill to shrink their ears for a week at a time, they had brought back a spaceship that transformed to look something like a car, and Pai had even set up an apartment room for the aliens to live while they stayed in Tokyo.
Pudding was even more surprised at Taruto’s change in appearance then the fact that they were staying. He had changed his hairstyle from being two pigtails the top of his head (he had declared it “not manly enough”) to a small, messy ponytail in the back of his head. His outfit had also changed. It was more so similar to Kisshu’s with the shirt, but he had kept his own pants type. The most amazing thing had to have been his change in height. He had grown even more since the two years ago to the current moment, but then he was about two centimeters taller than her. At the current moment, he was about 3 centimeters taller, because she had grown as well.
But now, his hair was even messier with the cold wind whipping through it. He raised an eyebrow at her as she studied him. “What is it, monkey-girl?” he asked.
“I’ll race you to the park near here, na no da!” she chirped, bending her knees in an invitation to dash.
He blinked at her statement, but she was off before he could even conjure up a response. “H-hey!” he called loudly, starting to dash after her. She just laughed as she raced faster.
Even though she was running as fast as her legs could carry her, he was readily catching up. Letting out a laugh of happiness, she tensed her legs and plowed forward even more hastily. Taruto let out a couple of swear words and tried to quicken his pace.
She turned to run backwards to determine where he was at behind her. Giggling excitedly, the blonde came to the conclusion that she was comfortably ahead and would win at this pace. Her heel dug into the slush on the sidewalk as she turned towards the park again and continued.
Taruto grit his teeth as he saw her position. Closing his eyes, he concentrated on the area in front of him and grinned as he felt the air snap around him. When he opened his eyes again, he was next to Pudding, who stared at him in shock. “Cheater!” she cried.
“It’s payback for your head start!” he yelled back and pushed ahead. Two minutes later he slowed, gasping at the children’s’ play section of the park. Following a few seconds later, Pudding screeched to a halt, spitting out noises of annoyance at him. Taruto just grinned at her smugly.
“Taru-kun is a cheater!” she rasped out, sucking in air desperately.
“Payback,” was the only word the alien responded with, before making his way over onto the snow-covered mulch of the playground.
“Hmph,” she pouted. Quickly her attitude changed, however, and she skipped onto the mulch as well. She let out a happy squeal as she saw the playground equipment, despite the fact that it was covered in snow. “Swings, na no da!” In her excitement, the catch-phrase slipped out into the cold air. She sprinted towards the swings and hopped onto one that wasn’t covered in snow. Immediately, she began to pump her legs hard, gaining altitude as she did so.
“Come join me, Taru-kun!” she cried, her voice sliding with her as she moved back and forth.
He watched her for a minute or so before turning down her offer. “I don’t need a dumb swing to fly, monkey-girl,” he reminded her, and with an easy push of the leg, he was floating several meters off the ground towards Pudding.
“The swing is not dumb, Taru-kun!” she protested, but smiled as he levitated in the frigid air. She continued to swing, pumping her legs harder, so she would be going higher than Taruto. Within no time, she was swinging as high as the swing set would allow. Taruto lazily floated higher, again, and Pudding stuck out her tongue at him. Suddenly, she grinned broadly.
“Well, I don’t need a swing to be higher than you either!” the blonde declared, and as the swing reached the peak of its height, she jumped. Before she fell very far, she grabbed onto the metal bars that made up the frame of the swing set, and clambered up to balance on the top supporting bar. “Hah!” she cried, triumphantly as she could.
Taruto shrugged and floated even higher still. “Whatever,” he said, smirking. Pudding let out a groan of annoyance.
“I bet you can’t do cool tricks, though!” The yellow Mew did a careful cartwheel on the bar. Taruto just laughed and floated around the swing set. Pudding did a backwards cartwheel and let out a scream as she felt something heavy hit her jacket. Taruto tossed a snowball up and down in his hand tauntingly, grinned an unholy grin. “Taruto-kun!’ she shrieked, using his full name for emphasis. He laughed loudly, and chucked the ball of snow in his had at her. She dodged the snowball, and waved her fist at him. “Hah!”
Any normal Tokyo native would have been surprised to come into the park and end up seeing a blonde girl doing cartwheels and dodging snowballs from the top of a swing set, while a floating boy chucked the balls of snow at her. Even though Tokyo had seen some weird things since the Mew Mews had first arrived, it wasn’t everyday you saw a floating boy throwing snow missiles at an athletic blonde girl. But no one was wondering by the park in the early morning hours, so for now, no one else had ever seen a sight like the one in the playground.
The alien floated close to his former enemy and lightly chucked some snow at the girl. Pudding began to move to dodge the snow, but Taruto was too close to give her much reaction time. Stumbling on her own feet, she fell forward, letting out a shriek and grabbing at anything near her.
With a loud, ‘thump!’ the girl hit the ground. Taking a few seconds to recover she groaned. Moving slightly in her discomfort, she found that the ground beneath her was very soft. ‘And warm,’ she realized. Sitting up to get a better look at the earth under her, she gasped as a very disgruntled brunette stared back up at her. “Ow,” he commented, but she could barely hear him, because she had knocked the air out of the poor alien as she fell on him.
“Taru-kun!” the martial arts master squeaked. She blushed, and suddenly figured out that she was straddling his waist. “Sorry, sorry!” she gasped, almost tripping over herself in her hurry to get off of him. “Are you ok? I’m so sorry! I probably broke your back! And then you’ll become a paraplegic! And then who am I going to beat at rope climbing in gym? Ahh! I’m so sorry!”
“Pudding…”
“How am I going to get you to a hospital? I can’t teleport, and I certainly can’t carry you… You’ll probably get an infection, and then you’ll die! TARU-KUN’S GOING TO DIE!” she wailed loudly.
“PUDDING!” the alien-turned-‘human’ yelled, cutting her off before she could continue her ranting. Once she stopped speaking, he muttered stubbornly, “I’m fine…”
Pudding blinked several times and stared at the lightly blushing boy in front of her. As his words sunk in, she became animated again. “That’s great!” she crowed, throwing herself at him. She easily wrapped her arms around his neck. “Taru-taru’s okay! And Taru-kun saved me!” Taruto blushed an even deeper shade of red, but luckily Pudding was too busy squeezing him and shaking him back and forth to notice.
“I’ll thank you by giving you something special!”
Taruto mumbled something about it better not be a free “Pudding-will-teach-you-a-gymnastics-move!” coupon like last time, but the ecstatic girl continued. “Thank you, Taru-kun!” she chirped. And the next thing Taruto knew, he was thrust back as Pudding pushed her lips firmly onto his.
The red flush on the alien’s face would have put any fire engine to shame.
---
Pudding pulled back after what seemed like an eternity to Taruto. But secretly, deep down in his little alien heart, he enjoyed it as he had enjoyed nothing before.
But, heck, he wasn’t going to go and admit that!
Pudding grinned, and Taruto thought he could detect a blush on her face. “Thank you for saving me, Taru-kun!”
Taruto blinked once, before composing himself as any other normal teenager would do. “No biggie,” he murmured, not quite focusing on what was around him.
An awkward silence filled the freezing air, and the two stared at anything but each other. Taruto squinted into the rising sun, and Pudding seemed entirely infatuated with a tree with a squirrel hopping through the branches. To break the silence, Pudding lunged forward and pulled at Taruto’s arm. “Let’s go, let’s go,” she urged.
“Where?” Taruto asked, surprised, and let himself to be yanked into a standing position.
“Anywhere!” She skipped in front of him. “Follow me! We’ll play follow-the-leader!”
‘Same old Pudding,’ the boy thought, putting his arms behind his head in a gesture he had picked up from Kisshu.
Pudding walked with a spring in her step down the sidewalk until they were out of the park. She shot a sharp glance back at Taruto and grinned. The monkey-girl swerved sharply to the right and Taruto raised his eyebrow in a questioning manner, but followed. He didn’t need his enhanced alien hearing to hear the giggle she released as he trailed behind her like a puppy. She turned again, this time to the right, and he moved right with her.
Next, the leader slowed her pace to a very, very slow walk and as Taruto adjusted, sprinted ahead. The brunette boy hurried to follow. In a very typical Pudding manner, she threw in two cartwheels. Taruto muttered loudly enough for her to hear “Didn’t learn your lesson the first time, eh?” but copied her movements again. As he pulled up, he noticed that she had dodged across the street and joined up with the slow trickle of early morning traffic. Swearing under his breath, he jogged after her. This routine continued for another five minutes before Taruto noticed that they were a block away from the apartment he shared with Pai and Kisshu.
Pudding seemed to have noticed his realization, and turned at the next corner towards the apartment. She darted ahead yet again, and jumped onto a lamppost and swung in circles a few times before jumping off, narrowly avoiding a little old man with a cane. Following suit, Taruto made sure to avoid the poor old soul. The old man had gotten enough of a scare with Pudding leaping next to him suddenly.
Slowing down, and finally halting the blonde teen waited for Taruto to catch up. She smiled happily as he stopped next to her. She took in a deep breath and opened her mouth wide and shouted, “GOOD MORNING, TOKYO!”
Taruto stared at her with horror evident on his face. “What are you doing?” he hissed.
“It’s follow-the-leader, Taru-kun,” the yellow-themed girl stated matter-of-factually.
He hesitated before taking a deep breath as well, “GOOD MORNING, TOKYO!” he bellowed down the street, and more people turned to look back at the two than when Pudding had yelled it out.
“Good job, Taru-kun,” she congratulated him, patting him on the back. “Game over!”
The two began walking again, and they finally ended up at the front steps to the apartment building where the alien trio resided. Together, Taruto going first, they entered the building and passed by the mailboxes before hesitating at the elevator. Pudding made the decision before shouting, “Stairs!” and pushing open the door to the stairway.
“Shouldn’t I get to decide?” Taruto called after the girl.
“Nope!”
He grudgingly followed her up, up, up until they reached the fifth floor. Both were gasping for air, but happily made their way to the door of the apartment. The area in front of the doors was open, so they could look out onto the city around them. Pudding leaned on the ledge and ‘ooh’ed and ‘aah’ed as she always did at the view. “It must be around 7 already,” she guessed, glancing at all the traffic bustling around the city she could see. Taruto nodded in agreement.
Another silence filled the air, but not for nearly as long as it had been at the park. Pudding shattered the silence by saying cheerfully, “I think I’m going to go the store and by some doughnuts for the kids. I bet they’ll love a treat!”
“Doughnuts?”
Pudding gave him a ‘how-can-you-not-know-that?’ look. “You don’t know what doughnuts are, Taru-kun?”
“Not really.”
The yellow-Mew gasped. “That’s horrible! I’ll have to buy you one soon! Maybe I’ll drop one off later or something. Jeez, Taru-kun, never eating a doughnut!” She shook her head sadly at the loss of how many years Taruto had gone without doughnuts.
“Okay?” he said, leaving it to sound like a question.
“Okay,” she confirmed, despite the fact that Taruto wasn’t expected a reply.
She moved from the ledge, after sending one last glance over out on the city. “Thanks again, Taru-kun!” she chirped, before she swooped in and pecked him on the cheek with her lips.
Taruto flushed again, and Pudding scurried down the hall, waving back at him. “See you later, Taru-kun!” she called. A few seconds later, the door to the stairway clinked shut and she was gone.
Taruto stared at the space she had been just seconds before. ‘What a day… And it’s not even that late,’ he thought with a sigh. But his sigh was a contented one. It had been a good day so far for him. He was startled back into reality as he saw a small orange-ish colored figure waving to him from the ground below. He waved back and watched the figure until it disappeared around the corner.
“And there she goes, little Miss Sunshine. She’s cute, neh?”
Taruto jumped and swore violently before turning around and swearing directly at the person who had startled him.
“Kish, where the hell did you come from?” he spit out at his older friend.
“Why, Tart, I thought you knew! I came from my mother, of course,” his friend remarked cockily, floating slightly off the ground to lean against the wall where Pudding had been leaning before.
“Of course I know that, you idiot. What I mean, Kisshu, is when the heck did you get out here? Were you listening to the entire thing?” Taruto put special emphasis on comrade’s full name, because they usually just called each other by their nicknames.
Kisshu lazily lifted his arms behind his head in the gesture Taruto knew all too well. “I can’t believe you don’t know what doughnuts are, Tart. You’ve had a very sheltered childhood, haven’t you?”
Taruto growled venomously. “I’m going to kill you, Kish!”
“You have to catch me first!” the older alien taunted and whizzed towards the apartment door.
“KISSHU!”
“Eek! Pai, save me!”
“What kind of stupid thing have you done now, Kish?”
“Can you believe that Tart hasn’t ever had doughnuts?”
A pause.
“… Seriously, Tart?”
“BOTH OF YOU SHUT UP!”
---
The aliens are early risers. Or something like that. And what was Taruto doing out so early? He was actually going to walk by Pudding’s house, which he frequently does when he can’t sleep and it is early in the morning. He ended up meeting Pudding half way. What a charmer, going by her house!
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