The sun shone down brightly from the cloudless sky on the little park in Tokyo. A small breeze stirred the warm air, preventing the temperature from rising too high. Suddenly a stray leaf broke away from a tree's hold, creating a small shadow that passed lazily over the walkway, and found its way to a girl passing by. Making its home atop her red hair, it nestled between the two, ribbon-held ponytails.

Pausing for a slight moment, the girl reached up quickly to snatch the leaf from her hair. With large brown eyes she observed it, holding the tender leaf in her palm. As the breeze picked up, she held up her hand, allowing the leaf to fly away. Through her blowing bangs she could see it make its way to a familiar bench. Once again, it made its home.

A small smile rose to the girl's face, and she walked along the path the leaf had taken. As she approached the bench, she once again took the leaf into her hand. Dropping her school bag onto the ground, she slowly sank into the familiar position to wait, though she knew that no one would be coming.

It was out of habit that Ichigo came to rest on the park bench, though she knew painfully well that there would be no friendly greeting shouted at her for another week. His footsteps would not sound from the path, so she listened for the far-off calls of birds instead. She knew that she should feel pitiful, a girl so desperately waiting for her Aoyama-kun to return from England, but she couldn't bring herself to not miss him.

Pulling her phone out of her pocket, she stared at the blank screen. No messages, no incoming calls. Even Masha was not there, shrunk down to the size of a charm. Ryou had taken him back to collect the data from the Mews last clash with the chimera anima. Attacks had begun to slow down recently, but the enemies were still the same. Despite any efforts by the aliens, Tokyo Mew Mew always claimed the victory. Ichigo knew that Kisshu would have to step up his game if anything was going to change about that fact.

With that thought escaping her mind, Ichigo basked in the warmth of the day for a few minutes, allowing the breeze to wash over her. Today was her day off, so she did not have to worry about any angry phone calls from Mint telling her to quit being lazy and hurry up. She could picture them all at the Café Mew Mew: Mint sipping her tea, Lettuce breaking something and apologizing profusely for it, just to turn around and spill something, Pudding rolling around on a giant rubber ball while spinning the plates with the customers' orders on them, and Zakuro being as rigid as ever, barely opening her mouth even to ask if she could take the customers orders.

She could picture the huge mess they would all have waiting for her tomorrow when she came in. Of course, she could always clean that mess up today. They would welcome her to work at the Café, and let her reschedule her day off for a day that Aoyama-kun was back in town.

That slight disappointment hit her once again. In her mind, she could picture Mint's smug look as she walked through the doors. Lettuce would have pity filling her eyes, and Pudding would bug her until Ichigo told her why she wanted to reschedule. Zakuro would say nothing, but would look at her knowingly.

It was ridiculous; she was the team's leader! She had to at least appear stronger when faced with the loneliness of not having her boyfriend around.

Standing up abruptly, the leaf she'd been holding fell to the ground. Slipping her cell into her pocket and grabbing her bag from the ground, she headed towards the woods. A blush of embarrassment had risen into her cheeks. The day was too nice to sit around moping.

As the red-haired girl stomped past, the leaf was once again picked up by the breeze. It floated away from the bench, dancing in the sunshine. The pair of golden eyes that had been watching the girl flicked to the leaf for a moment. Immediately the teen recognized it as the one that had fallen from the branch he propped himself up on. A small smile played on his lips as he once again turned to watch the girl disappear through the trees. After a moment, he disappeared as well.

Computers were strange objects. The years and years that were poured into the making of updated systems created a never-ceasing flow of innovations. As complex as this made the machines of metal and wire, they could still be taken out with the simplest of kill codes. This was true even to the ones specifically designed so that people other than the owners of Café Mew Mew could not access them.

The green-haired teen thought about this, a bemused smile on his face, as he watched all the screens around him begin to scramble with random images. Pictures of DNA, animals, statistics, maps, and data all rolled across the screen in bright flashes. The entire memory of the massive system was taken in by the golden eyes in a matter of seconds. Then, everything went black.

As the pounding footsteps began to echo down the metal staircase, Kisshu's form began to distort. By the time the blond hair was visible making the sharp turn into the basement, the teen was gone.

"The hell!" came the aggravated cry of the man that had entered the room. His blue eyes were locked onto the blank computer screens. He had built and destroyed enough computers to know what had happened before even pressing any keys.

Though he knew it would be a futile effort, he bounded to the keyboard, and began to punch in various codes to try to bring any memory back from the system. He wanted the security footage from the room, and he wanted it now. Even without it, as each key was pressed, his mind quickly wrapped its way around what had just happened.

Cursing under his breath after a minute, all codes failing to bring the computer back to life. Quickly, he turned and began to run up the stairs. As he slid into the kitchen, he didn't even have time to open his mouth before the man at the counter posed a question:

"You had been saying something about them plotting, so is this what you were expecting?"

The man didn't even look up from the batter he was stirring. With the skill that takes years of practice, he added ingredients with one hand and whisked quickly with the other. His long brown hair was tied off with a ribbon, and a chef's hat was propped pristinely on his head. His usual smile had dropped; his eyes were calculating.

"Ichigo has her day off today; Masha's not with her. Her boyfriend's out of town, so she's alone." The facts rolled off of Ryou's tongue. His eyes were calculating as well.

"The café is full of people; we can't just close down. Zakuro just left for a photo shoot, so we're already short one server," Akasaka said, tapping the whisk on the side of the bowl. With his free hand he opened a drawer next to him, and pulled out a heart-shaped cake pan. As he poured the batter smoothly into the pan without spilling a drop, he asked, "What do you propose we do?"

A timer dinged, and Akasaka moved to open the oven. The scent of fresh vanilla wafted out into the kitchen along with the intense heat from the red hot wires. As the chef he took one cake out, he slipped the heart-shaped cake in, closing the door and cutting off the heat.

Ryou moved instinctively to clear a space on the counter for the hot pan. As he moved aside a ready bowl of icing, he laid out his plan:

"There is nothing more I can do with the server, so I'll take over for Zakuro. Mint and Lettuce will go out and search for Ichigo, and Pudding and I will handle things here until they get back."

"Go tell them quickly," Akasaka said, meeting Ryou's eyes for the first time since coming into the kitchen. His voice and face had concern leaking into them. "Let's hope the worst won't have time to happen."

But the worst had already begun.

To any new readers, I am in the process of rewriting Chapters 2-17 of this story right now. I will be uploading the chapters as I finish them, so please stick with me until I do. I'm rewriting the chapters because when I posted the original story in 2007, I didn't realize the complete lack of description and decent writing quality I was putting out there. Chapters 18-19 are my latest posts, so those have the writing style that I'm going to be applying to these next chapters.

I will take these messages down on the beginning chapters as I go along, so once this message is off of this chapter, then Chapter 2 has been rewritten. I hope that you'll continue reading my story! ^_^