Alright, so this is my entry for True's Alternate Pairing Contest! Wowzee, was it ever tough to write these characters. They're always so guarded with emotions, ne? I hope I did them justice, and there will be a second chapter coming soon! I just need to finish editing, but I'll post it asap.

Please, review and tell me what you think. Constructive criticism is greatly appreciated!

Good luck to all the other contestants, and enjoy the story!

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything,

and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken."

~ C.S. Lewis

She could've slapped him. She honestly wanted to. But this, of all times, was not the moment to tear each other down. So what if he had just run out into the middle of the battlefield, endangering his life and possibly theirs?

Dodge, run, and strike. It was all she wanted to focus on in this crucial moment, but he just had to have added the extra task of protecting a vulnerable teammate. How could he help, honestly? Even if he did transform into 'Alto', what good could that do against this chimera anima?

"Ribon Zakuro Pure!"

Purple hair flying, she lashed out at the beast as she worked her way across the battlefield.

"Watch your left, Minto!" she shouted, warning of an encroaching tentacle. Zakuro took a running start and leapt over the chimera's flailing tail to land next to Ryou.

"What the hell are you doing out here?" she hissed. "Aren't you supposed to be monitoring Ichigo's progress? And Deep Blue's?"

"Keiichiro's in charge of that for now." Ryou turned to her, eyes burning with a sort of restless helplessness. "I had to- I had to come to help you all." He gestured vaguely to the chaos before them, his usual cool demeanour in shambles in the face of this Final Battle. Surely he understood that he couldn't be of help to them, but he was past logic now. Zakuro found herself frustrated by his sudden emotional breakdown; why did their apparently fearless and carefully detached boss have to do this now?

"This is just to buy time until Ichigo can face Deep Blue! She ran up to the ship already; you don't need to put yourself in danger to help us sta-"

"Fuu Rai Sen!" Pai yelled as he teleported to strike a whirlwind down around Zakuro and Ryou. Grit flew into their faces, and the wind fair threw them off their feet.

"Ribon Minto Echo!" Mint shouted, forcing Pai to veer off and dodge the shot. The whirlwind ceased, mercifully, and Zakuro tried to dissuade the oncoming chimera with her whip.
Fighting two aliens and their toughest monster at the same time was exhausting.

Please hurry, Ichigo…

"Get out of here, Ryou," she warned. "Just throw us a new weapon if you have one, and find a safe place to hide." Even without her focus exclusively on the blonde boy, she could feel his desperation.

Ryou grabbed a fistful of his hair in frustration, but began to back away from the battlefield.

"Damn it, I can't- I can't do anything else for you," he apologized, hands thrown overhead in a vain attempt to shield himself from a shower of rubble. Zakuro could only pray that by now he had realized how much danger he was putting himself and the others in; perhaps the vivid reality of battle had been enough to jolt him out of his lapse in judgement. "I'm so-"

In her peripheral vision, Zakuro saw Tart teleport subtly behind Ryou. What was he-? It took the girl a moment to register the threatening action, but the conclusion hit her like lightning. He was about to throw his click-clacks at point-blank range, at Ryou's neck.

"Ryou!" She acted fast, shoving him roughly onto the pavement, onto safety. She raised the hilt of her whip to deflect the spinning spheres but somehow the little brat had managed to put a backspin on the thing.

There was a sickening crunch as the weighted wires wrapped around her torso, and Zakuro fell, still retaining a small measure of grace even in her agony. With impact came the sudden inability to breathe. Her chest felt like it had been hollowed out with a blunt knife, like it would cave in entirely, bones broken if not splintered. Bruises began to bloom already, red welts where the wires had dug into flesh.

The two red metal balls fell away and rolled across the paving stones.

Clenching her teeth and willing her eyes to focus, she looked up and into Ryou's face, only a few feet away now, and saw through the streaks of grime something akin to despair.

"Zakuro-san, your ribs- broken?"

She attempted to speak, but could only nod, emitting a laboured gasp for breath.

"Onee-sama!" cried Mint, several paces away now, eyes flashing with shock and anger. Turning on Tart, she raised her bow and loosed, all in the same movement. Her rash shot flew offside, but even so the young alien let out a cry and spiralled down from the sky to land in a most unnatural position on a pile of rubble.

Zakuro struggled to sit up. When had it come to this? Fighting, hurting, killing children? God forbid, not killing. There was still time. There had to be.

Hurry, Ichigo…

"Pudding needs help, na no da!" came the small Mew's desperate cry from across the battlefield. Zakuro's eyes slid back into focus once more to see an opening- possibly all she would get. The chimera's feet had been fixed to the crumbled pavestones with the little Mew's Pudding Ring, but its tail had come free and had angrily swatted the girl across the courtyard. Pudding skidded across the pavement, panting. Zakuro gritted her teeth, holding back… what? Anger? Sadness? She had always held back her emotions so expertly, letting nothing touch her. Now, bruised and broken along with her friends, something inside had shifted, and the sense of invincibility had shattered like the brittle dream it had been.

With sheer force of will, she rose to her feet, clasping her arms around her torso as if she were trying to keep herself from falling apart. Ryou had scrambled back to shelter behind a torn-up slab of pavement, and Zakuro was sure that he was still tearing his hair out. But just because he cared about them didn't give him an excuse to throw caution to the winds.

She took a step.

He… truly did care about them, didn't he?

"Mint…" she gasped, "Lettuce… on my signal!" Zakuro yelled, swaying slightly, but breaking into a halting run. She tried to focus. She needed to get to the optimum angle and- yes, there was her opening. As she jumped to wrap her whip around the neck of the anima, the one thing she felt more acutely than the pain was Ryou's gaze fixated on her.

Of course he was watching her. In a way, this battle was his too. The Mews were his creation, his hope- the only hope for the world. And now, she was sure; he did care about them all.

But his eyes were fixed only on her; his gaze was drawn solely to the statuesque, dusky figure, brandishing her bravery, the world's fate handed over to this unlikely group of heroines.

The whip tightened around the chimera's neck, and blood began to spurt from the wounds.

"Ribon Minto Echo!"

"Ribon Lettuce Rush!"

An explosion of light, then nothing. Nothing but Pai floating in the air, just out of reach, and the Mews collapsing with exhaustion onto the empty courtyard.

Ichigo…

"Ichigo," said Ryou tiredly, emerging from his cover several paces behind her and echoing Zakuro's thoughts, "is confronting Deep Blue as we speak. The power readings up there were enough to crash our laptops, so all we can do now is… hope."

The girl pushed sweaty locks of violet hair out of her eyes and surveyed the battlefield. She had never seen a sight that looked less like hope. The torn-up ground, the looming ship shifting portentously against the dim sky, and the battered people that guarded it all held an air of anxiety, of expectation. Their fates were out of their hands now.

Clutching her chest once again, the pain redoubled, Zakuro turned to face Ryou, who had picked his way through the rubble to check on Mint and Pudding. The fight had completely expended everyone's energy, and the two girls swayed where they stood before collapsing to the ground. Ryou helped them get into comfortable positions, braced against a slanting rock, and though her eyes drifted in and out of focus, Zakuro could see his young face aged a hundred years with regret and worry. He cared so much. He cared enough to want to be here even though- a stabbing pain tore through Zakuro's chest as she leant her weight against a stone wall- even though he couldn't do anything.

Pai floated slowly down to the ground, seeming to be both in shock and mildly injured. So Mint's arrow had grazed him.

"Humans are such… marvellous creatures," he mumbled disbelievingly as he landed near where Tart lay, with a fatigued and anxious Lettuce giving up all pretence of aggression as she checked for a pulse. Little could be heard of Pai and Lettuce's conversation, except for a hushed, "Is he breathing?" "Yes." They continued to talk for a time after that, with an emotional intensity that could be felt even from where the violet-haired girl lay sprawled against a rock.

She didn't understand everything after all, it seemed. How could some people be so willing to lay their safety, their heart out on the line for another? It hurt too much. It always ended up hurting too much.

Ryou made his way through the debris to slip down next to Zakuro, checking if she was indeed still breathing.

"Zakuro-san, are you alright?"

"Aren't you… a bit more worried about your little strawberry right now?" she asked the blonde boy quietly.

"God, yes." Zakuro almost smiled at that; through all the teasing and quarrels he had still cared for Ichigo all along. "But there's nothing we can do for her now. Not unless you're up for doing a power extension."

"I don't... think any of us could handle that," she said, voice tinted with frustration and pain. Ryou's eyes saddened.

"I know." Suddenly, his expression grew urgent and curious, and Zakuro anticipated the next question with a confused heart.

"Why did you save me?" Ryou wanted to know, expression rapt.

"Why do you think? You could have died."

"Yes, but my survival isn't crucial to this battle. You could have carried on without me, but if you had died, then the rest of the girls…" he trailed off, not ready to think about other possible outcomes this conflict could bring.

"You're wrong," Zakuro replied simply. "You've always been the heart of this battle. Or at least the head, anyway." She braced herself, and took a deep breath. "We're fighting for you, and the world we love. It's your battle too."

The young man shifted his weight underneath him, and gave a slow nod to Zakuro. He didn't seem to have anything to say, but his expression was grateful.

"Ryou?" the lilac-haired girl asked after a pause.

"Yeah?" he responded, lifting his head from clenched hands.

"Why have you always… made it so hard for us?"

"What?"

"Everyday, you'd… ow… tease us and pick at our work and put us down, then build us up, and tear us down again. Especially with Ichigo. Yet, you care about us." It was a statement, not a question. "I don't… understand you."

Ryou met her eyes steadily, though his face was filled with sorrow and an overwhelming sense of knowing too much.

"I just wanted to prepare you for times like this."

Zakuro was surprised by his answer. Something in his eyes surprised her too; in this moment of uncertainty and peril, she was unable to focus anywhere but on those startlingly sapphire orbs. She made a resolution that if she survived this, she would tell him how beautiful his eyes were.

"I'm an idiot. I know that better than anyone." She could feel the frustration overwhelming him again, and a strange sense of softening in her own heart. "I'm a school-age genius, but I couldn't find a better way to protect Earth than completely taking over the lives of five innocent, normal girls."

Zakuro's indigo eyes began to fill with tears, drawn up from a life of suppressing everything she had ever felt for fear it would own her. She had found that water was weakness, and had always held it back. Tears were only for those who weren't strong enough to move on.

She regarded Mint, Pudding and the others, spent and broken, lying across the courtyard. Today had somehow broken the dam and made it harder than it had ever been to keep these emotions inside her battered chest. Any sense of pride once felt had been scoured in these last hours.

"I needed to do anything I could to give you a thicker skin, make you stronger, for this. How could you have known what was coming?"

But this young man had somehow managed to focus on saving the world, and retain his humanity all at once.

The tears spilled over, cold and clear, like they were newly melted from an icy heart.

"Zakuro, what's wrong?" Ryou asked, distress evident on his face.

"Y-You care so much for us," she answered almost inaudibly, breath coming short between the pulsing pain and the sobs.

Ryou watched as the young woman's carefully preserved pride and grace gave way to an honest, exhausted sincerity. He took her hand then, acting on impulse yet still apprehensive of rejection. It was a show of strength and understanding. And weakness. Because truly, he needed it as much as she did just then. One look at her beautiful face, streaked with tears and grime, scrambled his thoughts as he reached for what he had wanted to say ever since he had brought these girls to the fight.

"I'm sorry, Zakuro. I-I…" he broke off.

She understood, though.

"Thank you, Ryou. For everything you've done."

"It's not over yet," he whispered, his gaze drawn up to the ominous silhouette of Deep Blue's ship, but pulled back even more quickly to her face.

With held hands and locked eyes, they waited for the flash of light that would decide their fate- annihilation, or healing.

Please, let it be Mew Aqua…