Episode 01: Mew Project Restart!

Cardboard boxes litter the floor; some emptied and overturned, others overflowing with wires, machinery, and other assorted clutter. If not for the layer of dust beginning to gather over everything it’d be reasonable to assume that the owner had just moved in and hadn’t finished unpacking.

The only true light source is a wall-mounted screen large enough to take up half of the room’s width. Beneath it sat a large panel covered in various keys and buttons with several smaller monitors positioned around it. In front of the set-up sits a woman in her mid-thirties, hunched over a keyboard with various images and fragments of code reflecting off of her rectangular glasses and tinting her milky white skin a faint blue.

She pays no mind to the lock of slightly greasy black hair slipping from her messy bun, only brushing it out of her face once she leans back in her old office chair to stretch her arms out in front of her. The woman suppresses a yawn as she reaches across her body to grab a paper coffee cup haphazardly balanced on the console. The lukewarm temperature makes her cringe, but isn’t enough to stop her from finishing it off and dumping the now-empty cup in a nearby box overflowing with trash.

A new window pops up on the screen, displaying an email draft with several recipients; five schools all located in the Tokyo area. She gives the text a quick read-over before pressing send. - OP: bitter sweet darling — Smewthie - Episode 01: Mew Project Restart! - "It was totally just a publicity stunt."

"A publicity stunt for what!?"

"Ugh! You’re both wrong! Clearly, Tokyo Mew Mew were alien warriors sent to guard a lesser species!"

Tokyo Mew Mew: the quintet of colorful superheroines with their iconic animalistic features and cutesy weapons who’d appeared a decade prior to protect the people of Tokyo (and the world) from mutant animals infected with parasites. They’d gone silent several years ago, but their popularity evidently hadn’t waned in their absence.

A forty-something man stands with his arms crossed in front of a large group of students, all clad in blue blazers and buttoned bolero jackets. He claps his hands together loudly, silencing the argument, at least momentarily.

"I expect you to all be on your best behavior. It may be a Saturday, but we are still representing Himawari Academy. Anyone found to be acting against our values will spend the rest of the day filling out worksheets, am I understood?"

The dull, out of sync "Yes, Takahashi-sensei…" doesn’t seem to phase him.

A hand shoots up into the air, shaking excitedly and hopping up and down before rising a couple feet higher as a head of blonde hair rises above the crowd. "Sensei! Sensei!"

Takahashi takes a deep breath. "Yes, Momose? Is there a problem?"

Several students giggle at the sight of 13-year-old Momose Ame being hoisted up by a stocky girl with a messy black bob, not unlike a cat being displayed, complete with her stocking-clad legs dangling above the ground. With all the attention now on her, she grins. "Ummmm, I was just wondering if we were all staying together oooor—"

"You’re free to explore the exhibition at your leisure, but please remain on the grounds and return at 1:30, not a minute later." The moment he finishes talking, the crowd disperses into smaller groups of varying sizes.

Ame excitedly hops from foot to foot, a loose lock of hair managing to bounce against her nose despite the braid on her shoulder and the chunky white clip in her bangs keeping everything else in place. "Isn’t this soooo cool!? Okay, okay, okay, where should we go first?" She pulls up the exhibition’s interactive map on her purple, glittery phone, scrolling over the different sections and clicking on all the little animal-themed pins.

The friend who’d lifted her up, Kurosawa Airi, leans over Ame and taps a pudding-shaped pin, bringing up an image of a girl around their age, clad in a flared yellow dress with her blonde hair styled in four long, thin braids. "There’s my girl!!" She exclaims, her warm brown eyes crinkling as she grins.

"Alright, alright, that’s one vote for Mew Pudding! What about you, Ma-chan?" No response comes from the third member of the trio, Sato Maki, so Ame tries again. "Hey, Ma-chan, what do you wanna check out?"

It’s only then that she looks up from her phone to see Maki standing a short distance away, completely fixated on a TV hanging from the ceiling. The screen is playing the infamous first interview with Tokyo Mew Mew, its clearly flustered leader stammering as microphones are shoved into her face.

Maki finally turns to address her friends, droopy blue eyes sparkling. "...Did you know Fujiwara Zacro was a guest on this show? It’s theorized that the aliens were actually targeting her as a beacon of her generation."

Ame smiles endearingly at her friend, joining the shorter girl to watch the screen. "Whoa… my mom said that Zacro was—"

"WATCH OUT!"

It takes several moments for Ame to realize why she’s suddenly at ankle height, and it takes several more before she registers the heaviness on top of her.

The weight soon lifts and she’s able to sit up just in time to watch a short figure in a black hoodie and blue mini-skirt race down a hallway, nearly colliding with several passerby. An outstretched hand is then shoved into Ame’s face, one attached to a petite boy with a shaved head and baggy blue gakuran.

"I’m so sorry, miss!" He pulls Ame up with more force than necessary, jump-starting a bevy of rambled apologies and bows.

Airi steps forward to check Ame for obvious injuries. "Hey! What’s your friend’s problem!?"

"I… uh…" He begins to slowly back away, his hands up in a defensive gesture. "Su-chan! Wait up!" The boy sprints off after the other figure. Airi’s ready to pursue before Maki stops her with a hand on her shoulder.

"Oh my gosh!" From the crowd emerges a chubby girl wearing the same buttoned-up navy blue bolero and high-waisted skirt mandated for all female Himawari Academy students, her chocolate brown ponytail frantically bobbing as she rushes over to fret over Ame. "Are you okay!? Did you hit your head!?" She holds Ame’s face in her hands, tilting it this way and that. "Does anything hurt?"

Just my pride... "I’m fine!" Ame squeaks, cringing at how red her face must be getting. "Thank you for worrying about me, Satomi-san!" She momentarily wonders what the chances are of a sinkhole swallowing her up right at that moment.

Though still visibly worried, Satomi backs off, her hands clasped in front of her chest. "Good, I was worried... Now, if anything does start hurting, just come and find me, okay?" She sighs. "I’ll have to let Takahashi-sensei know so that he can report that girl to the museum to the exhibition staff. Well… it was lovely seeing the three of you!" Satomi smiles, bows, and strides off to go find their teacher.

A moment of silence falls over the trio. Airi holds up three fingers and starts to put them down one at a time. Three, two, one...

"Ahhhhhh! Satomi-san is so amazing!" Ame miraculously keeps her volume at a loud whisper. "She’s so nice and elegant and beautiful!" She dramatically falls back into Airi and Maki’s waiting arms, as if it’s a practiced routine.

"You should ask her out," Maki bluntly suggests.

"I caaaaan’t! What if she rejects me? What if she’s not into giiiiirls!"

Airi can’t hold back her laughter. "Coooowaaaard!"

The theatrics stop all at once and Ame is left pouting up at her friends. "...I think I’ll stick to admiring her from afar…"

A petite green-haired girl in a red sailor uniform hurries past the distracted crowd, paying no mind to the scene in front of her. She quickly ducks into the nearest bathroom, just in time for tears to start flowing down her thin face and onto a muddy, torn book clutched against her chest.

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Maki thumbs through a girly teen magazine, its front page a good decade out of date. She scoffs at what she’s reading. "How could anyone mistake Mew Lettuce as a fish? She clearly had horizontal tail flukes, like all cetaceans."

"Huh? For real? So she was, like, a whale?" Ame holds up a set of Mew Mew-themed hair clips. "Excuse me, how much for these?" She pauses, spotting a sister set of ribbons. "Oh! These too, please!"

"¥15,000 all together, miss." The vendor holds out a card reader, allowing Ame to pay.

"Personally, a whale doesn’t seem all that likely to me. Her tail seemed more reminiscent of a dolphin or porpoise."

"Ohhhhh, so, like, what’s the difference?"

Before Maki can answer, Airi rushes over, several bags of candy piled up in her arms. "Look what I got!" She attempts to pass a couple over to Ame, only to spot her recent purchases. "Hair bows? You don’t usually…" Her expression turns smug. "Tryna buy Satomi’s love, are you?"

Ame blushes bright, shoving the bows and clips into her school satchel as if trying to hide evidence of a crime. "Keep your voice down! What if someone else hears!?"

"Uh-huh? Sounds like someone’s embarrassed that she got caaauuuught~"

"Noooooo!"

Elsewhere, several screens light up with symbols and text boxes. One in particular replays Ame’s fumbling and embarrassment. The screen zooms in just in time for a tall, brown-skinned girl to walk past, unaccompanied by anyone and slowly munching on a crepe. The camera trails after her as she wades through crowds of students, several text boxes gathering around her and filling with info; statistics, numbers, lines and lines of text.

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