Beautifully Pointless

By Laura Schiller

Based on: Tokyo Mew Mew

Copyright: Mia Ikumi, Reiko Yoshida

It was so simple in the beginning. We had a mission: to reclaim our ancestral homeworld by any means necessary. It was the will of Deep Blue and Deep Blue must be obeyed. We hadn't quite expected to be fighting attractive females our own age, but unlike Kish, I was determined not to be distracted. My peers have called me cold, calculating, ruthless; my two cousins and teammates are the only ones who can put up with my company for longer than necessary. The least I could do was live up to that reputation.

Then came the day I found myself alone, underwater, face to face with the one I had previously classified as the weakest and most timid of them all. Mew Lettuce, in the green swimsuit and thigh-high boots, her long braid whirling as she moved with the elegance and agility of the porpoise whose DNA she shared. I had never been in a battle remotely like this; it was more like a dance than anything.

She was not weak. She fought me bravely, but without the hatred I had every reason to expect. She spoke to me on equal terms. Don't you have someone to protect? she asked.

In the end she swam right past me to protect her own someone – the yellow-haired human scientist who had created the Mew team. I watched her embrace him, activating the drops of Mew Aqua in the bottle he carried, so that the two of them floated to the surface in a bubble of sparkling light. And, as so often happens – and why should it not? We were enemies – I was left behind.

What you did was beautiful, I thought, but also pointless. Because once we released our polutants into the atmosphere, the entire population of the planet would be destroyed. Including Mew Lettuce and her beauty.

I remember that moment now as I spread my red fans wide to halt the oncoming tidal wave of power. Behind me, held up by her exhausted comrades, with smudges on her face and uniform, Mew Lettuce watches me with her sea-green eyes. My strategies and tactics have all failed; my mission is lost, and I do not even care anymore. I have murdered my youngest cousin out of sheer spite, calling him a traitor, when it was really myself I was accusing. If Taruto deserves do die for his treason, then so do I.

I remember Mew Lettuce flying towards me with her hands crossed over her chest. Originally you lived on Earth, didn't you? She spoke to me of the peace we could have made, if we had only begun on this planet by talking instead of fighting each other. That is the tragedy of this war; we know each other too well. The Mews are no longer faceless enemies; they are people, young women, with strong wills and kind hearts of their own, and a loyalty to their beautiful planet we can understand all too well. And yet we continue to fight – why?

I have run out of reasons. They no longer matter. All that matters is the chance to redeem myself, even slightly, in Mew Lettuce's emerald eyes. To do what my comrades and I should have done long ago.

Stop fighting.

Soon, it might be time for me to dream as well. Dream of the afterlife I never used to believe in, whatever it might be, whether I go to earn my reward for a hero's death or eternal purgatory for a traitor's. Or perhaps I will be reborn, with a different name and body, my soul wiped clean and ready to start over. Perhaps in that life I will see her again, bow to her and introduce myself, and she will smile up at me without remembering that we were ever on opposite sides of a war.

Until then, Mew Lettuce, I wish I could tell you that your beauty is anything but pointless. It requires no justification; it is a miracle in itself.

Forgive me if you can, Mew Lettuce.

Farewell.