Work Text:
Mei and Dan are on grocery-shopping duty, and Mei is crouched outside of a local market frowning at a head of lettuce when her thoughts are suddenly interrupted by a shout of, “Hey, you! Pinky!”
Startled, she jolts, nearly reaching for a weapon or her changer or something, and looks up into the glaring face of a teenage girl in a school uniform with her hair up in a high ponytail. “I’m sorry, have we met?”
The girl stares at her in apparent disbelief and then turns her head, shouting, “You hear that, girls? She wants to know if we’ve met,” over her shoulder.
This is met with snickering from a group of three other girls who are similar to her both in their school uniforms and their air of general menace. One of them is playing with a yoyo, which she somehow manages to make threatening. Another one snaps her gum noisily as she and Mei make eye contact. The third has large, round glasses that soften her face a great deal, but the effect is immediately reversed by the studded leather motorcycle gloves she's wearing, and which do little to muffle the sound as she cracks her knuckles.
“I promise you, it's not a joke. I’ll happily believe you that we have met, but I don't remember it.” And then–a realization dawns, and Mei looks over at Dan with a sense of slowly-mounting horror. “Wait, Dan…shaved ice?”
Dan’s eyes go wide. “Oh, no, I think you're right, I think it's the shaved ice.”
The girl's forehead wrinkles. “I don't know what the hell you two are babbling about, but if you feel like apologizing then treating me and my girls to shaved ice would be a decent start.”
Mei’s stomach turns at the mere thought of it as Dan says, hurriedly, “Um, it's pretty hot though, why don't we get ice cream instead?”
Ten minutes later they're sitting in a booth at an ice cream parlor near the market and Mei's wallet is feeling significantly lighter. She's crowded onto the bench against the wall, Dan looking a bit squashed as he sits between her and the gum-chewing girl, whose name is Mariko. Across the table, the loud girl–Junko–sits with queenly poise between the girl with the yoyo (Keiko) and the one with the glasses (Chikako); the three of them are sharing a truly enormous banana split. Junko takes a long drag from her glass of fizzy cola and says, “Ok, that's the wildest bullshit I’ve heard in ages.”
“It does sound absurd, yes, but I assure you, it's true.”
“Not saying I don't believe you, all kinds of weird shit’s been happening around here. My little cousin got some kinda sneezing curse, like, two weeks before your whole mess, had to go to the hospital and everything.”
Dan rubs at the bridge of his nose. “That one was pretty bad, yeah.” A beat. “But, I mean. Look. We don’t remember the whole shaved ice thing too well, what did we do to upset you?”
Junko sizes Dan up, for a moment almost thoughtful. “You're kinda shrimpy, aren't you? I like that in a guy.”
Dan turns bright red.
“You ever thought about ditching Pinky and getting with someone who's actually tough?”
He turns redder and then coughs. “I, uh, I think you’re misunderstanding something, Mei and I aren't dating.” He glances at Mei out of the corner of his eye before adding, “And also she's really tough,” as if he’s worried that she’ll get angry with him if he doesn’t include it. Either that or he’s feeling defensive of her honor, which is charming, but he somehow turns even redder when she smiles at him, so she doesn’t ask.
Junko’s eyebrows go up. “You’re not, huh?” She squints at him. “So then you’re available.”
If Dan has to put up with much more scrutiny, Mei’s concerned that he might explode, so instead of waiting for him to answer she says, “Does this have something to do with what we did?”
“Kinda. You hit on my boyfriend,” with an accusatory point across the table and a somehow equally accusatory sip of cola. “And I don’t know what school you go to, but at my school we don’t do that shit.”
Of course, this means it’s Mei’s turn to blush; she can feel her ears going hot. “Um, well, it’s not a school–I’m sincerely sorry for that, I certainly wouldn’t have done anything like it if I’d been in my right mind. Is your, your boyfriend nearby? If possible I’d like to apologize to him as well.”
Keiko snorts indelicately at Junko’s elbow, and Junko rolls her eyes. “Nah, I broke up with him ages ago, if he’d wanted to keep dating me he wouldn’t have gotten all goofy just because some chick he’d never met before started flirting with him.” She takes a bite of banana split, looking annoyed. “Kind of sucks, I liked him ok apart from that.”
“Oh no, that’s even worse, is there something I can do to make it up to you, then?”
She shrugs. ”We’ll figure something out, treating me and the girls to ice cream’s already pretty good. So what school do you go to? That uniform’s cute as hell.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I think I was unclear, we’re not in school, we work. I’m Ptera Ranger, of the Zyurangers.”
There’s a moment of stunned silence, and then Mariko says, “No way, ” and pops her gum noisily as if to punctuate the statement.
Junko takes a last noisy sip of cola and points at Dan, although when she speaks it’s clearly to Mei. “And he’s a Zyuranger too?”
“...yes?”
“Well, that settles it.” She turns to look at Dan, still pointing, and says, firmly, “ You’re gonna take me on a date.” She snaps her fingers. “Chikako! What’s my schedule?”
Dan makes a sort of croaking noise and starts choking on his ice cream as Chikako digs a notebook out of her uniform jacket, flips it open, and adjusts her glasses. “Miss Junko is available this evening for dinner, tomorrow afternoon for a trip to the movies and a stroll after, or all day on Saturday if you would prefer to take her to an amusement park.” She says this all as flatly as if she’s tallying up his total at a shop; when she’s finished double-checking the notebook page she looks up at Dan and continues with, “An amusement park would be ideal for maximum visibility, but does present the possibility of attack by that space witch woman or her monsters.” A beat, and then she frowns. “Which might in itself be preferable, it occurs to me. Should I put you down for Saturday, or are you otherwise scheduled?”
Mei pounds on Dan’s back, and after a moment he recovers enough to say, “What? Why? ”
Mariko pops her gum again. “You’ve got to take her out on a date so that Tatsuya can see you with her and be super jealous. Obviously.”
It’s not for Mei to answer, so she doesn’t say anything, but she keeps her hand on Dan’s back comfortingly, and after a moment he regathers himself enough to say, “Sure, that seems fair I guess, the amusement park’s fine. When…when should I meet you?”
Junko laces her fingers under her chin and grins at him. “Ten’s fine, gorgeous. Make sure you chew some gum or something, I don’t kiss guys who don’t taste good.”
By the time they get home, Dan’s still looking a bit shell-shocked, and Geki takes one look at him and then turns to Mei and says, “What’s wrong with Dan? Did something happen?”
“Oh, nothing bad, we just ran into some acquaintances.” Mei glances at Dan out of the corner of her eye as she begins to put away groceries and then adds, maybe a bit slyly, “Also, Dan’s got a date on Saturday.”
Geki says, “What?” so loudly that Goushi and Boi are both over in seconds, both clearly worried about the possibility of another attack and then dissolving into delighted shock when Mei says, calm as anything, “You heard what I said, Dan has a date on Saturday. We’ll need to make sure his hair’s combed neatly for it.”
Right away Goushi is trying to smooth down Dan’s hair like a mother hen, and Geki’s glowing with a sort of fatherly pride that’s really very funny given that he’s not much older than them. Boi says, with terrible gravity, “You’ll need to give me some tips on how to get dates, Dan, I’ve never been on one.” This, finally, is what causes Dan to flee, and for Boi to chase after him, saying, “Dan, I thought you knew everything about girls,” with laughter cracking through his seriousness.
Mei puts away the rest of the groceries with a smile on her face and says to Geki and Goushi, “I was thinking it might be nice to go out and get shaved ice for dessert this evening after dinner.”