Disclaimer: As a matter of fact, I do own Pokemon

Disclaimer: As a matter of fact, I do own Pokemon. (I was being ironic, please don't sue!)

A/N: To all those who read my first story and reviewed, thanks for your support. Enjoy!

If one opened a dictionary to find a term describing the dwelling of Azelf, the best you could hope to find is "Spartan." The walls were no more than bare rock, the cold stone floor lacked even a futon's worth of furniture, and there wasn't even a lone candle to illuminate the darkness, the resident relying on its uncanny eyesight and extrasensory perception to get around. The only sound was the plip…plip…of water dripping off the ceiling into the innumerable small puddles below. To a casual observer, the cave seemed uninhabited. However, like most casual observations, it would be wrong.

A more thorough observer would note the slow rhythmic chanting, no louder than the endless plip...plip... of the water. As one's eyes adjusted to the inky blackness, one would glimpse a small figure, sitting in a cross-legged lotus position, eyes closed, seemingly motionless save for the rising and falling of its light blue chest and the movement of its lips as it muttered at the edge of hearing.

This is Azelf, the Lady of Will, head bowed in concentration. She contemplated her surroundings, the plip…plip… as steady as a metronome. She focused her concentration, in this place lacking in any sensory input save the dripping and the breathing and the reiteration of the mantras. She was honing her mind to a razor edge; her will tense as a violin string. She was almost there. She had almost gained total control, total will, total enlightenment that came from ascetic self-denial.

She observed only the chanting and the breathing and the dripping and the darkness. She was almost there, almost…

"HIYA, AZELF!"

Here's a little thought experiment; walk up behind someone engaged in some mentally taxing activity (reading, doing a Sudoku, taking a nap, etc.), being especially careful to not let them notice you. Now, take out one of those aerosol air horns people use to make extremely loud noises at football games. Put it right next to their ear and set it off without warning. Do you have that picture in your mind? Good, now you pretty much know Azelf's reaction.

After a few minutes of panicking and undignified shrieking, Azelf was left pressed up against the back of the cavern like an escaping convict, on the verge of hyperventilation. As she regained her senses and got her breathing back under control, she became aware of the childish giggling that had been going on the whole time, but had been drowned out by the pounding of her own pulse in her ears. She knew that giggle. There was only one Legendary that had that grating, incessant, carefree, annoying giggle.

"Mew…," she growled, in a manner that said quite eloquently that if she wasn't the Being of Willpower, she would have already snapped and killed him by now.

The pink, adorable abomination that is Mew floated out of the shadows, casting a Beanie Baby-esque silhouette against the light of the cavern's entrance. "Sorry Azelf, did I startle you?" he asked, not even trying to suppress his laughter. "Yes. Yes, you did," said Azelf, in the calm, even tone of someone who is suppressing something, which was probably not laughter. "What are you doing here, anyway?"

"Oh, nothing in particular, just passing through. By the way, what were you doing right now, just before you almost had a heart attack?" Mew asked, another fit of giggling issuing forth at the mention of the previous episode. "Meditating," said Azelf with a weary sigh, already tired of talking to Mew. "It's something Uxie told me about, and I figured it was worth a try."

"Meditating? Why were you doing that?" "It allows one to calm their mind, attaining perfect focus," she said, quoting Uxie's explanation word for word. Then Mew did something that Azelf thought he did with far too much regularity; he asked a stupid question that she nevertheless couldn't answer.

"Focus on what?" "Huh?" responded Azelf, as if Mew had just said he was King Henry VIII or something. "I mean, you have to focus on something, right? This place is nice and all," he said as he absentmindedly examined the rocky walls, "but there is a lack of interesting stuff. What do you use this super-focus to observe?"

"What do you mean, what do you focus on? You just focus," she said in the authoritative tone of someone who has no idea what they're talking about but will be damned if they'll admit it. "You focus on focusing? Shouldn't that make your brain explode?" "Yours, maybe…"she muttered. "Besides, what do you know about mind-over-matter?" "I'm levitating right now, I obviously understand it a little," Mew responded with his trademark smile.

Mew floated closer to the cave floor and picked up two or three fist-sized rocks. "Much fun, is it? All the focus and self-control, that is," he asked, casually juggling the rocks, spinning them through the air like electrons orbiting an atom. "Because personally," he continued without pausing, "I don't see much fun in it."

"It's not about fun. Desire is a chain that binds you," the Being of Will said, her amber eyes gleaming like polished steel, "and freedom comes from self-denial. I for one would rather not be a slave to material needs. And would you stop that!?" she added. "Fine," Mew complied, ceasing his juggling. "Well, I must admit that I am a 'slave to material needs' as you put it. I'm a kleptomaniac, I pull far too many practical jokes, I'm addicted to sugar…" he listed, as he calmly made the stones continue in their strange orbits with his telekinesis.

"Don't forget the womanizing," Azelf pointed out in a withering tone. At this remark, the pink cat's eyes went even wider than they already are, and the self-juggling rocks clattered to the floor. "Now, that is a completely unfounded accusation! What have I ever done to indicate even the remotest hint of lecherous tendencies?" "At the last Meeting, you showed up dressed in a Hugh Hefner-esque smoking jacket with a Lopunny on each arm." Azelf did not look amused.

Mew paused, his eyes unfocusing, as if reading some invisible writing in front of him as he tried to remember the incident. "Oh yeah, that did happen," said Mew, the look of realization on his face soon replaced by the kind of odd smile that really didn't look at home on a face that childish.

As quickly as it came, the rather unsettling expression left the pokemon's face, to the relief of anyone who had to look at it. "However, in all fairness, I mostly did that to see the expression on Mewtwo's face." "Didn't his jaw actually hit the floor?" said Azelf, a smile forming at the mental image. "Yep, thanks to Palkia's space-warping," Mew chuckled.

"However, getting back to my point," he said in a businesslike tone. Another thing Azelf found annoying in the kitten-like creature before her was that he always took the scenic route in a conversation. Catch him on the right day, and he'd ramble for hours about whatever stupid thought wormed its way into his head. Good luck asking for the time.

"I may be a slave to the world," he said, light dancing on his eyes like water, "but you can be just as much of a slave if you go too far in the opposite direction," at this, he drifted closer to Azelf, looking her straight in the eye, "and as I said earlier, at least I have fun."

"Hmph," she went, crossing her arms and generally conveying nonverbally that she thought Mew was so full of it that it should be dripping out of his huge, rat-like ears. He just laughed at her seriousness, pissing her off even further. "Well, it seems we are at an impasse. There's only one way to settle this…" Mew muttered, holding out his paw in the air.

The cave was briefly illuminated by the Teleport, before being plunged back into darkness. Mew's paw now held a small orb, about the size of a marble, dyed the same sickening shade of pink as him. It gave off a hateful, malevolent aura. Of course, this could be said of anything pink.

"What the hell is that?" asked Azelf, curious despite herself. "This," he said, his voice taking on the patter of a stage magician showing nothing up his sleeve, "is a little project I've been working on. This little ball is the culmination of three years and hundreds of thousands of dollars of research and development." "Where did you get that much money?" Azelf asked, knowing she wouldn't like the answer. "Stole it," he responded matter-of-factly.

"That still doesn't tell me what it is." "Sorry. This, my friend, is the single sweetest piece of candy on Earth," he said reverently. "You went to all this trouble to make one piece of candy," she said, using all her legendary willpower to not throttle the loon in front of her. "Well, not just any candy," he reproached. "This thing is the equivalent of about twenty pounds of raw sucrose, compressed until it's as dense as a neutron star. It's so sweet, it would make a normal lifeform's head explode! It is the pinnacle of confectionary technology; it's like the Manhattan Project of sugar."

"And I call it… the Gobstopper of DEATH!" at this, Mew looked off into the distance and pointed his finger randomly into the air. If this were a movie, it would have looked dramatic; as it was, he looked like a prat.

"Wonderful," Azelf said, her voice drizzled with a light glaze of sarcasm, "but why did you bring it here? For that matter, why haven't you eaten the evil thing already?" "Well, I was saving it for a special occasion, but I have found a better use for it. You see, I want you to eat it." "What? Why on Arceus' green earth would I do that?" "Why, to prove a point!" he seemed to take on a manic energy, his plan finally revealed. "This will be the ultimate test of self-denial versus self-indulgence, mind over matter. If willpower is truly the greater force," he summarized like Phoenix Wright, "you should be able to shrug this thing off easily."

"Hmmm," she went, holding her chin in mock-contemplation. "Well I suppose that makes sense, maybe NO!" "Awww, c'mon, it'll be fun," Mew whined, giving Azelf his best puppy-dog eyes. "Are you trying to use peer pressure on me?" "No," he said, his eyes glittering with an unidentifiable emotion, "but that is a damned good idea."

His body was engulfed in a bright, kaleidoscopic aura, his form growing and elongating. When the light faded, a Seviper sat coiled in the place of the pink kitten-thingy, the Gobstopper of DEATH resting on the end of its spiny tail. The purple serpent slithered toward Azelf, coiling around her, waving the experimental jawbreaker in front of her nose tauntingly. "Yessss, tassste the Forbidden Fruit," he said, an oddly malevolent smile situated between his crimson fangs.

"Does that ever work?" Azelf mocked, trying to keep from being creeped right the hell out. There was something about that smile she just didn't like… "Well, it'ssss worked at leassst once in the passst," he said, chuckling at some private joke. "Come on, what are you, Azelf? Ssscared of a little sssweet?" "Never." At this, Mew's reptilian face came right up to her ear, wearing the smirk of a trickster god, and whispered, "Well then why not give it jussst one little tassste?"

Azelf sighed the sigh of the defeated. "You're not going to stop bugging me until I eat the stupid thing, are you?" "Nope. I have nothing elssse to do with my day." She glared at the menacing pink orb in front of her, the hateful pink thing seemingly mocking her, just like a certain other pink annoyance that wouldn't leave until she swallowed the dumb candy along with about a gallon of pride to wash it down. "Grrr…fine. I'll eat the wretched candy and prove that my will is greater than your hedonism. Satisfied?" "Very."

She picked up the Gobstopper of DEATH, holding it at arm's length like a lit firecracker. She slowly brought it up to her mouth, eyeing it with suspicion. Oh, what the hell, she thought, and, holding her nose and saying a prayer to any god that wasn't Mew, ate it. "Yesss," Mew chuckled, "thisss ssshould be very interesssting."

Azelf sucked on the jawbreaker, secretly terrified that her head might explode at any moment. However, after a while she noticed that the thing wasn't that sweet. In fact, it didn't seem to have any flavor. She might as well have been sucking on a pebble. "Sorry to disappoint you, Mew," she said in triumph, "but this thing's a dud. I don't taste any-," and then the world went blank.

Azelf slowly climbed the summit of Mount Consciousness, gradually rising into the land of the living. She cracked open her eyelids, her eyes red as the ruby in the middle of her forehead from all the veins. As she sat up, she quickly clutched at her skull to keep it from cracking open from the unholy headache she had. Ugh, maybe that thing did make my head explode. "Oh god," she croaked, "what the hell happened?"

"Are we awake, sleepyhead?" At the sound of that piercing voice, she groaned and curled up into the fetal position, hoping it would all just go away. These hopes were not helped by Mew occasionally poking her in the side and asking "Awake yet?" "Mew," she managed to force out, "what happened?"

"It seems the late Gobstopper of DEATH took a second to kick in. Also," he added as an afterthought, "that was perhaps the most entertaining sugar high I've seen since sugar was brought to the Old World in the 1500s." "Thanks for the history lesson," she said, in no condition to tolerate Mew's tangents. "By the way, I didn't know you could get a sugar hangover." There was a pause. "So…" There was another pause. "You wanted to know what happened last night?" King Pause III reigned over the conversation, continuing the noble Pause Dynasty. "Yeah, go ahead," said Azelf, bracing herself for the worst.

"Well, let me just preface this by saying that you gave the best rendition of 'R-E-S-P-E-C-T' I've ever heard." "Wait, there was," she said as though the word left a bad taste in her mouth, "karaoke?" "Yep. It was almost as entertaining to watch as the mechanical bull." At this bit of news, Azelf moaned as if in physical pain. "Don't worry, nobody paid any attention to that," he tried to comfort, "they were all too interested in the fire." "There was a fire?" she said, horrified. "Yeah, I probably shouldn't have given you those matches to play with."

"Oh Arceus, I'm wanted for arson!" she lamented. "Nah, you didn't stay long enough for them to identify you. Where did you learn to hotwire a car like that, anyway?" Azelf didn't understand Mew's question at first, but with horrible certainty her insulin-addled brain put it together. "I stole a car?!" "Yeah," he said, as if grand theft auto was akin to littering in terms of severity, "it's in the lake right now, actually."

"WHAT?!" She pushed Mew aside and bolted to the entrance to her cave. Lo and behold, half-submerged in the formerly pristine waters of her lake, was a burnt-out, crumpled, two-thirds rusted shell of what at one point might have been an automobile.

She backed away from the cave entrance, her amber eyes wide with unimaginable horror. Mew gave her a friendly pat on the shoulder. "That was a fun night," he said, trying to make conversation, "We should do it again sometime."

Without looking up, Azelf's hand shot out like a cobra and latched itself onto Mew's neck. For once, his easygoing smile faltered, to be replaced by fear. "Um, Azelf," he said hesitantly, "what are you doing?" Like a scene from a slasher film, Azelf slowly turned her head to look Mew straight in the eye. What he saw made him gulp. Her eyes glittered with a murderous rage, pent up over the millennia behind her near-infinite willpower. Like a dam bursting, a wave of destruction was about to engulf everything downstream, which at the moment mostly consisted of Mew.

"You," she growled, "you drugged me up on sugar and made me a laughingstock. I'm a criminal now, for Arceus' sake! And now," she said with a really unsettling giggle, "you're gonna pay." "Now Azelf, let's not get too hasty," Mew said, beginning to panic, "remember your willpower! Willpower, remember?" "Screw willpower!" she shouted hysterically, "I wanna kill something!" She drew her arm back, and gave Mew a mighty Smack! across the face.

"Now, in all fairness," he said, his head springing back like a punching bag, "I didn't make you eat the-," Smack! "You chose to eat it of your own free wi-," Smack! "I really don't see how you can blame m-," Smack! "The situation really isn't that ba-," Smack! "You know, if you'd just let me explai-," Smack! "If I could just finish a senten-," Smack! "Okay, that's starting to get annoyi-," Smack! "I'd like it if you stopped tha-," Smack! "WILL YOU STOP SMACKING ME FOR FIVE SECONDS AND LET ME EXPLAIN?!"

At Mew's sudden outburst, Azelf reflexively released his neck and backed away a bit. He took a deep breath, regaining his composure. "Now, if you're done, I have a perfectly reasonable explanation for how none of this was my fault." "Oh, this had better be good," she grumbled. "It was impossible for the Gobstopper of DEATH to give you a sugar high." "How the hell is that possible?" "Easy. It didn't have any sugar in it."

At this sudden revelation, Azelf used her mastery of willpower to give a coherent and constructive response. "Whatnow?" "Yep," went Mew, like a magician explaining how a trick was done, "The thing was made of artificial sweeteners, completely indigestible. Your body would have had an easier time metabolizing cardboard."

Azelf reacted the same way that a man with a gun does when, faced with an axe-wielding maniac, he pulls the trigger and sees a little flag come out with the word 'bang' written on it. "If that's true, then why the heck did I act like that last night?" "Well, that's rather simple. Do you know what a placebo is?" Azelf pinched the bridge of her nose, her eyes closed in irritation. "Mew, I'm not Uxie on the best of days, and I have a headache. Use words I understand."

"A placebo is when a doctor gives a sugar pill to someone with an illness and tells them it's a cure. Amazingly, sometimes the patient actually gets better, just by the power of believing they're getting better. In your case, "he said with a giggle, "I gave you some useless chemicals and told you it was a sugar pill!" "So all of that crazy stuff that I did because I was stoned on sucrose," she pondered, "it was all in my head?" "Yep! All that self-indulgence came from your own willpower!" At this, Mew began to laugh hysterically, finding the whole thing immensely funny.

"So, where does that leave the whole 'mind over matter' debate? Who won?" "Well, obviously me," Mew said, his cocky grin returning for an encore. "I would never have been tricked that easy." "Yeah, but I didn't get smackedlike ten times," Azelf pointed out. "True. Let's call it a draw, shall we?"

"Yup." A smile on her face, she shook paws with Mew, settling the debate once and for all. When Mew was about to let go, she suddenly pulled him closer and gave him a quick peck on the cheek. For the second time that day, Mew's smile was interrupted, this time by confusion. "What was that for?" "For giving me a nice night out," she said, smiling.

As Mew's own smile learned the coast was clear, it returned with reinforcements. And that was when Azelf pulled back her arm and punched Mew square in the jaw, leaving him on the floor, unconscious. "And that's for lying."

Two months between stories isn't that bad, right? Ugh...sorry for dropping the ball on the new story, I have no excuse but procrastination. But behold, boredom has triumphed over laziness! Huzzah! R & R!