Chapter 4: The Lessons Begin

Standing before the Sages' Pyramid, Mew is currently being confronted by Auris' daughter Kairi, who is doing nothing but staring at him angrily while grasping onto her bo-staff in both hands. Mew raises his eyebrows and smiles with an inner chuckle, and with his arms still extended outward he asks "So umm…Are you going to do anything or are you just going to stand there looking at me?" Kairi scowls and says to him firmly "Get out of my way."

"I don't think that's really an option here. I told your mom that I was going to stop Gravitus, so I'd kind of look like an ass if I broke my promise." Mew comments nonchalantly afterwards, and with a fervent widening of her eyes Kairi proclaims "You look like an asshole anyways for doing this! You aren't an Aurian, so you have no reason to get involved in our affairs." Mew gives her a rather disbelieving glance and tells her while tilting his head slightly and shrugging his shoulders "In any other circumstance, you'd probably be right."

"But your mother asked me to help out, and I'm pretty certain she's the go-to authority on Aurian affairs." Mew remarks, and Kairi says harshly "Mom's crazy. Only an Aurian can defeat Gravitus. A newbie Elemental Overlord like you doesn't stand a chance." "That's a mighty fine number of assumptions you're throwing out there, and it's especially insulting that one of those is directed at your own mother." Mew says to her right afterwards.

Turning her body forward and placing the bottom of her staff against the ground, Kairi brandishes her right pointer finger at Mew and remarks in a crass manner "I can say what I want to about my mother, so butt out. Secondly, they aren't assumptions, it's a matter of fact that you are weak and only an Aurian can stop Gravitus." "If that was the case then your mother wouldn't have brought me in to deal with him. This isn't a 'Only Link can stop Ganon' scenario I'm dealing with here." Mew replied with a timely reference included in his nonchalantly spoken sentence.

"You don't even HAVE a reason to fight Gravitus." Kairi claims bluntly, but while folding his arms together and putting on a serious expression Mew tells her "He's a monster that's oppressing his people…Do I really need to have a reason to stop him besides the fact that what he's doing is morally wrong?" Raising her staff up and then stamping it down once, Kairi proclaims "Yes you do! Do you even understand that a lot of us Aurians might have personal vendettas against Gravitus?!"

"And yet you are the only one vocally objecting to me going inside the pyramid and doing the task your mother wants me to handle. So I'm assuming either you got some guts compared to everyone else or your reason for fighting is a lot stronger than the rest of your people. So which is it?" Mew inquired calmly, but Kairi glared at him with slanted eyebrows and said bitterly "I don't have to explain myself to an outsider."

Sighing in response to that, Mew then shook his head while laying a couple fingers against his forehead. "Then I really have no reason to relent. I REALLY am having a hard time understanding why you're having a problem here anyways…After all, who cares WHO stops the oppressor? There's no prophecy involved, Gravitus can be stopped by anyone. Honestly, and I apologize a bit since I don't usually say this…But you're acting like a bitch about this whole thing, Kairi."

Immediately upon being insulted like that, Kairi's eyes widen for just a moment, and she goes completely frenzied in her expression before gripping her staff tightly in both hands again and putting herself in her prior stance. "I will NOT be talked down to by some outsider! Draw your weapon and fight me right here, right now!" Kairi then proclaims angrily, and Mew says "I had the feeling we were going to reach this conclusion anyways. It's a shame really…If only your attitude was as appealing as your appearance. But I'm not going to tolerate this type of behavior, especially when there's more pressing manners at hand."

"W-What?!" Kairi sounded incredibly flustered by the brief remark Mew made about her appearance, and then she remarks in anger towards him "You're going to regret saying something like that cretin! I'll defeat you and then take down Gravitus!" Mew then holds his right hand out and begins to summon forth a cylindrical tornado of red flames out while stating with an intrigued smile "If you somehow manage to defeat me, then you might just be able to take on Gravitus. But for now…"

Summoning forth his sword from the flames, Mew quickly grasps onto the cross of amber that acted as the handle of his sword. A ring made of diamond wrapped around the amber cross, and there were eight triggers of different colors atop the ring. The blade was five inches wide, half as tall as Mew himself, and an inch thick, and the blade was made of a silver-like steel that was quickly enveloped in bright flames. With his sword brandished out Mew finishes his sentence off happily with "Lets begin Elemental Overlord 101 with your lovely teacher Mew."

"Heh, the only one who is going to get schooled is you. I'll show you why we Aurians are not someone you can mess with, cretin!" Kairi says before leaping forward and spinning her body around as she descends towards Mew, taking her staff and swinging the top half of it straight at him. Mew lifts his sword above him while barely changing his expression, letting the staff strike down on his blade and break some of the flames away from it due to the impact's shockwave. But Kairi then vaults behind Mew and lands in a kneeled position, letting go of the staff in her left hand.

She then swerves her body around on the slick glass floor and tries to go for Mew's leg with her staff extended out, but Mew subtly moves his right foot back and causes a high, uneven wall of glass to come up and block the staff attack from the side. As Kairi quickly lifts herself up and looks surprised, Mew explains to her while calmly lowering his right arm "Lesson one, I naturally control many elements, giving me a variety of options for offense and defense."

Mew then demonstrates the offensive capabilities of his powers by nudging his left shoulder back against the wall and causing a series of glass shards to fly out from the breaking apart wall. Kairi responds with a bit of shock but then holds her staff in front of her and spins it around rapidly with an agile switching of which hand grips onto the center of it, causing her to defend against all of the glass shards and then put herself in a perfect position to grab the staff in her right hand and thrust it forward, but as she does a stream of light-blue aura comes down from her arm and wraps itself around the staff.

With this added layer, Kairi's staff is able to puncture right through the glass wall like it's paper and strike Mew in the back while the shattering noise had just hit his ears. "Ooof!" Mew remarks rather casually as the force of the blow knocks him onto the ground. Kairi pulls her staff out of the glass and quickly performs a high forward flip into the air, preparing to bring her staff straight down and expanding the bottom of the aura layer so it looks like a thick, rounded hammerhead.

Mew turns his head to the right and looks up to see Kairi coming down on him quickly, but before he deals with that problem he lays a hand against the ground and forces a tiny seed into the floor that cracks apart the glass much like a pebble against a car window would. Mew then uses the power of the wind to create a gale behind his feet that launches him forward in a single burst of speed, though that comes at the cost of having his skin skid against the ground.

Kairi slams her staff against the ground and puts large cracks in the glass as her hammer aura extension impacts with it. The amount of force she puts down forces her to kneel, but she doesn't worry about that and instead glares at Mew while he uses the wind to gently raise himself back onto his feet. Mew then turns around and brushes the front of his body while forcibly huffing and puffing a bit from the burning sensation on his skin, and he follows this up by regaining his calm demeanor and lifting his left hand forward before remarking "Lesson two, Elemental Overlords can be some pretty tricky fellows."

He then snaps his fingers together and utilizes the seed he planted moments ago, accelerating it's growth to the point that it cracks open and raises some creeping ivy that rapidly wraps itself around Kairi's legs and goes for her waist by the time she flinches and notices what's going on. The ivy tightly wraps itself around her body to keep her in place, with some of it splitting off to make sure there is multiple ivy wrapped around her arms to keep them held up before she can attack the lower ivy with her staff.

By the time Mew was done, Kairi's body had been wrapped from neck-to-toe with ivy, and she was looking at him with the utmost frustrating in her eyes. "I wouldn't consider struggling, the ivy MIGHT release a poison if you do." Mew advises calmly while laying a hand against his chin. With a smirk, Kairi says "Wasn't planning on it ya creep." She then uses her mind to move the aura from her staff back to her body, and suddenly rips apart all of the ivy by summoning hundreds of aura needles out from her body.

With an awed whistle beforehand, Mew says "Wow, that's a pretty cool tactic." Swinging her staff beside her in one hand, Kairi keeps her smirk while brushing the front of her nose and stating "I've trained diligently in the offensive style. I'm perfectly capable of overpowering anything you throw my way." "Offensive style, eh? Well you know, the key to victory is one part offense and one part defense. I hope you've been taught at least a bit in the latter." Mew ponders.

"Like I need to be advised by the person I'm going to defeat." Kairi says with quiet arrogance while holding her staff back a bit and using her aura to put a pike-like spike at the front of her weapon. She then dashes forward and rapidly thrusts her staff once she stops six feet away from Mew, trying to use the sharpness of her aura to scar his body. But Mew reacts by standing in place and moving his right arm around so his blade is positioned perfectly to absorb the impact of each blow sent his way.

All the while, Mew smiled and casually asked "So umm…You're interested in video games right? I mean you mentioned Pokemon earlier. What's your favorite Gen?" Kairi looked at him in disbelief while continuing to attack, saying angrily "Are you trying to strike up a conversation during a battle?!" "Well if I have to be honest I consider this more-or-less a training exercise on what Aurians are capable of." Mew remarks with a shrug of his shoulders that doesn't disrupt his defense.

This throws Kairi into a frenzy again, and she reels back on her staff and doubles the size of her pike extension before thrusting it forward and exclaiming "I AM NOT SOME TRAINING DUMMY!" A spiral of aura erupts out as she thrusts the staff through the air, and she hits Mew's blade right in the center with enough force to push it back against his chest and knock him through the air a few feet until he lands on the ground, looking a bit surprised by the strength Kairi exerted.

Kairi has to catch her breath for a moment afterwards, panting as her face was flushed red out of anger for what Mew said to her, but while she was pulling back on her staff Mew took advantage of her weakness to charge forward and pull back his left fist, throwing out a straightforward punch right into Kairi's face that launches her backwards, making her spin around in the air until she slams against the wall of the pyramid back first, hitting it hard enough to make a body shaped indent that spreads cracks out across the crystal stone.

Mew pulls his hand back and shakes it around a bit while unfurling the fist, stating to Kairi calmly afterwards "Lesson Three…Try not to let your opponents get to you. It's an easy way to get others to take advantage of your weak points." Kairi doesn't waste time in peeling herself off the wall, but she holds her hand up close to her now bleeding nose and proclaims in disbelief "Y-You punched me! Didn't your mom teach you not to punch a girl?!"

Mew folded his arms together and remarks in a rather insulted manner "Oh you are NOT pulling the gender card on me. I'm sorry, but you seem to have gotten the wrong idea about my personality. I'll be chivalrous to women outside of battle, but if you have the strength to fight me I'm going to treat you like a warrior regardless of appearance or gender." All of a sudden, Mew hears someone behind him exclaim "Yeah! You tell that crazy bitch off!"

Mew looks behind himself for a moment and finds himself suddenly surprised by the fact that a crowd of Aurians have gathered in the area, stretching from one corner of the pyramid to the other in an arc. "Ummm…Seems an audience has gathered. Can't say I saw this coming…" Mew murmurs out as he turns back to look at Kairi, who was currently looking angrily at all of the Aurians that had gathered, especially with what the random dude said regarding her. Quickly, Kairi raises her right arm up beside her face and scowls.

Mew remarks to her quickly "Hey, calm down. Don't let the audience's presence affect your battle per-" "Screw you! I've had enough of your mockery! Time to show you why I'm the only one who can face Gravitus with this Level 3 Drive of mine! Beast Tamer Drive, activate!" Kairi interrupts Mew midway and slams two of her fingers on the chimera-etched stone attached to her bracelet. The light-blue aura her body slowly begins to transform into a dark-green one, and she picks her staff up and lashes it against the ground to split it apart into multiple segments, all of them connected together by a thick coil of aura down the center.

"…Huh, your power's increased a lot." Mew said with a bit of intrigue and surprise in his voice while Kairi places her newly formed whip back together and lays it atop her other hand, saying to him in an arrogant tone "Now I'm going to win. I'll take you down in less than five minutes." Mew points his sword at her and states "I hope you actually know how time flows, otherwise you're pulling a Frieza on me with that claim."

"…I'm going to beat you so badly that you won't be able to crack a joke or make a reference ever again." Kairi says dryly while she looks down at her whip, and Mew nonchalantly shrugs and says "If you shut my mouth somehow, I'll just write in the air with water." Kairi thus raises her eyes up in quiet annoyance and says "Take him down my beast…"

She then summons out from her aura a manifestation of a tiger, which looked perfectly like one down to the ruffles of fur despite being colored pure dark-green. It maintained a solid form and let out it's mighty roar before it runs across the ground at a surprising speed towards Mew. "It's pretty fast…" Mew thinks before he goes to swing his sword down across the ground to intercept the aura tiger, but as he goes for the upward slash the beast moves with surprising agility to the left and leaps towards the side of Mew's body.

The tiger swings its front claws out multiple times at Mew's arm, but because they are not real they fail to scratch into his skin and instead attacks with the force of ten-ton hammers. Mew can feel quite a bit of pain in his arm muscles and quickly finds himself having to retaliate by turning his body to the left and using the position of his arms after the last attack to swing his sword diagonally downward towards the aura tiger.

The beast leaps back and avoids the attack, but Mew slams the blade against the ground and summons forth an eruption of stone that strikes the aura tiger in the chin and knocks it into the air while it lets out a realistic, pained screech. Knowing quickly that attacking the beast was a waste of time, Mew lifted his sword out of the ground to break apart and send the stones at the mid-air tiger to distract it before turning his attention towards Kairi. "Come on mysterious stranger guy, you can take her!" Another random Aurian cheers, to which Mew responds to that by subtly gesturing his left hand out and summoning a tiny wall of wind to slap said guy across the face for his vocal interference.

He then runs at Kairi quickly to make up for those few seconds of lost time, and while holding his sword beside himself he takes his left hand and curls it into a fist to go for an attack at Kairi's chest while she was giving him a snide expression. Before the fist of fire connects, Kairi takes her whip and lashes it out to wrap it around Mew's arm and stop him from even getting close to touching her. The grip around his arm was surprisingly tight, and Mew couldn't get loose even though he pulled back with all of his strength.

With a whistle, Kairi calls the aura tiger towards her general direction. The beast lands on one of the pile of rock chunks from Mew's earlier attack and leaps across the battlefield until it was right behind Mew, at which point it rears up and takes both of it's claws down onto Mew's back. Mew visibly grimaces in wide-eyed pain as the force of the aura tiger's attack goes through his muscles and spine.

But before the aura tiger could be commanded to do another attack, Mew pulls back a bit on the whip to stretch it out enough so that the rope in the center is more vulnerable. He then hangs his sword's ring on his wrist to free up his fingers for a quick snap, which causes a thunderbolt to come down and zap right through the rope of aura, breaking it apart from the rest of the whip and allowing Mew enough time to pull his arm out of the front of the whip and turn himself around while grasping onto his sword again.

Once he was looking directly at the tiger he performs a hard swing of his sword horizontally across the tiger's chest, unleashing a burst of wind to blow the tiger away from him at the same time. The aura tiger falls against the ground a fair distance away, and Mew is able to turn around and resume focus on Kairi. But by the time he does so she had already put her whip back together and lifted it up ready to lash it out at him. The aura had been spread out to thicken the whip and give it more strength, meaning that when Mew raised his sword up to block the attack there he was immediately forced to kneel with one leg onto the ground, an act that cracked some of the bones in his other leg.

While Mew was down like that Kairi kept whipping at him to try and break his blade, with every lash spreading aura out in waves. Mew remarks nonchalantly "You know, my blade is kind of unbreakable. I should know, I've tested it's limits pretty thoroughly." "But it's never faced the power of an Aurian before, has it?" Kairi comments on arrogantly, to which Mew tilts his head and admits "Well no, but I don't exactly think you're applying nearly enough strength to crack it let alone break it."

Kairi's slants her eyebrows at that comment and then says "Fine, I guess I'll have to show you a couple other tricks my Beast Tamer drive is capable of then." She proceeds to use one strong lash from her whip to vault herself over Mew's body and land about twenty feet away where her aura tiger currently lied down with it's form distorted by the sword slash. She snaps her fingers to get rid of the beast and then snaps them again to convert the aura into another beast, this time making it into a ferocious female lion.

"Not only can I make multiple beasts…" Kairi says before she lifts her whip and lashes the tip of the front into the aura lioness, which causes aura to visibly stream into the beast from her body, and slowly the creature grows in size until it was taller than Kairi herself. "But I can increase their strength through my whip. Now my beast, tear that cretin apart!" With a swing of her free hand out towards Mew, Kairi's aura lioness roars so loudly that it shakes the area and then sprints forth at Mew.

Mew watches for a second as the beast tears apart the ground as it runs, and he waits until the last moment before the creature was before him with claw halfway swung towards his body to leap back and land against the side of the pyramid while the lioness punctures through the floor like it was nothing. Mew then dispels his sword temporarily and holds his arms out to summon fireballs at his fingertips, the crimson glimmer from each one shone brightly before Mew thrust his arms forward and proclaimed "FLAME CANNON!"

He then launches a tunnel of raw flames from his hands that goes straight down towards the aura beast, consuming it entirely and causing a large pillar of fire to erupt into the air. But the aura beast wasn't affected very much as it leaped from the pillar bathed in fire and ran up the side of the pyramid after Mew, who was recovering from firing off his attack. The lioness lunges it's head into Mew's gut and causes him to become heavily winded as aura erupts in a shockwave from the sides and back of his body to represent the damage he has now sustained.

But instead of letting the beast have it's way with him past that point, Mew recovers from the blow and swings his arms out to grip the lioness on both sides of it's gargantuan body, bracing his feet against the ground for a few seconds with the help of his powers creating braces of steel that did not bend an inch around his legs. Once he had grasped the creature tightly enough, Mew uses the steel binds to push himself higher into the air on a pillar of his own creation, and without a stable platform to put it's back feet on the aura beast is left hanging vertically in mid-air rather quickly while Mew continues to hold onto it's front shoulders.

Once high enough up, Mew flattens the platform until a solid discus and removes the binds, letting go of the beast so it can begin plummeting to the ground, hoping that the hold of gravity combined with the speed of it's fall would be enough to significantly damage it if not defeat it entirely. But the beast was persistent in it's pursuit of Mew's defeat as it took both of it's claws and latched them to the back of Mew's arms, and though they could not tear through flesh the tips still dug into his skin deep enough to draw some blood out while Mew himself grimaced in surprise.

"Heh, you're a clingy beast…Sorry though, I think I'd be more of a dog person if I ever decided to have a pet." Mew comments through the pain with his usual joking tone, and he proceeds to control his own blood by solidifying what was leaking out and providing enough of a push to get the aura beast off of his arms. The beast then falls to the ground with a mighty thud that spreads dust across the area, and Mew follows up by leaping into the air and flipping himself around so he could pull his fist back and then slam it against his steel platform.

The platform then morphs into a giant spear of steel that thrusts down and impales the aura lioness through the chest, going so far as to also puncture through the ground as well. Mew then flips through the air until he lands on his feet a fair distance away from the trapped aura beast. It wasn't defeated, but there's no way it'd be able to move. Mew drew his sword back out with a flick of his wrist and prepared to strike the beast down, but Kairi took care of the matter for him by dispersing the creature's form and bringing the aura in front of her. "We're down to the last minute and a half, but I don't think I'll need all of that time now." Kairi says with the utmost confidence as she turns the aura into one final beast.

The aura forms into the shape of a mighty grizzly bear, and said beast quickly stands on it's hind legs and lets out a gruesome roar while Kairi throws her whip into the creature's back. She pours enough aura into the bear to triple it's size, and because of that it's roar soon becomes both echoing and near deafening. Mew's heart beats heavily for a bit as he remarks in his head "Great, the lioness hurt me quite a bit…I probably should switch to another form when I get the chance."

But he was immediately pressured as the bear walked over to him and lashed it's claws down, forcing Mew to leap back to avoid the onslaught and land atop the door to the pyramid, where he keeps hold of his sword while simultaneously thrusting his fists into the air to send short-term streams of flame right into the bear's face. The creature does not flinch and ferociously retaliates by taking it's right claws straight down and striking Mew clean through his body with enough force to break the door apart and bury Mew in the rubble created from it.

After a brief pause, the bear lifts it's claw out from the rubble while pinching Mew's shirt in the back to raise him out. Mew was a bit battered from the attack with visible dust on his clothes and some blood dripping down his arms from the shoulders. Kairi grins and pats her whip against her left hand, saying as the seemingly defeated Mew was hung up for all to see "I knew you weren't anything special, Elemental Overlord! You can't handle what we Aurians are capable of!"

However, Mew begins chuckling in response to that claim, and while lifting his sword up he holds it so the triggers on his handle we pointed towards Kairi. Kairi states "What are you laughing about now? Got another terrible joke on your mind?" Instead of answering that directly, Mew lifts his other hand up and starts moving it to the white colored trigger on his sword, telling Kairi firmly "Final Lesson…These triggers on my sword aren't just a design flourish." He then clicks the white trigger with little effort.

From the blade erupts multiple streams of holy light that envelop themselves around Mew's body like a cocoon and force the aura bear's grip to come off it. Kairi looks up in surprise and says "W-What?!" As the cocoon quickly breaks apart with the spreading of angelic wings from within, Mew jumps forward while having his hand latched onto the handle of his diamond katana in the hilt, as his body wore the holy armor and angelic wings expected of this form. With a single draw of his blade from his hilt he slices right through the aura bear's stomach, cleaving it in two and causing it to let out a dying roar before it's split visage is dissimilated into nothingness, blanketed by a veil of light that launches streams of it throughout the sky.

Mew quickly lands on the ground and sheathes his katana, holding his right hand out while streams of light cascade towards the palm and saying to the rather stunned Kairi "If you have anymore beasts, now's your chance to send one at me, otherwise you're taking this attack head-on." The fact that Kairi could only look at him with widened eyes and a bit of a shiver of her body was enough to tell Mew that she not only could not summon another beast, but that the bear was likely the strongest one she had. With a bit of a pitying glance, Mew sighs and says "Then I guess I win the battle…"

Without further hesitation Mew fires off a holy fireball from his palm that strikes Kairi dead-on in about two seconds, with the attack bursting apart into a spread of white flames as Kairi is knocked onto her backside while letting out a brief cry of pain, her body landing with a jolt while her aura changes back to light-blue and her whip snaps back into the staff form. Folding his arms together, Mew says calmly "Sorry it had to end like that, but you REALLY shouldn't have tried picking a fight with the guy who's trying to help you and your people out."

Returning to his normal form, Mew begins to turn around while stating "I hope this served as a good lesson for your future endeavors, now go back to your mom and wait for me to finish Gravitus off, Kairi." He spreads his arms out to move aside the rubble at the door and was about ready to go inside the pyramid when all of a sudden he heard the clang of Kairi placing her staff against the ground, which causes him to pause and glance over his shoulder to see Kairi kneeling on the ground and grasping her staff with both hands to act as her support. Quivering with a somewhat distressed look in her eyes, Kairi murmurs out "W-W-Why you…? W-Why…?"

"Shut up you bitch!" "You finally got your just desserts!" "Go home and cry to your mother again!" "Stupid girl!" "Take this 'cretin'!" "Just stay kneeling on the ground like that!" The Aurians that were watching the battle suddenly start erupting into various hateful comments towards Kairi, with some of them even tossing stones and other junk at her, each blow causing her expression to visibly flinch in agony as she looked almost traumatized by all that was happening. She didn't say anything else at this point, and with her biting down on her lower lip she continued to quiver.

Mew felt outright disgusted by what he was seeing even after Kairi brought the battle upon herself with her behavior, and as he turned around to look at Kairi he thought to himself "What the hell? This is almost like a lynch mob…" It seems there was something problematic going on between Kairi and the rest of the Aurians that justified this almost barbaric behavior, and it didn't take long for Mew to summon his sword and hold it along the length of his right arm while keeping a finger close to the white trigger and exclaiming "Hey! All of you cut this out right now!"

Only one of the Aurians, a male teenager, stops to look at Mew and said "No offense dude, but she's had this coming for a long time. But if you want to stop us, you're going to have to take all of us down!" Mew glances over the crowd that had gathered here, noticing not just adults and teenagers but children as well. Giving the Aurian who spoke to him a powerful glare that exudes of his own energy to make them go stiff in the knees, Mew clicks on the white trigger and goes back into his Light Form.

"I'm really ashamed you chose to say that. And I'm especially ashamed of you adults for teaching your children to have this type of behavior towards someone YOU dislike." Mew calmly says, and in a rather ballsy display considering what they just saw Mew being capable of the Aurians glared at him and almost looked ready to attack him as well. Mew just raised an eyebrow to that response and lifted his right hand up, but instead of scaring them with an attack he instead used his energy to swiftly erect a half-dome barrier of light over himself and Kairi, attaching the back of it to the pyramid so there'd be no way for anyone to get in.

The sound from the outside was also cut off, and with that all dealt with Mew returns to his regular form and dispels his sword while remarking to himself "I got ten minutes…" Letting out a puff of air before he turns to look at the quivering Kairi, Mew then plants his fists against the sides of his stomach and remarks "…You're too soft sometimes Mew, but you can't just leave this alone." He then steps forward until he was directly in front of Kairi, where he then kneels down in front of her and says with an empathetic gesture outward "Hey, you don't have to worry about those guys anymore. Are you ok?"

Kairi lifts her head up just enough to look Mew straight in the eyes and scowl, saying to him in a rather weak sounding voice "W-W-Why you…? W-W-Why did my mom pick you over me to fight Gravitus?" Mew couldn't exactly provide an answer to that question, so he just let Kairi continue talking while she turned her head away and mentioned "Do you know how insulting it is…To have your own mother put more faith into some stranger than her own daughter who has worked tirelessly to defeat the man oppressing her people…"

Kairi then looked back at Mew and said bluntly "Why the HELL are you still here? …You humiliated me, isn't that good enough for you?" Mew shook his head and said "I wasn't intending to humiliate you, far from it…Honestly, how could I have known that your own people were so against you?" "…Hmph, it's been like this for me for two years now. Just me versus whatever shit they choose to dish out at me. A lot of them are just upset that I've kicked their ass in battle before…" Kairi mentions with rather little care in her voice, though Mew knew well enough that it did affect her quite a bit.

With a chuckle, Mew says "Well that's not too hard to believe. You forced me to use my Light Form to beat you. That's not exactly an easy feat. You're pretty strong Kairi, though you seem to be more focused on brute strength instead of trying to use any real strategy." Kairi lowers her eyebrows in a glare and says to him "…Geez, I really don't get you. You take this request from my mom, then you defeat me in battle, then you stand up for me, THEN you lecture me on proper battling…"

"What can I say? I'm a bit of an oddball sometimes." Mew admits in a moment of nonchalant deprecation towards himself, but Kairi then pouts a bit and says to him "Well whatever, thanks for the compliment I guess…But you won our battle, so what's the point of my strength if you're already good enough to defeat Gravitus…" Sitting down in a criss-cross position, Mew raises a pointer finger up and says with a smile "Hey now, don't get down in the dumps. I think you're looking at this the wrong way. Two heads are better than one, as the saying goes."

Looking at Mew in confusion, Kairi says "What are you implying?" Mew gestures back with his thumb and states "Look, I know how it always goes with these type of adventures. Gravitus probably has a squad of super powered minions waiting for us inside the pyramid to stall us until he arrives. For all I know a lot of them could have abilities that could give me a tough time, so wouldn't it be great if someone was there to have my back?"

"…You're seriously asking me to come along with you, aren't you?" Kairi inquired with a rather dumbfounded expression on her face. Mew folded his arms together and said "Something like that, yeah. But if you come with you you'll have to follow a few rules." Pulling a fist from his armfold, Mew lifts a finger up every time he lists a rule off "One, I want you to pay attention to how I fight and learn some things to be used in the future. Two, I'd like it if you'd try to lighten up a little bit…Not everything has to be serious. Three, give me a smile every now and then, you look like such a grumpy gus otherwise."

"…This is seriously happening." Kairi states in disbelief while looking down with an expression of confusion. Mew shrugs and says "Hey, you can either take me up on my offer or in five minutes you can go back to being ostracized by your own people." "You're not exactly giving me much of a choice here. It's either deal with those assholes or spend what I assume will be some riveting time with you." Kairi responds with after raising her head up and putting on a dry expression.

"Hey, if you listen to my advice and do a good job fighting along the way, I'll let you fight Gravitus yourself. Sounds like a pretty good bargain, wouldn't you agree?" Mew offers, and after a few seconds of pondering things over Kairi lets out a single hmm and then whispers "Well, I guess you did be a bit nice to me…Fine, I'll come along, but I'm going to lay my own ground rules first." Mew shrugs and says without a care "Toss away."

Pulling a hand away from her staff, Kairi does the same thing Mew was doing moments ago while she lists off her rules "First off, no saying anything about my breasts. I know they are big, almost as big as my mom's in fact, but if you are more focused on that then I won't be able to take you seriously. This leads to my second rule…If you crack even one terrible joke, I'm slapping you across the face." Mew stops her then and there by scoffing once and saying "Ooooooo, going to have to add a fourth rule to my list. No Tsundere behavior allowed. That means no 'b-b-baka's', slaps, or 'I didn't do it because I like you or anything'."

"…Well you won't have to worry about that last one anyways. But fine, if you get to add a fourth rule then I'm doing the same. Third one goes first though, and that rule is that I'll be allowed to throw out sarcastic remarks if something comes to mind. The fourth and final rule is that I want you to treat us as equals." When Kairi finishes off her list of demands, Mew just nods his head once and nonchalantly states "Ok, I guess those are fair requests."

He then extends his right hand out and both him and Kairi do a quick handshake on the whole matter, with Kairi putting on a more battle-hardened expression while Mew helps her get back onto her feet. Once that was done and over with, Mew said to her while gesturing his arm out "Anyways, the barrier's going down in about a minute. We should probably get going." "Yeah, that gathering of losers won't follow us into the temple anyways." Kairi says bluntly with a smirk.

Mew blinks a few times regarding that comment and then turns around to start heading into the temple, and while Kairi followed him she widened her eyes momentarily and remarked "Hey! You have something to say about that, don't you?! Hey!" By the time the two have entered the pyramid, the barrier of light Mew erected goes down, and all the Aurians are suddenly slapped across the face simultaneously by some tiny hands of light that Mew had left in the barrier. As the entire group just stood there dumbfounded at what just happened, one guy suddenly proclaimed "Wow! That guy is just as much of an asshole as she is!"

Next Time: The Guards of Gravitus