A/N: ...I think I lied when I said faster updates were coming. Wait, did I say faster updates were coming? I think I'm losing my mind.
Anyway, before I get started I would like to respond to a guest review I moderated. To whoever left that, I'm glad for the attention, but I can't accept your Mew. There are two reasons for this:
1) Your formatting was incorrect. If you had or were willing to leave a non-guest review, I could PM you for more information, but I can't. In addition, I have an OC PROFILE FORMAT on my profile page. It's there for a reason.
2) In your profile, you listed 'dragon' as the Mew's DNA animal. Much as I love fantasy, I'm writing sci-fi, so no dragons. If you'd said Komodo dragon or specified two animals that would give your character dragonlike aspects and didn't mind the drawbacks of a two-animal character, that would be fine, but you said 'dragon'.
Sorry about the Author Rant, but it had to be done. Please, use the OC format on my page. It makes things a heck of a lot easier.
Zakuro sprang backwards, away from Kisshu and towards Mint, her keen violet eyes darting back and forth as she analyzed the situation. The main threat—the chimaera—had been neutralized, though not according to Phase Two of the plan the Mews had concocted. The aliens weren't fighting at the moment, and if Ichigo wanted to talk there would be no better time. That is, if it weren't for the wild cards in the situation: the newcomers.
The fox Mew—Lyra, she supposed—stood close to one of the unfamiliar Cyniclons, who hung almost protectively by her right side, gold eyes flashing death at anyone who looked directly at them. The second alien stood almost a meter away from the two, his unnaturally blue eyes darting as though assessing the others for signs of hostility. Something silvery shimmered and twisted at his right wrist, even though his left hand was nowhere near it. Calliope stood several meters away, arms folded over her chest. She looked, Zakuro thought, confident. Perhaps overconfident, since if the Mews or the aliens decided to attack her team she would have a hard time fending them off.
"And why would we be interested in conversing 'like sane, civilized people'?" Pai said. Lettuce took a few steps away from him, and the alien turned to face the bat Mew.
"Do you want to watch everyone on your home planet die when you can't beat the Project?" She grinned at the stunned look on Pai's face. "Yeah. I know all about the situation, even your side of it. And me and Lorem here—" she gestured to the blue-clad Cyniclon "—have a plan that lets everyone come out alive, not just one side or the other."
"And how do I know this 'plan' will work?"
"You don't," Lorem interjected. "I don't, either. But attempting something that may or may not work is better than charging headlong into certain death."
Pai snorted. "Idealists," he said, shaking his head slowly.
"Hey," Calliope said warningly. Her red eye flashed. "Don't diss the idealism, especially when it's trying to save your backside."
"Hmph," Pai scoffed.
"Maybe we should listen to what she's got to say," Kisshu suggested. Zakuro looked at him, startled.
"And this after you tried to kill me just a few minutes ago," said Ichigo.
"I thought there wasn't a way out of it then, and you never know, I might still do it."
"Ok, enough flirting," Calliope said. "You wanna talk business, we'll talk. You wanna be cute with each other, do it on your own time."
"Hey!" the two protested simultaneously. Calliope ignored them and steamrolled right ahead, spreading her wings as if preparing for flight. "We've got a safe house set up not too far from here, and Lor got the tech stuff set up to keep people out. We can talk there."
Lorem shot her a look. "What, you are going to make me walk with them by myself? You know Hellebore will just 'leap' with Lyra the moment you give him an opportunity."
"Oh, please. I'm just shakin' the raindrops off my wings."
"Now who's flirting?" Lyra joked.
Ichigo burst out laughing. Kisshu joined her a second later, and before Zakuro really knew what was going on the tension lay in melting shards on the ground as everyone except Pai and Berry joined in. The wolf Mew chuckled a little herself, tail swishing from side to side.
Berry hung at the back of the group, watching everyone with various degrees of suspicion. She didn't really trust her teammates anymore, since they were turning out to be traitors after all—she'd warned Ryou about this!—didn't trust the newcomers at all since they were either traitors or the enemy, and she wouldn't trust the enemy if you paid her everything in the national budget. At least the groups separated out, making it easier for her to keep an eye on the threats.
She reviewed her impromptu plan in her head, adjusting the finer aspects of it. She would have to watch this meeting, and she would have to remember everything. She would keep her head down, would resist the urge to scream at them how wrong they all were, resist grabbing her staff to smash the aliens' heads in and forcing the traitors into compliance. And then, like a good, loyal Mew, Berry would report everything she had heard to Ryou.
The most disturbing thing about the situation, though, was how close the traitors were to their enemy 'allies'. The fox Mew, Lyra, practically hung off the gold-eyed Cyniclon like a barnacle on a rock—and the second Calliope turned her back, the two vanished for places unknown. Calliope herself walked side-by-side with the other one, neither of them speaking with the other, but Berry could practically see the connection. And Ichigo! Rather than doing what she was supposed to and killing the aliens, walked close enough to that green-haired monster that at any given moment she could reach out and touch him. And the other Mews just went along with it! They didn't protest their Leader's actions, didn't disobey her order and follow their mission—it was disgraceful.
It was maybe a five minute walk to the 'safe house', and during that time the rain actually let up and allowed a peek of the setting sun through the clouds. The house itself looked like an ordinary house in the suburbs, nothing to set it apart from innumerable identical buildings except that the small front yard hadn't been mowed recently and all the windows were boarded up—except one in the back, from which the boards had been removed. And, judging by the way it was propped open by a stick, was probably the entrance. Calliope dropped the stick on the sill and, shaking her wings off before folding them flat against her back, climbed through. She held the window open.
"Come on, you guys. We don't have all day, and I don't want the neighbors to get too curious," she said. Ichigo shrugged and, due to her shorter height, was forced to haul herself up onto the windowsill.
Mint groaned. "That's going to be irritating." In response, Zakuro knelt in front of the window and cupped her hands as a step for the lorikeet Mew to use. Mint flashed the older Mew a quick smile.
Berry waited until everyone else—except the freaky blue-eyed alien, who insisted on going last—had gone through the window before hopping up herself. She smirked, glad that she would be less clumsy and undignified at getting through the window than Ichigo thanks to her rabbit genes. She jumped lightly onto the windowsill and slid inside, landing neatly in the dimly lit room. The alien followed a second behind her and closed the window. She heard something click behind her and whirled around to find that he'd locked it. Cold fear trailed down her spine.
"You…locked us in," she said slowly.
"I would rather you," he eyed her suspiciously, "remained here. I don't trust you not to sneak out to get a head start back to your base to tell your boss everything."
Berry gulped. How had he figured her out so quickly, with only a few minutes of observation? She shivered and took a step back, chilled by those suddenly glacial eyes. Lorem stepped past her, trench coat rustling as it brushed against her leg. Berry stood still, frozen with fear, before following a second later.
In the next room—the former living room, judging by the dusty sofa and chairs—the rest of the group had congregated. Calliope was seated backwards on one of the chairs, straddling the back with her arms resting on the top. Ichigo, Zakuro, and Lettuce had claimed the main part of the sofa, while Mint sat on one arm and Pudding perched on the back, her feet dangling between Ichigo and Zakuro. Hellebore had claimed one of the other chairs, and Lyra was seated on his lap with her head tucked under his chin. Pai had claimed the third chair, with Taruto sitting on the arm of that. Kisshu hovered cross-legged nearby, arms crossed casually behind his head. Lorem stood quietly beside Calliope, blue eyes studying the room. Berry took a seat on the free arm of the sofa.
"So," Calliope said. "Before I say anything, I want a promise that nobody's going to go and spill to the people in charge, 'cause they'll try to stop us and if they succeed everyone dies."
"What's with the 'everyone dies' thing?" Berry asked. "I know if we lose the aliens will kill everyone and if we win we kill the aliens, but why do we care what happens to them? They're evil freaks trying to kill us all!" She immediately gave herself a mental slap upside the head. There went the 'resist the urge to tell them they're wrong' part of the plan.
"They're not evil," Lyra protested. "If you get to know them, some of them are really nice!"
"Some of us are just mean, though," Hellebore corrected, and tugged on Lyra's ear. She smacked playfully at his hand. Calliope just rolled her eyes.
"They're not evil, just desperate. You'd act the same way if you were in their situation…Lor, you wanna tell 'em? It's not really my story…"
Lorem nodded. "Thank you," he said, then turned his attention to the Mews. "To put it simply, even without the threat of Project Mew, our people are on the verge of extinction. The planet we currently inhabit is becoming increasingly unlivable, even having taken the extreme precaution of moving the population underground, and if nothing is done we will die out within the next generation. We had one option: relocate to a more hospitable planet."
"Why choose Earth?" Zakuro asked.
"It's close, and we lack the resources to travel much farther. It's Earth or nothing, according to the Council," Pai said.
"Not anymore!" Calliope declared. "Me and Lor figured out a solution that, if we can find the thinger—"
"Terraformer," Lorem corrected.
"Yeah, the thinger. We've got a picture—"
"A set of blueprints."
"—A blueprint-thingy on Lorem's computer, so we know what the chumpey looks like, and if we can't find it we'll need to build one. And then all we have to do is steal some of that Aqua Vitae stuff and convince everyone in charge to just shut the hell up and listen to us and—"
"Hang on a second," Ichigo cut in. "What did you say?"
"Convince everyone to shut up and listen?"
"No. The other thing."
"Build a new terraformer-thing?"
"No, the other other thing."
"Steal a power source?"
"You realize that's a crime, right?"
"Yeah, and? I'm probably accused of hacking a government database, stealing sensitive documents, theft of government property, and treason from humanity. Lyra's guilty of the last two, and Lor and Hell are, like, Public Enemy Number One or something. None of us give a damn anymore. We just don't want one side or the other to be killed off. It's not right."
"What Calliope means is that we're already outside the bounds of both human and Cyniclon law," said Lorem. "We'll do whatever it takes to save both sides." He shot Calliope a look out of the corner of his eye, and Berry wished she knew how to interpret it. The bat Mew nodded subtly.
Kisshu dropped out of his hover, landing lightly on the floor. "You're crazy," he said. "But it might work. We've been fighting a war for ten years with no progress, and if we work with you instead of the Council, there's a chance."
"It's an absolutely foolish endeavor," Pai said. "And the likelihood of this terraformer still being in existence after three hundred million years is—'
"Why would Cyniclon technology be on Earth in the first place?" Lettuce asked suddenly.
Everything went dead silent for exactly twelve seconds. Then Lorem spoke.
"Our species actually evolved here on Earth, but was forced off due to…extenuating circumstances. That's why our technology is here." Turning to Pai, he added, "Admittedly, it's highly unlikely that any of our technology that was left on Earth is in one piece and accessible, much less functional. Nevertheless, you know how well our ancestors built things. Didn't we come back to Earth in the crafts our people originally left in, with only maintenance repairs in the years since they were built? It's possible there's still a potentially-functional terraformer in existence on Earth, we just need to locate it."
"'Potentially functional' is the key phrase. You may be part of that project, but you don't know everything, and you are a fool for playing along with that human's idiotic idea." Pai stood and glared daggers at everyone in the room. "This plan of yours is more likely to get both sides killed than save them. I will not participate in such foolishness, and anyone with a shred of common sense will agree with me." His point made, Pai left in typical Cyniclon fashion. That is, he teleported before Calliope could stand up to punch him in the face.
"…That went well," Lyra said, tone laced with sarcasm.
"Agreed," said Hellebore. Calliope glared daggers at the place Pai had just vacated.
"Pai's just an old doubter," Taruto said, dropping into the seat of the chair. "But I wanna help. Maybe it'll be more fun than bothering the old hags all the time."
"Who are you calling an old hag, midget?!" Ichigo snapped.
"Who else, grandma?!"
"Calm down," Zakuro growled. Both Ichigo and Taruto immediately went quiet.
Kisshu shrugged. "Not sure if it'll work, but…" his gaze wandered to Ichigo "…a crazy plan is better than having to kill my Koneko-chan. Thing is, this is one of the planned sites for Project Deep Blue, and if Pai tells our superiors, we'll be in serious trouble. We could get relocated to different branches."
Unexpectedly, Lorem smiled. "That may be a blessing in disguise. With the two of you in different locations, we'll have more insiders on both sides and more potential help if you can convince anyone else to see things our way."
"What's 'Project Deep Blue'?" Ichigo asked.
"Essentially, it's a counter to Project Mew. Instead of the original plan, which was to target all areas of high population density and move out from there, the Council has set up a contingency plan, which is intended to create a powerful disturbance in Earth's electromagnetic field, reversing the planet's polarization and screwing up the climate, orientation, and rotation of the Earth badly enough that humanity would be too busy struggling to survive to fend us off," Lorem said. "Before I left the main ship, I threw a wrench in Project Deep Blue's planning, so we're in a race to find the terraformer before the project can recover."
Berry noticed Calliope shooting Lorem an odd look, almost like she wanted to say something but was holding back.
"So what do we have to do?" Zakuro asked.
"Japan is one of the biggest seismic zones on the planet. If they get access to anywhere they could disrupt a fault line or something, we're just as screwed as if they get the Poles. Keep 'em out at all costs," Calliope said.
"And what will you be doing?" Berry challenged.
"Finding the terraformer, or finding someone who can build a new one," Hellebore said. His golden eyes narrowed. "Don't you listen?" Berry shrank back away from him—and fell off the arm of the couch. Ichigo snickered. Berry's ear twitched irritably. B*tch.
"Anyway, we probably ought to let you go back to your base before your Coordinator gets too worried," Lorem said. "The best of luck to you."
"You too," Ichigo said, standing up. The other Mews followed her lead, and Lorem led the way back into the window room—which had probably been the dining room at some point—to unlock the window for them.
The second the Mews made it back out onto the abandoned road, Berry smirked.
Time to tell Ryou. I can't let the aliens get away with killing everyone, but Calliope and her fellow traitors have to be stopped before their weakness lets the aliens win.
A/N: Sorry for the infodump. Anyway, I'll probably end up splitting this into several shorter stories, just to cut down a bit on the length in my word document-63 pages and 27,712 words, not counting Author's Notes. On this, I'll do one epilogue chapter just to set up the transition, and then I'll post the next part. Buckle up, folks-we're going global!