A/N: Okay, we're only on chapter 14 and nowhere near the end, so I'm going to split this story into two parts, possibly three depending on how long the rest is. This'll be the last chapter for Part One, and I'm getting started on Part Two now.
Thanks to the people who submitted Mews for me: iamgoku, Amu Tsukiyomi, XxHellShadowXx, LittleMissWonderlannd, Raven-Geek, wolfwingsbrenna, and brightcloud0915.
Special thanks to the wonderful Rafel666, for her wonderful OCs and support-and for being there to bounce ideas off when I needed it. I owe it all-or at least a good chunk of it-to you.

Thank you all for reading; I'll see you in the next installment of Project Mew: Racing Light!

2100 hours Tokyo Standard Time, Project Mew Tokyo Base

"You're certain that's everything?" Ryou asked.

He gave Berry a hard stare, trying to get every detail possible out of the hybrid Mew. She was a poor fighter and a risk to the stability of his team—he should have terminated her a long time ago—but she was useful. The other Mews were independent, or shy, or solitary, or simply chose not to share the details of their private world with him, but Berry put her loyalty to Project Mew before her loyalty to the team. Her affection for him was an asset as well. She would trust him intimately, as the other Mews didn't, and gave him insight into both the interactions within the team and into the thought processes of a Mew, which often seemed as alien as the actual aliens.

"Of course," Berry replied. Her leporine ears were alert, the tips perked up rather than their usual half-drooped state, and her feline tail swished the air. Her wine-red eyes were wide, conveying a very human expression of innocent sincerity and earnestness that seemed out of place knowing what she wanted to do for the Project.

"Alright. Thank you for bringing this to me, Berry. I'll use the information as I see fit. You are dismissed."

"Okay! See you later," the blonde Mew said, planted an enthusiastic if sloppy kiss on her Coordinator's cheek, and left the room beaming.

Ryou turned to Keiichiro, who had been sitting at his computer and listening the whole time. "This is an interesting development, don't you think?"

"Very," Keiichiro replied. "It certainly does explain why the Cyniclons are so desperate to take over Earth and why they're willing to stand and fight a ten-year war when there are countless other planets they could access."

"Which begs the question: who is this Lorem, and if he has access to sensitive information such as this so-called Project Deep Blue, why is he being allowed to roam freely and associate with the enemy? If he were part of our organization, we would probably keep him in the most secure location we had access to to prevent him from being compromised."

"I'm not certain he's an ordinary Cyniclon," Keiichiro said contemplatively. "Berry described him as having blue eyes, but in ten years of interaction the Project has no data recording an alien with a similar eye color. The closest match I can find is violet, which indicates to me that the allele producing the blue-eyed phenotype is both extremely rare and either recessive or incompletely dominant. Taking that into consideration, it's unlikely he's completely natural, and if my hypothesis is correct…"

"You think he's like the Mews."

"Berry reported that he was affiliated with this Project Deep Blue, which, according to his description, is a counter to Project Mew. Considering that phrasing, it's likely genetic manipulation was involved to some degree."

"Hm." Ryou cupped his chin in his hand, his index finger resting on his upper lip while his thumb rested under his jawbone and the other three fingers curled around his chin in his usual pose of 'serious thinking'. "The question becomes this: do we tell the Project about this development or keep it to ourselves?"

"I'll leave that to you, Ryou. As the Coordinator, such decisions are your responsibility."

2133 hours Tokyo Standard Time, 15 km north of Project Mew Tokyo Base

"Everybody ready?" Calliope asked, slinging her bag across her chest. She'd modified the straps into a harness to avoid hampering her wings or hurting herself while carrying it—not that weight was an issue. She could easily carry equal to her own body weight and still fly for hours.

"Yep," said Lyra, finishing zipping her own bag. Calliope grinned. It was good to know her morals had rubbed off on someone, even if that someone was the girl who consistently stole random things from Calliope until the older Mew got smart and locked her door.

"As am I," Lorem added. Hellebore hummed his agreement, and Calliope pushed the window open.

"Alrighty, everyone clear on our plan? We're headed to Australia next, try and convince the Mews down under to work with us, and then we go on a terraformer hunt."

"One problem," Lorem said. "I neglected to inform you, but even if we utilized the Bug in tandem with my computer, its sensory array lacks the power and range to detect the terraformer." 'The Bug' was Calliope's nickname for the small craft Lorem had hijacked during his exit from the Cyniclon mainship, so-called for a superficial resemblance to a Volkswagen Beetle with wings.

"Then what do we do? Lyra and Hellebore reviewed the blueprint-thing and he said we can't get the things we need to build a replica without some hard-core theft that'll definitely get us busted."

"We'll need to steal one of the larger ships, the ones the Earth-resistance teams use as their personal bases of operation. The Bug is just a three-passenger planetary transport with limited capability for low-planetary orbit, while the larger ships are long term and have the systems I would require to do a regional scan for the terraformer's signature."

"So we'll steal a ship," Hellebore said bluntly. "And if we can't find it, we'll steal the stuff—or I'll do it, since none of you can teleport."

Lorem grumbled indignantly, and Calliope burst out laughing at his reaction. If Hellebore's reactions and emotions seemed exaggerated thanks to his human-like appearance and oversized ears, Lorem's far-larger ears were even more comically overblown. That and he was cute when he was grumpy. Calliope just wanted to cuddle him sometimes—when she didn't want to hit him for being either a know-it-all or a doesn't-know-anything. He shot a glare at her, and the blonde sagged against the wall, laughing so hard she shook like a leaf and couldn't get any sound out.

Lorem made an irritated noise somewhere between a whistle and a chirp, and Hellebore chuckled.

"What did he say?" Calliope demanded, gasping to get the air back in her lungs.

"He called you a silly bat-wing weirdo," Hellebore translated.

Calliope smacked the blue-eyed Cyniclon across the back of the head—lightly; of course, she didn't want to give him a concussion. He shot her a dirty look, and she stuck her tongue out at him.

"Real mature there, Calli," Lyra drawled. "Now, are we gonna sit here and talk all night or get this show on the road?"

"Okay, Mom, we're done!" Calliope fired back. Lorem and Hellebore shot each other identically confused looks.

"Mom?" Lorem asked. "Isn't that noun usually used as a term for the female parent, or guardian if the relationship is by association rather than genome?"

"Yeah, but calling Lyra 'Mom' is a way of saying that she's…how do I say it…she's acting like a female parent."

"Ah. Alright, then," Lorem said. Hellebore warbled something at him, and Lorem hum-whistled in reply, each shift in pitch interrupted by a glottal click. Both laughed at that, and Lorem, his tongue sticking out the side of his mouth, churred quietly while twitching his ears up and down. Hellebore snickered and blew a raspberry. Calliope looked at each other and rolled their eyes in unison. The bat Mew knew they were thinking the same thought:

Boys.

10:33 Eastern Standard Time (US/Canada), Project Mew Eastern Seaboard Base

The remaining Eastern Seaboard Mews were running a training exercise.

Unlike their Japanese counterpart, the American bases elected to use virtual-reality augmented scenarios rather than a glorified obstacle course. That being said, the training room was a mechanized glorified obstacle course controlled by the computer that generated the scenario, but virtual-reality helmets added a level of real-world experience the obstacle course alone could never match. Mew Currant, the team's constantly-pissed Leader, was in a good mood for once. It was her favorite virtual mission and her team was running like a well-maintained V8-engine—that is, firing on all cylinders and making a glorious racket while they did so, even though they were short two members.

The scenario was almost something out of the first Avengers movie—the one Calliope had always insisted was the best movie ever—the aliens sending in a mothership and swarms of chimaera to overrun New York City. Currant had never run that scenario before without Calliope and Lyra, and she was feeling the losses pretty hard. Did that many chimaera really come down from overhead all at once?

Fortunately, she'd worked her team to think on their feet and react to changing situations. Amu and Sakura—both of whom used names other than the ones the scientists had given them—took over Calliope and Lyra's positions as 'airborne defense' and 'running sniper' respectively, though both covered their own positions as well. Bree had come out of hiding to take to the air—or, more accurately, the sides of the buildings, where her sharp-edged war fans did serious damage. And Currant stood in the middle of one of the main streets, plugging oncoming chimaera with her laser cannon.

The timer went off, signaling the end of the scenario, and Currant pulled the virtual reality helmet off her head. Her round, furry ears twitched in annoyance, and her upper lip curled. In spite of her team's enthusiasm and determined attack, they'd underperformed. A lot—they'd 'killed' maybe two-thirds their usual count, and nobody managed to disable the mothership.

"Alright folks, listen up," the ringtail-lemur Mew barked. "We're gonna have to step up our game. Calliope and Lyra bailing on us doesn't mean the aliens left, just that we're down two fighters. And even though Calli's calling for peace, we gotta protect our turf from them until she comes through. That means no running off and no stupid shit. Nobody tries to be a hero, got it? Heroes die, and we have to live to keep fighting." Her fierce amber eyes studied her teammates. Three sets of eyes, blue, green and pale yellow, stared back at her—the last pair disconcertingly large as always. "And you know what that means."

Sakura groaned. "Training from hell. Currant, you slave-driving—"

"Is that dissent I hear?" Currant cut her off. "Don't you dare start that shit too. This is like World War One, your freedom of speech guaranteed to you by the Constitution is suspended until the war's over. Got it?"

Sakura saluted, looking grumpy. Bree and Amu saluted as well, and Currant responded and dismissed them to go get cleaned up. That done, she went immediately to Coordinator Merrill to make her report.

The American Mew Projects' funding came entirely from the government, taking up most of the budget assigned to the military, and the bases were run like army camps. The Mews were technically government property, even if they were classified as American citizens and listed in military records as special operatives.

The brunette entered her superior's office and knocked quietly on the doorframe to announce herself. The Coordinator's computer was on, and he was having a conversation with that (in her opinion) hot Japanese Coordinator. The talking went quiet the second she knocked, and Eli looked up at her.

"The team has finished the training session for today. I've got them cleaning up now, and we'll go into weapons' maintenance afterwards."

"Good. Keep them in line, Mew Currant. I don't want anyone else taking off."

"Yes, sir!" The lemur Mew snapped a salute, which her Coordinator replied to, and headed off down the hall to clean up herself.

She'd made her agreement to herself and her team: she would follow the mission so long as she was protecting the people she was supposed to protect, but she wouldn't get in Calliope's way and would help if the rebel Mew asked. She didn't, however, like that Calliope was now her equal in rank, knowing how flat-out stupid Calliope could be when her brain shut off and her body took over. Hopefully the alien, who had actually been caught in Bree's analysis of Calliope's hack-attack, was smart enough to keep her in line.

One could only hope…