Disclaimer: No I do not own Tokyo Mew Mew.

Five Elements; The American Mews

Chapter 21: Tuesday; Day of introductions between new friends and new foes

It was dark…pitch dark. It was so dark that anyone human wouldn't have been able to see their own hand in front of their face. However, that darkness was dispelled as a single ball of violet flame appeared in the air, illuminating three forms that were nearly invisible because of the shadows that still remained.

The first voice was cultured beyond compare, the perfect gentleman personified. "How goes our plans, Poison?"

A second voice, this one angry, came from the other side of the fireball. "Yes, how goes your boring research? I still can't understand why you waste so much time studying things that are so easy to break with our powers."

The third voice, calm and educated, spoke quietly. "I have concluded the following about the human beings." A green glow came from a small ball of light next to the fireball. The thing that was emitting the light was a small green beetle with a clear abdomen. "I call this little creature a Bio-Beetle. It has the ability to transform human genetics into a creature that I aptly name a Bio-Demon. This will allow us to use the human beings as our weapons in this fight."

"A Bio-Demon?" The cultured voice laughed. "How appropriate…the three Demon Lords should command such creatures, wouldn't you say Rage?"

"It's pitiful that we should be using such methods to take over this planet." The angry voice snarled. "Why can't we just destroy all of the humans ourselves? It isn't like there is anyone who can compete with our might!"

"That's where you are completely wrong." The cultured voice sighed at how foolish his compatriot always acted. "Those children…"

"…are not worth the amount of worry you place upon them, Seraph." Rage punched something and a loud cracking noise could be heard. "They couldn't even beat that doctor we had been keeping our eyes on…what makes you think they could do anything to defeat us?"

"I'm not so much worried about as much as I'm worried about the people who are backing them up." Seraph turned in the shadow and disappeared. His voice lingered in the air, an echo left by its owner. "Poison, use your own discretion and figure out a good way to use the Bio-Beetle against the Mews."

"As you wish it." Then Poison disappeared as well. Rage snarled and punched something again right before he disappeared. With one quiet puff, the fireball extinguished itself and dropped the room into darkness again.

---------------------------------

The teacher, a young man with brown hair wearing a sweater, walked up to the chalkboard and started to draw on it. "And so, the problem's root can be determined here…"

Bruce Mensing sat near the back of the classroom, his eyes looking at the board and yet looking beyond it. The last things on his mind were some math problems.

Erika smiled slightly. "You're all Mew Mews…but it's time for you to figure out how to surpass these forms. Mew Aero, Mew Terra, Mew Pyro, Mew Sonic…all of you must lose these forms and achieve your next levels of power." Her eyes glittered slightly at the prospect. "Excelsior told me about the four of you, which is surprising considering that Mew Aero just came to be…but he was the smartest student I've ever had. Your current forms cannot surpass the high C level…but if you can surpass these physical limitations…then I promise you that B+ will be within reach. At that level, you won't be matched by anything that the known world has on it."

Bruce sighed at that painful memory. ("So against this 'new threat' all of my training and hard work will be useless?") He looked down at his desk, looking thoroughly depressed. After his fight, if it could be called that, against Olson, he quickly figured out that all of his power couldn't possibly defeat something at B- level. If these threats were stronger than that, he was finished already unless he could figure out how to reach that next level Erika had spoken about.

Caitlyn, who was seated behind him, tapped him on the shoulder and in the middle of that motion she dropped a little folded note into his lap.

Bruce reached down cautiously and opened it, looking at the scrawled text.

Hey Bruce, why are you slumping so much? Is something the matter?

The boy smiled very slightly and shook his head just enough for her to notice the action. He was alright, if just depressed at the fact that his rival was gone until the end of the week. Considering it was Tuesday and he was already bored, he knew there was a long way to go.

The teacher, who had seemed to be droning on and on about the work on the board, stopped talking and motioned over to the opening doorway. "On that note, we have a new student who just moved here from back east."

The girl who walked in had long brown hair that went down the back of her neck in a ponytail, and her crystal blue eyes glittered in the sunlight coming in through the window by the front of the class. She wore a dark blue dress that fit to her slim body comfortably, and she smiled to the classroom as a whole as she walked in. "Hi there! My name's Anne Meridan, and it's a pleasure to meet all of you." She had a strange accent, her English slightly clipped.

Caitlyn smiled. ("She looks nice.") She noticed that Bruce's shoulders had slumped again. Poking him in the back, she waited for him to straighten up…but nothing happened. ("What's the matter with him?")

Bruce just stared at the girl in front of him like she was goddess walking upon earth. His eyelids drooped slightly and his cheeks began to glow red. In fact, the only thing stopping him from getting up and trying to personally introduce himself to her was a nagging little voice in the back of his head telling him not to make an idiot of himself.

Caitlyn just sat there, completely clueless as to what was going on, since she couldn't see Bruce's face.

---------------------

Poison tilted his head to the side curiously at what he was watching. Before he planned to attack these Mews, his plan was to observe their actions and figure out the best method to get rid of them. He was fifty percent certain that if he personally attacked the two sitting near each other right now, he could defeat them both…but those odds didn't appeal to him at all.

Then he noticed the look on the male's face. ("Perhaps he is suffering from some kind of fever? Or maybe…") Then he realized what was the focus of the male's attention. It was the female that had just entered the room. ("I see…he is experiencing some kind of attraction to her?") A dark smile crossed his lips and he disappeared from his spot by the window. ("I must use this information to my advantage.")

----------------------

It was lunch, and Bruce was standing against the back wall of the lunch room and watching as Anne was surrounded by many of the different 'players' of the school. ("Players…another word for sick souls who see a girl's feelings as an object to win over so they can do what they wish with it.") He growled from somewhere deep within his throat, the noise not human at all.

Caitlyn, who seemed to appear out of nowhere, whispered right into his ear. "No one's noticed it, but your ears are showing."

Bruce flushed red and slapped his hands on top of his head, feeling the furry tiger ears that were there twitch a couple of times in response to being touched. Then he noticed one of the boy's that was speaking to Anne put a hand on her shoulder.

Caitlyn eeped as she was forced to grab Bruce's collar to stop him from running up and punching the boy right in the face. Then she eeped again and grabbed his tail, which had shown itself. "Bruce!" She whispered sharply.

The boy ignored her and marched right up to the table as he realized the boys there were starting to mob her. Caitlyn eeped louder as she was dragged along for the ride.

All of the boys turned at once as they saw Bruce coming towards them. But what scared them more than that wasn't just the fact that Bruce was the only guy in school who could the almost legendary thug Roger Grant to a standstill, but also because at the moment his irises were fire-red. All at once they quickly moved out of the way and made room for him at the round table that Anne was sitting at for the lunch period.

Caitlyn yelped as Bruce sat down, the action throwing her face-first to the floor. ("Why is he acting so weird?") Though now she just wanted to smack him in the back of the head.

"Uhhh…hi!" Anne wasn't sure whether to say hello or not to the scowling guy that had just walked up, but after a few moments she remembered that some people weren't always how they seemed to be. "My name's Anne Meridan, and you are?"

Bruce immediately realized where he was and in less than a second he was smiling charmingly. "Me?" Every guy around the table leapt back as Bruce shot up one leg onto the tabletop and pointed the finger of his right hand up into the air dramatically. Everyone in the lunchroom heard the crash of his shoes, and now all eyes were on him.

Caitlyn just stood there, her right eye twitching. ("Oh no…he wouldn't do it here…")

"I am the burning passion of Johnson Junior High…" Bruce lifted his head up a little bit. "The warrior of justice…" His head lifted up just a little bit higher. "Rival to the evil Roger Grant!" Thunder crashed somewhere in the distance. "Even the rocks themselves fear my fighting prowess…" Turning to look right at her now, he bowed his head and flicked his own ponytail back over his shoulder.

A dramatic pause held over the whole room, no one making a single move.

"My name is Bruce Mensing!" A strange, almost hazy hair appeared around Bruce as his eyes turned soft and he leaned in a little bit towards Anne. "And I find it a great pleasure to meet you." He began to lean in farther, up until Caitlyn struck him with a metal chair in the side of the head and knocked him out in one hit.

Everyone in the room just sat there in silent awe, unsure what or how to respond to this.

Anne giggled and looked down at the floored Bruce. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Bruce."

The face-fall done by everyone in the lunch room shook the school's foundations.

-------------------------------

A few minutes later (after some first aid to the lump in the back of his head) Bruce was sitting next to Anne and chatting away, all of his actions seeming slightly overcharged. It was like the chair blow to his head had permanently locked him in fast forward.

Caitlyn just sat across the table and rolled her eyes as Bruce continued to tell the story of when he had completely and utterly destroyed Roger in a duel. He was making it seem like so much more than what it was, which was just a simply brawl. ("That settles it, he's trying to impress her. Luckily for her, she doesn't seem to catch the strange way he is acting. I guess she thinks this is how he always acts.")

----------------------

It was about two hours after school, and everyone had agreed to meet at the mall to discuss their new plan of attack.

Walt sighed and stirred his coffee with a little straw while he watched the crowds of people traverse through the mall. "So, where did you say Bruce is now?" He sighed and tugged on his shirt a couple of times to loosen it.

Caitlyn sighed as well. "He promised Anne that he would show her the mall this afternoon. He's around here somewhere, acting like an idiot."

Alicia smiled calmly from her seat next to him at the table in the food court of the mall. "Something getting on your nerves?" While she spoke, he could have sworn he saw a pair of fox ears perk up from her head. "Maybe you'd like to go for a walk with me?"

"And let you try to 'borrow' money off of me for clothing?" Walt took a sip of his coffee. "No thank you, I like to not waste my money on designer clothing that serves no purpose beyond looking pretty."

A small vein bulged out of Alicia's forehead and she smacked him in the side of the head, sending his chair and him to the ground. "Being fashionable is not pointless!"

From his spot on the ground, Walt replied evenly. "Hitting me doesn't convince me otherwise, you know that right?"

Caitlyn smiled slightly at how strange Roger's brother was. ("Why is he so calm? And more importantly, how does he always keep his hair perfectly straight?")

---------------------------

Poison, who was still invisible to human sight, smirked as he watched the male and the female he was interested in going about the human marketplace. ("The male seems to be in a much more agitated mood now.")

Bruce walked a fair distance from Anne, and continued to fidget. Everyone once in a while he would looked thoughtful and then turn red because of it. This whole thing ran like a date to his mind, but he knew he was just showing Anne around the mall. ("She'll need to know where all the good hang-outs are located here.")

Anne followed behind him by a few feet, giggling whenever he would trip or stumble. ("Bruce is such a weird guy, but he's funny.")

Poison smirked as he saw the perfect opportunity now. ("Now…") He held up the tiny little Bio-Beetle and whispered to it. "Listen to me, my creature. I want you to go after the girl right there…" He pointed to where Anne had been a few seconds ago, but she was gone. ("Where'd she go?") Then he saw her a little farther down the way, looking at a booth that sold windchimes. "There she is, go!" The little beetle opened its wings and shot towards her like a bullet.

"Wow, that's so pretty." Anne leaned in a little closer towards a deep blue windchime that dangled there in the air.

Bruce, in a burst of excited energy at the thought of being a nice guy and buying the windchime for Anne, literally threw himself at the booth-keeper. "How much for the whindchime?"

The man back-pedaled as the black-haired boy flew at him…and then he gasped as he saw Bruce's shoulder hit the booth. The whole thing shuddered and a pair of glass windchimes dropped from the display, hitting the ground and shattering. "HEY! Those were twenty bucks apiece, you little punk!" He reversed directions and slammed into Bruce, stopping the boy's forward movement and sending him crashing to the ground. "You better plant to buy those!"

"Oh Bruce!" Anne dropped down to the boy's side, barely noticing as something shot right above her head and landed right onto the booth-owner's chest. "Are you alright?"

The man felt cold for a moment…and then he felt hot. Not just hot…angry too…

Bruce stood up and bowed numerous times to the man. "I apologize deeply for my actions, please allow me to buy some of your fine windchimes. I'll, of course, buy the ones I just broke as well!"

The man felt his entire body fill with a burning rage. "I won't listen to your little excuses, you brat!" He punched Bruce right in the gut, and then slammed his forehead into the boy's nose, sending him head over heels into another booth. "I'll make you pay for those windchimes in your blood!"

Anne ran over the broken booth, ignoring the gathering crowd of confused passerby. "Bruce, are you alright?"

A mall security guard ran over to find out what the ruckus was all about. "Hey, what's going on here?"

The booth-owner turned to look right at the guard, his eyes blood-red. "Mind your own business…" A deep growl came from his body, like something was underneath his skin.

Poison sighed. ("What a disaster…oh well, too late now.") "Awaken child, hear the call of your master!" He whistled loudly, the noise like nails on a chalkboard.

The booth-keeper howled in pain and dropped to his knees, his entire body being swallowed up within a shroud of red light. "What's happening to me?" From within the shroud, the howls of pain grew rougher and rougher, until finally something exploded out of the shroud and crashed through what was left of the windchime booth.

It was four-legged and low to the ground, its red eyes and greenish-black hide very terrifying. But what stood out the most was the huge, almost overflowing, shell that covered its back. It was clear, and glittered like a diamond in the light of the mall.

Poison laughed at the success of his creation and pointed at where Bruce had been thrown. "Your target is there, go Diamond Armadillo!"

Roaring, the creature curled into a ball so that the shell of diamond it had covered all over it like a smooth ball. Then it launched in an insanely fast roll towards where Bruce had crashed.

Anne screamed as she realized the creature was headed right for her.

To be continued…

And so the new threat reveals themselves. Who are the three Demon Lords, and what are they working towards?