Chapter 6: The Wandering Girl

Having partaken as the sole audience member in Mew's fight with Mercury, Kairi now followed the dim-witted so-called "Elemental Overlord" back through the portal.

They arrived in the Pyramid in a snap, with neither of them feeling dizzy despite the great expanse crossed. Kairi saw from the corner of her eyes as the stamp Mew got started to glow. As much as she hoped it'd be a trap that give him a good jolt, alas, life was never that fair.

Mew turned around and raised the back of his hand to the portal. The glow from the stamp guided the portal off to the left, opening the way to the next floor.

Then, as if this simple action was worth the effort to celebrate, Mew grinned. Kairi glared at him with jaded eyes and a soured pout.

"God he's so disgustingly optimistic. He's like a smile with legs." Kairi thought in a tone of pained annoyance. She then rolled her eyes and tried to look away, but unfortunately his issues manifested in more than just his smile.

In his ear-grating energetic voice he said "I can't wait!" and started rubbing his hands together, "Eight other Planetary Aurians...I can't wait to see what they're capable of!"

"If its not smiles or breasts, its fighting. He's one big, dumb fightaholic..." Kairi reared her head back and let out a "Hmph!"

So of course, Mew reacted to it. He turned and looked down at her in more way than one as he asked in his snide, almost mocking tone, "What's the matter princess? Aren't you even a little bit excited?"

"Of all the nerve...!" Kairi thought as he turned to glare at him. She kept glaring in the hopes his unflappable attitude would yield, but it did not. He responded with another one of his patented sighs and turned back towards the stairs.

"He doesn't care about any of this! Its all just a game to him!" With her cheeks puffing out in anger Kairi lowered her eyes and kept to her thoughts some more, "The Planetary Aurians were supposed to be our heroes...But every last one of them are traitors allied with Gravitus!"

She lifted her head and saw Mew heading up the stairs. She hated that her body's first instinct was to chase after him. It was almost like he had rented out space in her mind.

"Just like he did with my mother's breasts...!" She then scowled and levitated a hand up, pretending it was around his neck. She wiggled it around with a twisted up look on her face until Mew looked back. Then she laid it back under chest and looked away.

Once Mew faced back forward Kairi squinted at his back and thought, "When you let your guard down I'm gonna knock your fraud-ass out and deal with those traitors myself. So have your fun while you can, asshole!"

The climb to the third floor was taking longer than expected. The stairs were more long than they were high, and there was a bit of curvature to them around the middle part.

All the while Kairi looked at Mew from a safe distance and waited for an opening. His mind was so easily read and yet it was difficult to peg down his weaknesses. It should have been easy to get the jump on him, Kairi thought, but all Mew ever seemed to do is smile, smile, smile.

"Ugh, why are you so goddamn happy all the time?!" Kairi's thoughts boiled over and spilled out of her mouth, which she instantly clamped shut. But it was too late. She had given Mew an open-door invitation to get inside her head once more.

But for the first few seconds after she screwed it all up he just stared at her and uttered a "What?" with a slight giggle. He then wagged a hand around and echoed her question, "You're asking why I'm so happy all the time?"

Kairi squeezed her teeth together and growled in her head, "Stupid stupid stupid! The one time he actually listens to you!"

Mew tucked his hands in his pockets and asked, "Why princess, are you warming up to me?"

"GET BENT!" Was her natural defense mechanism against his flagrant stupidity.

Mew then paused for a moment and gave his answer in a surprisingly relaxed tone, "Cause I always try and make every day special."

Kairi tilts her head a bit towards him and goes "Huh?" as he continues with his hands laid on the back of his head.

"I'm not much of a future-thinker. I take every day as they come," Mew then creased out a smile and said something rather profound for good measure, "And if you smile a lot every day will be a good memory. And if you have good memories, then you'll want to smile more!"

"Ah...!" Kairi froze up with her eyes widened and her heart racing. Her brief surprise had faded by the time Mew looked and remarked, "You should try smiling a little more. I bet it'd do you a lot of good."

Mew left it at that and went back to climbing the stairs. Kairi stayed back, lightly grazing her bottom lip with her top teeth. She shook her head as her mind felt fuzzy, "H-He didn't say that...There's no way he could know about..."

She firmed her gaze and looked up after Mew. She narrowed her eyes and muttered, "No...No he's just messing with me."

Her expression resumed being sour as she chased him to the top of the stairs. Finally on the third floor, she noticed another portal at the end of the hall, with the room itself having a different atmosphere. Now there were glass pillars on both sides filled with various gases.

"What kind of gases are these? Phosphorous? Hydrogen cyanide? Germane?" As much as Kairi wanted to take a closer look at the tubes, she had unwanted company.

Mew surprised her with a snap of his fingers close to her body. The next second she found herself surrounded by a thin layer of air. She could feel it, but not see it. She hesitantly breathed it in with no ill effects, at least so far...

She glared at Mew and saw him also surrounded in air. He waved her towards the portal and started to walk towards it.

"What. Now?" Kairi groaned in misery as Mew walked backwards to the portal and swung his arms out.

"After Mercury comes...?" He leaves her hanging like he was the host of Jeopardy as he steps right into the portal with a smile.

"Urgh..." Kairi lashed a fist out at the portal and wagged it a few times while cursing Mew out a bit. Then she scowled and grumbled, "He just thinks he can do whatever he wants...!"

She runs straight for the portal, refusing to let him out of her sight. After a swift warp her body and ears were whaled upon by a mighty storm. These howling winds filled with blistering heat and terrifying gases were the sole tourist attraction on the second planet from the Sun – the lonesome Venus.

Kairi's common sense about coming her head been shown the door by her anger, and now she was going to pay the price. But as she braced her arms under her chest and trembled, the woes of this world seemed content to leave her be.

"Huh?" She poked her head up a bit and watched as the gas storm grazed the wind Mew had put up around her, allowing her to see, breathe and move unimpeded.

"He protected me...?" Kairi muttered in utter confusion.

"Yeah I did!"

"Ahh!" Mew talking took Kairi completely by surprised, even though he was just a few feet away.

"Pretty cool h-WHOA!" Kairi takes a swing at his head and he ducks right under it, throwing his hands up and pretending like he's guilty of something.

"Easy there princess," Mew backed up out of her reach and then chuckled, "I figured this plan would work. Take that NASA! I'm the first man to walk on Venus!"

Kairi's eyes bulged at the sound of one word Mew spoke out of his dumb, stinky mouth. "Figured?" She gasped in disbelief as she edged towards him, "You left our lives in the hands of a...a guess?!"

She leaned into Mew's face with a scowl and saw his eyes shifting around struggling to make an excuse up. His best effort amounted to, "I-It was an educated guess!"

"ON A FIRST-GRADE LEVEL, IF THAT!" Kairi screamed, her face bright red. She struggled so, SO very hard not to punch him. Instead she rammed a pointer finger into his chest and yelled, "Quit putting us in danger!"

Mew shrugged and remarked, "You chose to follow me, just saying..."

"Urk!" Kairi sucked her lips in and pulled back. She turned away and growled in her head, "He keeps doing this! God, please smite this idiot already!"

When she turned back around Mew was off and running to check out the planet. He moved at a slow pace as he suddenly asked, "While we wait for our next opponent princess, why don't you tell me a little about Drives?"

Kairi grit her teeth and resorted to her natural response, "I ain't tell you jack, idiot!"

Mew rubbed the back of his head, sighed, then remarked, "Idiots don't normally try and learn new things princess."

He then made a point of trying to sound like HE'S the one getting fed up with all this as he asked, "Can you at least tell me one thing?"

Kairi puffed her cheeks with a pout and looked away as Mew continued, "Is it possible for a Drive's power to be used without a stone?"

Kairi perked her eyes up and wondered "What did he say?" She then turned to him and replied, "O-Of course not don't be ridiculous!"

"Really? Cause Michael and Raphael could."

"Well...they...must've had their stones hidden elsewhere!" Kairi snapped her fingers at Mew like her idea was brilliant. But then Mew started shaking his head and told her, "But your bracelets are the conduits for the Drive's power right?"

Kairi froze up and left Mew hanging. He figured her silence meant "Yes" and started thinking aloud to himself. Kairi held up her bracelet and stared at it, ""He...he figured that out...all on his own?"

Not even for a brief moment could she detach the idea of Mew being an idiot from her mind, and thus said with a smirk, "Lucky guess."

The winds of Venus started to calm down just a little and Mew pointed his gaze eastward. He laid a hand over his forehead and remarked, "Ah, here they come!"

Kairi followed his gaze towards the deep shroud of gases. A shadow floated closer. It was shaped like a triangle with ridges like on a sawblade. It waved around in the winds, creating a few more inhuman shapes until it was no longer a shadow, but a cloth. A big old, brown, lined cloth made to look like a cloak. But there was no one or no thing attached to it.

...At least, not at first. As the winds continued to stall some gases became more solidified inside of the cloak. It stretched to-and-fro and made a wavy triangular shape slightly bigger than the cloak. But when Kairi looked up at the head, she let out a little gasp of shock.

"T-That's..."

Perched atop the cloak was the silhouette of a little girl's face. Her eyes, lips, and hair came in visibly. Kairi guessed the girl couldn't have been older than eight because of that. She started shaking and curled a fist up before her chest.

"Well hi there!" Mew blurted out. Kairi then looked at him.

"How could he be so obscene?" She wondered, "This girl probably can't even talk."

The phantom drifted closer. She was cautious, but seemed friendly. Mew smiled at her and asked in the same manner her did with Mercury, "My name's Mew. What's yours?"

"...Venus..." The phantom faintly whispered. Her voice sounded like it should on a girl her age, but that just made the pain of listening to her that much stronger. Kairi squeezed her fist tighter and bit her lower lip to hide her pale gasp as she tried to back away.

But Mew simply smiled and said, "That's a nice title, but that's not your name...Is it?"

Venus waved her little shapeless hands out and murmured, "We are supposed to fight, aren't we mister?"

"She's so...polite," Kairi noted, "How...how did she wind up like this?"

Mew folded his arms up against his chest and remarked, "Yeah I guess we do have to fight, huh?"

Suddenly Kairi found herself being called out by Mew, "Hey princess, I'll leave this in your hands!"

Kairi swung her head to him and stuttered "What?" before the full weight of what he asked hit her head-on, "You want me to do what?!"

"Fight Venus," He said as if it was easy or obvious to do, "I mean you did say you could beat a Planetary Aurian, correct?"

"You can't expect me to-!" Kairi bit her tongue and pulled back. She didn't want him to see her hesitate.

"I"m not giving him the satisfaction...!" She faced the phantom girl and called her staff into her hand, stamping it on the ground.

"Atta girl! That's the spirit!" Mew's praise just pissed Kairi off. But not as much as him suddenly turning tail and walking off, "Well, good luck!"

"W-Where are you going?!" Kairi exclaimed.

"To see what the planet's got to offer. I shouldn't be gone long!"

Before Mew was out of hearing range Venus murmured, "No shield..."

Mew turned around and after a "Huh?" listened to Venus point her ghastly hand towards Kairi and repeat, "No shield..."

Mew wagged his hand out and explained, "She'd die without it."

Venus closed her eyes and the winds suddenly shifted in a circular fashion around her and Kairi. The gases were shoved aside, leaving a vast arena for the two to fight in. Mew blinked, then snapped his fingers amidst turning around and hollered, "Like I said, good luck!"

Kairi lost her veil of air but could still breathe just fine. She yelled to Mew "If I die its your fault!" but he was either too far away or purposefully ignored her. Kairi figured it was the latter.

"Asshole..." Kairi grumbled before turning towards Venus.

The phantom floated there silently. Looking at her gave Kairi goosebumps, and she swallowed tightly. Then she grabbed her staff in both hands and pointed it at Venus.

"...Lets go." Kairi whispered. Venus slowly nodded her head, and then from the rim of the arena she drew in gases to create two big hands besides her.

"Yes, lets play." She said without fear or hesitation.

Vs. The Gaseous Phantasm: Aurian Venus!

Kairi slowly blinked her eyes and muttered "W-Wait...what?" only to find one of those hands clenching into a fist and flying straight towards her face.

"Ack!" Kairi swung her staff at it and hit the middle knuckle. But the gases break apart on contact and the whole rest of the fist flies right past her.

Kairi looks up at Venus and watches her send the other fist straight away. Kairi grumbles "I guess if she's willing to fight..." then cusps her staff in both hands and takes a swing at the fist to break it apart.

She then runs for the phantom girl and leaps at her with her staff wrapped in aura. When she takes a swing downward, Venus glides gently to the right and watches Kairi plummet for the ground, her staff doing little but putting a hole in it. It'd be a hole fitting for playing golf with, at least.

Venus calls her fists back up then lets out a quiet but rather shrewd giggle. Kairi slowly pulled her staff out of the ground and said with one eye raised higher than the other, "Is she...taunting me?"

Venus didn't respond and continued to float daintily in place. She wiggled the left side of her cloth and the adjacent fist rose up into the storm of gas clouds, scooping out a large mass and solidifying it into a few orbs with a squeeze.

Kairi squinted her eyes and saw a chance to attack Venus. She leaped straight at her and leaned her staff diagonally against her waist. Venus swung the other hand out open palmed between her and Kairi.

Kairi swung her staff prematurely and smashed it against the hand's center, where her staff was unable to make it through. She bounced off and landed on the ground a couple seconds later, with the hand turning upright and waving her off.

Kairi squinted her eyes and was almost feeling like an idiot for feeling pity for this phantom. She closed her eyes all the way and grumbled, "I was letting myself get fooled, god I'm an idiot."

Once she lands she leaned her head back all the way and muttered, "She's just another of that bastard's pawns..."

A huge shadow loomed overhead. Kairi stepped back and saw the fist she left behind dropping down in the shape of a hammer head. She leaped back and was knock over upon landing by the hammer's shockwave.

When she fell on her rear she quickly stood back up and saw her chance to strike yet again. She focused entirely on the gas hammer and jumped on top of it for support. But before she could leap off it the mass in it thinned out and she fell into it.

The gas flew up and spun around her in a mini-tornado to get her coughing. Fortunately it was a pretty basic type of gas. Nothing like the hot stuff plaguing the planet day by day. Unfortunately, gas is still gas, and its not good to breathe it in for long.

Kairi closed her mouth until the rest of the gas passed. But as she looked up she saw the phantom girl had another trick up her full-body sleeve.

The hand she sent off earlier returned, balancing those orbs on three of its fingers like basketballs. Then each of those fingers wiggled the orbs off and sent them plummeting to the ground.

Kairi widened her eyes and bounced backwards. She wasn't chancing it with those orbs, and her suspicions would pay off when they all exploded upon contact with the ground. They dispersed a bunch of strange white gases, some of which Kairi manages to inhale by accident.

Right away she leans forward, pinches her lips together, and tries to fight off an emerging urge to laugh. But its futile. The gases are too strong, and the longer she resists the more she inhaled. Suddenly she's in tears and cuddling her stomach as she bursts into laughter.

"Hahahaha! Hahaha!" It thankfully didn't last long, as once the gases disappeared Kairi had finished exhaling it from her lungs.

But now she was pissed. She grit her teeth and looked up at Venus, yelling at her, "D-Do you think this is some kind of game?!"

Venus clapped her big hands together. It was basically the equivalent of sending a message to Kairi that "Yes, this is all one big joke to me" without a single word spoken between both parties.

Kairi gripped her staff in both hands and with a loud roar she lunged straight for Venus with one vicious leap. She twisted her body back around and her pupils were as small as a hungered cat's. She then swung with all of her might and with the help of some aura around her staff she broke through Venus' hands and smacked the phantom girl right in the center of her cloth.

Venus was blown back, tumbling around until she bounced off the edge of the arena and shook her head around. The silhouette of her face became disturbed for a moment, projecting an illusion that she looked a little sad.

Kairi wasn't falling for it, "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me!"

She landed on the ground and swung her staff by her hip, taking up a rather aggressive stance as she said, "No more games! Fight me or get out of the way!"

Venus drew her hands back and levitated a little lower towards Kairi. Then the shape of her lips curled downward as this melodious melancholy seemed to surround her. The winds around the arena went silent, and then suddenly whirled much faster than before. The walls of the arena arose to create a miniature funnel cloud, with the two of them standing in the eye of the storm.

"Ok..." Venus took her big hands, pressed and stretched their fingers out until they cracked, and her voice took upon a more grizzly tone, "Lets fight."

The big hands then opened and raised up at the sides of Venus' body. With a snap of their fingers a couple holes are punctured into the storm walls. From those holes emerge solidified spears of gas that shoot straight at Kairi.

Kairi turns to the right and bats one spear away with her staff then leaps back away from another. She swats away a couple more spears and finds her arms retracting with each one she hits.

Venus holds both of her hands together and her bigger fists squeeze a bunch of gases in place. With the spears keeping Kairi company Venus is able to rub the gases unimpeded. The more she rubs it, the brighter the glow in the space between grows.

The spears subside for the moment as Venus parts her hands, revealing a sun that's roughly the size of her head. Kairi widens her eyes and nearly drops her staff on the ground.

"She can make miniature suns?!" Kairi then bit her teeth together and felt herself trembling at the ankles. The power of the sun was in the palm of this little phantom girl's hands, and right now she was juggling it back and forth like a hacky sack.

Kairi looked around and found herself wondering, "God where did that idiot run off to? I can't believe I'm saying this...but I could really use his help right now!"

Meanwhile...

Mew whistles his way through the barren lands of Venus. He happily has his hands tucked in his pockets as he looks around, his motives a pure mystery to anyone but himself...And that demon in his head.

Fortunately for Mew he hasn't heard a thing from him since coming to Sancturia. Which has allowed his mind the chance to focus on other things. Such as...

"Now where is it?" Mew pointed his head at the ground and stopped to shuffle his feet around and disrupt the dirt, "I swear I felt a heavy calcium deposit somewhere close by..."

His toes bumped up against some solid mass underground and he let out an "Oh!" like a child discovering something new. He slides his toes back and holds his hand down to do a little digging with his mind. After uncovering the upper layer of dirt Mew's hand tenses up and he mutters "Oh..." with a deflated sense of enthusiasm.

Back with Kairi...

She bites her lower lip and growls "Oh forget him!" then slams her hand down on her Drive stone. She swings her whip out as her aura rises up from her body and then declares, "My Beast Tamer Drive can handle this!"

Venus giggles and then finally decides to toss the sun straight towards Kairi. In response Kairi squeezes a hand before her chest and summons her aura lion. She looks at it with a heavy heart and then swings her hand up at the sun, yelling at the beast "Go!"

The lion nods then leaps straight in the air. In seconds it latches onto the miniature sun and coils itself around it tightly to apply pressure. In doing so the lion causes the sun to explode, sacrificing its fleeting existence in the process.

Kairi then quickly summons a tiger and whips it a couple times to increase its size. Venus spends a moment looking shocked, with her big hands squeezing their fingers inward to imitate blinking.

"You aren't pulling that stunt again!" Kairi said with determination as she commanded her tiger to go leaping at Venus.

The phantom girl twirled aside and brought her fists along with. The tiger pounced upon the storm wall and create an aura platform under its feet to defy gravity and offer support. It prowled along the side towards Venus, who wagged one of her "hands" at it and muttered, "Bad kitty."

The tiger hunched over with a growl then came sprinting towards Venus, who flew back quickly to get away. Holes opened up in the walls to try and impale the tiger upon spears of gas. The tiger weaved between the spears and took a leap towards the little girl.

Venus took one of her big hands and slapped the tiger right in the face, repeating what she said a moment ago with a bit more oomph, "Bad kitty!"

The tiger fell on its side and went rolling towards Kairi's legs, where it barely mustered the strength to stand on all fours. Kairi's knees shook and she took a second to give the tiger a quick whip to help provide it strength.

"Splat!"

Venus crushed the tiger under one of her big fists, rubbing the knuckles around for good measure. Then she pulled her hand up and wagged the fingers at Kairi mockingly.

Kairi stamped her right foot down and declared "Oh that's it!" as she summoned a grizzly bear and gave it a few good whips to make it as big as she did against Mew.

The bear stood on its hind legs and let out a roar so ferocious that all the gas in Venus' fists dematerialized for a moment, and she was left fluttering her eyelashes. Kairi's head hung over as she took a moment to catch her breath. Then she raised it and threw a punch out in the air while declaring, "Knock her out!"

The bear was in sync with Kairi's emotions and raised its right claw while continuing to roar. Venus stood still in place and reformed her hands, but then combined them into even one bigger hand and squeezed its fingers around the claw.

The bear pushed against it and seemed to be making headway, until Venus seemed to decide she had enough. With a bit of a leap in volume Venus remarked, "Go away!"

The big hand let go, lifted itself above the bear, and then swiped itself straight down the front of it. The gases of the hand turned rough like sandpaper and ground away the mass of this massive bear like an eraser to chalk. When all's said and done, the bear only had the back half of its legs to fall back on.

Kairi hung her body over and let out a pale gasp of "A-Again?" as the legs collapsed forward and vanished into dust. Her heart thumped loudly against her chest as Venus descended upon her and asked a playfully dreadful question, "Can we play some more now?"

Kairi had no answer. Her mouth moved but no words came out. Venus just wiggled her little hands out and said, "That's sad..."

She raised a big gas hand over Kairi's body and prepared to deal the final blow. Kairi let out a tiny whimper and closed her eyes...

"TIME OUT!"

Venus stopped the hand inches above Kairi's head and the two of them looked at the edge of the arena. Mew was standing there with his hands clapping into a T position a few times.

Kairi blinked a few times as Venus withdrew her hands and turned to Mew, asking him in a curious voice, "Will you play with me now mister?"

Mew folded his arms against his chest, smiled at Venus, and told her delicately, "Not right now dear. I need to talk with my grouchy tag-along for a moment."

Mew trots up to Kairi, ignores her feelings of imperilment, and then chuckles at her, "Having a fun time?"

The moment Mew closed his eyes Kairi took her whip to his head and almost hit him. But he's just as slippery as a toad. After ducking under that attack Mew took a few cautious steps back. Kairi panted and then growled at him, "What do you want?!"

Mew looked over his shoulder at Venus and gave her a smile and wave as she loomed patiently a few feet behind him. He then turned to Kairi and asked her, "Did you ask Venus what her deal is?"

Kairi swung her arms down and exclaimed, "I know what she is! She's a little girl that Gravitus experimented on...and then mind-controlled to obey his every command!"

Mew pinched the space between his eyes, let out a sigh, then turned to face Venus. Kairi looked at her as well and saw that she was slowly floating away, almost like it was an admission of guilty towards her accusations.

But then Mew said to Venus cordially, "Soooo this is probably none of my business but...You mind explaining the skeletons buried over there?"

He started gesturing to the north. Kairi stared that way and muttered "S-Skeletons?" knowing exactly what that implied.

Mew turned towards Kairi and waved a hand out beside his face as he said, "Yeah. Whoooole lot of them too. Maybe fifty or so? I didn't want to take the time to count them all."

As Kairi spent some time in shock Mew looked back to Venus and turns down the sass quite a bit as he noted, "They were all buried in their own graves and organized neatly into rows and columns."

For the first time, Kairi saw Mew's lip sink as he found himself having difficulty putting his thoughts into words. And yet, what he said really resonated with her.

"You must have really cared for those people."

Venus hung her head and lowered her little hands. Her bigger hands dispersed into the air, and she hovered closer to the ground. Mew waved at himself and tried to smile in hopes that Venus would take notice.

The phantom girl inched a little closer and then stopped a few feet away. Kairi just stood there watching the events unfold, only able to be a spectator in this strange turn of events.

"Those graves are...filled with the bodies of my old colony..." Venus whispered.

"Old colony?" Mew pondered. Venus nodded her head.

"My papa and mama...They led a colony of space cowboys. They traveled across the cosmos looking for new adventures and sometimes trouble came to find them too..."

"I was happy to be their daughter...Cause they loved me very much. Whenever they would go to new worlds, they'd always bring me back a new type of flower to plant in my garden."

"Papa and mama came to this planet and decided they wanted to settle down and make it their new home. It was a pretty world full of greenery and water..."

"It...was?" Kairi dreaded the direction the story was going.

Venus closed her eyes and her little see-through body started to look pale. She then continued her story, "Then a big storm blew through the planet...It carried a lot of 'radiation'...I think...It made me feel warm, and then very cold."

"...I woke up unable to feel or move or speak...It was very scary...I-I was all alone. No one else survived. Mama, papa, everyone...They lost their skin and could no longer move."

"I was pushed around by the wind until a strange old man came to visit. He took pity on me and tried to give me a body again...But he could only make me one with the gases that had hurt me..."

Venus waves her little hand towards her cloak and gives it a couple pokes, "Without this cloak...I would disappear."

Kairi took another glance at Mew and saw that he was neither smiling nor frowning. He just slowly bobbed his head and listened. It was a side to him that didn't make any sense to Kairi.

Venus then waved her hand out and remarked, "And then Mr. Gravitus showed up and said he could help me. He said that...given time...he would find a way to restore my old body..."

"Oh he did huh?" Mew said with a somewhat cheeky grin.

Venus nodded. Mew then crossed his arms against his chest, bobbed his head, then snapped his fingers up by his face and said, "Then that settles it!"

Both Venus and Kairi whispered "Huh?" as Mew knelt down in front of the phantom girl and held his right hand out.

"I'll be the one to get you your body back!"

"HUH?!" Kairi exclaimed as her body leaned back in shock.

Mew tilted his head and with a big bright grin giggled, "But in exchange you've gotta tell me your real name, ok?"

Venus fluttered her eyes a few times and then stammered out, "M-Maria...Argus."

"Maria..." Mew echoed with a bob of his head, then smiled at her and remarked, "Now that's a cute name."

He then took Venus' tiny hand and shook it gently, taking care not to touch her for long. He then told her, "Then its a promise!"

He then stands up, crosses his arms and remarks, "And heck, while I'm at it...I might as well see about getting Michael and Raphael split up too!"

He leans sideways at Kairi and chuckles, "It probably won't be thaaaat hard right?"

"Heeheehee..."

Mew turns back and joins Kairi in watching Venus crack a smile. Kairi lays a hand gently on her chest and feels a warmth projecting from it, along with a slow heartbeat. She curls her fingers into a fist and hangs her head a little.

"She's just a little girl..." Taken the time to think things through, Kairi almost wondered how she could've let herself get so angry at a child. She probably didn't want to accept the answer to that.

Mew then interrupted her moment of reflection by saying to Venus, "And when you get your body back, I definitely wanna see you smile even brighter Maria. You got a really cute one."

"Thanks." Venus murmured. Then she perked her little eyes up and said, "Oh!"

She took one of her hands up to the back of Mew's and starts etching something with a tiny bit of gas. Its another stamp, only this time its a simple smiley face.

"Good luck on the next floor mister." She said.

"Thanks! And you take care alright?" Mew responded.

Venus then wandered off into the winds of the planet, leaving Mew and Kairi to return to the portal. The two of them are quiet until they arrive back in the Pyramid, where Kairi finds she cannot hold back her voice any longer.

"How can you make that kind of promise to a total stranger?!" She yelled as she swung one hand out and waited for Mew to turn around and explain himself.

He just kept up his lackadaisical attitude about as he waved a hand around his face and remarked, "Do I need a reason to help someone?"

"Hasn't she been lied to enough?!" Kairi suddenly found herself yelling until her face turned red, "She's just a little girl! Don't build up her expectations if you can't deliver upon them!"

"Kairi..." Mew seemed to have a moment of realization, but then grinned and told her in his brazen tone of voice, "So there is some kindness buried in that heart of ice after all!"

Kairi went "Auff!" and swung her fists down, then stamped her feet hard as she turned around and crossed her arms under her chest to yell, "Why do I even bother?!"

Mew sighed then swung a hand out as he remarked, "I'm not going to fail her. Or your mother either."

Kairi glared over her shoulder and huffed at him, "Whatever...Lets go to the next floor."

"Nah." Mew suddenly blurted.

"What?!" Kairi turned around and leaned into him angrily.

Mew waved his hand around and said in a chipper tone, "I'm beat. I think I'm gonna head back into town and take another look around."

"You have a job to do!" Kairi exclaimed as he turned around, "Hey!"

Mew leaned his head back and remarked, "The Pyramid's not going to suddenly blow up."

He tucked his hands into his pockets and added, "Come on princess, join me...Oooor you can stay here until I get back, your choice."

"And let YOU run rampant in town?!" Kairi swung her head up and slowly followed him to the stairs, "Forget it! I'm not taking my eye off you!"

Mew shrugged and chuckled, "Suit yourself! I could use a tour guide anyways!"

Kairi exclaimed, "I am NOT your tour guide!"

And so the two spend a very long time walking down the stairs, bickering the whole way through...

Next Time: The Mirror Society