Chapter 18: Winter Wonderland
The next morning...
Kairi wobbled to the top of the stairs with her eyes partway open. She holds onto the rail and slowly made her way down. She groaned as her feet dragged her to the bottom, her energy for the day already spent.
When she arrived in the living room her eyes turned to the couch all on their own, only to find it vacant. She then glanced up at the clock. It was a quarter past 9.
"He already left without me..." She wasn't too surprised he'd done this twice already. Rather, she was almost disappointed.
"Its because of how I behaved last night..." She had spent a couple tireless hours pondering why she felt sick to her stomach, then the rest of the night troubled by that inescapable feeling. Her answer? Undetermined.
With nothing better to do but wait for Mew to return from another frolic in the Pyramid she headed into the kitchen to eat. Her stomach was complaining out of hunger now. Upon slipping past the door frame she heard a fork drop on a plate and grumbled "Morning" to her mom.
"Morning sleepyhead!" But it wasn't her voice that replied.
Kairi looked up and saw Mew at the table with a few bits of scrambled eggs on his plate. He smiled like usual and struck up a conversation ignoring everything that happened last night, "Your mom makes some really good eggs!"
Kairi stared at him from afar and didn't budge until her mother came into view with a fresh plate of eggs set at her seat. Auris smiled and winked then returned to the stove to clean-up.
Kairi wandered over to her chair and sat down. She picked up her fork and started eating. The whole time she looked at Mew, which he didn't reciprocate at first. When he did it was joined by a sudden blurt of, "So I was thinking...!"
It spooked Kairi senseless and she dropped her fork onto the plate. This stilled Mew until she picked it up. Then he pointed his fork at her and leaned down on his elbows, twirling the utensil by his head.
"Today, you're going to take another crack at a Planetary Aurian." That took her by surprising for a variety of reasons.
All she could say was, "Already? After two days of training?"
Mew nodded his head. Kairi should have been happy to have his approval, and maybe yesterday she would have. But after seeing so many sides of Mew and failing to understand any of them she didn't know how to react.
"Yeah, I think you're ready!" But he did. He always did. And if he thinks she's ready then well, Kairi could only feel inclined to believe him. But for good measure she turned to her mother.
"Mom?" Her worried tone told Auris enough. She tilted her head back and said, "I think your teacher knows best honey."
That was all the confirmation she needed. Mew perked up and exclaimed "Perfect!" then sprinkled in a little reassurance into the mix, "And hey if I'm wrong I'll be right there to provide back-up!"
It was a pretty straight forward win-win proposition for him to make. Kairi answered with a nod and silently picked away at her meal. A part of her wanted to try and bring up last night but didn't know how to. Then it hit her hard.
"W-Wait what am I thinking?" She shook her head, a bit of food and waking up getting her mind back in order, "Its not like I actually CARE what he thinks..."
But there was a somewhat melancholic anecdote to her thoughts this time, and it lingered until they headed out of the house. There they found Gabriel keeping guard as he does. Mew turned and cracked a joke.
"Do you ever eat breakfast?"
Gabriel opened his eyes and replied, "I'm always up at the crack of dawn, so my mealtime is earlier than yours."
"Heh, you really are into that whole samurai motif ain'tcha?"
Gabriel didn't dignify that with a response, and inquired to their intentions, "Back to the Pyramid again I see?"
"Yep! Just gotta clear out what? Three more floors in four days? Easy!"
"Just be careful," Gabriel's voiced deepened, "The last three Planetary Aurians are the most dangerous of them all."
"Oh god, and considering what Jupiter and Saturn could do..." Kairi felt a mild bout of panic while Mew was excited as always.
"Ha! Danger is my middle name!" He boasted.
"I could almost believe that..." Kairi let out with none of her usual spunk. Then after she sighed the two of them headed for the eighth of the Pyramid.
There, Kairi was greeted by hundreds of soft cold flakes of white falling from the ceiling. She held her hands out and the flakes melted in her palms.
"Is this...snow?" Her eyes dimly lit up as the cold air left her skin covered in goosebumps. Mew waltzed into the room with arms crossed and smile bright. Kairi gleamed at him and thought, "Is this your doing?"
"I wish I could take credit," Mew chuckled, "But this just seems to be the floor's theme."
Kairi looked around the room and saw candy canes, towering ice cream cones, and gum drop cushions. It was like a scene from a fairy tale. It was nice to look at. Now if only she could get rid of the background noise...
"Didn't we already fight someone who used the cold?" Mew blurted out while tapping the side of his head in thought.
"Yeah? Kairi replied, mildly curious to know what he was getting at.
"Hmmm..." But he left her hanging as he made his way to the portal. Kairi rolled her eyes and followed him through to the seventh planet from the Sun – the icy...Uranus?
"H-Huh?" Kairi staggered back upon seeing this new land. Outstretched for miles to the mountains and beyond the surface of Uranus was covered in a cold material similar to snow. Most of it was white, but there was some brown, pink, orange and yellow mixed in as well. In the distance lied a forest of peppermint candy trees and gumdrop fruits.
A lake of chocolate syrup was next to it, surrounded by a bed of rainbow colored candy pieces. Seeing all these sweets drew Kairi's gaze back to the ground. She cautiously bent down and scooped some of it into her hand then gave it a lick. It was creamy. It was sweet. It was...
"Ice cream?!" She dropped the scoop to the ground and turned to find Mew gobbling down the ice cream like a vacuum cleaner. Clearly the concept of brain freeze didn't apply to him.
"Mmm...Sho ghood!" He said with his cheeks positively stuffed and glowing, his hand and knees down like a pig at the trough. Kairi scowled in revile of his behavior, and was fortunate that it didn't last long. He stood right up and wiped the dribble off with his arm.
"...I never want ice cream again." Kairi grumbled, feeling nausea in her gut. Mew spun back to her and planted his fists on his hips as a statement of pride.
"Boy, do I wish I had a waffle cone right about now!" He then put his hand above his forehead and pivoted around like a telescope, "Now where's the Planetary Aurian? I wanna thank 'em for dessert!"
"How do you know they did it?" Kairi grabbed the side of her head and looked down with a somewhat maddened look in her eye, "For all we know the planet was always like this!"
Mew laughed. She knew he thought she was crazy. When he thus smiled at her she was shocked to hear him say, "Glad to see you using your imagination, but no..."
He turned his back to her and raised his arms up to the sides of his head, "I can sense the planet's surface under this decadent double-layered dessert."
Kairi looked towards the ground and nudged her shoe along the surface. Even with Mew's confirmation she still felt like this was too crazy to be real.
"Who'd cover a whole planet in...ice cream?"
"Probably a child," Mew stated casually as he tossed his pointer finger northbound, "Like the one coming our way, perhaps?"
Kairi swung her head up and saw a little girl frolicking through the metropolitan meadow. Her skin was white as snow with a dull purple tint in her cheeks. Her small body wrapped up in a delightful blue robe with a snowflake pattern. Her feet stayed warm via a pair of snowshoe boots, and her head was bundled up under a woolly snowcap. Her violet-blue hair was twisted up into a pair of braids down to her waist, and her eyes were nice and green. She danced around with a magic staff dangling from her right hand, its jeweled top reminiscent of a vanilla ice cream swirl in shape and color.
"Another little girl?" The dainty sight of the girl's dance left Kairi distraught. Given prior encounters this wintery bundle of joy was no doubt the Planetary Aurian she'd have to fight.
After the girl finished twirling towards them like a ballerina on one foot she stumbled to stand upright and almost dropped her staff. She hugged the staff up to her chest and jiggled her body around in tune to a jingle she was humming.
Kairi's expression went taut and her cheeks turned rosy red. "She's cute," She thought with woe and worry, "But so was Venus..."
The little girl suddenly stopped dancing and stared between her two guests. She grabbed her staff in both hands and centered it before her body.
"It seems we have some company. Their numbers not too many." The girl spoke in the language of rhyme with a rhythm as soothing as a lullaby. From her tone of voice she was probably only ten years old.
Mew swung his hand up and blurted, "Hi there! My name's Mew, and you are?"
The girl turned her staff towards her left shoulder and hummed some more. Mew was left hanging his hand up and staring blankly at the girl. So he turned to Kairi and whispered, "Maybe she wants you to introduce yourself?"
"Whuh?" Kairi didn't think that was a bad idea perse, but she wasn't sure HOW to introduce herself.
"U-Umm..." She looked the girl in the eyes and swung her head right down, throwing her cap off as she started an introduction.
"My name is-" When she saw her cap fall she paused to pick it up and put it back on. But when she tried again the girl raised her staff in one hand and twirled on one foot.
"Come and play! Play play play! Play away all night and day!" The girl's overly cheery tone made Kairi's heart tingle with warmth.
"Awww..." She murmured aloud, prompting Mew to chuckle. She turned beet red and looked right at him. He pressed his fingers up to a sneer and gave her some grief.
"If the snow angel's too cute for ya I can fight her instead!"
"S-Shut up!" Kairi picked up some ice cream and lobbed it at Mew's face. He happily took the hit just so he could lick it up. Kairi didn't care, she looked right back at the girl and left out a huff.
The girl, obviously identified as Uranus, kept dancing. Kairi looked at her and couldn't feel a single violent bone in her body.
"I don't want to fight her..." However, Kairi remembered that she thought the same thing with Venus, and after one conga line of humiliating memories her decision became a lot more clear. She closed her eyes, took a deep deep breath, and relaxed.
"But I have to." She opened her eyes with a fire lit under her feet and raised her hands up, summoning her staff in their grasp. She gently pointed it at Uranus and wiggled it around.
"Sure, I'll play with you." She said without hesitation.
"Are you sure?" Mew asked, an obvious test of Kairi's resolve.
Kairi looked down at her staff then up at Uranus. It was hard to separate the sweet little girl from the fighter hiding underneath.
"I underestimated Venus and Mars and they beat me...I hated it when Mew underestimated me like so many others have and yet I did the same thing to others...I can't do that anymore."
She turned to Mew with embers in her eyes and told him, "Positive."
She raised her staff a little higher and stated, "I'll show you that I can fend for myself now."
"Alrighty then!" Mew proclaimed as he backed away slowly, "She's all yours!"
Uranus spun her way back and let out a "Yay!" as she raised her staff high above her head.
"What is she going to do with that?" Kairi kept a close eye on it as the gem on top glowed light green.
"For fun and games we pull out all the stops! So meet my friends made out of gum drops!" The magic from her staff sprinkled the ice cream snow with sparkles.
Then from out of the ground rose two eight foot high golems made entirely out of different size gum drops. Green ones comprised the body, black ones outlined the eyes and pupils, and white ones behaved as teeth. They were bouncy even as they stood and looked really out-of-place next to their little master.
"Candy...Constructs?" Kairi was surprised briefly then just assumed this was her Drive. She raised her staff ready to charge in, then pulled it back down and shook her head.
"Wait for her to make the first move..." She told herself a few times over as Uranus made her golems listen to her whims.
"Belly flop belly flop! Get 'em get 'em gum drop!"
The golems nodded then the leftmost one sprung twenty feet up in an instant. It poised its bloated belly in Kairi's direction and dropped right down. She leaped to the right in the nick of time and was surprised at how fast it fell.
Which made it imperative to keep moving, as the other one jumped right in after its buddy. Kairi backflipped and felt her skip a beat as the golem grazed her head. The first golem bounced on over to where she'd land. There was no time to jump so Kairi just glided a few feet back out of the way.
"Hoh!" Kairi blurted as her body moved so fast on its own that she felt like a bolt of lightning.
Then, she saw her chance to strike and charged into the fallen golem. She struck it with an upward swing of her staff and it went flying off over its companion. It would go bouncing away for a while, leaving Kairi the space to handle the other.
"My friend is giving his all! Bouncing away like a bouncy ball!"
Uranus danced and cheered and drew in Kairi's gaze. But she turned back around and hopped back as the second golem came down. The golem started bouncing up and down faster, and Kairi struggled to keep ahead of it.
"Gotta take this to the skies!" Kairi kicked off the ground and flew thirty feet up where the golem's bounce wouldn't reach. She then turned to Uranus and, though it was still hard to accept this fight, decided to dive at her.
But a shadow covered her from above, and the second golem got the drop on her. It sent her to the ground and bounced on top of her a few times. It was surprisingly heavy, and kept pushing Kairi's face into the ice cream when she tried to lift it.
"Why. Didn't. He. Tell me. How to. Fight. Multiple...OPPONENTS?!" Kairi struggled to get her thoughts straightened out with that golem treating her like a trampoline. She growled and punched the ground but then closed her eyes and told herself, "Fooocus..."
She spun her situation in a more positive light and quickly whipped up a plan. She propped her staff up under the golem's belly and its thick, gummy flesh slowly impaled itself on it. Kairi breathed out in relief and used the free space to stand.
She then lifted the golem over her head and swung it down. By putting aura around the staff the momentum of her swing split the golem in half.
Uranus slowed her dance and closed her eyes partway, her voice losing a bit of that pep she had, "I guess his heart wasn't in it...He got tired, he quit, he had to split!"
Kairi turned to her and readied her staff for an attack. But then she heard something coming, and it was coming in fast. She turned left and saw the first golem bouncing back. With a few more leaps it'd bowl her over.
"One at a time..." She felt was the best way to handle Uranus and her minions. She didn't back away from the oncoming threat and instead dug her feet into the ground, a feat made difficult by its creamy composition.
"Put your strength into your legs..." She stiffened her stance, gripped her staff a little tighter, and watched as the golem performed its last bounce to reach her.
"And expose their weakness!" She widened her eyes, swung her staff up diagonally, and cleaved into the golem so hard it stopped in place. From there her body moved on its own, reversing the way her hands were positioned on the staff so she could swing again in the opposite direction. She kept this up and without even realizing it watched as her staff became a blur.
She never lost ground even as she swung with all her might, chopping up the golem and spreading its bits and pieces all over. When she finished up she lowered her staff down in one hand and caught her breath.
"I-I'm not used to fighting like that! Whew...!" She was a little roughed up but had a bright-eyed smile the whole time. She then shook her head and turned to Uranus.
The little girl was silent and motionless as Kairi ran in and thrust her staff into her chest. Gently, mind you. She wasn't about to permanently cripple a girl about half her age.
Uranus was bowled over onto her back, picking up bits of ice cream dust on her clothes. Kairi stayed back, swung her staff up close to her hip and thought, "That...can't be it can it?"
She was right on the money. Quicker than she blinked Uranus swung her head up and started rubbing it like she had a boo-boo. Kairi eased up a little and raised her head to ask, "Are you ok?"
Uranus opened her eyes and half her lips twisted into a glaring scowl while her left pupil shrank down to the size of a pin. This sudden shift in attitude caught Kairi by surprise and left her vulnerable to the little girl's sudden outburst of, "You JERK!"
Her voice sounded like nails on chalkboard, a tone way too deep and scratchy for one so young. Yet just as quickly as the girl's inner malice sprouted it quickly dug itself back in and she stood up with a big old smile.
She danced in place and waved her staff back and forth in both hands, claiming in her chipper, rhyming tone that, "You're very naughty naughty. You demonness with the curvy body..."
Her tone may have corrected itself but her choice of words were certainly more vile. And with a flick of the wrist and raise of the staff, Uranus set about to summon even more constructs to her aid.
Kairi stood back looking a little dumbfounded by the sudden outburst on display. She then grumbled bitterly under her breath for letting Uranus get away with using more of her magic.
"Ugh fine, a few more gum drop golems...I can handle that." She said with confidence.
But what rolled up to the battlefield weren't more gum drops or anything sweet and gummy like that. From atop the nearby mountains a pair of giant ice cream snowballs rolled down to the chocolate syrup lake and coated themselves in a thick layer of the liquid-y goodness. From there any excess ice cream pushed outward from the body to create stubby legs and life-like arms, topping themselves off with a domed head as they stood upright next to Uranus.
Candied raisins pushed through their faces to act as their eyes, and with a dollop of magic from her wand Uranus gave them each a long, candy corn nose. Kairi slacked her jaw at these new creations. They lacked a lot of the cutesy charm the gum drop golems had, and seemed like a patchwork job.
"Can't let my guard down though..." Kairi raised her staff to the pudgy snowmen and listened as Uranus gave them her orders.
"Play with her to your heart's content! Claw her and ream her until her body's spent!"
Vs. The Dessert Demonness: Aurian Uranus
"...What?" Kairi closed her eyes in a half-amused fashion until the snowmen stirred to life with a jolly guffaw. Each one leaned down and the bottom of their heads pulled up, revealing a nasty set of candy corn fangs. They then swung their arms down and sharp peppermint cane claws shot out of their stubby hands.
"Holy crap!" Her eyes were then wide open from there on out as the snowmen came lumbering at her with the intent to harm. The right one closed in first and shoved its brother aside amidst raising its claw to strike.
Kairi jumped back out of the way and held her staff up front just to be safe. The other snowman pushed its brother over onto its side and wildly flailed its claws Kairi's way.
She knew this wasn't the time to find out how sharp peppermint feels on the skin. So she closed her eyes to concentrate and get a feel for the snowman's movements, then used her staff to deflect its claw swipes before they could get too close.
She pushed her staff between her hands but kept the grip tight, allowing her to fend off the snowman's vicious assault while putting distance between them. This would help immensely once the other snowman got up and ran in to attack.
Kairi diverted her attention to the right for a moment and kicked herself up off the ground to fly away. The snowman that first attacked her now shredded apart its comrades' right arm, an act that swiftly turned the two against each other.
With its remaining arm the snowman impaled its comrade through his chocolate-y shell and let out a disturbingly innocent guffaw. The other snowman retaliated by impaling them through the same spot and letting out the exact same noise.
Kairi hovered on by, a silent spectator in this bizarre freakshow of a battle, and thought to herself, "What the heck is going on here?"
Whatever the answer was could wait. When she saw Uranus was wide-open she smirked and pointed her staff down at the little girl. She was too busy reprimanding her creations to seem to notice where she was.
"Quit fighting quit fighting! Lest the witch come falling like lightning!"
"And strikes like thunder!" Kairi yelled that out thinking it was a good comeback. It wasn't. But its the intent that counts.
Uranus puckered her lips and looked gobsmacked by Kairi diving down on the warpath towards her. But she need not worry, for before she got too close one of Uranus' snowman broke away from the mutual mutilation of his comrade to snag Kairi out of the air by her right leg.
Kairi's eyes widened and she turned back amid plummeting to the ground. She grabbed her staff and took a quick swing at the snowman's claws. She shattered them with a well-placed strike but momentum still dragged her to the ground.
She closed her eyes and focused her energy out of her back, creating a cushion to soften her fall. She bounced right off it and landed on her feet close to the snowmen. One was disarmed and the other declawed, but that didn't make them any less dangerous or feral.
They looked at each other and then nodded their heads. The declawed snowman turned around, rammed its bare arm through the empty socket of the dearmed snowman, then twisted its head around so they were both staring right at Kairi.
It was disturbing for sure but also very stupid. Kairi snickered and told herself, "How are they supposed to hit me now?"
The answer, as it turns out, would be that they wouldn't. In their desperate bid to remain in the fight the two snowmen swung their claws at Kairi in futility. Their combined form was so wide and their arms so small that Kairi could just stand between them and they'd never reach her.
She even put her staff behind her back and poked it out slightly to tickle the snowman's claws. But then with a slight jolt to her heart she recognized this wasn't the time to play around and shook her head.
"Take them down, then go after Uranus...Come on, don't screw it up! Don't screw it up!" The pressure of proving her worth distracted her train of thought away from finding the snowman's weakness, even though it was so obvious a baby could point it out.
Kairi stared at the holes the snowmen impaled into each other and knew she could finish this up fast if she put her mind to it. First things first she touched her Beast Tamer Drive to change her staff into a whip. She didn't intend to summon an animal. She just needed the weapon form momentarily.
She whipped the centermost legs of this mismatched snowman and the end legs couldn't suffice in keeping them balanced. They wobbled their way onto their backs and couldn't budge no matter how much they flailed. Kairi then deactivated the Beast Tamer Drive to return to her staff and leaped above the right snowman. She closed her eyes and dove right in, plunging the staff through the wound in its chest.
"I hope this works..." She prayed as she bit her teeth down and braced herself. She used the theory behind what Mew said regarding flight to push her energy out from the right side of her legs and spin around and around in place.
The ice cream surface really helped get the momentum going to push the snowmen around as well, with the staff acting as the center piece of this little experiment. After a while of this the speed of the rotation ripped the armless snowman off and sent it sliding straight for the chocolate syrup lake.
"I-I think I'm going to be sick..." Kairi hung out just that little bit longer so she could line up the other snowman like an eight ball going to the corner pocket. She had to trust in her senses that what she was doing was right, and when she finally pulled her staff out of the snowman it went hurtling for the lake in a completely straight line.
Both snowmen were slowly dragged to an unceremonious demise. The last moment of their fleeting existence, to try and claw their way out of the surface, went completely unnoticed by the one who sent them there.
Uranus once again froze up and her breathing hastened at a dire pace. Kairi wasn't about to let her get another shot in at summoning and charged forward, swinging her staff back as far as her arms would carry her.
"I'll finish this now!" She exclaimed as the final swing was swung.
"G-Go away!" Uranus screamed her little heart out and threw her arms down. Her body exploded with a haunting blue aura as thin and cloudy as fog and Kairi sensed danger on an unprecedented scale.
She forced her feet to the ground and pulled her staff back. Even just by grazing the girl's aura Kairi found her the end of her staff consumed in a deadly frost. The aura lashed out and forced Kairi away. This was, without a doubt, Uranus' true Drive ability.
"She froze part of my staff in an instant...I-If my hands had been any closer..." Kairi didn't want to think about it. She shook it off and watched as Uranus' aura comfortably stabilized just around the edge of her body. She was smiling, but that smile locked away a deadly secret.
Kairi smashed her staff against the ground to break the ice off then pointed it at Uranus. Her hands her shaking and her legs didn't want to move. And the little girl continued to hum and dance like everything was all fine and dandy.
"You think you're clever? You claim yourself my keeper? Catch me if you can when you're faced with the gingerbread reaper!" Uranus' staff turned a slight shade of black as she pointed it back towards the peppermint forest.
A chill unrelated to the atmosphere covered the ice cream lands as fog rose up from the forest, joined by a creeping shadow. The fog spread to their location and the shadow galloped out at lightning speeds.
Kairi braced herself as this new culinary concoction came to a sudden stop and kicked up a plume of ice cream dust. An echoing neigh parted the fog to reveal a nightmarish mare whose bare flesh was stitched together out of black licorice ropes. Its rider was cloaked in dark brown fruit tape and held on to its horse via a rope pieced together by hard ringed candies. The rider turned its shadow draped face towards Kairi and swung it right hand out, a scythe with a sharp peppermint blade sliding out of its sleeve and into the grip of its frosted gingerbread hand.
The reaper pushed the limits of what could be done with candy. In spite of its sickeningly sweet ingredients this creature was a recipe for disaster. Kairi knew that there was no time to play around with this one.
"I need some back-up, pronto!" She swiftly pushed down on her Beast Tamer Drive and jumped back as the reaper took a swing at her neck.
"Eek!" She screeched as the blade missed by an inch. She unfurled her whip and thought about the beast that'd be best suited for this fight.
"I could try horse versus horse..." She jumped out of the way of a couple more swings as the horse galloped towards her, throwing up icy dust to get in her eyes.
"But...I don't know how to ride a horse!" Kairi threw one arm up to cover her eyes but that simply gave the reaper a free cut on her elbow.
It cut down close to the nerves and felt worse than the sharpest paper cut imaginable. Kairi grit her teeth and a little bit of her blood dripped onto the ground. Uranus seemed pleased by that, as she came up with a rhyme on the spot to describe what was happening.
"Drip drop drip drop. Blood doth spill like a juicy drop pop!"
"...Scratch that, I don't want any candy ever again!" Kairi was annoyed that she had to keep retreating from the reaper's charge while Uranus was free to mock her with terrible rhymes.
She could swing her whip to try and deflect the reaper's scythe but it was sharp enough to potentially break the links. But there WAS another target for her whip to have its way with.
"The horses' legs!" Kairi briefly looked down and remembered what Mew told her about how important it is to keep your opponent at your eye level if at all possible.
"If I disable the horse the reaper will be easier to handle!" But with how broadly the scythe was swung getting by seemed almost impossible.
"So what I have to do is..." Kairi's eyes lit up and she swung her left arm up with the perfect creature in mind. Her aura gathered around her arm right as the reaper swung down. And what that devilish delightful blade would meet with was the hardened shell of a tortoise.
The bulky shell repelled the scythe over the reaper's head and Kairi saw her chance.
"Now!" She dispelled the tortoise and swung her whip around the horses' front legs. With one mighty tug the horse went down, and the reaper fell on its side. Kairi felt like cheering. It was exhilarating to chain all that she learned together to take down these foes. For once, she truly felt like she was on top of the world.
However, the fight was far from over. The reaper leaped over its trusted steed and swung its scythe towards the ground, dragging it along as it advanced upon Kairi. Though the fact that its hood was now down, revealing a smiling gingerbread man face, dulled the construct's fear factor by a considerable amount.
Kairi hummed deeply to herself and readied her whip for round two. She now had the height advantage over the reaper but they held the advantage in weapon length. But there was easily a way for her to fix that.
"Time to bust out the big guns...!" Was what she wanted to do, but something was gnawing at her to reconsider.
"Actually..." She quickly turned to Uranus and focused on her staff, "If I rob her of her staff, that'll put an end to these creatures!"
But there were two factors to consider: The girl's Drive, and the reaper's presence.
While running back and swinging to deflect the reaper's scythe Kairi worked out how to get Uranus' staff, "A creature that can sneak up quick and undetected..."
Her eyes lit up and she blurted out "Of course!" while throwing her left hand out the ground. Her legs provided decent cover for the snake that she summoned. It burrowed itself into the ice cream snow and through Kairi's commands swiftly wiggled its way towards Uranus.
"Now for you..." Kairi locked her eyes onto the reaper's smiling face and ducked under one of its swings. She buckled her feet against the ground and lunged into its stomach to tackle it to the ground.
She had to sell a struggle so Uranus wouldn't get cautious. So she held back on punching the gingerbread man in its soft smiling face so it'd be able to muster the strength to stand.
She slid off it and watched as it took a swing at her head. She ducked her head back and on the rise swung her whip up to wrap around its arm and force its scythe into the ground. She glanced right and felt the snake was inches away from Uranus.
"Time to deliver the coup de grace!" Kairi pointed her free hand at the reaper's body. Out from behind her sprang a kangaroo that kicked the reaper's chest with the full-force of two double-barreled pistons. Naturally, it crumbled like a cracker all over the ground with barely any effort.
The kangaroo bounced around on its pieces just to be safe, but the battle was going to end soon enough. Kairi turned to the right, her victory over the vicious reaper throwing Uranus into a state of shock. Kairi watched as her slippery little serpent shot out of the ground and went straight for the tip of the staff.
"AAAAAAAAHHH!" Uranus suddenly grabbed the sides of her head and evaded the snake by accident. A blood-curling scream joined with another explosion of aura, turning the serpent into a popsicle that shattered on the ground.
Kairi grit her teeth and whispered "Shoot!" then widened her eyes as the ground began to quake at her feet. No. It wasn't just at her feet. This earthquake shook the entire planet.
"W-What's going on?!" Was her immediate thought as the cold winds of the planet whipped around Uranus' body. She squeezed the sides of her head like she was in pain and icy tears formed on her cheeks.
"Sitting upon a castle high a princess awaits a prince's stride! Freed from her winter cage the prince's kiss shall melt her icy hide!" Uranus hastily yelled out utter nonsense in a painful voice. Kairi couldn't bear to hear this and instinctively turned her head back towards Mew.
He was standing his ground against the rising storm with his arms crossed and fists taut. He looked ready to jump in and intervene at Kairi's word.
"No!" Kairi turned back to Uranus and held herself steady upon the ground, "I don't need his help! This...is my fight to finish!"
The ice cream enveloped Uranus' body and formed a giant castle that towered over the land in seconds. But it didn't stop there. This castle was attached to the back of an even BIGGER three-headed dragon. One of its feet alone dwarfing Kairi in size.
Kairi's heart was racing. This was Uranus' last stand against her. If she could overcome this obstacle, it was the absolute proof that she didn't waste her time on Mew's nonsense.
The dragon opened its mouths and set loose a blaze of absolute zero ice. Kairi kicked off the ground and flew! Flew faster than she thought her body could handle past the deadly attack. She sped towards' the dragons heads and avoided their icy glare and echoing roar. She knew where her true enemy lied.
On the highest room in the tallest tower, Uranus had been trapped inside of a barred cage of her own making. She still held on tightly to her head but more importantly, her staff. Her aura was out of control, moving around her body in random bursts. There were moments where the staff was untouched by her aura, but they were "blink and you'll miss it" moments.
"I don't have much time...! I need something fast...fast!" Kairi's thoughts were going as fast as her body was avoiding all the cover fire from the dragon's mouths. Their balls of ice threatened to ground her as a lifeless statue, but the fire in her heart helped her ward them off.
Then the idea came to her in a crucial moment, and she didn't think on it long. She swung her right hand out and declared "FLY!", where an ear-piercing shriek then heralded the descent of a speeding falcon. It moved straight as an arrow towards Uranus' tower and pierced the winter cage with its sharpened beak. The timing was perfect down to the millisecond, as it used the very same beak to snatch Uranus' staff out of its hand and fly out.
Uranus didn't react to the ensuing collapse of her terrifying prison with anything but chills. All that ice cream went to the ground and piled up as a hill a hundred feet tall. Kairi looked down and saw Uranus at the top of said hill sliding her way down to the bottom. Keeping a cautious mind, she flew down to meet her.
She turned off the Beast Tamer Drive and pointed her staff to meet Uranus' face when she finally made it to the bottom. But as it turned out, it wouldn't be necessary. The whole experience must have drained the little girl to exhaustion, for her eyes were closed and she was snoring softly to herself.
Kairi stared at the real-life sleeping beauty and didn't believe her sleepy-time demeanor was real at first. She held the staff down and almost felt like poking her in the face to double-check, but when she did all the little girl did was smile and giggle.
"...Its over." Kairi dispelled her staff and sagged her shoulders in tune with her sigh of relief.
"Good job!" Mew slapped a hand down on Kairi's shoulder and she nearly jumped out of her clothes in fright.
"Eeep!" She turned around, drew her staff, and took a swing at Mew's head. He expertly ducked under it and came back up grinning like an idiot.
Kairi stared at him and, for some reason, is actually glad she didn't hurt him. But she still felt he deserved a good yelling.
"DON'T SNEAK UP ON ME LIKE THAT!" She gave him a mouthful and he threw his hands up with a partway guilty grin.
"Sorry, sorry!" He apologized then tucked his hands into his pockets, his voice becoming full of praise, "But hey buck up! You completely, undeniably, beat a Planetary Aurian on your own!"
Kairi's eyes perked up and she turned towards Uranus. Seeing the little girl relaxing was a godsend, but that didn't change what led to this point. Kairi's heart tied into a knot, and as she raised a fist to her chest she murmured, "Then...why doesn't it feel like I won?"
Mew crossed his arms, walked up closer to Uranus, then looked down at her with a curious gleam in his eyes, "So what are we going to do with her?"
"H-Huh?" Kairi assumed the wrong intentions coming from Mew's tone of voice.
"We can't just leave her here like this." But of course, she was just jumping to conclusion. Of course he'd have the girl's best interests in mind.
"R-Right..." Kairi looked down at the girl once more and felt something different forming in her heart. It was like she was helpless, but not because she was weak, but because she had no solution to help this girl who seemed to be in very dire straits.
"Leave her to me."
Kairi and Mew turned around and saw Michael walking towards them. From the looks of things he had just gotten out of the portal, and his droopy face appeared sadder than usual.
"Michael? What're you doing here?" Mew took the words right out of Kairi's mouth, and the two of them stepped aside to let him pass.
"Word got out that you managed to beat Catherine, so I knew you'd be coming here soon enough..." Michael paused and looked over at Kairi. He tilted his head slightly and wondered, "You the one who fought her?"
"Y-Yes?" Kairi stared in blatant confusion.
Michael suddenly bowed at her and said loudly in gratitude, "Thank you for taking it easy on my little sister."
"...What?!" Kairi reeled back in sync with Mew. She looked over at Uranus then back to Michael and, quite frankly, couldn't see the resemblance in the slightest.
"She's YOUR sister?" Mew once again mirrored her sentiments, "I swear...I had her pegged as Raphael's little sister!"
Michael stood up and faced the unconscious Uranus, letting out a try chuckle before addressing the obvious problem, "I know right? Icy blue skin, the ability to control the cold...No way she'd be related to a useless, greasy pacifist like me huh?"
He bent down and gently picked Uranus up to cradle her in his arms. He turned around and rocked her gently, giving her head the proper support it needed. Kairi watched without saying a word. She didn't even have a thought in her mind. The only sign that she was still alive was that her heart wrenched up in a knot, and the color slowly became flushed from her face.
But she could still hear, and as Michael started to hum the same tune Uranus sang it became clear that he wasn't lying. Mew shook his head and without his usual clowning around asked the doting big brother, "What happened to her?"
Michael raised his head and let out another dry chuckle.
"Remember how I talked about my home planet being at war all the time? Well when I wasn't forced into battle I was back at home taking care of my little sister Vivi," Michael lowered his head to look into her shut eyes with a smile, "My dad died early on in her life and my mom had to work hard to make ends meet. So I was stuck raising little Vivi most of the time."
"Heh, you probably saw how energetic she is. Back home she was always zipping around like she was full of sugar, and the only way I could keep her still was to read out fairy tales. She loved them. Sometimes she'd even make me roleplay the prince to her princess."
"...But little did any of us know, Vivi had a lot of potential energy inside of her just waiting to be unleashed." Michael's tone turned sorrowful as the story continued on.
"A scuffle on the border of our two sides gave the ice side a chance to sneak into my home town and kidnap Vivi. As soon as I found this out...it was already too late. Mages on the ice side of the planet used a powerful dark magic to inverse Vivi's affinity to their side in hopes of claiming her potential energy as the weapon to win the war."
"And they got what they wanted...And so much more than they could have imagined. The moment they finished inverting her her power was unleashed on a cataclysmic scale, covering the whole planet in ice."
"...And that's what led to you and Raphael being stuck together." Mew remarked.
Michael nodded softly then continued, "But Vivi...she wasn't so lucky. She survived the event but her mind was completely broken apart from the strain. Now she could no discern what's real and what's fake...Except when she's in pain."
"...I tried to beg the wizard who saved me to fix my little sister, but he claimed her condition was none of his concern. The only solace he offered was to make her immortal, like me, so perhaps one day I could work out a solution on my own."
Michael's hands tightened into fists and he held Vivi closer to his chest, "But its been two-thousand years and no one's found a cure! Gravitus, Catherine, they've tried everything they could but nothing works!"
"My sister's trapped in her own mind and no matter how much I tell her 'Good morning!', 'I love you!' or 'How are you doing?!' I know she'll never be able to answer me! I'm so desperate to save her that I'd be willing to give up my life in her place!"
Kairi bit her lower lip and suddenly snagged onto the headband around her neck. The discomfort in her heart twisted up and a single tear was wrenched from her eyes.
All of a sudden, Mew put a hand on Michael's shoulder and made him look him in the eyes. With a firm glare he told him, "And what good will it do Vivi if her big brother isn't there for her when she wakes up?"
Michael hung his head a little in shame and admitted, "I-I know that...But what else am I expected to do?"
Mew put on his classic smile and swipe a thumb across the breadth of his chest, "Why...just leave her to me!"
Once again Kairi was taken aback by how swift and suddenly Mew was willing to offer to help someone he only knew for a little bit. Even Michael stared up at Mew and didn't knew how to respond beyond a weak laugh.
"You're a strange one Mew..." He said rather curtly, "But...I guess if there'd be anyone who could do it, it'd be you."
Yet despite Michael knowing Mew just as long, he was willing to put all his faith into his capabilities. Mew smiled brighter, put his hands behind his head and remarked, "And I promise to find a way to fix your problem too Michael!"
Michael shook his head and remarked, "If you can save Vivi over me, then do it. I've got enough control over Raphael to keep him from causing trouble."
He looked down at his little sister and whispered, "But if it wasn't for this planet keeping her away from civilization Vivi would be going around turning everyone and everything into desserts."
"I hear you loud and clear," Mew bobbed his head a couple times then turned for the portal and swung his right hand up to say, "Come on Kairi! We should let these two be for now."
"Huh?!" Kairi briefly snapped out of her funk to see Mew heading into the portal. She looked back down at Michael and Vivi and tugged at her headband with one finger. She wanted to say something, ANYTHING, but nothing she thought of sounded genuinely concerned.
So she turned away and started to move when Michael suddenly said, "Aren't you forgetting something?"
She looked back and Michael reached into Vivi's robe to pull out her stamp. Kairi slowly approached him and he stamped the back of her right hand. The stamp this time represented a little girl resting in her bed, with a dream cloud hovering overhead.
"Mmrrrmm..." The urge to say something grew stronger, but as she began to open her mouth Michael said something truly bizarre.
"You know...I don't know what it is, but something about you's...different than it was before." He looked at Kairi with a sincere smile and then went back to whispering a fairy tale to his little sister.
Kairi clenched her fist up near her heart and then, upon feeling a swell of puzzling emotions in her mind, ran straight for the portal to leave this exhausting scene behind...
Next Time: A Gamble of Grand Proportions