Card Captor Sakura Fan Fiction ❯ Chaos Card Captor Sakura ❯ A Duality of Despair (Part II) ( Chapter 7 )

Chapter 6: A Duality of Despair (Part II)

(Sakura’s room)

With the door closed and the light dimmed, Kero flies over to the curtains to pull them shut, eliminating the orange sunlight shining in from the window. He then sits down at the windowsill, turned away from the curtains, and he shuts his eyes meditatively.

The right-hand drawer of Sakura’s desk opens itself as a red book glowing with a yellow aura levitates out. The book hovers in midair as it breaks its own seal, revealing a stack of cards inside the book where the pages would be. Under their own power, the cards begin to float out of the book in a giant ring, until the entire deck of the fifty-two cards levitate in a giant ring.

“Don’t worry, everyone,” Kero reassures the apparently frantic cards. “I’m sure that Sakura will be fine. Clow knew what he was doing when he chose her as our new Master.”

One of the Clow Cards in the ring breaks formation and floats face-down towards Kero. Kero then flips the card over, revealing it to be The Mirror.

“That’s right. You were there.” Kero says to Mirror. “You still remember him back then, don’t you?”

*-*-*

(flashback)

In a dimly-lit room, the knob of an old-fashioned door turns and the door creaks open. A small, orangey catlike creature with a pair of tiny wings nudges the door open and pokes his head in.

“Clow, its dinnertime!” he calls out in his juvenile, slightly British-accented voice.

A blue-haired teenager with a short ponytail and wearing a black hooded cloak turns back towards the door. “In a minute, Kero. I’m working on a special project now,” he replies.

Keroberos rolls his eyes at his master’s callous response. “For the hundredth time, it’s Ker-ber-us!” Keroberos corrects. He nudges the door further open with his head and walks into Reed’s room. Lit by a duo of candles on Reed’s desk, the otherwise empty and cobweb-ridden room appears nearly pitch black. “And would it kill you to clean this place out? It’s kinda’ creepy in here…” Keroberos asks, surveying the cluttered bed, cobweb-ridden crates and dusty stacks of thick books that look more at home in a haunted mansion than in a then-modern study room.

“C’mon, it’s not that creepy, is it?” Reed replies. “Besides, I’m not really that hungry right now. I’m really busy.”

“Riiiight…” Keroberos comments before sprinting forward and springing up right onto Reed’s desk.

Keroberos and Reed exchange stares. Reed was drawing with a feather-pen on a small piece of paper. Keroberos turns his attention to the drawing. While it hadn’t been completed, it showed a long-haired young girl holding onto some circular ring or plate of some kind. The bottom of the card reads “The Mirror.”

“Drawing pretty girls is your idea of busy?” Keroberos asks rhetorically. He nudges Reed’s shoulder as forcefully as he can. “C’mon, I’m hungry! If you would’ve just created me like every other sane sorcerer makes their Guardians, this wouldn’t be a problem!” he scolds.

“What? What’s wrong with being able to eat? I thought you liked all those tasty sweets, didn’t you?” Reed asks, puzzled.

“Well I did,” Keroberos begins in a somewhat self-incriminating tone, “…but that was before I realized that I needed to eat to stay alive. You meanie! Am I doomed to be a pig forever?” he retorts.

Reed glances up in thought for a split second before shrugging his shoulders. “Well… possibly…” he responds, giggling to himself as the mental image of a little winged lion with an enormously inflated belly crosses his mind.

Keroberos groans. “Why can’t I just suck magic out of the earth, too? It’s so much easier that way…” Keroberos protests petulantly.

Reed places his quill pen down and flips his new prototype card over before turning his full attention towards his Guardian Beast. “It’s also easier to let go than hang on, if you’re hanging over the edge of a cliff. There are times approaching when magical dependency will be like a virus. In that way, you’re really the first of your kind. Soon, Kero, you’ll be glad that I did what I did.”

Keroberos scoffs and turns his head sharply. “Yeah, like in about two hundred years…” he retorts sarcastically.

“So you do understand,” Reed acknowledges, much to Keroberos’ surprise. “Atta-boy, Kero,” Reed adds with a half-pet, half-noogie to the young lion.

However, Keroberos doesn’t have much of an opportunity to lance Reed with a well-deserved glare as Reed reaches behind his head and scratches him behind the ears, causing him to close his eyes blissfully and emit a soft purring. “Uhh… Clow, you know I’m a sucker for ear rubs, you crazy nut…” he says through his satisfied purring, attempting vainly to come off as accusatory.

*-*-*

(Sakura’s room)

Kero floats over towards Sakura’s desk and opens the bottom drawer of Sakura’s desk, and the insides of which resemble something like a hand-made dollhouse living room, complete with a bed and even decorated with posters on the “walls”. Staring into his personal abode, Kero notices his room littered with several discarded candy wrappers.

“He knew that all of this was going to happen. He did know what he was doing. At least… I hope he did, for Sakura’s sake,” Kero thinks to himself, floating into his room with intent of clearing out all the trash.

*-*-*

(the woods, near Penguin Park)

Mirage frantically storms onwards through the shady woods, repeatedly shooting glances behind and around her. She cries out tears of horror, counting in her head what could quite possibly be her last moments. Without slowing down, she quickly wipes her tears away with the sleeve of her sweater, but with her vision momentarily obstructed, her foot catches on an above-ground root, tripping her up and sending her hands and knees first into a floor of soggy dirt and mud. Taking no time to keep up appearances, she unhooks her foot from the high root and proceeds right back to fleeing.

Short moments after, a very similar-looking girl to Mirage flies by, riding atop a grimly-decorated scythe with large bat wings. She stops her flying pursuit of Mirage to circle around the location where she had tripped. Sakura transforms the Nightmare back into her key and the Nightmare Card. She also kneels down to see the handprints in the thick mud. Placing her own hands into the cavity, her hand fits the imprint perfectly. Sakura grins menacingly at the implications as she stands to her feet. “I’ve got you now…” she calls out ominously into the woods.

*-*-*

(further in the woods)

Syaoran darts glances about, quickly following the trail of slashed trees left in Sakura’s wake while riding on the Nightmare. His frustration builds as the tediousness of his pursuit increases.

‘This is stupid. These woods aren’t nearly this large. I should’ve either passed her by or come out the other end, not wind up in some gloomy jungle,’ Syaoran thinks to himself. Tiring himself out, he slows his zealous rush down to a paced jog and then a slow walk. He finally stops moving altogether and places his hands on his knees to keep himself up while gulping in mouthfuls of precious oxygen at a time. His rubber knees nearly give way at the duress.

After a moment, Syaoran grudgingly walks ahead, in sharp defiance of his winded and tired body. Walking ahead a few more feet, he turns his head to the side, seeing a sharply-cut tree stump not far from his path. Near the stump, a familiar long-haired figure stares on in the opposite direction, into the forest.

“Daidouji-san?” Syaoran calls out.

Tomoyo turns around to see Syaoran behind her. “Li-kun?” Tomoyo glances over her shoulder in perplexity, pointing behind her frantically, trying to make sense of it all. “I thought you were chasing after Sakura-chan. How’d you get behind me?”

Not answering Tomoyo’s question, Syaoran quickly rushes Tomoyo and shoves the Inferno Crossbow in her face, much to Tomoyo’s shock and astonishment. Tomoyo speechlessly backs away until finding herself pinned against a tree, and Syaoran continues to pursue her slowly and stoically the whole way.

“Li-kun, what’s gotten into you?” Tomoyo asks.

Syaoran holds Tomoyo against the tree with his forearm and he points the Inferno Crossbow’s arrow at Tomoyo’s wrist. He carefully yet quickly runs the arrow against the fabric, tearing through the cuff like a hot knife, before releasing a now outraged Tomoyo.Tomoyo gawks in horror at the cut running from her cuff halfway down her forearm. She looks back at Syaoran with an expression of betrayal. “You lunatic! What was that for? This is a designer dress. Do you have any idea how long it’ll take me to make another one?!” she fires back.

Syaoran raises his hands defensively. “Okay, okay, it really is you. Sorry, just checking. With Kaos Cards like Mirage running around, you can never be too careful.”

Tomoyo ceases babying the torn wrist of her outfit. She stares forward in a deep, dazed, and somewhat remorseful thought. “Speaking of whom, did you find Sakura-chan and Mirage-san?” she finally asks.

Syaoran stares back into the forest, in the direction he had presumably run off into. “Doesn’t look like I’ll be able to at this rate…” he answers ominously. “Do you think this forest is abnormally large for a suburb like Tomoeda?” Syaoran asks.

Tomoyo looks all around them, getting an eyeful of the forest that appeared as their confine. “And how,” she answers matter-of-factly. “Do you think Sakura-chan cast a spell on the woods to trap us here?”

Syaoran shakes his head. “No, I don’t think she’s trying to trap us. But I bet that she trapped Mirage so that no one else can interfere with her capture. We’re just in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Syaoran supposes.

Tomoyo holds her hands in front of her face. “She’s already powerful enough to enchant a forest this size?” Tomoyo asks frightfully.

“She was always powerful, but she just doesn’t realize it,” Syaoran responds, tightly clenching his fists. “The Elixir of Fire blinded her to her own inner power, so she can never be happy with being as powerful as she is. All she wants now is more power, more power, and more power, even if it destroys everything about her to get it.” Syaoran pauses, an eerie silence coming over him.

Tomoyo looks on into the deep forest. “Li-kun,” she begins, breaking the silence. “… what do we do now?”

Syaoran shakes his head. “There’s nothing we can do. We can’t overpower her magic. She’s won this round. All we can do is wait for her spell to pass and try again later when the next Kaos Card shows up.”

Tomoyo turns her head sharply in Syaoran’s direction. “Well you’re taking this rather calmly,” she objects sharply, folding her arms crossly. “I never thought I’d hear the day when you give up on Sakura-chan like this.”

“I’m not giving up,” Syaoran retorts calmly. “But if I want to overpower her next time, I can’t exhaust my magic just by being mad.” Syaoran relaxes, the Inferno Crossbow on his arm retracting and folding back up as he takes a seat on the tree stump. “The tables have turned in my favor, this time. Now, Sakura is the super-powered sorceress, and I’m the weaker-powered one who has to trust that everything will be alright. If she wants to play my game, I guess I’ll play hers then…”

Tomoyo leans her back against a tree and closes her eyes. “I sure hope you know what you’re doing, Li-kun. With the Elixir of Fire powering her, Sakura-chan can now play your game very well. Maybe even better than you did.”

Syaoran clenches his fists in his lap. “Don’t remind me.”

*-*-*

(outside a convenience store, late that evening)

A shadow quickly zips its way onto the roof from high in the air, the orange sunlight from the horizon hardly illuminating the figure at all.

The automatic sliding doors at the front of the convenience store slide open with a ping as a tall, silver-haired boy in a tan jacket and brown slacks walks out of the convenience store, carrying two large grocery bags filled to the brim, and holding an incredibly long receipt in between his index and middle fingers.

“That should do it for the weekend,” Yukito mutters to himself, before suddenly finding himself grabbed by the collar and snagged into the air. The next thing he knows, he is on the roof of the convenience store, being held up by his collar by a muscular red claw. His eyes meet up with a pair of bioluminescent yellow eyes, clearly not human, from a dark silhouette.

“Glad you could make it, Judge,” Damien answers, revealing himself from the shade by stepping into the fluorescent glow of the convenience store sign.

Yukito shivers in Damien’s grip. He drops his groceries to the ground to try and muscle Damien’s enormous claw off his shirt, but to no avail.

“What’s the matter? Not coming out to play, are we?” Damien asks coyly.

Yukito wraps his arms around Damien’s claw to keep his shirt from ripping under the duress. “W-whatdoyouwantwithme?” he stutters fearfully.

Damien hurls Yukito aside, sending him reeling and tumbling around on the roof of the convenience store. Despite Yukito’s best attempts to stand up after this, Damien quickly floats over to where he is and places his clawed foot down on Yukito’s back, forcing his face into the concrete roof.

“I know you’re in there. Don’t make me have to open this shell up with my bare hands…” Damien threatens.

Yukito just barely lifts his head up in the general direction of his assailant. “Who, or what are you? Why are you doing this to me?!”

Damien kneels down to meet Yukito face to face. “You know exactly why I’m doing this to you. After all…” he begins, pausing for a moment to scrutinize his scaled ‘hands’. “…look at what you did to me. If anything, I’m being generous.”

“But I’ve never seen you before in my life! How could I have done anything to you?!” Yukito asks desperately, staring Damien straight in the eye.

Damien answers Yukito’s stare with one of his own, and both exchange stares until Damien’s eyes widen. “You… you really don’t know… do you?” Damien asks calmly, picking up Yukito by the shirt on his back and lifting him up to his feet.

Yukito sorely hangs in Damien’s grip. “That’s what I was trying to tell you. Look, I’m sorry for what whoever did to you, and I’d like to help you out, but I don’t know how. But whoever it is that you’re looking for, you’ve got the wrong guy.”
“No kidding…” Damien responds, staring down. “When it comes to being sick and twisted, Reed, this just takes the cake,” Damien says to Yukito, though not necessarily at him per se.

“Reed?” Yukito asks weakly before falling unconscious. A pair of silver bird wings slowly sprouts from Yukito’s back, allowing Yukito’s limp, comatose body to levitate in the air. The wings swell up and wrap around Yukito’s entire body. After an audible pulsation of energy from within the wings, the feathered veils lift away, revealing the resemblance of an angel with long silver hair, pure white robes, and nearly bare feet.

Yue gently floats down, resting his mostly bare feet on the hard stone rooftop. “You use Clow Reed’s name with confidence, demon. You must be incredibly brave,” Yue commends coldly.

Damien squints ferociously at Yue’s slight. “You would think like that. Your very existence is like venom to me, yet you’re nothing but Reed’s pet angel. I can’t say I’m surprised.”

“Reed’s pet angel?” Yue asks in disgust. “And what foul abomination do you serve, if I may ask?” Yue fires off, but he quickly finds Damien’s claws grasping strong hold of his robes and pulling him face-to-face with Damien.

“Look, Pretty-Boy, I didn’t track you down to debate semantics with you,” Damien insists. “How much has your master told you of one named Kaos Gin?”

Yue turns his head sharply away from Damien. “Nothing. Clow Reed is the greatest sorcerer to ever walk this earth. All others are but footnotes in history.”

“Sounds like propaganda to me…” Damien responds. “…though I guess it explains your laxity when it comes to your new master… the Cherry Blossom,” he mutters.

Damien’s comment, no matter how soft-spoken, had struck such a chord against Yue that he turns his eyes sharply in the man-dragon’s direction. With a quick sweep of his arms, Yue clears Damien’s grip from his clothes and backs away, hovering in the air. “What are you up to?! If you have a problem with Clow, leave Sakura out of it!”

Damien shakes his head. “Too late. The wheels of destiny are in motion. Besides, nothing I could do to her could ever compare what Reed did to us.”

“Us? Who is ‘us’?” Yue asks.

Damien folds his arms. “Honestly, what kind of rock did Reed hide you under that you don’t remember any of this?! Let’s just say that your master wasn’t the only sorcerer who dabbled in enchanted cards. And he certainly wasn’t the best.”

“I’d imagine that this is where your own over-boasted master comes into the picture,” Yue snipes. “But still, what does this have to do with Sakura? She is done with Clow Reed. The Clow Cards belong to her now. It’s over.”

“This has nothing to do with the Clow Cards… but everything to do with Reed!” Damien replies furiously, quickly turning his back and whipping Yue backwards viciously with his powerful crocodile-like tail.

Yue takes the blow across his chest, sending him reeling through the air until he winds up levitating over the buildings on the opposite side of the street from the convenience store. After recovering from the ferocious strike, he whips his arms out and his palms glow. In his palms appears a pair of levitating blue glowing orbs. “Malicious devil! Are you trying to tell me that this threat on Sakura’s life is merely to spite Clow?” Yue asks forcibly. “I won’t let you…” By whipping his hands forwards, Yue unleashes a torrent of ice crystals headed straight for Damien. Damien responds by holding his ground confidently, as the ice melts away around him, before it smashes into him and potentially slices him into ribbons. The water splashes onto his scales and boils to steam, leaving a stream of humid vapor to fly right past Damien’s body.

Damien shakes his head with building frustration. “So now it’s spite? You just love to assume the worst, don’t you, Reed-lover? As easy as it would be for a superior Guardian, like me, to do, I don’t have time to match powers with you. But if you truly want to know the answers to your questions, then you’ll follow me…” Damien instructs calmly. Damien then lunges upwards straight into the air like a rocket, and Yue takes flight after him in hot pursuit. However, Yue can barely keep up with Damien as he attempts to catch him.

Soaring up into the clouds, Damien holds his position, seemingly thousands of feet off the ground. The bright neon lights of the street where they were fighting over appear as but twinkling stars below.

“This had better be good, creature. You test my patience enough with your arrogance alone, but I will allow none to speak ill of my former master,” Yue warns, meeting eyes with Damien.

Damien gulps down deeply, swallowing his pride before responding. “My master, like yours, has two Guardian Beasts. Your … Kerberos, if memory serves, is your counterpart in protecting the Clow Cards. In the same way, I also work with another Guardian Beast. My counterpart is called Lycan. We had a delicate plan that, if successful, could complete a work that our dear master attempted to finish. But unfortunately, Lycan has gone horribly off-track. I’m worried that he might try and kill your Cherry Blossom.”

Yue squints at Damien’s sincerest explanation of his situation. “There is truly no honor among thieves then. Why is your partner my problem?”

Damien furiously balls up his claw and shakes a scaled fist at Yue. “Do you have something stuck in your ears?! Lycan is going to kill your master, and as much as I hate you, I gave you a heads-up. But I guess that Reed’s flunkies aren’t any brighter than the Big Cheese they kiss up to. You care more about the name of your former master far more than the safety of your new master. It’s clear to me now that I’ve wasted my time here,” Damien concludes, turning his back on Yue.

Yue spreads out his wings in an impressive display of wingspan. “I concur. You did waste your time here,” Yue replies. “Your partner isn’t a Guardian of Clow Reed, making him weak, as are you. This is why you had to come to a real Guardian. But nonetheless, if you think that Yue the Judge is your errand boy, whom you can boss about at will, then you’re an even greater fool than I expected. Your ‘Lycan’ is not my problem. I will continue to protect Sakura, but I refuse to fight your battles.”

Damien scratches at his head in frustration, tugging at his crimson red hair and tearing out large clumps, much to even the unshakable Yue’s shock. “No, Yue. You’re the fool. I gave you a warning. Lycan is coming after the Cherry Blossom, and you don’t even care. You’re not just as stupid and arrogant as your master. You’re also just as heartless.” Damien looks back at Yue and stares him right in the eye, noticing Yue’s typical stoic return stare. Damien’s orange magical aura grows greatly as his red hair begins to fall from his scalp, greatly thinning his hair and revealing his tanned scalp right above his forehead.

Yue folds his arms. “If you think this convoluted mutation of yours is going to make me more likely to assist you, I’m afraid you’re sorely mistaken of who you’re dealing with.”

Damien squints suspiciously. “Yes. Yes, Yue. A mutation. A mutation that exists because of YOU!” Damien accuses viciously, stunning Yue with the sheer force of the accusation. “Because Reed created you, I became obsolete. You weren’t truly the first Guardian of the Clow. It was I who was to be by Kerberos’ side. Reed and Gin were to be a team. But Reed felt the need to stab my master in the back. To abandon me, and to create you. To take the glory of Clow and hog it all to himself! And as your magic gets stronger and stronger, it destroys me slowly and painfully. You’ve been unknowingly killing me for the past two hundred years. Yet when I attempt to bring you this warning, not for Reed, not for Kaos, but for the Cherry Blossom herself… all I get is you spitting in my face. Well…” Damien rants, holding out his hands on opposite sides of himself, pouring the orange aura around his body into his palms, creating two flaming javelins, one in each hand. Damien grabs these javelins and strikes a pose for combat. “…it ends here, Yue. If requesting your aid won’t work, I’ll destroy you. And with your existence no longer plaguing me, I just might have a prayer of defeating Lycan myself. I’ll protect the Cherry Blossom better than you ever could!”

Yue shuts his eyes and calmly traces a blue arc through the air. “You have made three mistakes here, Damien. Your first was to spout such blasphemous lies about Clow Reed. Your second was to take up arms against me. And your third was to assume guardianship over my new master. When I’m through with you, your power will be nothing but a faint memory, just like your master.”

“Let’s dance,” Damien shoots back, tossing the spears at Yue, which Yue easily evades by strafing in midair.

Yue takes aim with a shimmering blue magical arrow, aiming it straight at Damien’s heart. He fires the arrow, but a burst of orange energy flares up around Damien’s body, vaporizing the arrow in a blast of magical heat.

Damien charges this magical energy around his body, focusing it with both his hands into a single sphere of energy. The flames extend take the form of a burning spear with a molten metal blade that flows like fire itself. Damien stares at Yue with murderous determination as he rushes forward with his mighty lance in hand, but Yue cracks a completely unseen and lightning-fast chop across Damien’s stomach, stunning Damien and vaporizing his weapon. Shocked by both the force of chop and the magical expenditure of generating and losing such a large weapon, Damien hangs in midair for a split second before he begins to plummet to the ground. Before Damien can fall too far, Yue catches Damien by the throat, pulling him up to eye level and staring him down.

“You may be willing to destroy me, but I will not stoop to your level. You have but one chance to make your case, so listen closely or I will reduce you to the dust from whence you came. You will take me to Sakura right now. You will show me exactly what the danger is that she is in. And you will not double-cross me, lest I need to finish where I left off. If this ‘Lycan’ that you mention is also there, he is not my problem, nor will I make efforts to defeat him, save those necessary to keep Sakura out of danger. Am I making myself perfectly clear?”

Damien breathes heavily with exhaustion as the rage that was in his eyes vaporizes, just as easily as his weapon had done earlier. “Maybe… you’re not… quite the jerk… that I pegged you to be… at first…” he spits out piecemeal. “And you can… rest assured that… if we ever do… fight again… …I won’t go… so easy… on you… But for now… follow me… I’ll… show you… I’ll show you everything…”

Yue stares into Damien’s eyes, noticing the dissipation of Damien’s rage. He stares further, trying to find even a hint of dishonesty in Damien’s eyes and soul, but to no avail.

*-*-*

(the dark forest)

Syaoran swings his arm wildly, clearing through the low-hanging foliage, bushes, and vines in his path, proceeding through the path carved by the glowing red beak of the active Inferno Crossbow. Looking around, he comes to a familiar clearing, where Tomoyo sits on a cut-off tree stump in wait.
Tomoyo looks unenthusiastically back at Syaoran. “Still stuck?”
Syaoran slouches back against a tree with a loud groan. “Yeah, pretty much.”

Tomoyo turns her gaze out into the infinite depth of the forest. “This is insane. How long could it take Sakura-chan to capture a card? Even a Kaos Card shouldn’t have taken her this long to defeat.”

“She must be toying with it,” Syaoran observes. “Just torturing Mirage before finally sealing her off.”

Tomoyo perks up at catching another one of Syaoran’s Freudian slips. “Her?”
Syaoran blushes for a split second. “It. Before finally sealing it off,” Syaoran corrects himself subtly.

Tomoyo looks away from Syaoran, almost in fear of asking her next question. “A-are you… Do you feel compassion for a Kaos Card? I thought you hated them all.”

Syaoran grits his teeth tightly, but Tomoyo doesn’t notice. “I feel sorry for anyone or anything that has to confront Sakura when she’s like she is now… even for a Kaos Card,” Syaoran responds grimly

Tomoyo, eager to change the conversation, looks down at her wristwatch. She taps on the face of the digital watch with frustration, as even the seconds digits remain frozen in place. “No good. I can’t even tell how long we’ve been here. My watch is still busted.”

Tomoyo stares up into the trees. Hardly any light can penetrate the thick forest. It is at this moment that Syaoran notices Tomoyo’s observation. Syaoran reaches into an inner jacket pocket and pulls out a yellow ofuda, rolled up like a miniature scroll. Gathering sticks and vines from on the ground, he kneels down in the middle of the clearing and arranges the sticks into a pile, unrolls the ofuda and places it over the center. At Syaoran’s intense stare, the ofuda catches fire, igniting the makeshift fireplace and casting long, dark shadows across the forest. Syaoran stands to his feet and surveys the forest again with the aid of the fire’s light, but the darkness of the forest remains impregnable.

“Sit tight, Daidouji-san. Looks like we could be spending the night,” Syaoran tells Tomoyo.

Tomoyo responds by walking over near to the fire and kneeling in front of it. She sticks out her hands a short distance from her body to warm herself by the fire.

“Li-kun…” Tomoyo begins, catching Syaoran’s attention. “…what are we going to do about Sakura-chan? Isn’t there any way to stop her from acting like such a brat without hurting her?”

Syaoran kneels beside Tomoyo and folds his arms. He stares deeply into the fire, remaining silent for a seemingly eternally-long moment in time. “There are ways. There have to be ways. Clow Reed defeated Kaos Gin the first time the Kaos Cards appeared, and I’ll just have to give Sakura the same treatment as Clow gave Kaos,” he answers.

Tomoyo begins to smile, complying with the soundness of Syaoran’s logic regarding the situation. “And you are, after all, a descendant of Clow Reed. If anyone can save Sakura-chan, it’s you.”

Syaoran lets out a deep sigh as he pulls his knees up to his chin, as his pondering strays towards the facts of cold, hard reality. “But it’s not going to be that easy for me. It’s not a question of power, but whether I can bring myself to do what has to be done. She’s going to fight me. And the only true way to stop her is to do exactly what Clow Reed did to Kaos. But I don’t know if I can do that to Sakura.” Syaoran holds up his right hand, fingering at the bandages wrapped tightly around his palm. “I can’t raise my hand to her. No, I won’t. Not again. I couldn’t live with myself if… if I…” Syaoran continues, but he trails off at the end.

Tomoyo glances back over at Syaoran, noticing his attention fixed on his apparently wounded hand. “Li-kun, level with me. Your hand. What’d you do to it?” Tomoyo asks, pointing out Syaoran’s bandages.

Syaoran unwraps the bandage around his hand, coiling the bandage in a ring around his fingers. Before removing the last of the bandages, he glances at Tomoyo out the corner of his eye. “Just remember, you asked…” he warns, receiving a comprehending nod from Tomoyo as a cue to remove the last of his bandages. Syaoran turns his palm face-up, revealing deep welts charred into his flesh, like from a cattle prod. The scabs appear to spell out something across Syaoran’s palm, but Tomoyo can’t quite decipher the characters, apparently never having seen them before.
“Chinese?” Tomoyo asks, answered by a nod from Syaoran.

“It’s a ceremonial rite of mourning. When a Li does something they’re ashamed of, they mark a burn into their skin,” Syaoran answers grimly, balling his hand up into a fist. “I hit her. I… I couldn’t believe what came over me. It was inexcusable. What I did.”

Tomoyo reaches out to Syaoran and gently places her hand on his wrist. “You know, they say you always hurt the one you love most. You weren’t being mean or cruel to her. You knew what you were doing. You love Sakura-chan, and you couldn’t bear to see what the Elixir of Fire was doing to her innocent heart. A good parent gives the same loving discipline to a foolish child. Don’t beat yourself up over it.”

After a long pause and some deep thought, Syaoran rolls his eyes in Tomoyo’s direction. “Hey, where do you get all this touchy-feely junk anyway? Do you carry a desk calendar around with you or something?” he asks curiously.

Tomoyo cracks a smile. “It’s my summer assignment. I chose parental psychology for my subject. I finished it in the first two weeks of vacation.”

Syaoran raises his eyebrow. “You’re weird…” he comments, getting an innocent giggle out of Tomoyo.

Suddenly, Syaoran’s and Tomoyo’s chummy conversation is interrupted by a loud explosion and a bright blast of flame, casting dark shadows all across the forest from the few trees that weren’t instantly incinerated by the blast. The explosion rocks the very ground, easily claiming Syaoran’s and Tomoyo’s attentions. The two take cover behind a large tree trunk off to their left, on their side of the explosion.

Tomoyo glances up meekly at Syaoran. “Did Sakura-chan catch Mirage just now?” she whispers.

Syaoran puts his finger in front of his mouth, hushing Tomoyo down. He peeks around the tree and raises his right arm, ready to call on the Inferno Crossbow at a moment’s notice. He overhears some chatter over the crackling of the fire.

“Well that was brilliantly explosive. If this ‘Ritieru Wurufu’ creature that we need in order to save Sakura was around here, then you may as well have incinerated him with your magic spears,” one of the voices, clearly male and with somewhat of a sophisticated accent, comments sarcastically.

“Just zip it, Reed-lover,” the second voice, a familiar one to both Syaoran and Tomoyo, answers back. “And it’s Riteru Wurufu, for your information.”

“Run this by me one more time: you’re looking for this ‘Riteru Wurufu’ because it has an incredible amount of magic and conveniently also seems to wish that Sakura be kept safe from this ‘Lycan’ you keep telling me about. But if Sakura is already in as much danger as you say she is, why are we wasting our time on this little scavenger hunt?”

“Ugh. Look, what part of ‘zip it’ confuses you?”

Syaoran, having eavesdropped for more than long enough to identify the voices, backs away from the edge of the tree trunk. He shakes his head with utter confusion at the thought.

“Come on out, Little Wolf. You’re not fooling anyone, hiding behind that tree. I can feel the Inferno Crossbow from over here,” Damien’s voice calls out.

Syaoran darts out from behind the tree, with his Inferno Crossbow raised and poised to fire its blazing dart, but he lowers his arm slightly as he notices the two beings before him. His jaw hangs down in shock. “…It’s you!”

*-*-*

Sakura casts her piercing glances around the forest as she totes her mighty Kaos-halberd around. But Sakura suddenly stops as the shadows of the forest lift off the ground and take form behind her. Sakura closes her eyes as her pursuer takes form behind her.

“Dilly-dallying much, are we, Kinomoto Sakura?” the deep, bellowing voice asks rhetorically as the shadows take Lycan’s shape. Lycan’s massive frame places his masked face right in the tree branches, so he lowers his head down, breathing warm, noxious gusts through Sakura’s hair from behind.
Sakura refuses to turn around, but she does glance out the corner of her eye. “Well, well. Better late than never. You almost missed the whole show. Frankly, I was wondering whether you were gonna’ show up or not… Lycie-chan…” Sakura snipes.

Lycan squints in anger for a split second. “There’s been a change of plans. We’re not alone in this forest anymore. Damien has penetrated the magic barrier… and he brought some unwanted company.”Sakura rolls her eyes. “Don’t tell me. You want me to make them gone,” she guesses. She turns around sharply and swings the Nightmare right at Lycan, who doesn’t flinch at all. Sakura ceases her swing with incredible control, right before the Nightmare’s blade smashes into Lycan’s bone mask, noticing Lycan’s cold stoicism as she locks eyes with the beast. “Well I may be your Card Captor, but I’m not your mercenary, Lycie-chan. I’ll deal with your little insubordinate later, when I’m good and ready.” She lowers the Nightmare out of Lycan’s face and pats Lycan pejoratively on the mask before turning away from the shady monster. “I’ll have my fun at Mirage’s expense, and until then, you can do your own dirty work!” Sakura adds sharply, but only to be bowled over from behind by a massive backhanded claw, sending her face-first into the dirt. Sakura lifts her head slightly off the ground, but before she can stand up, she feels a large heavy paw weighing her down, nearly crushing her flat had it not been for the aura of the Elixir of Fire protecting her.

Lycan lowers his head down to Sakura’s ear, and Sakura struggles to turn her head to stare Lycan back in the eye. Lycan squints furiously. “Let me make things crystal clear. I am not a weak Guardian, like your former Guardians of Clow. I am not a sympathetic Guardian, like Keroberos. And I am most certainly not your friend, like that imbecilic Xiaolang. I care of but two things in this world: the orders of Lord Kaos himself, and results. See that you provide more of the latter, lest I have to dispose of you along with that turncoat, Damien… and his would-be ally, Yue.” After his long-winded speech, Lycan lets his paw off Sakura’s back and allows his Card Captor to stand to her feet, picking up the Nightmare on the way up.

“Yue?” Sakura asks in disbelief. “Hm. Y’know, now that I think of it, I do owe him a beating. If Yue gets in your way, I could see taking him out being personally gratifying…” she begins, before turning to face Lycan. “But first thing’s first, finishing up with Mirage.”

Lycan hangs his head and sighs a deep, bestial sigh. “I suppose the saying is true…” Lycan begins, as thin black strings shoot right out of his body and circle around Sakura.

Sakura takes a step back and holds up the Nightmare defensively, swinging at the black cords and slicing many of them up, but even with a wide, slashing motion, the strands keep closing in on her. The thin lines wrap around Sakura’s wrists and pull her arms out in opposite directions, nearly ripping her arms off, and snatching the Nightmare right out of Sakura’s hands, tossing it aside like a toy. Sakura grunts powerfully, trying to fight off the tight pull of the mysterious strings, but to no avail.

“…If you want something done right, you have to do it yourself,” Lycan continues. “Dominion Card, exorcise the Elixir of Fire!”

“Dominion?!” Sakura shouts back, not noticing a group of strands sneaking up behind her and stabbing her right in the back. Screaming loudly, her eyes and mouth begin to glow bright orange, as more and more of the strands that emerge from Lycan’s body home in on Sakura’s heart and penetrate right through to her core. Finally, the bright energy of the Elixir of Fire launches out of Sakura’s eyes and mouth, refocusing and reconsolidating itself back into the bottle on the lanyard around Sakura’s neck. With the bottle refilled, the glow dies down and Sakura falls limp.

Lycan leans in closer towards Sakura, examining his fainted Card Captor. To no surprise of Lycan’s, Sakura opens her eyes. Lacking either her normal exuberance or the tainted orange glare of the Elixir of Fire in her eyes, Sakura’s eyes are covered over with pitch black pupils, as a new power takes control of her. Her voice cracks and groans as she begins to speak.“I-I-… I will… do your bidding… Kaos-sama…” Sakura mutters.

Lycan squints with a sense of accomplishment. “First, end Mirage. Her treachery has set us back too far. Make her power yours to command…” Lycan instructs monotonously.

The strands around Sakura’s arms recede, allowing Sakura to fall to her knees. The strands retract into Lycan’s body, but not before one of the strands snakes across the forest floor and grabs hold of the Nightmare, holding it up for Sakura to grab. Sakura responds by slowly but surely picking the Nightmare up, into her hands.

After a moment of standing statue-still, Sakura quickly takes the Nightmare into both hands and spins backwards, cleaving the sickle right through a thick tree behind her. The tree trunk explodes into fragments of wood around the area of the impact, and a Sakura-looking silhouette that was apparently leaning backwards against the opposite side of the shattered tree is thrown forwards by the explosive impact.

Lycan paces forward in the direction of the fallen Sakura-looking girl and he lowers his head. “You’ve evaded us for too long, Mirage. But we need your powers back. The time approaches quickly.”

Mirage struggles back to her feet, leaning against another tree to pull herself up and lean her shoulder against. While getting up her eyes meet with Lycan’s red stare, causing her to stand stiffly still, trapped like a rat in Lycan’s deep stare. “Lycan-sama…” she mutters faintly. She turns back away and tries to run, but she collapses on her hands and knees in sore exhaustion, breathing heavily.

Sakura paces towards Mirage in a complete trance. With the Nightmare in hand, she twirls the halberd around with two hands until it transforms back into the skull-tipped Key of Kaos.
The next thing Mirage realizes is that she is being tugged to her feet from behind, being dragged up by the collar of her sweater and turned to face her pursuer.

“Turn and face me. I want to see your eyes close shut one last time before you are sealed…” Lycan’s voice says to Mirage, but only on closer inspection did Mirage realize that Sakura was actually the one who just spoke. Mirage also stares into Sakura’s eyes, blacked out completely by the effect of Dominion.

“You…” Mirage begins, looking back at Lycan. “You used Dominion on your own Card Captor? You’re unforgivable! You’re insane!” she chides, despite clearly being in no position to say anything against Lycan.

Lycan lets out a low and incredibly disturbing chuckle of amusement. “There is no such thing as ‘sane’ and ‘insane’. There are but two factions of all beings in the universe: those who are powerful, and those who are not. At least one of us knows where they stand…”

That is the last thing Mirage hears before a beak of bone collides with her forehead. Her eyes glass over and her body glows of orange energy. “Help… me… Gin-sama…” she whispers softly before getting cut off on account of her body dissolving into magical energy and then taking the form of a card, which subsequently floats into the walking-comatose Sakura’s right hand.

After Mirage had reverted back to being a Kaos Card, Lycan shuts his eyes in the silence of the moment. “However, Mirage, power is never absolute. Those with power are so because they strive to become even more powerful. It is often dangerous, indeed, but always necessary. And for the powers of Kaos to increase once again, there are but two more pieces of the puzzle to collect…”

Sakura holds up the Mirage Card. It shows the image of a hook-toothed bat with wing membranes that turn into fire at the edges.

*-*-*

Syaoran lowers his Inferno Crossbow’s aim and lets his arm hang down as he stares on in shock. “Yue…” he says softly.

Syaoran and Yue remain locked in their gazes at each other.

“You…” Yue answers Syaoran back.

Damien folds his muscular, scaly arms. “Well, I see you’ve met the Little Wolf already. I guess that saves me the trouble of introducing you two.”

Yue turns his head sharply in Damien’s direction. “Are you trying to tell me that Li Syaoran is the Little Wolf that you’ve hired as your Card Captor?” he asks loudly.

“Of course. ‘Riteru Wurufu’ in my tongue translates to ‘Xiao Lang’ in yours, after all. Why? Jealous much?” Damien asks coyly, his arms folded smugly over his chest.

Yue turns away from Damien and stares Syaoran down again. “Hmph, hardly. I defeated Li Syaoran in his sad attempt at passing the Final Judgment. I’m just noticing how you lesser Guardians have to scrape the bottom of the barrel for your Card Captors.” Yue refocuses his piercing stare back on Damien.

Syaoran raises an eyebrow. “Y’know, I’m standing right here…” he intervenes meekly.

“You won’t be standing for much longer, Xiaolang…” a thunderous voice echoes out from all around, catching everyone there by surprise, with Syaoran being far from the least shocked.

Damien turns his head around rapidly. “Lycan! It’s you! What do you want, now?!” he calls out.

Yue rolls his eyes. “This ought to be good…” he remarks sarcastically.

Tomoyo is startled to the bone. Surrounded by a warped forest and with violently powerful Guardian Beasts all around her, she backs up against a tree for a speck of refuge.

Yue remains still, his eyes closed and his arms folded, hardly intimidated, much less impressed.

Syaoran points his Inferno Crossbow out into the woods. Not seeing anything, he paces slowly and cautiously outside the crater, keeping his guard up and all six of his senses as sharp as daggers. Still seeing nothing around, he turns back towards Tomoyo, Yue, and Damien, but all of a sudden, he is brought to his knees by a sharp jab in the back of his knees, forcing him down, accompanied with an arm wrapping around his neck.

“Sakura-chan, what are you doing?!” Tomoyo calls out, though not getting a response from Syaoran’s speechless assailant.

Syaoran begins to realize who had jumped him as he feels a slender, sweater-clothed arm around his neck. He vainly grabs at the yet unidentified figure’s arm, trying to pull his head up and struggle against the grip, but he can’t budge his attacker an inch. He begins to run short of breath as his face tightens.

Sakura had caught Syaoran in a tight, left-armed headlock, while holding up the Nightmare’s scythe in her right hand. She brings the blade closer and closer to Syaoran’s neck at a tediously slow yet methodical pace. Syaoran takes note of the approaching blade with wide eyes.

Damien stares a hole through Sakura, having seen her face for the very first time, and being caught in deep shock. “No… She’s the Cherry Blossom that Lycan chose as his Card Captor? It can’t be her… Anyone but her…” Damien mutters under his breath.

Yue overhears Damien’s muttered musings. “What is that supposed to mean?” he asks.

The shady darkness pours out of the forest and assumes Lycan’s enormous form, beside Sakura and Syaoran. Lycan leans his head down once again to come into eye contact with his audience, but particularly glaring at Damien. “Heh heh heh… I told Xiaolang that he wouldn’t be standing for much longer. Brought to his knees by his ‘true number one’. How poetic,” Lycan begins, basking in the overflowing irony.

Yue unfolds his arms and examines Lycan’s figure for the first time. “So you’re this ‘Lycan’ I’ve been hearing so much about. Though I can’t say I’m impressed if all you can do is rematerialize out of the shadows in an attempt to frighten me. But hearing that you are yet another part of this conspiracy to steal my master is inexcusable,” Yue tells Lycan. Meanwhile, he draws his hand through the air, leaving a blue arc of cold fire. He grabs hold of this arc like a bow with his left hand, and holds his right hand up to the sky. In his right hand appears a meter-long white arrow, made of pure and refined magical energy, which Yue methodically draws over his bow. Taking aim at Lycan’s mask, Yue releases the magic arrow. The arrow quickly sings through the air and it scores a devastating hit, impaling Lycan’s right eye and causing him to scream out with an ear-splitting roar as he flails his head. As Lycan thrashes about like a wounded animal, most of the length of the arrow sticks out of Lycan’s mask.

Damien leans his head over Yue’s shoulder. “Well, you’ve got some serious guts to pull something like that off…”

Yue shuts his eyes and cracks the resemblance of a smile. “Why, thank you,” he answers aloofly.

Damien leans away from Yue in response. “But not a lot of brains! You just took a potshot at the one who holds all the cards!” Damien retorts.

Momentarily, Lycan ceases his charade of thrashing around and stares ahead with his remaining red eye fixed on Yue. With a dark bellow of rage and madness, the white arrow sinks slowly into Lycan’s eye like quicksand, much to even Yue’s astonishment, as Lycan’s eye appears to swallow the arrow whole, and in disturbing fashion to boot. After the arrow had fully vanished into Lycan’s eye, Lycan appears to blink with his left eye until the red glow returns.

“And how right you are, Damien,” Lycan responds. “Well, maybe not all the cards yet, but we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. First, I’ve been waiting and waiting to speak to this Yue for a very, very long time…”

Yue stares on blankly, but he tries his best to maintain his stoic poker face. “So you have some power, Lycan. Frankly, from all that I’ve heard of you, I would be disappointed if that did work.”

Lycan chuckles at Yue. “Well then I’m glad that I don’t disappoint your high expectations. I sincerely wish I had the opportunity to further demonstrate my full capabilities. But, alas, I’m here on strict business,” he explains, before returning his attention to his fellow Guardian of Kaos. “Damien, you couldn’t even find a being capable of defeating me. How pitiful. And yet, how desperate. I told you that the despair would be yours, did I not? Witness how my promises ring true…” he says, turning his head slightly in the direction of Syaoran and the possessed Sakura.

At the conclusion of Lycan’s semi-rant, Sakura monotonously reaffirms her chokehold on Syaoran, causing him to cough and gasp for air. At this reapplication of Sakura’s choke, Syaoran’s shirt brushes up against something rigid and misshapen under Sakura’s sweater. All he can feel from it is a pulsation of warmth. Coming to the realization of the implications, his slowly closing eyelids snap wide open.

Syaoran powers through his suffocation, eventually muscling himself to his feet with pure adrenaline and a blood-curdling shout, much to everyone’s surprise. Having stood to his feet fully, thus also lifting Sakura off her own feet and putting her whole weight on his throat, Syaoran quickly backs straight into a tree behind him. Sakura’s head smashes into the tree and suddenly her grip falls limp. Sakura falls to the ground unconscious, while Syaoran plummets to his knees, sucking in some much-needed breaths of fresh air. But after Syaoran regains his lost wind, he turns straight towards Lycan and lances a stare right into his abyssal form.
“What did you do to her, Lycan?!” Syaoran shouts forcefully. “You did something to Sakura to take control of her. I know you did! The way you manipulate your own Card Captor is disgusting!”

Lycan turns his head sharply, his red eyes meeting with Syaoran’s amber pupils for a split second before Syaoran finds himself sailing backwards, with three fresh slash marks across his t-shirt. “One at a time, Xiaolang, heh heh heh…” Lycan chides sadistically, though he shows no signs of actually having to have lifted a limb to throw his attack, as if he lashed out at Syaoran with his very will.

Tomoyo clasps her hand over her mouth, trying not to scream out and draw unnecessary attention to herself, lest she join Sakura and Syaoran comatose on the ground.

“So effortless…” Damien mutters in astonishment.

Yue paces past Damien, closer to Lycan. “I’ll finish this-” Yue begins before he feels a burning grip around his arm. Looking back, he sees Damien grabbing forcefully at his arm, his sheer muscle strength enough to snap Yue’s comparatively frail arm in half, were it not for Yue’s magically-superhuman fortitude.

Damien snarls at Yue. “And what do you think you can do, Reed-lover? He tossed the Little Wolf around like a rag doll, and he didn’t even move a muscle to do it. Face it, you don’t stand a chance.”

Yue shakes his arm free of Damien’s grip and butts foreheads with the fiery-tempered Guardian of Kaos. “I’m getting really tired of that Reed-lover thing, you cur…”

“What’s the matter?” Damien snaps back. “You realized that you’re truly powerless when it comes fulfilling your sworn duty to protect your new master? Or are you just afraid that you’re the obsolete one and not me?”

“Obsolete?!” Yue asks in astonished shock. “How DARE you!”

“How dare I?” Damien replies. “How dare you, you despicable, ignorant, callous sonofa-”

“STOP IT!” a shrill girl’s voice yells out over Yue’s and Damien’s bickering. Suddenly, all conscious eyes fall on a hyperventilating Tomoyo.

“Why are you two fighting? Sakura-chan and Li-kun are in danger, and all you two care about is your petty rivalry because your respective masters didn’t like each other?” Tomoyo says accusingly towards Damien and Yue equally. “Between the two of you, you’re four centuries old, yet you’re babbling about like a couple of four-year-olds.” She then focuses her attentions toward Damien. “Damien-san, you say that you don’t want Sakura-chan to get hurt. You told me that the plan that Kaos Gin gave to you required Sakura-chan to live. I can’t say I agree with your motives, but I don’t want Sakura-chan to be hurt either, so can we at least share that much of a common goal for just this once? We all share a common enemy, and while I can’t help Yue-san fight Lycan”

Damien leans his head down in frustrated shame.

Tomoyo then refocuses on Yue. “Yue-san, I’ll admit to not knowing anything about who Clow Reed really was, or wasn’t, or what he was like. But that’s not important. It’s admirable that you defend your creator’s name, but what would he say to you if you let Sakura-chan get hurt because you were too busy defending his honor? Yue-san, I beg of you to put off this rivalry with Damien. You both need each other’s help because no matter how strong Clow-san created you, you’re both stronger as a team than you are as individuals.”

Damien smugly folds his arms and immaturely sticks his tongue out at Yue, only for Yue’s hand to fly up and grab a crippling hold of Damien’s tongue and twist it like a rag, causing Damien to shout out loudly.

In the background, Lycan squints his eyes narrowly, mentally focusing in on Tomoyo. “The girl is wise beyond her years. I’d best keep an eye on her. She could pose a threat to Lord Kaos’ plan later…” Lycan thinks to himself.

“Indeed…”

Lycan hears the subtle, dark voice in the back of his mind. “Lord Kaos? You have never contacted me while on an assignment before. Have our plans changed again?”

“No, no, no, all is as it should be. But do keep an eye on the Daidouji girl. Your suspicions are right, that she could threaten the plan.”

“Should I eliminate her?”

“No, leave her be, for now. Simply retrieve the objective, conduct your transaction, and return. It is not time yet. And dangerous things happen to those who deviate from the plan…”

“Case in point, what should be done about my… partner? He seems to be in a less-than-cooperative mood.”

“Yes, yes, hence my change in plan. At any rate, our primary objective is to retrieve the last card. It is imperative that we acquire it soon. Do whatever you need, barring your own destruction, to get it back. If you are lost now, everything is for naught.”
“Heh… Trust me, I’m not too worried about that. These… children can’t even touch me.”

“Then you are a fool, to underestimate Damien, Yue, and above all… Xiaolang.”

“With all due respect, Xiaolang is but a little boy. I do not fear him.”

“I assure you, you have never encountered a being quite like Xiaolang in your long, illustrious existence. As you know full well, the most dangerous individual is the one who feels he has nothing to lose. So congratulations for creating your own worst enemy.”

“Permission to terminate?”

“If the need arises …eliminate the disposable resistance. Few expenses can be spared, as time continues to run thin.”

“Understood.”

The red glow returns to Lycan’s eyes as he departs from his trance, only to find Yue and Damien staring him down with an ice arrow and a fire javelin in hand respectively.

Damien glances at Yue out the corner of his eye. “What do you say we get this party started?” Damien beckons toyingly.

“Just try to keep up,” Yue retorts with a return glance.

Lycan lowers himself to the ground, bracing himself for combat. “Meh heh heh heh heh heh heh… I’ve been waiting and waiting for an excuse to get my claws dirty for a loooooong time. Keep an eye out, Damien. I’ll pluck what I want from your ashes if I have to.”

Yue keeps his eyes fixed with Lycan. “What is he talking about?”

Damien likewise keeps his eyes glued on Lycan’s slippery, shady form. “I’ve got a pretty good idea,” he answers, nodding his head confidently.

“Care to share?” Yue asks.

“Later!” Damien responds back quickly.

Before Damien can answer properly, Lycan takes off in a long lunge towards Damien and Yue. Damien takes an over-handed swing at Lycan with his spear, but before he connects, Lycan’s form splits off into several specter-like copies that all dodge the attack before dissipating into the air, sending Damien’s lunging swing straight into the ground. Before Damien can pull his spear back up, he finds himself planted face-first into the dirt, courtesy of a slash across the back.

Yue notices Damien fall over, but still can’t find Lycan’s exact location. He quickly chops through the air with his hand, leaving a blue, bowlike streak, which he grabs a hold of. Raising the one arrow in his hand above his head, the arrow quickly replicates repeatedly until an entire quiver of blue arrows fills his hand. He draws the entire handful of arrows across his bow simultaneously, aiming it about and looking for Lycan. However, Yue meets a similar fate as Damien, planted by a slash out of nowhere from behind.

Damien struggles to his feet, as does Yue. Damien grits his fanged teeth in frustration as he smashes his reptilian fist into the ground. “Grr, this is getting us absolutely nowhere!”

“How right you are, Guardian of Destruction,” Lycan’s voice echoes out across the forest sadistically.

As Yue and Damien continue to keep Lycan somewhat occupied, Tomoyo leapfrogs behind the trees, keeping her distance from the actual combat, all while working her way to Syaoran. Slinking out from behind the tree which Syaoran had been slammed against by Lycan earlier, Tomoyo grabs hold of Syaoran by the shoulders, shaking him as firmly as she can. “Please, Li-kun, Yue-san and Damien-san need your help. Sakura-chan needs your help. Lycan is fighting against Yue-san and Damien-san right now, and they’re both losing.”

During the battle, as Damien climbs fully to his feet, his pupils suddenly blank out, causing him to freeze in place. Yue notices.

“And if Yue-san and Damien-san lose…” Tomoyo continues, hopelessly explaining the situation to a still comatose Syaoran. “…then something terrible will happen to Sakura-chan. Li-kun, I know you can hear me. Please wake up.”

“What?! Damien, what happened?” Yue vainly asks Damien concerning his sudden statue-like state before Yue’s eyes also go black, causing him to hang his head back and levitate limply in midair.

Tomoyo continues to shake Syaoran weakly by the shoulders until she finally sees faint signs of Syaoran twitching his fingers. Tomoyo’s eyes open wide, but before she can examine Syaoran closely, her eyes open even wider as an arm wraps around her neck and a strong yet slender hand covers her mouth. “MAMUMAMAAM!” Tomoyo shouts through the muffling hand covering her mouth. Sakura had regained consciousness, somewhat, and had ambushed Tomoyo, putting her in a headlock and gagging her with her bare hands. Tomoyo can only watch as deep quadruped footprints pace slowly in her direction, followed by Lycan’s slowly materializing form.

Lycan leans in towards Tomoyo. “Well, well. Look who wants to play heroine. Normally, a mere human would be below my attentions, but right now I’m on strict orders. I can’t have you waking up Xiaolang so he can ruin all my fun, now can I? You’re a smart girl. Of course you understand, don’t you?” Lycan patronizes. With a shift in the direction of the shine in Lycan’s red eyes, Sakura takes the cue to take her hand off Tomoyo’s speechless mouth and to loosen the chokehold.

Tomoyo breathes heavily at first. “You’re nothing but a cowardly bully! I’m not afraid of you! What did you do to Sakura-chan?”

Lycan tilts his head, closely examining the pitiful human girl at his mercy. “I assure you, one without magical powers would not understand my subtleties. In fact, those with magic can rarely appreciate my … artistic design.”

“Artistic design, you call it?! Gimme’ a break!” Tomoyo snaps back. “Pottery is an artistic design. Painting is an artistic design. Fashion engineering is an artistic design. Taking control of an innocent girl’s brain for your own amusement is just plain sadistic!”

“Heheheh… innocent…” Lycan snickers. “You humans love to throw that word around. Makes you feel less guilty for the shame and the pain you harbor. For the darkness that lies within every human soul. Within Kinomoto Sakura, as well as within you. Your pain is that the one you love more than anything in the world will never, ever reciprocate. So you ‘get your kicks’, as it were, by playing matchmaker in some sick little head game. It eats you away inside because, in your heart of hearts, you know the truth. You know what I’m talking about… Daidouji Tomoyo…”

Tomoyo shakes her head back and forth. “Shut up, Lycan! SHUT UP! You’re wrong! I don’t hate Sakura-chan because she doesn’t love me, too! As long as she’s with the one that makes her happy, I’m happy too! And that’s something you’d never understand!”

“What a load of tripe…” Lycan mocks with disgust. “You can’t hide your fear. Your fear that those you love dearly will leave you behind as they tire of your presence. You stay awake at night… every night… wondering if that’s the same reason your father left you…”

“You leave him out of this!!!” Tomoyo shouts out furiously, her eyes brimming with tears of rage against Lycan.

“Oh?” Lycan asks quizzically, leaning in towards Tomoyo. “Well why… don’t… you… make me?”

“Hey!” a boy’s voice shouts out, turning Lycan’s and Tomoyo’s heads to the side.

A fair distance away, Syaoran leans weakly against a tree with his hair a mess and his shirt in scraped and dirty tatters. His Inferno Crossbow is fully armed and aimed squarely at Lycan.

“I believe the young lady told you to shut up,” Syaoran tells Lycan coyly.

“Li-kun!” Tomoyo calls out with overjoyed relief and an ear-to-ear smile all over her face, cut off when Sakura forcefully tosses her aside, at which point she frantically scampers over to Syaoran’s side.

Lycan looks in Syaoran’s direction with the semblance of astonishment. “How is it possible that he is still standing… again!? …Is this what Lord Kaos was warning me about?” Lycan thinks to himself, trying to conceal his shock with his excessive stoic bravado. “You intend to intimidate me in vain, Xiaolang. Your Guardians are now victims of one of my personal favorite spells, the Daidouji girl is worthless against my power, and Kinomoto Sakura is my slave. The fact remains that you are all alone. What, then, do you possibly expect to do with that peashooter you call a Key of Kaos?”

Syaoran cracks a lopsided, exhausted grin as he grabs hold of his sore side with his free hand. “Sakura isn’t your slave, Lycan. With the Elixir, she won’t take barking orders from you, or anyone else for that matter. But without the Elixir of Fire, she can’t stand the very sight of you. Y’know, she’s terrified of ghosts and specters. She told me so herself once. Which can mean only one thing: you cast the Dominion Card on her.”

“Well aren’t we the young sleuth?” Lycan humors Syaoran, leaning his head over Sakura’s shoulder as the zombified Sakura stares Syaoran down as well. “But what can you do about it? You said so yourself. You don’t want to cause Kinomoto Sakura any pain. And you can’t harm me, even if you tried. It’s lose-lose, Xiaolang.”

Syaoran pulls out a rolled-up ofuda out of his pocket. “That’s not a problem. Haven’t you heard? Sometimes, you have to hurt the ones you love to show them that you care.”

Lycan’s eyes widen. “What are you doing?”

Syaoran holds up the ofuda in his right hand and releases it. The parchment unravels flat on its own as the symbols burnt into Syaoran’s palm glow with a thin red aura. As the ofuda flattens out, Syaoran balls up his right fist and braces his aim with his left arm. “Summon: Steed of Poseidon!” Syaoran declares.

The Inferno Crossbow fires a red spear straight through the ofuda, but passing through the ofuda changes the spear into a wide burst of water that takes the rough shape of a snake. It rushes straight towards Sakura, who stands completely still, and the hard impact knocks her backwards. She rolls away, her now-wet sweater rolling through the forest covers her sweater in a thin mud.

“The Rites of Kaos!” Lycan exclaims.

“Rites of Kaos?” Tomoyo asks.

Syaoran nods, holding up his right palm for Lycan to see. “That’s right, Lycan. It’s the same magic Clow Reed used to defeat Kaos Gin from the story.

*-*-*

(flashback)

In Syaoran’s apartment, Syaoran reaches up onto a high shelf with the help of a stepladder to retrieve a worn-out manuscript. He quickly flips through the pages before descending down the stepladder.

“The night I came home after capturing Chimera and Plague, the same night I first saw you, I realized that what Sakura and I were up against wasn’t just a myth. So I looked deeper into the story. It said that Clow Reed used a similar ritual of scarring his own hand to augment his own magic to be most effective against Kaos.”

Syaoran walks off while continuing to skim through the thin book.

*-*-*

(end flashback)

“I needed some magic…” Syaoran explains, “…that could defeat the Kaos magic, but wouldn’t harm Sakura greatly. So I went back to Clow Reed himself for the answer.”

“You call that your answer?” Lycan asks sharply. “You knocked Kinomoto Sakura down hard with that blast. You could have killed her. It seems then that you’ve gotten incredibly desperate.”

Syaoran points past Lycan, into the trees. “Possibly, but from the looks of your card over there, it looks like my attack took more of a toll on it than on Sakura.”

“What?” Lycan wheels his head around to see a man-sized grey shadowlike jellyfish, hanging pitifully in the trees next to him, like a horridly-mutated wayward kite. Its enormously long yet thin white and slimy tentacles trail all the way back to an unconscious Sakura, where a few of the tendrils still remain, magically-permeating Sakura’s back, into her heart. Most, however, have fallen out, and the few that do remain seem to hang in just barely.

“Dominion!” Lycan bellows furiously, swinging his head to stare Syaoran down. “Don’t think this changes anything, Xiaolang! Even your pathetic Rites of Kaos cannot stop-”

“Fall back, Lycan,” a voice in Lycan’s head interjects, cutting off Lycan’s train of thought. Syaoran and Tomoyo make clear note of Lycan’s pause.

“What?!” Lycan remarks aloud, completely freezing in place. The air around the ground grows into a thick, cold fog, blanketing the entire forest as far as any eye can see. The shadows around Lycan begin to creep up from the forest and grab at Lycan’s ankles, slowly pulling him through a foggy portal on the ground. “No, Lord Kaos, NO! I can finish this! I can still make this work! I am NOT DEFEATED YET!” Lycan roars out, but the shadows continue to drag Lycan down, through the fog,

“Yes, Lycan. You are. Return now, lest our mission be jeopardized.”

“Lord Kaos, you’re making a grave mistake!”

“Oh, I highly doubt that…”

Oblivious to the second voice, Syaoran holds up his right arm to cautiously shield Tomoyo, while simultaneously watching Lycan sink into the pit-like fog that thickly coats the forest floor.

“Li-kun… who is Lycan talking to?” Tomoyo asks nervously.

Syaoran remains completely silent and motionless to Tomoyo’s question.

Lycan, having sunk into the fog up to his shoulders, reaches out of the portal to grab hold of the ground, pulls himself up, and shoots one last glare in Syaoran’s direction. “Grrraaah! Don’t think you’ve won this. Mark my words, Li Xiaolang. I will be back, and I’ll have your head!” Lycan’s claws begin to slip through the dirt as Lycan slowly and reluctantly continues his descent.

Syaoran motions to Tomoyo to stand back, and Syaoran grabs another rolled-up ofuda from the front pocket of his pants. Syaoran aims the Inferno Crossbow at Lycan. “But in the meantime, I guess I’ll have to settle for having your head.” Syaoran opens his palm and the ofuda unrolls in midair. “Summon: Fist of Ares!” Syaoran declares, firing a bolt from the Inferno Crossbow at Lycan. The red shot passes through the ofuda and comes out the other end as a cannonball-sized fireball with a flaming comet-like tail.

The fireball impacts against Lycan’s mask and explodes violently, and though it does no actual damage to Lycan, the shockwave of the attack knocks Lycan’s grip loose, blasting apart the ground around Lycan. Lycan’s claws helplessly slip through the ashen dust as he is dragged into the portal. Lycan lets out a last menacing roar as his claws and mask sink down into the fog. Brief moments after the completion of Lycan’s slow and tedious plunge, the fog clears, which reveals the ground below where Lycan stood to have closed up behind him. Near the spot where Syaoran had shot the supercharged fireball that ultimately sent Lycan reeling, the muddy ground along that area had dried up completely, leaving an arid patch of dirt.

Tomoyo lets out a deep sigh of relief as she leans back against a tree. “Phew! I thought we were all goners there for a minute!”

Syaoran maintains a skeptical posture as he looks around the woods. The shadows around the edges of the forest and above the treetops begin to dissipate faintly, allowing small cracks of light to peek through. But the decay rate of the shadows is very slow. “Without Lycan, the shadows are disappearing. And with them gone, there’s just one thing left to do.”

Syaoran dashes towards Sakura’s body, where the slimy grey jellyfish continues to detangle itself from the tree and snake its tentacles back into Sakura’s heart. Syaoran aims his Inferno Crossbow high into the trees, where the Dominion’s main body rests. “Return to your original form: Kaos Card!” Syaoran calls out, a bullet from the Inferno Crossbow easily harpooning the helpless Kaos Card like a fork through a rotten tomato. The Dominion squeals and thrashes about for a bit, finally withdrawing its incredibly long tendrils from Sakura’s back as its entire form begins to glow a bright orange. The orange light energy condenses up into a card-like form high in the trees. When the card ceases glowing, it floats down out of the trees, effortlessly into Syaoran’s hand.

Syaoran observes the card, seeing first of all his name in kanji at the bottom edge, seemingly branded into the card. The portrait of the card’s main body shows the jellyfish-like life form with tentacles hanging down. Within the center body of the jellyfish rests a cracked heart. Syaoran smiles with a satisfied gratification, but his inner joy is cut off as he sees an orange flicker out the corner of his eye, accompanied by a shrill scream.

“Li-kun! Watch OUT!” Tomoyo yells out.

Syaoran turns around, but the next thing he knows, he is pinned against a tree by the neck by a high tennis shoe. He feels the plastic-like material rub roughly at his neck as he sees Sakura holding him up with a flexibly-raised high leg. Sakura hangs her head down, but she sharply glares up at Syaoran, revealing an all-too-familiar burning shine in her eyes and a sickly toothy grin across her face.

“I should probably be thanking you, shounen,” Sakura begins, “…for getting that monkey off my back. But then again, now that you’ve collected your third Kaos Card, that puts us in a bit of a precarious situation. After all, you know what happens to the Card Captor who snags Card #7, don’t you?” she asks, turning her head slightly.

Tomoyo desperately tries to tug Sakura backwards, getting her to let Syaoran go, but Sakura effortlessly swats her away like a gnat, sending her hurtling to the ground.

“Back off, Mouse. The Shounen and I are talking about big-people stuff now,” Sakura remarks coyly.

With Sakura’s attention diverted for just a split second, Syaoran leans against the tree for support and delivers a would-be devastating double-legged mule kick up Sakura’s jaw, knocking her head up and breaking Sakura’s bind on his neck with her foot. However, after stumbling back and shaking her head back and forth a few times, Sakura stares back up at Syaoran quickly.

Syaoran climbs back to his feet, grabbing a sore hold of his neck and abdomen. “So, you’re back again?” Syaoran asks rhetorically, his eyes meeting head-on with Sakura’s. “What is it going to take to get you to leave the real Sakura alone?!” he asks with a low-toned and sore frustration.

Sakura wipes a smudge of dirt off her jaw. “Oh, about as much as it’ll take you to realize that this isn’t just some loser possession magic. The Elixir of Fire really is me. And the sooner you get that through your thick skull, the easier things will be for the both of us.”

Syaoran shakes his head. “No. No, you’re not the real Sakura. It doesn’t matter that you’re not possessed. You’re just simply not in your right mind.”
Sakura smugly folds her arms. “Oh, well that changes everything now, doesn’t it?” she asks, grabbing gentle hold of Syaoran’s chin and tilting his head to meet with her stare. “Look, Shounen. Whatever you thought was real about me, I’d suggest you re-think it. This is how I am. How I really am. I’m not going back to being your weakling little damsel in distress. I like it this way. For every time when we collected the Clow Cards that you were always the better magician, for every time you were the know-it-all, for every time you had to come to my rescue-”

“Now who’s clinging to the past?” Syaoran interrupts, shoving Sakura away forcefully. Syaoran re-arms his Inferno Crossbow and aims it at Sakura’s face, but before he can solidify his aim, his entire body begins to tire out and he falls helplessly to his knees, the bolt in the Inferno Crossbow disappearing as quickly as it had been summoned. The Inferno Crossbow collapses itself onto Syaoran’s arm. All this elicits a sinister laugh from Sakura.

“Ha! I’m beating you to death, you pathetic Shounen, and you still can’t raise a hand to me? Is your pathetic crush on me so strong that you can never hurt me? Because you just love me so much?” Sakura remarks sarcastically, huddling over Syaoran.

“No… you were right the first time…” Syaoran mutters in response, causing Sakura to look down at him in confusion. Syaoran stands to his feet and raises his eyes to meet Sakura’s. “I am too weak to harm you. I guess I just don’t love you as much as I thought…” Syaoran adds, only serving to cause Sakura to look back at him with even greater confusion.

“I guess comebacks aren’t exactly your strong suit, eh Shounen?” Sakura hypothesizes, raising a high eyebrow.

Syaoran lowers his head slightly, and he notices Tomoyo crawling to her hands and knees behind Sakura, just leaning there and catching her breath. Syaoran then looks back up at Sakura with renewed determination. “But… maybe it’s finally time I rectified that…” Syaoran mutters with a soft, hoarse tone.

With a burst of energy, Syaoran throws his weight against the tree behind him. He grabs onto two low-hanging branches on this tree and, with the tree as a support, he mule-kicks Sakura right in the stomach, straight backwards and over Tomoyo, tripping her over and landing her on her back. Syaoran lands and raises his forearm high. “Key of Kaos: Release!” he declares, causing the Inferno Crossbow wrapped around his arm to mutate once more. Syaoran struggles to retain his consciousness throughout the draining process, as his magical powers are being drained, stretched to their limits, and are still running on empty. Somehow, and with a loud scream, Syaoran whips his arm downwards as the Inferno Crossbow finishes its transformation and reloads with one last red bolt of energy.

Sakura struggles furiously to her feet as she reaches around her neck, pulling out her key. “Well, I see you’ve still got some gas left in the tank. Well I’ll fix that. Key of Kaos: Release!” Sakura declares, as her star key pops right off the lanyard and it takes a larger and more mutated form of a skull-tipped Key of Clow. Sakura quickly twirls the key around like a baton before striking it against a Kaos Card before her. The wand in her hand rematerializes as the Nightmare, its cruel staff shimmering softly in the low light of the forest.

Sakura and Syaoran each point their respective weapons at each other, preparing to strike. Syaoran is the first to break his stare, as he notices the bright white fracture in the shadows around the forest. But as Syaoran’s attentions are diverted for just that split second, Sakura takes the opportunity to jab Syaoran hard with the blunt end of the Nightmare’s crescent blade. This clubbing slam causes Syaoran to cough out a small trickle of blood and forces him to grab hold of his sore ribs as he falls to his knees again. Syaoran finally gives out and falls backwards, but through sheer intestinal fortitude, he maintains the crimson arrow housed in the single-shot magazine of the Inferno Crossbow.

Sakura stands over Syaoran’s fallen body. “You’re spent, Shounen. You can’t stand against both Lycie-chan and myself. Oh, if only your precious ancestor, Clow Reed, could see you now. What would he say to that, hm?” Sakura stomps on Syaoran’s stomach, causing him to scream in agony again, as yet another trickle of blood splashes out his mouth. Sakura continues to repeatedly kick at Syaoran in the ribs and abdominal areas, but these taps are numb to Syaoran’s already torturously-thrashed body. As Sakura finally tires of this, she takes a half-step back and raises up the Nightmare’s long staff. At the short end of the staff is a long, knife-like tip, which Sakura raises high above Syaoran, preparing to finish him off once and for all. Sakura sneers at Syaoran, but before she can bring down the sharp tip, Syaoran just barely cracks a grin, which freezes Sakura in place.
Syaoran begins to giggle under his breath and through a hoarse cough. “Lycan wanted me dead… didn’t he?”

Sakura’s eyes widen. “…So? So what? What’s your point?”

Syaoran places his palms on the ground and lifts his head off the ground. His hoarse snickering continues. “I told Lycan that you’re nobody’s slave. Yet here you are, about to finish me off for good, when what you’re really doing is just following orders like an attack dog. And I thought that this realyou was above stuff like that.”

Sakura grits her teeth at Syaoran’s logic. “Happy coincidence,” she remarks, before driving the metallic stake down on Syaoran.Syaoran raises his right arm, with the Inferno Crossbow’s bolt still active, and he blocks the thrust from the Nightmare. “There are no such things as coincidences in this world,” Syaoran begins, climbing to his feet despite the incredible pressure put on him from Sakura’s blade. “There is only hitzusen. …Is yours to be Lycan’s puppet forever?” Having stood completely to his feet and nearly driving the Nightmare out of Sakura’s hands, he swings his right arm powerfully backwards, forcing Sakura away and knocking the Nightmare clean out of Sakura’s grip.

The force sends the Nightmare’s blade hurtling into a tree, where Sakura hurries over to retrieve the blade. But before she can pull it out, she feels Syaoran’s eyes watching her. With her hands on the Nightmare’s staff, she swivels her head back towards Syaoran, who prepares to fire the Inferno Crossbow at her.

“What’re you gonna’ do, Shounen? Shoot me?” Sakura asks, calling Syaoran’s bluff.

Syaoran stares on, somberly shaking his head. He holds up a Kaos Card in his free left hand, turning it around to reveal it’s identity as the Chimera Card. “No, Sakura. Don’t think of it as shooting. Think of it as discipline. Like a loving parent to their disobedient child.” Syaoran reaches forward with the Chimera Card and touches it against the edge of the red bolt on the Inferno Crossbow. “Grant me the wings of the mighty albatross. Chimera!” The card dissipates and arcs behind Syaoran, shooting silver energy into his back. After the energy from the released Chimera finds its way into Syaoran’s back, Syaoran’s stretched, torn and tattered shirt begins to swell up with a growing hunch on Syaoran’s back. Syaoran’s t-shirt is torn apart spectacularly as a pair of pure white-feathered wings explode out of his back. Syaoran holds up the Inferno Crossbow to his bare chest, revealing its last shot to be spent.

Sakura leers back at Syaoran with uncertainty. “That was your last shot with the Inferno Crossbow, and you spend it growing wings?” she asks coyly. She grabs a solid hold on the Nightmare and tears it from the tree in which it was stuck, nearly ripping the tree’s trunk apart. She places an aggressive double-handed grip on the Nightmare, preparing to use it on Syaoran. “Now let’s get those things off of you. Frankly, they make you look ridiculous.”

Sakura lunges at Syaoran with the enormous blade, but Syaoran easily sidesteps the absolutely livid Sakura as he flies up into the tree that Sakura was standing under. Syaoran looks down with endearment at Sakura.

“Your anger is getting you nowhere,” Syaoran remarks.

Sakura turns around to see Syaoran perched in the very tree that Sakura nearly tore apart by pulling the Nightmare out of it. She looks up at Syaoran deviously. “And your stupidity is about to get you killed!” she exclaims, lunging after the half-shattered tree trunk with the Nightmare. The Nightmare’s blade crunches into the tree, nearly slicing all the way through what’s left of the tree trunk, but the blade gets stuck in the wood. Sakura blindly attempts to pull the blade out of the tree, but it tears the tree down in her direction. Syaoran quickly bounds out of the tree, but Sakura is so blinded in her rage that she doesn’t notice the tree collapsing down on her. The tree lands with a loud thud, and the tree trunk crashes down hard, right over Sakura’s head.

Syaoran floats above the one-tree deforestation below, watching somberly as a subtle orange glow is cast on the ground from under the tree. Syaoran then quickly swoops down to the ground, where he finds Sakura knocked unconscious and pinned down by the tree trunk that fell on her. Upon closer examination, he can see an orange fluid slowly pouring out of Sakura’s eyes and mouth, flowing down towards a glass lanyard bottle, where the fluid flows into under its own power. As the last of the Elixir of Fire leaves Sakura’s eyes and mouth, the bottle which the elixir flows into seals up with the high-pitched clank of glass on glass. The orange energy swirls around in the skull-shaped bottle as the eye socket areas let out one last bronze flicker of light before all the glowing in the bottle subsides.

With a wide smile, Syaoran lifts up the foot thick tree trunk and pulls Sakura’s body out from under it, dragging her out from under the fallen log before finally shoving it aside. Syaoran gently cradles Sakura in his arms and he smiles down at her with endearment. He runs a slender finger over Sakura’s cheek, clearing her slightly muddied hair off her angelically soft face.

Sakura’s eyelids twitch about before they finally crack a small ways open. Sakura’s untainted emerald eyes finally emerge from behind her heavy eyelids as she looks up. The first thing she sees is a bright light, followed by a shirtless, rugged, winged, and thoroughly-beaten Syaoran leaning over her.

“Are… Are you… an angel?” Sakura whispers softly and innocently, reaching up weakly, but letting her arm fall back at her side.

Syaoran holds back torrents of joyful tears as Sakura’s gentleness had finally returned to her, and thus his nightmare had finally ended. He bites his lip and shakes his head. He chokes on his own words for a moment before answering Sakura. “No. No, I’m no angel. I’m just another guy,” Syaoran answers back, gently rubbing a muddy smudge off Sakura’s cheek. “You’re the real angel here. Please, don’t ever leave like that again…” he begs softly, not entirely sure of whether or not Sakura can hear him, but at the moment not really caring much either.

Syaoran lets his heavy eyelids close shut as he keels over in exhaustion, the Chimera-generated wings vanishing in a puff of feathers. But as soon as Syaoran falls over, Sakura opens her eyes fully and leans up in Syaoran’s lap. Sakura reaches down towards Syaoran and grabs at his shoulders, shaking him.

“Li-kun? Li-kun? Are you okay?” Sakura asks innocently, showing absolutely no signs of fatigue, as if waking up from a restful nap. Syaoran remains exhaustedly limp, despite Sakura’s attempts to wake him.

Tomoyo paces up beside Sakura and places a hand on her shoulder. “Li-kun will be fine. He’s just been through a lot. But you’ve been through a lot yourself. How are you feeling?”

Sakura jumps to her feet exuberantly and flexes a muscle. “I’m feeling great! Despite all my clothes being damp and muddy, I feel like a million yen!” Sakura cracks a cheesy smile, but she and Tomoyo both turn their heads to the side at the sound of a deep, amused chuckle.

“You really are the Cherry Blossom,” Damien answers, pacing slowly through the trees, with Yue’s arm hung over his shoulders. Yue paces beside Damien, leaning on him for balance, though with an expression of utter contempt on his face aimed squarely at Damien.

Sakura points up at Damien, covering her mouth with her hand in fear. “W-wh-who’s that? Who are you?!” she asks Damien fearfully.

Tomoyo holds her arm out in Damien’s direction, to introduce the fearsome-looking creature at Yue’s side. “Sakura-chan, this is Damien-san. He and Li-kun have been fighting hard against Lycan to keep you safe.”

Damien raises an eyebrow. “That’s an awfully crude summarization, Daidouji, but I’ll allow it, given the circumstances,” Damien retorts with a slighted tone.

Yue takes his arm off Damien’s shoulder, but almost immediately he falls back against a tree. He breathes deeply in and out, looking around the forest, seeing the light cracks in the shade barrier getting wider and faster, breaching visibly to the outside. “It’s over, I take it? Lycan is gone?” Yue asks.

Damien collapses to his knees in exhaustion, leaning back and supporting his weight on his shins and tail. He groans loudly. “Lycan gone? Heh, not by a long shot, Reed-lover. Though at least we’re walking away with a moral victory. And we owe it all… to the Little Wolf,” he explains. “Because without his Rites of Kaos and his determination to save the Cherry Blossom, we’d all still be at Lycan’s mercy, as if he had any.”

“Riteru… Wurufu?” Sakura asks in confusion, putting a Japanese accent on Damien’s nomenclature for Syaoran.

“Xiao-Lang,” Yue responds. “Damien comes from England. In his language, the Chinese name ‘Xiao-Lang’ translates to ‘Riteru Wurufu’.

Sakura places a finger on her chin, pondering. “Hm… Shau… lan… guu… Shau… lan… Wait a sec, that’s Li-kun’s given name! Li Syaoran!”

Damien rolls his eyes. “For the record, I gave her points for compassion, not insight…”

“So, what about these Rites of Kaos?” Tomoyo asks. “I thought Li-kun burned those marks into his hand because he was upset about what happened with-”

“Upset about what?” Sakura asks naively, interrupting Tomoyo.

Damien sits fully on the ground, cross-legged. “The Rites of Kaos. Now that really takes me back. Those incantations… They’re just like something Reed would’ve designed.”

Yue glares at Damien out the corner of his eye. “What’s that supposed to mean? Is it supposed to be some kind of insult?”

Damien only chuckles. “Heh heh… No, not quite. The incantations of the Rites of Kaos are over two millennia old. They come from way back in Ancient Greece. ‘Fist of Ares’, ‘Steed of Poseidon’, ‘Breath of Artemis’, and the ‘Lance of Zeus’. Reed figured that this magic would be so old and outdated that Lord Kaos wouldn’t have seen it coming. And, as the blue moon was out that night… he was right.”

“But there must’ve been plenty of powerful magicians from other times in the past…” Tomoyo postulates. “Why did Clow-san use Greek magic?”

“Because he was a nut!” Damien answers sharply. “The Clow Cards may have been Reed’s profession, but Ancient Greek magic was his hobby, even bordering on an obsession. Heck, when it came time to name his first Guardian Beast, he named it after the ferocious three-headed hound from Hades. Heh heh… ‘Cerberus’.”

“Cerberus?” Tomoyo, Sakura, and Yue ask in a confused unison.

“Siro… Bur…” Sakura sounds out.

Tomoyo also tries to sound out the name. “Cera… Ceraber… C… Ker… Keraber-” Tomoyo interrupts herself as she attempts to contain a giggle, covering her mouth. Tomoyo cups her hand over a clueless Sakura’s ear and whispers something to her that causes her to crack up also.

Sakura giggles immaturely. “So that’s where he got his name from! I guess now we know.”

“Poor Kero-chan…” Tomoyo responds.

Tomoyo’s and Sakura’s giggling is interrupted by a series of voices calling out through the forest.

“Sakura! Yuki!”

“Sakura-san! Daidouji-san! Tsukishiro-san!”

“Tomoyo-chan!”

“ Syaoran-sama!”

At the sound of the voices calling through the cracks in the darkness, Damien raises his gaze. He sighs as he sorely stands to his feet. “Looks like some more humans are on their way. Which means there’s no place here for me. You’d think I would’ve gotten used to it by now…” Damien muses to himself. He begins to dissolve into a fire that crawls up from the tips of his claws to up his arms, but before he vanishes entirely, he hears a call for his own name.
“Wait, Damien-san!” Sakura calls to Damien urgently. In turn, Damien responds by rematerializing and looking down at Sakura.

Sakura looks up at Damien with puppy-dog eyes. “Before you go… thanks. Thank you for saving me from Lycan.” Sakura calls up to Damien meekly.

Damien shuts his eyes and nods his head as he continues to burn away. “Don’t thank me. It’s not my thanks to accept. Thank the Little Wolf. When he comes to, tell him that I’m proud of him.”

Sakura nods in compliance as Damien’s entire body disappears into the flames, leaving but a gust of ash in his wake. The ashes blow away deep into the forest, as Sakura and Tomoyo watch on.

Yue leans off the tree and spreads his white wings across his body. “It’s time I resumed my disguise as well. There are some who are expecting him.”

The calls grow louder as the darkness surrounding the forest had almost completely dissipated. Replaced with them are a few beams of light from flashlights, and the familiar silhouette of the King Penguin in the far distance.

“Sakura!” Toya shouts out, popping out from behind a tree and shining his flashlight all over the area.

Syaoran is collapsed, shirtless, and unconscious. Tomoyo carries Syaoran’s jean jacket over her shoulder and her camera in her other hand, somehow having kept a grip on it the whole time. A reverted Yukito leans unconsciously against a tree. And last but not least, Sakura shields her eyes from Toya’s light. Her once light blue puffy sweater is now a limp, muddy mess, irrevocably ruined. Sakura’s slightly muddy and damp hair sticks up in all directions, the ultimate bed-head.

Getting used to the new sensation of the light, Sakura lowers her arms and grins widely. “Ehehehehehe… uh, Big Brother… ehehehe… Whatever you think this looks like… this isn’t it…”

Toya rolls his eyes as he kneels down in front of Sakura. He points his flashlight down and turns it off. Examining the abounding mess around them, he returns a glare to Sakura. “One of these days, kaiju, you’re going to explain to me just what exactly happened here…” Toya warns ominously.

Sakura smiles back up at Toya, his normally-irritating chiding a welcome change from the same from Lycan. She wraps her arms tightly around Toya’s neck and pulls herself closer. “Don’t worry, Big Brother. Everything’s fine now. I’m okay.”

Toya protests against Sakura’s hug, as her muddy sweater smudges his jacket. “Hey, cut that out!” he insists.

Another light shines through the forest, finding its way to Syaoran. Wei bursts out from around the trees, rushing towards the beaten boy. “Syaoran-sama! Syaoran-sama!” Wei calls out. He kneels down beside Syaoran and points Syaoran’s body face-up. As Wei gently opens Syaoran’s eyelids with his hand and shines his flashlight into Syaoran’s eyes, Syaoran regains some consciousness and lifts up his left arm to shield his eyes. Wei is overjoyed at Syaoran’s positive reaction.

Wei then gently rubs the back of his hand down Syaoran’s abdomen, eliciting a sharp wincing expression on Syaoran’s face. Wei’s smile fades away. “Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear. You exert your body so, Syaoran-sama.”

Syaoran limply shakes his head. “But it was all worth it…” he whispers hoarsely.

Wei turns his head behind him. He sees Sakura frantically bowing in apology towards her brother and father, no-doubt receiving the chewing of a lifetime for staying out so late. However, fortunately for Sakura, Yukito stands in her corner, waving his arms frantically, apparently trying to dissuade Toya and Fujitaka from taking ‘harsh action’, and for the moment it appears to be working. Wei smiles at the sight, as while it still looks pretty bad for Sakura, he realizes that it could have been much worse. “Syaoran-sama, you are too kind.”

Syaoran coughs hoarsely. “So I’ve heard…”

Tomoyo leans back against a tree, basking in the heart-warming reunions all around her, when she hears her own name shrieked out.

“Tomoyo-chan!” Sonomi shouts, bursting out from the forest with such glee that she tosses her flashlight behind her. She jumps down onto her knees in front of Tomoyo and grabs the girl into a surprising and almost crushing hug. Sonomi cries out tears and tears of relieved joy. “Tomoyo-chan, I’m so glad I found you! I thought you had ran away for some reason, so I looked all over town, and I called Ms. Maki, and I called your friends, and then Mihara-san tipped me off that you might be around here and, and-and-and-and-” she hyperventilates.

Tomoyo reciprocates by gently placing her arms around her mother’s neck and she hugs back. “Zettai daijobu, mother. I’m okay. Everything’s okay.” Tomoyo rests her head on her mother’s shoulder, resting in the assurance of the truth of her friend’s borrowed motto.

Indeed, everything was okay. Except for one individual, though…

*-*-*

(the dark void)

With a primal roar, Lycan plummets downward, endlessly on and on, his wings doing him no good at all. Suddenly, he lands hard on an ice-cold stone pillar. Lycan rattles his head about before looking over the edge, seeing the pillar stretch on for an eternity downwards.

“Heh heh heh. Lycie-chan. It’s catchy.”

“Lord Kaos!” Lycan roars. “I see. This must be the punishment for my failure. To endure the same torture I inflicted on Kinomoto Sakura. All because I failed to retrieve The Life.”

“Nonsense, Lycan.”

“What are you talking about? I failed in my mission. You told me to-”

“I told you what you needed to know.”

“So… Li Xiaolang never needed to die?”

“Hahahahaha… Of course not, Lycan. Such an attempt would be suicide. It was, after all, the Little Wolf that sent you packing to me in the first place.”

“What was the point then?!”

“Everything is going according to plan, Lycan. I knew that the Little Wolf would defeat you.”

“He did not defeat me!”

“Of course not… Nevertheless, you did just as I willed you to. The feeble pawns of the fool Card Captor know of your power now. And even Damien has struck his will against ours.”

“Grrrrrrr… I’ll kill that turncoat!”

“Ease, ease, Lycan. Damien always gave his lip service to our cause, and thus so did his Card Captor. But it was only a matter of time before he realized the truth. You did well, Lycan.”

“But what about the Life Card?”

“Tomorrow… is another day.”

“I will not fail you again.”

“That is not your concern. There is no failure for you, but for me. Your concern should be your obedience. If you simply heed my words, then…”

“Zettai daijobu…” Sakura’s voice echoes out through the shadows in Lycan’s mind, completing the thought of the former voice.

Lycan begins to cackle lowly. “Yes. Yes, Lord Kaos. Zettai daijobu, indeed. Mheheheheheheh. Rrrrraahahahahahahahahaha!”