A/N: Hi everybody! Princess Alaya D'Arc here! This story picks up directly after the group leaves Piffle world, and before they land in Lecourt. This is the world that they visit in between those two. This is my first time ever publishing something like this to the internet, so, yoroshiku onegaishimasu! (Please look kindly on me!) Constructive criticism and suggestions for storylines are most welcome. On another note, since I am totally new to this website, I am still "learning the language" so I'm assuming that A/N means "Authors Note" and OC means "Original Character." Please let me know if I make a slip up with the abbreviations and end up saying something totally stupid! "(-_-)
Other than that, I have nothing more to say, so please enjoy "Sister of the Wind!"
Chapter one: A Pre-ordained Encounter
It was thundering like there was no tomorrow in the sprawling metropolis of Liaré city, in the country of Dumault; and the grey, foreboding streets seemed made of more water than asphalt. From the sky, dripping downward like a huge raindrop, the fabric of reality bent and tore and finally vanished to deposit the five inter-dimensional travelers in a dank, saturated alleyway.
"We have arrived!" sang Mokona Modoki, the round white ball of fluff that had transported them there.
"Argh! Couldn't you have landed us someplace dry, manju-bun? I'm soaked, and it hasn't been half a minute yet!" growled Kurogane as he picked himself up from the deep puddle where he had been dropped. "Get off, wizard!"
"Aww, Kuro-puu! That was mean!" wined Fai, who had just been sent sprawling into the wall of the alleyway by the ninja's unceremonious shove.
O-0-O
Slap! Slap! Slap! Slap! Slap!
Bare feet striking wet concrete.
O-0-O
"Blame the manju-bun for landing you on top of me." Replied Kurogane as he tried to ring out his sodden cloak.
"I'm afraid I've got to agree with Kurogane on this one," remarked Syaoran as he helped Sakura to her feet and pulled up the hood of her cloak for her. "It's awfully cold and wet in this world. We should find some shelter until this storm lets up."
"Agreed," added Fai. "We don't want princess Sakura catching cold, after all."
O-0-O
Gasp! Gasp! Gasp!
Breath sobbing in a ragged throat.
O-0-O
"First of all, manju -bun," Kurogane grunted, "is there even a feather in this world? 'Cause if not, we should leave and go someplace dry."
Mokona tensed up in concentration, and then his eyes popped open and he squealed, "Mekyo! There's one here alright. It's far away though," he ended sadly. Just then, thunder crashed and lightning tore across the sky with a magnificent flash. Terrified, Sakura unthinkingly clutched Syaoran's arm and let out a faint scream. Even Mokona hid under Kurogane's cloak in fright.
O-0-O
Gasp, slip-slither, thud, 'Aah!'
Falling; cry of pain.
O-0-O
"Hyuu! That was some display of power!" exclaimed Fai. "We should hurry and find shelter, before the gods of this world decide to fry us!" The group turned to exit the alleyway, with a rather embarrassed (but also pleased) Syaoran keeping his arm around Sakura to comfort her.
O-0-O
'Rrgh!' Splash. Tap, tap, tap, slap! Slap! Slap-slap!
Pulling self upright, staggering forward, running again.
O-0-O
Outside the alley, the city lay before the travelers; a sprawling, dreary grey eternity, with neither tree nor bird nor blade of grass in sight. The people who hurried along under umbrellas wore black or grey, with a flash of white here and there, carried black or grey umbrellas, and drove to and fro in black or grey or white cars. There wasn't a speck of color anywhere that the travelers could see, and dressed like they were, they stood out like red on white. Sakura shivered and rubbed her hands together. She could see her breath like little clouds in front of her mouth and nose. She wished she had been wearing something with long sleeves when she left home, or at least a shirt that covered her midriff.
"Here," offered Syaoran, taking off his gloves and sliding them onto her hands, which were quickly going numb, and pulling half of his cloak around her so that they were both covered in it. She blushed.
"Survival 101," Fai commented, saving Syaoran from further embarrassment. "If you stay close to other people, you'll be much warmer."
O-0-O
Slosh-tap! Slosh-tap!
Numb feet pounding the pavement; they sound so far away!
Swish!
Pushing long hair out of eyes.
Cough, cough, Gack! Splish, plip, plip, plip…
Coughing up blood, which mingles with the rain and is washed away.
O-0-O
The five, with Syaoran and Sakura sharing a cloak, and Mokona (after being tossed there by Kurogane) taking shelter in Fai's coat, made their way as inconspicuously as they could down the side-walk in search of somewhere warm and dry. This wasn't saying much of course, and plenty of people were whispering and staring, and a few even snapping pictured with their cell-phones.
"Hey Kurgy! They think you're weird!" giggled Fai, and then ducked quickly as the ninja decided he'd had enough and took a swing at his head. Turning around to walk backwards in front of the others, Fai started singing, "Kurgy is a weirdo! Kurgy is a weirdo!" it was because of this that he was a little way ahead of them when it happened.
From around the corner of the building next to them, a girl ran into sight, just in time to ram into Fai and send him sprawling to the ground on his back and then fall on top of him. Everyone froze in shock for a moment.
The first thing Kurogane noticed was her legs and feet. There was muscle there, and they were long and built for running, but her bare feet were covered in blood, as if the skin had been torn off of them, and there was a gash on her thigh. She looked like she had been running in that condition for some time.
The first thing Syaoran noticed was that she was wearing next to nothing. The only garment on her was a short-sleeved white dress that didn't even reach to the middle of her thighs. It was torn and dirty too, and covered in blood. He blushed crimson and looked down at his feet.
Sakura noticed her hair, which was a mix of brown and red and fell past her waist. Even as a wet, tangled mess, it looked so pretty.
Mokona felt powerful, and yet equally powerfully suppressed magic within her, and frowned as much as a white ball of fluff could frown, which wasn't much.
Only Fai was close enough to see her eyes. They were the most unusual shade of black-cherry he had ever seen. If he didn't know better, he would certainly have called them violet. And they were wide with pain and terror, set in a pretty face, which was nonetheless in bad shape, with scrapes and bruises matching the rest of her battered body.
The moment passed, and she leapt up to her feet, helping Fai to his in the same motion.
"I am so sorry!" she exclaimed her voice rough and cut with gasps. "That was entirely my fault; I wasn't watching where I was going." She bowed low, hair falling away to expose a pair of deep wounds on her upper back. "Please excuse me." She said, and then turned to run off.
"Wait!" cried Fai, clutching at her arm. The sudden jolt caused her to lose her balance and fall to the ground, legs bent on either side of her with her knees in front and her feet behind.
"Aak!" he ejaculated, "I'm sorry; I didn't mean to trip you up. It's just; you don't look in any condition to be out jogging in a thunderstorm." Perfectly punctuating his observation, lightning rent the sky again, and almost simultaneously, thunder crashed like the falling of mountains to a valley floor.
As if he had some kind of drug on his hands, the girl altered instantly at his touch.
"Get your hands off of me!" she snarled, and viciously struck his hand away. The violet in her eyes was darker now; they seemed almost completely black.
Fai's hand was red from the blow she had dealt it, and his face was twisted with confusion, bereft of its constant phony smile. She glared into his startled eyes with breathtaking intensity for a moment before a loud wailing, buzzing sound started up a few streets away and began moving closer. Her eyes turned violet again, and widened with fear, as she put her palms on the ground and tried to haul herself back to her feet, with no visible success. In a matter of seconds, the little group on the sidewalk was surrounded by big black automobiles with lights flashing on top and sirens wailing from within, and men in black suits with sunglasses on (despite the cloudy weather) were pouring out of them like ants from an anthill when they smell food. The bystanders who had been staring all turned and were suddenly in a very big hurry as they trotted, jogged and even sprinted away.
Out of one of the vehicles stepped a rotund man in an expensive (grey) silk suit, with an attendant holding a (grey) umbrella over him and a very wide smile on his face; so wide, in fact, that his little beady eyes were barely visible.
Kurogane, Syaoran and Fai all experienced the unpleasant rising of the hair on the backs of their necks and the dropping of their stomachs that signified imminent danger. Sakura sneezed, breaking the tension momentarily and diverting Syaoran's concentration back to her.
"You've given us quite a lot of trouble, number one-one-three-eight," observed the fat man in a silky voice that grated on Kurogane's nerves. He put a hand casually on his sword-hilt which was concealed by his cloak; for the present. The girl snarled again, this time using words which made Syaoran want to cover Sakura's ears. The fat man laughed, and Kurogane, Fai and Syaoran all felt like they were too close to nails being scratched across a chalkboard, even though the sound was innocent enough. The man's eyes, his face, his smile, his whole demeanor radiated corruption and danger.
"And who might all of you be?" the fat man addressed the travelers, looking primarily at Fai, who was in the foreground. "Dressed in such outlandish clothing, you must be from a different country."
Fai pasted his most charming smile on his face and tossed his hair out of his eyes.
"You are correct sir," he said in a voice that could have passed for polite and cheerful among less intelligent company, "We have traveled very far, and are unfamiliar with your country's ways and styles, I'm afraid. Actually, perhaps you could enlighten us? I am particularly curious about the custom of chasing beautiful, injured women in thunderstorms, ganging up on them, and calling them by a number rather than by a name." His smile was firmly in place, but his eyes and voice betrayed the tiniest hint of aggravation which, in him, amounted to uncontrollable wrath in another. Syaoran turned so that he was between Sakura (who was still under his cloak) and the black-clad men. Kurogane tensed for a fight, a wolfish grin tugging at the downturned corners of his mouth, as if begging to be released--along with his sword, of course.
The fat man's eyes became hard and icy cold; so cold that even the ninja shivered a tiny bit. He snapped his fingers and all the men around him, who had by this time formed a semi-circle around the travelers and the girl, pulled out guns.
"Syaoran, stay by the girls. Keep them safe!" shouted Fai as Kurogane dove past him and set upon the gun-men like boiling water on ice.
"It's about time we had something to do that'd keep us warm!" bellowed Kurogane as he sent his adversaries flying in all directions.
"Well you're certainly having fun!" exclaimed Fai as he, rather uncharacteristically to say the least, bashed a pair of heads together and elbowed another man in the gut.
"Who woke him up?" Syaoran mused quietly, confining himself to defeating only the attackers who were close enough to pose a threat to Sakura or that unknown girl, who was still sitting on the ground, looking more than a little flummoxed.
"Are you alright?" Sakura asked the girl, kneeling down next to her. The girl glared over at her, but without any real anger, as if that was merely a habitual expression. After contemplating her for a moment, she replied, "I'll live," in a rather flat voice, and turned to observe the battle. Mokona, who had abandoned his shelter of Fai's coat for a safer one inside Sakura's cloak, jumped out and landed on the girl's lap. She started, did a double-take, and blinked a few times.
"Don't glare at Sakura! She's being nice to you!" he reprimanded her.
"Uh, what's with the talking cream-puff?" she asked, looking at Sakura and pointing at Mokona. Before Sakura had a chance to explain, they were distracted by a loud noise.
"ALAYA!" bellowed a dry tenor voice from somewhere above. Everyone stopped fighting for a moment to look up. This was a mistake.
Loud enough to drown out the next crash of thunder, a deadly hail of bullets sped into the fray from several different directions, tearing through the suited men and distracting them. Three old rusty cars with Gatling-guns mounted on the tops and gunners poking their heads out of the skylights screeched to a halt around them, and before she quite knew what was happening, Sakura was bundled into one of them next to the angry girl (with Mokona still on her lap) and when Syaoran rushed to her rescue, he was shoved in on top of her. The doors slammed, and they drove off at a break-neck pace that defied conversation with their captors/rescuers. They were all trying too hard to keep the food they had eaten in piffle-world in their stomachs where it belonged.
"Nathan, report please." Syaoran turned to see that the angry girl was sitting on the on the other side, with no seat-belt on, in a comfortable position with her hands in her lap. She looked perfectly calm, as if they weren't traveling a hundred and eight miles an hour in a rickety vehicle that looked like it was about to fall apart. Trying to ignore how much this embarrassed him, Syaoran squirmed around until he was sitting on the seat, with Sakura on his lap, and buckled the seat-belt on over both of them. For added security, he locked his arms around her waist.
'I'm not blushing, I'm not blushing,' he told himself, as if thinking it over and over would make it true. Nathan, the one who the angry girl had addressed, was to Syaoran and Sakura's point of view, a pair of legs standing on the middle seat with his torso outside the skylight. He had stopped firing the Gatling-gun a moment ago, and he now ducked down inside the car to reply.
"This, my lady, is a classic example of what is known as 'recon-mission-turns-into-rescue-mission.' We were driving around rummaging for clues as to your whereabouts, and all of a sudden, the captain started shouting, 'She's here! Turn left and head for 45th street!' and stuff like that. Thus, here we are. Nice day for it, eh your highness?" he added as yet another lightning bolt illuminated the sky with its dazzling radiance.
When, a moment later, the thunder made itself heard, Sakura, who was already traumatized, was pushed over the edge and fell unconscious. This was probably for the best, Syaoran reflected as for the next half-hour they were tossed around like dandelion seeds in a hurricane by the insane driving of whoever was behind the wheel. Even Mokona, after only a few minutes, crawled beneath Syaoran's cloak to hide.
"Tell me when it's over," he begged quietly, before his turn to pass out came. Un-fortunately, Syaoran's nerves were just strong enough to withstand the harrowing experience, so he was left fully awake to ponder the fates of Fai and Kurogane. They had left too quickly for him to see what had become of his two friends, so on top of being cold and wet and having an unconscious Sakura and Mokona both using him for a pillow and being driven somewhere he didn't know by a maniac and a perpetually angry girl who seemed to be in charge, he couldn't help but wonder if they had been brought down by numbers or hit by stray bullets or, or, or…
He wished that he too could pass out.
A/N: So, yeah, that was chapter one! Too long? Too short? Too much action, and not enough plot? Too much plot and not enough action? Characters acting too out of character? How about description? Did I give you enough of a taste of Liaré city for you to get the flavor of it? Hit the review button below and give me a shout-out! Even just a few lines would be most helpful!
Nota Benne (Latin: 'Note well') I do not own Tsubasa or any of the characters, although I do own the right to gush over how cool they are (especially Fai.)
Alaya D'Arc, Capt. Rand St. John, Liaré City and the Country of Dumault are all 100% mine.
Domo Arigatou Gozaimashita! (Thank you very much!)
m(_ _)m - [Bow.]
