The Criminal
by Martial Arts Master
Cardcaptors and all related characters copyrighted by Nelvana and whoever originally created Card Captor Sakura in Japan. Ok, enough with the legal stuff. Listen, I KNOW most of you out there prefer the Japanese version to the dub, but I've only seen the dub so I'm using the American names. Anyway, on with the story.

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It was sunny outside, and a Sunday at that. Sakura, having already done all her homework, was out roller-skating around the neighborhood. She was having a lot of fun, as well. In her opinion, the only thing that would make this more fun would be if Julian was with her. Or maybe Li...
She shook her head to clear it. Where on earth had that thought come from? She didn't like Li at all. In fact, she hated him. He was always saying that she wasn't good enought to be a Cardcaptor. In fact it was because of him that Meilin was against her so much. After all, maybe Meilin wouldn't be so mean if she wasn't so jealous of anyone else getting close to Li. Li was kinda cute though, when he wasn't yelling at her for making a mistake with the Clow Cards...
Again she shook her head to clear her head of such a thought, but this time she wasn't watching where she was going and bumped into a tree, hitting her head and knocking herself down.
"Owwwwwww..." moaned Sakura, rubbing her head ruefully. Next time she'd watch where she was going. Suddenly she got a bad feeling...
"Something bad's happening at my house..." Sakura said to herself. Then a horrible thought struck her. What if something had happened to her father? Sakura immediately rushed home as fast as she could.
Sakura through open the door to her house and shouted, "Is everything all right---GASP!" Sakura gasped because what she saw was someone with a gun, who was pointing the gun at her father.
"Sakura, run! This guy's insane!" her father shouted.
Immediately the stranger said, "Shut up! I was gonna ask you again where your valuables are, but maybe you'll change your mind about not telling me if I shoot this girl instead..."
With that said, the robber immediately pointed the gun at Sakura.
"You leave my daughter alone!" Sakura's father shouted, tackling the robber. They wrestled around on the floor for a while, and then the robber knocked out Sakura's father with the butt of the gun. Sakura's father landed with a loud crash.
"DAD!" Sakura screamed. As the robber got up, Sakura ran up to him and began pounding on his legs.
"You leave my dad alone you big bully!" Sakura screamed.
The robber easily picked Sakura up and pinned her against a wall. He said, "Now listen little girl, if you don't tell me where your valuables are, I'm gonna kill you!"
Sakura was scared. The robber looked like he meant business. Sakura didn't know what to do. The Clow Cards could easily take care of this creepo, but Sakura couldn't reveal them to someone who wasn't related to the whole Cardcaptors business. Sakura began whimpering.
"Oh, quit whining!" the robber shouted. "You make me sick!"
Suddenly two people knocked on the door.
"Is everything ok in there?" Julian's voice asked.
"Yeah, I heard someone whimpering," Madison's voice said.
The robber cursed his bad luck. He hissed to Sakura, "Say everything is fine, or I'll blow your brains out."
"E-e-e-everything i-i-i-is f-f-f-fine," Sakura managed to squeak out.
"Doesn't sound like it to me," Madison's voice came through the door.
"Yeah. Is there something goin' on there we should know about?" Julian asked from outside the door.
The robber cursed again. This time he took action. He tried to imitate Sakura's fathers voice. He said, "Everything is fine. Sakura and I just had a minor argument, that's all. I think I might have scared her by yelling too loud."
Julian's voice sounded suspicious as he said, "Wait a minute. Sakura's father NEVER yells at Sakura. He settles for a stern voice, that's all! Who's in there?!"
The robber began to swear repeatedly. Then he said, "Well it doesn't matter who I am! You can't come in this house without being invited!"
"No, but we can call the police and tell them that you're trespassing!" Madison shouted from outside the door.
Now the robber panicked so much that he broke a window and jumped out of the house, fleeing. Sakura sighed with relief, got up and opened the door. There were Madison and Julian with worried looks on their faces.
"Sakura, what happened?" Madison asked with a worried tone.
Sakura quickly explained everything that had happened. She then added, "It's a good thing you guys came here. How come you were near here, anyway?"
Julian sounded embarassed as he said, "Well actually, we went to a fortune-telling place to get our fortunes told just for fun. The fortune-teller told us that someone very close to both of us would be in danger. You're the first person who came to mind, so we decided to check up on you. Just in case."
Sakura blushed and mentally compared Julian to a knight in shining armor. Then she dismissed such thoughts and said, "Well, it's nice that you guys came."
"Yeah, good thing we saved your butt," Madison said jokingly.
All three had a good laugh.

A day later, at the fortune telling place...

The fortune-teller was reading a newspaper. She was surprised when she read an article about a robber being arrested. The robber had confessed to trying to rob the Avalon home. The fortune-teller remembered that the day before, she told two people that a friend of theirs would be in danger. They had immediately mentioned someone named Sakura Avalon and dashed up. What surprised the fortune teller was that her fortunes had never been right before, but that one had been right. The fortune teller concluded that she must be getting better and went back to reading her newspaper.

The End

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E-mail all questions and comments to bleifer@msn.com.