Kinomoto
Akane raised her dominator, the coefficient of the young woman rapidly rising. The man behind the girl pressed a knife to her neck. "Drop your gun or I'll slit her open."
Akane couldn't get a clear shot, and no one else was around to take it. There were dozens of onlookers, but not a single enforcer with her. If she wasn't quick, the hostage's coefficient would rise past three hundred soon. Akane gritted her teeth, moving to the side to see if she could get a good angle. The man had already taken three other lives. She needed to deal with him before he took a fourth.
"I'm warning you, I'll do it!"
The woman sobbed, tears and snot marring her pretty face. "I'm sorry, I'm so-sorry!"
"Shut up bitch!" The man pulled the blade across her neck some, grunting as the woman's legs gave away in fear. He jerked down to get his grip on the woman again, but it was too late. Akane fired, hitting the man in the neck. He swelled into grotesque proportions and exploded into a horrible mess of gore. The woman fell to her knees, screaming in fright. But she was free now. Some onlookers threw up, but a few cheered.
And then Shimotsuki appeared, dashing onto the scene, dominator raised.
Akane gasped, realizing what the inspector was preparing to do. Akane yelled to Shimotsuki to stop as the dominator unlocked into lethal mode. Another girl rushed forward, blocking the line of sight of Shomotsuki's dominator. She fell to her knees, grabbing the sobbing victim into her arms. Shomotsuki fired still, paralyzing the new girl. She aimed at the victim of the kidnapper, readying to take a second shot.
She never fired. A cloud of blue dust fell over the assembled people.
Akane gasped, suddenly exhausted. Her knees gave out and she fell to the ground, every person around her following suite. No one saw where the dust came from, no one would remember but the street scanners.
Akane grunted, waking up just as the enforcers arrived. "What?" She asked herself, looking around her at the other waking people. Shimotsuki groaned from her spot on the dirty street, a hand to her head. Ginoza helped the inspector up, asking her what had happened.
Hinakawa helped Akane up. "Are you alright, sister?"
Akane gave him a smile at his meekness. "I'm good, just got a little sleepy there."
Hinakawa's lips pulled upwards at the joke before he shyly turned away.
Their attention was on the empty spot of gore where the two girls had been in the middle. They were now gone. Akane sighed, knowing the case wasn't over until they found the once hostage, now a criminal of over a three hundred coefficient. Hinakawa picked up her dominator that she had dropped, handing it to her. "Thank you." She accepted it, Sibyl's voice registering her as a valid user. "We're not done yet until we find that girl."
Shimotsuki walked up to her, dominator in hand. She raised her other arm, activating her wristcom. "Miss Karanomori, I want to know what happened to us, and why we all lost consciousness."
"You won't believe me. Ha ha." Shion could be seen throwing her head back in her hysterics.
"Compose yourself, Miss Karanomori. We have dangerous a criminal out there with coefficient over three hundred. I want to know how they got away and where they are. Starting with how." Never once did Shimotsuki's voice raise, the only indication of annoyance she held was her narrowed eyebrows, which relaxed as she watched the analyst calm down.
"It was a blue fairy that spread the dust, and if you don't believe me here's a clip from the street scanners." Shion's face disappeared, replaced with a video clip of the scene that took place moments ago. Sure enough, a tiny girl with insect wings flew over the crime scene, sprinkling a glowing dust over them all. Perhaps it was a flying bot covered in a hologram that dispenses a quick acting drug? After that, a fire rushed towards the scanner from out of view and the video stopped.
Akane looked from Shimotsuki's wristcom holo to the street scanners. Every scanner that had eyes on the scene afterwards was destroyed.
"Sorry to put a damper on things, but our two girls and blue fairy are gone. There's a path of disabled scanners leading to an abolitionist distract, and from there you're not going to find them easily. I suggest you all wrap up there and come home. They've got an unknown tech with them at the moment that'll put you to sleep."
"Tsk…" Shimotsuki made a face but nodded. "Very well, we'll be back within the hour." She tapped the holo, setting her wristcom to standby. "Let's collect the people up and send them to rehabilitation."
Akane stepped forward, pursing her lips. "Shimotsuki, her coefficient could have dropped to a manageable level, but you wouldn't have it. If it weren't for that other girl, we'd have two dead—"
"Criminals. Sybal judged them and I will execute that judgement without question. Something you as my senior inspector should do as well." Shimotsuki turned away, watching as drones surrounded the area and started rounding up the latent criminals in the crowd. Satisfying enough, no one chose to run. They would be wrapping there up quite nicely, bots already cleaning the remains of human flesh and blood.
"Are you okay now?"
"Yes, Miss Kinomoto." The girl who had been paralyzed brushed her hair away from her face. "I'm not sure about my friend though. She's been in and out of rehabilitation so many times that this might put her in there permanently."
Sakura looked over to the shower, sighing when she heard more dry-heaving. The world she found herself in was a cruel parody of humanity's attempt at a perfect society. In its perfection, it destroyed the individual down to their very thoughts. She wished she could take action and rid the city of this Sibyl System, but it was now so engrossed into the industry, the culture, that it would hurt millions.
"I think you might be right, but her hue's cleared up enough to enter a rehabilitation center. She's done it many times before, and I'm sure she can do it again." Sakura smiled at her companion.
"I don't see a genuine smile like that very often. You're something else, Miss." The girl brushed her hair out of her face again, though it fell back because of how it was cut. "I wish more people were like you. You didn't stand by and wait for a number, you acted on what you thought was right, and saved our lives. Not many folks understand that she's mentally ill, but capable of really good things."
Sakura nodded her head and stood up. Walking to the bathroom door, she knocked twice. "You alright in there?"
"Uhg, I'd liked to have died…"
Sakura turned to the first girl with a questioning eyebrow.
"She's okay." The teenager said, smiling. And it was a true smile, filled with relief and happiness not clouded by the thought of her hue darkening at being happy towards the wrong thing. "Thank you." She said again, rubbing tears from her eyes.
Sakura leaned her head back and sighed. "You know I don't know your names. I'm, not sure if I should ask." She had met many new friends in the last few months in the future, but many of them had either vanished or were taken into custody. Her judgement of character didn't use the same criteria as Sibyl's. It depressed her to think there was a time not too long ago that she'd ask their names and remember them. As a child sometimes her memory faltered and it was hard to keep track of so many people in life when first meeting someone, but she grew to remembering people well. Now, the skill was practically useless. Computers and implants took care of the small stuff like that. Sakura didn't have an implant, but she knew the implants could read and tell someone if they had met in the past and help bring up the right memories.
Sakura brushed a hand through her short hair, grimacing at its greasy state. Once her guest was out of the shower, she'd hop right in. "I'll stick to not knowing who you are."
The girl made to protest, but it was here that her friend exited the shower. The once hostage looked pale and sick, but at least she was clean. Sakura discreetly checked their hue's, both friends were under three hundred, but still above the hundred mark. "Relax, keep off the streets for a few days, call into work sick. If your hue's still dark, then turn yourself in for counselling. But, I have faith you can take control of that yourself."
"Thank you again, Miss Kinomoto." They said in unison, before sharing a quick smile.
Sakura chuckled. It was good to see that some little things were still appreciated in this day and age. She unbuttoned her blouse, readying to step into the shower.
"Woah, her clothes are real. I wonder who made them?" The once hostage said to her friend as they opened Sakura's apartment door and left.
Sakura let the shirt rest around her shoulders, and stepped into the steamy bathroom. She pulled a scanner to check for any diseases or blood left behind, also hitting the command on her mobile for the bathroom to disinfect itself just in case. Letting the automated bathroom do its work, she turned to her mirror and commanded it to defog itself. Slowly, a woman looked back at her. She was in her mid-twenties now, but still was mistaken for a younger age. Life's experiences and ordeals changed her character throughout the years, but she liked to fancy herself holding onto the qualities of who she was sense childhood.
The girl's comment echoed into her mind. Who made her clothes? That person was why she was here, in this strange future wonderland. "Tomoyo, I'll find you, and we'll go home."
The bathroom signaled her that it was ready for use again, the water was heated, the steam was removed from the previous use. Now it was as if there hadn't been an emotionally destroyed woman in there. Sakura placed her scanner into a socket and let it read herself. Her hue came up onto the mirror. It read a healthy sixty three. She closed her eyes and opened them again. Now it read an extraordinary four hundred and fifty two. The scanner updated, her number rapidly declining. It took practice after learning she had this ability, but it was her most useful defense in the current world. Their law, could not touch her.
At first she thought it was related to her magical abilities but after some research she discovered rumors of other people with this unique trait. These folks either stayed out of the eye of Sibyl their whole lives without a question asked, or took advantage of their power in the world. There was one man who created and mass produced helmets that could give a regular individual a pseudo version of that ability. There were still helmets in circulation, but now they were all in the hands of anti-Sibyl groups, people no better than terrorists. Sakura wanted the system gone, but through the use of force and other's expense, it wasn't the right way. The system needed to change over time, and in a justifiable manner.
Sakura leaned forward and gripped the edges of her sink. She looked down. Her hair outlined her vision, blouse loosely hanging around her, and a lacy bra held her breasts. She stared at a section on the bra, studying a group of intricate lines. She unclipped the front and looked up at the mirror again. There were shadows under her eyes. She was tired of this world and wanted to go home. Only, she needed to find her friend first, or learn her friend's fate. Long ago she had wept over the likely possibility of Tomoyo being destroyed by a dominator. Today was a good example of how skewed justice had become. If there was traumatized girl from another time, maybe universe, Sakura wasn't sure about the scientific theories involved at the moment, their coefficient was going to be high. Would it even be dangerously high? Above three hundred earned someone a death sentence.
Sakura closed her eyes, imaging the horror of her friend slowly turning around with her gentle smile. Then a blue light would hit Tomoyo's side and she'd begin to swell and-
"Aahh!" Sakura screamed, hitting the sink's surface. .
Throwing her clothes to a corner, Sakura stepped into the shower and set the water to be a searing hot temperature. A warning went off suggesting she lower the water's temperature, but she needed something to clear her mind. Stepping into the scorching water for a second, then stepping out. She repeated this until she was satisfied and cleaned herself. Then did it again to rinse herself off. Leaving her soiled clothes where she had discarded them, she stepped back into her main apartment in search of clean clothes.
Opening her closet, a large assortment of garments showed themselves to her. An automated machine rotated different outfits and a few battle costumes to present to her. There had been a time where Tomoyo was with her, they were working together to find the scattered Sakura Cards. And then Tomoyo disappeared and Sakura had been searching for her friend ever sense. Looking over her shoulder Sakura frowned at the book on her nightstand. The cards were all there and she could go home. There were many times she tempted the idea of returning to her time, just to see her friends, or sneak into a further time in the past to see Tomoyo again. But she didn't know if she could return to this time point.
Sakura brought her attention back to the task at hand and chose a simple outfit of jeans and a denim button up jacket, a very western outfit that looked nice and was durable. It was another day to search for her friend, and if need be, play the hero.
No wait, she wasn't the hero. Taking in a deep breath, she raised her hue and then checked herself. The highest number she had achieved was around six hundred. She smiled. Sakura Kinomoto was this world's version of a villain. Perhaps it was time to start using a different method of searching for her friend.
After I watched Cardcaptor Sakura and then followed it up with Psycho Pass I wanted to see a crossover of the two worlds. Sadly, there wasn't one to be had. Wanting to see if you can mix the two, I was inspired to write this story for myself. Dear reader, please leave your thoughts and comments in a review. This story is open to suggestions as I'm pantsing through this tale.
