Fate's Phoenix
Disclaimer: I love Card Captor Sakura, but sadly I do not own it. My use of it's characters is purely for fun. (Though if Clamp happens to read this and think it is brilliant... well that would be great too. XD) Anyway... I am poor, so no suing. Thank you. :)
Summary: Read within... I am not spoiling it for you. :3
Key:
- Dream State - , Flashback , ' thoughts ', " Dialogue "
Rating: T
Pairings: Sakura/Eriol
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(England)
A rather odd-looking woman with long light-brown hair hopped about in the rain. More specifically, she was hopping cheerily down a lengthy cobblestone path towards a pair of tall golden gates that seemed to stretch all the way up into the heavens. Behind her lay hundreds of acres of beautiful gardens. As the centerpiece, the largest mansion one could find in the middle of nowhere stood, exuding a magical sort of warmth and familiarity that nobility never usually offered to the common.
Well... that's the way Nakuru thought of it anyways. A great, big, huggable mansion. To everyone else though, it was just a regular Victorian-style mansion with nothing particularly special about it.
She reached the gates just as a short white truck bearing an eagle-emblem on it's side drove off into the distance.
Grinning to herself at her excellent timing, she opened the gate and headed toward the mailbox, rummaging through the stack for anything that might be addressed to her. Though such a search was pointless, Nakuru never received any mail. Why would she? Who would bother mailing a live-in housekeeper anyway? Still, Nakuru had been created with a limitless sense of childlike optimism, and so, regardless of reality... she searched the mail with glee.
Naturally, the mail was getting wet while she did this, but it didn't really matter. Her master knew plenty of spells that would dry them off in an instant as though they'd never been rained on in the first place. He would still get annoyed with her though... but she didn't mind. It was so much fun pissing him off.
A soft groaning sound caught the brunette's attention, and she turned, curious, towards the sound. A fading white light blinded her only a moment before she could observe the strange huddled lump that had appeared there.
Nakuru gaped. The creature that had appeared at her master's doorstep... was human, and accompanied by a brilliant silver sword sticking proudly out of the concrete as though it had always been there.
The rain had no mercy for the strange traveler and began soaking them mercilessly. Nakuru was beside herself... to bring it inside would definitely incur her master's wrath, but to leave it out here... that wouldn't exactly be fair either.
Well, Nakuru's innocent morality would never stand for leaving a person to catch pneumonia in the rain when there was something she could do to prevent it... and with that decided, Nakuru leaned forward to check the vital signs of the stranger.
The first thing she noticed... was that it was female, like herself, but much younger... probably around the age of her master. The second, was that she was clothed in an elaborate, white and pink, sorceress costume that was getting dirtier by the second as it absorbed the rain and mud that had surrounded the scene where the girl had appeared.
A sorceress... how odd. The nobility that usually visited her master hardly ever showed up in such a strange fashion. (Blinding lights and swords.) And Nakuru was quite certain that her master had put some kind of magical spell around the house so that no magic of any kind would ever be able to teleport directly to his doorstep as this young woman had done.
Then again... stranger things had happened where her master was concerned. So, that this unique young stranger had somehow bypassed the security didn't really surprise Nakuru at all.
Shrugging and suspending her own disbelief, she gathered the girl up in her arms and skipped merrily back down the long winding path that lead through the gardens to the spacious Victorian mansion that lay within them, the gates closing automatically behind her.
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Eriol Hiiragizawa was not one to be surprised. Ever. Or at least, he was not supposed to have been. Being the reincarnation of the greatest magician ever to master the Eastern and Western arts of magic usually afforded him more than enough magical power to outstrip every other magical being to ever have existed since then, including the current card mistress. After all, he was the only one he knew that had ever lived twice. Two lifetimes to achieve perfection where most only had one. Though it was true he no longer held any recourse to the contract magic that was commonplace in this land, Eriol had known his entire life that he would someday loose it, and had studied and practiced plenty of other arts.
Eriol also had a second, more secret reason for knowing too much where it concerned the future, but, in spite of any objection to the contrary, there he was... staring in well-concealed shock at the young woman whom he'd left behind so long ago in Tomoeda, Japan, with only a deck of magical cards to her name.
Clow, of course, had seen the future long ago. The future in which his only friends, the Clow Cards as he affectionately referred to them, would someday need a new master to guide them to an even greater purpose than that he would serve. His babies... his creations... that which he had lovingly crafted after hours of labor inspired by an infinitely creative mind... would need more than what he could give them, and their new master would be the one to help them achieve it.
What he hadn't known at that time though... was just exactly who would become the new master of his precious cards, nor under what circumstances his own life would end so that they could leave his possession. Eriol, as the last remaining piece of Clow's spirit on Earth since Fujitaka Kinomoto had died, held onto what memories he had been given of Clow's as though they were golden treasures, and was therefore all too aware of what exactly had finished him as a sorcerer, and how the continuance of such a power was still haunting him even now.
Even now... as he stared at Sakura Kinomoto, the mistress of the cards... his realization that he was surprised at her appearance only put him more on edge. What more could Fate possibly want from him after all these years?
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~Rozu