Chapter 6

Elena sat opposite the dressing table mirror turning her head from side to side to check her hair. Satisfied she picked her brush up from the table and quickly ran in it through her blonde locks which straightened before springing back to curl a little giving her hair a much sought after bouncy look. Finished Elena chucked the brush over her shoulder to land in her overnight wash bag which was on the chair four of five metres behind her.

Sakura was clumping her hair before securing them with hair bands in her usual style, checking quickly in a different mirror that it looked symmetrical. Sakura caught Elena's thoughtful glance and turned towards the blonde girl.

"What is it?" She asked. Elena didn't say anything, occasionally tilting her head before finally nodding.

"I think you should try having your hair down." She finally said, utterly serious.

"I don't think long hair would suit me though." Sakura replied, all the same glancing in the mirror and imagining herself with longer hair, not like Tomoyo's which reached beyond her waist but more like Elena's which was just longer than shoulder length.

"I don't mean long hair, just having it down rather than how you do it now." Elena explained. Sakura thought about it but couldn't quite get the right image in her head. Tomoyo walked down the stairs from her bedroom with her school bag.

"Breakfast should be ready by now. Shall we go downstairs?" She suggested and the trio wandered downstairs to the large dining room. It was tremendous overkill to use the gigantic table which was only used for grand banquet-like meals so they ate at a much smaller family table.

In the midst of their meal of cereals, toast, bacon and an assortment of fruits and cheeses the butler of the house entered the room.

"There is a gentleman at the door requesting Mithran-dono." The butler informed them. Elena put the toast she had been buttering down on her plate carefully and stood up, pushing her chair back as she did so.

"I won't be long." She said as she left the table to follow the butler who led her to the front door. Himura raised a hand in greeting and the butler excused himself, leaving the two alone. They quickly hugged and Elena noticed Himura tensing slightly at the contact. She pulled back and looked at him critically.

"You've been injured again." She stated and he nodded rather than making weak excuses or lying.

"Two trucks left the school grounds last night, no lights on and the license plates were covered up. I tried to follow them but a car was bringing up the rear checking for any tails like me. I noticed them just in time." He glanced at his shoulder and Elena looked around before gently lifting his aertex shirt and sliding it across so that the dressing on his shoulder was revealed.

"You're lucky it went right through." She said at last, pulling his shirt back into place. "You can't go around so carelessly Himie, you're not as tough as before." Her face was wrought in concern.

"Don't you worry about me, I may be a human without my powers but I'm not helpless." He gave her a wry smile, the self-confident and infinitely reassuring expression that had smitten so many girls, including Elena herself.

"What were you doing at the school anyway?" Elena asked, moving off the topic of his injury. Even as a human Himura healed quickly, it would only be a couple of weeks before he could take the poultice away for good, if he was spared infection.

"After I found out Shaoran was effectively missing I decided to start looking from where we knew he was last, the football match at school. As I arrived those trucks pulled out and they were far too suspicious to just ignore. I rang Julius before I started to follow them. I knew I wouldn't be able to keep up with them the whole time so I tailed them to edge of town so we knew a vague direction. We're working through a mountain of files to see if we can find some clues."

"That's why you're not in school clothes. That means you two won't be at school today, right?" Elena asked as she mulled over the information. Himura nodded, glancing back inside to make sure no one, Sakura most importantly, was listening in.

"With Shaoran's absence today we won't be able to keep it a secret from Sakura-chan for long. Julius and I worked overnight and we'll continue today through these files. What I want you to do is find out who else was on the football team and see what you can find out from them."

"Okay then. With you two not around Sakura-chan will want to know what's going on, what do we tell her?" Elena thought ahead. Shaoran's absence was a mystery; but with Julius and Himura both absent from school Sakura would know she wasn't being told something.

"Say we're out looking for Shaoran. It'll be obvious that he's gone missing so it'll be plausible for her to know we're looking for him; and it's not exactly a lie. We still don't have any idea what happened but we're working on it." Himura gave Elena a light kiss on the cheek and turned to go. He stopped as he stepped out through the huge doors and turned.

"Oh; and keep an eye out. Lightning doesn't strike twice in the same place; but people most certainly do."


Shaoran woke to find himself in a room that was poorly maintained. Paint was flaking off the walls and the wallpaper underneath was peeling away to reveal the brick work underneath. The floorboards were scuffed, scratched and dented. The entire place smelt musty and unused.

Pushing himself into a sitting position he felt groggy and light-headed, swaying from side to side before shaking his head to clear his mind and steadying himself with one hand on the floor. He looked around him to see several of his team mates and former opponents lying still unconscious on the floor or leaning against the walls. It looked they had been thrown in here and the bruises on Shaoran's body suggested that they had indeed just been thrown into the room.

He thought back, trying to remember what had happened. He remembered a boy talking about slave traders and then there had been a crash, the sound of glass smashing and then the clank of something metal hitting the floor. Some form of canister had been thrown in through the window and the last thing Shaoran remembered was looking at the canister as a hissing noise came from it.

Another wave of nausea swept over him and he held his head in one hand, riding the wave out before looking around him again to study there location in detail but the inspection yielded nothing more, the room had no windows and the only door in the room was on the other side, no path available to him through the carpet of sleeping boys. Shaoran pushed his back against the wall and closed his eyes. There was nothing he could do for now except build up his strength by resting.

Sakura sat as the teacher called out the register and waited for Shaoran to burst in; but he didn't. There were a lot of empty seats in the room, all boys. In addition to Shaoran, Himura and Julius were absent and four other boys from the class were not in attendance. Sakura was only vaguely acquainted with the boys who were missing, she remembered that they were on the football team and she became more and more worried, terrible scenarios running through her head.

"Kinomoto, are you ill?" The teacher asked, startling Sakura. She looked up to find the entire class had turned around to look at her.

"N-no, I'm fine." She managed to mumble back but Elena stood up and crossed to Sakura's desk.

"I'll take her to the nurse's office, sensei." Elena volunteered and the teacher nodded his approval. Sakura made a feeble protest but Elena overrode it and led the girl gently but firmly by the arm to the nurse's office.

"You're as white as a sheet of paper, Sakura-chan." Elena said as she stopped to knock on the infirmary door.

"I'm worried about Shaoran." Sakura managed to say and Elena sighed, knowing she would have had to tell the poor girl eventually.

"The entire football team is missing, Sakura-chan. Himie and Julius-kun are looking for clues and the police will be in before long. They'll be found, don't you worry." Elena had left out all the details, sticking to the bare minimum so that Sakura was spared the possible reality.

"They were kidnapped?" Sakura cried.

"I don't know but it seems likely." Elena agreed just as the nurse's door swung open. The school nurse on duty took one look at Sakura then motioned for them to come in.

"She needs to rest." Elena said, manoeuvring Sakura over to a bed and tucking her in swiftly.

"No I need to look for Shaoran." Sakura protested and tried to sit up but Elena pushed her back down into bed.

"You're in no condition to be running about, mental or physical so just stay here and rest a little. Tomoyo-chan will come check up on you at break. Stay here until you're feeling better then go to lessons and we'll meet up again after school, alright?" Sakura nodded, giving in to the girl's commanding voice. Elena spoke with the nurse quietly before leaving Sakura to her fears.


Himura cast an eye over the mountain of papers printed from the fax machine and the multitude of computer screens connected to projectors arrayed around the huge room.

"If there's so much info on these guys why has nothing been done about it?" Himura demanded as he stapled another report together and laid it on top of an ever growing pile.

"My guess is they've paid off some people. Besides, trafficking is something that most governments tend to overlook. They're far more concerned with loftier issues like global warming. It doesn't matter so much to them that kids are taken and sold as slaves right under their noses." Julius answered from the other side of the room where he was working at one of the computers, downloading and viewing attachments to e-mails his contacts had sent him.

"It won't be long before the police are involved you know. Bribery or no they can't just ignore dozens of parents reporting missing persons who are strongly connected." Himura mused as he read through a report before deciding it was completely irrelevant and placing it in a paper recycling box.

"If we can get the leg work done now there'll be less legislation issues to slow them down later." Julius finished off Himura's thought for him. "Here, look at this." Julius called, typing a few more keys. One of the projectors changed its view to that of database showing the passage of ships and other vessels from Japan in the last week.

Himura stood up and weaved his way through the stacks of reports to stand by Julius as he scanned through the notes. A few of the records were missing information but most were highly detailed.

"This one." Julius used a pin-pointer pen to shine a red light on one of the records. Himura's eyes roamed across the record and he frowned, reading it again to make sure he wasn't seeing things.

"'Loaded with two trucks lacking license plates with a load weighing approximately a tonne?'" Himura read out, working out the calculations in his head.

"Two trucks with no license plates. You said the ones you saw had blanked out ones. Surely they wouldn't show the plates until out of local jurisdiction?" Julius asked and Himura nodded, reaching the end of his arithmetic.

"And even if the weight of the trucks is only approximate the weight of the cargo is suspicious. Assuming the average weight of a boy on the football team is sixty kilograms and they took all the boys from both teams the weight comes to nine hundred and sixty kilograms. That's pretty darn close to a tonne, especially an approximate tonne." Himura looked at Julius who nodded agreement. The boy picked up a phone and dialled a number.

"We need to know where that ship was headed."