The Sword of
Frost
Chapter One: Start
"Eriol-kun!" Kinomoto Sakura gasped when she opened the door to find Hiragazawa Eriol and Daidouji Tomoyo. "Aren't you supposed to be in England? How come you're here?"
Eriol's eyes flicked momentarily to Tomoyo and smiled mysteriously. "Due to many reasons, I have decided to stay in Tomoeda for good. Well… I didn't know that hosts are supposed to let their guests stand outside and chat. Aren't you going to invite me in or something, Sakura-san?
"Oh my gosh! How can I forget? I'm so happy to see you. Sorry. Come right in!" Sakura blushed with embarrassment. She turned around and bumped right into Li Syaoran, who had been scowling he sensed Eriol making his first appearance in Tomoeda and shooting him a look more vicious than ever now that he arrived at the Kinomoto residence (especially after he heard Sakura claim how glad she was at his appearance).
"What's wrong, Syaoran-kun? You don't look too happy. I thought you would be, since Eriol-kun is back with us for good and everything…"Sakura asked densely, not noticing the sourness in his eyes.
"Nothing." Syaoran growled and stormed off into the living room, leaving Sakura as confused as ever and Tomoyo and Eriol smiling secretly to themselves.
~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^
"Eriol-kun, Tomoyo-chan, let me introduce. This is Fang Lie Xu from Kun Ming. He just arrived two days ago, right after Syaoran-kun and Mei Ling-chan did, and gave us some strange warnings. I'm sure he's dying to talk to you, too." Sakura related briefly.
Eriol turned and smiled at Mei Ling, then focused his attention back on Lie Xu. "Hi. Nice to meet you." They shoke hands formally, and Eriol sensed a sharp jolt at his hand. "Your magical powers are certainly very powerful." He commented, smiling politely.
"Hmm… You're not bad either, huh? I guess you must be really powerful, since you are Clow Reed's reincarnation." Lie Xu said.
"What is it you have to warn me about, Fang-san?" Eriol questioned, settling himself on the sofa, not responding much to Lie Xu's reference of him to Clow Reed.
"Well… Like what I've said to the other two, dark forces are out, with the three of you as their target. I'm not really in a convenient position to reveal much, but I would like to stress that they could start their attacks anytime soon, and they're powerful." Lie Xu explained seriously.
Instead of throwing questions on Lie Xu like the others, Eriol remained perfectly calm. He flashed a smile at everyone and took a slow sip of his cup of tea. "Umm… School is starting soon, and if I'm not wrong we'll be attending the same high school. So… Are you guys ready for high school?" He said slowly, while everyone else gaped at him in shock, except for Tomoyo, who was chuckling to herself.
Mei Ling was the first to recover. "Well… I don't know… I've heard that high school in Japan is supposed to be really fun and romantic, so I'll be really looking forward to it. According to comics and stuff, it's the perfect place for love stories…" She responded, with an I'm-in-a-faraway-fantasy-please-don't-wake-me-up look evident on her face.
"I agree. And I'll be really looking forward to our romantic love story." Lie Xu suddenly leaped up and kneeled right in front of Mei Ling, took her hands in his and looked directly into her eyes.
In response, Mei Ling's face fired up in a split second; she yelled out some undecipherable words and started thrashing around violently, while the rest couldn't help but laugh out loud.
Just then, everybody stopped whatever they were doing, except for Mei Ling and Tomoyo, who were unable to sense anything. "What?" Mei Ling asked roughly, anger still evident in her harsh tone.
"Did you people sense that? Let's go check it out. It's at the forest behind the Penguin Park." Syaoran voiced and headed out of the house, followed shortly by everyone else, Mei Ling still fuming away and Tomoyo quickly grabbing her V-8 along, murmuring to herself in excitement along the way.
In a matter of a few minutes, the group had reached their destination and began checking out their surroundings with caution. Just as they were about to give up and leave, the dark force they were searching for attacked.
All of a sudden, countless stone bricks appeared out of nowhere and started throwing themselves at the group. The group retaliated with a formation immediately, with everybody forming a circle around the defenseless Tomoyo, videotaping away under the protection of her friends. Sakura had swiftly applied the Power card on her staff and cracked every brick coming her way. The rest destroyed the bricks with their bare hands, since fighting was nothing to them. All these took place within several seconds, and the fast, vigorous action maintained for a few minutes until the two battling girls began to slow down.
Noticing this almost immediately, Syaoran murmured aloud, " We must do something! This can't go on forever!" Squinting his eyes in effort to catch the right timing, he shouted," Fang! Hiragazawa! Form a protective shell over the others once I leave the formation! I'm going to cast a spell now!"
With that, he jumped out of the formation and leapt steadily onto a tree branch. Clenching his sword tightly in determination, he shouted, "Lei Den Shou Rai!", threw out an oufuda and cast the spell.
In a split second, thunder cracked and crashed down violently, with a blinding flash that was so bright everyone had to cover their eyes with their hands to prevent being blinded. While they were waiting for everything to quiet down, the group heard several big explosions and the ground below them shook dangerously.
After several torturing moments, Syaoran finally told them that everything was over and everyone opened their eyes slowly. They saw that the bricks had all been blasted into little pieces, but there was nothing else; everything else looked as though the fight hadn't taken place at all.
"But.. why? The explosions we heard were so loud! I thought everything around us would be blasted to pieces or something…" Sakura exclaimed in disbelief.
"Well, basically it's just the same spell from before, just that I had improved on it such that it will only take effect and attack whatever elements I desire for it to. I was afraid that the bricks would grab the opportunity to attack the whole lot of you when I went off to cast the spell, or that any of you would be slashed by the brick pieces when they were blasted, so I asked Fang and Hiragazawa to cast the protective shield." Syaoran explained patiently, receiving several blank and sweat-dropping faces as his reply. "Oh, never mind." He gave up and growled.
Everybody then realized with a start that Syaoran's powers had been completely different from before in terms of strength and ability, and that he was, no doubt and by far, the most powerful within the group. Mei Ling, however, only smiled knowingly.
"Let's go!" She called out cheerfully and led the group back.
Two figures floated in a special aura above the patch of forest, surveying the battle.
"They're good. Or rather, he's good." The shorter form commented with a smile, while the taller one merely nodded gravely in agreement, eyes flashing mysteriously.
~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^
Two days later, at Seijou Senior High School…
Scanning the notice boards anxiously, Sakura prayed hard. It was several moments before she finally saw what she was looking for.
"Yeah! We're in the same class! So are Syaoran-kun, Eriol-kun, Yamazaki-kun and the rest! And so are Mei Ling-chan and Lie Xu-san, under that column reading "foreign students"! Hanyaan! It's going to be just sooo wonderful!" Sakura hopped around and hugged Tomoyo in utter delight.
Tomoyo smiled, glad that she had asked her mother to help in this matter. It did not take her much effort to convince her – all she had to do was to stress how happy Sakura would be if she found herself in the same class as all her other friends in front of her mother. "I'm really glad too, Sakura-chan." She responded calmly, with a soft and quiet smile playing on her lips.
"Hey guys, take a look at these two names. They definitely look like they are Chinese names, and somehow I have this feeling they're related to one another." Mei Ling pointed to the two names below hers – 'Han Xuan Yu' and 'Shuang Lin'. "Their names sound really nice, though." Mei Ling added. Lie Xu, who was standing behind her, looked at the two names and frowned, with a distant look in his eyes.
~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^~^
In class…
Mysteriously, all of Sakura's friends ended up sitting in interesting positions, in pairs. (Sonomi has nothing to do with it this time.)
From the window, Mei Ling was stuck miserably, um… sitting together with Lie Xu at the third pair, with Sakura and Tomoyo behind them and Syaoran and Eriol right at the back. Chiharu and Takashi were sitting at the first two seats from the door, while Naoko and Rika sat right smack in the middle of the class.
It turned out Mei Ling was right. During the first period of self-introduction, the group realized that Han Xuan Yu and Shuang Lin were, like Lie Xu, from Kun Ming, and turned out to be cousins on the maternal side. Despite of their outstanding appearances, they appeared aloof and arrogant.
Shuang Lin had chin-length black, short hair. Her eyes were of a rich royal purple, adding to her already striking features, and she made it very clear that she was very interested in Syaoran. Although one could have thought that she resembled a beauty from olden times, she certainly didn't carry herself with that same resemblance in attitude. She was confident, all right, yet she did everything a "cool" girl would do. She had several ear-hole on both sides of her ears, had on thick make-up, not buttoning her uniform properly, deliberately making her skirt so short that everyone couldn't help but steal glances at her. Moreover, she carried herself around with an air of arrogance and she hadn't bothered to try making friends with anybody else. All she did was smile seductively at Syaoran, smirked at Sakura and stuck to her cousin for the entire day.
Han Xuan Yu, on the other hand, appeared more down-to-earth. Although he was as unapproachable as his cousin, at least he made an effort to make himself look decent, and had his school uniform on properly. He shared the same shiny black hair with his cousin, with serious eyes of dull, dark amber. Throughout the lesson he had been caught staring at Sakura, Tomoyo, Syaoran and Eriol (He was sitting with his cousin Shuang Lin beside Sakura and Tomoyo) by Mei Ling. She also sensed sharply that Lie Xu had never taken his eyes off the cousins for the entire day, and felt confused and somehow irritated.
After the first day of school
"It was really fun at school today. There were lots of new and old faces around." Sakura commented, sipping her cold drink with content. The group of ten (Sakura, Syaoran, Eriol, Tomoyo, Lie Xu, Mei Ling, Takashi, Chiharu, Rika, Naoko) was having a get-together tea after school.
"Speaking of fun, I can't wait for the school to start organizing a field trip. I will surely get my hands on whatever information I can get on the creepy stories of that particular area we'll be visiting." Naoko perked up, her glasses glinting but at the same time causing Sakura to shudder and groan inwardly.
"Hmm… we've got quite a number of foreigners in class. There's Li-kun, Mei Ling-chan, Hiragazawa-kun, Fang-kun… On, and those two cousins from China." Chiharu noted, and the others nodded in agreement.
"Well, it's…" Takashi adjusted his collar and began.
"Yeah, yeah." Chiharu immediately forced a drink into his mouth before he could get any further, not realizing that the others were gaping in awe at her ability to cut Takashi off, or rather, her speed of shutting him up, as well as how she managed to tell whether Takashi was starting another of his made-up stories.
"Those cousins have got a major attitude problem." Mei Ling complained under her breath, suddenly turning and glaring at Lie Xu, who looked back at her blankly, with a goofy grin on his face.
"Speaking of the new Chinese classmates, Sakura-chan," Tomoyo leaned towards Sakura and whispered to her. "I don't know if you have noticed, but that Shuang Lin-san seems really interested in Li-kun. Looks like you have a rival in love! You'd better beware!"
Sakura stared at her best friend dumbly, struggling to digest what she had just heard. It seemed forever before the news finally sank into her head and she finally got hold of it.
"HOEEEEE! She cried out in shock, startling the entire group.
: Hurray! (Applause) The first chapter is finally out! I took like what, a million years to get it done. Oh, and several things to be noted. Mei Ling is on a transfer programme organized by her school in Hong Kong to be in Tomoeda for one semester (half a year), along with several other schoolmates who were posted to other schools in Japan. Which means she can only stay in Tomoeda with the group for half a year. And I don't know whether the title for this fan-fic is garbage or what, I personally think it sounds lame, but there's no other name I can think of. I mean, I didn't even come up with this name. My sister did. I'm really sorry, but I suck when it comes to naming my fan-fics or chapters.
Something extra… for those people who know Chinese and are interested in the Chinese names in this fic: (if you realize, the background color is the same as their eye colors ^_^)
Fang Lie Xu
Han Xuan Yu
Shuang Lin
I wanted this fic to be highly related to China and Chinese stuff partly because Chinese magic is present in CCS, so I would love to elaborate on it, since everybody I know claims that I'm really a "Chinese Chinese". Yupz, it is true that I really love the Chinese language, so what? Another reason is that I have lots of info to write this fic, with a counselor and that sort of thing… I've heard lots about Kun Ming… In fact I already got an idea how the place looks like and everything, so why not make use of the knowledge I already have?
Anywayz, comments are really welcomed. You can also throw me any questions you have about my fic, like what are the meanings of the names of the new Chinese characters and that sort of thing… You are free (and wanted!) to contact me at either of my two email addresses: luvly_hui@yahoo.com.sg or manga_manga_manga_maniac@yahoo.com.
Have fun reading! And sorry if there're lots of loopholes or if this chapter is really short! I promise to write longer chapters next time! (Anyway, I loved that formation part… And Touya fans look out! There'll be something great in store for you people… Though I personally still feel that Syaoran is the best ^.^)
#Disclaimers: I don't own CCS or any of it's characters, okay? (Although I wished I did). CLAMP (Kodansha) does, so don't sue me…
Liz#