*He he* I know, you all hate me for being so late. I guess I got writers block... no, that's not it. Actually, I wrote this chapter the same time I wrote the last chapter. I guess I just wasn't sure about what ***** (- Not a swear word or anything, I just don't want to ruin it.) to pick.
Oh well, I'll get on with the story now. I do not own Digimon or Card Captor Sakura...
Japanese Words:
(Iie) = No
(Arigatou) = Thank you
(Sugoi) = Cool/Awesome
(Daijoubu) = It's okay
*~*~*~*~*
Digital Cards
Solid Ice
*~*~*~*~*
Once Takeru entered the cave, he could see Sakura pulling at a cabinet.
"Syaoran is behind this. Please help me."
"Kinomoto-san, Li-kun is…" Hikari began.
"He's behind here!"
Hikari sighed and both she and Takeru started to pull on the cabinet with Sakura. The cabinet was really heavy but they were finally able to move it far enough from the wall to see behind it. There was a doorway behind the cabinet. Hikari and Takeru were surprised but Sakura looked like she had known. She squeezed behind the cabinet and through the opening. Takeru was the first behind her.
On the other side of the doorway was a small room, lighted by a single candle. The candle seemed to be magical since there were no wax drippings and it illuminated a lot more than an ordinary candle.
There was a single dresser with a couple drawers in the small room. Sitting on the top of the dresser was a birdcage with a giant padlock.
"Kero-chan!"
Keroberous, the guardian beast of the seal, was lying on the bottom of the cage. He appeared to be asleep but his eyes were open. Covering his body were many various bruises and scars.
"Kero-chan…" Sakura whimpered
"So that's Kero?" Hikari asked
"Who's Kero?" Takeru questioned
"One of my guardians. He guided me though the years of the Clow cards and the Sakura cards." Sakura answered while picking up the cage, trying wake the stuffed animal.
"How are you going to open the cage?" Hikari asked
"Maybe there's a key or something." Takeru suggested and opened one of the drawers. Inside were three key chains.
"Kinomoto-san…" Takeru began but Sakura was already at his side.
"Syaoran-kun" Sakura sobbed and picked up the little figurines. "First Tomoyo-chan and Mei-ling-chan and now Syaoran-kun"
"We-we tried to tell you, Kinomoto-san" Takeru stammered
"I can feel his aura! His aura is coming from this!" Sakura cried. She was hugging the little key chains to her body.
"Shouldn't we go?"
"Iie, Piedmon still isn't anywhere near."
"How do you know?" Hikari asked
"I can feel his aura…" Sakura began but then her eyes went wide.
She quickly spun around and stared at the birdcage.
"K-Kero-chan…"
"What's wrong?" Hikari questioned, a little frightened at what might be wrong.
"KERO-CHAN!!!" Sakura screamed, tears rolling down her cheeks.
"Please, tell us what's wrong"
"I… I can't feel his aura"
"What would that mean?" Takeru asked
"It would mean that Kero-chan is dead…"
"Can you feel his aura at all?"
"Yes but…"
"But what?"
"But it's not coming from Kero-chan…"
"What do you mean?" Hikari joined in on the questioning.
"Kero-chan's aura is coming from that wall." Sakura answered and pointed to the wall behind the desk/table.
"From it?"
"Well not quite… more like behind it."
"Maybe there's a doorway." Hikari suggested and began feeling the wall for some sort of clue.
"Or a switch" Takeru also began to help and climbed underneath the desk.
"Arigatou" Sakura smiled and wiped her tears from her cheeks. She hugged her small friends before slipping them into her backpack. Then she also went looking around for clues about Kero's aura. Returning to the desk, she opened the other drawer. Inside was a thin box. It was pretty long but wasn't very wide. She picked it up and was about to open it when she heard Takeru announce that he found something from down below her. She stuck the box into her backpack and ducked down to see what he had discovered.
"What is it?" Hikari questioned
"Look at this." Takeru said and reached for the wall beneath the desk. Sakura and Hikari were surprised to see his hand go right through it and disappear.
"Takeru-kun! Are you okay?" Hikari cried.
"I'm fine." Takeru replied and brought his hand back from the wall. "Do you think this leads to where your guardian is?"
"The Illusion Card could easily make it look like there was a wall there." Sakura pointed out.
"Wasn't the Illusion Card the one that copied Ankylomon?" Hikari asked
"I think so. The Illusion Card has a weird pattern on the front, right Kinomoto-san?" Takeru questioned
"Hai." Sakura responded, "I think we should go in. I'm positive Kero-chan is behind there." She was using all her strength just to stop herself from diving into the small opening. She didn't really care what was behind it; she just wanted to get her guardians back. She could now clearly feel Kero's golden aura radiating from behind the wall as well as Yue's moon aura.
Takeru nodded and stuck his arm through the fake wall. He waited a second then crawled through the opening, swiftly followed by Sakura and Hikari. What Sakura saw when she emerged on the other side of the wall was completely unexpected. A wave of relief, happiness and dread washed over her all at the same time. A gasp escaped from her mouth and she was clearly at the brink of tears. This room was a little bigger than the last, but that wasn't important to Sakura. In the middle of the opposite wall were her two guardians, Kero and Yue. They were right there in front of her, right in her reach. The only problem was that they were in the centres of two ice pillars. Her guardians were completely surrounded in ice.
"The-they're frozen." Hikari gasped from behind the stunned card mistress.
"Are they okay?" Takeru asked
Sakura was in too much shock to speak. Her lips were frozen, just like the ice barriers holding her friends. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, but she didn't notice.
"What do you think Piedmon could have done to do this? It's not cold in here at all. Could he be using magic?" Takeru pondered
"What do you think Kinomoto-san?" Hikari questioned
Sakura looked over at Hikari as her mind returned to her. She thought about it for a second then said: "The Freeze Card" A sigh of relief followed the statement. "The Freeze Card freezes magically. That means they are still alive."
"That's good. How are you going to unfreeze them?"
Sakura thought about it for a second. "I could use the Firey Card. It has a magic flame that won't burn them if I don't want it to. The only problem is that I don't have it."
"The Firey Card was the girl that shot a fireball at Togamon." Takeru exclaimed
"Is there any other way?" Hikari asked
"I don't think so. The only card I have is the Arrow Card…wait…"
"What is it?"
"I sense the aura of the Sakura Cards."
Takeru and Hikari jumped to they're feet. "Then we have to get out of here!" Takeru yelled.
"Iie, Piedmon still isn't near."
"Then where are the cards?
Sakura closed her eyes so it would be easier to sense the location. She pulled off her backpack and opened it up. Slipping her hand inside, she pulled out the wooden rectangle box she had found earlier. A smile appeared on her lips as she took off the lid. The first thing she could see was the pink half of a Sakura Card. She put her hand in and took out a small deck of Sakura Cards. Flipping over the deck she spread them out so she could see all. In her hands was the Shadow, Float, Twin, Jump, Silent, Glow, Move, Snow, Mist, Change and Mirror Card.
Sakura's tears returned to her eyes. But instead of sorrow, these were the tears of happiness. Hope had broken in through her barrier of sadness and gave her new determination. Deep inside she knew she would get past this and everything would turn out okay.
"Arigatou" She whispered to her cards and hugged them to her body. She was about to put them into her Sakura book with the Arrow card but spotted something on the top card. It was Piedmon's name, covering her own. Flipping through the deck she saw that all the cards were under his control. Syaoran had gotten rid of it on the Arrow card with a spell. She wished she had asked him how he had done it.
"Welcome back, friends." Sakura heard
She looked over at Takeru and Hikari but they were staring at the ice. Besides, this voice sounded older. The voice was coming not from her ears, but her mind.
"Oh, now look what he did to you." The voice continued. "You would much rather be under Mistress Sakura's control, right?"
Sakura could feel the cards grow warmer in her hands.
"I thought so. Now Sakura-chan, shouldn't you be paying extra attention to something more important?"
Sakura blinked. The voice had spoken to her. She waited for the woman to speak again but everything was silent. Sakura came back to her senses. What did the woman mean when she told her to pay attention to something more important? Everything seemed normal. She stretched out her senses and found what the voice was talking about. She put her cards into her book and returned it to her backpack. Lifting herself to her feet, she motioned for the others to head for the opening.
"Is Piedmon coming?!" Hikari gasped.
"Hai, but he is still far away. We should be able to get into the woods before he reaches here. I just wish…" Sakura explained, then turned and looked longingly at her guardians.
"What?" Takeru asked, already heading for the opening.
"For some reason, Piedmon had left some of the Sakura cards in his desk. Unfortunately, the Firey wasn't one of them."
"We'll come back as soon as we get it back from Piedmon." Hikari smiled, trying to cheer up the card mistress.
Sakura smiled in gratitude and said goodbye to her frozen friends.
As they passed the desk she returned the box to the place she found it and closed the drawers. They pushed the dresser back into place and the three of them left the cave.
"So what cards did you get Kinomoto-san?" Takeru asked as they crossed the empty field.
"I now have the Shadow card, the Float card, the Twin card, the Jump card, the Silent card, the Glow card, the Move card, the Snow card, the Change card, the Mist card, the Mirror card, and the Arrow card."
"Sugoi! Will they be very useful?"
"Actually, yes. That's the reason I don't understand why he was keeping him inside that desk, away from the rest of the cards."
They were now at the other end of the field and were entering the trees.
"Oh! Where is Sora-san? Wasn't she outside? What if Piedmon got her!" Hikari cried.
"Daijoubu. Sora went to look for the others." Takeru calmed the brown-eyed girl.
Hikari sighed in relief. "That's good. We should go look for them to. It would be better if we were all together."
"Where should we go?"
"I know where they all are." Sakura smiled
"You do?" Takeru asked "How?"
"That's easy. All you digidestined have a strange aura around you. Even though they're not as powerful as Piedmon's, I can still feel them all."
"That's great!" Hikari cheered "So where are they?"
"Hmm… there's so many of them, and in so many directions. I remember Izumi-kun having a purple aura. He's over in that direction where Piedmon is. But that's only because he was turned into a card and Piedmon has him."
"What colour is my aura?" Hikari asked, curiously
"Yours is pink, just like mine." Sakura answered cheerfully
"What about mine?" Takeru also questioned
Sakura cheerfulness vanished "Green… just like Syaoran-kun's."
Hikari hugged the sorceress around the neck, trying to cheer her up. Sakura hugged her new friend back thankfully and when Hikari let go, she smiled. If Syaoran were here, he would tell her not to cry. Sakura refused to cry. If she did, nothing would be done.
"I don't get it." Takeru commented, "Koushiro-san's aura is purple, like his crest. But my aura is green. Shouldn't it be yellow, like my crest?"
"Crests?" Sakura asked. She still didn't really know much about the digidestined and their earlier journeys to the digital world.
"We got our crests the first time we came to the digital world. They helped our digimon digivolve."
"Oh, I see. I can also feel an orange and grey aura coming from Piedmon. Do you know who those are from?"
"That's 'ni-chan and Jyou-san!" Hikari cried, "Piedmon has Jyou-san too!"
Takeru put an arm around Hikari. He could tell she was still upset about Taichi getting caught. Takeru himself was also upset. He remembered that Taichi had run from his hiding spot to help them. He had stayed to fight against Piedmon and got caught. Takeru was silently scolding himself for not staying to help Taichi. He could have done something to help his friend. But no, if he had done that then it would have put Hikari in danger.
"Let's go get Sora first." Takeru suggested. "Then we can go find the others."
Sakura nodded. "What colour is her aura?"
"Her crest is red."
Sakura closed her eyes and searched for the red aura. She blocked out all of the other auras so that Sora would be easier to find.
"There are two of them…" Sakura mumbled
"Two what?" Takeru questioned
"There are two red auras." Sakura answered.
"The new digidestined." Hikari commented. "Miyako must have the same aura as Sora."
"If that's the case then I don't know which one is Sora." Sakura sighed. "Both auras are of equal power."
"Are they with anybody?"
"Ano… one red aura is alone but the other one is with a green aura and a magenta aura."
"The aura that's alone is probably Sora." Hikari said. "Unless she found Mimi and Ken. In that case, it would be Miyako."
"Eto… maybe we should go looking for the one that is closest." Takeru suggested. "Who would that be?"
"That's the red aura that is alone. It's right over this way." Sakura replied and began walking into the trees.
*~*~*~*~*
Wow, that was a pretty long chapter...
If anyone is actually reading this, PLEASE review.
Arigatou
Oh well, I'll get on with the story now. I do not own Digimon or Card Captor Sakura...
Japanese Words:
(Iie) = No
(Arigatou) = Thank you
(Sugoi) = Cool/Awesome
(Daijoubu) = It's okay
*~*~*~*~*
Digital Cards
Solid Ice
*~*~*~*~*
Once Takeru entered the cave, he could see Sakura pulling at a cabinet.
"Syaoran is behind this. Please help me."
"Kinomoto-san, Li-kun is…" Hikari began.
"He's behind here!"
Hikari sighed and both she and Takeru started to pull on the cabinet with Sakura. The cabinet was really heavy but they were finally able to move it far enough from the wall to see behind it. There was a doorway behind the cabinet. Hikari and Takeru were surprised but Sakura looked like she had known. She squeezed behind the cabinet and through the opening. Takeru was the first behind her.
On the other side of the doorway was a small room, lighted by a single candle. The candle seemed to be magical since there were no wax drippings and it illuminated a lot more than an ordinary candle.
There was a single dresser with a couple drawers in the small room. Sitting on the top of the dresser was a birdcage with a giant padlock.
"Kero-chan!"
Keroberous, the guardian beast of the seal, was lying on the bottom of the cage. He appeared to be asleep but his eyes were open. Covering his body were many various bruises and scars.
"Kero-chan…" Sakura whimpered
"So that's Kero?" Hikari asked
"Who's Kero?" Takeru questioned
"One of my guardians. He guided me though the years of the Clow cards and the Sakura cards." Sakura answered while picking up the cage, trying wake the stuffed animal.
"How are you going to open the cage?" Hikari asked
"Maybe there's a key or something." Takeru suggested and opened one of the drawers. Inside were three key chains.
"Kinomoto-san…" Takeru began but Sakura was already at his side.
"Syaoran-kun" Sakura sobbed and picked up the little figurines. "First Tomoyo-chan and Mei-ling-chan and now Syaoran-kun"
"We-we tried to tell you, Kinomoto-san" Takeru stammered
"I can feel his aura! His aura is coming from this!" Sakura cried. She was hugging the little key chains to her body.
"Shouldn't we go?"
"Iie, Piedmon still isn't anywhere near."
"How do you know?" Hikari asked
"I can feel his aura…" Sakura began but then her eyes went wide.
She quickly spun around and stared at the birdcage.
"K-Kero-chan…"
"What's wrong?" Hikari questioned, a little frightened at what might be wrong.
"KERO-CHAN!!!" Sakura screamed, tears rolling down her cheeks.
"Please, tell us what's wrong"
"I… I can't feel his aura"
"What would that mean?" Takeru asked
"It would mean that Kero-chan is dead…"
"Can you feel his aura at all?"
"Yes but…"
"But what?"
"But it's not coming from Kero-chan…"
"What do you mean?" Hikari joined in on the questioning.
"Kero-chan's aura is coming from that wall." Sakura answered and pointed to the wall behind the desk/table.
"From it?"
"Well not quite… more like behind it."
"Maybe there's a doorway." Hikari suggested and began feeling the wall for some sort of clue.
"Or a switch" Takeru also began to help and climbed underneath the desk.
"Arigatou" Sakura smiled and wiped her tears from her cheeks. She hugged her small friends before slipping them into her backpack. Then she also went looking around for clues about Kero's aura. Returning to the desk, she opened the other drawer. Inside was a thin box. It was pretty long but wasn't very wide. She picked it up and was about to open it when she heard Takeru announce that he found something from down below her. She stuck the box into her backpack and ducked down to see what he had discovered.
"What is it?" Hikari questioned
"Look at this." Takeru said and reached for the wall beneath the desk. Sakura and Hikari were surprised to see his hand go right through it and disappear.
"Takeru-kun! Are you okay?" Hikari cried.
"I'm fine." Takeru replied and brought his hand back from the wall. "Do you think this leads to where your guardian is?"
"The Illusion Card could easily make it look like there was a wall there." Sakura pointed out.
"Wasn't the Illusion Card the one that copied Ankylomon?" Hikari asked
"I think so. The Illusion Card has a weird pattern on the front, right Kinomoto-san?" Takeru questioned
"Hai." Sakura responded, "I think we should go in. I'm positive Kero-chan is behind there." She was using all her strength just to stop herself from diving into the small opening. She didn't really care what was behind it; she just wanted to get her guardians back. She could now clearly feel Kero's golden aura radiating from behind the wall as well as Yue's moon aura.
Takeru nodded and stuck his arm through the fake wall. He waited a second then crawled through the opening, swiftly followed by Sakura and Hikari. What Sakura saw when she emerged on the other side of the wall was completely unexpected. A wave of relief, happiness and dread washed over her all at the same time. A gasp escaped from her mouth and she was clearly at the brink of tears. This room was a little bigger than the last, but that wasn't important to Sakura. In the middle of the opposite wall were her two guardians, Kero and Yue. They were right there in front of her, right in her reach. The only problem was that they were in the centres of two ice pillars. Her guardians were completely surrounded in ice.
"The-they're frozen." Hikari gasped from behind the stunned card mistress.
"Are they okay?" Takeru asked
Sakura was in too much shock to speak. Her lips were frozen, just like the ice barriers holding her friends. Tears were streaming down her cheeks, but she didn't notice.
"What do you think Piedmon could have done to do this? It's not cold in here at all. Could he be using magic?" Takeru pondered
"What do you think Kinomoto-san?" Hikari questioned
Sakura looked over at Hikari as her mind returned to her. She thought about it for a second then said: "The Freeze Card" A sigh of relief followed the statement. "The Freeze Card freezes magically. That means they are still alive."
"That's good. How are you going to unfreeze them?"
Sakura thought about it for a second. "I could use the Firey Card. It has a magic flame that won't burn them if I don't want it to. The only problem is that I don't have it."
"The Firey Card was the girl that shot a fireball at Togamon." Takeru exclaimed
"Is there any other way?" Hikari asked
"I don't think so. The only card I have is the Arrow Card…wait…"
"What is it?"
"I sense the aura of the Sakura Cards."
Takeru and Hikari jumped to they're feet. "Then we have to get out of here!" Takeru yelled.
"Iie, Piedmon still isn't near."
"Then where are the cards?
Sakura closed her eyes so it would be easier to sense the location. She pulled off her backpack and opened it up. Slipping her hand inside, she pulled out the wooden rectangle box she had found earlier. A smile appeared on her lips as she took off the lid. The first thing she could see was the pink half of a Sakura Card. She put her hand in and took out a small deck of Sakura Cards. Flipping over the deck she spread them out so she could see all. In her hands was the Shadow, Float, Twin, Jump, Silent, Glow, Move, Snow, Mist, Change and Mirror Card.
Sakura's tears returned to her eyes. But instead of sorrow, these were the tears of happiness. Hope had broken in through her barrier of sadness and gave her new determination. Deep inside she knew she would get past this and everything would turn out okay.
"Arigatou" She whispered to her cards and hugged them to her body. She was about to put them into her Sakura book with the Arrow card but spotted something on the top card. It was Piedmon's name, covering her own. Flipping through the deck she saw that all the cards were under his control. Syaoran had gotten rid of it on the Arrow card with a spell. She wished she had asked him how he had done it.
"Welcome back, friends." Sakura heard
She looked over at Takeru and Hikari but they were staring at the ice. Besides, this voice sounded older. The voice was coming not from her ears, but her mind.
"Oh, now look what he did to you." The voice continued. "You would much rather be under Mistress Sakura's control, right?"
Sakura could feel the cards grow warmer in her hands.
"I thought so. Now Sakura-chan, shouldn't you be paying extra attention to something more important?"
Sakura blinked. The voice had spoken to her. She waited for the woman to speak again but everything was silent. Sakura came back to her senses. What did the woman mean when she told her to pay attention to something more important? Everything seemed normal. She stretched out her senses and found what the voice was talking about. She put her cards into her book and returned it to her backpack. Lifting herself to her feet, she motioned for the others to head for the opening.
"Is Piedmon coming?!" Hikari gasped.
"Hai, but he is still far away. We should be able to get into the woods before he reaches here. I just wish…" Sakura explained, then turned and looked longingly at her guardians.
"What?" Takeru asked, already heading for the opening.
"For some reason, Piedmon had left some of the Sakura cards in his desk. Unfortunately, the Firey wasn't one of them."
"We'll come back as soon as we get it back from Piedmon." Hikari smiled, trying to cheer up the card mistress.
Sakura smiled in gratitude and said goodbye to her frozen friends.
As they passed the desk she returned the box to the place she found it and closed the drawers. They pushed the dresser back into place and the three of them left the cave.
"So what cards did you get Kinomoto-san?" Takeru asked as they crossed the empty field.
"I now have the Shadow card, the Float card, the Twin card, the Jump card, the Silent card, the Glow card, the Move card, the Snow card, the Change card, the Mist card, the Mirror card, and the Arrow card."
"Sugoi! Will they be very useful?"
"Actually, yes. That's the reason I don't understand why he was keeping him inside that desk, away from the rest of the cards."
They were now at the other end of the field and were entering the trees.
"Oh! Where is Sora-san? Wasn't she outside? What if Piedmon got her!" Hikari cried.
"Daijoubu. Sora went to look for the others." Takeru calmed the brown-eyed girl.
Hikari sighed in relief. "That's good. We should go look for them to. It would be better if we were all together."
"Where should we go?"
"I know where they all are." Sakura smiled
"You do?" Takeru asked "How?"
"That's easy. All you digidestined have a strange aura around you. Even though they're not as powerful as Piedmon's, I can still feel them all."
"That's great!" Hikari cheered "So where are they?"
"Hmm… there's so many of them, and in so many directions. I remember Izumi-kun having a purple aura. He's over in that direction where Piedmon is. But that's only because he was turned into a card and Piedmon has him."
"What colour is my aura?" Hikari asked, curiously
"Yours is pink, just like mine." Sakura answered cheerfully
"What about mine?" Takeru also questioned
Sakura cheerfulness vanished "Green… just like Syaoran-kun's."
Hikari hugged the sorceress around the neck, trying to cheer her up. Sakura hugged her new friend back thankfully and when Hikari let go, she smiled. If Syaoran were here, he would tell her not to cry. Sakura refused to cry. If she did, nothing would be done.
"I don't get it." Takeru commented, "Koushiro-san's aura is purple, like his crest. But my aura is green. Shouldn't it be yellow, like my crest?"
"Crests?" Sakura asked. She still didn't really know much about the digidestined and their earlier journeys to the digital world.
"We got our crests the first time we came to the digital world. They helped our digimon digivolve."
"Oh, I see. I can also feel an orange and grey aura coming from Piedmon. Do you know who those are from?"
"That's 'ni-chan and Jyou-san!" Hikari cried, "Piedmon has Jyou-san too!"
Takeru put an arm around Hikari. He could tell she was still upset about Taichi getting caught. Takeru himself was also upset. He remembered that Taichi had run from his hiding spot to help them. He had stayed to fight against Piedmon and got caught. Takeru was silently scolding himself for not staying to help Taichi. He could have done something to help his friend. But no, if he had done that then it would have put Hikari in danger.
"Let's go get Sora first." Takeru suggested. "Then we can go find the others."
Sakura nodded. "What colour is her aura?"
"Her crest is red."
Sakura closed her eyes and searched for the red aura. She blocked out all of the other auras so that Sora would be easier to find.
"There are two of them…" Sakura mumbled
"Two what?" Takeru questioned
"There are two red auras." Sakura answered.
"The new digidestined." Hikari commented. "Miyako must have the same aura as Sora."
"If that's the case then I don't know which one is Sora." Sakura sighed. "Both auras are of equal power."
"Are they with anybody?"
"Ano… one red aura is alone but the other one is with a green aura and a magenta aura."
"The aura that's alone is probably Sora." Hikari said. "Unless she found Mimi and Ken. In that case, it would be Miyako."
"Eto… maybe we should go looking for the one that is closest." Takeru suggested. "Who would that be?"
"That's the red aura that is alone. It's right over this way." Sakura replied and began walking into the trees.
*~*~*~*~*
Wow, that was a pretty long chapter...
If anyone is actually reading this, PLEASE review.
Arigatou