The Prize
by Iryl
Author's Notes:
AU: This is slightly AU, so expect some things to be different and some to stay the same. Please don't tell me I messed up because Li isn't doing magic or doesn't know about Clow. I left out anything that would make the plot too cumbersome -- this is a light romance, something to get me away from the novel I'm working on.
Complete: This story is finished and will be posted as it is typed. I just need to type it up. So you don't have to worry about it being finished because it already is. It will all be up when I add the Epilogue.
Along with that, chapters will be scenes -- when I change scenes, the chapter will change. This means that some chapters will be a few paragraphs and others will be a few pages. This allows me to post more often as I type it up.
It was dark in the park. Syaoran Li had just moved to Tomoeda and it was on his first night that he felt the dark, stirring magic.
He hurried to the park, still in his jeans and t-shirt. He had been brushing his teeth when the magic pricked his mind and had run out of the house, startling Wei (his cousin Meilin was already asleep).
There. He honed in on the sense and ran into the trees. There was another magic now, clean and white, battling the first.
He burst onto a jogging path, startling one of the combatants, who was knocked down by a blast of dark energy and landed by a bench. They didn't get up.
The creature came toward him, man-like but with tendrils of wriggling hair and skin the color of burnt wood.
He darted back as the creature struck, then took his own weapon from around his neck. A moment later, clashing steel filled the area.
In the end, he skewered the monster with its own weapon -- a curved blade like a short scythe.
Panting a little, he allowed himself to check the prone figure half-hidden by the park bench -- and caught his breath. She lay tragic and pale, almost artistically placed with her skirts, pale as moonlight, strewn around her. She seemed to glow in the night; the sight of her almost crippled him -- Syaoran found his knees trying to buckle.
When she moved, he let out a gasp that brought him back to reality and knelt beside her.
She sat up, looking dazed and lifting an automatic hand to check her mask. She wore a white mask with lace at the edges that disguised her eyes. Syaoran wondered why.
She searched the area around them before standing up, noting the fallen creature a few feet away. "Did you get them?"
Syaoran paused. "Them?"
Her eyes widened and she whirled, catching sight of movement and flinging out her hands with a wild "Fiery!"
A creature Syaoran had not seen creeping up on them was incinerated. "Wow," he said.
The girl, probably his age, turned and smiled at him. She pulled herself, shaking, onto the bench beside her. "So what do I owe you for saving my life?" She was teasing, but he took her up on it. When she heard his reply, she stopped smiling and looked at him -- really looked at him. "A kiss," she repeated.
He didn't really know how he'd had the nerve to say that, but, before she could shake the surprise off, he took her chin and tilted her lips up to his.
They were both blushing furiously the whole time, but Syaoran forced himself to be calm. His lips were warm and insistent, and after a few seconds she responded.
Then he was in heaven. By the time it ended, he found that he'd sat beside her and had gathered her in his arms. She had a dreamy, ravished look about her that made him want to kiss her again, but she came to herself before he could work up the courage.
"Oh," she said, backing out of his arms as if she'd just been walking and found herself on the ground. "I need," her eyes flew up to his as if embarrassed to look at him, "to go home."
"What's your name?" he asked as she stood.
She looked over her shoulder at him -- did she know how delicious her shoulders looked? -- and replied too innocently, "But you've already used your reward." Then she gave an impish smile, muttered "Illusion," and disappeared.
He gaped at where she had been, then sat back and thought about the evening. Touching his lips, he smiled. It hadn't been a waste.