"Roaming the Darkness"

The sun had risen high above the town and at its zenith had looked over the entire sky without a single cloud obstructing its path but despite the normally dizzying heat it emitted over the Earth it watched the temperature itself was unusually cool.

Li Syaoran walked briskly down the path outside his home. Although the destination unclear, all he could feel was a sense of incompletion so immense that it hurt, he felt himself wanting to end the pain by finding the missing piece of the enigmatic puzzle that was there but at the same time not.

Stopping to rest for only a second he gazed distractedly at the sky above him in a seemingly desperate attempt to find the answer in the clouds and the sun.

Little did he know the true answer lay in the stars

Regardless he continued at a tiring rate down the road unaware of his surroundings when suddenly something caught his eye.

A tree, nothing interesting really just a tree, its leaves waved gracefully in the wind but something in waving in it's branches piqued his curiosity.

A flower, retaining very little of it's vibrancy but in it's fading color it was evident that at one time it had been a petite pink flower.

Images flashed before him but unlike the ones this morning there was no accompaniment no pain that would simulate his body being torn apart. They were abrupt too quick to make out any details but one stayed etched to his mind.

"Oooof…..gomen nasai" entangled so deeply in his thoughts he continued to speed walk and had walked right into the woman, she stumbled and tripped. Using his years of reflexive training he caught onto the flailing wrist and pulled the woman towards him narrowly avoiding the hard cement.

"To..Tomoyo?" he said while holding tightly onto her wrist as she stared at him wide-eyed and still panting from their collision.

"Li-kun, ano..how are you …umm feeling?" she said trembling, either from surprise and lack of breath or some ulterior reason. This hit Syaoran like cold water, Tomoyo his calm rational always confident friend was stuttering and seemed unsure of what to say, this alone worried him. "Tomoyo, what's wrong?"

She stuttered again, taking on a mixture of grief and disappointment as well as confusion in her dark eyes. Again he repeated his question this time with more demand.

"What's wrong? You know I would help you if you ever needed anything, we've been friends for forever now" he stated in his most calming tone of voice. True we've been friends ever since-

And then it began

The all too familiar pain swept across his skull and back before Tomoyo, the road the trees all exploded into white.

White, only white as far as the eye could see. The pain growing, every nerve firing off and bringing him to a desperate frenzy for the pain to stop.

Just then it did.

The surroundings were bleak, with a bright light that was obscured only by the shadow of the blur moving ever closer towards the old-Chinese style well.

I gotta help her he thought summoning his sword with practiced ease in the event of a possible confrontation between this newfound evil, overwhelming his sixth sense as it emanated a sense of not hate, but need.

"Wake up" he shouted defiantly.

The sudden burst of sound carried out in the forgotten hollows of an all-too familiar Hong Kong slum, with it the light dispersed and the dark magic had fled. Leaving the blur and him standing alone against the cold dust that had gathered itself there.

It began to materialize; he now knew for sure that his visions were not of finding what happened to him, but who happened to him.

The blur moved gradually as it fell into the shallow puddle splashing it's dark water onto the broken stone.

Water

Then he saw it, tires slicing through puddles, blurs of motion sweeping across the window, cries of pain and the blurry image of two beautifully carved jade eyes and…

…and…

..and red.

Crimson red that darkened everywhere that threatened to taint the jade forever, he felt a pang of grief, an overwhelming sense of pain that threatened to leave him as an empty shell of himself.

"…forget"

And suddenly everything went dark.