Haven't magically been given the rights to CCS or YYH. Haven't changed the plot, though various underlying magical theories and histories are changing with every chapter. Anyways, all warnings and disclaimers still apply.
A few quick cultural notes:
the Japanese do not put thermometers in their mouths. They put them under the arm.
"Cat's tongue": the literal translation of a Japanese term for people who can't eat very hot food. (Hot as in temperature, not spice.)
"san". In Japan, polite suffixes are added to everyone's name EXCEPT your own (unless you're extremely arrogant), though sometimes you can drop the suffix if you're very close to the other person (like with your spouse, sibling, or your child) or being extremely rude. So, in English you would introduce yourself with "Mr. Smith", and be called "Mr. Smith", but in Japanese you would introduce yourself as just "Smith", and be called "Smith-san".
The cutesy, Hello-Kitty-style frog that you may have seen is "Keropi-chan".
CHAPTER STARTS HERE-
Ch. 4 - Shutdown
The next morning, Sakura wouldn't wake.
"C'mon, kaijuu," Touya muttered, gently shaking her shoulder. A useless gesture, one he'd done several times over the last ten minutes, but it gave him something to do while waiting for the thermometer to beep.
Something to do other than stare at the bottom desk drawer, where Sakura's stupid stuffed toy was hiding from him, that is. And if the toy-thing knew what was good for it, it would NOT come out until Touya rousted it from the drawer. Which, if Sakura's temperature was normal... or even if it wasn't, come to think of it...
The thermometer beeped. Touya clinically reached under the covers, into Sakura's pajama top, and removed the device from her armpit. The digital readout displayed a perfect 37 degrees Celsius: normal body temperature.
Touya looked up at the door, meeting Yukito's gaze. "She's not feverish," he said flatly. "Pulse is normal, her color's good... there's nothing wrong with her."
"But?" Yukito pressed.
In answer, Touya just cocked his head at his unconscious sister.
Yukito bit his lip. "I'll make your excuses," he offered lamely.
Touya stared at him, willing Yue to come out so they could have words. It didn't work, although Yukito flinched subtly, unconsciously, away, eyes bewildered under the worry for Sakura. "If you would, please," Touya relented, putting the thermometer in his shirt pocket. He wouldn't be going to school today.
"Do you have work afterwards?" Yukito asked. Touya nodded absently. "I could take your shift."
"No, I can go," Touya said, standing. "Dad'll be home from his dig later this afternoon."
"If you're sure..."
"I'm sure."
With one last glance at Sakura, Touya left the room, Yukito turning to follow three steps behind. Yukito ate a hasty breakfast... three, actually: Touya's, Sakura's, and the first helping of his own... while Touya packed away the rest of the food he'd intended for Yukito's usual second and third helpings. He could eat later, and Yukito was running late from the time spent trying to wake Sakura.
By the time he was done, so was Yukito, and Touya followed him to the door. He stuffed Yukito's schoolbag in his hand and a last slice of toast in his mouth while Yukito simultaneously tugged on his jacket and shoved his feet into shoes, then Touya all but pushed Yukito out the door.
"See you later, To-ya!" Yukito called back as he rushed out the gate and vanished around the corner.
Touya shut the door without the proper reply. Yukito was out of hearing by now anyway.
He kicked his shoes off and stepped back into his slippers, and dropped the thermometer off in the bathroom, washing the tip and leaving it out to dry. Then he headed upstairs, changed out of his school uniform, and stopped by Sakura's room once more.
Knocking gained him no response, so he opened the door. Sakura remained asleep in her bed, and her plush lion had mysteriously appeared on the shelf near her head. Looked like the yellow creature... whatever its name was... had forgotten that Touya knew pretty much everything. Touya closed the door once more and shook his head. No need to harrass the plushie thing yet.
He had a better idea.
SCENEBREAK-
Around noon, Touya returned upstairs. He'd checked twice since that first look, with no change in Sakura's condition. Both times, he'd clomped heavily up the stairs, hearing the faint sound of Sakura's game system snap off before he was halfway to her room. This time he'd tiptoed up, and the telltale electronic beeps and background music floated out from behind the door, overlaid by incoherent yelling and growling in a somewhat rough, high-pitched voice that definitely wasn't Sakura's.
"Lunch is ready if you want it," he called out, eliciting a horrified clatter, complete with explosions and a howl of dismay. Ha. He'd made the toy lose its video game.
Touya smirked faintly and headed downstairs, not bothering to see if the promise of food would lure the creature out. Considering the grocery bills since Sakura had acquired the thing, there was no way it would pass up a meal.
And indeed, shortly after Touya sat down, while he was pouring himself a cup of strong tea, a small yellow head poked sheepishly around the corner. Touya met its eyes for a moment, then tipped his head curtly towards the other place setting.
The toy glided across the room and landed in the clear spot Touya had left it. It tugged a napkin across its lap, spent a second admiring the food, then bowed from the waist towards Touya. "Thanks fer the food," it said clearly, though with a strong Osaka accent.
Touya didn't answer. But he did pour a cup of tea for the yellow creature before beginning to eat his lunch.
It grabbed a chopstick in each hand and attacked the meal, gobbling noisily and taking huge mouthfuls (probably the only way it could possibly eat a full, adult-sized meal in the same time it took an actual, adult human fifty times his size). "Mm... thish ish delicioush... mm, and this... and this... ahaha, yummy..." It gulped loudly and slurped up some tea. "Ow, hot!"
"Cat's-tongue," Touya muttered.
The beast rolled its eyes. "Well, what else would I have?" it asked rhetorically, before diving back into its lunch once more. "Mm... good...!"
It's almost like eating with Yuki, Touya realized. Just as fast, just as vocal...and everything's good. A bit of rice got stuck to the creature's cheek. Though not as clean. Touya stifled a smile.
"What?" the little beast asked.
Apparently, he hadn't stifled it well enough. "Nothing," Touya said flatly. The toy shrugged and went back to eating. Touya ate a few more bites of his own lunch, washing it down with tea, and paused. "Hey."
"Mm?"
"What's your name?"
The toy blinked, then leapt to its back paws and stood tall. "I," it said grandly, brandishing a chopstick, "am the great and magnificent Sun Guardian of the Seal, created by Clow Reed, Keroberos!" It grinned at Touya and plopped back down. "But you can call me Kero."
Kero. Hm. Sounded like a frog. "Kero-san," Touya repeated, trying the name.
"Yup."
"Huh."
They finished the meal in silence, save for Kero's appreciative munching and a round of seconds for the little creature. Finally, though, he sat back with a happy puff of air and patted his stomach. "Mm, that was good... thanks bunches." He beamed at Touya. "I keep forgettin' I can actually have lunch when you're home without Sakura sneakin' it up, yanno?"
That was a good enough way to lead into the conversation Touya wanted to have. "About Sakura..." he began.
"Hm?"
Touya fixed a dangerous stare on Kero. "Shouldn't she be awake by now?" She had passed out a couple of times before, from... whatever she was doing. Changing magical Cards so they worked off her power, too weak to do the same for Yue... but however it worked, she'd never stayed unconscious this long.
Kero frowned, crossing its arms thoughtfully and contemplating the tabletop. "Well..." it hedged, "Maybe."
Maybe?
"Clow scrambled my memories, and Yue's, a bit before he died," Kero continued. "Or when he died. Sometime around then. I'm not entirely sure, but it happened. However..." and Kero frowned more deeply, his round little forehead furrowing in concentration, "... I seem to recall that Clow himself had wildly different reactions to creating each Card." He paused, eyes closed in thought, then nodded to himself. "Yes. And there was never any pattern to how it happened, really." Kero snorted softly. "Like he spent a month in his sickbed raving heresies after making Create, Erase, and Twin, but only needed a coupla hours' sleep after Light and Dark." He glanced up at Touya through one eye.
"A MONTH?"
"Pretty much. Dunno why. Like I said, no pattern." Kero waved one stubby paw at him placatingly. "But this was bound to happen eventually, once she started making her own Cards from scratch. As long as she isn't feverish or babbling about the importance of forty-two, I wouldn't worry. Okay?"
"... no."
SCENEBREAK-
It seemed that she drifted in an endless black void, long chains of pink petals twining thinly about. They spun in slow streams, twirling each on their own, flickering bright into glittering into gleaming to gone. And they held back the dark and the shards and the tears, ripping heat meant to stifle, and gave her some air.
"Mama... it hurts..."
No reply; the cards tumbled and spun.
SCENEBREAK-
The day wound down quickly, as weekdays tended to do, and by the time the autumn sundrew long shadows over the streets, Touya's father had arrived home and Touya was able to leave for his part-time.
Today he was scheduled at a local restuarant, a small walk-up booth that would soon close for the winter. The food wasn't that great, but the place was quick, cheap, and on one of the main roads near the train station. So, despite the darkening skies and falling temperatures, Touya was kept busy at the register until considerably after the last train from Tokyo passed through.
Among the last customers of the night... usually tired, slow-moving salarymen and secretaries, a scattering of bright-eyed college students weighed down with books... were two teenagers: rough-edged boys in unfamiliar school uniforms, who would've sparked any shopkeeper's instant suspiscion.
As the shorter boy snapped out an order for sodas and fried rice, in an accent that Touya couldn't place, the taller one stared unabashedly at Touya as if he was a potentially rabid dog. Touya ignored it, keying in the order and counting out the money the first boy tossed into the money dish very carefully. The notes looked like real yen... he began counting out the change.
"Hey," the first boy began. Touya glanced up, to see the boy's hand disappear into his shirt pocket.
The other boy grabbed the first's arm. "Wait, man," he blurted, getting a confused, challenging stare.
Touya waited, hand curled around the counter, finger poised over the button that would activate the security alarm... but no, he could see the edge of a piece of glossy paper just peeking out of the pocket. Nothing else.
"Just... trust me, man, okay?" The taller boy's eyes flicked nervously from his friend to Touya and back several times.
"... fine." The paper vanished, tucked securely into the bottom of the pocket once more. The first boy grabbed his change, the food, and they walked off into the night.
Touya stared after them for a long moment. Weird...
SCENEBREAK-
Somewhere deep in the last building this side of reality, a phone rang.
And rang.
And rang.
Koenma stumbled out of the bathroom attached to his office, clutching his trousers closed as he ran to his desk. Hopping into his chair, nearly losing his grip on the fabric, he fumbled at the reciever, accidentally hitting the button for the speakerphone.
"It's about time you picked up, you pint-sized excuse for a god! What sort of shit-ass operation are you running? I'm sick of being dumped into the middle of the biggest wrecks you guys can't ignore anymore! I signed on to look for my friends, not clean up your mess!"
"Yuusuke! What...? Slow down, I have no idea what you're talking about!" Koenma blurted the instant Yuusuke paused to take a breath.
"NO IDEA? NO IDEA? We didn't take ten steps into this town before Kuwabara was having fits of the screaming meemies, and I for one don't blame him! HOW COULD YOU MISS THIS?"
"Miss WHAT?" Koenma asked, taking a second to button his pants.
"Oh, nothing," Yuusuke snapped. "Just the biggest, most powerful psychic vampire I've ever frikkin' HEARD of."
Koenma nearly fell out of his chair with a squawk.
"Or somethin' close to it. And it's been here over six months," Yuusuke finished. "SIX MONTHS. Really gonna tell me you had NO clue?"
"I..." Koenma squeaked. Clenching his fists, he pulled a remote from his desk drawer, turned on his monitor, and began entering commands. "I'm on it, but I swear, I haven't heard a thing. I think the reports said that sector's been quiet for years."
Silence for a long moment. "... then either they're the wrong reports, or somebody's been snowing you guys."
Which, Koenma knew, made the situation that much worse. Was it just in Tomoeda, or was it a widespread problem? How much was being missed by Reikai surveillance? He entered more commands into the remote, isolating the sector in the monitor. "Just how strong a demon are we reporting?" he asked warily.
A bit of muffled noise crackled through the speaker, then Yuusuke came back on. "Kuwabara says at least powerful enough to take all his power in one gulp. That's about the capacity of the victim we saw."
At least. At least. Though Kuwabara was no A-class demon, he was still remarkably powerful... even ignoring the psychological strength he gained from his complete inability to accept defeat. If this thing could take all of Kuwabara's power in one gulp... and it had already done so to one person, and had been running amok for six months since then...
Snap decision. Koenma grabbed his stamp from the desk and pushed it into a slot on the back of the remote. A click, and the remote's top flipped up, revealing a grid of arcanely-marked buttons. "I'm shutting the sector down."
"You're what!"
There was only one way to divert Yuusuke's attention and keep him working the mission, rather than blowing his way out of containment, and luckily it was with the truth. "Yuusuke, if Kurama and Hiei encountered something that drains magic... there's a chance... a very small chance... there might be nothing left." Except, in a worst-case scenario, a half-empty shell of flesh left of Minamino Shuiichi.
Static crackled through the line.
Koenma hit one more button, and the arcane writing lit up bright red, outlining a new button. "Contact me when you've eliminated the threat."
"What? Hey! Wait!"
"Brace yourselves."
"Koenma!"
He hit the button.
TBC
A/N's -
Don't worry, you are supposed to be confused by that scene. You know which one I'm talking about.