Ahahaha... the last chapter was bad, and this chapter is worse! I think this is becoming a problem...
For those of you that haven't noticed, I updated a new story. I'd also like to thank KiwiKol for the review. I forgot to mention that. It'll be explained (not in detail) in this chapter.
Disclaimer: Yes, I own CCS. I also own a pink elephant, a pet werewolf, and the planet Zobo.
Please note sarcasm.
Chapter 6 of 'My Life'
Finale
Naoko stood rooted to the spot in horror. She couldn't take her eyes away from the blood that was staining the carpets. The screams in the store weren't there at all. Her ears were still ringing from the gunshot.
"Where is she." It was a statement, not a question. Naoko didn't turn to look at the speaker. The only thing running through her mind was one thought, over and over again.
Sakura's fortune came true.
Sakura's fortune came true.
"I said: where is she?" He demanded angrily. He didn't recieve an answer.
"WHERE?" He yelled. Naoko turned with a placid expression on her face. Her mind had gone completely blank.
"She is nowhere, yet somewhere at the same time, she is nobody, and yet, she exists as somebody," she said in a quiet voice, quoting from one of Ikumo Arisu's books. Her voice was on autopilot, and her mind was shutting down from fear. He's going to kill me, she silently thought. He murdered Rika's parents, and now he's going to kill me.
She recalled the day Rika had been escorted to her house, tearstained and broken. Rika'd had to grow up pretty fast after that...
And she'd only been five.
"That gets me nowhere!" He was furious. This girl wasn't going to help him at all!
"Nowhere is the definition of somewhere that doesn't exist. That somewhere is just simply... not there," was Naoko's quiet response, her mouth still on autopilot.
He fired off another shot, this time through the roof. A yelp escaped from Naoko's lips, but it was lost in all the screams.
"Tell me, or die."
The barrel of the gun was now aimed at her heart.
Naoko visibly turned white.
"Can't you do anything Eriol-san?" Tomoyo cried over the screams. She had her cellphone out and was trying to reach the police.
"I could try, but I wouldn't know what to do!" Eriol had unconciously begun intecepting thoughts, and he had a massive headache. He tried to keep his composure.
"Are you retarded or something? You're normally the one that comes up with the harebrained ideas!" Syaoran demanded, glaring at his distant relative. "Naoko's going to get killed at this rate, and I can't do anything, because I'd just succeed in destroying half the store as well!"
The table they'd been playing cards was knocked over as the highschool girl with the fanboys ran past, all screaming. Tomoyo let out a groan and leaned over to pick up the cards. She still hadn't made a connection with the police.
"What about Sakura?" Chiharu suggested as she tried to help Tomoyo.
Meiling nodded. "She should be able to do it!"
"Yeah, but there's one problem," Syaoran said. At that very moment, Meiling looked around and didn't see the auburn-haired girl anywhere.
"Wait a second. Where'd she go?"
"And that's our problem."
Sakura clutched her star wand, face pale. The girl that she'd done a fortune on earlier lay dead on the ground.
It just wasn't fair. How one second you could be living and the next, dead.
"Illusion," she whispered, letting the wand tap one of her pink Sakura cards. She vanished from a normal point of view, letting the Illusion card swathe her in its magic.
Completely invisible to the naked eye, she moved slowly, positioning herself next to Naoko.
"Freeze," she hissed, tapping the card. The ice slowly crept along the ground. She used her magic to convert it so it was invisible.
"Sleep," she whispered, as the man glared at Naoko. The little fairy floated around, putting people to sleep. There were a lot of people in the store. Sakura was feeling the magic drain at this point. She would collapse at this rate.
"If you won't tell me anything useful, then you die!" The man fired a shot.
The bullet began covering the distance between him and Naoko.
"SHIELD!" Sakura screamed.
Time stopped.
Eriol watched the fairy floating around, sprinking blue powder. Every single person it flew over fell asleep. Sakura has this much magic, eh? He thought silently. She was putting a lot of people asleep.
Using his magic, he deflected the fairy from him and the others, who, for some reason or another, had resumed the game.
Syaoran glared at them all. "Do you not realize that there is in fact, a problem?" Meiling looked up at her cousin.
"We can't do anything about it without destroying anything, anyways! Go fish," she added.
"Dangit!" Chiharu muttered, leaning over and picking up a card.
"So we're just going to do nothing?"
"What can we do, Syaoran? Absolutely nothing, that's what." Meiling said. "Unless you want us to blow up the store while we're at -"
A scream cut through her sentence.
A little fairy drifted into the women's lounge, spirinkling dust on Rika. She fell fast asleep.
The fairy then glowed pink and went back into its card, job done.
Its card lay in a pool of blood that was slowly spreading, but its magic prevented it from getting bloody.
Syaoran tore through the store. That scream had to be Sakura's.
He froze when he reached the scene. There was blood on the ground. Sakura layface upin it, her pink cards scattered all around her. Her wand glowed and shrank, becoming the Star Key.
The man was frozen in place, but he was shouting obscene things. Naoko's face was ashen. She'd just escaped a near death experience.
"Is-is she -" Syaoran didn't dare say the word, for fear that it might be true.
Naoko shook her head.
"She's still alive." Syaoran sank to the ground in relief.
"I think she's suffering from magic drain." Tomoyo came over.
"I reached the police! They should be here soon!" She froze when she saw Sakura. Syaoran smiled weakly at her.
"She's not dead, thank kami-sama," he told her.
"Then the blood -"
"Is from the girl behind her," Naoko said quietly.
"Oh..." Syaoran began carefully picking up all of her Sakura cards. People around were waking up, looking confused.
"What happened?"
"I remember a gunshot... then... wait. Are we all dead?"
"No.. I don't think so..."
It was a while before the police arrived, forcing the barred doors open and searching.
"Where is the offending man?" The policeman's voice boomed loudly.
"Here, sir," a woman said. Children were crying. People were trying to avoid the blood. The police lifted the dead girl, seaching for an I.D. Syaoran stood protectively over Sakura when the policeman came to see her.
"She's not dead," Syaoran proclaimed. He'd have to get Eriol to do one of those cleaning spells on her, but other than that, she was okay. The policeman shrugged.
"Okay, then," he said, grabbing the man and handcuffing him. He turned to Maki. "We'll be sending in a cleaning team to clean the blood, but other than that, you should be good." He began pushing the man through the door, followed by another policeman that'd bagged the gun and the bloodstained book.
"I'LL GET YOU SASAKI!" He yelled as he was dragged through the door.
In the lounge, Rika shot up.
That was Kazama's voice... She thought.
He really was going to kill me! The door opened.
"Eh... Sasaki-san? Rika looked up to see Meiling. "He left."
"Oh, r-really? Th-that's good..." She shakily stood up. And fell over.
"Ikumo Arisu's supposed to show up in 15 minutes!"
"That's exciting..." Rika said quietly.
"You know, when he left, he yelled something about you," Meiling commented. "Do you know him?"
"Hai," Rika whispered. "He killed my parents. And my brother."
"Oh," Meiling said, not knowing what else to say.
"Well, I'd better get off," Rika said, standing up and leaving the room.
"Er..." The door slammed shut. "Okay, then..."
"Are you looking forward to meeting Ikumo Arisu?" The reporter, having awakened, was doing interviews. Again.
"Of course! Who wouldn't be?" A man asked.
"You'd have to be pretty stupid to not be," a woman said calmly.
"Honestly, I'm not sure!" A middle-school girl said.
"Nope." A boy of around five said bluntly. "I hate reading."
"I am!" A little girl cheered brightly.
"Definitely!" A couple said in unison.
"Well, it looks like almost everyone's excited! And the police are still investigating the murder case of Nanashi Ai(1), who was shot today," the reporter said, finishing up her interviews. The cameraman turned the camera off.
"Now all we have to do is wait..." The camerawoman said quietly, a grin spreading across her face.
"Do you have a five?" Eriol asked.
"No. Go fish." Eriol leaned over and picked up a card.
"A six?"
"You already used your turn," Syaoran said.
"Well, too bad." Sakura was still unconcious, but Syaoran had managed to convince Eriol to clean up the blood all over her clothes.
"ATTENTION EVERYONE! IKUMO ARISU WILL BE UP HERE IN TWO MINUTES!" Someone had a megaphone. The loud voice jolted Sakura awake.
"Did Naoko -"
"I'm perfectly fine," Naoko cut in. Sakura let out a sigh of relief.
"Come on," Syaoran told her. "We should go meet her."
"We already met her," Tomoyo said casually, standing up. "Didn't we?" Naoko nodded.
"We did," she said, before disappearing into the crowd.
Rika could be seen squeezing her way through the crowd. The reporter was doing interviews again.
"Do you know her?" The reporter asked. There was a "No."
"Excited?"
"Yes."
Meiling just waited patiently at the edge of the crowd, having left the restroom.
Syaoran looked up to see someone familiar at the podium.
"See, what did I tell you? We met her already!" Tomoyo said cheerfully.
"You knew who she was?" He asked her.
"Of course! I know lots of things! Actually, Eriol told me," she said, lowering her voice to a confidential whisper.
"Oh." The woman behind the podium cleared her throat.
"Eh... hello. That scare was... something, wasn't it?" Silence. Chiharu was in total shock.
"Er... I'm well-known as Ikumo Arisu..." Meiling stared at the speaker, stunned.
"But I'm actually known as Sasaki Rika..."
Owari
Ha! I finished! Poorly, though...
For those of you that reviewed, thank you very much! I will now be writing Unbreakable Promise, for those of you that are interested.
Originally, I was going to make Ikumo Arisu Naoko, but then I figured out that wouldn't work. I also considered making thehigh school girl IkumoArisu.Feel free to dream it up, if you want. I may or may not write an epilogue. It's up to you guys to decide.
Also for the chapter 2 answers:
Everyone who knew:
Tomoyo
Naoko (Heh, Naoko's lie was a lame one. She said that she promised, but she never did.)
Eriol (2 people voted yes, but no one voted no, so he knows)
Little girl with book (Well, I didn't bother to name her...)
12 year old boy
Everyone who didn't:
Chiharu
Sakura
Group of Girls (Wasn't it obvious?)
Rebellious boy
Syaoran
Mother with child
Couple
Woman in forties
Girl with fanclub (Also obvious!)
(1) - Nanashi Ai. Nanashi is 'no-name', ai is 'love'. I just randomly picked that name. Expect it to show up often in my fics...
Thank you to: Animefreakkagome (strange review there), TeDDie BeaRZ, Queen of Pink (anon.), cheeky doggie, Lil-BabYAnG3L, SPAngelz, ffgirl-07, KiwiKol, blackXxXblossom, Jade (anon.), and Musette Fujiwara for reviewing!
As well as all of those that bothered to add this story to their favorites and story alerts!
See you all in my next story! (Eh... if you decide to read it, that is...)