A/N: Okay so this update came a lot quicker than the last one, right?
A reviewer asked me where they stored Syaoran's soul after taking it from the container. I've already explained that method a little bit at the very start of the story. He stored it in a pocket dimension through his magic. Just like Sakura stored her essential stuff in the beginning of the story when she first came onboard Little Wolf. I hope that clears up the confusion. ^_^;
Now then, enjoy the new chapter. ;)
"The pain won't last." The other Syaoran, the one that never had any emotions, spoke in his typical monotonous manner, completely ignoring his cousin as he focused all his attention on Sakura. She could feel Yuuko's counter-spell activate, but even it wasn't strong enough to contain the effects of the curse mark. Through the haze of pain enveloping her, she saw him narrow his eyes, the skin on her shoulder burning as she dug her nails into the flesh to try and stop it. "Embrace what you are."
"N-no…" she grit out, struggling to get back on her feet, vaguely wondering how she had ended up on her knees in the first place. The curse-seal was spreading, burning poison spreading through her veins, eating away at everything that made her who she was, but she fought, forcing it back, willing Yuuko's spell to work and contain its effects.
"Why do you fight it?" he cocked his head to one side curiously. "Embrace what you are."
"Because I'm not what that bastard wants me to be." She hissed, removing her hand from her burning shoulder with some effort as she glared at the brunette standing before her. "Just like you're not this…this…emotionless thing!"
"The mage was foolish to fight this way," He responded in what could have been a conversational manner had his tone not been so flat as he gazed past her towards Fai. Sakura took that chance to get back on her feet."Nothing will become of his sacrifice when you all die by my hands."
"Is that what your master told you?" she narrowed her eyes angrily, taking a step towards him as her mind raced a mile a minute.
"I only state the obvious."
"X-Xiao-lang…" Meiling interrupted, moving closer to her cousin, freezing at the level stare he gave her in response.
"Careful, hunter," he drawled in a way that showed he couldn't care less about the woman addressing him by a name he no longer used. "Emotions make you weak."
"On the contrary," she grit out, trying to stand as tall as she could despite the agony of two opposing magics waging war beneath her skin, "they're what make you stronger."
As if to disprove her point, Syaoran raised two fingers in Meilin's direction, shooting a bolt of lightning towards her that the shocked hunter couldn't quite dodge in time. Sakura watched in horror as the woman flew through the air, head colliding with the wall behind her with a sickening crunch as she slumped to the ground in an unmoving heap.
"Her emotions made her too weak to attack me," he said calmly, "and for that, she paid a heavy price."
"How could you do that to her?" she hissed angrily, unable to tear her gaze away from this emotionless thing before her to see if she was still alive or not. "She was your cousin!"
"She was weak." He responded simply, "I see the same weakness in you. Killing you will be just as easy. The mage has already forfeited his life and-" the wall to their right blew inwards in a magical explosion, cutting off his next words as they both turned to look at the cause of the disturbance. Touya led a party of Yukito, Kurogane and Tomoyo on hover boards, having apparently blasted a path through the palace walls to reach their location through a makeshift shortcut.
"Sakura!" She could hear the relief in his voice as he made a beeline straight for her, dropping the hoverboard right next to her. Grabbing her by the shoulders, he hurriedly checked her over, momentarily not perceiving Syaoran to be a threat. "Are you okay? Why are you by yourself? Where's that pilot? And Meilin, why did she…" he trailed off, apparently having caught sight of the fallen hunter's motionless body. "No… Who could… how did she-"
"You and your allies will meet the same fate." Syaoran said, picking up from where he had been interrupted before. "Emotional attachments make you weak."
"Brat," he growled low in his throat, "did you kill her?"
The brunette's only response was to cock his head to one side as though wordlessly questioning if there were any other candidates around.
"Don't," Sakura had enough sense to grab her brother's arm, keeping him from launching himself at the emotionless teen. "Did you find what you went after?"
She knew her brother was an excellent fighter but anger made him reckless enough to commit mistakes and right at that moment, he was burning with rage. Her best bet would be to draw the brunette as far away from everyone else as possible and try to return his soul to him.
"Here." He shoved a tiny ball in her palm. Glancing down, she noticed it was a vague replica of a yin-yang in spherical form, pulsing warmly against her skin like a tiny heart. She still had no idea how she was supposed to return the soul to the brunette, but she knew she would be trying to save him no matter what. She could still remember the way his apparition had looked at her back in Infinity when he had asked for her help. Knowing it would be best to do what she had to do as far away from her friends as possible, she grabbed the first hoverboard she saw and hopped on.
"Protect Fai," she said, hovering a few feet off the ground as she looked then all, "I'll fix him. Stay safe and good luck." And then she was zooming through the air, as fast as she could away from the others.
The sky was covered in thunderclouds, occasional flashes of lightning the only source of light as she picked up the sounds of fighting all over the city. Sensing the suffocating aura reaching out for her somewhere behind her, she knew her attempt to lead the brunette away from everyone had worked. Now all she had to do was bring him outside of the city where their fight would not be interrupted by wayward hunters. It was a little hard to determine the boundaries when there were no lights to help demarcate the outer walls of the Imperial city. That was probably one of the biggest downsides of Meilin's plan of the rebels blowing up as many power stations and control towers as possible.
Cold wind beat against her exposed skin, making her fingers numb, but Syaoran's soul was warm and comforting inside the palm of her hand as she flew as far away as she could.
-0-
Quickly barking orders at his companions to keep a look out for any one following after them, Touya dropped to his knees next to Meilin. He cast a cursory glance around for the missing blond Sakura had asked him to look after before deciding that Meilin was in more urgent need of assistance as he checked her for a pulse, feeling just the tiniest bit relieved to find one, weak but steadily thrumming beneath his fingers. She was still alive.
"Tomoyo," he hurriedly beckoned the medic over, "She's alive, help her." Waiting only for the woman to give him an affirmative nod before jumping to his feet and hurrying over to where he had left his hoverboard with Kurogane and Yukito. Activating the device, he mounted it and drew his sword.
"I'm going after them," he said, glancing over his shoulder to look at his companions. He froze where he was when his gaze slid past the two and he saw the horrifying sight awaiting him through the ornate double doors that had been thrown open. The shock must have shown on his face because both men were turning around to look at what he was seeing. Touya tried not to feel sick at seeing hundreds of wires going right through the body of the man he only knew as the pilot of Little Wolf. Kurogane swore explosively to cover his own shock as Touya tried to come to terms with the fact that the blond was suspended several feet above the ground by the snake-like cables that were connected by their other ends to the mainframe computers. How could he have missed noticing something like that until now?
Maybe it was the fact that even though it seemed like the man was in indescribable amounts of agony, lips parted in a never ending scream, the cocoon of berserk magic that surrounded his body was cutting off not only the noise but also the mainframe itself from sight. A defense mechanism of some sort perhaps? Keeping anyone from noticing the mainframes unless looked directly at. It could explain why he had only just seen him and… was that blood? He sucked in a sharp breath as his eyes followed the slow spiraling path a glob of something crimson coming out of the pilot took inside the sphere before joining a much bigger glob right at the base.
"No, don't." Yukito's sudden warning made him tear his gaze away from the sickening sight. "You'll kill him."
"What the hell do you mean I'll kill him?" Kurogane growled, trying to wrench his arm free of the bespectacled man's hold. He must have been trying to enter the room, "He's being tortured in there! We gotta get him out."
"That's the mainframe," Touya said before he could stop himself, "try to unhook him from it now and you'll kill him faster than you can blink."
"But what the heck is he doing in there?" the ex-captain growled in frustration, rounding on Touya angrily.
"He's trying to destroy Fei Wang's network." He replied, internally debating if he should tell the man the toll if would take on the pilot, deciding against it in the end. Besides, even he had no idea what would become of the blond at the end of this ordeal. Best not to go into it at all. And he still had to go after the Kaijuu. "Just keep an eye on him and Mei. I'm going after Sakura."
Before he could lift off the ground a powerful explosion sent him flying through the air, making the world spin around him as he hit his head on something and fell to the ground. Wiping the warm liquid seeping into his eyes away with the back of his hand, he staggered to his feet, trying to focus his attention on his surroundings. Yukito and Kurogane were still on their feet, surprisingly enough, thanks to the shield his friend had erected around himself and the red-eyed man just in the nick of time. They both appeared to be looking at something behind him but Touya found himself looking around for Tomoyo and Meilin. Were they alright? He knew whatever had caused the explosion required more attention but he had to know if she was okay. He found Tomoyo huddled over Meilin's still-unmoving form, shielding a woman she did not even know with her own body. He spotted a few bleeding cuts on the healer's face and arms but thankfully, Meilin was not harmed any further.
"Hello again, Kurogane," he heard a man speak silkily.
Deciding it was time to start paying attention to the ones that had caused the blast, he turned around, taking in the sight of a pale-skinned hunter smirking at their tiny group as he lazily cleaned a pair of round-framed spectacles before snapping them back to the bridge of his nose. His hair was pulled back in a low ponytail and he had the look of a man who was quite pleased with everything that was happening around him. Behind him stood a small army of hunters- had to be at least fifty men- all armed to the teeth and looking more than ready to spill some blood. Must have been the Bat Lord's hand-picked loyalists.
"I see you brought a couple of traitors along with you," the man continued in an amused tone, seemingly dismissing their group as nothing more than a minor annoyance. "and the thorn in my master's side as well." He nodded his head towards the place where Touya now knew Fai to be, still screaming that never-ending, soundless scream. "It's too bad I won't be getting the pleasure of killing him off, but I guess I can still settle for your little rag-tag group of losers instead."
"Rondart," hissed the captain, immediately alerting Touya to the hunter's identity. Sakura had told him about this imposter back in Infinity. "I'll make sure to draw out your death for as long as possible for what you did to the kid."
"Ah," the man's smirk widened, "but it was that man on the other side of those doors who did all that to your adoptive brother. Tell me, by the way," he continued conversationally, not at all acting like they were a threat, "how did you put up with that retard for so long anyways? I must say, the broken mind does make it a lot easier to control our weapon."
Touya's grip tightened around the hilt of his sword as he glowered at the man. The hunter's words seemed to have brought Kurogane's anger to a whole other level, though. The man let out an animalistic snarl as he shot towards the hunter with his weapon slicing through the air, aiming to cut the latter in half right where he stood.
Touya only had a moment to swear internally before following after the red-eyed man, signaling Yukito to back them up. He knew that letting Kurogane go off to fight that many hunters on his own would not be much different from allowing him to commit suicide. Hell, he was running right to his own death. The sound of metal screaming against metal filled up the air as he gave his magic free reign to defend him and Kurogane from attacks they could not block as the first wave of hunters swarmed the narrow corridor to spill their blood.
-0-
"Why do you still fight?" she heard him ask with the smallest inflection of curiosity as she turned around to face him, far away from the city. The skies had opened up and rain was pouring down hard, making it difficult for her to see much at all. She could still, just barely, make out his vague humanoid form against the darkness a few feet from her.
"Because I refuse to let something control me." She responded, tightening her fingers around the brunette's soul, trying to wrack her brain for an idea on how she was supposed to return it to him. As though protesting to her rough treatment, the ball began to grow hotter and hotter till it was nearly scalding against her skin.
"Is living in agony any better?" Syaoran questioned, sounding quite a lot like his old self. However, the constant presence of his suffocating magic crackling in the air reminded her that despite the similarities, this was not the boy she had come to know and care for.
The burning sensation in her hand caused her to hiss out in pain as she focused all her will power into not dropping the ball into the darkness below her. She could feel the tiniest amounts of Fai's magic mixed with what had to be his dead twin's magic weaving some sort of spell around the soul but it was hard to figure out its intended purpose until the magic caused the tiny orb to collapse inwards inside her palm. Her eyes widened in panic as she hurriedly brought her hand to her face, realizing it was now empty of the soul she had been entrusted with.
"Such a fool." Syaoran chuckled, giving the first proper hint of human emotion as he looked at her, her eyes having adjusted to the darkness well enough to see him. "His efforts and sacrifice will be in vain."
The warmth of his soul suddenly settled right against her own heart, calming her panicked mind enough to properly pay attention to Syaoran and her surroundings. A flash of lightning lit up the night, bathing everything in an electric glow for a fraction of a second as rain continued to pelt their bodies. Thunder rumbled overhead and she noticed Syaoran raising his sword, attracting the next bolt of lightning to his weapon. The blade absorbed the fury of nature, letting it crackle all around it in a terrifying sight.
She only had a split second to swerve out of the way of the magically-enhanced attack that came tearing through the air towards her. Gritting her teeth at the unavoidable fight, Sakura called on her magic to enhance her senses. They were both deadly assassins, trained to be perfect human weapons. One was without a soul and the other had more blood on her hands than entire armies combined. She knew, even before their fight properly began, that unless a miracle were to happen, only one of them would be walking away from this alive. She only hoped she would be able to find that miracle before she had to take the life of this boy who had been a very important part of her life from the very beginning.
A/N: The stages have all been set and the final showdowns are about to begin. Keep an eye out for the update and don't forget drop me a review. Remember, your reviews feed the plunnies and help them grow strong and mutate quicker into these monstrosities I end up writing all the time… ^_^;