Author's Note: Internet got switched over during the week so I'm slightly behind in writing. Only slightly though. Read, Review, Favourite and Enjoy!
Chapter 120: The Hero's Cards
Sakura looked at the man who had been watching her, black hair, dark eyes, black coat, and skilfully shuffling a deck of cards with one hand. Chazz is what his name was, every few minutes he would look to his side as if speaking to someone his tone ranging from neutral to angry and insulting. Eventually Naofumi finished up with Myne and came in for her turn.
"You're.. difficult to settle on a place to send you." Naofumi stated as he crossed his legs and looked at Sakura tapping his fingers against his arm. "If I sent you to your home world you would just handle everything easily using the various clow cards." Naofumi stated as he indicated Chaz. "So it's either sending you to your world or to his."
"What's so special about his world?" Sakura asked indicating Chazz.
"Card users are more common where I come from, unlike yours where the only one who uses them is you and the people you know." Chazz explained as he shuffled his deck.
"Is that who you keep talking to?" Sakura asked looking at Chazz bluntly.
"Yes. Weak spirits are able to float around without anyone noticing, and these three are the weakest among the weak." Chazz's face suddenly lit up and he turned angrily on the three invisible spirits that only he could see. "Shut Up! Why would I want to inflict your ugly faces on this little girl! I'll let you three become visible when I have a mirror I wanna shatter!" Sakura was legitimately taken aback at the angry outburst and leaned over to talk to Naofumi.
"They don't get along do they?" Sakura asked looking at Naofumi with concern.
"This fellow once saved those three from the bottom of a well alongside a bunch of other weak spirits and he's basically been a magnet for monster spirits ever since." Naofumi stated by way of reply. "It would be one thing if he just abused them and made them stay in card form twenty four seven, but he let's them come out and voice their opinions, and at night he basically shoves plugs into his ears and lets them party all night." Since they don't have any physical presence, they don't make a mess, they're only loud which is why he wears ear plugs. Aside from that he lets them run wild.
"How did Card Spirits get so popular in your world?" Sakura asked looking at Chazz curiously.
"Jerk archaeologist named Maximillian Pegasus dug them out of an ancient Egyptian tomb, got told by another jerk that shoved a rock into his eye socket that ancient Egyptian wizards use to used them to do battle in ancient times and thought 'Jeez, I should turn this into a card game and make millions of dollars.'"
Sakura was stunned by that.
"A... card game?" Sakura didn't know how to respond to that, the life in her eyes looked like they were getting ready to leave her.
"That's the face I made when I realised how dangerous some of these things are." Chazz stated holding up his deck, before angrily turning on the three card spirits that were floating around him and snapping again. "Oh shut up! You know exactly what I mean!"
The colour in Sakura's face drained away. This was like if Clow Reed mass produced the Clow Cards and distributed them to the public in the name of profit, this was like manufacturing thousands of Tow missiles and putting them on the shelves of children's toy stores!
"To be fair, I think that if people really knew what these things are capable of the government would have rounded all of them up already." Chazz stated bluntly.
"Oh please, your world's gone through what? Five near miss apocalypses already?" Naofumi asked looking at Chazz like he said something stupid. "Your world's governments just don't wanna admit that they've been blindsided by a half blind old man with a easel, nor do they want to admit that they've allowed the stupid things to run wild so long, nor do they want to admit that said apocalypses were stopped by a bunch of teenagers armed with cards."
Sakura just face palmed herself and let out a sigh. Bureaucracy. Bureaucracy and politics were going to be the death of that world.
"So where would I be going in that world?"
"Industrial Illusions, the company that the half blind archaeologist now owns, where he spends his days making pictures to turn into cards. Training under him would help you figure some things out." Naofumi explained while he was getting ready to cast the first of the spells that he would use to send Sakura back to her world.
"And if I return to my world?" Sakura asked looking at Naofumi suspiciously.
"You'll be returned to your home, after you finished things with the Hope card." Naofumi explained bluntly. Sakura thought about the situation for a few more moments.
"It would be good if I could reestablish communication with the Sakura cards before I go." Sakura stated as she held her chin in her hands.
"Well that's the easy part." Naofumi stated as he poked Sakura in her head.
When Sakura woke up she had sand in her mouth and proceeded to spit the foul tasting substance out.
"Well, I'm not in the city anymore." Sakura could practically hear the Eqyptian music play in her ears as she saw the desert like expanse, with the pyramid's off in the distance. So she was Egyptian in her past life like those... she got the feeling she knew why that Chazz guy was chosen as her mentor now. Putting that thought off to the side Sakura made her way into the Egyptian tomb, where she encountered a young girl who was looking at an unfinished stone carving with a pondering look. "So I was a stone mason in my past life?" Sakura asked feeling a little let down. She was a little girl in her Past life and she was still a little girl now.
"I am a dark mage." The other girl seemed to pay Sakura the barest hint of attention before returning her attention to the stone block. "My name is Mana."
"A mage is named for the substance that magic works off of?" Sakura asked her face scrunching in confusion. "Did your parents hate you or something?"
"The substance Magic works off of was named for me." The girl named Mana corrected as she put her tools down. "I am one of the first mages in human history, and one of the first to study and categorise the flow of magical power, there have been other incarnations before me but I am the one who made the biggest impact."
"And how does a dark mage pay?" Sakura asked looking at the girl suspiciously.
"At the moment? Not even in job satisfaction." Mana explained as she walked backwards. "My order's job is to pull out the darkness in people's hearts thereby ridding us of the danger they represent and sealing it away. At the same time the sealed darkness becomes controllable monsters that we can use as weapons to defend the kingdom with."
"That all sounds like a horrible life choice." Sakura stated eyes wide with terror.
"You're not wrong." And what's worse: Mana didn't even deny it. "Like broken bones or strained muscles the removal of part of the soul is a injury that will heal over time, stronger so to help prevent the same injury from occurring again in the future, not even remotely helped by the fact that thanks to the arrogant belief that we're above such things the darkness has the fuel to grow massively and the people it's taken root in ignoring it." Mana grabbed her hammer and nearly snapped its head off in anger. "But the worst part is, when people started deliberately breeding stronger and stronger monsters by rounding up our citizens for the slightest offences and had them engage in death matches!" And then the anger in the room deflated as Mana slumped over. "So now you know how our civilisation fell." Sakura could imagine that going out of your way to mass produce a bunch of monsters made out of the worst parts of humanity would probably have that effect.
"Don't tell me that is..." Sakura asked indicating the stone slate that Mana had been working on.
"Ours." Mana stated as she let out a sigh. "Ironic, yanking out the darkness in our people's hearts and then getting them to fight for their lives is exactly how our civilisation fell, and then I turned around and did the exact same thing to myself in order to try and save as many people as possible. Of course I was the even bigger fool, instead of the darkest parts of my soul I went for the whole thing. In the hopes that in the future I would be able to stop the dark tides." Mana just sat down and let out a sigh.
"The Card Game? The one Chazz was talking about!?" Sakura stated as if cluing into the situation going on.
"Yes." Mana gave a flat look, eyes dead. "If I knew how many 'fans' I would have in the future I would've drawn myself as a ugly old woman." Mana reduced herself to an image, an image that exists in the form of countless cards, posters, adult entertainment websites, and Mana was not only conscious in each of them, but aware of what was happening around them.
"What is it? What happened?" Sakura was looking legitimately concerned with Mana.
"I'll spare you the details of the horror show." Mana handed Sakura a paint brush. "Finish it. And put more clothes on it than I did."
"Are you sure?" Sakura asked taking the paint brush nervously. "This sounds like this is pretty important to the timeline."
"Do you have nightmares about people leering at you?" That was the least of Mana's nightmares but like she said she'll spare Sakura the grisly details. "Then it sounds like we went through separate timelines, instead of being dug up by a self proclaimed Archaeologist turned Artist turned game designer I stayed in my dusty hole and eventually became you. Now paint."
"Hmm." Sakura looked at the stone block and pressed the small end of the paint brush into her lip. Mana reminded Sakura little of a witch, only instead of long flowing gowns she instead had simple thin linen cloth typical of ancient Egypt. Sakura was artistically dead inside but Tomoyo had an unhealthy obsession with dressing her up in a new outfit every time one of the cards reared their ugly heads so she had plenty of inspiration to call upon. For this occasion, Sakura recalled the most witch-like outfit of the lot, the one she wore when she went after the storm card, a navy blue leotard/shorts combination, a blue on red rain slicker/cloak combination, and a blue on red witches hat and navy blue stockings with black mary-jane shoes. Sakura looked to Mana, right she should make some additions instead of just blindy painting Tomoya's work over her, so... Mana had a cloak pin of some kind, a ruby bejeweled clasp with a star inside of it, so she just added that. "Finished!" Sakura declared and Mana walked around to look at her works.
"Looks good." And then the world was sucked away.
Sakura woke up in her bed back in her family home, three alarm clocks going off in her ears. A morning person Sakura was not. But they were not the only thing getting her attention. The H.U.D. was back, but it was already sorting through her transformations. The Majority of them sadly were quite predictable, all of the stat boosting cards that she collected had their bonuses removed without the power to order the world around telling them that they're raising her stats. Instead Sakura focused on finding her allies.
"Kero!" Sakura immediately went to one of her drawers and pulled it open, revealing that the inside had been crudely decorated like a room, complete with a bed of folded cloth with a small winged stuffed toy inside.
"Sakura? Since when are you a morning persooon-!" Sakura pulled the talking toy out of the drawer as she twirled around the room hugging him to herself. Sakura was sitting in front of Kero on the bed, regaling him with her story of what happened to her when she was summoned, the hero book she had on her person made it easier, how she was summoned to fight off that world's directional tiger beast, the reincarnated, the other heroes, and how she was sent back home after so many years. And why she would have to go back. "Hmm. That would explain your sudden increase in power." Kero explained while he started pacing around the bed.
"I've retained my increased mana?" Sakura asked while she looked at the H.U.D. one of the 'Sword Cards' she picked up from Kuro activating by itself.
"Definitely, these 'reinforcement methods' must include increasing your mana capacity and production. You've already managed to match Clow Reed's power." As Kero was saying that the book started to glow, a rectangle block in the middle of the book. "Oh that's not good."
The Bao Lei sword, a weapon designed specifically to refine spirits to a stronger form, not only that but a vast wave of cards were disappearing from Sakura's list under the influence of the black smithing reinforcement method, and under the influence of the crafting minigame each of them were being used as materials to strengthen and reinforce the Original set of Cards Sakura came to the other world with, the Sakura cards. Because of the influence of these things, the deck of cards exploded, dozens of spirits ripped through Sakura's room and shattered the window as they flew outside over the skyline of Tokyo.
""Here we go again.""
Two figures flew into Sakura's room and bowed before her. The first of two Sakura recognised, expected even, white hair, luxurious white robes, white wings, White as the Moon Yue.
The second though was unfamiliar with Sakura, black clothing and black wings like the night sky, but both his clothing and his wings were decorated with gold thread and sparkles, a swath of black cloth covered his right eye with a golden Egyptian eye ornament over on top.
"We came as soon as we saw." Sakura lightly slapped her face as she looked down at the deck of cards in her hands, she was back to having only fifty three cards, and all of them were clear like slates of empty epoxy. Then a message appeared on the H.U.D.
'After being refined into divine spirits the Sakura Card's power can no longer be contained via the 'Clow Card' system. Each of the Sakura cards must be found and rebinded in order to restore the power of the Cleared Cards.'
"Do I just have to chase them down and reseal them after beating them into submission again?" Sakura asked looking concerned. As if answering this question, the H.U.D. revealed the 'Paint System.' In Sakura's field of vision a sheet appeared in midair, off to the side an artist's palet alongside paint brushes and a paint all appeared. 'Once a spirit is found its physical form must be bound back into existence, not only that...' Various symbols Sakura recognised as magic letters appeared in her field of view. 'But to pin down the powers and limitations of each card the appropriate corresponding magic symbols must be hidden into the image as well.' Sakura just hung her head low and sighed. Using the system was a lot easier than creating it. 'Be quick. The Longer the cards go without being sealed the more havoc they have the chance to unleash, not to mention that they need mana to survive, and without you to supply it they will go looking for it themselves.'
"Sakura, your orders?" Yue asked concerned that their mistress wasn't responding to them. Sakura just let out a sigh in response.
"I need the two of you to go around and see if you can catch hide or hair of the various spirits. If we're lucky we can start catching them before they get up to their old tricks." Sakura stated while she looked down at the epoxy like cards in her hands, sighed, and then put them away.
"If you wouldn't mind leaving Cerberus and Yue to that task milady, there's matters the two of us need to discuss." The Black angel-like man stated simply.
"Cerberus, Yue go." Sakura instructed simply and the two flew off. Knowing how much of a blabbermouth Kero was Yue will be filled in on what's happening within the hour. That gave Sakura time alone with the third figure.
"I don't recognise you, so you must be 'Chazz.'" Sakura voiced her suspicions.
"In this form I am known as 'Umbra' a guardian spirit you created specifically to draw power from the stars." The Third Guardian spirit explained in simple terms. "But yes, I am Chazz."
Suddenly a small, yellow creature with snail like eye stalks appeared in a puff of smoke. "Wait does this mean that she's the bosses boss?"
A second puff of smoke, a fat black creature with a giant nose. "I guess this means she's the one in charge now."
A third puff of smoke, a green creature with one eye and a giant tongue sticking out of his mouth. "Sorry for your demotion Not-Boss!"
Suddenly 'Umbra' grabbed the yellow and green creatures in a strangle hold, slammed them both together with the black creature, before stuffing them into what Sakura can only describe as a hole that suddenly appeared in empty space with several stomps of his foot.
"As I was saying." Sakura wisely chose not to comment on what she just saw. "We need to sink some priority into what cards you choose to chase after first." Chazz went to Sakura's bulletin board. "Some of the cards are flatly more important than others." Chazz was pinning little sticky notes to the board one by one. "There's the five Western elements, which represents all states of matter, Earth, Water, Wind, Fire and Lightning, which are respectively solids, liquids, gasses, Plasma and Lightning." To the five little sticky notes with cartoonish symbols of the five elements, Chazz added two more. "Then there's the five Eastern Elementals, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water and Wood. The seven of these are going to eat the majority of the cards that were consumed in the little stunt right now."
"You mentioned Fire, Earth and Water twice." Sakura pointed out raising her hand.
"Of course I did!" Chazz stated as if it was obvious. "There would be serious problems if 'states of matter' and 'states of energy' had no over lap, don't you pay attention in science class?" Why are they talking about science in a magic lesson? "Moving on. Theres also the two balancing forces with Light and Dark." Two more sticky notes were added to the board. "These are representative of the 'Matter and Energy of the cards.' Below them we have the seven origin magics." Space, Time, Gravity, Creation, Metamorphosis, Spirit and Evolution. "And below those we have the cards that you got from the other Hero's." The Seven different kinds of class Cards, Sabre, Archer, Lancer, Rider, Berserker, Caster and Assassin plus the Shield's from Maple, or rather Shielder.
Tanya's bows and Guns were likely swept up with the Archer Class Cards and Katarina's spears were swept up with the Lancer Cards, Kuro's Swords the Sabre, Sakura was also willing to bet that Myne's Jewels and Jade's Blunt weapons got swept up in the Caster and Berserker classes too, Gol she wasn't too sure about, but maybe the Assassins? Kaede would be shielder but what about the rider? The monsters Sakura fed to her cards maybe?
"And finally the one that has the raw power of all the others combined, the nothing, or as you called it, the Hope. The power of nothingness equals to the power combined of every other card combined in order to act like counter balance to them."
"Meaning that it has the biggest power up of all of them." Sakura stated letting out a sigh. "The description of the Bao Lai sword says that it elevates spirits onto the level of the divine, does this mean that we have 53 gods that we need to chase down now?"
"More like angels." Chazz stated bluntly. "They're up there in the grand ranking of the universe, but in comparison to a real god they might fall short, Except for Hope that is. And except for the Tiger." Chazz stated indicating the metal Sticky note.
"Meaning I have to go chase down that cat again?" Sakura stated letting out a sigh.
"I'd focus on finding the Space card first, or it's equivalent." Chazz stated sitting on Sakura's drawer.
"Why?" Sakura asked sounding concerned.
"To enable your ability to travel all over the world." Chazz stated as if the answer had been obvious.
"Say what?" Sakura on the other hand had only gotten more concerned.
"Their power has massively increased, even using their respective abilities more efficiently there's not enough power in this tiny country to go around. I don't think they're going to immediately spread out, but I do think that once territory has been drawn up by the strongest of the local spirits that they will have to spread out, so for now you need to use the window of opportunity that has been created to involve yourself in their fights and pick off the losers."
"How bad can it be?" Suddenly the ground started shaking.
"Sakura!" Kero zipped back into the window. "We found one!"
A nearby apartment building had been picked up by a pinkish glow and was being shaken. Various people were dangling from the building screaming for their lives.
"Rescue them!" To Sakura's command her three guardian spirits swooped in and rescued the people that were on the verge of falling out of the building, as well as going into the building itself to rescue anyone who could still be inside. Several small objects fell out of the building, and the card responsible having obtained his prize the entire building was dropped. Kero, Yue alongside Umbra and his spirit army all flew in to lower the building safely to ground, in the meantime Sakura had locked onto the cause of the madness that had so rudely awoken so many people in morning: a giant pile of Stuffed animals with a fat pink rabbit sitting on top. "JUMP!?" Sakura shouted out the name of the Card she just locked eyes with and watched as it's ears went straight up at attention. "The Jump card has the power to pick up buildings now!?" To Sakura's memory, the Jump card was a relatively weak and stupid card whose only ability was to make things go up and down, usually her when she's using it. The first time they met Jump had made a giant pest of itself hiding in a department store's stuffed animal bin, every time it was bought it would sneak back to the store, usually with the rest of the stuffed toys in it's owner's possession. Having become more powerful had not made the stupid creature any less stupid than what it use to be. Disregarding that she was still wearing her Pajama's Sakura ran down the stairs, threw on her skates and chased after the Jump Card. For three blocks.
"Okay wise guy!" Sakura was now realising she didn't retain the heroic physique she had developed in the world she was summoned to. In the end, it took the additional coordination from the three Guardian spirits in Sakura's employ to chase the miserable rabbit down before he destroyed another building. "Care to explain yourself!" The rabbit-like spirit went wide eyed in fear as it desperately tried to bow and beg for forgiveness, as it was being held in the air by its ears by Yue that was a little bit difficult.
"Quit grovelling! Explain yourself!" Yue snapped angrily. The rabbit waved its limbs around in a panic making various squeaking noises like the stuffed animal it resembled as it tried to explain what happened.
"What do you mean you don't know! You were the one that picked up the building and was shaking it around!" Kero snapped pointing accusingly. The Rabbit rapidly shook its head as it tried to explain what happened.
"You tried to jump up to the building to have a better look around and you picked it up instead!?" Umbra asked in a demanding tone of voice. "How did that lead you to mugging some poor family for their stuffed animals, and destroying their house!?" The rabbit started letting out a cold sweat, which was quite impressive considering that it was an immaterial spirit.
"Let me guess. You saw a stuffed animal and got all excited?" Sakura knew her spirits well. "Take him to Tomoya's studio, we can paint the Jump, or rather the Gravity I guess, when I get there."
"Understood Mistress." Yue stated before bowing and making preparations to transport The Jump away.
"So they're trying to get back to me, but at the same time they're all lost and confused too. Not only are they stronger but getting infused with millions of reinforcements from the card weapon has given them new powers too." Sakura explained while she held her chin in her hand. "Some cases, not all of them." Umbra's wings formed a cocoon around his body, which then glowed briefly revealing a young man who was dressed for college, Chazz. "You don't know what kinds of weapons the other heroes have unlocked, you didn't get the chance to look through them before you came back here."
"There were millions of them!" Sakura replied looking ahead with a thousand yard stare. "How am I supposed to look through all of those?" "I'm not scolding you I'm telling to you to ply caution in dealing with the other cards, Gravity is not the same as Jump, if you assume that the cards are the same that they are now, then you're going to have a bad time." Sakura didn't heed Chazz's words, something that in the years to come she would come to regret, for now Sakura had other things she had to worry about. "For now, you need to call your father and let him know that you're okay, considering you disappeared right after the building dropped, afterwards you have to get ready for school, it's your first day of middle school you know."
Review Section:
RonaldM40196867: I've done a couple Omakes already, short one paragraph things in the review section the last couple of chapters.
Dakota Bruder: Fair, but at the end of the story.
coolkid0806: Tanya killed every Yahweh, but by bypassing the laws of space and time as she had her attack travelled through time to seek out the moment of vulnerability that each of them possess, as for the implications behind her doing that, for starters she created a bootstrap paradox in Highschool DXD by killing the creator of the Sacred Gear system leaving it unfinished and creating a bunch of glitches like Balance Breaker. In any case Omakes: Another day another goddess, luckily for Naofumi they usually like sweets and he's very good at making them. "So you intend to 'borrow' my Heroes of Courage?" Zelda was the mortal incarnation of a goddess, which only managed to exaggerate her sweet tooth. And if she was easier to manipulate that might be enough, but she was a mortal incarnation of the very concept of wisdom itself, so he would have to also apply some convincing too. "The basic idea is that multiple heroes get summoned into a single time period by different nations at a time when they are honestly rather pointlessly at war with each other, the heroes realise they are descended from each other and that should cease the conflict." That and they're some of the few heroes to successfully weaponize the fishing rod, that is simply invaluable when he's already short of Hunting tool Heroes. "Teach them how to make these and you have a deal."
Nightshadegirl: I would highly recommend it myself.