Card Captor Sakura Fan Fiction ❯ Chaos Card Captor Sakura ❯ The Eve of Destruction (Part I) ( Chapter 9 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

She knew this opportunity would show itself eventually. He knew this day would come. Who is to be the true master of the Kaos Cards? Only Lycan can decide. Let the final battle begin...

Anime/Manga: Card Captor Sakura Fan Fiction | Genre(s): Adventure / Mystery / Supernatural | Type: Continuation | Uploaded On: 06.20.2010 | Pages: 38 | Words: 50.2K | Visits: 882 | Status: Completed

Chapter 8: The Eve of Destruction (Part 1)

“RRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAGGHH!!!!”

The mighty roar rings out amidst the dark abyssal nether-plane as Lycan lumbers along like a wounded dog. Hanging his head, Lycan claws forward, limping through the darkness.

Lycan's mask bears a gaping, crater-like wound, right in the forehead segment, the origin point for the many cracks that permeate all across his armored faceplate. His red glowing eyes seem to blink erratically, still flinching in a pain that was all but foreign to Lycan before the incidents of a mere minute or so ago.

“No Kaos Cards…” Lycan vents furiously. “…means that my powers are gone. And without Kaos Encarnate's immediate powers… I am but a shadow of a shadow. And without my Card Captor… I have none to do my bidding.”

Lycan lets out another painful scream of utter contempt and rage. “Orchid, you conniving, deceptive little witch! This is no longer about the Kaos Cards, nor even about Kaos Encarnate. You, and you alone have made this war about revenge. I may have nothing… but I swear that if it takes every last fragment of my power, every last flicker of sentience in my broken soul, I will make you suffer the torment of a thousand hells for your trickery! ORRRRRCHIIIIIIID!” Lycan vows.

*-*-*

“Sakura-chan?” … “Sakura-chan?”

The anxious voice calls out to an unconscious Sakura who cracks open her eyelids. She finds herself standing up, with Tomoyo at her side supporting her, and her arm lays over Tomoyo's shoulder. Sakura holds up her hand to block a bright light from above, but as her eyes adjust, she finds this bright, seemingly pure light to be nothing but the mundane overhead lights in the auditorium.

Indeed, after her eyes had adjusted, this is exactly where she finds herself. However, Sakura recalls the memory of what had just happened in this auditorium, and she finds the placid auditorium around her to be quite amiss. The curtains to her right were not charred black. The auditorium floor was not blasted with ash. The exit door had not been blown in. And Sakura's classmates were all conscious and walking around, though packing up to leave for the day. Naoko, Chiharu, Rika, and Yamazaki exchange some words with Tomoyo, beyond earshot of Sakura, before donning their umbrellas and/or raincoats and leaving. Amidst the ringing in her ears, Sakura could also feel something else wrong. It's as if, in the back of her mind, she felt that something was missing. Something was gone, but as she struggles to think of what it be that's missing, she can't identify what isn't there that, she believed, should be there.

“Tomoyo-chan…” Sakura speaks up weakly, stirring her friend to attention. “Tomoyo-chan, what happened? What's wrong?”

Tomoyo sighs in relief, holding back her joyful tears at Sakura's regained consciousness. “So you're finally awake,” she answers back in a flat, monotone voice, a spectral opposite to how she normally greets Sakura. Tomoyo turns her head away. “Did she win? Did Li-kun save her? Is this nightmare finally over? Or… how much of her is left?” she asks herself, still holding back the tears, but now tears of anguish and fear.

Sakura takes her arm off her friend's shoulder and rubs her eyes with her left hand. Leaning on her own feet now, she feels her feet clothed only in socks. As her eyes trail further downstage, she sees her discarded and unclasped rollerblades lying around arbitrarily, the only possible sign to her that a struggle ever took place. She stares blankly at her rollerblades, slowly recalling the battle between Lycan and the mysterious Orchid.

Sakura also turns her attention to her right hand, hanging limply and just now noticing a Kaos Card in her weak grasp. She holds up the card to take a look at it. The card's art was not one that she had seen before, or not for long anyway, as it depicted a decrepit vulture with a beak of bone and empty, decaying cavities for eyes. The bird on the card's art seems to perch over something, which Sakura first surmised to be a tree branch, but on further scrutinizing, the bird was actually perched on the arm of a human skeleton.

Not recoiling in horror at the morbid card art, Sakura instead looks down to find her name already seared onto the card, as per the other three Kaos Cards she had already captured. Sakura smiles at this. “I did it…” she whispers. “I captured the final Kaos Card. They'll never hurt anyone else ever again. It's finally over.”

Tomoyo tries to force herself to take solace in small blessings, but her mind strays back to her conversation with Syaoran the day before.

`Yesterday, you asked me why there are only seven Kaos Cards in the story, but there were eight Kaos Cards in the museum... …I wouldn't worry about Kinomoto-san though if I were you. She'll be just fine.'

“Is this what you call `fine'?” Tomoyo mutters softly, directing her rebuttal at her memory of Syaoran and the words they had traded.

Sakura turns abruptly to face Tomoyo. “Hoee? Did you just say something, Tomoyo-chan?”

Tomoyo shakes her head in denial, faking a smile and waving the accusation off. “No, it's nothing. Just thinking aloud,” she answers. “Congratulations, Sakura-chan,” she adds somberly.

Sakura pays no attention to Tomoyo's tone as she basks in the completion of defeating and sealing the Kaos Cards. “I just did the impossible…” Sakura adds with elated pride. “I'm the master of the Kaos Cards,” she adds, grimmer in tone. “The Kaos Cards are all under my beck and call…” she adds further, with an even grimmer tone than before, but she then lets out a sigh as she stares off. “So …why?” she asks, turning Tomoyo's curious attention in her direction. “Why do I feel like there's something still missing?”

Tomoyo looks around the auditorium. Her classmates had already left, and nothing about the auditorium seemed out of place… except for one small detail. A detail which she hoped was the reason for Sakura's admitted feelings of incompletion. Indeed, as she looked about the auditorium, the only thing out of place was Syaoran, being nowhere in sight, as if he had completely vanished. Tomoyo trembles at the thought.

Having been hit by Fade, Tomoyo didn't keep her consciousness long enough to see what happened between Syaoran, Sakura, and Lycan. And while it was obvious that Sakura had captured the Fade Card in the end, Tomoyo remains unsure of what had happened to Syaoran. Did he stay and fight for Sakura as valiantly as he had promised? Or did he flee? Of course though, knowing Syaoran as she did, she knew he would never leave Sakura if there were still some last chance of saving her from Kaos. So, with Syaoran gone… what possible chance is there of saving Sakura?

“Tomoyo-chan…” Sakura pipes up, jarring Tomoyo out of her dreary train of thought. “Tomoyo-chan… when I had the dream when I captured the Nightmare Card, I saw Li-kun in a subway station,” she claims.

`I'm going to be filling out the paperwork for transferring out of Tomoeda Elementary today. If all goes well, I'll be out of the country in no less than a week's time.'

Tomoyo gasps. “The subway…” she mouths inaudibly, citing a connection.

“Li-kun was there one minute,” Sakura recounts. “…but the next thing I knew, I was all alone.”

*-*-*

(out on a rainy side-street)

Touya sits still in the mud, still fending off a bout of unconsciousness, as he sits under a cherry blossom tree at the side of the road. The very tree that he collided into, that apparently knocked him out, was providing him some comfort from the rain, but not a great deal.

The rain falls hard and fast, much more viciously than when Touya first blacked out. Touya opens his eyes to see the rain continue to pour down, and his ears picked up the torrential rainfall, the heavy winds, and the claps of thunder from above. But then, he hears something else. Like the drop of a heavy bag onto the street. And something else. A call, directed right at him.

“TOUYA!” Yukito calls out, rushing towards his friend with an umbrella in hand. Shocked when he first saw Touya knocked down on the side of the road, he had dropped his groceries into a puddle, though his true regards lie with his battered friend. Kneeling down at Touya's side, he holds the umbrella over them both.

“Touya! Are you alright? What happened to you?” Yukito asked nervously.

Touya groans deeply, still not quite fully responsive to the world around him. “Y-Yuki…” he stutters. He tries to lift his arm, but he winces sharply as a sting runs through his entire body. Far more than would be expected even from a concussion.

“Yuki, it's one of them…” Touya struggles to say.

“…A spirit?” Yukito asks, though not particularly bothered. Of course, this wasn't the first time that Touya had made contact with other spirits, much less the first time that Yukito ever heard about such a thing. But this would definitely be the closest that he's ever personally gotten to one, or at least from his human point of view.

Touya relaxes slightly and smiles up at his friend, the least agonizing nonverbal confirmation he can muster, but his smile quickly gives way to the pain. “Something is about to happen. Something big. This spirit… it won't talk to me… but I can feel its fear.”

Yukito frowns. Despite believing Touya, he finds himself too in-the-dark when it comes to ghost-like things to help out, so instead he keeps quiet. Throwing Touya's arm over his shoulder, Yukito stands up and supports Touya, still while hanging onto the umbrella, but as Yukito stands up fully, Touya's arm slips out of his grip. Touya lands hard on his side, much to Yukito's flustered distress.

“TOUYA!” Yukito calls out, trying to resuscitate his friend. Yukito grabs Touya firmly by the shoulders and shakes him about like a limp ragdoll, but Touya remains motionless.

“It's…” Touya begins. “…coming…”

Touya's eyes crack open, revealing a pair of large yellow eyes with narrow, animalistic pupils. When Yukito locks gazes with Touya's transmogrified eyes, he too is stricken with a momentary out-of- body experience, as he feels himself pull away from reality, like entering into a dream. The last thing Yukito sees before blacking out is the silhouette of a pair of wings wrapping around his body.

Yue emerges from the mysterious wings wrapped around Yukito's body, and with a single, startled bound, he leaps away, getting some distance between himself and Touya, as he also undergoes a similar but more ominous transformation.

Underneath Touya, small fissures in the ground open up to reveal a magma-like glow in the shape of the Circle of Kaos. To Yue's shock and horror, a pair of orange membrane wings, like those of a bat or a dragon, protrude from Touya's back and wrap over his body. The wings pull away to reveal Damien in Touya's place. Battered and bruised, he leans against the tree on the side of the road for balance, clearly no better off physically than Touya was himself. He gulps in large breaths of air, as if he had been suffocated, or buried alive.

“YOU!” Yue exclaims. “So it wasn't enough, was it? It wasn't enough just to slander Clow's good name, or to let loose your Kaos Cards of Destruction, but that you have to draw your magic from others like a parasite-”

“You think I enjoy this?!” Damien retorts, glaring up at Yue, despite leaning over weakly. “I've got work to do to save your Master's skin, and if you're not gonna' help me, then at least don't get in my way!”

“Save my master?” Yue asks skeptically. “Sakura… What's going to happen to her? What are you trying to save her from?” Yue bounds down to Damien and wraps his hands around Damien's bulky neck, lifting his massive albeit limp body from the ground. “ANSWER ME!” Yue bellows with untold rage, shaking Damien around. Getting no response from a mute Damien, Yue raises his right hand, allowing a sphere of glowing blue light to appear in his hand. A crystal grows out of this light, and soon more crystals begin to form, circling around the central one.

Damien smirks at Yue. “I wouldn't do that if I were you…” he threatens deviously. “I'm your Master's only hope of survival…”

Yue calls off his icy shards at Damien's ultimatum, instead casting the massive figure to the muddy ground beneath the cherry blossom trees. At contact with the moist ground, Damien's very skin sizzles like a frying pan, joined in a duet by Damien's agonizing screams. Damien manages to lift himself off the soggy ground, slowly but steadily.

“Survival…” Yue echoes back. “You keep mentioning the peril that Sakura is supposedly in, as if you're the messiah who can get her out of it. Give me a straight answer: what are you expecting? What do you have invested in Sakura's life?”

At last Damien stands to his clawed feet, but he still holds himself up by hanging onto a low-hanging branch from the cherry blossom tree he leans on. “It's not your master's life I'm invested in. It's my master's Life.”

Yue pauses in peculiarity. “But …how? Isn't your master …dead?” he finally asks.

“It's his card, you twit!” Damien replies with frustration. He places a clawed hand over his heart, which begins to glow an eerie orange, the same color as the Elixir of Fire and all the other associated Kaos magic thus far. As if through telekinesis, Damien draws the source of the orange glow out from his heart, pulling from his very body a card. The card has all the markings of an eighth Kaos Card, the backing, the fringes, even a scroll-like text box with words reading “The Life” at the bottom of the card. However, as Yue notices to even greater peculiarity, the card has no portrait.

Even still, Yue backs away with caution. “What Kaos Card card is that?”

Damien stares Yue down coyly, shaking his head. “You're impossible! Can't you even read the card's name?! It's the Life Card! Or at least, that's what it was supposed to be, before Reed screwed everything up.” Easing Yue's heightened suspicions, he merges the card back into himself, wincing slightly. “It's not even a full card yet. Gin entrusted it to me, but in my growing weaknesses over the years, the Life Card and the other seven Kaos Cards slipped right out of my grasp, like sand between my fingers. When your master woke the cards up again, the Kaos Cards naturally gravitated towards their guardian. But half of them went astray.”

“And I suppose that was the half that went to their other Guardian, Lycan. Am I right?” Yue deduces.

“Well…” Damien begins, cryptically taking his time. “…that's the problem. There didn't used to be a Guardian of Despair before. There was just me, Gin's only Guardian. But when the Elixir of Fire was opened, it's as if Lycan appeared right out of thin air. And as he was proudly waving my master's flag, I, like a fool, fell for it. But the truth is that he turned out to have even darker intentions than I could imagine. It grew quickly apparent that Lycan had his own methods for supposedly fulfilling my master's last wishes. …It seemed as if he fooled everyone…”

Damien's strength begins to buckle as he takes to a knee, pausing amidst his explanation to tend to a body-gripping soreness. Meanwhile, Yue simply stares on complacently, completely ambivalent to Damien's suffering.

“Are you saying that this `Lycan' is a fraud?” Yue asks. “That he was a false Guardian Beast this whole time? And you let him go unchecked with cards your master entrusted to you? No, Damien. You're impossible! If you had any loyalty to your master, you should've already taken your cards back from that phony by now, rather than letting Sakura get tangled up in your mistake! If Lycan isn't a Guardian Beast, what kind of foul demon is he?! How much damage is he capable of?!

Damien catches his breath for a moment before turning back to face Yue. “The Life Card… Even though Gin never finished creating it, he did perform all the necessary incantations to give it power. The Life Card has been sustaining me for such a long time… It's all I have left of my Master… but that's what Lycan is after…”

Yue balls up his fists. “Tell me who, or what, Lycan is! Because if you don't know, and that… that thing is running around with the cards that your master entrusted to you, then the only one responsible for shaming your master now is you!” Yue accuses powerfully.

Despite his pain, Damien cracks a fang-toothed grin. “As hopeless as you make it sound, Yue, at least there's a silver lining. Thanks to the Cherry Blossom, he's not running around with my master's cards anymore. It must've been the Fade Card's work that blinded me for such a long time… Anyway, the important thing is that now, I can see Lycan for what he is. And yes… he's more than just a Guardian Beast. Much more… He's a spirit, one whose great discipline and heart have been all but wiped out. His ambition and malice have come unbound. Lycan, he's-”

Damien is cut off by the sound of a heavy, monstrous stomp off to his side. Right along the road, standing in the rain, Lycan limps around weakly, closing in on Damien and Yue. His mask is cracked wide by a small impact point, a wound that has not yet healed, if it could be healed at all. Yet still, despite Lycan's disenchantment and injury, he still swaggers about as arrogant as ever, snickering with a deeply wicked cackle. “I'm… right here…” Lycan finishes.

“LYCAN!” Damien shouts back. “What do you want, now? Did you come to finish me off, or are you still driven by your obsession?”

“How insulting…” Lycan patronizes. “I am here not as a Guardian Beast, but as a simple messenger. I, Lycan, am cordially inviting you both to history in the making. I… trust that I can expect both of you to be there, though all are welcome. I would not spare anyone, human, card, or Guardian, to the moment where their new undisputed master ascends and becomes Kaos Encarnate.”

“Kaos Encarnate?” Yue asks Damien.

Damien doesn't answer Yue, but he shakes his head at Lycan. “You're mad… You think the soul of a mere human can harness the full powers of Kaos?”

“So, you've finally figured it out,” Lycan notices with a sarcastic congratulatory tone. “You've figured out that I'm indeed the last remnants of your precious Kaos Gin. Ah, the wondrous betrayal. It hurts, doesn't it?” Lycan cackles, mocking Damien.

Damien grits his jagged, rotting teeth. “You're not my master. My master was someone I could be proud of. My master had a kind heart. A lot like-”

“Like Kinomoto Sakura?” Lycan interrupts. “You fools… completely unaware of the Kaos she harbors… Then again, when life is as fleeting for you pathetic creatures as it is, I suppose optimism is as good a false hope as any.” Lycan's arrogant gloating is cut short by a pattering of crystalline ice across his mask, though this only manages to annoy him. Lycan then turns his attention to the source of the irritation.

Yue prepares for a second wave of ice cold pelting to follow the first, focusing on Lycan with a laser-like intensity. “Don't you dare lay a hand on Sakura, you fiend!”

Lycan tilts his head curiously. “Oh? And why exactly do you still care? You think your master has any more humanity remaining than I do? Do you still harbor the illusions of her good intentions? Do you deny her mighty Kaos? A Kaos that I will soon drain from her frail, broken body as her cacophonous screams of agony ring through my soul like a sweet melody-”

“I tested her myself!” Yue interrupts. “Unlike you, she's stronger than this Kaos. She's nothing like you…”

“What an overblown and tainted analogy, Yue!” Lycan replies. “How can you say that she and I are too far different? When you judged her, she was weak, as was I for a time. But I discarded my weakness. And now that all the Kaos Cards have been captured, she has abandoned her weaknesses as well. Only when this Kinomoto Sakura has been judged can you truly understand what we have in common. Or, you can observe… as I judge her. Though mark my words, this time she will fail the test before her. And, unlike in your trial, no interlopers will save her.”

Yue's concentration breaks for a split second.

Lycan chuckles briefly, sensing a struck nerve. “It must eat away at you that Kinomoto Sakura passed your Final Judgment by cheating. She wasn't fit for the task, and you know it. And yet, she stole the cards your real master entrusted to you. Now, you're forced to pander to a pathetic little girl and pretend like she actually has claim to your master's legacy. Granted, your master Reed was a senile fool, you probably shouldn't be so hard on Damien. After all, considering the circumstances of how you lost jurisdiction of Reed's cards, you'd be quite the hypocrite to-”

Yue grits his teeth. “That has nothing to do with this! Sakura was destined to be the Card Captor. It was out of my hands,” he insists, despite a slightly bitter tone betraying his determination.

“Destiny is fickle,” Lycan replies. “No matter. Very soon, a power beyond your feeble minds will become mine.”

“I've heard enough-” Yue mutters as he prepares for another icy fusillade, but he is cut off by a massive flaming torrent shooting out from behind and enveloping Lycan. Even in the rain the flames burn hot with rage, but the rain mercifully extinguishes all the stray embers that land on the cherry blossom trees. Turning back, Yue sees his fellow guardian, Keroberos, approaching from the air with a mighty and determined ferocity. As Lycan's shady black form emerges from the flames virtually unscathed but massively irritated, he turns his attention skyward, looking Keroberos in the eye, only for the opposite beast to spit off more streams of magical fire in his direction.

Keroberos approaches quickly and aims his flaming breath attacks at Lycan's feet, attempting to drive the beast off, but not causing even a flinch. Instead, Lycan holds his ground and responds with his typical stoic resolve. Keroberos lands swiftly and gracefully at Yue's side.

“Well, well, what have we here?” Lycan taunts Keroberos. “My atrocities must've been vile indeed, if they were important enough for you to wake up from your naptime to take care of them. Or, knowing you, more likely I was interrupting your snack time.”

“Hey, give that a rest! I'm not a kid anymore!” Keroberos spits back.

Lycan squints back at Keroberos with his soul-piercing red glare. “Maybe not, but you're still an immature brat of a Guardian Beast. But don't worry. I'll use small words so you can keep up…” Lycan panders, his deep cackles mocking Keroberos, eliciting a feral, animalistic snarl from the supposedly noble Guardian Beast.

“Hey! KNOCK IT OFF!” Damien shouts, getting both Keroberos's and Yue's attention. “Look you two, they're just head games. He's just trying to get to you. Don't give that bully the dignity of your suffering!”

“Hmph! Well you're no fun at all, Damien…” Lycan pouts. “And here I thought we were a team…” he continues in a pitiful tone.

Damien ignores Lycan's scathing implications, keeping focused with a steely determination. “Save your bull for someone who cares. What are you up to? And what does the Cherry Blossom have to do with it?”

Lycan turns his head off to the side sharply before turning around altogether. He waves his twin spiky tails back and forth as he paces away briskly. “Well, if you truly must know... Come. Follow me, if you can. Come and witness my rise to highest power. It will save me the trouble of having to track you down and exterminate you.” Lycan pauses and turns his head, looking right back at all three of the Guardians. “I especially expect you to be there, Damien. Then again, I know you'd be there if it was the last thing you ever did …”

“You know it,” Damien answers. “I'm coming for you.”

Keroberos holds his stance courageously. “I'll give everything I have to protect Sakura from you. And for your own sake, don't make the mistake of assuming I'm the same stupid Kero-chan today that I was back then.”

Lycan sneers at Keroberos before turning his head back and trotting off slowly. “Of course, Keroberos. I would expect no less from any Guardian Beast. Though likewise, don't you make the mistake of assuming I'm the same weak Gin Clow today that I was back then.”

Lycan bounds powerfully upwards. At the apex of Lycan's jump, a flash of lightning illuminates the vast sky, casting a shadow of the cherry blossom trees onto the road. Within the span of the brief flash, Lycan dives into these shadows like a dolphin into water, even with Keroberos in hot pursuit. Just losing Lycan in the shadows, Keroberos pounces down and lands hard on the concrete, failing to catch Lycan before he completely disappears. “You slippery little snake!” Keroberos calls out in disgust of Lycan's seeming cowardice. He sniffs through the air with a keen concentration for magical energies, but Yue breaks his focus.

“Keroberos!” Yue calls over at Kero, who had bounded several meters away in his failed pursuit of Lycan.

Keroberos turns back to Yue, but only to see him standing around, wading in the cold puddles of rainwater at his feet, absolutely beside himself.

Yue balls up his fist tightly. “Keroberos, tell me… is it true? Was that really… really Clow's brother?

Damien scoffs sharply in answer to Yue's question. “Wake up and smell the ash!” Damien snaps, turning both Yue's and Keroberos's attentions to him.

Keroberos snarls back at Damien. “Hey, cut him some slack! How could he expect to remember what he never even experienced?”

Damien rolls his eyes. “Yeah, and the all-powerful Clow Reed couldn't be bothered to fill his pet in on all the deep dark secrets of his family, could he? That his brother became Lycan? That Gin's blood is on Reed's own hands?”

“Clow warned Gin on multiple occasions. He had no excuse for ignorance of the consequences of his own actions!”

“Gin was onto something huge! But Reed stuck his nose into something he knew was dangerous ground. And now my master is gone, replaced by that hollow, murderous fraud of a Guardian, Lycan. And yet, in spite of it all, you have nothing better to do after seeing me for the first time in two centuries than to debate the same semantics you've always held. You're useless! It's no wonder you couldn't protect your new master, either.”

“Hey, keep it above the belt! Besides, Sakura can take care of herself.”

“Thanks to the Little Wolf bailing her out, she can. But it looks like even he screwed up this time. Geez, what is it with Reed's lineage?”

“Needing help from others isn't a sign of being weak. It's a sign of being human! Something neither you nor your master would know anything about! And just because I don't care much for the kozo personally, it doesn't mean I don't respect his ability, or his determination. He's not done just yet…”

Yue stands still, continuing to recoil slowly from the shock as Damien and Keroberos continue bickering in a distant background, though neither Damien nor Keroberos pay any attention to Yue at this point.

Damien balls up a massive, reptilian fist. “But the Cherry Blossom is done. How can you fools call yourselves her Guardians? The Little Wolf continues to embarrass you both. Even now, he's trying to take matters into his own hands to defeat Kaos… and all for the sake of love. I swear that the both of you have some serious audacity to be arguing at a time like this. Now the Little Wolf is off to his death. How much blood does it take to open your eyes?!”

Keroberos grits his teeth quietly, Damien's words causing grievous wounds to his pride. “…And what would you suggest? You claim to be Sakura's savior, that you're the only one who can help her now. What's your plan, then?”

Damien relaxes his clenched fists. “Well, now that you'll actually hear me out, it's actually quite simple. Lycan is after me…” he begins, squinting deviously. “…so that's exactly what he'll get…”

Keroberos scoffs audibly. “Pschh! You call that a plan? Just going after Lycan all gung-ho, hoping he can't kill us all if we just gang up on him?”

Damien folds his arms and stares off into space. “Of course, if you'd just like to keep getting knocked into rooftops, we could just go with your plan,” he replies sarcastically.

Keroberos growls loudly. “I'm getting really fed up with your attitude, pretty-boy…”

“Stop…” Yue intervenes softly, like waking up from a meditative contemplation. He swallows hard on his pride as he turns to face Damien. “We're out of leeway here. If we fail again, Sakura is as good as dead. Damien… if you have a plan… then as Sakura's Guardians, we have no choice but to go along with it.”

Instead of grinning pridefully, Damien stands rather sullen and plain, caught completely off-guard by Yue's sudden acceptance. This time, Damien swallows his own pride. “Thank you. Both of you. Y'know, if we can work cohesively, maybe, just maybe there's still hope.” Damien stares up into the sky, beside himself. “…for all of us.”

*-*-*

(a dark and dank subway)

The cold wind rushes through the dank, almost derelict-looking underground subway station, causing Syaoran to shiver stiffly, as he sits alone on a bench, sitting below a route map hanging above him on the wall. His jean jacket provides him with a little warmth, but not much.

Syaoran looks around the vacant station, ensuring that no one was around. Finding not another soul in the vicinity, he pulls a stack of Clow Cards out from a pocket in his jean jacket. Fanning them out, the eye of his magic allows him to spot a shady, dark aura covering the cards. Fade had been sealed, true, but it was too late for the Clow Cards. Lycan, or Kaos Gin, or whoever he was, was right. All the cards had been cut off from Sakura's magic, either by Fade, or by Sakura's denial of the responsibility of the Clow Cards. Or maybe a combination of both those factors was to blame. At any rate, the cards were now reduced to drawing their magic not from their master, but their creator, Clow Reed, a creator who passed away a long time ago. It would be only a matter of time before the Clow Cards' sustenance runs completely dry, and then…

Syaoran had already thought about this, apparently giving it not a small amount of consideration. He knew in the back of his mind that this worst-case scenario could come about, and that the only way to preserve the Clow Cards was to take them to the closest possible magic to Clow's. And now, as he sits in the breezy subway station, Syaoran now ponders in his mind how he would bring the Clow Cards to his mother, as well as the explanation he would give for his failure.

*-*-*

“Mother, I brought back the Clow Cards. They'll be safe here.”

“I cannot commend you for your failure, son. But… nonetheless, I am glad that you are alright. You are your father's lone heir… and the future of our clan.”

“I am deeply sorry.”

“But what of the Clow Cards' Master? After the Final Judgment, the Clow Cards and their Guardians assigned to a new Master. Well? What of her?”

*-*-*

“I failed her.”

Syaoran trembles at the thought of his mother asking about Sakura. His stomach churns as he assumes the full guilt and shame for failing to collect more Kaos Cards than Sakura had, and that Kaos Sakura, no… Orchid had triumphed, becoming the master of the Kaos Cards. There was nothing he could do, he reasoned, trying vainly to justify, even excuse his defeat.

He returns his gaze to the afflicted Clow Cards, as one of the Cards levitates out of the stack on its own. As the Circle of Clow appears below Syaoran's feet, the Mirror releases herself from the bindings of her card. The card's energies assume the form of a tall, circular mirror, with Mirror's true form on the other side of the reflection, like a glass barrier. The green-haired girl doesn't even try to cross the threshold of the glass, but instead directs a teary glare at Syaoran. Mirror places her hands against the barrier between her and Syaoran, pressing against it and realizing herself to be trapped on the inside of the reflection, unable to escape.

“Why did you lose? Why did you fail?” Mirror asks Syaoran telepathically, but faintly still.

Syaoran doesn't even dignify Mirror with eye contact, choosing instead to wallow around. “Save your strength, Mirror. You'll be in Hong Kong by tonight. There, the Li Clan will be able to provide you and the other Clow Cards with some other magical sustenance,” Syaoran explains, revealing his intention for Mirror and the other Clow Cards.

Mirror slams her petite fists against the glass wall in protest. “We don't want another magical sustenance! We want Sakura-sama!” she insists. Crying helplessly, she kneels down, but Syaoran remains oblivious. “We trusted you. We were counting on you. You promised us that you would take care of Sakura-sama…”

Syaoran turns away from Mirror. He holds a heavy hand over his heart before gripping a tight fist, as if to seize at a searing pain. “Maybe someday, I'll forgive myself for this,” he mutters. “Maybe someday, you all will, too.”

“NEVER!” Mirror raises her telepathic voice. “The Clow Cards will NEVER forgive you for this!” she adds, but Syaoran remains turned away, deafened to Mirror's thoughts and words. “We'll never-”

Syaoran snaps back to his senses again at hearing Mirror's tearful rant abruptly cut off. He glances over his shoulder briefly, but turns around in shock.

Mirror stands up, her forehead and hands leaning up against the barrier, as a deep, rippling crack runs down the surface of the Mirror card. Mirror's jaw hangs in shock as tears of pain run down her face. The vicious crack goes deeper and wider until, with an ear-shattering scream, the Mirror shatters. Not even just the surface of the mirror, but even the frame itself breaks away like glass. As Mirror ruptures away, the shards of the Mirror Card mysteriously pool at Syaoran's feet, reforming into a Clow Card, but more importantly, Syaoran catches a glimpse of Mirror's attacker.

Three massive silver talons reach forward out of a foggy, shady cloud. From within the amorphous shade, two bright red burning eyes shoot a hateful glare at Syaoran. However, Syaoran needed no reminder. The identity of Mirror's assailant was all too clear to him.

“Persistent runts… How much does it take to kill those pathetic misfits that Reed called his Clow Cards?” Lycan says in his unmistakably gruff and thunderous voice. Lycan's form materializes out of the shady cloud, landing down one mighty footfall before another. At last, his bony, nearly-shattered mask protrudes from the cloud, while the fog itself rolls away from Lycan's massive body, slowly spreading a layer of thin, dark haze over the entire subway floor.

Syaoran steadily reaches down to pick up the Mirror Card, though his eyes don't budge from Lycan. “What are you doing here? You got what you wanted already. You have no business with me anymore,” Syaoran says coldly to Lycan.

“What I want?!” Lycan booms. “Hmph, you cannot fathom what I want! No, Xiaolang, you have what I need…”

“What I have…” Syaoran begins. “What do I have? You've taken so much from me. What could I possibly have to lose now?!” he yells. He raises his right forearm as the Circle of Kaos appears below his feet, its powerful ethereal glow cutting right through the haze on the ground. The Inferno Crossbow activates, folding out and arming itself with a glowing orange arrow. Syaoran then points this arrow right at Lycan's cracked mask. “All I have left to give you... is your oblivion!” he finishes.

Lycan fury builds up into an ominous chuckle as he rears up to pounce. “My Oblivion, you say? …You …you poor, sorry fool! You know not of what you speak!”

Syaoran remains of steady resolve, despite Lycan's fury and madness. “You may be my ancestor, Gin, but your spirit doesn't belong to this world anymore. So leave, before I have to put you down like the dog you are.”

Lycan cackles in amusement as he dives into the fog-covered ground and submerges himself quickly beneath the murky shadows, too quick for Syaoran to fire off a shot at Lycan's crumbling mask. As Lycan's form disappears, the monstrous cackles echo throughout the cavernous subway station.

Losing track of Lycan's location, Syaoran scans the subway station for potential ambushes as he steadily and calmly holds his ground. Aiming his crossbow steadily and holstering Mirror and the other Clow Cards away in a pocket inside his jacket, Syaoran begins to slowly take a few steps forward at an extremely slow and tedious rate.

“Yes… I've waited too long to put this child out of his misery. And once I'm done with Xiaolang, Kinomoto Sakura is next. After that, it'll be down to just you and me. Yes… I know you can hear me. You always do. Be ready to meet your end of the deal…”

A shadow springs quickly across the wall behind Syaoran, which he barely catches out the corner of his eye. Within the instant, Syaoran snaps around and fires his Inferno Crossbow at the wall. Hitting a stationary map and shattering the glass covering before it, the entire map display is instantaneously incinerated in a flash of bright embers and a whoosh of a quick burn, leaving only the charred, shattered glass behind. Syaoran's sense catches up with his reflexes and he lowers his crossbow to confirm his miss-by-a-mile. Syaoran shuts out Lycan's taunting sadistic laughter as he calmly regenerates the arrow for the Inferno Crossbow.

Turning around, Syaoran re-examines the catacomb-like subway station. Seeing another shadowy blur race quickly down the wall into the opposite end of the subway tunnel, Syaoran discharges another arrow. The bright glow illuminates the air like a flare as it hurtles down range, right down the opposite subway tunnel, before finally exploding. The resultant flash-flicker from the explosion reveals nothing, as Lycan's echoing voice continues to mock Syaoran.

Syaoran glances up at the ceiling and around at the walls, seeing thousands of shadowy specters shoot in all different directions in an indiscernible jumble. His breathing quickens as his magical senses reveal to him threats coming from all sides, rendering his magical sense as useless as the rest of his senses. Seeing a nearby support column, Syaoran launches another bolt into a cluster of shadowy specters crawling around on the column's surface. The glowing arrow impacts the column and erupts with an ethereal explosion of magical energy, repelling away the specters on the wall, but without harming the column. Syaoran then somersaults over to the column and leans his back up against it, taking a moment to catch his breath and magically reload the Inferno Crossbow for yet another blast. Syaoran finds himself looking in towards the center of the cavernous room, with the stairwell leading out of the subway a good distance away from him, with the subway tunnel directly behind him. For a brief moment, Syaoran considers fleeing the subway for the surface, but his resolve steadies him. Who else could possibly stop Lycan? Realizing this, Syaoran dismisses his fear.

Syaoran closes his eyes and takes in a number of deep breaths, steadying his out-of-control pulse and trusting the eyes of his magic to see what his own two eyes can't. He shuts out every other sense but that of his magic. However, even with his magical senses focused to a laser-like precision, he feels an unsettling aura all around him, leaving him nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. Finding no other recourse, Syaoran reaches into one of his inner coat pockets with his left hand and slowly pulls out a crumpled up ofuda, which he palms in his right hand. Steadying his trembling right arm, he wraps his left hand around his right wrist as tight as he can while generating another bright orange arrow.

Lycan resumes his taunting, his voice emanating from the very walls themselves as he speaks. “Yes, Xiaolang… run. Run away. As far as you can… as fast as you can… flee before my awesome might… Don't worry about Kinomoto Sakura. I will do what you could not. I will relieve her of that pesky Kaos… once and for all…”

Syaoran tenses up and grits his teeth at Lycan's threat. He quickly turns around the column and fires a bolt from the Inferno Crossbow, quickly reloading, and firing another bolt, into the darkened ceiling. But instead of these arrows exploding violently, instead the shadows around the wall merely wrap over and consume the arrows, causing them to fizzle away and vanish. Syaoran freezes up at the implacable horror all around him. He reloads the Inferno Crossbow and aims carefully all around the subway station. But to Syaoran's chagrin, no place is a safe place to hide from Lycan.

“ON YOUR KNEES!” Lycan bellows suddenly, causing Syaoran to turn his entire posture around rapidly, but he is blind-sighted when Lycan's tail emerges from the shadows and whips him across the back, throwing him forward onto his hands and knees. A deeply-cut slice opens up across the back of Syaoran's jacket, cutting even through his shirt and slashing the skin on his back with a long gash. Trickles of blood begin to seep down Syaoran's back from this wound, but Syaoran's willpower dulls him to the searing pain.

“Don't bother standing, Xiaolang,” Lycan encourages. “What better way to greet our guest of honor than on your hands and knees?”

Syaoran slowly lifts his head. “Wh… What… `guest of honor'?” Syaoran struggles through his pain to ask.

As if answering Syaoran's very question, a door frame materializes off to the side, much to Syaoran's confusion.

*-*-*

(behind the stage)

A blank, expressionless Sakura paces back behind the stage curtain, with Tomoyo following quickly behind.

“Sakura-chan, you have to get to the subway!” Tomoyo urges, grabbing Sakura by the shoulder.

Sakura glances back coldly at Tomoyo and gently pushes her hand away. “I know,” she responds dryly. She then paces towards the door to the prop room behind the stage, where she places her hand on the door and pauses for a moment.

Tomoyo quickly whips out her cell phone from her duffel bag and hits a speed dial button. “Sakura-chan, we have to get there fast, or Li-kun will leave. I'll call up my bodyguards and-”

“My way is faster,” Sakura responds, cutting off her friend. She turns the knob and pulls open the door, allowing a layer of black fog to spill out from the floor of the other side of the door to the backstage floor.

All of a sudden, Sakura throws the door open wide. Though Tomoyo expects to see a prop room or something more theatrical on the other side, instead the doorway leads into a dark, dank subway. Shadows scurry across the walls like locusts, and a deep echoing cackle can be faintly heard from the other side. Moreover, a faint, husky breathing can be heard from the other side, coming straight from Syaoran. Keeled over, he struggles to even stand to one foot.

Tomoyo holds her breath as she stares at Syaoran in shock, but with her cell phone continuing to ring, Sakura paces through the portal and yanks the door shut behind her. Tomoyo quickly rushes up behind Sakura, but not before the door slams shut. Tomoyo quickly throws the door back open again, but now sees a handful of stacked boxes and dusty props in a small closet, much more reminiscent of the prop closet she was expecting behind the door at first.

“Daidouji-sama? Daidoui-sama? Hello? Are you there?” a woman's voice calls out at Tomoyo from her cell phone, snapping Tomoyo out of her shock and bewilderment. Catching on, Tomoyo raises her cell phone to the side of her head.

“Yes, this is Daidouji Tomoyo speaking,” Tomoyo responds frantically, dashing out from behind the curtains and heading straight for the emergency exit. “I need pickup at Tomoeda Elementary, to head for the nearest subway station. It's an emergency. Code Red.”

“Copy that, Code Red. Requisitioning a bodyguard squad to arrive for pickup at-”

“No… the bodyguards won't be necessary. Just the fastest driver you have,” Tomoyo interrupts. She pushes in the emergency exit door, triggering the fire alarm and allowing Tomoyo to observe the tempest that had brewed outside.

“…Request confirmation on the auxiliary bodyguard requisition, Daidouji-sama? As a reminder of policy, Code Red is for immediate tactical response to terrorist-level threats and therefore requires mandatory deployment of no less than four heavily-armed-”

“Yes, you heard correct, do not deploy additional bodyguards. Just worry about getting here as fast as you can!” Tomoyo responds urgently. “…All your guns and all your hate will be useless…” she adds in a somber whisper.

“... …Negative on that cancellation. Bodyguard requisition can only be cancelled by an on-site sergeant or higher-ranking officer to confirm an all-clear.”

Tomoyo shuts her eyes and places her hand over the receiver in frustration. “Stupid bureaucrats,” she mutters. “Look, just get the van out here as quickly as possible! This is urgent!”

“…Copy that. Bodyguard requisition has been successfully canceled. Briefings have been issued. Directions have been uploaded and confirmed by the driver. The van is leaving the premises now. ETA: ten minutes.”

Tomoyo stares up at the ominous thunderclouds. “Make it five.” Tomoyo terminates the call before the receiver could even respond, and she dashes straight out into the rain, stopping only long enough to grab an umbrella.

*-*-*

(outside a board room)

Sonomi stands in a brightly-lit corridor, like that of an office building, next to a tall, long-haired woman wearing a clean-cut black suit and dark sunglasses, while Sonomi herself is dressed in an elegant business suit of her own. Both stand outside a nearly closed set of double doors, likely some kind of meeting room, which it seemed that Sonomi was called urgently out of for some reason. The agent woman holds up a bland, gray cell phone to Sonomi. She also hands Sonomi a pair of headphones, which Sonomi plugs into the cell phone.

“All right…” Sonomi gulps down. “…Play it…”

The agent presses a green button on the upper left corner of the cell phone's keypad, beginning a playing of an earlier call. At first, all Sonomi hears is a normal enough background static, until another agent's voice appears.

“Daidouji-sama? Daidouji-sama? Hello? Are you there?”

“Yes, this is Daidouji Tomoyo speaking. I need pick up at Tomoeda Elementary, to head for the nearest subway station. It's an emergency. Code Red.”

“Copy that, Code Red. Requisitioning a bodyguard squad to arrive for pickup at-”

“No… the bodyguards won't be necessary. Just the fastest driver you have,”

“…Request confirmation on the auxiliary bodyguard requisition, Daidouji-sama? As a reminder of policy, Code Red is for immediate tactical response to terrorist-level threats and therefore requires mandatory deployment of no less than four heavily-armed-”

“Yes, you heard correct, do not deploy additional bodyguards. Just worry about getting here as fast as you can! …All your guns and all your hate will be useless…”

“... …Negative on that cancellation. Bodyguard requisition can only be cancelled by an on-site sergeant or higher-ranking officer to confirm an all-clear.”

“…Look, just get the van out here as quickly as possible! This is urgent!”

“… … …Copy that. Bodyguard requisition has been successfully canceled. Briefings have been issued. Directions have been uploaded and confirmed by the driver. The van is leaving the premises now, ETA ten minutes.”

“…Make it five…-”

“Hello? Daidouji-sama? Daidouji-sama?-”

The agent presses a red button on the cell phone's keypad, located slightly below the green button, thus stopping the playback. Meanwhile, Sonomi's face is stuck in a state of shock.

“Did you send out the bodyguards?” Sonomi asks calmly, despite not being calm at all herself.

The agent pushes her glasses up her nose. “With such urgencies, we were unable to requisition the compulsory four bodyguards before sending the van off. I know it was a breach of protocol, and I am deeply apologetic…” Sensing the rising distress in her boss, the bodyguard pauses for a moment before taking off her glasses to stare Sonomi straight in the eye. “I'm a single mother myself…” the bodyguard adds, trying with all her willpower to contain her personal reservations regarding the sheer gravity of the situation. “I made what I thought was the best call at the time. With my rank, I gave the authority for the transport to leave without sufficient security precautions. If anything happens, I will take full professional and personal responsibility.”

Sonomi gives the agent a deathly serious stare as she rips off the headphones and shoves the cell phone at the agent. “You had better hope you made the right call. My little angel…” Sonomi begins to choke up, her mind flooded with worst case scenarios. She shakes her head to dispel these pessimistic thoughts. “She's all I have left…”

*-*-*

(the subway)

Syaoran struggles to a standing base as he turns to face Sakura, who had just emerged from a mysteriously out-of-place door. Syaoran struggles to lift an arm out to reach towards Sakura, but he succumbs to the searing pain of the wound across his back, collapsing and landing right on his stomach. As he passes out, the arrow he had reloaded into the Inferno Crossbow fizzles away.

Sakura stares on at Syaoran with mixed emotions, but is completely oblivious to her ominous surroundings. Instead of balking in fear at the horrific, ethereal presence all about her, she devotes the entirety of her attentions to Syaoran. “Li-kun?” she asks innocently, tilting her head curiously. “Li-kun? Are you alright? Are you not feeling well? Did you get hurt?”

Despite Sakura's pleas, Syaoran's only response is laying face-to-concrete, lifeless and comatose on the ground.

As Sakura begins to comprehend the reality around her, her eyes begin welling up with tears of sadness and fright as Syaoran refuses to respond to her pleas for consciousness. She then turns her attention to the subway around her. Turning around, the portal-like door that had brought her to the subway station had vanished just as easily as it had appeared. It is at this point that she also begins to sense a horrific, mighty magic presence all around her. Seeing the spectral shadows coarse across the walls, ceiling, and pretty much any solid surface, she begins to shiver in terror.

“Welcome, Kinomoto Sakura, I've been… expecting you…” a menacing voice calls out. “Or, should I say… Orchid?”

Sakura's eyes gloss over for a split second, causing her whole body to freeze over. “I…” she tries to speak. Her eyes dart around frantically as she examines the area around her. A directory on a wall with the map burnt out. The gusting winds flowing quickly through the tunnel. The mysterious door that brought her to this destination in the first place. “I… remember this place…” she mutters.

“As well you should,” Lycan answers. A large mass of shadows gather on the floor, right before Lycan begins to float up through the ground, almost majestically. His massive form appears even larger than before, though the vicious cracks in Lycan's mask remain, even getting worse, like even the slightest jostle would shatter it. “This place… you remember it?” Lycan begins nostalgically. “This is the very location that the Nightmare Card transported you to. This is where I chose you to be the Card Captor of Kaos. This is the place where I first witnessed your powers with the Elixir of Fire. And it will soon be the last place where anyone witnesses you alive.”

Sakura's eyes shoot open, an epiphany nearly bowling her over in shock, at the potential repercussions. “Wait!” she interrupts. “…I-i-if… if you first saw me when I was fighting against the Nightmare Card… then the voice that selected me as the Card Captor of Kaos… Are you saying that… that wasn't you who selected me?” she asks reluctantly, unsure of whether or not she'll get the truth, much less want it.

Lycan squints, his burning red eyes eerily locking onto Sakura, as if to confirm her unspoken suspicions. “Let's just say that there are some things in this world that transcend even Kaos… But I wouldn't be concerned about those things if I were you. All that you should worry about right now…” Lycan readies himself for a vicious pounce before launching himself at Sakura. “…IS ME!” Lycan bellows.

As Lycan lunges straight after Sakura, she has no choice but to hold her ground, as she has neither the time nor the space to dodge. Shivering skittishly, Sakura closes her eyes and braces for a mighty impact, but is shocked to feel a burning hot wind blaze right through her, like a fire. Turning her head behind her, Sakura just barely catches a glimpse of Lycan's tails sinking into the shadowy ground, with Lycan's echoing snickering taunting her.

Sakura turns back to face Syaoran again. Despite that the only friendly face in the entire station was planted against the concrete, Sakura frantically rushes to Syaoran's side and kneels down. She tries to lift Syaoran up, which stirs him to consciousness. “Li-kun! Li-kun, please wake up!” Sakura calls hopelessly, as Syaoran's face had already grown deathly pale.

Syaoran's eyelids twitch frantically before opening, though he still winces in the pain. Though it even strains his physical endurance, hearing Sakura's voice call to him gives Syaoran the impetus to open his eyes. Gritting through the pain, Syaoran props himself up on his arms and leans up. He manages to lock eyes with Sakura, giving him reason to smile. However, Sakura appears devastated at seeing Syaoran so battered and exhausted. She is only comforted when Syaoran manages to reach up with his right hand and place it on her shoulder, if nothing else for the physical support.

“Sakura…” Syaoran chokes out in a low whisper, which is all that he can manage before letting out a husky, dry cough.

Sakura shakes her head. “No, Li-kun, please hang on. I-I-I'll go get help-”

“No,” Syaoran whispers. “There's… no time…” He reaches into his jacket with a pale, trembling hand and pulls out his three Kaos Cards, all while smiling endearingly at Sakura.

Sakura notices Syaoran pulling out his Kaos Cards, and the implications cause Sakura to shake her head even more emphatically. “No! Li-kun, you'll be alright! I'll get you outta' here, and-and-and-”

“I…” Syaoran begins. “I… can't… hold Lycan… back…” he continues softly, raising his three Kaos Cards up for Sakura to take. “Here… You're… their master now… Please… use these cards… to survive-” Syaoran begs meekly, wincing in pain. He desperately sucks in precious gasps of air so that he can retain consciousness.

Sakura's eyes tremble with fear and uncertainty. She pushes back the Kaos Cards to Syaoran. “No, I can't take them, they're yours! Li-kun, you'll be alright. We'll get through this somehow. I won't let it end like this!”

Syaoran keeps on smiling. “I know you won't…” he replies. “You're a great Card Captor. I know… that if I leave my Kaos Cards to you… that you'll be able to end this nightmare once and for all. Please… finish it…” Syaoran's eyes close slowly as he falls limp. The Kaos Cards in his hand slip right out of his grip and flutter down, landing on the ground with a light yet thunderous tap against the concrete floor.

Sakura's hands and eyes stop trembling. “Li-kun?” Sakura calls helplessly, knowing she won't get an answer. “Li-kun, are you alright?” She grabs hold of his cold right hand, still on her shoulder, when she freezes up, noticing how icy and clammy Syaoran's hand had become. “Li-kun? Li-kun?!”

“Xiaolang can't hear you from where he is now…” Lycan's booming voice cuts in. As if nothing were the matter at all, Lycan simply materializes and strolls casually towards Sakura, without even as much as one of his usual cackling swaggers.

Sakura slowly and silently turns her head in Lycan's direction as she continues to hang onto Syaoran's body. Her breathing gets quicker and quicker as her many swirling emotions struggle against one another to emerge.

Lycan crouches down low to look Sakura right in the eye. “Well? Isn't this what you wanted? Weren't you the one who said that Xiaolang is just your means to take the Kaos Cards from me? And that he truly made no difference to you, alive or dead? Now Xiaolang has been disposed of, and his Kaos Cards are yours for the taking. Bravo. Congratulations. Well played, Orchid. I couldn't have done it better myself…” Lycan taunts, deliberately aggravating Sakura even further.

Sakura hyperventilates with anger and sadness. “I'll never… ever… ever forgive you…” she mutters. “…because he's more than just a shounen. To me, he's… he's…” she stutters, finally hugging Syaoran's body tenderly close.

Lycan can only just barely hear a small, soft squeak of a voice. “Hm?”

“…you'll pay…” Orchid whispers softly. She sets Syaoran's body down softly and reverently on the ground.

Lycan sneers with sinister interest. “Louder…” he eggs on.

“You'll pay.”

“Louder!”

“You'll pay!”

“With conviction!”

“YOU'LL PAAAAAY!” Orchid shrieks, locking eyes with Lycan in a challenge of death-glares.

“That's more like it!” Lycan replies enthusiastically. “Now, this Final Judgment can truly begin!” Lycan rears up for a vicious pounce.

“Good! Because when I'm done with you, there won't be enough of you left to fill a bird-skull-shaped bottle!” Orchid threatens back, quickly whipping the lanyard with the star key on it out from under her blouse. She holds it up, preparing for her incantation. “Key hiding the Powers of the Inferno, show your true form before me. I, Kaos Sakura, command you under our contract: Release!”

The star key is consumed by a frigid blue flame from Orchid's palm. As the flame burns through the star key, a massive icy wind blows through the entire subway station. The ferocity of the wind forces even Lycan to lower his posture, though Orchid stands undaunted, impervious.

“I've waited too long for this one encounter. Everything I've planned, everything I've schemed to achieve… shall be met here. And now, all that stands in between me and the fulfillment of my destiny is you. So prepare yourself…” Orchid and Lycan both contemplate in silent thought with immaculate synchronicity.

“…Kinomoto Sakura!”

“…Lycan!”

*-*-*

(outside Tomoeda Elementary)

Tomoyo stands right at the gates in front of Tomoeda Elementary, barely shielded from the pounding rain by her measly umbrella. She shivers violently as she peeks around the corners, waiting rather impatiently. Tiptoeing frantically to keep herself warm, she rolls up her sleeve and checks the time on her wristwatch.

“It's been fifteen minutes…” she thinks to herself. “Sakura-chan, Li-kun, please hang on,” she pleads.

Out the corner of her eyes, she sees a pair of headlights downrange, shining through the thick fog. She eagerly focuses on these headlights, unconcerned with the storm, until it turns out to be just another car passing by, not what she was expecting. At making this discovery, Tomoyo slouches, but as the car whizzes past, it drives through a deep puddle, splashing Tomoyo up to her waist with freezing, dirty rainwater. To make matters worse, the breeze from the quick passing of the car also blows powerfully, inverting Tomoyo's umbrella.

Tomoyo shivers violently as she jogs in place, frantically trying to keep warm. She couldn't go back inside though. She had to be visible for when her bodyguard would drive by and pick her up. How else could she get to the subway station in time?

Tomoyo's ears perk up as she hears the sound of loud horn-honking and tires screeching off in the distance, but she holds back her hopefulness, as it wouldn't be the first false alarm she's gotten. However, she can't help but stare downrange with a modicum of optimism.

A heavy pair of headlights slashes through the fog from even a great distance. As the van comes closer, its large silhouette becomes more and more defined. Tomoyo squints as the source of the bright headlights come closer and closer. To her relief, she spies a pale beige coloration to the large van. Tomoyo is so overjoyed to the arrival of her driver that she doesn't even bother to step out of the way as the van screeches to a stop right next to her and splashes her from head to toe with the freezing puddle water. Tomoyo shakes her head and coughs up the water she involuntarily swallowed as the driver of the van, a female suit-wearing bodyguard, comes out the right-side of the out with a large black umbrella and a heavy raincoat. The bodyguard drapes the raincoat over a shivering Tomoyo and hands her the umbrella as she leads her around to the opposite side of the van, where the bodyguard quickly, silently and carefully helps Tomoyo into the passenger-side seat on the left. The bodyguard then returns with the umbrella to the driver's side and collapses the umbrella before embarking and closing the door behind her.

Tomoyo desperately wraps her hands over the heaters, which were already at full-blast. “Thank you for coming out here on such short notice,” she says to her driver.

Tomoyo's bodyguard glances at Tomoyo briefly out the corner of her eye as she starts the engine and shifts gears. “That's what your mother pays me for. I'll get you back to the mansion in no time-”

“No, wait,” Tomoyo quickly beckons. “Well, at least, before I go home, I need to make a stop at the nearest subway station first.” Tomoyo then pauses, debating on how best to voice her intent without sounding like a lunatic. “…Two of my friends are stranded there, and I want to give them a lift to their homes, too.” It's not a complete lie, Tomoyo reasons to herself.

After a short moment, the bodyguard nods. “Will do,” she responds, starting the car and taking off down the road.

*-*-*

CRASH!

“Damien!” Keroberos calls out urgently.

Yue and Keroberos both descend quickly from a rainy sky, heading for an alley, following the trail of their fallen guide. Gliding down for graceful landings in the trashy, dark alley, they quickly take notice of the dumpster, which had exploded, burning in flames. Fortunately, the torrents of rain prevent the smoldering, scattered garbage from resulting in a massive fire hazard. All that remains, aside from heavy shrapnel and garbage-turned-soot, is a crater, where Damien had landed on his shoulders and remains upside-down after a less than poised landing.

“Nice landing,” Keroberos comments sarcastically. “I give it… a 2.5 out of 10,” he jokes.

“Bite me…” Damien replies stoically. He flops sorely over on one side and groans with acute discomfort. “Living off borrowed magic sucks!” he bemoans.

“Then don't,” Yue says, folding his arms. “Why don't you tell us what to do and we'll fight Lycan on your behalf? Remember, you're not just planning on fighting Lycan with magic that isn't yours, but with a body that isn't yours, either. If your magic gives out while fighting Lycan, you could get that boy killed.”

Damien lifts himself up sorely. “Trust me, you don't want to know everything I know about Kaos,” he dismisses. Having lifted himself up to a proper vertical base, he lifts his head slightly, locking a glare onto Yue. “I saw that look on your face when you learned that Lycan was Reed's AWOL kid-brother this whole time. I should ask whether you're able to fight Lycan. Can you handle cleaning up after Reed's screw-up? Can you handle that the reason Gin turned into Lycan was because he got stabbed in the back by his own flesh and blood?!” Grunting and groaning for moments, he generates a harpoon of bright orange energy, but the expenditure forces Damien to lean on this new weapon like a cane as he catches his breath.

Preparing to match Damien weapon for weapon, Yue chops his hand through the air, drawing a bow of blue energy that he grabs out of the air. “Don't start what you can't finish, Damien,” Yue threatens. “If you even want to make it to Lycan, I suggest you watch your tone…”

“Hey, cut it out! Both of you!” Keroberos interjects, physically throwing himself between the two Guardians.

All of a sudden, Damien winds back and launches his spear right past Keroberos, who dodges, although the shot would've missed him anyway. After launching the harpoon, Damien falls to his hands and knees in exhaustion. The harpoon disappears into the distant fog, beyond visibility.

“You psychopath! What was that for?!” Keroberos shouts at Damien.

Damien lifts his head up as he hears the frantic screeching of tires off in the distance, followed by a loud crash. “Oh yeah… I've… still… got it…” he commends himself as he wearily tries to keep on breathing.

*-*-*

(in the van)

Tomoyo's bodyguard squints out the window of the van and at the road, barely able to see more than a few meters out due to the torrential rain and thick fog, navigating by nearby traffic lights and the occasional tail lights of other poor souls who are unfortunate enough to get caught driving in this mess of a storm. “With all due respect, I can see why you called for a Code Red and cancelled your bodyguard requisition. No amount of firepower could save anyone from a downpour like this,” she comments. However, with little regard to the storm, she continues to drive at what would even be a quick pace for a regular day, causing Tomoyo's heart to beat like a thunderous drum as collision after collision are just barely averted by her hotshot chauffeur. Tomoyo remains silent in regards to her bodyguard's observation of the weather, opting to let her bodyguard believe whatever she needed to get her to Sakura and Syaoran as quickly as possible.

All of a sudden, a sharp jostle from the right, like that of an impact, causes the van to start skidding along the road. The bodyguard quickly grits her teeth and grabs a stiff hold of the steering wheel to avoid crashing into something from the tailspin. All of a sudden, the van smashes squarely into a telephone pole, crumpling the hood and triggering the airbags. The jerking of the impact knocks both Tomoyo and her bodyguard out.

*-*-*

Keroberos and Yue quickly bound over in the direction of the crash, to the beige van with its front bumper wrapped around a light post, and in turn the light post bends over the van's hood. Damien hobbles after the two Guardians, shielding himself from the rain with his massive leathery wings. Yue approaches the van from the right, while Keroberos approaches from the left. Damien finally makes his way to the van, where he leans against the back doors and catches his breath.

Keroberos peers through the foggy passenger-side window as he wipes his paw against the window to clear away the condensation. “I hope nobody was hurt…” he mutters.

Yue comes around back of the van, where Damien can barely breathe. “You caused this crash deliberately?” Yue asks. “What do you have to gain from it? How does this help your plan?”

Damien hangs his head and glances out the corner of his eye at Yue. “It doesn't. But it's called being nice. You ought to try it sometime.”

“Nice to whom?!” Yue inquires emphatically. “I'm getting fed up with all your games and secrets, Damien! What do you know that we don't?”

“In particular, or just in general?” Damien asks with a coy smirk.

“Yue! Damien! Come quick!” Keroberos shouts, gazing through a clear space he wiped in the condensation and rain covering the window.

Quickly filing behind Keroberos, the three guardians peer through the window to see Tomoyo with her face leaning into an airbag. Tomoyo doesn't even move, and is apparently unconscious. Further past her, the driver, presumably one of Tomoyo's bodyguards, also leans face first into an airbag.

Damien quickly slips in front of Keroberos and Yue as he cracks his knuckles. “Stand back, I'll get her out of there…” he boasts. Rearing back for a massive jab, he slams his fist into the passenger window, cracking it heavily, but not breaking through. A few anticlimactic seconds later, Damien peels his fist off the window and shakes out the soreness, all while Yue and Keroberos stare blankly at him.

“Um… Damien…” Keroberos begins. “That's probably bulletproof glass.”

“Bulletproof glass?” Yue inquires. “Where did you ever hear about such a thing? What kind of sorcery allows glass to deflect a bullet?”

Keroberos responds to Yue's question with a quizzical stare. “What? You've never seen any spy movies? Y'know, 007? License to Kill? The World is Not Enough? …Anything ringing a bell?” However, Yue only acknowledges Keroberos's pop culture knowledge with mere eye-rolling.

Damien ignores the bickering Guardians of Clow as he approaches the van door again. “Magic glass or not, we've got places to be,” Damien reminds the two. “I'm ripping this tin can open!” Sinking his bony claws into the cracks between the door and the chassis, Damien breathes in and out for a few moments before pulling. “One… two…”

All of a sudden, the door quickly pops open, slamming Damien in the face and causing him to reel backwards. Tomoyo had unbuckled her seatbelt and shoved the airbag aside, and she pushes the door further open.

“Kero-chan! Yue-san!” Tomoyo exclaims, catching sight

Yue glances out the corner of his eye as Damien continues to reel from the shock impact. He grabs Damien by the ear and pulls with a powerful yet seemingly effortless tug, dragging Damien into Tomoyo's sight and giving Damien something else to wail in pain about.

“And don't forget the all-powerful Damien, the fearless, unflinching Guardian Beast of Kaos,” Yue adds with dry sarcasm.

*-*-*

(the subway station)

Orchid warily gazes around the dark station. Lycan had re-immersed himself into the walls, which now continue to wail their torturous screeching voices at Orchid, though to no avail.

Orchid treads onward, moving away from the train tracks and pacing around the concrete lobby in circles like a frustrated, caged animal. She swings hard and smashes the Nightmare's staff into the ground for a loud iron clank. “Come on! Get out here and fight, you coward!” she demands. “Isn't this supposed to be my Final Judgment?” she asks, though she doesn't get even a hint of acknowledgment from Lycan. Her frustration building up to a boiling point, Orchid swings the Nightmare viciously and knocks over a nearby ticket machine, crumpling it like an oversized tin can, and nearly severing it in half to boot. As Orchid bathes in the ensuing rain of blank tickets that spew from the machine, not an inch of her anger subsides.

“Meh heh heh heh heh… Be sober. Be vigilant. For your adversary the devil walks about as a roaring lion, seeking whom he may devour…”

“Bad kitty,” Orchid returns the taunt with pure, embittered malice. “Get out here! Time for your neutering,” she adds with full seriousness, brandishing the Nightmare's glimmering blade with full intent on making good on her threat.

“At the very least, it seems Xiaolang's untimely demise at my hands hasn't affected your charming sense of humor,” Lycan taunts.

“That `Syaoran' means-” Orchid angrily replies to without thinking. Catching herself, she reasserts herself with a more confident, grimmer tone of voice. “He was dead to me long before you got to him.”

Lycan snickers with amusement. “Ah yes, I see now…”

Orchid looks around at all the walls, frantically trying to find Lycan amidst the howling shadows. “Oh yeah? And what, pray tell, do you see exactly?”

“I was right about you all along. Indeed, you actually were the perfect candidate to inherit the Kaos Cards. It's then such a terrible pity that you turned out to be such a wretched little brat. I truly regret having to snuff you out.”

“Strong words for a coward who won't show his face!” Orchid fires back.

“Only a foolish warrior lets his opponent dictate pace. All in good time… Kinomoto Sakura.”

*-*-*

(outside the subway station)

Damien leads Keroberos, Yue, and Tomoyo down the street and through the pouring rain to a set of stairs leading to the subway station. However, reaching the station, the four are perplexed to see a shiny, reflective pool of water having flooded the entire station. The surface of the water from the flooded subway station ripples as the downpour of rain splashes into the surface of the water.

Tomoyo clasps her hand over her mouth in shock as she shakes her head back and forth. “No… This can't be right…”

Keroberos looks across at Damien. “Are you sure this is the right station?” he asks skeptically.

Damien gulps down hard. “This is it.” He drops down slowly to one knee as he carefully reaches his talon-like hand into the pool, ready to pull it back in a moment's notice. Dipping his hand in, he pulls his fingers out to allow the water to flow over his entire hand. He rubs the digits of his talons together to scrutinize the texture of the substance. He nods with assurance. “Yeah, now I'm absolutely positive,” he confirms. “This isn't normal rainwater. This substance…” he drones off, staring up at the dark and cloudy sky. “It's literally raining kaos.”

“What?” Yue snaps. “How is that even possible?!”

Keroberos sniffs at the standing water flooding the stairwell. As he moves to dip his paw in the mixture, he feels a frigid cold wind flow through his very essence, forcing him to pull back. “During the Final Judgment…” Keroberos begins, turning everyone's heads attentively. “During Sakura's judgment, stars showered down from the sky. But now, as Lycan is judging Sakura, it's raining ice.”

“Ice?” Damien mutters. “We have to stop Lycan. Now! Whatever it takes,” he concludes.

Tomyo looks up peculiarly at Damien. “Of course we have to! Sakura-chan's and Li-kun's lives are at stake. Something like that should go without saying.”

Damien shakes his head as he kneels down to examine the flooded stairwell. “No, it's not like that. It's just that, with a kaos manifested as ice… Lycan is about to get a lot more than he bargained for.”

“And wouldn't that be a good thing?” Keroberos asks.

Damien continues to shake his head in disagreement. “No, it won't. In fact, it's not going to be a good thing for any of us. Especially the Little Wolf.” He slowly sinks his hand into the substance filling the subway station.

*-*-*

(the subway station)

Orchid stomps furiously towards the center of the subway station, having no luck at picking Lycan out from the shadows. She mutters furiously to herself until her eyes trail across the ground, to where Syaoran's body still lies motionless. Lifeless. Pale. Dead.

Orchid kneels next to Syaoran's body. She sets down the Nightmare at her side and stares at Syaoran.

“You were nothing but a pathetic little boy with a death wish,” Orchid tells Syaoran hopelessly. “Looks like you got just what you wanted.”

“He died as he lived- tugging at your heart with all he has.”

Orchid balls up a tense right fist as her left hand strays closer to the Nightmare. Her fingers slowly flow over the handle, ready to grip and swing the weapon in an instant. “Just show your face for about two seconds, Lycan, and then you can join him.”

Lycan's forked tail sticks out of the shadowy ground, presaging Lycan's emergence from the ground like a shark's dorsal fin in the water. He approaches Orchid from behind, cautious to keep his position ambiguous. “Because, deep down, you love Xiaolang, don't you?”

Orchid's left hand wraps firmly around the Nightmare's handle as she catches movement out the corner of her eye. “That's not something that concerns you right now…” she mutters ominously.

“Do I detect a hint of vengeance for the fallen Xiaolang?”

Orchid squints, ready to pounce. “That doesn't concern you, either…”

In a blurry instant, Orchid swings the Nightmare across the ground, aiming to slice right through Lycan's head, but Lycan is just an instant quicker as he ducks back into the shadows. Due to Orchid's wild swing and haphazard grip, the Nightmare goes flying across the station floor, clanking against the concrete loudly several meters away.

Orchid slams her fist into the concrete floor in defeat. “COME OUT AND FIGHT, YOU COWARD!” she screams furiously.

“What was that? You didn't think I was actually going to fight you on your terms, did you? But I appreciate how you so willingly fight on mine.”

“Keep running your mouth, Lycan,” Orchid taunts, standing back to her feet. “I'm just gonna' twist the Nightmare harder after I impale you in the face with it!”

“Catch me if you can...”

Tiring of Lycan's games, Orchid makes a beeline for the Nightmare, but before she can get to it, the Nightmare begins to levitate under its own power to a level slightly above the low fog. Orchid tenses up, sensing something clearly wrong before side-stepping the scythe as it zooms right past her. The Nightmare spirals through the air, clipping an unnoticeably miniscule strand of Orchid's hair, before it drives itself full-force into a concrete support pillar.

Orchid paces back to the pillar that the Nightmare had impaled itself in. “Now there's some of the Lycie-chan I remember,” she observes. She wraps her hands around the Nightmare's staff, but even her most powerful pulling cannot dislodge the blade. Even worse, the shadows crawling up the pillar begin to wrap around the Nightmare and draw it slowly into the shadows. Orchid tugs back, but the might of the shadows is far too potent, forcing Orchid to prop her leg up against the column for support. All of a sudden, the grip of the shadows subsides, sending Orchid reeling and the Nightmare flying far. As the Nightmare hurtles towards a far wall, the shadows covering the wall grow particularly dark, allowing the Nightmare to pass into the wall without any obstruction. Orchid turns her head just in time to see the shadows on the far wall swallow up the Nightmare.

“How pitiful, Orchid. Not only have you lost the Nightmare card to me, but you lost your key as well. How do you expect to use the Kaos Cards to pass this judgment, much less to kill me?”

Orchid tries her best to remain calm. She pulls out another Kaos Card, this time the Industry Card. “How do I use Kaos Cards without a key? That's easy. The same way I do everything else. Intimidation.” She then turns her attention to the card in her hand, and then up to the ceiling, where the shadows have covered up a number of lights, ecliptically blotting them out. “Alright Industry, I don't like you and you don't like me, but you'll do what I tell you or I'll rip you to shreds, got it?” Orchid stands up and tosses Industry into the air, causing it to spin around. The Circle of Kaos appears below Orchid, shining right through the low-hanging haze. All the signs are present of a successful activation.

“Now, use the lights to cut through the shadows!” Orchid commands of Industry, and to her pleasant surprise, the Industry's three cables disperse from the card and phase into the ceiling, giving Orchid the encouraging grin of a lifetime.

Even after Industry dispersed into the ceiling, Lycan ever indifferently emerges from the shadows behind Orchid, though he makes no attempt to conceal himself, as if nothing was amiss. “Well, well, well. You've gone and done it now…” Lycan warns.

Orchid turns back with undeterred confidence to face her devious assailant. “What are you talking about? I've figured out your little alignment trick. The Industry is a card of Destruction, not Despair, so you have no power over it. And once Industry hits the main circuits, I'll fry your shadows. Then you'll have to fight on my terms.”

Lycan snickers in amusement. “I'm afraid you're underestimating the sway I hold over my cards. Lest you forget, I'm not just a Guardian Beast, but the original master of the Kaos Cards.”

The cable-like tendrils of the Industry erupt from the ceiling, catching Orchid's attention. Orchid turns around to face the possessed power cables head-on.

“And like their master,” Lycan continues. “…the Kaos Cards don't take too kindly to ultimatums.”

Orchid swivels her head back and forth, trying to keep an eye on both Lycan and Industry at the same time. “Your cards don't scare me, Lycan!” she asserts.

“Well, they should!” Lycan threatens.

The cables of the Industry crackle as the electricity surges through it. Just as the cables lunge towards Orchid, she somersaults out of the way. The Industry's cables whip at thin air, missing Orchid by a great distance.

Orchid reorients, noticing Lycan and the live-wired Industry interposing themselves between her and Syaoran's body. As Orchid reaches for another Kaos Card, she feels around hopelessly, noticing something amiss. Orchid frantically feels all over her outfit, hoping to find at least one Kaos Card stashed away in a deep pocket or something, but to no avail.

“What's the matter?” Lycan asks coyly, noticing Orchid's distress. “Looking for something?” he taunts.

Orchid grits her teeth at Lycan's tone. “You took them all! My Kaos Cards!” she shouts.

“Wrong! They're my Kaos Cards!” Lycan insists sternly. “You may have defeated Xiaolang and proven yourself the superior card captor, but the Kaos Cards aren't yours. And you won't defeat me to win their loyalty, or their fear.”

“Their fear?” Orchid responds quizzically.

Lycan turns his nose up to Orchid. “Haven't your experiences as a Card Captor of Kaos taught you anything? Fear makes the world go `round. Every action that anyone does, human, card, or even one like us, is driven by fear. For someone who claims my legacy, I hoped you'd have figured this out by now.”

Orchid grins. “So, I guess this just boils down to a contest of who the Kaos Cards fear more: you, or me.”

“Precisely,” Lycan answers, still aloofly.

“It also makes me wonder… what do you fear?” Orchid hyper-analyzes. “What makes big bad ol' Lycie-chan tick, anyway?”

Lycan snaps from his stupor, shooting an intense stare in Orchid's direction. Orchid doesn't even acknowledge Lycan's stare, instead glancing off and folding her arms behind her back nonchalantly.

“I mean,” Orchid continues. “…by your logic, the more you fear, the harder you try. So if you weren't afraid of something huge, you wouldn't have gone to such great lengths to do, well, any of this. All that effort, all that planning, all that yelling… poor Lycie-chan must be scared stiff!” She tilts one eye in Lycan's direction. “Care to talk about it?” Orchid jabs innocently.

“…That…” Lycan grumbles furiously. “…is irrelevant. You have more pressing matters to attend to right now. You seem to forget that you're at a distinct tactical disadvantage right now. My motives ought to be the last of your concerns.”

The Industry begins stirring the cables it possesses. Drawing these cables back into the ceiling, the entire station rumbles as tremors and cracks run across the ceiling and floors of the entire station. Amidst the quakes, a net of cables erupts around the ground where Orchid stands. The crackling live wires surround Orchid in every direction, leaving her nowhere to run. Orchid responds to her predicament by holding her ground and looking all over, somewhere, anywhere, for a slight window of opportunity to fight back, but finding none.

Lycan steps forward, surveying Orchid's `cage', as it were, with great approval. “Reflect on your foolish arrogance… in Hell!”

“Reflect on THIS!”

All of a sudden, a massive gout of bright golden flame blindsides Lycan right in the face, disorienting both him and the Industry card. Maintaining the flaming pressure, Keroberos strafes past Lycan, aiming his flaming breath at Lycan's damaged mask.

With the temporary disabling of their master, the Industry-possessed wires flail about wildly. Orchid barely dodges the chaotically swinging cables as they occasionally lash at her, but Yue swiftly approaches from behind and chops at the cables with his hand. The ensuing and violent electric discharge catches Orchid's attention, but Yue is unfazed by any pain. Muscling through the surging electricity, Yue sends a blue, slicing wave of magic energy through all the suspended cables, cutting through them with an impeccable cleanliness. Yue's strike leaves the severed cables motionless and sends the remaining cables retiring back into the ceiling.

Keroberos flanks Lycan to the side as he lets up his magical flame breath attack, but right at the instant, he meets a pair of eyes, glowing crimson with malice, tracing his every move.

“Annoying rodent!” Lycan bellows as he sends Keroberos sailing off into a concrete wall with but a willful stare.

As Lycan turns forward, he stares down a meticulously accurate Yue, complete with his magical energy bow and drawn arrow. Yue lets loose his shot, but as the arrow approaches Lycan, it gradually slows down until it halts in midair, just a hair away from Lycan's mask.

“Will I never be rid of these pests?!” Lycan bemoans. Reversing the arrow with a mystical control, he reforms the blue energy to point the same arrow right back at Yue, but before Lycan can fire this pirated arrow, a glimmering dagger made of orange energy comes flying from seemingly out of nowhere, connecting with the arrow and causing a violent explosion.

When the dust settles, Lycan is nowhere to be seen, allowing everyone there to take a brief breather. Keroberos, still trembling from the ethereal impact, peels himself from the crater-like hole in the wall, stepping out sorely into the station. Damien lumbers the rest of the way down the steps, carefully watching his oversized footing on the tiny concrete stairs, and dragging his massive dead weight of a tail behind him. Finally, Tomoyo follows quickly behind Damien, springing down the steps two-at-a-time, eagerly darting right past Yue, towards Sakura.

“Sakura-chan, you're alright!” Tomoyo calls out, rushing at Orchid and eagerly hugging her from behind, but in shock, Orchid knocks Tomoyo back for her trouble. Tomoyo bumps into Yue, who helps to balance her out before she falls all the way over.

Orchid turns around, locking eyes with Tomoyo, showing far less enthusiasm than her chipper friend. “Mouse?! What are you doing here? This is my Final Judgment.”

“Yeah, and you were doing such a bang-up job, weren't you?” Damien replies sarcastically, lumbering closer.

Keroberos limps back towards the group. “If we hadn't shown up, you would've died, you ingrate!” he adds, scathingly chiding Orchid. “But what do I really expect from you at this point? Maybe Lycan was right. Maybe I really don't know who you are. Sakura.”

“It's `Orchid' now,” Orchid corrects. “And you're right. You don't know who I really am.”

Keroberos rolls his head back. “Well excuuuuuuse me, Princess!”

All of a sudden, Yue kneels down, grabs a hold of Orchid's chin, and turns her head in his direction. Yue stares deeply into Orchid's eyes. “…This isn't right. This imposter is not the one I selected to be the Master of the Clow Cards,” he concludes, shaking his head.

Orchid rolls her eyes. “Which is what I've been telling you people since the start!” she insists, swatting away Yue's hand. “I've always been Orchid, even before the Kaos Cards. You all just haven't caught on until now. You call yourself a judge, Yue? Well it looks like you judged wrong! Though how could I expect you to understand? None of you understand me!”

“Sakura-chan-” Tomoyo attempts to intervene, but Orchid locks gazes with her and freezes her with intimidation, right in mid-thought.

“And you!” Orchid snaps. “You're the worst of all, you stupid mouse! …You really think that me lending you an eraser in 3rd grade makes us friends? Do you know why I lent you that eraser? It's not because I'm a wonderful person or anything. You were worthless. Helpless. Pathetic. An embarrassment to yourself and everyone around you. I pitied you for a brief instant, and the next thing I knew, you were off using my eraser before I could come to my senses. And you think that slip-up qualifies you to be my friend? Some friend you turned out to be. I'm just your ever-smiling, never-objecting, absolutely spineless, walking mannequin. Meanwhile, I'd bail you out from one thing or another, be it the attack of a magical card… or the other cheerleaders bullying you for being such a geek. You used me, just like you used that stupid eraser!”

Tomoyo just stands and stares, speechless at Orchid's diatribe, as every word Orchid utters strikes like a rusty iron nail right through her heart, ripping and tearing through her very soul.

“So in turn, I figured I would at least use you for my own ends,” Orchid continues. “You let me pretend to everybody else that I had a friend. Your job was to get everybody to quit pitying me like I was some kind of freak loner. But I never stopped being alone. I've been alone since I was three years old, when the only person in the whole world who truly understood me left me for good. And then you come along and pretend that you can even compare to her? Never! You disgust me!”

Before Tomoyo can react to Orchid's outburst with any more than hurt tears, a wickedly deep cackling emanates from the fog-covered floor, cutting everyone off and grabbing their attention.

“What did you mortals hope to accomplish by coming here?”

“Putting you down! That's what we hope to accomplish!” Keroberos responds swiftly and confidently.

Off to the distance, near the train tracks, Lycan slowly emerges from the fog. “Really, Keroberos?” Lycan taunts. “I would've hoped that these past two centuries would've taught you a few things about patience and choosing your battles. You're picking a fight that you can't win.”

“Maybe he can't…” Damien interjects weakly, hobbling along. All of a sudden, he holds up a claw with a Kaos Card levitating over his open palm. “But I can. Oblivion, RELEASE!”

The card in Damien's hand responds to his call by launching forth a hurricane of swirling black and white lightning, right at Lycan. Barreling forward faster than even Lycan's reflexes can react to, the energy cyclone smashes into Lycan's mask and explodes violently. Plumes of smoke spread for several meters around in a split second, and the shockwave of the explosion slices through the fog like a torch.

Damien's new power source and henceforth unseen Kaos Card draws every eye except Orchid's.

“What power was that?” Yue asks with astonishment.

Damien drops to a knee and takes several deep breaths. “The last Kaos Card… The fourth and final Kaos Card of Destruction… The Life Card, having fallen fully to Kaos.... It became this. I wish it didn't come to this though. My Master… my true master left the Life Card to me, telling me to protect it above all else. I wish that letting it fall to Kaos like the others wasn't necessary… but our options have grown too thin.”

An evil cackling rises up from the explosion. A powerful windstorm blows away the smoke from the explosion, leaving only the fog on the ground, and thicker than ever to boot. Lycan hovers arrogantly, right over the railroad tracks, laughing maniacally. “I knew it! I knew I could count on you, Damien, to bring the final Kaos Card here. By doing so, you have sealed your fate, and the fate of everyone in this world! I won't be cheated out of my victory any longer. This time, this place, everything here is mine, including that Kaos Card. And I'll get that card from you if I have to pick it clean from your ashes!”

Damien grips the Oblivion Card tightly in his scaled fist. “Come and get me!” he taunts.

“What passion,” Lycan commends sarcastically. “What conviction. What desire. It's almost like you already know what happened to your precious Card Captor, Xiaolang.”

Further back, Tomoyo overhears Lycan. Her eyes snap wide open in shock. “Xiao…lang? That's Li-kun, isn't it…?” she mutters to Keroberos, who stands right at her side.

“Stay strong,” Keroberos encourages. “If I know the kozo, he's way stronger than this joker can imagine.”

Orchid chokes up. Gritting her fists, she stares Lycan down intensely.

“Do you come for vengeance?” Lycan asks, turning his head quizzically.

Damien is unfazed. “You lie, Lycan. The Little Wolf wouldn't fall to someone as weak as you.”

Orchid's pulse quickens. A pit of raw pain rises up in her chest.

“Why do you doubt my finest handiwork?” Lycan asks with a faux anguish. “Or should I just show you proof?” Lycan inhales deeply, rearing his head back, threatening to blow the fog curtain back.

“STOP IT!” Orchid shouts, unleashing her fury and sorrow in a decrying so loud and sharp that even Lycan takes pause.

Instead of blowing back the fog, Lycan slowly lowers his head, looking towards Orchid and snickering deeply. “Of course, Kinomoto Sakura. Why don't you explain what happened to Xiaolang?”

“He's…” Orchid begins. Choking up, she can't quite seem to get out the words, her throat as dry as a desert.

“Do speak up, so that everyone can hear you…” Lycan instructs, goading the anticipations of all others present.

“He's dead!” Orchid finally shouts out. “The Shounen is dead! He's dead! Dead! Dead, dead, DEAD!” she insists, exploding with emotion, letting the tears rain down from her eyes. Collapsing to her hands and knees, Orchid sobs uncontrollably, all to the background of Lycan's wicked laughter.

Damien turns his head to the side, seeing Orchid crying profusely. Thoughts swirl through his mind quickly, as to whether or not he could believe Orchid regarding the fate of his chosen Card Captor.

Tomoyo looks on uncertainly as Orchid breaks down. Though Tomoyo summoned up the courage to go to her, Yue restrains her with a gentle hand on her shoulder. Closing his eyes and shaking his head, Yue silently dissuades Tomoyo from getting herself involved.

“Kozo- … no… Xiaolang,” Keroberos mutters, lowering his head and closing his eyes in respect of his tongue-in-cheek rival.

Stacking further insult upon injury, Lycan telekinetically lifts Syaoran's lifeless body from below the fog. Deep, blood drenched scars run across his back, no doubt the source of the fatal blood loss. In fact, Lycan turns Syaoran's wounds toward the others deliberately, showboating in his own perverse way.

“Witness my proudest handiwork,” Lycan boasts. With a single, swift motion, he flings Syaoran's body into the far wall of the subway, across the railroad tracks, smashing through brick and kicking up dust with the force of impact.

“NOOOOOO!” Orchid shrieks at Lycan's callous handling of Syaoran's remains.

Syaoran's body hangs limply in the crater. Lycan then refocuses his attention on the rest of his moody assailants. “I can't wait to enshrine the rest of you on the walls of this station in similar fashion…”

“Take your best shot!” Damien goads, holding up the Oblivion Card, entwined with crackling energies that eagerly await their emancipation. “I'll reduce you to dust.”

“And he's not alone!” Keroberos chimes in enthusiastically, pacing up alongside Damien. “I've been by Damien's side from the start, and I'm not about to chicken out now.”

“You'll face all of us,” Yue adds, falling in line. “Whatever you used to be, I see you clearly for what you are now: an abomination that ought to be extinguished.”

Damien holds up his arm in a symbolic restraint of the eager Guardians of Clow. “No, you two. This isn't your fight. It's mine, and I won't… I can't ask you to fight it for me. Gin is my Master. Protecting him is my task.”

“My sentiments exactly,” Lycan replies, hurtling Yue and Keroberos further back with his telekinetic prowess.

Tomoyo ducks as Yue and Keroberos fly right past her, impacting with the wall behind her.

“Let's keep this down to only the relevant parties,” Lycan suggests calmly.

“Then count me in!” Orchid adds with a morbid eagerness.

“You should stay back, too,” Damien instructs. “When I say that this is my fight, I mean it. …You've still got a long life ahead of you.”

“Look, you!” Orchid replies sharply. Grabbing a hold of Damien's muscular reptilian hand, she winces at Damien's flesh-razing body heat, but doesn't relent. Instead, she stares Damien straight in the eye. “Give me the Oblivion Card, and I'll destroy Lycan. Look at me! I've lost everything. The Elixir of Fire, the Kaos Cards, the respect of everyone around me, and… and now all I have to live for is ensuring that Lycan suffers for what he's done.”

Damien mostly ignores Orchid's rant, but pays special heed to something Orchid says. “It figures that Lycan would've taken back the Elixir of Fire. It was his from the start. But if he really has all seven Kaos Cards, then this coming battle will be too dangerous for you to fight. I'll hold Lycan off. When the time comes, you'll know what to do.”

Orchid grumbles under her breath. “Forget you then! I'll take the fight to Lycan myself!” she boasts.

Orchid breaks straight into a dead run, charging at Lycan with no more than raised fists, but Lycan takes notice and locks onto her with his telekinesis, lifting her off her feet and a short distance from his massive jaws. Orchid flails around helplessly in mid-air, completely at Lycan's mercy.

Lycan chuckles at Orchid's eagerness. “How pathetic. The cavalry comes to bail you out from certain death, and yet you wish nothing more than to harm me somehow. I can only imagine. All that pent-up guilt, all that anger, all that pain… Xiaolang's loss must weigh heavily on you.”

“Just a couple more feet of wiggle room and I'd be happy to show you a thing or two about anger and pain…” Orchid threatens, but in vain.

Lycan tilts his head, leaning precariously close to a suspended Orchid. “Come now, threats are no way to get what you want. Try asking nicely …mehehehehehe-” Lycan gloats, before being startled by a powerful red claw grasping hold of his bone mask, yanking him off to the side.

Damien tugs Lycan off to the side by the face. Damien locks glares with Lycan for a split second before slapping the Oblivion Card over his face. “Fine. Please die!” Damien quips.

At point-blank from the energy-crackling Kaos Card, Lycan is engulfed in a cyclone of thunderous energy. With Lycan's telekinetic hold on Orchid relaxed, and due to the overwhelming shockwaves from the Oblivion's discharge, Orchid is flung far from this clash of the two Kaos Guardians.

Lycan attempts to escape the cyclone, but Damien keeps a solid grip on his mask, pinning him in place. Damien holds the Oblivion Card down over his own hand, allowing the explosive energy to consume his own hands, but preventing Lycan from weaseling away. Instead, Lycan flails his head about in pain, trying to shake off Damien and his explosive Kaos Card, but to no avail. Growing weaker and weaker, Lycan desperately charges into a stone pillar, ramming Damien back first into the support structure. Damien maintains the first hit in stride, continuing to hang onto Lycan for dear life, thus forcing Lycan to back up and continue charging that pillar. With each thrust, Damien's grip on Lycan's mask grows weaker, compounded by the agony of his own hands being subject to the same destructive powers that tear through Lycan.

A few more slams later, Damien's grip finally breaks, causing the stream of destruction to subside as well. Lycan quickly collapses. At this point, the cracks in his mask had grown so deep that it mystifies how it remains attached to his face. Damien rests collapsed against the pillar that Lycan had driven him into repeatedly. His claw-like hands bear deep scars that seem to bleed a crimson dust, but still Damien keeps his hand on the Oblivion Card with all due determination and duty.

Behind a pillar a short distance away, Orchid observes the bitter brawl between the two Kaos Guardians. Orchid had escaped Lycan's telekinesis and rolled out of the way of the massive flood of raw power to avoid it. At the moment, however, she focuses on the Oblivion Card in Damien's weak grip. With Damien in the state he's in, she could take that Card from him any time she wanted to…

Lycan coughs hoarsely as he slowly lifts himself off the ground. In moments, Lycan's coughing turns into a demented laughter, having come to a sudden realization. “You poor, pathetic bastard…” Lycan mocks. “I know why you backed off, why you didn't just let yourself be consumed in the Oblivion's explosive power. But never in my wildest dreams did I think the day would come when you would set aside your hatred for men and throw on some pathetic monkey flesh… all just to fight me. I'm flattered.”

“Don't be.” Damien mutters weakly, peeling himself out of the hammered, crumbling pillar that Lycan pounded him into. He rests his weight back onto his feet. With his left hand, he clasps sorely at his right arm. Flecks of rust peel away from the bronzed skin of Damien's arms, revealing more and more crimson scales within.

“I wonder,” Lycan continues. “Where could you find a meat sack with that kind of magic in this day and age? Maybe…”

“Someone who wanted the Cherry Blossom protected at all costs,” Damien answers. “His magic is mine now, and I'll waste none of it to protect the Cherry Blossom.” He turns his head.

Orchid hides behind the pillar in shame as Damien's gaze draws closer. “Charii… Burosomu? …Is that supposed to mean me?” she repeats to herself. Ultimately, she hangs her head shamefully. “What's the use? What idiot would want to protect someone like me? Especially after what happened to…”

Lycan chuckles. “You expect to keep the Oblivion Card from my grasp using that pathetic shell? And even if you could… what's to say that you're not doing exactly what I want you to do…?”

Lycan and Damien begin to side strafe around, circling each other, maintaining face and preparing to strike or block with equal readiness.

“You're a bad liar, Lycan.” Damien replies in rapid response. “You're cornered and you know it. So don't pretend that you're cooking up some master plan to somehow pull everything off at the last minute.”

“Have faith,” Lycan responds. “As they say, zettai daijobu. Never truer than it is on this day, soon, the entire universe will be set into order. Isn't the mind of a child so full of wisdom and insight?”

“Maybe,” Damien admits. “…but you're not a child anymore. You're all grown up, and worse off for it. Your mind is full of greed, spite, and raw hatred for everyone and everything around you. You're absolutely right about the mind of a child being a wonderful thing. That's why I'm risking everything here and now to free an innocent child from your evil.”

Lycan pauses, taken aback by Damien's accusation. “I… am not evil!” Lycan insists with a suddenly irked fury. He takes a couple of deep, calming breaths before continuing.

*-*-*

(flashback)

“No one is asking you to turn upon a path of evil. All I offer is my warning. What you choose to do with that warning will determine your path. Tell me, young Gin, what do you wish to become?”

“If what you say is true…”

“Yes?”

“…stronger. I want the power to change things for the better. I want the power to avoid that catastrophe. Show me. Tell me. Tell me everything you know about these… these Apotheos of yours…”

*-*-*

“…I grew up,” Lycan concludes. “You should do the same. The things that I see now go far beyond your understanding. What I see as preventative action and appropriate recourse, you call evil. Though frankly, between the two of us, I could care less what any of you think of me. What we are up against transcends power, and the powers of Kaos are our best collective chance of survival. Another time, and you would have seen me as your savior, your hero…”

“Unfortunately for you,” Damien replies, “…no one shares your visions of madness. I'll see to that.” He holds up the Oblivion card in his left claw. “I'll see to it that your disease ends here.”

“My disease?” Lycan chuckles in amusement at the accusation, but quickly shifts to a more serious tone. “Then what would you have? The blind leading the blind? Raw, natural selection? Anarchy without end? Never, Damien! I am no disease. …I am the cure,” Lycan claims with a somber audacity.

“A cure to what?” Damien asks sharply.

“…Mortality,” Lycan replies simplistically.

Orchid peeks precariously around the concrete pillar that hides her, continually eavesdrops on Lycan and Damien as they circle around one another. She overhears their conversation with little interest, but of a strange peculiarity, the air around the three of them seems to have faded into darkness. Gradual as it was, Orchid didn't notice it at first, but the subway station itself seems to have faded into the background. Looking back, Orchid can only barely make out Tomoyo's silhouette as she watches over the silhouettes of Yue and Keroberos, all three completely oblivious to the fighting that should, by all means, be right next to them. But as suddenly as their forms appeared, they were lost in the shadows, separated from Orchid and the warring Guardians of Kaos by a great chasm of time and space. Orchid frowns into the abyss, realizing full well that there is no escape.

*-*-*

“Kero-chan! Yue-san! Look!” Tomoyo calls out in desperation to the incapacitated Guardians at either side of her.

The anomaly of which Tomoyo referred to was a darkening shadow. The fog had lifted from the train station floor, but it enveloped the majority of the train station, around where Orchid, Lycan and Damien were fighting.

“The station! It's vanishing into the fog!” Tomoyo exclaims frantically. “Yue-san! Kero-chan! Wake up!” she pleads, turning back to the Guardians, smashed into the wall behind her.

“We can hear you just fine,” Kero responds. Curled up in a crater in the wall, Keroberos appears otherwise unconscious.

“We simply can't move,” Yue adds. Reclined into an impact crater of his own, Yue also lays back in a seeming state of unconsciousness. It is as if the two Guardians' speech was the only unhindered thing about them, as they otherwise remain motionless.

“Why? What's wrong?” Tomoyo asks unsurely. “Did Lycan do something to you two?”

“I bet he did…” Keroberos grumbles. “This paralysis stinks of the Dominion Card's work. That's why we can't move, and how come Lycan can throw us around like ragdolls. Pfft… telekinesis my foot.”

“And the fog is no doubt the Fade Card's work,” Yue adds. “Even with my eyes closed, I can feel its essence in the fog, glowing like a red-hot cinder…”

“I'll give Lycan this,” Keroberos begins. “…he's a creative little scumbag. He knows the ins and outs of every one of those Kaos Cards. There's no telling how many of the others are at work, right under our very noses…”

Tomoyo glances back into the dark, silent fog covering. No signs of the inevitable conflict beyond reach outside the cloud, forcing Tomoyo to assume the worst. “What if Lycan wins in there? What if he kills Damien-san and Sakura-chan too? If you two can't move, you won't be able to defend yourselves!”

“Have faith,” Yue chides simplistically, turning Tomoyo's head with his cold assurance.

“Don't you believe in Sakura anymore?” Keroberos asks.

Tomoyo stares down, her conviction shattered. “Didn't you hear her? She doesn't want to be Sakura-chan anymore. You heard her. If she really wants with all her heart to be Orchid instead… maybe we should just let her.”

“That's ridiculous!” Keroberos retorts. “If she wanted with all her heart to be a rock, would she turn to stone?”

Tomoyo's eyes shoot open, as she begins to grasp Keroberos's logic.

“It's just a name,” Keroberos concludes. “Don't believe what Lycan says. Lycan thinks that Sakura wasn't as genuine as we believe, and that she had been acting the whole time. Even if that were true, I still believe that our Sakura, the Sakura I picked, the Sakura Yue judged, and the Sakura you befriended, was no trick, and that she's still in there somewhere. And you're her best friend. Don't you still believe in her?”

“Well I…” Tomoyo begins, but quiets herself in thought.

*-*-*

Lycan lunges vocally and violently at Damien. Telegraphed as Lycan's lunge was, it proves a simple matter for Damien to somersault out of the way of the raging, bladed battering ram that is Lycan's rhinoceros-like mass. The pillar that Damien was using for support crumbles as Lycan smashes straight through it, utterly unhindered.

Damien uses another nearby pillar to pull himself up again, sinking his heavy claws into the rock and dragging himself up. As he looks around into the abyss, he sees nothing but a veritable forest of concrete pillars, surrounded by a seemingly impenetrable curtain of shadow that stretches on for eternity. In the time it had taken for Damien to hoist himself up, Lycan had vanished into this darkness, though Damien didn't find himself too surprised at Lycan's use of this craven tactic. However, to Damien's shock, Lycan approaches right in Damien's path of vision, with hubris as massive as ever for not attacking from the shadows as he often does.

Damien prepares the Oblivion card, raising it and using it to summon a corona of raw destructive power, readying a violent discharge. “You should've run and hid like you normally do…” he threatens.

“Your blindness is astounding…” Lycan mocks.

With a quick spin, Lycan lashes out with his tails, crushing through pillars effortlessly. Damien responds swiftly by dispelling his Oblivion card and leaping away, causing Lycan to miss greatly with his lashing tail swing. Crushed rubble from the decimated pillars litters the ground for a great radius.

“Your grand offensive is… a tail whip?!” Damien questions, offended as by a grave insult to his intelligence and martial skill. “Honestly, what kind of Guardian do you take me for?!”

Lycan squints. A metal cable trails out the back of Lycan's shadowy form, obscured from Damien by Lycan's dark bulk. “I take you for a self-proclaimed Guardian Beast who seeks to protect the so-called `Cherry Blossom'. But you are still a fool, and now I'm going to prove it. INDUSTRY! NOW!”

In different directions, the Industry's three cables split up and spring across the ground. While Damien struggles to keep track of the three cables, the Industry springs for particularly large pieces of debris from the broken pillars. Merging with the debris, the Industry lifts three particularly large slabs up in the air. One of the debris pieces is a large, near tetrahedron-shaped spike, with a size comparable to a cannonball.

“See the true powers of Industry, one of your Cards,” Lycan states. “Technology, be it stone, wood, or metal, is the true pride of mankind, but in truth, all technology is ultimately forged from the raw fabric of nature. Any once-natural substance forged in such a manner becomes a soulless tool, and is but fodder for the Industry to manipulate.”

“Quit wasting your breath,” Damien retorts. “I know how my own Cards work.”

“I expected you to know. But… do you understand?” Lycan replies esoterically.

Paying no heed to Lycan's ambiguous inquiry, Damien quickly draws the Oblivion Card and fires its energy at this stone projectile. The explosive cyclone engulfs the stone fragment and, with an impact like a thunderclap, the stone explodes into a fine dust, causing the Industry cable within to squeal loudly in some likeness of pain. Damien breathes the rapid breaths of exhaustion as the cracks in his skin begin to crawl up his torso, accompanied with deep, almost primal grunts of pain.

Another piece of debris, smaller though quicker than the first, flies right at Damien from the side. Attacking from Damien's blind spot, this stone smashes right against Damien's skull. Though the impact sends Damien reeling slightly, he rebounds and snarls at the hovering stone with a fang-toothed roar, no tamer than a wild beast at this point. As the Industry-possessed stone circles around, Damien swings a back-fist into this stone, smashing it to smithereens before the Industry could even react.

Lycan stands idly by, watching as the cables from the Industry jump from one piece of debris to another, flinging them at Damien, only to escape mere split-seconds before a berserk Damien can smash the possessed debris apart. As this whirlwind of desolation continues with greater and greater speed, not a stone touches Damien without getting pulverized, but his grunts progressively begin losing their humanity. The cracks in Damien's mortal skin reach all the way up to his shoulders, as he strikes out with greater and greater feral ferocity.

“Yes, Damien. Let the illusion of your identity as a Guardian crumble like dust. Embrace your true nature,” Lycan muses, chuckling wickedly to himself.

Damien's human skin flicks away like rust. As his swinging defensive flurries against the Industry's debris storm continue, his movements become swifter, more powerful, and more ferocious. Smaller rocks are swatted away like flies against Damien's wings, while larger chunks of rock meet their end at Damien's claws and tail, some crushed to a chalk-like powder in Damien's powerful hands.

Finally tiring of the pelting, Damien lets out a draconian roar of great fury. Pillars are blasted with a hot wind, while all the smaller pieces of debris are reduced to mere sediments in Damien's wake. This reveals the three cables of the Industry, in the form of three snakes, tumbling right out of the air and landing on the ground at Damien's clawed feet. Hissing back with a rusty screech, they come together and flare up a trio of cobra-like hoods. However, Industry's pathetic attempts to intimidate Damien are wasted, as Damien lands down a mighty dinosaur-like foot, crushing the cables limp.

Damien breathes heavily, concentrating what little remains of his humanlike focus onto Lycan. “…Whaaat?... Is-ggrrrrrrr… Is that all-grrrr… Is that the BEST YOU CAN DO?!?! LYCAAAAAN!!!” Damien bellows, though most of his speech is lost to his bestial snarling.

“As I thought,” Lycan responds. “You're no Guardian Beast. You're just a wild animal. You've always been a wild animal! No wonder you pester Keroberos and Yue insufferably about what it means to be a true Guardian. How pathetic that you yourself aren't even a real Guardian at all. That, Damien, is why you suffer now! You spite Reed for replacing you, not realizing that he saw you for the demon you were, and the demon you are deep inside, to this very day. Reed was right to create Yue to usurp the position you held!”

Damien furiously leaps up into the air, gliding for a moment upon his leathery wings, until he lands with a thunderous stomp, crushing the ground beneath him. After landing, Damien curls up, wrapping his wings around his body and, with a massive roar, his wings flap out, sending gusts of blistering winds flying out in all directions. This blows the remains of the debris into chalky powder, and also heavily erodes at all the pillars that Damien faces. The ground under Damien's feet glows dim, but as Damien stomps at the ground more, the stone gives way to a glowing-hot magma that pours up from the cracks in the ground and pools around Damien.

Orchid peeks her head precariously out from behind the now-eroded pillar that she hides behind. Though she had dodged the searing windstorm that shot out in all directions, she feels herself perspire more and more heavily, as the temperature rises dramatically. Orchid tugs at the collar of her blouse, sweltering in the heat. It doesn't even occur to her to ponder what is happening to Damien, the Guardian Beast growing mindlessly animalistic before her very eyes. But the question that Orchid asks herself is what Lycan thinks he's doing, or what he thinks he can prove… and to whom. What is it that transcends Kaos, exactly?

Lycan had laid low to dodge the worst of the burning wind that Damien had called forth, but he still shakes his head in disorientation. Immediately after refocusing his attentions on Damien, Lycan flinches hard after Damien leaps forward and smashes him over the face with a flailing smash, as any sort of martial skill that Damien possessed had crumbled away, along with his semblance of humanity. In response, Lycan attempts to stir his limp form off the ground, but Damien grabs Lycan by the mask and lifts his massive form with impunity.

“LYYYYCAAAAAAN!” Damien bellows furiously. Turning around, he throws Lycan like a toy, slamming his once-imposing form back-first into a nearby pillar, smashing it to bits and sending a diminutive form scuttling out from behind the pillar, shrieking as she barely dodges the worst of the falling rubble.

Orchid pulls herself up, sitting on the ground, but she yells in shock as she stares into Lycan's glowing red eyes, as the creature lay incapacitated near her. After her initial shock, locking her eyes with Lycan's, she stares in utter amazement.

Lycan. The very creature that had been Orchid's torment this whole time, the murderous Guardian Beast and fallen master of the Kaos Cards, of all creatures, had been laid low by his own fellow Guardian. Or at least what remained of said Guardian, anyway. What remains of Lycan's mask had been charred black by the burning wind, and smoke still smoldered from the surface. Lycan's heavy, wheezing breaths inflate his massive chest before allowing it to sink back once more. It's as if breathing is all Lycan can manage. The red glow in his eyes fades and flickers in weakness. His jaws hang slightly open, allowing his noxious, carcinogenic breath to sputter out in suffocating volumes. Orchid has to cover her nose and mouth with her hand and scoot away to avoid gagging on Lycan's exhaust-like exhalations. Yet still, despite all the horrific things that Lycan had done, despite the acrid aura of death about Lycan, despite it all, Orchid stares onto the fallen beast with something approaching pity.

Suddenly, a loud snarling grabs Orchid's attention with a demanding urgency.

Damien. Orchid didn't know much about the Guardian Beast of Destruction. She surmised that, like Lycan had chosen her as a Card Captor of Kaos, Damien had chosen the Shounen. Orchid had seen Damien once before, winded and beaten after what appeared like a long fight. But now, she saw Damien for what he was. This feral creature, finally purged of what little remained of his sanity, had just beaten down Orchid's tormentor. Unfortunately, he seemed to have paid for this victory with what remained of his humanity, if he was ever humanlike at all. Reflecting on Damien's title, Guardian of Destruction, Orchid thought it not much of a surprise that Damien would boast just as much, if not more power than Lycan. The Guardian of Despair tended to fight with more trickery and psychological warfare, more smoke and mirrors, rather than use the kind of direct force that Damien had quite effectively demonstrated. Maybe, Orchid reasoned, she had bet on the wrong horse. Maybe Damien was more of a threat to her all along, only she just didn't realize it. For that matter, maybe Damien didn't even realize it.

The reptilian creature haunting Damien's form drops to four limbs, like some kind of winged were-dragon. Flicking out its forked tongue, it stares intensely at Orchid, paying no heed to the fallen Lycan at all. The creature circles precariously, as if to psych itself up. As for what for, Orchid was unsure, but from what she could tell from Lycan's unconscious remains at her feet, she had some general idea. Orchid backs away, trying to get some kind of distance between herself and the creature, but like a patient hunter only would, it covers the difference with leaping bounds, though it never approaches too close. The creature apprehensively keeps its distance, snarling violently at Orchid. It flaps its tail back and forth, tensing up to close the distance with a ferocious body check. With one last preparation before striking, the creature moves up to the only high ground in sight, Lycan's collapsed form. This was the creature's first mistake.

Orchid blinks. The next thing she knew, Lycan was back to his feet, with the creature that was Damien impaled on one of Lycan's blade-like talons. The creature hisses and yelps in mortal pain. Lycan leans up into the creature's mass before, in the blink of an eye, he streaks forward like a shadowy wind, completing the follow through of his fatal slash. Lycan smashes his claw into a pillar, leaving a trail of rusted dust in his wake. The creature left behind dissolves into a cloud of ferrous smoke, leaving only a glowing humanoid form standing in its wake. The dust collects around where Lycan had driven his claw. Out of the dust, Damien rematerializes. Released from the corrupted form which he had degenerated into, he looks no worse for wear than when he started the battle, though his condition was obviously fading.

Damien's eyes trail down to his sternum, where he finds Lycan's claw driven right through his heart. Bringing his claws up around the wound, he feels a scalding hot trail of fluid seep from his wound. His vision blurs and his body begins to fall numb, but he can still hear, if only just barely.

Lycan leans his head up to Damien's, to whisper some last words into the fading Guardian's ear. “The Oblivion Card is mine at last. I thank you for your contributions, Damien… or should I say `fraud-guardian'? I am the true Guardian of Destruction. I am the true Guardian of Despair. And I alone am the true Master of the Kaos Cards. As for you, it serves you warmongering zaangr't scum right to die in battle, as your kind so glorifies. But your usefulness to me has ended. Now rot. Rot and die, like you should've done on the very day I found you.”

Damien groans in a defiant but weakly reply, unable to speak any further, but he stares Lycan down for a long moment. Breaking the silence, Damien groans in howling pain as Lycan twists his claw back and forth.

With a final driving motion, Lycan follows through one more time, blasting straight through the pillar, and through Damien. Lycan's slash leaves nothing of Damien but a glowing, rusty powder and a reverberating, agony-filled scream, echoing throughout the darkness.

Orchid can only stare on in stunned shock.

*-*-*

Yue's eyes snap open. Keroberos follows suit, opening his eyes and turning his head. The two Guardians, released from whatever incantation that bound them, stand to their own feet after peeling themselves from the craters in which their recent fighting had left them. Tomoyo turns her eyes to both Guardians, relieved for their safety. But something else draws her attention.

The thick fog begins to dissipate, eventually allowing the silhouettes of those within to stand out. With the fog cleared enough to make out distinct figures, Tomoyo and the Guardians see Orchid kneeling on one knee, staring up at Lycan, who floats above the ground in what would otherwise be a majestic manner, were it not for Lycan's demonic appearance and reputation.

Orchid stares down at the ground, where Touya had tumbled rather precariously after Damien's unnecessarily forceful exorcism.

Touya. The elder brother of the one once called Sakura. Though Lycan had violently impaled Damien, Touya didn't seem any worse for the wear, aside from the obvious lack of consciousness. Either Damien took the full brunt of Lycan's attack, or Lycan just plain didn't waste his effort on killing a bystander like Touya. Yes, Orchid knew full well that Lycan was doing this to get to her. But what Lycan apparently failed to see is that Orchid doesn't respond with remorse, but rage at this point. Tempered rage, but rage nonetheless. Orchid answers Lycan's atrocious assault not with words or tears, but with a cold, silent, almost eerie stare.

“Touya!” Yue shouts, single-handedly breaking the silence and quickly gliding through the thinned fog curtain on a pair of white-feathered wings. He comes to a dramatic landing at Touya's side, where he hoists Touya's unconscious frame off the ground. “Touya! Touya!” Shaking Touya by the shoulders, Yue tries to get a response, but is answered in lifeless silence. Yue is frozen with uncertainty.

Keroberos barrels in right after Yue, keeping his eyes glued to Lycan at all times. He physically interjects himself between Orchid and Lycan, blocking both their stares, earning a particularly contemptuous glare from Lycan's glowing crimson eyes.

Tomoyo trails behind, following Keroberos and Yue into the fog. Inside the thinning vaporous veil, she takes account of the carnage that had been obscured from their sight. Yet more pillars had been mown through with such casual-looking effort that they resembled overgrown concrete weeds. Lycan had apparently suffered some scalding burns to his mask, though Tomoyo spared no tears for the abysmally unsatisfactory amount of suffering he must've endured in the process. Tomoyo finds a particularly relieving sight to notice Orchid still standing, as she had feared the worst for her unarmed and emotionally shattered friend. This was more than could be said for Damien, however, who was nowhere to be seen. For that matter, how did Touya get there? With Touya draped lifelessly in Yue's arms, Tomoyo finds herself once again assuming the worst, even if unsure what exactly the worst case scenario may have been. Tomoyo keeps silent, recognizing how inadequately any words she had could've described what went on behind that haunting fog curtain.

Yue lifts his eyes from Touya and stares off angrily. “That… that bastard, Damien! Fleeing like a coward, leaving behind a defenseless vessel… Where did you go, Damien?!” Yue shouts to the air, as if Damien would actually appear to answer his query of cowardice.

Orchid stares down, realizing that her failure to end Lycan's existence as she promised so wrathfully had resulted in the death of another. Though, strangely, this most recent tragedy didn't impact her quite as badly as the one that preceded it. Pain has a way of numbing future instances of pain.

“What did you do to Damien?!” Keroberos interrogates Lycan sternly.

Lycan begins slowly levitating down to the ground. “Don't be so hard on Damien, Yue. Even though he blamed your existence for the deterioration of his powers, even though he had no chance of defeating me in his deteriorated condition, he didn't flee from me. He fought on, and on, and on, until he met his bitter, bitter end.”

Following Lycan's response, a glittering, rusty powder flies past like a thin cloud. Keroberos and Yue both identify the magical aura that it bears, and can faintly hear Damien's deathly screams echoing from what could only be his rusted remnants. The dust blows away and dissipates, taking Damien's haunting voice with it.

Lycan lowers his head to the ground. “Damien… was a good Guardian Beast,” he begins with a tone suggestive of a sarcastic eulogy. “Though he was very, very sick. A Guardian Beast in his state could only go on for so much longer, before finally burning out like a dim ember. Yes, Damien was more Beast than Guardian. And even if I may have assisted with speeding up his decay, his fate would have remained the same.” Lycan sets a foot forward on the ground and digs his claws into the concrete before dragging his claw back, symbolically drawing vicious gashes in the concrete floor below.

Orchid can take no more. “YOU MURDERER!” she bellows as she stands to her feet and looks past Keroberos, straight at Lycan. “How can you take away life with such apathy? How could something as filthy as your soul exist in this world?! You call yourself a Guardian Beast in vain. Only one title I know of truly suits you: …Kaiju… You're a kaiju!” Orchid shouts.

Lycan tilts his head curiously. “Ky… joo…?” he attempts to pronounce, but winds up butchering the poor Japanese language for all it was worth in the process. “Name-calling, Orchid? Really? Well, whatever `kaiju' means, would a `kaiju' forfeit his own Final Judgment?” he asks rhetorically.

Lycan receives a veritable chorus of stunned stares in reply, but none more aghast than Yue. “Forfeit?!” Yue asks, just to make sure his ears weren't deceiving him. As one who actually had not only given Final Judgments in the past, but handed out verdicts of failure to more would-be Cardcaptors of the Clow Cards than he cared to recall, Yue had never heard of a Guardian forfeiting their own Final Jugdment. Losing a Final Judgment in an honest, hard-fought fight against a worthy candidate was one thing, but an unabashed dereliction of his duties like this was practically heresy in Yue's calling.

Lycan snickers at Yue's naiveté. “One of the many perks of being both a Guardian and a Master of the Kaos Cards simultaneously is the right to make such calls. I am Judge. I am Jury. And, my personal favorite…” Lycan pauses for another deep chuckle. “…I am Executioner,” Lycan concludes with a perverse fervor.

Orchid bites her lip at Lycan's gleeful emphasis on the lattermost of his duties.

“But alas, no more,” Lycan continues. “I have no further need for the Kaos Cards, or their magic. They, and indeed the Final Judgment itself, have all served their duties.”

Lycan lurches forward precariously, but unthreateningly. Being no fools to Lycan's deceptive modus operandi, Keroberos, Yue, and Orchid all back off. Lycan tilts his head low as his throat rumbles with guttural convulsions, sounding almost like illness. Orchid and the Clow Guardians prepare for the worst, but to their uncertain relief of Lycan's honesty, Lycan proceeds to literally cough up the Nightmare's scythe. Opening his jaws wide, he manages to get the massive scythe out of his jaws, gently heaving it up to land right at Orchid's feet. Soon after, six other Kaos Cards follow, fluttering out into the air like leaves in the wind as Lycan heaves them up one right after the other. Lycan's gagging coughs grate at the ears, like nothing any present there would wish to hear again. With the last of the Kaos Cards expelled from Lycan's form, they convalesce around the Nightmare's form. Lycan then collapses in exhaustion, landing on the ground with a mighty thud and sending a strong wave of smoke out from his form, forcing Orchid, Keroberos and Yue to turn away, while Tomoyo ducks low and covers her ears behind the Guardians.

As everyone reopens their eyes, they feel a warm and comforting normality to what was once a horrific environment of darkness and fog. Now, the floor is clearly visible, if dim. The lights from above, or at least the ones that Industry hadn't blown out earlier, flicker precariously, intermittently illuminating the station. Lycan's entire influence over the station seems to have desisted with the forfeit of his Kaos Cards. It's almost as if the creature had kept his word.

Orchid opens her eyes and is stunned by what she sees before her. A panting and wounded beast lay keeled over on its side before her. It looked somewhat like Lycan, only much smaller, not unlike Keroberos in stature. Compared to when he formerly stood about the size of a tank, this Lycan seemed rather miniscule. `Lycie-chan', indeed. Though the creature matched Lycan in the dark color of its skin, its physical structure is more like a cross between a panther and a crocodile, like some sort of arcane, wingless dragon. Lycan's dark, furless skin glistens in the flickering overhead lights, like the smooth, slimy hide of a salamander. Most prominently of Lycan's features, a mask like the skull of a crow hangs over his face, bearing a deep hole between the eyes and charred black on the extreme front. In the large eye sockets, a trail of blood can be seen trickling down from Lycan's forehead.

Keroberos scoffs in near pity. “This is it? This is the all-mighty Lycan? The Guardian Beast of Despair and the Master of the Kaos Cards is… some… bloated gecko?”

Yue continues to hold Touya in his arms. Unable to fight at full efficiency, he prepares to spring backwards at a moment's notice. “Don't let your guard down, Keroberos,” Yue warns.

“C'mon, Yue,” Keroberos chides playfully. “If he gets any more diminutive, he might as well be pitching car insurance on TV.”

Orchid reaches down for the Nightmare, wrapping her hand around its long handle, yet without taking even an eye off Lycan. “All the easier for me to kill him, then,” Orchid reasons. “I told you that you'd pay for all that you did, Lycan.” Orchid reaches down again, feeling around for her Kaos Cards. She scoops the cards up with a single hand. “You've just made your last mistake…”

Lycan weakly lifts his head, struggling to lift its mass with his scrawny neck. “Oh… have I?” Lycan asks.

Accompanying Lycan's response, a single Kaos Card descends from above, glowing brightly. Orchid notices it and scurries to count up the Kaos Cards in her hand. Dominion, Plague, Industry, Chimera, Fade, and Mirage, all even bearing the name “Sakura” branded into them. With Nightmare bound to her staff, that put a full seven Kaos Cards under Orchid's control. Partially relieved that Lycan hadn't been holding out on the Kaos Cards he promised, she wonders for a split second what this eighth Kaos Card could be. And just like that, she remembers.

The hovering Kaos Card lowers down while Lycan cackles maliciously. “My purposes are complete, Orchid. I no longer need the Final Judgment because Damien, in his death, has delivered unto me the one and only Kaos Card that I required. All the others mean nothing to me. You can keep them. You can even destroy them, if you so wish. But the Oblivion Card… that Card… belongs… to me…”

Orchid grits her teeth and grasps the Nightmare firmly. “Not on your life!” she threatens, preparing to bring the heavy blade down through both of Lycan's skulls, but the Oblivion Card slips right over Lycan's face before the lobotomizing impact could connect.

Ding.

The next thing Orchid knows, a bright white light shoots out in all directions, with such a blinding intensity that she has to cover her eyes with her forearm. Orchid backs away, the light seeming to push her back with its sheer pressure of intensity. This force drives her, Tomoyo and the Guardians several steps back, until finally the light quickly retracts in.

The beast Lycan now more closely resembles the form it took in shadow, for he had swelled to over twice his size! This new Lycan seems even more limber in stature than the previous, bulkier Lycan that could barely lean up in such a vertically-cramped subway station. Though slightly smaller in overall mass, Lycan had traded bulk for far greater ferocity. Lycan's mask now no longer bore such incriminating stains of failure, but instead had mended and reinforced itself, now less of a bird skull and more like the skull of some carnivorous dinosaur. Lycan's limbs protrude vicious spikes at the elbow-joints, as well as going down his arms, and the claws of his hand-like appendages had grown even sharper, jagged, and more vicious than before, now looking more like talons than paws. Lycan's long, red eyes glow brightly with a renewed vigor, staring down his prey. Such a ferocious visage drives Orchid, Tomoyo, Keroberos, and Yue all the way to the other end of the station, getting as much distance from the beast as the subterranean arena permitted.

“I… live… anew…” Lycan speaks in a new, even deeper voice than before, barely recognizable as having any traces of humanity in it. “And you all… shall die…” he continues. A cold wind begins to flow into his slowly opening jaws, indicating a monstrous inhale. The kind that could only presage an equally-monstrous exhale…

Orchid turns her head to Keroberos and Yue. She gulps down. “Get out of here,” she states plainly. “Take my brother and that worthless mouse and get out of here,” she reiterates with added urgency, turning back to face down Lycan and whatever he had to throw at her.

“No, we're not leaving this all to you!” Keroberos insists, turning back to face Orchid. “We're your Guardians. We're here so you don't have to do any fighting. We can handle Lycan.”

“How are you going to do that?!” Orchid quickly inquires. “You mean like you've been able to handle him thus far?”

“I'm not quite sure, but we'll give it our all,” Keroberos replies in spite of his uncertainty. He turns to his fellow Guardian. “Right, Yue?”

Yue remains silent, staring down at Orchid.

Orchid tenses up. Down range, Lycan rears his head, preparing to spit out something massive. Tiring of her Guardians' excuses, Orchid sifts through her handful of newly conquered Kaos Cards to find one card in particular. “You all can get back, or I'll force you back! Dominion Card!” Flinging the card forward with the snap of her wrist, she taps the very tip of the Nightmare's scythe against it as it levitates before her.

An instant later, Yue, Keroberos, and Tomoyo all feel themselves being mysteriously jerked off to the side. The Dominion Card's invisible cords drag the three of them clean off their feet, but off to safety, leaving Orchid herself in Lycan's path of attack.

Orchid focuses her attention on Lycan. A bright glow builds up in Lycan's mouth, and Orchid stares it down hopelessly.

“Orchid can't die. She's already gone. I wish I still had her courage. Her strength. Her power. But no… she's gone. I am Kinomoto Sakura, now and forever, just some pathetic girl who can't get over the fact that… that… that I have no one left to live for… This is the fate such a worthless girl like me deserves. This is my fate.”

Lycan lets loose with his attack. Opening his jaws wide, he reveals a sphere of pure white light nestled in the back of his throat. In a flash, this sphere dissipates into a massive cyclone of energy, almost as great in breadth as Lycan himself. The burst tears forward, utterly crushing anything even remotely in its way as it races towards Orchid.

All of a sudden, Orchid feels a sharp jerk dragging her to the side. Once staring down her own demise, she now finds herself flat on her back as the barreling intensity of Lycan's attack bores right into the wall that Orchid had been standing in front of. Orchid holds up her arms to shield her face from the luminous burst. A few moments later, the attack dissipates.

Lycan's jaws hang open for a moment, allowing the steam and smoke to flow out before he shuts his jaws and takes survey of the havoc that his new powers caused. He grunts, blasting smoke out his reptilian nostrils in approval.

Downrange, the testimony of Lycan's ferocious new power lays strewn about. To say a tornado went through the station would do the severity of the damage very little justice. A few unfortunate pillars were caught right in the blast, leaving nothing in the path of the cyclone, not even rubble, like they ceased to exist after contact with Oblivion's magic. Even pillars that weren't in the way had been devastated by the passing shockwaves. Further down, into the wall opposite Lycan, a giant hole the size of a sewer pipe smolders at the edges, finely cut with such minimal effort. The hole leads into a deep tunnel, atomizing its way through dirt, rock, and the occasional sewer passageway for as far as the eye can see. Lycan cackles in triumph, utterly unconcerned that his attack had missed.

Orchid slowly lifts her sore body off the ground. The shockwave of Lycan's attack left her flat on her back, not too far from the obliterated hole in the train station wall. She begins to dust herself off from the powdered remnants of industrial sediments, but she stops abruptly when she notices a fine thread wrapped around one of her wrists. Similarly, she finds another thread around her other wrist, then one around each of her ankles. Her jaw drops in repugnance, then in anger. “Dominion!” Orchid shouts out at the threaded tendrils wrapped around her wrists. She shoots her glare straight at Lycan, as if to expect some foul play. “What did you do to the Kaos Cards that they suddenly want to protect me?!” she asks forcefully.

Lycan steps forward. “I have done nothing,” he claims. “If anything, the Kaos Cards appear to be rather starved for their master's attention, now that I have sent them off to a master that I have deemed worthy. No matter. In spite of them, I'll…” Lycan pauses. “…I'll release you to the death you so earnestly seek…”

Orchid turns her head coyly. “You expect me to believe that you think I'm a worthy master? You ditched your Kaos Cards! And after all was said and done, you were too much of a coward to face me in a real Final Judgment. You don't respect my ability as a Card Captor. If anything, you're afraid. Afraid I'd make a better Card Captor of Kaos than you ever would've!”

Lycan lowers his head. “Listen here, you tainted scum…” he begins, his voice somberly deep with a threateningly thin threshold of patience. “I don't respect an iota of your existence. But… to be truly honest… you would have made a promising Master of Kaos,” he confesses, nostalgically pondering Orchid's vast, if not lost, potential. “…But unfortunately, you decided that you'd rather play me for a fool than to give me even a shred of the respect you gave your former Guardians of Clow. You decided that you would try and steal my glory. You decided to try and deceive me! All after I…” Lycan's voice begins to crack, as if Orchid had somehow struck a nerve with the mightiest creature she had ever laid eyes upon. “… after I selected you… trained you… groomed you to follow in my stead as the Card Captor of Kaos! Why?! You held promise! But instead, you threw it all away! You spat in my face! That is why you shall not leave here alive!”

Orchid callously pulls the strings from her wrists and ankles, snapping them with her bare-handed strength and tossing them aside, all while keeping her eyes locked with Lycan's. “Who ever said anything about me leaving here alive? You say it as if I care about my own survival anymore…” Her eyes trail away. “I don't care if you obliterate me. Everything I've lived through up until receiving the Elixir of Fire has been a lie. Not even killing you would change that. Why would I want to keep living this sham of a life? If it helps mend your wounded pride, go ahead. As for me, I can't be rid of this existence fast enough.” Orchid sits up hopelessly, not even bothering to attempt evasion.

“Pride?” Lycan ponders quizzically to himself. “Orchid has no idea of what she has wounded, but most certainly, it wasn't my pride. …This pain… even I am no foreigner to suffering, but… why does this hurt so? …No… no, it can't… can't be… No, Damien… you're wrong.”

Lycan finds himself taken aback by Orchid's hopelessly defeated outlook. “…Very well. If you've relegated yourself to death, then death is what you shall receive…” His jaws begin to open, and the air around him hums at the power buildup. Lycan narrows his focus on Orchid… this being Lycan's turn to make a mistake.

A fiery colored bolt smashes right into Lycan's left eye, jerking Lycan's neck with the impact and sending Lycan's built-up breath energy spurting aimlessly across the train station, missing Orchid by a stunningly large margin in his instant of disorientation. The giant dart impales Lycan's eye with such might and ferocity that Lycan's neck twists off to the side, where his head is pinned against a pillar by the glowing bolt. Lycan struggles to pull his head from the pillar, but his efforts only exacerbate the pain. He roars out with such explosive volume that the stone ground immediately around him trembles.

Orchid puts up her arms in defense. The blast Lycan sputtered out may have missed, but the shrapnel from the walls, ceiling, and yet more pillars splashes widely. After the explosive rubble showers subsided, Orchid looks around for the direction of the arrow. Her eyes trail off to her right, over to the railroad tracks. Though Orchid knew full well that there was only one person who could've put out that kind of attack, she still failed to prepare herself for the shock. Sakura's heart skips a beat.

Over at the edge of the platform before the railroad tracks, Syaoran takes a knee. He turns his gaze to the Inferno Crossbow, tensing his muscles until a bright blazing arrow appeared along the crossbow's rack. The effort takes a slight toll on his posture, but he quickly bounces back, standing up and bracing himself for a repercussion unlike any other. But the impact he received wasn't from the stunned Lycan at all.

Orchid runs over to Syaoran and rams into him, almost sending him down to the railroad tracks, but Syaoran holds his ground. Orchid nests her head under Syaoran's chin and pounds on his chest like a drum with her pathetically weak fists.

“What are you doing here?!” Orchid yells. “Why are you still here?! You're not supposed to be here! You're dead! You're supposed to be dead! I hate that you're alive! I hate you! I hate you! I hate you! I HATE YOU!” she exclaims, completely at a loss for composure at this point. Her yelling and screaming diminishes to a soft sobbing.

Syaoran bides Orchid's tantrum with a depressing ease, though he refuses to be depressed about it. Though winded, beaten down, and barely able to see straight, he feels on top of the world. “Glad to be back,” he replies calmly.

*-*-*

Tomoyo opens her eyes, having recently opened her ears. She had to see. There was no way… No possible way… She had to be sure, to make sure Lycan's deafening pain-cries weren't just playing tricks on her. Before she could attend to her curiosity though, she had to untangle the threads that had dragged her off to the side before. This proves unnecessary, as the threads pop loose at the slightest effort pulling at them. Tomoyo drags herself to her feet as quickly as she can. Paying no heed to the threat of running right past Lycan's line of sight, obscured though it is, she runs across the train station.

Keroberos and Yue similarly free themselves from the threadlike tendrils of Dominion. Keroberos begins to bound after Tomoyo, eagerly taking advantage of Lycan's temporary lack of attention, but he turns his head back to Yue. “Hey! C'mon!” Keroberos calls back.

Yue stares at Touya's body, haphazardly dragged into the station's corner by the Dominion, just like Tomoyo, Keroberos, and himself, but at Keroberos's call, Yue quickly turns around and heads across the station after Tomoyo.

“Sakura-chan!” Tomoyo calls out eagerly as she bounds over low rubble to get to her beloved friends. Almost at their side, she sets her foot on a loose stone and slips. With a shrill yelp, she loses her footing and falls forward. Fortunately for Tomoyo, Keroberos bounds nearby and grabs the back of her collar in his lion-like mouth, keeping her from slamming her face into the jagged rubble and hard concrete.

Orchid had noticed Tomoyo's approach. Ceasing her useless pattering against Syaoran, she turns towards Tomoyo and grabs her by the front collar, lifting her right out of Keroberos's gentle jaws, though not to support her. Orchid stares Tomoyo down intensely, not having bothered to even brush the drying tears of a moment ago from her face. “Why are you so useless at everything?!” she barks irritably. “What are you still doing ruining my revenge?!” Rather than eagerly awaiting a reply, Orchid throws Tomoyo to the ground like a life-sized ragdoll.

Syaoran springs nimbly to Tomoyo's side. Putting her arm over his shoulder, he helps her stand to her feet, though Tomoyo winces in pain. Syaoran looks down at Tomoyo's left leg, where an abrasive scar trails its way up the back of her shin, likely from a sharp rock she landed on. The scar hadn't even broken the skin, and while Syaoran was tempted to think that Tomoyo was overreacting to such a small and otherwise insignificant scrape, he reasoned that Tomoyo didn't have anywhere near the pain tolerance that he had.

“Don't' worry, it's just a scratch,” Syaoran reassures Tomoyo, but looks up at her face to find her crying a wall of tears. Syaoran pauses for a moment. “…Daidouji-san?” he calls to her.

Tomoyo shakes her head. “No… it's not the scratch... I'm glad you're back, but… Sakura-chan… she's gone.” She throws her other arm over Syaoran's other shoulder.

“Get a room!” Orchid shouts with her trembling, shrill voice as she paces right past Syaoran and Tomoyo, making a beeline for Lycan and shoving Syaoran and Tomoyo aside. Orchid reaches her arm out with a commanding open hand, and from the other side of the station, the Nightmare's scythe launches itself at Orchid. Orchid swiftly catches the Nightmare out of the air and twirls it a few revolutions with a single hand before taking hold of it with both hands. All the while, she approaches Lycan.

Keroberos and Yue quickly spring after Orchid, coming to her sides, but Orchid increases her pace. Falling behind their master, they spring forward on their agile white feathered wings, coming to rest before Orchid, blocking her path to Lycan and grabbing a demanding grip on her attention.

“Get back, you two!”Orchid yells, threateningly holding up the Nightmare against her Guardians.

Keroberos and Yue back off by a half-step.

“Why do you insist on impeding us from helping you?!” Yue asks with frustration.

“Yeah!” Keroberos pipes up in reply. “Y'know, all for one and one for all? We're here to help!”

Orchid raises up the Nightmare. “If you want to help so much, get out of my way! This is my battle to fight. Lycan will pay, and I'll be the one to make him pay.”

“Pay? For what?” Keroberos asks. “I thought you'd be happy to hear that the kozo is still alive. If it isn't it enough for you to just stop Lycan, then you'll wind up being no better off than Lycan!”

Orchid raises the Nightmare's scythe, readying to make use of it. “You're wrong! Lycan has to pay, and pay dearly, for all he's done to me,” Orchid explains. “And you two can't stop me, either.”

Yue steadies his posture. “That almost sounded like a challenge…” Yue remarks. He straightens his hands as the edges of his arms begin to glow with a blue aura. “I knew that it was a fluke that an emotionally unstable little girl like you could even think to replace Clow Reed. I've had my suspicions since the end of the Final Judgment, when I bestowed mastery of the Clow Cards onto you on a whim of mercy, despite my better judgment. But now, with all that has been coming to light recently, then I've found a much graver reason why declaring you to be our master was a mistake…”

Keroberos turns a fearful glance to his fellow Guardian. “…Yue?”

“Sore loser,” Orchid jabs.

“Impudent usurper,” Yue counters.

“Uh, Yue…” Keroberos warns. “…we're supposed to be her defenders, not her attackers.”

“Silence, Keroberos!” Yue shouts. “I defend the honor of my true master, and not this juvenile sham. You should be doing the same.” Yue swoops forward, straight after Orchid.

Yue and Orchid clash in a thunderous magical impact of blade against blade. Yue finds the implacable chop of his arm impeded by the blade of Orchid's Nightmare Card, and Orchid likewise finds her swing blocked by Yue's ethereal slash, yet neither of them concedes any leeway to the other.

“You won't defeat me again, child!” Yue insists. “Unlike Lycan, I've never forfeited a Final Judgment. Over the years, many sorcerers and sorceresses had strived to master the Clow Cards. I've eliminated candidates who were twice the magician you'll ever be… and ten times the person. You think your belief that everything will be alright is what sets you apart from all them? All of them believed that things would be alright for them too, and yet they failed. You're no different, yet somehow you were chosen, a decision that bewilders me to this day, but never so egregiously as recently! Keroberos and Damien both derided Clow for his foolishness, yet his choice of you as his successor tempts me very strongly to agree. How could Clow choose you?!”

“The story of my life, Judge!” Orchid retorts. Orchid's feet begin to slide back against the concrete ground. Catching herself, she steadies her stance against Yue's forceful offense. Despite Orchid's resistance, the force of Yue's aggressive lunge travels right through Orchid and cracks the ground around her. “Unlike you freaks, I know I'm nobody special. Yet you always expect me to handle things, as if somehow I'm the only one who can. Why am I the one who could prevent catastrophe?! Why did I have to waste my life chasing around the cards that were your responsibility?! Why am I the only one who looks fashionable in those stupid outfits?! `Sakura-chan's more powerful than she seems.' `Sakura-chan is always so cute.' `Everything will be alright, now that Sakura-chan is here.' That's what I keep hearing all the time, and it's a lie! Well no more! NO MORE! I'm not a powerful magician. I'm not a sweet, pretty girl. I'm nothing like you all think I am! So all of you can just leave me alone!”

With a burst of kaos-induced strength, Orchid shoves Yue back several meters, clearing the attacking Guardian from her swinging arc.

Yue flies backward until, with a flick of his wings, he steadies his backward-soaring trajectory, coming to a halt right in mid air. He folds his arms smugly. “Do you honestly expect to deter me with this juvenile assault of yours? If this is all the power that this `kaos' magic has to give you, then you ought not even waste your time fighting Lycan… when you can't even justify your selection to me. If you were preparing for a Final Judgment against Lycan, you're chasing after the wrong Guardian…”

Keroberos watches the jousting of words and deeds between Orchid and Yue from a somewhat safe distance. Conflicted between his partner and his new master, he doesn't know which side to root for. “Orchid! Yue! Stop this before one of you does something you can't take back!”

Yue whisks up on his silver wingspan to come to a levitating halt at Keroberos's side. He whips his arms open, summoning a hail of frozen blue crystals, preparing to release them. “Oh I fully intend to do many things that I won't be able to take back!”

“She's your master!” Keroberos pleads.

Yue sends a deathly glare to Keroberos. “That witch is no master of mine! She isn't worthy to handle Clow's spectacles, much less his Cards!”

Keroberos's eyes widen. “…Please Yue, you don't know what you're getting into,” he continues to plead. “I… I don't want to see you wind up like Damien!” he manages to add.

Yue's eyes widen at the golden beast at his side. With a twitch, he sends the crystalline hail he had summoned right into his worrisome ally. The shards tear through fur, plink off armored plates, and even tear through skin. Keroberos is helpless to dodge or deflect Yue's icy assault at such a close range and with such short notice. Keroberos skids away and lands on his side, near the stairwell at the entrance of the train station, having been thrown some considerable distance from his assailant. Yue, meanwhile, continues glaring at his now injured counterpart without reprieve.

“How… how dare you compare me to that irreverent garbage?” Yue fumes. He is granted very little time to simmer in his anger, as a glistening of metal shines in the corner of his eye.

Turning to face Orchid, Yue catches the descending blade of the mighty Nightmare, right in between his hands, before the blade can do its reaping work upon him.

“Try to keep up, Judge. I wouldn't want to embarrass your real master any further…” Orchid mocks. She hangs in place mid-air, having been caught in the middle of a jumping lunge.

Yue lets the Nightmare's blade descend past his grip, but he side-steps the attack at the very last second. With another quick motion, his right hand darts up to catch Orchid right around the neck. In shock, Orchid releases the Nightmare, letting the blade stab into the concrete ground.

“You worm!” Yue yells. “Keroberos is no longer conscious to protect you. Now nothing can stop me from correcting the mistake I made when allowing one such as you to be our Master!”

Orchid helplessly claws at Yue's iron grip with determination. Her feet dangling nowhere even near the ground, she tries to break Yue's grip with a barrage of kicks, but Yue's long arm keeps Orchid's wild flails from connecting. It would seem that Orchid is at Yue's complete mercy, if such a thing existed for the angelic-looking Guardian, until Yue screams out in sharp pain, accompanied by a bright fire hitting him right in the back. Orchid drops from Yue's stunned grip, and then both Orchid and Yue turn to the source of the fiery stream.

Barely holding himself up, Keroberos squints across the station at Orchid and, in particular, Yue. Keroberos's vision is blurry, as he keeps one eye shut in sore pain. “Yue! You don't know what you're doing! You've already had your chance to judge Sakura, and she's our master now. You can't go back on your decision just like that, especially in light of these events-”

“You imbecile!” Yue interrupts. “You shot me in the back! I would expect such underhanded treachery from the likes of Damien and Lycan, but you?! You're Clow's Guardian Beast! You should be standing with me! Apparently, the task of defending Clow's good name falls on me and me alone. Well so be it!”

“Clow is dead!” Keroberos shouts back. “Sakura is our master now, and we'll protect her! Besides…” Keroberos lowers his gaze. “…your life is in her hands…” he mutters inaudibly.

Trying to hear what Keroberos concluded, Yue leaves himself wide open for a sharp strike across his back, courtesy of Orchid. Were it not for Yue's supernatural makeup, the Nightmare's blade would have sliced him in half. Instead, Yue is sent flying forward, crashing right into Keroberos. The two smash into the nearby wall, with Yue landing on top of Keroberos, with Orchid standing to face them.

Keroberos stirs what little consciousness he has remaining. `The Sun burns under its own power. But the Moon… Clow… am I really a new breed of Guardian Beast? Why? Why me? Why not Yue? You knew! You… knew…' Keroberos thinks to himself. Pinned under Yue, Keroberos makes only the most indiscernibly measly attempts to climb back to his feet. “…Yue…” Keroberos calls out weakly.

Orchid frowns in a mixture of rage and satisfaction, surveying the decimated Guardians of Clow and surmising their incapacitation. “And stay there!” she adds before finally returning her attention to Lycan. “I have a lot of pain to get out of my system…” She approaches Lycan once again, leaving the battered Guardians in a crumpled heap.

*-*-*

Lycan isn't any the wiser of Orchid's approach, or so it would seem. With Syaoran's arrow pinning his head to a pillar, he tries to weasel his head off the arrow's shaft, but every twitch sends him reeling in overly audible pain, an agonizing reminder that he isn't in a shadowy form anymore. Bathed in a universe of new sensations, most of which involve agony, even the amusing ordeals of those around him go completely without his notice. Though extremely powerful, Lycan is now but flesh and blood, just like any other creature.

But, Lycan reminds himself, he's nothing like other pathetic, mortal creatures. He takes a few breaths before letting out a brazen roar and, with all his might, he drives himself forward, ripping away the pillar with him. The stone pillar collapses away as Lycan, finally free, turns his head to see Orchid staring him down, just an arm's reach away. Lycan contorts his face until, with a snap like a firecracker the arrow explodes with a shockwave of burning energy.

“Do you have any idea how much that stings?!” Lycan roars. His glowing eyes flicker as his vision returns to him. Though he expects to see Syaoran hounding him down, he is taken a little off-guard to see Orchid measuring him up. He scoffs. “Oh, it's you.”

“Me?!” Orchid responds to the offense. “The Shounen is a pest. I'm a threat. Get that straight,” she corrects, pointing the Nightmare at Lycan.

“You were a threat,” Lycan counter-corrects. “But I was more than willing to trade those seven Kaos Cards for the one Kaos Card I needed. No one, neither from the Earth, nor from the Heavens, can pose a threat to me now. However, if it's any consolation, the threat you pose to my glory is so considerable that I can no longer simply dominate your will. I must instead sully my hands by reducing you to dust. I… I cannot bear to look upon you any further.”

Orchid readies the Nightmare, eagerly awaiting the upcoming contest of might and will. “That makes two of us.”

“You're wrong… Damien…” Lycan thinks silently.

*-*-*

(flashback)

Lycan had just impaled Damien to a pillar, but had not yet finished the job. The two stare at each other, as if to exchange last thoughts.

“Thank you, Master. You just saved the Cherry Blossom's life… by ending mine.”

“Hmph. The only Life that concerns me is the card I'll snatch from your rusted corpse. What could you possibly be referring to?”

“Master, I knew you were still in there. Somewhere. There are so many things I wanted to ask you… but my time is too short.”

“Shut up!”

“Just be true to your own heart. Yes… I am a zaangr't. But with that wretched identity comes sight. Sight of things beyond the scope of mortal eyes. And yet, finding the truth in your heart was no easy chore. You hid it so well, even from yourself. Fade is a powerful card, and I see why you favor its power.”

“What `truth'? What are you getting at?!”

“Take care of the Cherry Blossom. For your own sake, Master.”

“Take care of her?! I will END HER! And I'll do it with the very Oblivion Card that I'll take from you!”

“I doubt it'll be as easy as you think. The Cherry Blossom is full of surprises. I can see why you confirmed her as your Card Captor. You two aren't that different at all. Your feelings about her are-”

“Enough, scum!”

Lycan smashes right through Damien and the pillar he had pinned the former Guardian to with his vicious attack. All the while though, Lycan's thoughts continue racing.

“I'll show you. I'll kill that little brat! Just you watch me, Damien!”

*-*-*

Orchid and Lycan lunge forward at one another. Lycan swings forward with one of his massive, serrated limbs. Orchid swings wide with the Nightmare, deflecting this mass of sharpened bone-knives protruding from Lycan's new form.

In Orchid's mind, she can't help but compare this fight with Lycan to the last fight the two waged against one another, leading up to the capture of the Fade Card. Though Lycan can't pull any fancy tricks with the darkness this time, it isn't any easier to take swings at him. At least from the front, the blades are sticking out everywhere, poised to slice Orchid into several pieces if she isn't careful with her swings. Fortunately, the Nightmare's long reach allows her to strike from outside the protrusions' range, though Lycan's rapid movement forces Orchid to keep her eyes open and make sure to back away when necessary. Before, it was a matter of simply getting a shot to connect with Lycan's mask. Now, though Lycan is fully solid, she can't even touch Lycan through his meat grinder of a frontal arc, which Lycan keeps wisely aimed at Orchid throughout the fight. It figures. Old body or new, Lycan is still a coward. He always tries to put something between himself and his opponent.

Though Orchid swings, parries, and deflects Lycan's attacks with great speed, she can't concentrate enough effort on any offense more convoluted than swinging the Nightmare back and forth to keep Lycan at bay. Swinging and swinging, Lycan responds by backing away further and further. Orchid continues swinging and cautiously advancing on Lycan's position, wary that he doesn't just spring forward and impale her.

Lycan similarly spends his efforts analyzing Orchid's capabilities. Though he expected far more from Orchid, possessing all seven Kaos Cards at this point, she seems almost underwhelming. That gambit of surrendering the seven Kaos Cards in exchange for Oblivion seems to be paying off beautifully. Despite this, Lycan remains cautious. Though he had gained a phenomenal increase in power with the Oblivion Card under his proverbial belt, he now has a body that can be slashed, stabbed, and wounded. This had to be the reason behind Orchid's pummeling offensive: her tormentor now has a body that can feel pain. And feel pain he would, if Orchid got her way!

Throwing out a few weak swings with his heavy claws to test Orchid's resolve, he finds his offenses swatted back with impressive force. Though Orchid showed strong favoritism of the Nightmare Card in combat, what she lacked in brutal application of the other six cards, she made up for several times over with the power of her own kaos. Even without the Elixir of Fire powering her, Orchid seemed to boast plenty of power, possibly dwarfing even what she could've taken from the wicked potion.

However, Lycan remembers, Orchid isn't the only one with a few surprises to show off…

Orchid drives Lycan all the way back to the station wall, and she prepares to take a shot at Lycan's mask. Right as Orchid jumps up for a swing, Lycan leaps off to the side. Orchid's attack comes crashing down, smashing the Nightmare's blade right into the floor. With Lycan clear of Orchid's offenses and the Nightmare stuck in the station floor, Lycan quickly opens his mouth and takes in a deep gulp of air.

“OBLIVION!” Lycan calls out, summoning the power of the eighth Kaos Card. At Lycan's incantation, a violent white cyclone of power shoots out from the depth of Lycan's throat, racing right at Orchid.

Orchid was trying to pull the Nightmare from the ground where it had gotten stuck, but at Lycan's shout, Orchid turns her head to the side to see a burst of power tearing off in her direction. Orchid wastes no time in crudely tearing the Nightmare from the concrete ground and diving out of the way of the stream of power. “Missed me!” she taunts as she quickly scrambles back to her feet.

Lycan dispels the ill-aimed breath attack and focuses on Orchid, who had wasted no time getting back to her feet and preparing for yet another onslaught.

Inevitability, Lycan ponders. The fool Reed even had a special word for it. He called it hitzusen. Though as Gin Clow he dismissed such a silly word as just a fancy way of referring to destiny, as Lycan, he now understands it in a more complete capacity. At this time, despite Orchid's unshakeable resolve, Lycan remains content in his inevitable triumph. No matter what Orchid does at this point, nothing can diminish Lycan's victory. As far as he's concerned, the combat now is for mere bragging rights.

“Face destiny, Orchid,” Lycan taunts. “…you can't win.”

“Destiny?” Orchid questions, lowering the scythe in her hands. “I spit in the face of your `destiny', Lycan! I'll see you suffer for all the things you've done to me, just you wait!”

“Yes… I trust you will,” Lycan responds stoically, merely concealing his unshakeable confidence.

With their verbal joust over, Orchid and Lycan charge at one another, resuming a contest of a more strenuous nature.

*-*-*

The sounds of Orchid clashing against Lycan rage in the background. Syaoran avoids getting involved in the fight as he helps Tomoyo limp through the train station. To avoid getting caught in the mess of the combat, Syaoran guides Tomoyo around the very edges of the station, even if it takes longer. While Syaoran keeps his gaze forward, Tomoyo can't take her eyes off the fighting between Orchid and Lycan.

“Are you alright?” Syaoran asks, trying to get Tomoyo's attention off her twisted friend.

Tomoyo turns her attention back to the path that Syaoran was leading her on. Attempting to walk under her own power, she sets a little more weight on her scraped leg than she ought and nearly trips in pain, if Syaoran wasn't holding her up. Tomoyo regains her footing, leaning on Syaoran for support. “Am I alright?” Tomoyo replies quizzically, in spite of her own suffering. “How about you? We thought you were dead! What was that about?”

“That stupid Fade Card is a multi-tasking whiz, I swear. And Plague is no walk in the park, either,” Syaoran answers, annoyed at the Kaos Cards that were supposedly responsible for his fatal-looking injuries. “Mirage might have helped, too. It's pretty tough to keep track of all the Kaos Cards' presences at once,” he admits, but he notices that Tomoyo's attention had escaped him once again.

Tomoyo returns to focusing on Orchid and Lycan, but Orchid in particular. Part of her pleads silently for Orchid to not get hurt while Lycan launches his devastating laser breath streams at her, only for Orchid to sidestep, flip, and cartwheel out of the way at the very last possible instants. But something inside Tomoyo, something buried in a deep, dark place in her heart, makes her want to goad Orchid on, if only in her mind. Go, Orchid. Go, and make Lycan suffer…

“Li-kun, does it make me a bad person to want to see Lycan get what's coming to him?” Tomoyo asks shamefully.

Syaoran stops walking for a second and turns his head towards Tomoyo, almost stunned by her question. “What? You mean you don't?”

Tomoyo slowly shakes her head. “No. Well, maybe just a little… but I know I shouldn't. Isn't Lycan supposed to be Clow-san's brother? That means Lycan is human, or at least he was, doesn't it? How could I wish such bitter suffering on another person like that? As horrible as Lycan is, there's still so much we don't know. Why did Gin-san do it? Why did he become Lycan?”

Syaoran resumes walking, trying to set such questions as Tomoyo's aside. “That's what the powers of Kaos can do to you. It takes away one's reason. You can't control yourself. Nothing makes sense to you. You feel your heart racing in a flurry of emotions you may never have experienced before. It's like-”

Syaoran stops walking again. He completely loses his train of thought, as the very words he was using to describe Kaos to Tomoyo begin to echo in his ears. These words were familiar to him. These symptoms he was describing.

“…um... er… uh… tea!” Syaoran hears in his memory, from his own voice.

Syaoran clenches his fists tightly. The Inferno Crossbow begins humming with low reverberations as Syaoran generates a fiery energy arrow. “Stand back,” Syaoran warns Tomoyo, his voice low and ominous. “There's something I just realized. Something I have to take care of. Before it's too late.”

“Li-kun, wait!” Tomoyo calls back. Syaoran had already rushed head-long into combat, and didn't hear Tomoyo call out to her. Tomoyo leans her back against the wall of the station closest to her.

“Li-kun… come back…” Tomoyo pleads softly.

How selfish, Tomoyo thinks to herself. With Sakura lost to her own madness and Syaoran charging off to stare death in the eye for the umpteenth time, can Tomoyo think about nothing but what she wants? Had she truly given up hope for Sakura that easily? Well, that's not like Daidouji Tomoyo at all! Tomoyo steels herself. Even if she couldn't fight, she wasn't about to prove to Orchid that she was a good-for-nothing mouse.

“Come back, Li-kun. And bring Sakura-chan with you.”

Was that all she could do? Hope? Maybe Orchid had a point, Tomoyo considers shamefully.

*-*-*

In the middle of the train station, Orchid and Lycan quickly circle one another. Lycan comes skidding to a stop as he drags his claws through the concrete ground. From atop the Nightmare, Orchid dismounts from her flying staff and lands on her feet, dispelling the Nightmare's large, leathery wings, all without taking an eye off Lycan. Both Orchid and Lycan relent in posture as they take a breather. The fighting they had been engaging in had evidently taxed both their strengths. But both of the combatants knew that they were only really scratching the surface of each other's physical and magical constitution. The two stare silently at one another in mute acknowledgment of each others' power and fortitude.

Interrupting Lycan's reprieve, an arrow of blazing energy streaks through the air and smashes into Lycan's head from the side. The arrow explodes against Lycan's scaly obsidian skin, catching Lycan's ire in a big way. Lycan roars out in irritation before turning his vision to the offender.

Smug as can be, Syaoran stands with an empty Inferno Crossbow pointed right at Lycan. The tip of the skeletal structure smokes like a recently fired gun.

“And you think I'm a coward for attacking people in their blind spots!” Lycan snarls. He backs up and widens his peripheral vision, keeping one eye on Orchid and one on Syaoran, knowing full well that neither would resist the chance to take a swing at him if he so much as blinked. “You children understand nothing! Xiaolang, you try so desperately to stop me, and yet you don't even understand who or what I am. And Orchid, you have no idea of the scope of your ineptitude.”

Orchid and Syaoran close in on Lycan.

Syaoran approaches cautiously. Feeling Tomoyo's eyes right on his back, he feels discouraged from taking any risks, especially with a super-powered Lycan. He readies another round for his Inferno Crossbow to fire, wondering to himself how many arrows it would take to put this supercharged behemoth down, but Orchid calls over at him and breaks his focus.

Orchid walks right between two nearby pillars. “Don't waste your energy, Shounen.” Orchid begins to twirl the Nightmare like an oversized, bladed baton. She starts off slow at first, but the twirling picks up speed. Lycan stares on in bewilderment, wondering what any of this has to do with anything. Having picked up what Orchid deemed a sufficient velocity, she takes a solid grip of the scythe's shaft and swings into the momentum, demolishing the pillar at her left. Quickly returning to twirling the staff, Orchid turns to face the second pillar and smashes through it with a stroke even quicker, stronger, and more vicious than the first. Ending this routine, Orchid ceases spinning the Nightmare around and smashes the bladed tip of the scythe into the ground to halt its momentum at last.

Lycan backs up all the way to the edge of the railroad tracks, not quite sure what to make of Orchid's display. “Nice exhibition,” Lycan responds. “…but it seems you missed me by a rather wide margin. I'm still standing, and I'm not intimidated. Nor am I impressed.”

Himself unsure of what exactly Orchid was trying, Syaoran aims the Inferno Crossbow at Lycan, readying to fire, but Orchid holds up the edge of the Nightmare's scythe and blocks Syaoran's aim.

“You don't seem to get it, Lycie-chan,” Orchid responds with sinister playfulness. “You've already lost. Just look around.”

“Look around?!” Lycan replies in frustrated perplexity at Orchid's smug arrogance. “You think just because Xiaolang is standing once again that you stand a chance?!”

Orchid just barely avoids a face fault. “Not him, Stupid!” she shouts back, pointing contemptuously over at Syaoran. “Look at the station. Notice anything? Notice all those pillars we were wrecking throughout our fight? All those pillars that you weren't paying any real attention to?”

Lycan scans around the station. Indeed, it was as Orchid said. The station itself looked like a war zone, and every last pillar in the station had been smashed, knocked down, bowled over, blasted apart, crushed, atomized by Lycan's own Oblivion blasts, or reduced to gravel.

Watching Lycan glance around the station in what would otherwise be called fear in any other creature amuses Orchid, but only for so long. She decides to finally drop the bomb. “…as in those pillars that the architects of this station installed to keep this quaint little underground cavern from… oh, I dunno… caving in?”

Lycan's eyes shoot wide open. The ceiling begins to tremble as dust from above sprinkles down. The station can't hold for much longer. “NO!”

By the time Lycan returned his focus to Orchid, she had already activated a Kaos Card. Lycan only barely catches seeing the Industry's three cables slip into the ceiling, no doubt to accelerate the collapse of the station. Lycan's suspicions are confirmed as concrete, sediments, and buildings from above ground fall crashing through the ceiling and land on the train tracks behind him. The broken ceiling spreads quickly from the back of the train station forward, and Lycan quickly lunges forward after Orchid and Syaoran, but more pertinently to avoid being buried.

“NO! I'VE COME TOO FAR TO LET IT END LIKE THIS!” Lycan bellows, though to no avail as both Syaoran and Orchid had cleared away, leaving Lycan to run through a torrential rain of stone and dirt.

Having closed within a single bound of Orchid's position, Lycan makes one last do-or-die jump, which would be fully capable of goring Orchid if he could just connect, but a clump of ceiling in front of Lycan's path collapses right in front of him. Lycan had just dived under this falling slab ceiling. With a roar of defiance, Lycan is buried under the rubble of the entire train station, and everything that was above it.

*-*-*

After a few moments, the dust clears, and the echoes from Lycan's final roar finally stop ringing in everyone's ears. What was once the train station had become buried by a mountain of rubble. It puts a smile on Orchid's face to think that, somewhere under all this earthy carnage, a crushed and smothered Guardian Beast lies in motionless defeat. Dead. He had to be. Just had to be…

Syaoran had returned to holding Tomoyo up. Tomoyo had limped her way to the stairwell, well out of the way of the collapsed ceiling. Syaoran helps her to her feet, letting her get a closer look at the incredibly large mound of earth that had collapsed on top of Lycan. This had to be it, Tomoyo thought.

But no. The rubble mountain begins to tremble. Orchid raises the Nightmare staff defensively, wondering if she had anticipated Lycan's demise a bit prematurely.

Surely enough, an enraged Lycan explodes out of his sediment coffin. Right as Lycan lifts his head to let out an ear-splitting roar…

CRACK!

Tomoyo had buried her face into Syaoran's chest, having narrowly avoided witnessing what Tomoyo reckoned to be a scene gruesome enough to annihilate the innocence of her mind long before its due time. Tomoyo hangs onto Syaoran as tight as she possibly can.

Syaoran hangs onto Tomoyo as he keeps his eyes glued to the scene before him. Part of him wondered if this was, in fact, the last step, and whether the Kaos Cards and Lycan's scheme involving them had been brought to its final end. Yet somewhere, deep in his mind and heart, he thought about what Tomoyo said to him earlier. There were entirely too many mysteries involved in this fiasco to simply close the book on it now. Why did Gin really become the creature called Lycan? Part of Syaoran hoped that this would just be the end of it, but part of him burned with curiosity, eager to learn more. This part of him also anticipates the opportunity to satiate this curiosity… and soon.

As for Orchid, she hadn't skipped a beat. As soon as Lycan came up, his face had a close run-in with the Nightmare's blade. One sickening crunch of bone later, the blade crashed down through Lycan's decorative skull mask, and then into his own skull, driving right through and coming out his lower jaw. Lycan remains motionless as a cold breeze blows through the station, or what remained of it. A small, barely noticeable trail of blood runs down the Nightmare's curved blade, coming to a head and dripping off at the tip. The dripping blood lands with a comparatively thunderous volume against the dry silence.

Orchid's hands tremble in shock. She relaxes her grip on the Nightmare's scythe, letting Lycan's face support the staff's weight. She didn't want to carry it anymore. Its mass felt extraordinarily heavy in her petite grip, but she could feel the weight of it dissipate away. Orchid's thoughts race around. She had finally shut Lycan up once and for all. No more tricks. No more Kaos Cards. It was finally over. It is over. But then-

The Nightmare's staff trembles in Orchid's grip, and she just barely feels it. Orchid hopes for a moment that it was just her own wracked nerves playing tricks on her, but then she hears a low rumbling. And this rumbling turns to low growling, which turns to… laughing? Orchid begins to tremble slightly herself.

“…Finish it…” Lycan mutters.

“Finish what?” Orchid responds. “You're the one who's finished! Not even you can survive a hit like that.”

“I…” Lycan begins. “…I can't… But… your role… is not yet finished. Your staff… your staff is down. Speak… the sealing… incantation. Make… Oblivion… yours…” the fallen Guardian Beast sputters, after which he lets out a wheezing, guttural cough that could almost be heard as a mocking laughter.

Sensing some kind of trap, Orchid freezes up.

“Fear not… Orchid…” Lycan encourages. “Your quest… to capture… the Kaos Cards… When you… seal… Oblivion… my part… will end… I must… I must admit… I am proud… to have… to have overseen you… Orchid.”

Orchid grits her teeth, letting her eyes fall to the ground. Lycan was right. There was one last thing she had to do: seal the final Kaos Card. But Lycan had forgotten one other remaining last task ahead of Orchid. “My name…” she begins. “…is Sakura. Kinomoto Sakura!” Now, all that remains is to seal Oblivion.

At hearing Sakura lay claim to her own name again, Tomoyo slowly turns her head, peeking precariously through squinted eyes at what she expected to be some bloody, visceral mess beyond anything in her darkest nightmares, but as she opens her eyes and takes in the truth, it wasn't quite what she expected.

The supposed carnage was surprisingly clean. A small puddle of inky black blood, if one could even dignify it as even a puddle, gathers below Lycan's jaw. Sakura herself blocks Tomoyo's view of the Nightmare's blade piercing Lycan's skull. In fact, from this angle, seeing Sakura standing in defiance before the defeated remnants of the greatest evil she had ever seen in her life, the scene strikes Tomoyo with awe, like the romanticized conclusion of one of her beloved mangas. Ever since Sakura had first shown Tomoyo the powers of the Clow Cards, Tomoyo had imagined what a scene of Sakura triumphing in the name of truth and justice would look like. What upsets Tomoyo the most about this scene is that she had no camera to record it. Nevertheless, Tomoyo brings herself to overlook such a trite little problem. She'd always have her own memories, after all…

“…and in the name of Kinomoto Sakura…” Sakura continues. “…return to your original form!”

Something strikes a chord with Syaoran. Return to your original form. That's the incantation Sakura used to try and seal the Clow Cards, as well as the Kaos Cards. Something bothers Syaoran about the use of that particular incantation in this situation, now that he actually thinks about it. The other seven Kaos Cards can actually claim their card form as their `original form'. But the Oblivion Card doesn't have a true form of its own. It was never completed as a Kaos Card. So, if Sakura returns this card to its original form…

“Sakura! Don't seal it like that!” Syaoran warns.

“…Kaos Card!” Sakura finishes, not even hearing Syaoran's warning at all.

Too late.

A swirling cyclone of lightning-like magical energy erupts at the point where Lycan's cracked mask meets the Nightmare's scythe. Coruscating energies whip about, tearing away at the very fabric of reality upon contact.

Lycan is unfazed by this overwhelming surge of power, and his very body begins to disintegrate into the Oblivion's haywire power. “Sending… Life… to its true form… will be difficult. Yet I… I have… faith.”

Sakura locks eyes with the dying Lycan, so focused that she doesn't even feel the tearing energies of the Oblivion Card rend through her very body, dissolving her into nothingness upon contact.

“SAKURA-CHAN!” Tomoyo screams out, reaching out to Sakura, but to no avail, as Syaoran holds her back. The Oblivion's swirling energies had overtaken Sakura completely, leaving no trace. It tears away at Tomoyo's heart to think that, just after Sakura `returned' from within Orchid, she vanished again, possibly for good. The universe just doesn't play fair sometimes. At least Lycan had paid the ultimate price, Tomoyo reminds herself.

Syaoran stares at the point where Lycan's mask meets the Nightmare's blade, the seeming epicenter of this explosive energy. Tomoyo reaches forward into the unmaking fury of the Oblivion Card unsealed, but Syaoran holds her back, even if only for the sake of common sense. Syaoran would himself admit to wanting to know what happened to Sakura, and where she went. Is she gone for good this time? Did he come all this way just to fail Sakura now? Or is there one last action that Syaoran can take, one last valiant act of defiance against Kaos and Oblivion itself, to bring Sakura back from the brink of annihilation?

“Xiao… lang…” Lycan whispers, grasping both Tomoyo's and Syaoran's attentions.

Even Lycan's massive form was being dissolved by the swirling maelstrom of antimatter. At this point, Lycan's body looks as if it had been sliced through with precision, yet it still holds itself together for the moment. Blotches of Lycan's presence remain, exactly where they were before, like ink on the canvas of reality, but vast areas of Lycan's body have been whisked away, including the full left half of Lycan's face. Lycan's single remaining red eye glows with the intensity of one last gasp of sentience.

“…Go… Xiaolang…” Lycan repeats.

Syaoran steps slightly forward, holding Tomoyo back. “Go where? What happened to Sakura?” he asks nervously. “And what do you care? You tried to kill me!”

“I have… my purposes…” Lycan responds with a monotonous ambiguity. “But you… you must go… Find… Life's true form… Complete… the seal…”

Lycan pauses, only to watch as Syaoran remains frozen in place.

“…What happened to Sakura-chan?” Tomoyo asks meekly, placing her hand on Syaoran's shoulder. “Where did Sakura-chan go to? What did you do to her?” she continues asking, pulling herself gradually past Syaoran, getting as close as she can without getting caught up in the swirling obliteration. When Lycan remains silent, Tomoyo becomes irate. “Well? Where is she?! Answer me!” she shouts, leaning towards Lycan even closer. Syaoran just barely pulls Tomoyo back before an arc of matter-erasing magical energy sweeps through the area where she was standing.

“Xiao… lang…” Lycan speaks weakly, the volume of his voice dropping sharply. “…true form… complete… hurry…” With most of Lycan's visage eradicated by the powers of Oblivion, Lycan's speech degenerates into mumbles and phrases that he struggles to speak out. “…life… depends… on it… go…!” Lycan mutters desperately.

The storming magical winds of the Oblivion pick up in intensity and volume, driving Tomoyo and Syaoran a ways back, and drowning out Lycan's desperate muttering once and for all.

“Li-kun!” Tomoyo shouts out. “What's causing this?!”

Syaoran holds up his right forearm to block the wind, hoping that the Inferno Crossbow would be some protection against the Oblivion's power, but his effort proved useless. Predictably. “The Oblivion Card!” Syaoran shouts back over the magic typhoon. “It has no true form to be sealed to, but it's trying to revert to one!”

“So Lycan is really trying to make Sakura-chan into Oblivion's true form after all?!” Tomoyo asks.

Syaoran doesn't respond immediately, realizing that he'd have to shout over the raging convulsions of Oblivion's raw power. Rather than answering Tomoyo, Syaoran stares into the epicenter of the Oblivion's tantrum of a storm. Syaoran stares deeper, and deeper, and deeper, into this vortex-like storm, using even the strength of his magic to try and find something, some hint about his next step. Or if there is a next step for him at all…

What Lycan had said to Syaoran troubled him. Something about completing the Life Card's true form, but he wasn't sure. As he told Tomoyo earlier, Cards need both a true form and a master to function correctly. Without a master, the Cards roam uncontrolled, like the Clow Cards and, recently, the Kaos Cards had done. Without a true form, the Card's power would run rampant, like with Oblivion. Lycan… no, Gin knew all this, and Syaoran knew that Gin knew. As creator of the Kaos Cards, even Gin couldn't have gotten so horrifically deranged over the years that he forgot the basics of his craft. Lycan was egging Syaoran on to follow Sakura someplace, but to where he couldn't see, even with his magical sight. Syaoran feared that he and Sakura had not only failed to stop Gin's plan, but had actually facilitated its completion by their efforts to defy it. If this is true, then only a scarce amount of hope remains for either himself or Sakura.

But then… what is the explanation for this compulsion that Syaoran is feeling?

“Sakura…” Syaoran mutters, despite being drowned out by the thunderous power storm. “I have to find her. I have to get to the bottom of this…”

Tomoyo feels Syaoran's protective grip over her lessen. Syaoran was letting go. Though Tomoyo couldn't quite hear what Syaoran was muttering through the cacophony, she felt that she at least had a pretty good idea of Syaoran's intent. Despite a supposed contentment, as Tomoyo feels Syaoran slip away from her, her hand hangs onto Syaoran's. She tugs back.

Syaoran turns back around. Tomoyo had held onto his hand, pulling him back for a split second. Syaoran finds himself staring right into Tomoyo's dark eyes. With the deafening noise of Oblivion's tantrum still in full rage, words between the two would never have gotten through. Had Tomoyo any magical capability, she could've probably telepathically contacted him, Syaoran reasons. But no, this was Tomoyo. Not only had she survived this far without even a speck of magical power, but it was almost as if she didn't even need such power to tap into a magic all her own: a magic called hope. Even now, as Syaoran feels Tomoyo's dark eyes drilling right through his very being, he could tell what Tomoyo was thinking, even though what she had to say was so obvious to Syaoran at this point that it almost didn't need to be said.

Bring Sakura back.

Tomoyo tries to let up her clammy grip on Syaoran's hand, fighting herself. She knew that, for someone of Syaoran's strength and skill, it would be no trouble for him to slip right out of her grasp. Letting Syaoran's hand go wasn't necessary per se, but it was still important. She had to let go. It's for Sakura-chan's sake… as well as for Li-kun's. `I want my beloved to be happy… both of them.' Finding her strength, Tomoyo releases her grip.

Syaoran turns his fullest attentions toward the Oblivion Card. Nothing of Sakura or Lycan remains at this point, and the Oblivion's core, as it were, pulsates with a bright white light, lashing out with short-ranged beams of organic light, whipping about like tendrils, erasing whatever touched them. In wake of such an effortlessly destructive force, Syaoran pauses for a moment to strategize. If he wanted to get to wherever that Card took Sakura, then it would only make sense that Syaoran would have to do pretty much the exact same thing Sakura tried. As if kaos made any sort of sense, but Syaoran shuts out these thoughts. Instead, he focuses his mind on his duty, and on the Inferno Crossbow still strapped to his right arm. The flaming arrow loaded across the bow of this weapon was already primed and ready to use. Perfect.

Syaoran steadies his footing against the raging winds, but the typhoon of power keeps throwing off his aim. He'd never make that shot from a distance. Moreover, if the Oblivion was just going to dissolve him as it dissolved Sakura, he would need to get as close to the Oblivion's wrathful epicenter as possible. There isn't a moment to spare for finding Sakura in whatever dimension she had supposedly been thrown into. Thus, Syaoran reasons, the best solution is simply to kill two birds with one stone. He breaks his steady-aiming stance and braves the force of the winds surrounding the Oblivion.

“Oblivion! I don't fear you or your power! You won't hold me back!” Syaoran yells, readying himself to cross into a frontier not meant for anyone to cross. The Oblivion couldn't hear him, but Syaoran didn't care. He hunches over and drags himself forward, fighting directly against the winds as he approaches the Oblivion's core. Step after step test Syaoran's fortitude to continue on, but he would not be deterred by such a pathetic setback. Compared to Lycan, this is no hindrance at all.

“Take me to Sakura!”

Syaoran approaches closer and closer to the Oblivion's core. It takes nearly all of Syaoran's effort to keep from being thrown right back at Tomoyo by the Oblivion's winds, but he presses forward nonetheless. The wind not only forces him directly back, but as Syaoran gets closer and closer, dust and small stones fly around in the wind, but Syaoran pressures his way through even these. Sharp rocks whip past Syaoran, drawing cuts across his arms and cheeks, but he refuses to yield.

Finally having dragged his way up to arm's reach of the Oblivion's core, Syaoran raises his right hand. He wouldn't be firing the Inferno Crossbow's arrow, but would instead plunge the loaded Inferno Crossbow, as well as his very hand, right into the Oblivion's core! Indeed, no sacrifice proves too great at this point.

A short distance off, Tomoyo covers her ears to the roaring tempests before her. She clenches her eyes shut, though she wouldn't have been able to see a foot in front of her face with her long hair whipping all over the place.

`Am I truly so useless that I can do nothing but hope? …Fine then. I don't care. If I'm going to be a good-for-nothing bother, then I'll just hope with all my heart! Please, Li-kun, bring Sakura-chan back.'

“Return to your original form…” Syaoran begins.

Syaoran pulls his hand back. This is it. No turning back now. He pushes his Crossbow-augmented fist forward, right into the stiffest of the Oblivion's storms. The winds put up a resistance as strong as stone, but Syaoran presses forward. Mere inches separate the Inferno Crossbow's protruding arrow from the Oblivion's core, but as the winds grow in even greater ferocity, Syaoran finds himself being pushed away. Feeling his fury blunted, Syaoran begins to doubt.

`Can I really do this? Can I really seal Oblivion?'

This is pointless. This is moronic. This is outright stupid. By what power or madness did Syaoran think he could pull this off? And what exactly compels Syaoran to believe that Sakura is still alive? The word of a monster? Sakura is gone. That's it. Tomoyo can't help. Heck, with the strength of the winds coming from the core, she probably couldn't even see him anymore, much less help him. It's over. There's no point in continuing this useless charade of optimism any longer. There's no-

`What? What's this?'

Syaoran feels a pair of small, frail hands on his shoulder, holding him up, right as the Oblivion's stormy wrath threatened to bowl him over. Just in time. Syaoran rests, holding himself up against the windy fury of the Oblivion. Though this takes plenty of Syaoran's already overtaxed stamina, he rests on the unseen support at his back.

`These hands… Daidouji… How did she…'

At the risk of the wind twisting his head off, Syaoran ventures a glance behind him. Squinting through the rapid winds, he finds himself isolated. Expecting to see Tomoyo contributing what meek strength she had to help him, he sees her instead huddled several meters away, clenching her eyes shut and folding her hands desperately in front of her face.

Maybe Syaoran was just imagining it. Unless… This force… it's uncanny. It's almost like… could it be?

`Daidouji-san… you're full of surprises.'

Syaoran turns back to face the Oblivion's chaotic center of power. He renews his efforts to send the burning arrow on his arm right into its core.

`…and so am I.'

“RETURN TO YOUR ORIGINAL FORM: OBLIVION CARD!”

With the force of a spear through molasses, Syaoran jams his fist through the thick power core of the Oblivion, dragging the flaming arrow of the Inferno Crossbow into the untamed card's form. The Oblivion responds with an ear-splitting screech of power, unlike any living creature. The stormy hurricane subsides at this, but the glowing white power core remains, with Syaoran's hand jammed straight into it, seemingly stuck. Syaoran has no more time to take note of any other sensations. Feeling faint, Syaoran whites out. The world around him seems to depart in all directions.

“LI-KUN!” Tomoyo shouts.

Tomoyo watches in horror as the Oblivion's power core thrashes about, sending tendrils of mutated reality whipping about in a random frenzy. Like with Sakura, these tendrils tear great holes through the reality that is Syaoran, leaving him standing there motionless as his body dissolves. It is as if an eraser was wiping him from the face of the universe, one stroke at a time.

Tomoyo continues to stare until the Oblivion's core explodes out with a burst of light, wiping away all that remained of Syaoran and temporarily blinding Tomoyo. She rubs her eyes, frantically desperate to adjust her eyes to the dark station again to see what became of Syaoran. Tomoyo kneels down to avoid tripping in stunned dizziness.