Composed by deko
Translated by Yuki Neco
Morning of December 21, the people in Amamiya’s villa were nearing to the end of their three days’ stay, packing their baggage to leave. Sakura sat on the bed and looked out around the room that was tidied up like when she first came in. Syaoran and Tomoyo came walk in the room. “Sakura?” Tomoyo said with sympathy; Kero floated beside Sakura with perplexed look, as Sakura seemed a little depressed. “Uh, you’re done” Sakura blinked her eyes wearily.
“Yes, the car will be picking us up this afternoon, when Granddad gets back,” Tomoyo replied knowing her best friends attention was caught on something else.
“What is the problem?” Syaoran said, “Rumi’s back to her father, and that's all.”
His words turns on her feelings, then she said, “There’s no problem! But that I...”
“You’re worrying about her,” he nodded, “So am I.”
“I know how you feel,” Kero sympathized, “She was here for three days, and three of you seemed to me like a real family.”
“You’re feeling anxious because she cried that she was scared,” Tomoyo added.
“She called us Dad and Mom, though...” Sakura muttered.
“I can feel it. A strong, fearful power is coming,” said Yue who had turned into his Celestial form before anyone noticed.
In the director’s room of Advanced Communications Laboratory, the display of the network communication system showed the South American Station with the mountains in the sunset.
“Yes, we’ll be beginning to link all the data at noon today,” Satoshi said, as the sun tanned English scientist nodded beyond the display, saying, “The system is totally operational, Satoshi, but are you really all right for it?”
On the display on the opposite side, Elnan, the American Indian scientist added with sympathy, “Right. Misako is worried about you and your daughter.”
Satoshi gave a severe glare at his secretary who was looking at him with bewidleredness, then looked back at the scientists and said, “Anyway, tomorrow is a big day. If we missed this chance, we'll never have the libration for 4,000 years. So good luck.”
As the displays switched their visions, the secretary talked to him, “I’m sorry if I'm interfering.”
“This is my family’s matter. It’s none of your business.”
Misako turned silent. It was the first time in those years that he has declared like that. She realized the things were getting sensitive, and got astounded to see the monitor by her side. It was showing that the canister of the chip laid Rumi’s bedside, in a room of the laboratory.
“OK, Rumi, show us your true strength,” Satoshi thought with expectation widening his eyes, “Everything relies on you! I know you’re already awoken.”
Rumi laid her face down in a resting room, crying to herself, “Aunt Ben, Koro, and Goron...” Meanwhile the chip at her bed side was gaining its luminosity.
In Amamiya’s villa, Kerberus turned into his celestial form following Yue.
“What is the strong, fearful power you were talking about, Yue?” Sakura asked.
“I’ve been sensing the power as if it was covering all over town,” he replied, “I bet you sensed it even before I did.” He showed her the news paper that Yukito brought with him. Syaoran read it, “Advanced Communications Lab Calls off Ralay of Intercontinental Internet. Then something else will break up at the laboratory.”
“I wonder if Rumi’s father plans something big,” Tomoyo whispered in a questioning tone.
“That mad scientist, he neglects his own daughter... Sakura! What’s the matter?” Kerberus shouted. Everybody in the place gasped to see a magic circle glowing around the foot of the cardcaptor, then the entire room was involved in a mysterious space-time. They could see blinding flux of light, when Sakura heard a telepathy, “Help us, everyone. Listen to me.”
In the control room of Advanced Communications Laboratory, Satoshi was supervisioning the operators working with the consoles. One of the operators reported, “One more hour to the maximum libration of the earth. No change to the tracking parabolic antenna!” Another operator followed with the reading, “Transmission of medical data to the female Y commenses. Another 17 minutes to the arrival of the wormhole.”
“Female Y, that means Yoshiko, Dr. Nakagawa?” Dr. Gnome turned to Satoshi.
“We are nearly there. Disconnect the security system all over the laboratory,” Satoshi commanded, “Now, release the network circuits of the interstellar communication system, the Borg.”
“It’s way too risky,” a scientist shouted.
“Do it!” Satoshi shouted back.
In the busy control room, Misako was witnessing the scene that a little girl turned into a monster.
Red beams of light were crisscrossing in the resting room. Rumi tossed and turned, wincing in agony, “Aunt Ben, don’t leave me! Mom... help me! My mother...”
The crisscrossing red beams were emitted by the chip at her bedside. The canister bursted out, and the pieces fell on the floor. The chip floated from the broken canister slowly, emitting red and violet beams in turn. Rumi escaped out of control, and grabbed the chip with her eyes blazing in the same color of the beams of the chip. At the same time, every light in the room started to flicker panickily.
That was a light of madness.
It just started to snow in town. Pedestrians turned their collars up to shield the freezing atomosphere. The car of Amamiya’s ran on the street, in which old Masaki looked sad. Mr. and Mrs. Daidouji felt as if they saw the distress that the old man felt within him.
“It was more than 10 years ago when Satoshi first came here. Those days, the scientific society granted those who studied unidentified objects as hereic,” Masaki began.
“It was before he got married?” Sonomi asked.
“Yeah, he came here with Yoshiko. I aided him with the research fund under one condition,” Masaki continued.
“What was that?” Mr. Daidouji asked.
“To build a happy family before getting down to the research,” the old man answered, “Just as the promise, he got his own wife and daughter. But his wife had an unknown illness, then he...”
Mr. and Mrs. Daidouji turned to look at each other, when Mr. Amamiya smiled gently, “I’m very pleased with two of you, my precious granddaughter and her husband. In contrast, Satoshi has ever changed. He never supported his family, so that he often left his daughter in an orphans’ home.”
“That’s why she doesn’t have any friends of her age,” Mr. Daidouji mumbled.
At that time, there was a slam on the brake as they leaned forward. “There’s a checkpoint, Master,” the driver explained.
A police officer walked up to the car, “Hello, Mr. Amamiya. I’m sorry to tell you that private citilzens are prohibited to come around Advanced Communications Laboratory.”
“I don’t get it,” said Sonomi, “We are just going to...”
“I’m sorry. It’s the order from the autority. I’d be thankful to your understanding,” the officer said.
It was snowing so hard that the laboratory and the parabolic antenna were almost invisible in the blizzard.
Rumi was walking down the hall in Advanced Communications Laboratory grasping the chip that was emitting hedious beams of light. The moment she stepped in front of a door, the door violently opened.
The scientists inside the room screeched and faced down the floor, shivering with fear. “Humph!” As she snorted, the chip flashed, and then the console neatly located in the room caught on fire. Following minor series of explosion, stacks of paper in files started to burn. The extinguisher on the ceiling was invoked, but the flame is too intense.
“Director, we can’t get out of here! The fire escape and the automatic locking systems are all shut down,” a scientist shouted a report.
“To all the staff of the laboratory, leave anything the way it is! Repeat...” the PA system ordered, when the loud speaker bursted and the debris fell on the floor. Rumi kept on walking as if she couldn’t see or hear anything.
In the sound of alarm, all the staffs are working with the consoles, but no one could find a way to do with the disaster.
“Dr. Nakagawa, all of the systems rejects our command!” Dr. Gnome shouted inpatiently.
“Director, look!” Misako exclaimed.
“Compared to the chip, our practical computers are less than an infant,” Satoshi panted with excitement, “The system operates on telepathy, invented hundreds of thousands of years ago by an extraterrestrial civilization. My daughter is on the extraterrestrial lineage.”
“So your wife was...” Misako gasped.
“Now she is concious of her identity. She just recognized herself as a space alien, and she's eager to look for her company. Now she’s trying to open the Gate to the Stellar Field leading to her home planet,” Satoshi explained.
Satoshi had just driven his own daughter to the desperate state unable to escape, Misako thought.
“That’s nonsense!” Dr. Gnome shouted, “You lied to all of us that it was a low level chip. And what the heck do you think your daughter is?!”
No time to respond. The screen in front of them showed that Rumi stood in the room of the Borg system.
In the blizzard, Sakura and Syaoran stepped on the rooftop, accompanied by Kerberus with Tomoyo on his back, and Yue. Sakura still heard Yoshiko’s telepathy saying, “Please bring Rumi to me. I’m not sure if I can protect her, but I’ll try.”
“No, the door won’t open,” shouted Kerberus.
“Stay back,” Yue shouted as he shot the crystalline bullet, but they disappeared as if they were absorbed in the door. Next, Syaoran held his blade, but it stopped with a sharp colliding sound.
“Mom!”
Sakura felt as if she heard Rumi.
“You see? There’s an enourmous power at work here,” Kerberus said, “Huh? Sakura, wake up!”
Sakura stood without a word. The gang looked at the girl standing still. She was thinking with her hand pressed upon her heart, until she turned to them and said, “Kero... I mean I want everyone to stay here.”
“What are you saying?” Kerberus talks back.
“I can’t follow you,” Yue said followingly, “At this state, this building is in danger. Can't you see this?”
“I wonder if just taking Rumi out here will really help her out,” Sakura said.
“Sakura...” Syaoran muttered.
“That’s what you say, Rumi’s mother asked you to do it, Sakura,” Kero said in confusion.
“Kerberus, Sakura said it as her Mom,” Syaoran remarked.
Tomoyo who is videotaping the scnene smiled at the trustfulness between two of her best friends.
“Rumi was a good girl since we first met. She was too good a girl,” Sakura continued. The gang looked at Sakura without a word. Kerberus and Syaoran who knew how Rumi had acted in the villa were kind of confused.
“Are you saying that she has been crying behind her innocent smile?” Tomoyo asked what she didn’t get it.
“I don’t have mother, but I have a brother and father,” Sakura replied, “For the circumstances, grief never resided within my heart.”
“Rumi’s different, you mean?” asked Syaoran.
“She was always stuck in grief!” she cried, “The grief resided in the depth of her heart, tormenting the little girl badly.” No one could ever deny her statement. They couldn’t help feeling sympathy to the little girl who had been acting always cheerful. However, her best friend didn’t fully agree with her. “Well, Sakura. I know how much Rumi means to you. But when Yoshiko is sick worried about her, I think we should make much of Yoshiko’s wish first, without biased impression.”
“Biased impression!?” Sakura glared at her best friend.
“Sorry for my inappropriate phrase, but they say that a mother would sacrifice or give her own life in exchange for the sake of her child...” Tomoyo added.
Sakura felt bitter with her friend’s disagreement, but she knew Tomoyo's opinion made sense. “Thank you, Tomoyo. I’ll do what I can do,” Sakura replied.
“Rumi did not insist herself because she knew grown-ups wanted her to be docile, I guess,” Yue added.
“Her father stays away from her, and mother can’t move. I think she's a poor girl,” Kerberus said, “But, Sakura, how come you don’t want us to be with you?”
At that time, the alarm goes off, but no one ever paid attention.
“Not to frighten her,” Yue replied instead of Sakura, “I know you know the reason. In the beast form like that.”
“Humph, that holds true for you,” Kerberus rolled his eyes.
“That’s because you’re her Mom,” Tomoyo added.
Instead of reply, she began her incantation, “Key that hides the power of the star, show your true form before me. I, Sakura, command you under our contract. Release! Sword!”
The magic circle of Sakura Cards glowed, and the summoned Sward changed the shape of the sealing wand to a sword. In the blink of an eye, the door was cut through together with the unseen barrier in the air.
“See you later,” Sakura went beyond the door, when another unseen barrier emerged in the air; Syaoran dove beyond it in the nick of time.
“Syaoran!”
“I’m with you! I’m her Dad!”
Two of them ran deeper in the scene like the past. Tomoyo who left there have faith in them, with a belief that they would be back. But she didn’t ever notice the difference. Unlike the mystery they had solved, the opponent this time is the power from another dimentional space-time.
There was a tank in a dark mausoleum underground, in which a woman looked sad in the liquid filled in it. She thought, “Forgive me, Rumi. I wish I could move.”
Responding to her emotion, two points of glow appeared. They were the spirits of the rabbits. “Captain, they’re trying to contact the wormhole,” Rabbita reported, “Just another 30 minutes before the maximum libration of the earth.”
“They will suffer a sanction,” Lull continued, “Too bad they underestimate the chip’s power.”
Yoshiko dried her tears to hear the reports from her ex-subordinates. “A stellar navigator you are, so there’s no doubt in your calculation, Rabbita,” she said.
“Your daughter just walked in the laboratory,” Lull reported, “I guess we should help her out. Give us an order.”
She couldn’t reply in a moment.
The control room of Advanced Communications Laboratory was stuffy, just opposite to the high morale filled in the room the day before. The intruments that they thought were faithful opposed them, ruled by unseen masters. That was the fact.
“The return of Krommelt comet helped us prove the existence of the gigaintic gravitational source in the opposite side beyond the sun,” Dr. Gnome commented, “However, there’s no reply from beyond the wormhole.”
“If they have the technology to replace a planet and place a wormhole, answering our question is a piece of cake to them,” one of the observers said.
“I guess our analysis just revealed the face of it,” a scientist said sadly.
“I can’t believe it. The chip held by Rumi has such an enormous power,” Misako mumbled.
Satoshi did not reply to their words. He still sat on his seat, without even reacting any information reported one after another.
“Look! There’s Rumi,” Misako pointed to the monitor, in which the little girl stood by the gigantic system. All in the control room suppressed their surprise to see the screen.
In the room of Borg system, Rumi crawled into the system. When the chip emitting violet beams was inserted into the system, the inner mechanisms leapt to start up at the same time. “I don’t like to stuck here! Come here! Come here to pick me up,” she screamed.
In response to her scream, light ran through the system, and a violet halo enclosed the entire system. At the same time, the steel door was slashed though in the blink of an eye. In the next moment, a wind spirit flew in to blow the steel debris away to protect its masters who ran into the room.
“Stop it, Rumi,” Sakura shouted, “Your mother wants to see you. We’ll take you to your mother.”
“No, leave me alone. Don't get in the way,” the little girl refused.
The chip in the system flashed, as the loose equipments lifted, and flew straight at Sakura and Syaoran.
“Element wind!” Syaoran’s wind magic came out of his blade, blowing the attacking equipment down onto the floor. However, she still showed her hostility; now her cute face was distorted with anger. When the chip flashed, the attached monitor, the disk drive, and the keyboard floated.
“Rumi, stop it,” Sakura said.
“No! I hate everyone! You, too, Sakura,” cried Rumi, “I wish this planet disappered!”
Sakura nearly took out the Shield Card to summon. But she saw tears in the little girl’s eyes. Again, the equipments lifted up by unseen forces attacked the two magical fighters. Syaoran slashed the big disk drive with his blade silently, and cut through the keyboard and power supplying cables by the returning swing of the blade. On the other hand, Sakura stood there without doing anything. A monitor hit her shin, and she stumbled where the monitor bursted out in the impact.
“Sakura!” Syaoran shouted.
Debris of the display flew and tore through Sakura’s clothes. She stood bleeding, saying, “That’s OK. Now, Rumi, let’s go to your mother.”
The scene was shocking to Rumi, to know she herself hurt her beloved Mom. Her teeth chattered with fear, and she cried.
“N-noooooo!”
“I’m all right,” Sakura tried to soothe her, “Come on.”
Syaoran turned speechless to see how painful Sakura was. There was a moment of carelessness, during which the Transport Card was picked up from the Cardcaptor’s pocket. It flashed and then Rumi disappeared.
At the front gate of Advanced Communications Laboratory, old Masaki, Sonomi, and Mr. Daidouji was watching the parabolic antenna tracking the sun.
“It’s almost the time. I hope nothing will happen,” thught Masaki.
The parabolic antenna on the laboratory facing the sun has a ladder which lead to the focal point, on which Rumi was hanging. She barely felt her fingers, and seemed that she had skinned her knee; there were dots of her blood on the ladder. She muttered, “I want to go home, back to my home.” The antenna was tracking the sun of the winter solstice, showing the dim shape in the blizzard.
“Forgive me, Koro,” the little girl whispered, “That’s my fault your mother’s gone.” She kept on climbing the steep ladder step by step.
A space probe was drifting at the opposite side against the earth across the sun. There’s a spot nearby where white gas was bursting out. All of a sudden something gigantic popped out of the spot.
Even though it was the moment of the expectation, anyone in the control room of Advanced Communications Laboratory were absent-mindedly looking at the monitor—showing the eccentric behavior done by the daughter of the director. Now the loyalty toward Satoshi Nakagawa, the director, as well as the dream and the efforts over those years just turned into something worthless.
“Libration of the earth, maximum! Star Gate appears,” one of the scientists reported, “But there’s no response.”
Dr. Nakagawa in his seat kept looking down, though it was the critical moment of his life. At this time, the alarm system went off.
“Director, Space Probe Tsubame sensed the gravitational deviation,” an observing crew shouted, “A gigantic object’s coming out though the Star Gate.” On the monitor, he saw something with a sharp edge—only to be described as a gigantic blade. Satoshi, who knew what it was, widened his eyes with surprise and then collapsed on his knees, muttering in depression, “So they don’t know it. Our dream, our petition just turned nothing... Forgive me, Yoshiko.”
The loud speaker sounded a metalically high pitch sound—as if the bell of
wrath to befall the falks of wretch.