Chapter 12
Friday July 28 3:15pm Hong Kong time.
Tomoyo was delighted to note that there were several other sprites with him. "One of them must be Return." She assured herself. Unfortunately she had no idea what Return looked like.
Once they were all gathered around she asked the important question. "Okay, which one of you is Return?"
"We couldn't find Return." Fiery informed her.
It took Tomoyo a moment to get her mind to accept this unwelcome news. She had had her hopes up so high, and now they had crashed. "No! I will succeed! Eriol said that it was very probable that I would and so I WILL succeed!" She assured herself.
"Does anyone have any ideas where Return might be?"
Silence.
"Why did you get separated?"
More silence.
She then asked with a bit of a whine in her sweet voice. "Please! Any information may be important. When was the last time anyone saw Return?"
More silence.
Tomoyo was about ready to cry when Fight finally spoke. "There was a fight, right after we destroyed the human that killed Sakura. Fiery called for all the cards to destroy everything, and kill all humans. All of us here agreed with Fiery. It seemed like a good idea. But Light and Dark disagreed, saying the guilty party had been punished and there was no reason to destroy anything. Windy took their side. Then as we argued back and forth all the cards separated into two groups. Light and Dark's group tried to stop us, but we were too strong for them. We destroyed those who fought us, including Light and Dark, Windy and Woody for sure. Others too maybe. The rest of them scattered."
Tomoyo closed her eyes for a moment thinking of the beautiful Light And Dark. Windy was sweet too. And gentle Woody... Then a frightening thought came to her and she asked immediately. "Did any of you destroy Return?" She was relieved that no one had even fought the card. So then she went back to thinking of ways to search for Return. "Fiery, you called all these cards here, how far away can you talk to other cards?"
"I have no idea." Fiery answered with a shrug.
Tomoyo felt a surge of anger but closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath to calm herself. "I really should not yell at a being that just burned a city. Not to mention, tried to burn -me- to death."
"Well then," She continued calmly, "everyone spread out but don't loose contact with the others. Call for lost cards and tell them that it's safe to come out and we need them to help Sakura. Fiery, stay with me please. Now let's look."
And so they flew around the edge of the destroyed area with the cards calling for close to two hours, but when they hadn't found a single missing card, Tomoyo accepted that it wasn't working and she had to stop and think some more. "I have my Magic sense, and I can reach really far out with it. And I now know just what Sakura Cards feel like. Why didn't I think of that sooner!"
So she reached out with her Magic, feeling blindly for other cards. In less than ten minutes she thought she located one, but it was far from the destroyed area. Flying to the spot took another half hour, but she found both Flower and Sweet hiding together in the basement of a house. She calmed the frightened cards and asked about Return. No luck. They had no idea where any of the other missing cards were. So Tomoyo reached out with her Magic again, and again she located a hiding card. It was Twin and they had no idea where Return was either. The third card she found was Shadow, but when she asked if he knew where Return was, she got a much different answer. "I can find any card which casts a shadow."
"Finally! Success! It won't be long now and I can undo all this destruction." But after a minute Tomoyo began to worry again. And after five minutes she couldn't wait anymore. "Shadow? Are you still looking?"
"You haven't said you wanted me to look." Again she felt fury inside her. The Cards were so stupid! Or at least some of them were. After a deep breath to calm her she spoke to the dark shadowy figure again. "Find Return, and lead me there." After a couple of seconds without any answer from shadow she wondered if she had said something wrong. "Are you looking for Return?"
"Yes, I am. I will tell you when I find Return." So Tomoyo sat on the ground and waited. The pain in her chin was agony, but she had no ice to put on it. When she got thirsty she had Watery make her a little fountain, and then ran the cool water on her burnt chin for a while. As the hours past, she noticed that she didn't feel really tired or hungry. She decided it must be her Magic that was energizing her. Finally Shadow spoke. "Return is not casting a shadow anywhere I can reach."
Tomoyo couldn't help whimpering a bit, but then she reminded herself that it WAS possible to save Sakura, and it was up to her to figure out how to do it. "Of course!" Tomoyo thought to herself, Return must be hiding in the dark somewhere. Or, a frightening thought came to her, Return had jumped back in time to escape the angry Cards.
"Still, I have to keep searching!" she ordered herself, so she had Shadow and Flower locate and bring back all the cards they could. Shadow could find the cards and Flower could talk to them. Fiery had told her that no one was afraid of Flower so she would be the best one to talk to frightened cards. But in less than an hour it was too dark for Shadow to find anyone. One of the cards that they did find however was Time, and Fiery had said that Time was the only card that Return talked to. Time didn't know where Return was but he did say one very encouraging thing.
"Return couldn't have gone back in time. Because unlike the rest of us, Return can't use it's own power without outside energy. So unless Return found a source of Magic power it is still in this time."
"The most likely thing is that Return is hiding in a very dark place. Which is probably underground. So maybe my Earth Magic will work better through the earth..." First she had Earthy find her a house with a basement; an unusual thing in the area. Then she sat down on the floor in that basement with Earthy and began using her Magic. Earthy knew what Return felt like and she seemed very compatible with her own Magic; so she tried to blend their power. She began reaching out and sweeping the area, feeling for Return. Reaching a little further with each sweep.
She found many more Cards but Earthy assured her that none of them was Return. And so she reached and strained, and suffered the pain of her burn until it was nearly morning. She was thinking for about the tenth time that she must smell horribly inside her leather clothes when Shadow came to her with news.