Chapter 8
Sonomi's usual rather grim expression turned to a happy smile when she heard her daughters voice on her phone instead of the usual business calls. "Are you ready to come home now?"
"Yes. Please send my limo to Sakura's house."
"Of course. And it will be wonderful to see you again! I've missed you, my darling daughter. But I am surprised that you chose to spend the night with Sakura. Have things changed between you two?" She couldn't help asking hopefully.
"I don't really want to discuss that right now Mother." She said with no emotion. "Is that okay?"
"As you wish. Please hurry home. I am really looking forward to seeing you when you get here."
Tomoyo could hear the disappointment in her voice and she had to struggle to keep her voice flat as she answered. "I will be there soon." The moment she closed her cell, she chuckled with delight. She -so- loved giving her mom happy surprises.
xxxx
"It feels really strange to be moving out of that house. I've lived there since I was born." Sakura said wistfully as Tomoyo's bodyguards packed the last of her things in the huge trunk of the limousine.
"We have a very nice house, and I'm sure you will soon get used to it." Tomoyo assured her.
"I will love living anywhere with you, Tomoyo-chan." Sakura replied before kissing her girlfriend yet again.
Then it seemed like just a couple of minutes later when Sakura noticed that they were going through the electric gate that protected the Daidouji property.
After instructing her bodyguards to take everything up to her room, Tomoyo almost casually did a quick scan of the house, finding her mother on the south terrace. As Tomoyo led Sakura through the large mansion she had an idea to make her mom's surprise even better. So when they came out on the terrace and saw Sonomi watching them, Tomoyo grabbed Sakura and began kissing her. Sakura was embarrassed for a moment at kissing in front of Tomoyo's mom, but quickly forgot all about it as she got lost in the wonder of Tomoyo's kiss.
When they finally stopped kissing, Tomoyo led a blushing Sakura out to the table where a very relieved and brightly smiling Sonomi was sitting. "Okay, I was surprised. And it was a really nice surprise! It looks like things have worked out between you and Sakura-chan."
"Indeed they have. The next piece of news is that Sakura has her fathers permission to move in here with me. Will that be all right with you?" Tomoyo finished to an even more overjoyed Sonomi.
"Indeed it will! It will be wonderful to have Sakura-chan living here with us! It is too bad that there isn't very much of your summer break left now."
"No reason to wait I guess. First I'll see if she will give in easily. I'm sure she won't but I still should try."
"I need to transfer to Sakura's school, and be in the same classes as her. Otherwise we will both have to quit school."
Sonomi was shocked to say the least. "Is this a joke?" she asked hopefully.
"No Mom. I'm very serious. I need to be with Sakura all the time. It's more important than you can imagine."
"Tomoyo! I know how much you love Sakura, but you mustn't sacrifice your education just to stay with her. You really need to be in the best school you can for the future!"
"Actually, this has nothing to do with our love. But to tell you about it we need to be in a private place where we cannot be seen or heard. We have a secret that is...well it involves life and death... Lots of death."
Sonomi was now hoping that her daughter was joking rather than hallucinating. And she didn't sound like she was joking. "Okay dear... Whatever you say. Let's talk about it up in my suite."
"I would prefer my room, if that's okay? There is someone there I would like you to meet." Tomoyo said with a little smile.
"Of course, but I didn't know we have another guest." Sonomi wondered out loud as they started for the stairs.
Once in Tomoyo's room with the door locked Sonomi spoke first. "All right, now what do you need to say in private?"
Sakura looked uncomfortable, but Tomoyo was grinning She was really looking forward to showing off for her mom. First she went over to where Kero was pretending to be a stuffed animal. "Kero? We are going to tell my mom here all about our Magic so she can help us, okay?"
"It's about time!" Kero piped up as he flew up and over to hover in front of an astonished looking Sonomi.
"Sonomi-sama, this is Kerberos, also known as 'the beast of the seal', but we just call him, Kero-chan. Kero-chan, this is my mother Sonomi-sama.
"Pleased to meet you!" Kero said to Sonomi before turning to Sakura. "Didn't you bring me anything for lunch?"
"Here you are, Kero." Tomoyo said, as she held out a large piece of cake on a plate.
"Yay! Cake! Yay!" Kero yelled as he took the cake plate on his head and flew over to a table.
"Is Kero an alien?" Sonomi asked her daughter shakily.
'No, mom. Kero is a being created by Magic. We will talk more about him later. But remember when you saw Sakura grow wings and fly away from my window?" As she expected, her mom looked surprised.
"How do you know that?" She asked firmly.
"We will get to that in time. We have a LOT to explain to you about us and the world in general. First of all, as Kero demonstrates, Magic is real. Sakura has had powerful Magic since she was ten. I have Magic now as well, but I just got it recently." Tomoyo had expected a little more surprise from her mom as she had shown the first time she had told her, but this time her look was one of intense concentration.
"And you can demonstrate this of course?" She asked as if they were talking about everyday stuff.
"Sakura-chan, call on your fly card and show Mom your wings." Sakura nodded and in a moment she had her long beautiful white bird wings out. She then flapped them a little just to show them off."
"May I look closer, Sakura-chan?"
"Uh, sure." Sakura replied hesitantly.
Sonomi then looked carefully at where the wings came out of Sakura's shoulders as well as felt the feathers and the way they moved when she touched them.
"And where do they go when you don't have them?" She asked with a fascinated look. So Sakura put them away and showed Sonomi her Fly card.
"This is a Magic card. It doesn't look like much but it is actually alive. I ask it to give me wings and it does." Sakura shyly explained. Sonomi raised her eyebrows then nodded as Tomoyo began lecturing again.
"Sakura has many Cards that were originally made a long time ago by a great master of Magic named Clow. Sakura found them when she was ten and accidentally set all but one of them free. Kero then came out of the book the cards had been in, showed her how to use her Magic, and told her she had to capture the loose Cards. Once she did this, she made them her own and now they will do what ever she tells them to do. Unfortunately Sakura's Cards are incredibly powerful. This isn't a problem as long as they are Sakura's, since she has no interest in making herself queen of the world." Tomoyo said as she smiled and winked at Sakura, "However there are others out there who hunger for power, and would not hesitate to kill Sakura for those Cards. We had to fight one such person in Hong Kong called Kutong." This speech took Sonomi a moment to digest.
"And what happened to this Kutong? Did he give up?" Sonomi asked, sounding slightly worried now.
"He wasn't about to give up. Sakura had to use her Cards to kill him."
"You killed a man!? Sonomi burst out at Sakura. She was having serious trouble accepting the fact that the sweet shy daughter of Nadeshiko could have killed anyone.
"I had to. He was going to kill Tomoyo." After this fact penetrated, it began to make some sense.
"Okay, I'm very glad you saved my daughter, but wasn't there trouble with the authorities over this incident?"
"No. The only people who know about him say they owe us a great debt of gratitude for ridding the world of such an evil person." Tomoyo explained.
Sonomi was silent for another moment as she digested what she was hearing. "You said that you gained your Magic only recently, Tomoyo. How did this come about?"
"Okay now, this is really complicated, so listen carefully and don't interrupt please." Sonomi nodded immediately. "Last Monday, I found out from the cable news that Hong Kong was being destroyed." Sonomi looked startled but didn't interrupt. "Later Eriol called from London and told me that Sakura had been killed. He knew because her ghost had told him what happened. She had been kidnapped and then killed by the evil sorcerer I mentioned a minute ago. It seems that Eriol has the power to see the different paths that events could take. And he found that Sakura's death was not destined, and therefor that event could be changed." At this point Sonomi leaned forward a bit.
"The past can be changed?"
"Yes it can, if the event you want to change isn't a destined event, which means one that has to happen. Those can't be changed.
"So how do you find out if something can't be changed?"
"Eriol is the only one who can do that."
"Would he check and see if Nadeshiko's life could be saved?"
"I don't see why not. He does owe me for saving Hong Kong as well as Sakura. But we need to get my future figured out first, okay mom?" When Sonomi nodded hesitantly, Tomoyo continued her story.
"A Magic Card called 'Return' enables someone with enough Magic power to go back in time. So Eriol looked at how Sakura's death could be avoided and he was very surprised to discover that Sakura could only be saved if I were the one to go back and do it. He had not been aware that I had any Magic power, but it seemed I did, since you have to be born with Magic, you can't get it any other way." At this Sonomi sighed noticeably. "However my Magic wasn't really active yet. So Eriol came here and used his Magic to activate my Magic. In the process he discovered that I have a rare kind of Magic called Earth Magic. This gives me a power that no one else has and this was the main reason that I was the only one who could save Sakura. But first I had to find Sakura's cards. She had had them with her in Hong Kong so I started looking there. But it turned out that they had scattered and I had to fly all the way back here to Sakura's house with my own wings, which exhausted me, so I went home to rest."
"You have wings? Sonomi interrupted.
"Yes, I have some Magic Cards of my own that Eriol made for me. One of them is a Fly Card which gives me these wings." She called on her Fly card and her dragonfly wings appeared, which obviously delighted Sonomi.
"Insect wings? But why are they different from Sakura's?
"Sakura's were designed by Clow and are the traditional style. Mine are a new version, designed by Eriol. They are dragonfly wings which are faster and more maneuverable than Sakura's, though harder to learn to control. It took a lot of practice before I could use them properly, but they are really amazing. Can I go back to my story now?"
"Of course, I'm sorry I interrupted you." Sonomi said politely.
"As I was saying, I went home and you saw me flying so I explained all this to you then. And that's when you told me that you had seen Sakura's wings. Then, the next day I used the Return card to go back to last Sunday. Since the Card sort of rewinds reality, anyone who doesn't both have Magic power and a close connection with the use of the Card loses their memory of the events that now will not happen."
"But what about the paradox? If Sakura hadn't been killed you wouldn't have the Magic to go back in time?"
"There are no paradoxes in time. Even though a new timeline will be selected, that doesn't mean that the old one never happened, at least as far as I'm concerned. Do you understand?"
"Not really, but go on anyway."
"So to make a long story short, I and some other Mages found Kutong before he had killed Sakura and defeated him. Thus Sakura stayed alive and Hong Kong wasn't destroyed."
"But why would Kutong destroy Hong Kong?"
"He didn't, the Cards did. They love Sakura, so as soon as she was killed, they killed Kutong, but that didn't satisfy some of the most powerful of them, so they went on a destruction, and killing rampage."
"And they destroyed a city?"
"Yes indeed. Millions of people were killed. Like I said these cards are powerful!"
As Sonomi grasped this terrifying information her eyes got big for a moment. But then she shook her head as if to dispel a horrible vision. "But something doesn't seem right. You said you flew back from Hong Kong to find the Return Card. Why did you go there in the first place if these other Cards were rampaging and the Return Card was here anyway?"
"I didn't know where Return was until I contacted the other Cards and used them to follow Return all the way back to Sakura's basement."
"But when you got to Hong Kong why didn't the Cards kill you?"
"Because they knew that Sakura loved me. So as soon as they realized who I was, they let me talk to them and explain that I could bring Sakura back with the Return Card. And this is another reason why I was the only one who could save Sakura. However after Kutong's death, Sakura was attacked again. It was Kutong's version of a Card. I saved her life again with my Magic shield. My shield seems to be the strongest one known. And this is why I need to stay with Sakura. To keep her safe and what is even more important to the world, to keep her Cards from falling into evil hands."
"That is a lot to digest. I need to think a while."
"Of course." But as Tomoyo and Sakura were leaving Sonomi thought of something.
"Can you tell if I have any Magic power?"
"No, not really. I have no idea how to do it. Eriol can though." With this Sonomi nodded.
"Okay. He seems to be the Master of Magic."
"He is," Tomoyo replied. "He is the reincarnation of Clow. But I have a stronger Magic shield than he does." Sonomi just nodded and the two girls left her there.