Sakura Kinomoto took a long, slow breath as she walked towards the shop. She felt like an idiot. in broad daylight, none the less. When Kero sensed the card, she'd realized it was one of her friend's places. And then Tomoyo found out that the girl already KNEW about her magic.
So that meant costume! she was in a big red caped costume. Still, at least she feels strong. and hopefully Naru would understand that this was important. She walked up the steps, Tomoyo behind her, Kero on her shoulder and reached out, knocking on the door. "N-naru-kun?" she called out.
There has been a rumble of a motorcycle engine echoing through the street -- leading up to a black Suzuki motorcycle drawing up right besides the shop, there, bearing a rider in a brown leather jacket.
Yes, someone is actually foolhardy enough to ride a motorcycle even in this kind of weather.
After the engine hasa been killed, the helmet getting drawn up reveals the very much caucasian face of a short-haired german boy in his later teenaged years. There's a bandage wrapped over the bridge of his nose, too, for whatever reason.
And if Sakura looks back? She finds that his green gaze has been set directly on her, complete with a slight squint.
Soon enough, he sighs heavily, and slings himself off of the bike, with the helmet brought along in his hand. "Seriously, though..." He grumbles, audible enough for the european accent to be made out within his otherwise-fluent japanese. "What is the deal with you people and capes?"
It's been, as it so often is, a weekend. A weekend of snowmen, hot cocoa, snowball fights, actual fights, unexpected conversations, more snow, some more snow and pranks all over the apartment.
At least the pranks are edging down from 'homicide inducing' to a little more on the silly side, but the hollering at Through, especially now that Naru knows that Through is the perpetrator, has been a thing.
Now, however, is time for popcorn. And soon will be time for movies, once Alexis gets there. The knock on the door is an expected thing. It's the distinctly not Alexis' voice that is the surprising bit and Naru blinks as she opens the door to Sakura. "Well this is unexpected, is everything alright Sakura?" She looks beyond the girl to Alexis and there's a warm smile. "I don't have a cape, does that help?"
Sakura Kinomoto groans and turns bright red. "I-I told you the cape was too much, Tomoyo-chan," she groaned.
"But you look so cute, Sakura-chan~" Tomoyo said happily.
This, unfortunately, made things harder. Alexis wasn't a magical girl, which meant Sakura had to try to be subtle! "N-naru-chan? I errrr, I need to talk with you about something, errr, real quick. Ummm, private. It's, err, about a thing. Like the thing that happened a few days ago? But a different... thing." Yeah, that wasn't confusing at her. And she glanced nervously to Alexis.
"I'm afraid that one day you will," mutters Alex with a frustrated groan -- right before he comes to a stop just behind Sakura, to peeeeeer down at her, with a wrinkle of his nose. "Because it sure is starting to seem like they're mandatory for all ya'll magic folk. Which, by the way--" He reaches down to actually give the cape an upward tug -- not quite harsh enough to jostle her or anything, but still. "You could have, you know, *not* put on if you were going to want to hide that about yourself. Is this about the little bastard that broke my nose?"
"I like the cape. I'm not sad that I don't have one to trip on, but it does look good." Naru assures as she ushers both of them in. "I have a great jacket, but no cape. No tights either, but I am fond of my boots."
"If it's a magical thing, and you're worried about Alexis, he knows." Naru explains as she shuts the door behind both of them and then moves further into the apartment. "I don't think she was expecting to run into you, Alex. What would you like to drink?"
Sakura Kinomoto blinked a few times, then preens when she's told she looks good. "See, Sakura-chan? You look adorable!"
The cardcaptor blushed and nodded. "R-right. I ummm... maybe? Kero sensed a clow card here and... and I came as soon as class came out. After Tomoyo-chan made us stop by her place..."
"Well, you just had to dress the part~"
Sakura sighs. She wonders if any of the other girls have to put up with this. She then smiled and bowed politely to Alexis. "Hello, my name is Sakura Kinomoto, a pleasure to meet you. This is my best friend, Tomoyo Daidouji." She called after Naru. "So do you already know about the card here? And um, juice is fine..."
Through, meanwhile, was sleeping silently in one of Naru's mugs when it was pulled from the cupboard. Curled up in a tiny lil ball at the bottom.
Alex eyes Sakura over in bemusement while she's bowed over, with a glance spared for Tomoyo too. "... I'm Alex," he mutters, and then just goes stepping around the girl to go through the door. "And you really don't need to bow to me. I'm just some guy."
He stops right at the doorframe, however, when some realization sinks in, and he peeeeks back over his shoulder to Sakura again, while he's slowly uncoiling the red scarf from around his neck. "A card?" He repeats. "That little runt is a *card?*"
"What's a clow card?" Naru asks as she moves towards the kitchen. "Kero's the lion, right?" She confirms as she puts the kettle on for herself and goes to get juice out for Sakura.
"Are you looking for the little fairy?" Naru asks as she draws out the mug and glances down into it. "What do you want to drink, Alex?" Fortunately the kitchen isn't far, it's easy enough to hear from the living room.
Sakura Kinomoto nodded. "Y-yes. They are. I ummm... I hope it hasn't been too much trouble. They are usually pretty good! They're just... errr.... a little out of control. T-they're much better, really! Usually. I mean... welll uhhhh..." She glanced to the snow outside. Should she let them know that they're responsible for this snow storm? Nahhhh... "Most of them are pretty good. Sometimes they just go a teensy tinsy bit... wild. Eh... heh heh heh... eh..."
"I don't think burying the city in snow counts as a teensy bit wild, Sakura-chan."
Sakura urked. "W-well, I ummm, i-it's better now! The snow is melting, eh heh heh... ehhh..." She nodded. "Right, Kero-chan is the guardian of the book."
"Howdy! Nice to meet you!"
"Maybe? We're not sure which one it is. A few of them have been small and... others have been... not so small. do you know where it is?" Sakura asked as she followed her into the kitchen. "Would you like any help?"
Alex *stares* blankly at Sakura in silence for a moment or so.
"That was because of magic cards, huh?" He murmurs, and then just groans out before he steps further inside, to start owrking his boots off. "My life keeps turning more ridicilous."
"I'll have some milk or something like that, Naru," he calls after Naru, then, before he pulls the boots off and goes stepping further inside the partment, towards the kitchen. The leather jacket remains on him, though the zipper gets opened at least.
"Finding him, not a problem at the moment." Naru offers the mug to Sakura. "And yes, he's been a spectacular pain in the arse. Fortunately once we had a ... vigorous conversation about pranking, he's been better."
"Hunh. Snowstorm too, hunh? Better than the explosions at least." Naru comments thoughtfully as she gets out glasses for the two who aren't into hot beverages.
The comment about life being ridiculous prompts a giggle from Naru and she loops an arm around his waist and comes up on her toes to drop a kiss on his cheek. "Life /is/ ridiculous, m'dear."
Sakura Kinomoto nodded. "Yeah. It was... four of them, actually. One of them couldn't have done all that."
"Well, technically aside from the--"
"Kero, please stop helping."
"Hmph."
Sakura looked in the cup. "Oh? OH! It's so cute!" She gently put the cup down. "okay, I'll just--" Its head popped up. Looked right at Sakura and scowled. It lunged forward, slamming into her chest and sending her toppling through a wall with a crash. "Ow!"
"Sakura, that's the through card!" Kero yelled. "It can phase itself and others through solid objects! Be careful!"
"Owie..." Sakura banged her head. But slowly got up. Through zoomed off. "O-okay. The key that holds the power's of darkness. Reveal your true form to me! I, sakura, command thee under our contract! Release!" Her wand formed!
Whatever else Alex was going to do or say in response to Naru coming up to him with the kiss gets lost when Sakura gets sent flying through.
And he kind of just stares, wide-eyed. Aaaand then his focus turns to the voice of Kero, with a rapid blink.
"...Shouldn't you say that *before* the thing has already tossed her through a wall?" He asks. "I mean, it's... a little redundant at this point, isn't it?"
Clearly Alex is not aware of the usual anime tropes.
"This can't possibly end well," he asides to Naru before he sidesteps from her, and... Actually starts shedding his jacket off. Probably for the first on-screen time in ages.
"Yeah, we figured out the wall thing." Naru comments dryly as Kero offers that a moment or two later than is relevant, exactly. "And /that/ is why it's a pain in the arse, and tends towards the violent slamming." She reaches to move some of the breakables further back from the edge of the counter.
"It doesn't seem to phase well through hands, if you can catch it." Naru offers and eyes where Through has gone /this/ time, to start the inevitable chase through the apartment. "I'll go check my room."
Sakura Kinomoto looked around, trying to find where it went. She then charged down the room, grabbing the windy card.
"She asked me to stop helping. So I stopped helping until she needed it." Kero? Petty? Never. Tomoyo chased after Sakura to record! Through WAS in naru's room, swirling around. Sakura jumped up, "Wind, form the bonds to bind it!" Fierce winds tore through the room, scattering things, but Through ran through the wall, disappearing and making wid bounce off it. It was back in the kitchen. She tore off after it. "Hold still! Sorry!" she yelled back. "I'll clean up the mess, I swear!"
"Oh, *geez*," Alex mumbles over the chaos slowly unfolding through the apartment, and he pads his way quiclky over to press his back against the wall just besides the door to the kitchen, jacket folded up underneath his arm. "Naru!" He calls out, while he just... well stands there in waiting, apparently, what with his eyes carefully watching the door. "Can you go draw like a towel or something for me? THanks!"
... Why the hell wouldd he want a picture of a towel?
"Well.. dammit." Naru grumbles as she watches the apartment settle into chaos and mess. "If you're hoping for a magical towel, I can't actually transform on command yet. Which is basically driving me ten kinds of irritated, which makes for not a lot of help. Although enough destruction and I might get lucky on my brain thinking this is a fight enough to transform." She still goes to rescue a sketchbook from the disaster that is her room, and a pencil.
Sakura Kinomoto raced after Through, running into the kitchen and... She caught it! "YES!" In one hand. It just grinned, zoomed off, dragging her through two walls and... they'd soon hear and all too familiar crash, one that would pribably bring back not too fond memories to Alexis. Followed by a thump. "O-ow..." Sakura whimpered, sniffling a bit.
"Sakura-chan, are you okay?"
"T-that... that hurt." Through zoomed off back to naru's room, laughing.
"Just try anyway, I have an idea!" Alex insists after Naru before he hears the victorious sound of Sakura from the kitchen.
"Oh, did you..." He starts, while he leans himself to the side to peek through the door... Just in time to see the girl pulled through a wall. "...Get it. I probably should have mentioned the part about it being strong enough to pull people with it earlier, huh?" The guilt is probably enhanced by the telltale sound of something hitting the wall on the other side of the apartment, and he winces with it.
"Okay. damnit." Aaand off he goes running to the direction of Naru's room, too, jacket in tow in his hand.
"Yeah, that last bit is the part that smarts." Naru winces a touch at that characteristic sound. "Hopefully Daisuke is free later." She doesn't make any assumptions of Mamoru being free at any given time.
Chaos everywhere, and being called upon to draw something deliberately with magical intent seems to be sufficiently distracting to Naru's overthinking brain that by the time all three.. four.. five.. of them are in Naru's room again, she's in henshin and pulling a towel out of her sketchbook to hand off to Alexis.
Boots, jacket, mostly white with bits of black and some colourful stripes, but no cape. Naru isn't a cape kinda magical girl.
Sakura Kinomoto finally comes running in time and sees... "Oh! I knew you were a magical girl!" And then through charged her. This time, Sakura dove to the left, barely avoiding getting touched. "Windy!"
Another huge mess, but it disappeared into another room, soon appearing in the front room again as Sakura raced after it! "HOLD STILL!" she screamed, running after it.
Alex definitely did not expect to see this.
And so Alex ends up just staring at Naru for a moment. Long enough that even after Through and Sakura have already left the room, he's still kind of staring.
"Um. well. This is a thing," he eventually manages to murmur, akwardly, and then steps over to take the towel from her in just as akward of a motion. "Um. I'll come up with something better to say when we're not busy with this, okay? Um. thanks." Aaaand then he's turning to leave the room again, too. But he's not so much running this time as he is just stomping along.
On his way to follow the chaos, he loosens his grip on the jacket, just enough to let the garment unspool from the folding... while the towel gets rolled up along in his other hand to make it as compact as possible, to be held just behind his side to be mostly concealed. "...Even if it can go through walls," he murmurs quietly to himself. "There's only so many routes it can take..."
"It's a thing." Naru agrees and she reaches up to brush her bare fingers against his cheek in a gesture that makes the unfamiliar henshin'd Naru seem very very familiar.
And then Alexis is stomping along and Naru is left in the chaos of her room. The agreement wiht Sakura's assessment that she's a magical girl is implied, and apparently Naru's holding down the fort in the destruction of her room. She peers into the closet a moment, just to make sure Through hasn't gone back in there.
Sakura Kinomoto jumped into the air as she made it into the living room. "WINDY!" she yelled. More crashes. More things getting tossed around. And then Through came running down the hall, strait at Alexis. Tomoyo was still catching all of this on camera. Also, they'd soon hear another shriek from the living room, and a crash.
"Kero-chan, why does this card hate me so much?"
"Through is... a bit of a brat, to be honest. It was bound to happen. I think Clow Reed made it because he was tired of having to walk the extra four feet to his door. before bed."
"Of course he did..."
Alex's eyes slightly widen and his irises dilate with focus when the accursed fairy comes straight towards him. And he immediately reacts, by way of lifting up his jacket-bearing hand, to send the bundle of leather fluttering and spreading through the air towards it.
Surely Through can just go through the jacket, though. Alex expects as much. But by his thought process, he's also expecting it to not actually be able to *see* through things necessarily. So that's a distraction.
The very instant the jacket's in the air, the towel held with his other hand is unfolded and grabbed onto with his other, now-freed hand too, when he pounces forward to bring the magically-constructed towel up, all while a million estimating thought processes run through his head to try to figure out Through's flying path. The exact spot where he needs to swing the towel through before closing it in on itself.
Unfortunately for Alex, even if this works, he will still have to deal with the inevitability of Through probably ending up swinging him around while he's holding onto the closed towel-trap for dear life.
"Brat was not in the top five words I've been using." Naru points out, with the assumption being that they probably aren't fit for print. "This card is a bloody menace." Which is probably also the least of the things Through has been called in the Osaka household of late.
Naru emerges out of her room to watch Alexis try and capture the little fairy in a magical towel, hoping that her magic triumphs over Throughs innate magic, to keep him from just phasing away. "I have no /clue/ how you're going to keep a hold of him, Sakura."
Through flails back and forth, slamming Alexis into wall after wall after wall before, finally, managing to tumble out of the towel, spinning through the air and looking disoriented. Sakura activates her trap card!
"WINDY!" The wind lances out, wrapping through in a bubble of air! It bounces off the walls, but is trapped. She smiles. "Whew. Return to your true form! Clow card!" she yelled. More winds and then, FINALLY, the card was sealed. She caught it as it flowed up and to her hand, before she hugged it. "Yay! Another catch!" she wiggled from side to side.
And then blinked when behind her there was a sound of something falling over. She looked around, cringed, then turned to Naru and... "I'm so so so so sorry! I-I'll pay for anything I broke I'm so so sorry I-I'll help clean up I'm so sorry!"
At least she was a lot nicer than through.
THUD. THUD. THUD.
Alex is much larger than either of the two girls, and thus the sound caused by him getting slammed into walls... over... and over... and over and over and over ad infinitum again is likely much harder and heavier, too. It probably doesn't help the condition of the apartment at all that he stubbornly holds on to the towel for what might be an admirable amount of time, considering the kind of abuse he has to go through to do so.
It doesn't stop him from yelping in pain every now and then when he collides with a wall particularly hard, though.
Still, eventually enough is enough, and when he ends up going hand-first into a wall, his grip slips, and with the slipping away of Through itself, he's sent rolling through the air and flopping down onto the floor with one final, glorious THUD!
"...blrb," he eventually sounds out, once the damned thing has finally been captured -- but he's perfectly content just laying on his back on the floor, limbs spread limp and askew and all, for the time being. "I... probably should have... planned that further than just the... 'hold on' part..." He mumbles.
His nose is probably bleeding again. If nothing else, he is going to be bruising all over.
"I wouldnt leave that card anywhere that I might have a lighter near by." Naru comments as she hurries over now that she's unlikely to get smacked aside by pinball Alex and kneels next to him to ensure that he's vaguely alright, a hand resting lightly on his chest. "You alright?"
There's a slowly let out sigh as Naru looks around the destruction of the apartment. "Brat is totally not in my top five, no."
Sakura Kinomoto cringed and quickly signed her name with a pen supplied by Tomoyo, before pocketing the card. She looked around and sighed. "I... I take full responsibility for... for all the destruction caused. I'm sorry, it's completely my fault." Shep ulled out her little purse and... sighed and internally cried a bit. She held out the small pittance of yen, about 500. "I-I get my allowance in a week, I can pay more then, okay?" she said softly, before sighing. And she wanted to get one of those rocky road fudge nugget ice cream bars too.
She then proceeded to start cleaning up and trying to tidy. But the place was pretty trashed.
"I'm okay," claims Alex in a quiet little sound on the floor, completely unmoving otherwise. "I'm just... gonna stay here for a while, okay...? Cool..."
He groans again. EVerything hurts.
He does still have the cognitive ability to hear Sakura, though, and he at least attempts to peer into her general direction from the corner of his eyes. "...Keep the money," he murmurs, then. "I cna... probably get money from my parents... to cover the damge... They probably won't even notice..."
"Don't worry about the money." Naru shakes her head a little as she resists the urge to just settle on the floor with Alex and rest her head upon his chest, possibly to pretend that her apartment isn't trashed. Even without Alexis' offer, Naru isn't poorly off herself.
But alas for her desire to hide a moment, there is a significant amount of clean up to do and Naru pushes herself up to her feet to survey the damages.
"Kitchen is mostly spared. My mother's room was spared, really it's out here and my room." She takes another of those slow breaths, deeply inhaled and let out after a moment, slow and constrained. "I'll deal with my room later, but let's get out here cleaned up. There's garbage bags under the sink in the kitchen for anything that's broken. I think things mostly just got thrown about."
Fortunately, there were very few personal looking items in the living room, it had a fairly spartan air to it, like a well appointed hotel more than a cozy home.
Sakura Kinomoto nodded. "Thank you. I'm really, really sorry for all this. Then quickly got to work. Kero and Tomoyo helped, too, the group quickly moving to help. At least they weren't useless supports! Kero was able to do a really good job even with the problems. And Sakura was able to use bubble to clean up the messier messes and Float to put things up that were too high up for her short frame. As she hung up a picture, she glanced back.
"Naru-kun? Is he your boyfriend?"
Alex, for his part? Eventually, he does manage to bring himself up onto his feet, although it's while everyone else is busying themselves with the cleaning and such. And he is most definitely wobbling on his feet, too, after today's flavor of beating.
He doesn't even hear the question regarding him. He's probably busy seeing stars.
"How likely is that little fairy to get loose from that card?" Naru asks as they clean up, as if possibly preparing herself for when the next potential onslaught might be. "Higher on the destruction of my stuff scale, but lower on the energy drain or curse scale. Although I heal better than vases."
Naru glances over to where Alexis is as he drags himself up onto his feet and she watches him a moment before turning back to Sakura at her question. "Yes, he's my boyfriend. I'm rather fond of him."
Sakura Kinomoto shook her head. "She can't, now."
Kero nodded. "Right! Now that sakura has caught it and put her name on the card, Through is directly connected and bound to her. There's no way for it to escape again unless the seal is broken, which won't be possible until she dies."
Sakura sighed then. And then gets confirmation. She smiled a little. "Congratulations, Naru-kun! He seems really dependable! Is he going to be okay?"
"I'm fine!" Calls Alex. Apparently he heard *that*. Though nevermind the fact that he is taking a moment to lean against the wall for support. "Just... Just a couple bruises, s'all..."
"I will save questions about how she escaped in the first place for another time and place." Naru notes, possibly simply warning that she does have such questions and letting them have time to decide how to answer.
"He's pretty resilient too." Naru glances over to Alex again, and her expression is concerned and fond both. "Although the prospect of seeing if one of the healers is free tonight has crossed my mind. We'll see."
Sakura Kinomoto cringed. "It's... simple, really. I uhhh, accidentally broke the seal and... let them all out and kinda accidentally scattered them to the winds. oops..." She rubbed the back of her head. "Sorry. I ummm, if you want, I can call an ambulance? Or did you mean like... healer magic? Is there such a thing?"
"I said I'm fiiiiiine," Alex calls in protest from the wall-- though now he's pushing awya from it to move towards the nearby couch instead. Better there than against the wall, honestly. "I just need to... yeah... sit down for a while. IT'll be fine."
"Magical healers." Naru confirms and then quirks her head at the mention of breaking the seal. "Ah. I .. see. That has to be a spectacular pain in the arse to hunt them all up again."
Many hands make light work, and the living room is mostly back into vague order, minus a few knick knacks that didn't survive. "Alex, if you crash in my room, then you can keep me company while I clean up in there." Naru offers and then looks to Sakura. "Thank you for helping to clean up. I .. hope I never meet that card again. I know you're sorry, and it's not exactly your fault, but I cannot say that I'm fond of that little fairy."
Sakura Kinomoto nods. "Yeah. They can be a bit troublesome. But... once I get them, they're really nice. They're warm and sweet and... they've kept me safe. Eh heh. I'm not surprised. I'm sure she's sorry... at least a little. But she won't bother you again and--"
And then her phone went off. And she urked. "What? No! I-I had to stop on the way home and-- huh? Daddy had a what? I-I'll be home to help soon!" She then gulped and bowed. "I'm really sorry, daddy had to help with some office work a-and I need to go home and help my brother clean up before he gets home! I'm really, really sorry! I-I'll make it up to you, I promise!" She then had no choice but to turn and run off. Tomoyo soon following after allowing her own apologoies.