DM: Well here's a fic that just spawned itself. Please enjoy!
Disclaimer: I don't own CCS. I also don't own Ranma ½ or anything else that this fic reminds you of! Any songs/books/whatevers I use will be specifically referenced, like Through the Looking Glass and Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.
Curses!
Chapter One
Down the Rabbit Hole
As the fasten seatbelt sign came on again, a teenaged girl began to bounce in her seat excitedly. She brushed her auburn bangs out of her eyes, only to have them fall in again. The sea had begun to give way to land and she could see the brightly colored flags on the piers. The girl's green eyes sparkled as she watched the ground eagerly. Adjusting her navy blue school uniform nervously, she was too distracted to notice the flight attendant folding up her tray table for her. Her classmates, covering about ten rows in the center of the plane, began chattering excitedly around her as the plane began to descend.
She pointed out the window frantically and grabbed the sleeve of the girl sitting next to her. The girl was sitting and calmly watching a group of girls giggling.
"Tomoyo, look! It's China! We're almost there!"
Her friend, a pale girl with violet hair and eyes, sighed somewhat exasperatedly, and nodded. She looked disappointedly at her clothes.
Why do we have to wear our uniforms even on trips? she wondered. It was spring, the time for fashions to change, and she had been looking forward to a fashionable field trip.
"Sakura, from the way you're acting, it looks like it's your first time on an airplane!"
Sakura blushed and stopped bouncing. She went back to staring avidly out the window at the landscape that was growing ever larger.
The junior class was on a field trip, the first of the year, to visit the ancient gardens of the Ming Dynasty for history class. It was a trip much looked forward to by the students, because they missed their other classes for three days.
"I can't wait!" Sakura squealed again.
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A boy with messy brown hair trudged into his school, sighing all the way. He took his seat next to a boy with blue hair and eyes who wore glasses. The campus glowed bright green after the first spring rain replenished the various bushes surrounding it.
"Morning, Xiao Lang," said the blue haired boy, smiling warmly. Xiao Lang only grunted. More students were entering the classroom, followed by the teacher.
The seats were all arranged in neat rows, but Xiao Lang felt his eyebrow twitch as his neighbor knocked his slightly out of line.
The teacher began writing things like meeting points on the board, but our messy haired hero paid no mind as he noted with extreme contempt and envy that a few of his classmates were wearing their summer uniforms already, while he was still in his winter one. He hated the cold and had never been able to handle it well. It was also rather bothersome that they weren't all the same.
Isn't that the point of a uniform? He thought.
"All right class," he called out, commanding their attention, "Bring me your Field Trip permission slips! We leave in twenty minutes for the gardens!"
The class collectively cheered, with the exception of Xiao Lang, who only groaned. His amber eyes locked on the teacher with intense dislike. Coming to school in the afternoon was the pits, but at least they hadn't had classes that day.
"This trip is so freaking stupid," he muttered in Japanese. His Chinese classmates did not notice, but the boy with blue hair chuckled.
"Oh Syaoran," he responded in Japanese, "why so glum? It's just a field trip."
"You wouldn't understand, Eriol," Syaoran said, turning away, "I just have a bad feeling about this." Unseen by Syaoran, Eriol's glasses flashed ominously
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Sakura was skipping happily along a path between two large bushes of purple flowers that hugged the cute little path. A small river flowed on either side of the stone walkway, making a happy gurgling noise and running between the cracks in the stones. The whole garden had a very zen feeling to it.
"Oh wow! Look at this! And this! And this!" Sakura chatted excitedly, dragging Tomoyo from ancient relic to statue to funny looking flower. The other girl smiled.
"You're so cute, Sakura, the way you get excited about everything," she said, angling her video camera to get a better shot of her friend.
"Ooh! What is that?"
Sakura made a beeline for a large fountain that was surrounded by tourists and students from Hong Kong on their own field trip. She could only see the top, a bronze statue of a moon and a sun linked together and spewing rather dirty looking water from a common vertex.
"Excuse me, excuse me," she said happily in Chinese as she pushed her way to the front. Tomoyo hung around on the edge of the crowd looking up amusedly at the ornate and beautiful fountain. How gaudy, she thought, smirking.
"This fountain is cursed!" a fat Chinese man was telling the crowd, repeating it several times in different languages. He kept his eyes on a gullible (and fat) group of American tourists, who snapped pictures for no reason as he spoke. Sakura's eyes widened as she stared at her reflection in the water.
"Really?" she asked the man, looking like a five year old as she tugged on his sleeve.
"No!" came a shout from the crowd. A boy with unruly brown hair pushed his way to the front, smirking at Sakura.
"There's no such thing as magic," he said, patronizingly, attempting to stare her down though she was nearly as tall as he was.
"Don't talk to me that way!" Sakura shot back, angry at being treated like a child.
"I'll talk to you however I want," he said, taking a step closer, "kid."
"Don't call me that, you jerk!" she shouted, drawing herself up to full height. They were nose to nose.
People were watching the show. The fat Chinese tour guide was looking between the two of them, excitement clearly etched on his face.
"You're just a stupid little girl who believes in magic! You probably still believe in the tooth fairy!" he shouted.
"And you're a meanie-turd-face who thinks he knows everything!" she shot back, pulling down her lower eyelid and sticking her tongue out at him, a way of saying "F you" in Japan.
"Why you stupid brat!" he yelled, grabbing her by the shoulders.
"Let go of me you arrogant pervert!" she struggled against him, and together they toppled into the fountain.
"Go die!" they shouted as they looked in each other's eyes.
Sakura blinked, and then rubbed her eyes. She was looking into her own eyes. Green ones. The Sakura on top of her looked utterly confused.
"What did you do? Oh no, this very bad!" the fat man rang out, though the expression on his face clearly said that he was enjoying himself. He was now solely speaking in English as the Americans pushed their way to the front and made a ring around the three.
"What?" No one in the crowd knew that anything was different.
Sakura found her voice. "You're me!" they shouted at the same time. "No!"
Sakura looked down. She was…she was… that stupid boy!
"I hate you!" they both yelled.
The boy grabbed her by the shoulders and began shaking her.
"Get out of my body!" he yelled, his voice coming out shrill and feminine. Tears were forming in his…her? eyes.
The fat Chinese man was chortling now. The crowd merely gaped in awe.
"The curse of the ancient Clow Reed fountain," he began knowledgeably, "make two people who get angry switch bodies."
"How do you fix it?" Tomoyo's voice asked from the crowd.
"Ah," said the man, holding up a finger, "Clow put curse on fountain, Clow know how to lift it. But a quick fix is to apologize!"
Sakura and the boy looked at him as though he had asked them to start a moon colony.
"You apologize, and then you switch back," Sakura grew hopeful, "But," he said, waving his finger pompously, "When you get angry again at anybody, you switch. No matter how far apart you are!" he said to the boy in Sakura's body, who had opened his mouth to speak.
"Where is this Clow Reed?" the boy asked instead. Sakura felt faintly sick watching him unceremoniously wring out his skirt, giving everyone a great view of her legs.
"Oh he die long time ago," the man said, grinning. Sakura burst into tears.
"Will you stop that! Boys don't cry!" the boy said arrogantly.
"No worry, though. He have descendant. He fix you."
"Where is he?" Sakura asked, wiping her face on her sleeve. The boy cringed with disgust.
"I dunno. But you go on quest to find him. He somewhere in China. He last seen by me in big mansion across forest." He pointed north, where the wilderness expanded as far as the eye could see.
"Oh Sakura, I'll go with you!" Tomoyo said, running up to the real Sakura. She turned to the boy and asked him his name.
"Li Syaoran," he muttered.
"No you don't go!" the man said, "Only subjects of curse may go on quest!"
"And why not?" Tomoyo asked indignantly.
"Because Clow say so!" he replied, pointing to the intricate characters on the fountain. Sakura and Syaoran sighed. The duo searched the crowd in vain for their teachers and classmates, but everything was blocked by the incredible girth of the Americans, who were half blinding them with all the camera flashes. They must have gone to do the scheduled tours as planned and forgotten their few stragglers.
"Ok…" they started walking to the forest when something white and fuzzy shot by them and fell into a tunnel-like hole a few yards ahead. The hole was so small it seemed to belong to a rabbit, though they hadn't seen a rabbit their entire time at the garden.
Tomoyo alone noticed how strange it was for such a hole to be overlooked by the people who managed the park, but she said nothing, as it didn't seem important. She, Sakura, and Syaoran were staring at the little man, wondering why he'd thrown a stuffed toy down a random hole. The crowd around them chattered anxiously as the guide enjoyed holding the suspense.
"Well?" Syaoran growled impatiently, his voice coming out weak and feminine from Sakura's mouth. Everyone was fixated on the Chinese guide.
"You follow the rabbit!" the fat man said happily. Syaoran ran back to him and grabbed him by the neck.
"You threw that, you stupid old coot!"
The man picked up Syaoran by the back of his shirt, giving everyone a display of Sakura's stomach causing Sakura to blush with embarrassment. Her boy body reacted funny to that…
"This is good for the tourists, so you'll do it!" the man hissed in Chinese. He threw Syaoran into Sakura, and the two of them tumbled towards the hole.
No way would they be able to fit in that hole together! It was just a small opening in the ground, definitely only big enough for one. Sakura braced herself for the impact.
But it never came. The two just kept falling, their bodies weirdly tangled up. They could see the stuffed rabbit falling a short ways below them.
"Just in case we don't survive this, I apologize," Syaoran said, and when Sakura opened her eyes she was looking at him as a girl. They had switched back, just like the guide had said they would.
"Oh thank God," she breathed. In the boy's body, the pants were awfully tight.
The ground was getting closer, and they watched as the bunny hit the ground, bouncing pathetically a couple times before being discarded by some invisible hand into a pile on the side of the room.
Sakura and Syaoran hugged each other as they hit the ground, but again there was no impact. They bounced lightly a couple times and then were set on their feet, still clinging to each other.
"Where are we?" Syaoran asked, as the two sprang apart, blushing.
"I dunno…" Sakura muttered, looking at the pile of discarded items. There were stuffed rabbits and pandas and a good amount of trash. Much of it looked ancient.
"Well are you just gonna sit there and gawk?" he said. Sakura got a good look at him for the first time. He was handsome, though his arrogance shone through the expression on his face.
"Jeez, excuse me," she huffed, and they began to circle the room. They came to a door. It had a large crescent moon carved in silver on it. Strangely, there were no handles.
"Apparently he was a fan of fairytales, this Clow person…" Syaoran was saying, as he examined the door apprehensively.
"What?"
"Never mind."
"No, tell me!"
"Just be quiet."
"You're a big fat meanie!"
"Who are you calling fat?"
"Well excuse me, Mr. My Pants Are Way Too Tight!"
"What?" he looked confused.
"When I was in your body, the pants got tight when I looked at you—I mean, you in my body," she said.
He stared at the ground, his face extremely red.
"Whatever… Boys are so weird…" she said, and pushed the surprisingly light door open. They had ended up in the forest… but at the same time a weird feeling hung in the air. The plants looked the same, except they all had a strange silvery glow. A light rustling and a flash of red indicated the movement of some strange bird.
"This must be his magical version of the forest…" Syaoran said aloud.
"Oh so now you believe in magic, huh?"
"Oh shut up."
They walked a little ways when the door slammed shut behind them. The forest was lit, and furthermore there was a breeze, which was odd considering they were underground.
"How can there be sunlight here?" Sakura wondered aloud.
They walked on, the silence growing more and more uncomfortable. Sakura was becoming more and more aware of the ridiculous nature of her predicament. Here she was, in some kind of subterranean forest with a strange Chinese boy. She looked around, resisting the urge to start babbling nonsense. She could feel that he wanted to say something too and was relieved when Syaoran finally spoke.
"What's your name, anyway?" he asked, trying to look uninterested.
"Kinomoto Sakura," she said, pausing to examine a flower that she had never seen before. It was pretty. It had five silver petals around a swirling middle. It glowed brighter than the plants around it.
"Oh? Is your father's name Fujitaka?" he asked, watching her pick the flower. It reminded her so much of a person she knew, but she couldn't quite remember who.
"Yea, why?" she caressed a petal. Was it this soft before? It looked like it had glasses on. No, that's just silly…She thought.
"Oh my friend Eriol says he's distantly related to some Kinomoto Fujitaka, that's all…" Syaoran stared at the ground.
Sakura wasn't really listening at all, too absorbed by the flower, which seemed to be moving. She tickled a petal with one finger and the stem began to shake back and forth. Curious, she leaned in and sniffed the center. It didn't smell like a flower at all, more like…
"Yukito?" she said aloud. Syaoran stopped mumbling and turned to her.
"Who?" he asked. Sakura turned to him to reply, but then felt the flower getting heavy. She turned back to it and gasped.
"Oh my God!" Sakura shrieked, and dropped the flower, which was growing at an alarming rate. It took the form of a young man in his twenties with gray hair and kind eyes who was wearing glasses. He was dressed in slacks and a vest, with a bright red bowtie. He bowed.
"Yukito!" Sakura shouted. Syaoran looked confused.
"Who is this?"
"This is Tsukishiro Yukito, he's—"
"—the person Sakura cares for the most," the young man said, smiling. Sakura blushed. Syaoran smirked.
"Kinomoto, this is obviously an illusion, he was a flower just a second ago—"
BOP!
Yukito had pulled out an extremely large pocket watch and proceeded to smack Syaoran on the head with it. It popped open to reveal a rotating moon tracking the seconds, and two hands like wings indicating the time, 3 pm.
"Why you!" Syaoran growled,angrily. Suddenly he was watching himself. He and Sakura had switched.
"Nice going, idiot!" Sakura yelled.
"Oh I'm so late!" Yukito said, and he hopped (yes, hopped) away.
"No! Yukito!" Sakura shouted and chased after him.
"Kinomoto! You're still in my body!" Syaoran growled and tore after the two of them. This girl could run pretty fast, he had to admit.
He then ran smack dab into his own back. Sakura had stopped. Yukito was blocking the exit.
"What is Clow Reed's favorite fairy tale?" he asked, his voice as blank as his expressionless face.
The two gawked at him, thinking. Hmm..
"Through the Looking Glass!" "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland!" They shouted at the same time.
They realized that they needed to answer with both when Yukito said, "Since you are both correct, you may pass."
Sighing with relief, they walked out the door. They had come out on the edge of the wood on a tall hill. Syaoran had stopped in his tracks, his hands twitching.
"It will get more difficult as you go on…" the robotic voice came drifting out from behind them.
"Great, hey Li—" Sakura stopped. Is that really what she looked like when she was angry? She followed Syaoran's gaze.
"Oh! A mansion!" she said happily, still surprised at how deep her voice was. Syaoran continued to twitch.
"What's wrong?" she asked. His now-green eyes were set in anger on the house.
"That's…my house…" he growled. There was no mistaking the large Yin Yang symbol delineated by two different kinds of grass in his front yard. The columns were a dead give away, too. He smacked his forehead.
Life just isn't fair, he thought in irritation.
DM: Well that's it for now guys! Tell me how you like it—please review!
Next Chapter: At the Li Family Mansion