This will be my first Card Captor Sakura fic, but hopefully not my last.
I've got an idea that uses the main characters in the works, but this
story will be a prequel to the main series (the sub, naturally) focusing
on Clow Reed and the creation of the Clow Cards. Naturally, he's going
to have to capture them all, but each capture will be different from the
respective capture in the main series. I'm also going for more of a
light comedic touch with a bit of action, rather than the love-heavy
plots from the series. Not to say there won't be any romance... but
enough intro. I'll say more after the chapter, including a rather
impressive anecdote that took place while I was writing the chapter.



The Taming of the Clow
A Card Captor Sakura fanfic
Chapter 1 - Stacking a Full Deck

    It was an unusual lab by the standards of the twentieth century -
instead of chemicals, machinery, and electronics, there was nothing but
a large bookshelf filled with arcane tomes and a wide desk which was
completely cluttered except for a small space that had been cleared for
working. But the twentieth century was far in the future, and this lab
was used for something that twentieth-century scientists wouldn't waste
their laughter on - the study of magic. At that very moment, the lab's
owner was seated at the desk, idly playing with card that was decorated
on one face like the back of a Tarot card, but blank on the other side.
He twirled it in his fingers, examining both sides even though he'd
already memorized every detail of the only side that had details.
    His assistant placed a tray of sandwiches and vegetable sticks on
the desk. "You've been working very hard, Master Clow," he said.
"Perhaps you should rest for a time."
    "Not yet, Yue," he protested calmly. "I think I'm on the verge of a
revelation."
    "Another one, Master?" Yue asked impatiently. "Please tell me this
won't be like the last three revelations. It takes a lot of power to
repair the walls after you blow them out."
    "I've given up on trying to make more powerful spells for now,"
announced Clow. "I want to do something different."
    "Something nondestructive, I hope," Yue suggested.
    "Of course not! What fun would that be?" asked Clow. "I'm just tired
of using the same magic my ancestors used before me. I want to do
something new and original!"
    Yue stared at the object of his master's fixation. "Playing with
cards?"
    "Magic cards!" Clow shouted excitedly, turning to stare up into
Yue's eyes. "Think about it! Magic power that could be carried around as
easily as a deck of cards!"
    Yue couldn't even pretend to be impressed. "Really? How
fascinating," he said tonelessly.
    "No more wands, no more gems, no more chronometers!" Clow continued,
oblivious to Yue's disinterest. "Just a handful of lightweight,
easy-to-carry pieces of paper that look like ordinary cards, like a
game! I could walk the streets carrying a full deck of these cards, and
no one would look twice at me!"
    "IF you ever got out of this stuffy lab and went outdoors," Yue
replied haughtily.
    "Of course I'd go outside, if I could bring my magic with me!"
    Yue considered the idea. If it meant his master would be willing to
leave the house on occasion... "It sounds like an excellent idea,
Master," he agreed. "May I be of assistance?"
    "I'm not sure you could do anything to help," said Clow, absently
munching on a carrot stick. "Honestly, do you do ANYTHING around here?"
    "I keep the rain from intruding on your research," said Yue,
pointing to a still-discernible discolored patch that had once been a
hole in the ceiling.
    "Rain!" shouted Clow. "That's perfect! I could make a card that made
rain!"
    Yue's face darkened. "Please test it outdoors, Master."
    "Of course, of course," said Clow, waving his hand dismissively at
Yue. "But I've got to write these ideas down." He began to push the
clutter around on his desk, searching for a notebook. "What happened to
my notes? Yue, where are my notes?"
    "Why don't you create a card that takes notes for you?" Yue asked
only somewhat sarcastically.
    "Brilliant!" exclaimed Clow. "And not only that, but whatever you
write instantly comes to life!"
    "That will save you quite a bit of work," Yue noted.
    "Yes, but only if I can get it right on the first try," said Clow,
turning his full attention to the card in his hand. "It will use a good
deal of my family's magic, but I'll have to mix in some Western magic to
transfer the focus to the cards. And that means working in English as
well as Chinese."
    "Shall I fetch your dictionaries, Master?" Yue asked helpfully.
    "No, no, I'm not hungry," said Clow, taking a bite out of a
sandwich. "Just get me a couple of dictionaries from the bookshelves
over there."
    "Sometimes I don't know why I bother speaking at all..." Yue mumbled
just loud enough for Clow to hear as he went to fetch the dictionaries.
    "A card that makes the people around you silent..." Clow murmured in
similar fashion.
*************************************************
    Yue cautiously opened the lab door, afraid to wake his master from
much-needed slumber. However, his fears turned out to be ungrounded, as
Clow was still wide awake and busily at work painting the face of a
card. "Master, have you been working all night?" he asked.
    "Ah, Yue, you're just in time!" announced Clow. "I'm just about to
put the finishing touches on my first card!"
    "Are you, now?" As a rule, Yue never got too involved in his
master's research, since interest might be construed by the young mage
as encouragement, and then he'd never get to experience even the wonders
his own manor had to offer, much less the outside world. But this idea
of cards honestly intrigued him, and he couldn't help approaching the
desk to see what his master had done this time.
    The card was beautifully detailed, demonstrating Clow's knack for
art which had developed over years of calligraphy training. A picture of
a closed book, so realistic that Yue almost felt like he could reach
into the card and turn the pages, was framed with a single line in the
shape of the full-length mirror that hung on the wall of Clow's bedroom.
Above the picture was the bottom half of a cartoonish sun, a semicircle
circumscribing the character that meant "creation" with wavy triangular
sunbeams emanating from it, and below was a banner bearing the English
words "THE CREATE" topped with a small crescent moon. A six-pointed star
to either side completed the elaborate drawing.
    "It's very impressive," said Yue, surprised at how truthfully he
meant it. "How does it work?"
    "It's quite simple," explained Clow. "CREATE is a book that invites
the reader to write in its pages. And whatever is written in those pages
comes to life!"
    Yue stared at CREATE as if hoping to see something more in it. "It's
a card," he said at last. "It's not a real book, just a picture of a
book."
    "You just lack imagination," Clow reprimanded his assistant. "I told
you, there's magic in the cards."
    "The last time I heard that, you were throwing a fortune teller out
on her head," Yue said darkly.
    "Everyone knows Tarot cards aren't worth the paper they're painted
on," said Clow. "But I've imbued this card with my family's Sun and Moon
power, as well as a little bit of Western magic from my books. Just
watch this!" He reached down and picked up his favorite wand, a winged
bird's head cane with a rose colored handle and solid gold counterweight
opposite the figurehead. He stood up and stepped into the center of the
room, holding the wand in one hand and the card in the other. A circle
of light appeared on the floor, surrounding him with magical symbols and
characters in English and Chinese. With a deft motion, he flung the card
into the air. "Become a book that brings my imagination to life!" he
chanted. With that, he swung the wand, striking the center of the card's
face with the beak of the bird's head. "CREATE!" The card glowed so
brightly that Yue couldn't bear to look at it, and a wave of energy
rushed past him as he covered his eyes.
    When the magic effects had died down, Clow's voice broke the
silence. "You see that, Yue? I told you it would work!" Yue looked up to
see his master exultantly holding a thin book in both hands, cradling
the wand in a palm. "Look! It's the CREATE book!"
    Yue had to blink several times to make sure his eyes weren't going
to bug right out of his head. He'd seen his master do some impressive
things before, including certain types of object transformation, but
turning a single card into a book was unlike anything he'd ever seen
before. Sun and Moon magic was spirit commanding magic, so the object
transformation had to be the Western magic Clow was talking about. If
that was "a little," it was hard to imagine what could be done with full
knowledge of that magic!
    "It's not really transformation," Clow explained, for once showing
an unusual perception of what Yue was thinking. "This book is a spirit,
the essence of my family's magic. Its body was created from the card you
saw earlier, but it took its form based on the will of the spirit.
That's all the Western magic I needed."
    Yue took the book from his master and turned it over in his hands,
examining the titleless cover. "Does it really work?"
    "I don't know," replied Clow. "Let's try it, shall we? Go ahead." He
handed Yue a pen. "Write something. Hopefully something safe."
    "All right," said Yue. He flipped through the book until he found a
blank page and readied the pen. "Let's see.... 'In the corner of the
lab, there sat a small dusty stool, home to the most beautiful woman in
all the land. Her skin was as fair as -'" Clow's heavy breathing was
making it difficult to think, but Yue ignored that with his usual aplomb
and continued writing. "'- hair like spider's silk, but darker than the
very ink in these pages....'" A hand grabbed the sleeve of his coat, and
he glared at Clow. "You wanted me to write this, Master...."
    "Don't stop now, Yue!" Clow begged, his bulging eyes staring into
the corner. "You've got such a beautiful descriptive style!"
    Yue looked up to see what had his master so enthralled, only to see
the very woman he'd been picturing sitting on a small stool in the
corner. Of course, he'd pictured her wearing slightly more clothing....
His hand involuntarily slammed the book closed, nearly catching his
tongue between the covers. The woman and the stool instantly vanished.
    "NOOOOOOOOOOOO!" screamed Clow. "Bring her back! Write more!"
    Yue sighed. Apparently it had worked after all. "You'd meet women
just as beautiful if you ever got out of the house, you know." Still, it
was a shame he hadn't gotten to see her. "So what went wrong?"
    "Wrong?" asked Clow, taking the book back from Yue. "Nothing! It was
perfect!"
    "You're drooling, master," Yue whispered. "And what I meant was that
she disappeared as soon as I stopped writing."
    "A minor limitation of the spell," Clow said, waving his hand
dismissively while he wiped the drool on his other sleeve. "It will take
a bit more power to keep the spell in effect once the writer stops
writing. I plan to use CREATE to make the rest of the cards."
    "Will that work?" asked Yue. "Can you use this card magic to make
more card magic?"
    "Of course!" replied Clow. "It's like writing a book about how to
write books. Besides," - he picked up his nearly dry paintbox and showed
it to Yue - "business has been too slow for me to afford enough paint to
make another card by hand."
    Yue nodded. "It's hard to sell magical favors when there's such a
stigma against it."
    Clow sighed heavily and sat in his chair. "I know. Soon they'll be
outlawing the sale of sexual favors too. What is our world coming to,
Yue?"
    "If I recall correctly, most of the opposition to magic in this area
is from your former customers."
    "Will you stop pointing out how destructive everything I do is?"
Clow snapped. "Once I finish creating my cards, everyone will want a
deck!"
    "It's quite possible," Yue admitted. "If everything goes as you
plan, you'll be the first Sun and Moon magician to create a new mode of
magic in over two hundred years."
    "Two hundred years, eh?" mused Clow, turning the book over idly in
his hands. "Well, then it's definitely time for a change." Suddenly, the
book fell from his hands onto the desk. "What do you mean, IF everything
goes as I plan? What could go wrong?"
    "Shall I count the holes in the ceiling for you, Master?"
    "Shut up and get me a sandwich. I've got a lot of work to do."
    Yue bowed. "Yes, Master."
    Clow yawned. "What time is it, anyway?"
    "Half past five in the morning."
    Clow blinked. "I've been up that long?"
    "Yes, Master."
    "Huh." Clow examined the pile of junk on his desk to assess its
possible merit as a pillow. "Better bring a cup of that imported coffee,
too."
    "Of course, Master." Yue bowed again as he backed out of the lab.
    Clow stared at the CREATE book. "A card to make people sleep...
that's a good one to start with."
*************************************************
    A loud screech from the lab woke Yue from what had until that moment
been a very peaceful rest. His eyes flew open as he realized what a
mistake it had been to let his master work alone. His blanket landed on
the floor in a heap as he raced to the lab and threw open the door. The
entire room was a shambles, with more junk piled on the floor than could
possibly have been in the room before. Clow himself was barely
recognizable under the layers of soot, ice, dirt, and - of all things -
chocolate that covered him from head to foot. But as if oblivious to his
appearance and the state of his lab, Clow triumphantly held up a card as
Yue entered. "Yue, look! I'm nearly done! Only one card left to go!"
    Yue's jaw dropped. "Master! What in the world happened here?"
    Clow shook his head sadly. "Weren't you paying attention? I finished
making the fifty-first card, and I have only one more left to go."
    "But.... The lab is a shambles! It looks like the aftermath of one
of your failed experiments!"
    "Nonsense," Clow retorted with a smile. "Some of the cards were a
bit feisty at first, but I managed to wrestle them under control before
they could do too much collateral damage."
    Yue frowned as a piece of ceiling fell inches from his nose. "Define
'too much.'"
    "Well, they need to be powerful!" Clow pointed out. "These cards are
meant to embody all the power of Sun and Moon magic! Split that
fifty-two ways, and you still have quite a lot to go around."
    That number again... "Aren't there seventy-eight cards in a deck,
Master?"
    Clow groaned. "Not that damn Tarot again! I told you how much I hate
that fake fortune telling. This deck is based on that European set, with
the swords and hearts and so on. The one they use in gambling games.
That deck has exactly fifty-two cards, which frankly means a lot less
work for me. This is tiring business!"
    "Writing in a book is tiring?" Yue asked skeptically.
    "There's more to it than the power of CREATE," Clow reminded his
assistant. "Remember, anything written in the book disappears once the
writing stops. It takes a bit of ingenuity to keep it around afterward."
    Yue looked at the stack of cards on the desk, fifty-one high now
that Clow had added his newest to the top. "Then how is it done?"
    "Just watch," said Clow, grabbing his wand. "Let's see... what card
should I make this time?"
    "Excuse me for a moment," said Yue as he reached for the door. "I
just remembered that I have somewhere to be right now."
    "Fine, I get the hint," Clow sighed. "Why don't YOU pick a safe,
sensible card?"
    Yue sighed gratefully. "Why not something like flowers? Flowers
can't hurt anyone."
    "Flowers?" Clow rubbed his head. "I think you're missing the point
of these cards, Yue."
    "If you want me to stand here while you create one, then it'll be
flowers," Yue insisted.
    Clow groaned. "Fine. FLOWER it is." He sat down at the desk and
quickly sketched on an ofuda. He picked the finished paper up and showed
it to Yue. It bore several symbols, including the one for "flower"
surrounded by the familiar trappings of a Sun and Moon summon spell.
"Now, the key to the whole thing." He held the wand in his left hand
while he wrote in the CREATE book with his right. "'Finally, there was a
card called FLOWER which held a beautiful spirit of flowers,'" he wrote,
speaking the words aloud for Yue's benefit. The card itself appeared on
the desk as Clow wrote. "'It came alive one night, dancing around the
room and showering its lovely petals for all to enjoy.'" The card leapt
off the table of its own accord and became a tall, youthful, pale woman
of distinctly pink hue with inverted tornadoes of hair atop her head and
flower petals covering every inch of her flowing dress. As Clow
continued to write, she spun around and floated into the air, sending
flower petals flying in all directions. Yue caught one and held it,
finding it to be just as real as it looked.
    But Clow had only half finished the spell. He quickly tossed the
flower ofuda into the air and struck it with his wand, chanting, "Spirit
of flowers, I summon thee to my side!" A ray of light emerged from the
ofuda, becoming an exact duplicate of the spirit already dancing through
the room. The two spirits shimmered for a brief moment, then flew toward
each other and merged in the center of the room, becoming a single body.
Clow quickly slammed the CREATE book closed and turned around in
triumph, breathing heavily. "There, you see! It's still there even after
I closed the book!"
    "Indeed it is," agreed Yue, unable to take his eyes off the dancing
figure. "But is it still the spirit that emerged from the card?"
    "Of course!" replied Clow. "It's very simple. Obviously, if what you
write in the CREATE book actually exists, then the book can't create it
through magic because it's already there. And when you stop writing
about it, it will still be there afterwards because it wasn't created by
the book."
    "That makes sense," said Yue, although it didn't really.
    "So, when I summoned the spirit, it was real independently of the
book's magic," Clow continued. "Since what I wrote in the book was real
without the magic, it didn't disappear when the magic ended."
    "But why did the two spirits become one?" asked Yue.
    "Because there is only one flower spirit," replied Clow. "The spirit
I wrote about is the same one I planned to summon, so my summon spell
merged with the spell of CREATE."
    "All right," conceded Yue. "I suppose it all makes sense in some
way, since it seems to be working." He lifted his foot from the
ankle-deep pile of petals on the floor. "Now, how do you return it to
its card form?"
    "Sometimes that can be tricky," replied Clow, "but in this case,
since it's such a tame spirit by nature, it should be willing to turn
back on its own." He stood up and pointed his wand at the spirit. "I
command you to return to the form in which I created you!" he chanted.
"Become a card!"
    The spirit stopped dancing and bowed its head gracefully toward a
rectangle of light that appeared in the air before it. As it
straightened up, the spirit began to trail long wisps of itself into the
card, slowly letting itself be siphoned into the light until there was
nothing left. Finally, the light became a solid card, which floated down
into Clow's hand. Yue leaned over to see that it was very similar to the
card form of CREATE, except that its picture was of the spirit he had
just seen, and the kanji and English characters on the card both said
"THE FLOWER". With a grand gesture, Clow laid the card atop the rest of
the deck. "So there you have it, Yue. What do you think?"
    Yue nodded. "I must commend you, Master. This is an incredible
accomplishment for the Sun and Moon clan."
    "Well, thank you, Yue. I'm glad you've managed to agree with me for
once."
    "I'm glad you've managed to do something agreeable for once,"
countered Yue. "So tell me: what magic did you use to seal the spirits
in card form?"
    "Seal them?" Clow's eyes darted nervously toward the stack of cards,
which was emitting a bright glow.
    "You didn't seal them?" Yue asked in a panicked tone. "Newly created
magic is incredibly unstable! If it's not sealed immediately, it will
run wild and anything can happen!"
    Clow snatched the deck of cards off the desk and began to shuffle
through them. "Why didn't you tell me this before I made the cards?" he
shouted over the rising wind as the intense buildup of magic began to
send the air in the room swirling furiously.
    "I'm just your assistant!" Yue shouted back. "You're the one who's
supposed to know what you're doing!"
    "You thought I knew what I was doing? Are you insane?" He began to
throw the cards to the floor. "Which one is GLOW?"
    "They're ALL glowing!" shouted Yue, covering his face with his arms
to shield himself from the flying debris.
    "No, no! The GLOW card! It's got to be the one respon-" One of the
cards in his hand suddenly burst into flame, causing him to drop all of
the cards with a cry of pain. The flames spread quickly across the
floor, fanned by the now gale-force wind. Lightning crackled through the
room, and water splashed both men from all directions out of the
unbearable brightness. Then there was a hideous wrenching sound from all
around, as Clow and Yue felt a huge mass pressing them to the floor. The
light momentarily gave way to infinitely deep darkness, which was no
more conducive to sight, before the world exploded around them. Heavy
timbers fell onto the prone men, nearly crushing them, and then all was
silent.
    Finally, even the silence faded, letting the ambient birdcalls reach
their ears through the dense cover of wood and paint. Clow summoned all
of his strength to push his way to the top of the pile that had once
been his home. The shingles beside him shifted as Yue also climbed out
of the wreckage. "I hope you learned something today, Master," he
admonished Clow as he brushed the dirt from his clothes.
    "Yeah," replied Clow. "They need to find stronger materials to build
houses out of."
    Yue scowled. "What about the cards, Master? What do you plan to do?"
    Clow looked confused. "Do?"
    "About the cards!" Yue waved his arm at the still magically-charged
air. "They've escaped!"
    Clow shrugged, shedding the coat of dust from his shoulders. "Oh
well. Back to the drawing board."
    Yue's face twisted as he tried to contain his rage. "Drawing
board?!"
    "Oh, right." Clow put his finger to his chin. "It blew up."
    "The cards escaped!" Yue repeated. "They're out there in the world,
wreaking havoc! Untamed magic has a tendency to destroy!"
    "Hmmm...." Clow stopped to think about this new bit of news. "I
suppose I'd better go get them back."
    Yue sighed gratefully. "I'm glad you've come to your senses!"
    Clow nodded. "Yeah. There's no way I'd be able to make a replacement
deck."
    Yue's jaw dropped. "Replacement... deck?" He stiffened and grabbed
Clow by the collar. "Do you mean you'd just leave those cards out there,
terrorizing the innocent people of the world?"
    "Why not?" asked Clow, fishing his wand out of the debris. "Nobody
out there I care about."
    "But you ARE going to take this quest seriously, right?" Yue asked
meaningfully.
    "Sure, sure," said Clow with a dismissing wave. "As long as you
remember to tell me the important and potentially fatal facts BEFORE I
screw everything up."
    "Perhaps you'd like me to be the magician and you can be the
assistant," offered Yue.
    "Maybe YOU'D like to invent a new type of magic," Clow challenged
him.
    "Well, *I* wouldn't let it loose once I'd finished with it!" Yue
retorted.
    "Now who's being immature?" Clow asked triumphantly. He spun the
wand in his hand a few times before gripping it and pointing it in the
direction of the nearest road. "Now, let's get out there and save the
world!"
    "Which you endangered in the first place," Yue reminded him.
    "Don't spoil the moment."
    "Do you even know where to start?" asked Yue.
    Clow began to shake his head, but a horrified scream rang out from
the neighboring farm before he could say a word. "I'd guess we just
follow the screams," he announced with a smile.

--------------------------------------------------------

Yeah, a bit of an abrupt ending, but I didn't want the first chapter to
stretch all the way to the capture of the first card. The next chapter
should have a bit more action. ^_^ As always, I welcome comments about
the story, including suggestions for improvement.

Oh, yes, I promised an amusing anecdote. It happens that I was rather
indecisive about which card should be the last one created (the one that
Clow uses to demonstrate the process of making the cards). Since Yue was
going to be there, it would probably have to be something tame, like
FLOWER, but I didn't want to choose something that obvious. (Yes, it
doesn't make sense.) In fact, I wrote the scene such that FLOWER was not
going to be the last card. I considered cards like FLOAT, but that
seemed strange as well. Of course, there's only one proper way to choose
in a moment of indecision. I decided to shuffle up my Clow deck, draw a
card at random, and let that be the last one even if it wasn't a tame
one. And sure enough, the card that came out on top was FLOWER. A brief
rewrite, and I went with what had been my first choice, minus the
feeling that it was somehow wrong. The cards do not lie. (I'd also been
reading Tarot Cards that night, which is where I got the idea.)

Anyway, thanks for reading! Next time, Clow captures (and seals!) his
first card!

DANNY: Can you see a vampire through a one-way mirror?

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