Chapter 2- Way of the Remnant
It is said that there is a time for peace, and a time for war. For
Gabor, there was absolutely no question what time it was. The flock of
darkness sped at him like the storm they had been mere moments before,
their dark forms filling the skies like bats. Gabor leapt high into the
air as they came close enough to strike, dodging the mass of evil with
amazing agility. The demonic foes passed straight through the roof of the
building right where he had been standing moments before, then came out,
passing through matter like dust, once again when they realized they had
been eluded. Gabor landed on another nearby rooftop, grabbing a Card from
a small black pouch on his belt and throwing it straight at the demonic
hoards. He shouted something in another language, and the Card suddenly
and violently erupted into a burning ball of fire mixed with ice and
stone, the three-element attack striking square in the midst of the
creatures with a massive explosion. Demons vanished on contact, phasing
away as if their bodies had suddenly been grabbed by a black hole. The
Card re-materialized in Gabor's hand and he replaced it back into the
pouch.
"Do this you cannot!" One of the demons who had escaped the fireball
shouted. "To us their souls belong!"
"I come in the name of the great I Am, fiend. To you belongs nothing so
long as I am here!" Gabor retaliated, bringing his sword to bear. With an
amazing leap into the air he sliced at the gargoyle-like creature,
sending his sword slicing straight through it's scaly hide. Instead of
bleeding or such, the creature suddenly phased out with a scream, such as
the others had done. He landed on the ground in front of Sakura and her
friends, sword drawn in protection as he spun to face the murderous
hoards. "Last chance, scum! Withdraw or be vanquished! Your choice."
The cloud of darkness was still for a moment, then one of them,
apparently of a higher rank than the rest, said something in an ancient
tongue. The demons flew away into the receding dark clouds until they
could be seen no more. Gabor's sword slowly shrunk back into it's cross
form as the mass of clouds above began to part and disappear.
Li watched all that had gone on, almost too afraid to take a breath.
Now, right in front of him, with his back turned towards him, was the
silver-clad warrior that had saved their lives. The figure turned to
them, his sword now gone and his cross replaced around his neck. Li got a
quick look at the man's face. He was definitely teenage, his somewhat
long deep brown hair just barely visible beneath the hood he wore. His
eyes were the color of steel, and he had a somewhat square chin that
rounded off quite a bit. Beneath his cloak he wore a grey belt and a
black jumpsuit, a small square pouch attached on the left side of the
belt. Li was almost sure he'd never seen anyone quite like this guy
before, and he almost scared Li with the awesome powers he'd displayed
just seconds ago.
He knelt down to take a look at Sakura's wound. After examining it
thoroughly, he pulled another white Card from his pouch. With a flash of
light he suddenly held, in place of the Card, a small bottle of some kind
of saffire colored liquid with a small cork keeping it closed. He handed
it to Li.
"Use this. Apply it to her wound with a piece of cloth and make sure you
clean out every part of the wound or it'll get a nasty infection. She'll
need a good deal of bed rest to recover from this, but this medicine
should help speed up the process." The figure instructed. Li did as he
was told without asking questions, and Tomoyo helped. They bandaged the
wound with the medicine-soaked piece of Li's cape, checked her over for
other injuries, and then carried her over to a nearby bench. It had been
overturned during the storm, so the mysterious figure set it upright so
they could lay Sakura down on it. After a few minutes her breathing
leveled out and she was starting to open her eyes. Sakura was going to be
OK.
"Who are you?" Li asked, turning to face the figure.
"I'll answer your question if you'll answer it too." The man said.
"I'm Li Clow, a Cardcaptor. These are my friends, Tomoyo and Sakura. We
were trying to capture that Clow Card when you showed up."
"By now you've surely realized that that was no Clow Card." He stated.
Li nodded. "I am Gabor, a friend. Li Clow, you say? Related to the
Cardcaptor who made the Clow Cards, by any chance?"
"Yeah. Are you a Cardcaptor?"
"Yes, but not your regular Cardcaptor."
"There's no such thing as a 'regular Cardcaptor'." Li stated. "Each and
every Cardcaptor has some unique or special power. What's yours?"
"... Well, let's see if you can't figure it out." He picked up the
bottle of medicine, now almost empty, in his hand. He handed it to Li. It
transformed back into a Card as soon as Li touched it. "You seem to know
a lot about Cardcaptors. Look this up."
He suddenly bounded off, vanishing into the distance at a speed faster
than anything Li had ever seen. He was about to chase after the
mysterious Cardcaptor, make him explain himself, but he realized in the
same breath that he would never catch him. He looked at the Card in his
hand. It was pure white, almost no art like border around the picture of
the bottle like the Clow Cards had, except for a small, intricate cross
in each corner. He turned it over to find that the other side was
completely white, not a single piece of scroll work to be seen. 'Weird.'
He thought to himself. 'I've never seen a Card like this before..."
Gabor watched from a far away distance as Li looked at the Card, watched
unseen as Sakura got slowly to her feet with the help of her two friends,
and watched as they made their way back into the big city. 'Headed for
home, no doubt.' He thought to himself. If Li really was a descendant of
Clow Reed it wouldn't take him long to ID that Card he had given him.
Home,... a thought that made him sigh sadly. He had never had a home, not
since his parents died and sent him off to a foster home with a lady who
cursed the name of God daily like some kind of morning routine. He still
found it amazing that God had saved him even in the midst of all that,
and had now called him to fulfil this role in protecting this world. Few
people actually knew him, knew his full name; people he could call
friends. Gabor Judah had always been a loner, had been forced into it
actually to save himself from that abusive foster mother that had tried
to turn him from being a child of God into a wretch out on the street
running hundreds of jobs for her so she could sit at home and smoke Cuban
cigars all day. He had lived the kind of life that no child should ever
have been capable of surviving, and he had seen the bones of the ones who
hadn't get berried in the backyard after some of the lady's crime
partners faked adopting the children so she wouldn't get caught. He had
berried some of those bones himself.
His life had been miserable, like waking up from a nightmare only to
live in one as soon as the sun came up every morning. But even such times
of trial and testing as these had had a purpose in the divine scheme of
things, for it was in this time that he had uncovered the Cards.
They had been hidden in a floorboard underneath his room, for what
purpose or by whom he still had no idea, next to an old leather-bound
Bible that's leather was peeling. He had treasured both, and even when
the hag-like woman had discovered the Bible and stolen it from him, he
had still somehow managed to keep the Cards hidden from her. At one time
they had even been right out in plain view and she had somehow not seen
them, purely an act of God. He had run away from that place with the help
of the Cards, run far far away, and finally come across an abandoned
cabin that had everything he'd need to survive just left lying around in
it. From there he had begun searching through the book he'd found the
Cards in, trying to find out with greater accuracy just what he had. He
had no idea at that point that he'd been drafted into a spiritual war
like nothing he ever could have imagined.
As for the cross he wore, it was one of the Item Cards that he kept
within reach all the time, no matter what. He had named his 'deck' Zion
Cards, and had begun training to use them at an early age. All of their
powers were bound up by the prophecies of the Lord; in layman's terms,
these Cards were Holy. Some were Item Cards that brought forth the item
they represented at a word from the one who held them, the word being an
ancient Hebrew word he'd found inscribed inside the book, others were
Event Cards, like that flaming hail blast he'd used against the demons or
a special 'Random' Card that he held onto for dire emergencies only. He
also bore seven Creature Cards, very similar to what most Cardcaptors
he'd seen use solely, but with a special power that defied earthly
thinking. His Creature Cards had the ability to battle demons and seemed
almost immune to all of the 'magic' that other Cardcaptors bore. They
didn't know that what powers they had didn't come from so-called magic,
but interestingly enough from the Card-books themselves; a kind of
linking book to a spiritual power source called 'Grey Crystals', which
mimicked whatever powers the bearers had in mind at the moment they
opened the Card-books. Grey Crystals were dangerous indeed, part of the
reason why he never used one, but what's more it that, being of the
spiritual realm by nature, Grey Crystals could be either in territory
controlled by the armies of the Heavenly Host, or the demonic powers that
owned so much of the earth. Therefore, if one of the Grey Crystals was
controlled by the forces of the Abyss, then that person's powers are
owned by Lucifer and his band of destroyers. The results of such were
best visible in the many Cardcaptors who served evil purposes, such as
the occult or other such forces of spiritual darkness, simply so they
could continue using those Cards that they valued to much.
'Valuable enough to sell your soul?' He thought to himself. A Cardcaptor
who depended on a Grey Stone was an easy target for a demonic attack. All
Lucifer's hordes had to do was capture that Grey Crystal and 'turn it
black', and they OWNED that person and their powers, most of the time. He
had met a few Cardcaptors who had had their Grey Crystals besieged and
captured, but had still not given in even when they didn't know the
Truth. It was rare though, and so many Cardcaptors had fallen that way,
becoming Sorcerers and Witches and worse simply to control their Cards.
Clow Reed had gone down that path for a long time, he was told, before
angelic forces recaptured and freed his Grey Crystal, allowing him to
make his own calls. In the end, he had bound his Cards into the Clow
book. 'And now they've been released by a bunch of ten year olds.' He
shook his head. 'Boy, are they opening a can of worms.'
Li had looked carefully at the white Card, observing it's every detail
in detail and making sure to check it against pictures of Clow Cards and
other kinds of Cards he'd seen. So far, he'd gotten some close ones, but
not hit the mark. What kind of Card was this, anyway? He'd have to figure
it out if he was going to get the story on this Gabor guy. He sure talked
funny, all that stuff about 'demons, the great I Am,' whoever that was,
and that weird word in Hebrew. He'd tracked that word down to a couple of
possibilities, but so far he hadn't had any definite luck tracking down
either the Card or that weird word. It was really starting to frustrate
him.
"Hey, at least Sakura's OK." He told himself. That guy had showed up at
just the right time to save their skins, bigtime. That had been almost
two days ago, and by today Sakura was feeling like a million bucks and
hadn't bothered to hide it. Lucky they had that fight on a Friday
afternoon, because if Sakura came to school with a broken leg or
something people might start to suspect something. For crying out loud,
was he the only one concerned with the security of this little group of
theirs?! Tomoyo and her videotaping kicks would get them all in big
trouble one day, *big* trouble.
His search having turned up nothing and his magical resources having
absolutely zero effect of this Card , he decided to take a rest for a bit
before giving it another go. He flopped onto his bed face-first, sighing
in frustrated annoyance.
Suddenly, it came to him. Like a bolt of lightning an image flashed
through his mind, then disappeared just as quick. He leapt off his bed
and began flipping through the pages of the Cardcaptor books he'd been
using as references like a lunatic. Finally, halfway through the book, he
found it.
"Remnant Cardcaptors, a strange group that has existed since the days of
the great Clow Reed's ancestors," He read straight from the book, not
caring who heard him. "Have appeared on rare occasions to turn the tide
of battle in times of dire trouble, such as the Surro-Terkaan wars and
the battles against the equally mysterious races of Darkcaptors and
ZaeT'kno Cardcaptors. Very little is known about them, except that they
are immune to the magic arts and that their Cards are by far one of the
most powerful Card sets of all, rivaled only by those of the Darkcaptors
and certain unknown rogue Cardcaptors who seem to have similar powers to
the Darkcaptors. Remnant Cardcaptors have never been traced to a specific
genealogical line, unlike other Cardcaptor factions, and appear out of
nowhere with magnificent powers and almost other-natural weapons." He
stopped reading for a second. "Other-natural? What's it mean by that?"