"Henry J. Cobb" wrote:
Abbot and Costello did OK against the monsters of their day, how do you
think they'd stack up against the Negaverse?
About as well as the Sailor Scouts. Both groups have the power of the
Script behind them
But we all want to see Alan of the Doom Tree put the moves on Sakura
Kinomoto.
******
[I disclaim any and all responsibility to pay medical bills resulting
from my "intro to fic" break lines and/or anticipation of what lays
thereafter. ^_-]
******
Sakura looked around her spacecraft, pondering the unlikely crew. At
an age where most humans went to high school, she was now among
humanity's first ambassadors to the stars - but not officially. In
fact, "officially" she had been kidnapped by her non-Terran shipmates,
though a glance at them confirmed that they were far more interested in
each other, and in their tree in the cargo bay, than in kidnapping
people, even if the humans' love for each other apparently did feed the
tree.
Which, she still suspected, was only tangentially related to those
humans who did wind up on the ship. Herself, of coure, and her
longtime friend Tomoyo, who kept hinting that their friendship could
fuel the tree even more - though Sakura had no idea what Tomoyo meant,
and had told her as much. Then there were Shaoran and Meilin, whose
relationship was best exemplified by the fact that the tree grew at
least one new leaf whenever Meilin walked by thinking of Shaoran,
though Sakura had never seen the same happen for Shaoran thinking of
Meilin. All four nicely paired off, just like Ail and Ann. Kero had
come along too, although he had no opposite - unless one counted
whatever it was he occasionally communicated with, that lead them on
their journey.
Each of the pairs had one card master and one non-user. Ail, Shaoran,
and herself competed for the cards that were out there. While there
was some tension as to who got which card, it was far better that one
of them had the cards than that the cards stay free, especially since
they were all teammates. Meanwhile, Ann, Meilin, and Tomoyo would crew
whatever support was needed, whether suppressing any secondary targets
during a card capture, preparing special tools or weapons needed for a
certain task, or - more often than Sakura wished were necessary - just
prepping the ship's medical bay. Kero was the ship's pilot and mascot,
and in fact left the ship so rarely that most who knew of the group
either did not know Kero existed, or assumed he was the ship's AI.
Earth was still dealing with the revelation that We Are Not Alone too
much to launch any kind of rescue. Which was good, because the magical
cards now scattered across the galaxy would only respond to the chosen
trio. While hunting down each individual card would, in theory,
eventually catch them all, they all longed for the day when they would
find the master card with which they could summon all uncaught cards to
one spot, and catch them all at once. For it was this card that gave
the others life; if the other cards did not respond to its summons,
their powers would be snuffed out like a heartbeat. But it was also
the most destructive of cards; the reputation the ship's crew had
gathered for the devestation their prey often wreaked was as nothing
compared to the bloodshed this card would bring once awakened.
They were the Dirty Pairs, and they hunted the Bloody Card.
******
[What? You were expecting five card stud with the energy of an entire
race - human or Ail's/Ann's - as the stakes?]