Fate Draws Sakura A Blank

Posted in the hallway just outside the band practice room after closing hours, a list of names and roles went up for the first time. Children would surely be most excited the next day to see what parts they got and where their hard work learning their acting skills from watching old B-movies had gotten them. But that joyous moment never came, for in the dark hours of the night, a mysterious shadow passed it by with a touch and barely a pause. By the time morning came, the sheet of roles would be little more than a bold header and a series of blank lines. What a lonely play it would be this year indeed.



"You've got to be kidding me!" Sakura yelled out in protest. "Are you really telling me that nothing seems wrong with this?" Sakura stood outdoors, slightly spreading the bottom of the skirt of her uniform. She was talking to Miss Sakamoto, a classy looking young lady with long black hair and a matching black, dressy shirt and pants. She had a small messenger bag strapped around her shoulder where she kept the papers she needed and wanted to look at while she was with the children outside and not at her desk. She was Sakura's new teacher. The preschool teacher. And Sakura was wearing a preschool uniform that barely reached her waist.

"Oh yes, I'm sure! This is correct!" Miss Sakamoto spoke in a cheerful tone, apparently not even noticing Sakura's distress. She reached into her bag and took out a folder of papers with Sakura's name on it. "We keep records on each student in the school system, and the school board took a closer look at yours recently." She opened up the folder to show her some of the papers. "As you can see, your record is completely blank. That means you must have just started school, so we moved you to this class to correct it!" She closed the folder, tucked it away in the bag, and closed her eyes to give Sakura a peppy smile.

Sakura stomped her foot as she was about to make another point, but a sudden crinkling sound shifted her attention to another problem. "Ugh… Even if that's somehow right, why was I told I needed to… wear… diapers to attend?" Peeking out below her uniform was indeed a diaper sized correctly for a girl her age.

"Oh yes, that!" Miss Sakamoto was more than happy to explain. "Since this is a preschool, and some of our students are very young, we understand that not all of our students are quite ready to go without diapers yet. And we can take care of that for them! To be safe, we require new students to wear diapers unless we have a parent's signature saying they're ready to go without them. And, well, like I just said, your record is blank… Since you're a girl, we'll just need your mother's signature, and you can go without them the very next day!"

"But I don't have a mother!" Sakura protested further.

Miss Sakamoto stared back at Sakura silently for a moment, not shifting away from her smile before flatly answering, "That's going to be a problem."

"I'll tell you what's a problem! This outfit!" Sakura lifted her skirt a bit as she continued, enough to reveal her whole diaper. "Even when I just let this hang at full length, it's not long enough to cover this diaper!" She felt pretty embarrassed about this whole situation, and it wasn't helped by the fact that the whole time she was talking to the teacher, one of the little girl students was staring at her in wonder.

Miss Sakamoto nodded and answered, "This is the largest size of preschool uniform we make. I'm sorry it doesn't go all the way down to your knees or anything, but look on the bright side! You should be proud that you're such a tall girl~!"

Sakura looked at Miss Sakamoto feeling dumbstruck. "I'm this tall because I'm a fourth grader!"

Miss Sakamoto raised a finger to the side of her face as she looked Sakura over and thought. "Well, I suppose if that were true, it would almost make more sense. I'll tell you what. If you think some things are missing from your record, I'll put in a request after class is done today to get a backup from the school's database. It shouldn't take more than a day or two. It's usually done processing after a few." Sakura glared at her innocently smiling teacher, not liking the uncertainty she was hearing. Her eyebrow was on the verge of twitching right up until Miss Sakamoto flatly (but cheerfully) continued with that same smile, "It could be five weeks."

"FIVE WEEKS?!" Sakura was so flustered she could barely see straight. "Are you telling me I'm going to have to put up with being in preschool and wearing these clothes and being in diapers for five weeks?!" Her protest would've gone on longer and with more fury, but the school bell rang right there.

Miss Sakamoto called out to the children, "Recess is over! Time to go back inside, little ones!" As the children started to file toward the door (other than some stubborn ones who pretended not to hear), she looked back at Sakura. "I see that you're upset, but fussing about it won't help. Let's just go back inside for now—it's snack time! There's a box of animal cookies AND a juice box, each with your name on them!" She turned to round up the last straggling children, leaving Sakura without many choices. With a sigh, she walked inside.

Miss Sakamoto wasn't kidding—each cookie box and juice box had a student's name written on them. Sakura took a seat in front of hers, but the preschool chair was much too short for her. Normally having her knees near her face while sitting would just be uncomfortable, but she had a unique plight today. No matter how she shifted her position or where she put her legs, her little preschool uniform left her diaper completely visible. Worse still, the girl who was watching her outside was sitting next to her, and it was clear that she was now intently watching Sakura's diaper in wonder.

Across the table, a pair of twins—a boy and a girl—watched Sakura as they snacked, and the girl asked her brother a question.

"Doesn't the tall new kid seem stwange to be hewe?"
'Why? What stwange about her?'
"She's dat big, but she gots a diaper on!"
'Oh, sure! First t'ing I notice about her!'
"... Even before how tall she is?"
'Well dat was da second t'ing I notice.'

Sakura sighed and hung her head low. There wasn't much she could do to yell at these kids since they sure didn't know any better. She resigned herself to going along with it and snacking, even though that felt embarrassing too.

But just because she wasn't yelling didn't mean the room wasn't noisy. One girl's angry voice particularly stood out. "Who erased my coloring book?!" The girl waved a coloring book with only the black lines it came with in the air. "You don't do dat to people! And it was colored in crayon! How do you erase crayon?!"

—————

The preschool class let out at noon, and Sakura rollerbladed her way home. She got looks from passers by on her way, but she did her best to look past them and just get home. When she arrived, she met with her father, Fujitaka, who was briefly home during his own lunch hour.

"Hello Sakura," he greeted her as friendly as he could. "So… How was your day?" He knew full well what her situation was, so he tried to approach gingerly, but he knew there was only so much he could do.

"Well," Sakura answered sarcastically as she removed her skating gear, "we snacked on animal cookies, heard the story of Little Red Riding Hood, drew with crayons, and did the Hokey Pokey. And I might be stuck doing the same thing for another five weeks!"

"Oh, well," her father started, "five more weeks of that wouldn't be SO bad, right?" He was sweating a bit as he could see his daughter close to the point of fuming.

"I'll be in my room. I need to think about this for a while." Sakura walked to the staircase to make her way there.

"Very well, I'll leave you to it," Fujitaka answered. With a little smile, he teased her a bit saying, "By the way, just in case you need them, the rest of that case of diapers is in your bedroom!"

Sakura shuddered for a moment, then ran up to her room yelling "Daaaaaaad!" in embarrassment, and she slammed her door when she got up there.

Sakura walked over to her bed and sat down on it to change out of her preschool uniform when Kerberos showed himself. "Are you planning to add that outfit to your Cardcaptor costumes?" he asked. "Because I think that look suits you pretty well!" Sakura grunted as she pulled her socks off, trying not to acknowledge his comments.

"And I don't know why, but I like something about that crinkling sound when you walk!" he continued. "That looks WAY more comfortable than your other kind of underwear! Is it?"

Scowling a bit, Sakura tried to change the subject. "Kero, they said that my school record is blank. Do you know about any Clow Cards that could cause something like that?"

"Erasing a school record?" Kero questioned right back. "What kind of card do you think would erase a school record?"

"I don't know, something that can mess with computers or electricity? Or anything?" She scratched her head as she tried to think of something. "Could you... come along with me tomorrow as a teddy bear just in case there is something?"

"I suppose so," he answered as she changed into a more comfortable shirt. "It would probably be more fun than just hanging out here when no one is around." As Sakura was about to change out of her diaper, Kero followed with, "Hey, wait a second... If you wear that instead of your other underwear, that means less laundry for us to do later!"

Sakura blinked twice and stared blankly at him. "You're kidding, right? I mean, we still need to throw them away, you know?"

Kero shrugged and replied, "I'd rather deal with taking those out in a bag than having to touch your delicates! Keep it on!"

Sakura shook her head and bluntly told him, "I'm not keeping these on one minute longer than I need to!"

"You keep them on or I won't go to school with you tomorrow!" Kero made his demand adamantly. Sakura was about to yell back at him, but she took a minute to think about that offer. There was every chance he would see something she didn't, and if there was a Clow Card at work, she didn't want to miss it. With a heavy sigh, she flopped back her bed defeated. Kero crossed his arms and taunted, "Yeah, that's right!"

—————

The next morning, Sakura stomped her way down the stairs, dressed and ready for preschool once more. Kero was safely tucked in her bag, and her brother Toya and father were already seated at breakfast.

"You're up early," Toya commented as he glanced at her. "Can't wait to get to school, or what?"

Sakura pouted a bit as she walked past the kitchen. "I just want to get there without anyone seeing me like this again." She started to get on her rollerblading gear.

"Wait, Sakura!" her father called after her. "Aren't you at least going to eat breakfast before you go?"

"I'm not hungry!" she called back as she half-stomped her way to the front door (being careful not to fall). A moment passed without the sound of the door opening, and Sakura walked back from around the corner and into the kitchen, quickly gobbled up a little more than half of what was on her plate, and half-stomped her way out the door and slammed it behind her.

Toya finished a sip of his drink and asked, "Hey, how come she doesn't wear a longer skirt over that for the way there and back?"

Fujitaka stared at the doorway silently for a moment, then scooped what was left on Sakura's plate on to his own and said, "When I see her at noon today, I'll mention the idea."

—————

Sakura stepped into the classroom less than amused. She looked to the left and to the right at what today had in store for her… Kids playing Candy Land, Miss Sakamoto at her desk looking over some papers, kids cutting paper, Tomoyo sitting at the snack table, a round of Duck Duck Goose…

"Wait…" Sakura turned her attention back to Tomoyo, who stood and waved to her. There was her best friend, here in the preschool class with her, wearing a matching uniform, and surprisingly also diapered.

"How did you end up here?" Sakura asked as she walked over to Tomoyo. Kero peeked his head out of Sakura's bag to see who she was talking to, and he kept his face there motionless so he could watch without seeming unusual.

"She said it was something about my school record being blank," Tomoyo answered. "But it's not so bad when both of us are here!"

"That's the same thing she told me," Sakura thought out loud. "Something's weird here, don't you think?"

While Sakura took a moment to think about how the same thing could have happened to both of them, the same pair of twins she saw yesterday sat and watched the two of them. The girl looked at Tomoyo and asked her brother about this newcomer.

"So? What's da first t'ing you notice about dis one? Her diaper?"
'No. Dat she gots long hair.'
"Oh. ... What's da second t'ing you notice?"
'Dat lady at da window with sunglasses who's watchin' her.'

Sakura and Tomoyo looked to the window to see one of Tomoyo's bodyguards quickly duck out of sight. "Your bodyguards followed you here," Sakura asked.

Tomoyo nodded and answered, "You can never tell what preschool students will be capable of." The twins watched the bodyguard peek back in the window, then turned their attention back to Tomoyo as the girl spoke up again.

"Weird. What's da next t'ing you notice?"
'Da camera in her bag.'
"And da next t'ing?"
'How tall she is!'
"And what's da next t'ing you notice after dat?"
'She gots a diaper on.'
"AH HA! I'm not da only one who notice!"

Sakura hung her head low, a little frazzled. She could only wonder how her being diapered was the first thing this boy noticed about her, yet no less than the fifth thing he noticed about her friend.

"What's going on here…?" Miss Sakamoto's voice caught Sakura's attention, and she looked over at her. "My schedule for the day is blank, but I was sure I had it filled out. I have the day of the week and date written on top, but nothing else…" She looked through a few other papers. "The last few days' schedules are blank too, but I was following yesterday's schedule yesterday, and it was all filled out! It couldn't have been one of the children though… They were written in ink!"

"Oh? Wait a minute." Kero spoke up, keeping his frozen position in her bag. "Has anything else been getting erased suddenly?"

Before anyone could answer, the little girl whose coloring book had been erased yelled out again. "Who erased my name?!" She waved a slip of paper in the air with her name—Kasumi—written in dotted lines for her to trace over. Her tracing, however, was gone. "Why would anyone do dis? How'm I gonna remember if people keep erasing my work?!"

Sakura noticed that Tomoyo had gotten her camera out and was recording the little girl. "You're filming this?" she asked.

"Sure," Tomoyo answered. "This is an unusual enough day, isn't it?" She turned her camera back to Sakura to record her conversation with Kero. As she did, she couldn't help drifting the camera a bit to make sure Sakura's diaper was in the shot at all times—she figured that if spending a day in the preschool was a rare event, seeing her friend in a diaper was even more rare than that.

Kero resumed his explanation. "I'm starting to think this could be the work of the Blank card."

"Blank card?" Sakura asked. "If it's blank, does that mean we won't be able to see it?"

"What?" Kero replied in confusion. "What, no, NO! The card isn't blank, it's the Blank card! It can erase imagery from any surface."

"Hm… That sounds a little like the Erase card, doesn't it?" Sakura asked.

"That's because it's an offshoot, a shard of that card," Kero answered. "Think of it as a child of the Erase card. Its abilities are similar, but not as powerful. That should make it an easy capture, but…" Kero boldly peeked a little further out of Sakura's bag and looked around before continuing, "If it landed you girls in this classroom, it's obviously still powerful enough!"

Tomoyo turned her focus and camera elsewhere and asked, "So, if we could see the Blank card, would it look like a jester that's just a little taller than Sakura?"

Kero thought for a moment and answered, "Yeah, that sounds about right."

Tomoyo nodded and said, "Then with the magic of my camera, I can see it erasing the blackboard right now!"

"It's not invisible!" Sakura turned to look at the blackboard, and sure enough, the little jester who embodied the Blank card had a hand on the board and was removing everything written on it. "So that's our Blank card, is it?" she continued. "Should I… try to capture it now with all these people watching?"

Kero looked around at the class, then decided to hover outside the bag. "They're all just little kids," he said. "They don't know the difference between what's real and what's not. It should be fine."

"All right then!" Sakura took drew and raised her wand and stepped forward to approach the jester. She didn't get far, however, before she felt her wrist grabbed, and she was pulled back and turned around quickly meeting Miss Sakamoto's eyes.

"Oh, no you don't!" Miss Sakamoto said sternly. "I will not have my children fighting each other in this classroom! Do I make myself clear little lady?" She held on to Sakura's wrist until she was sure she would do no harm.

"Children…?" Sakura was baffled by this confrontation. "You don't even know that so-called student's name!"

"Well…" Miss Sakamoto hesitated, but tried to hold her air of authority. "I'm drawing a blank, but… Not all students come on all school days! It's not like I need to have all my students' names memorized… Right? I bet most of the ones whose names I don't know don't even notice!"

She let go of Sakura's wrist and tried to get more on topic. "But anyway… If I see any more aggressive actions from you, I'll put you in time out! And don't think that I won't do it!" She then turned and walked over to the blackboard, looking at it from end to end in a stunned way. "… I want whichever student who erased my chalkboard to come up here and write their name on it right now!"

Kero floated right next to Sakura and said, "I guess I forgot she might see, or that she might step in and do something. We need something to distract her so you can work your magic!"

"Okay," Sakura began to ask, "so what can we do to keep her distracted?"

Before they had any chance to come up with an idea, they were interrupted by an audible gasp and turned their attention to a girl standing there with glistening eyes. "She…" The girl could hardly contain her excitement. "She brought a teddy bear!"

Kero looked shocked at that comment, but before he could react and get out of the way, he'd been grabbed out of the air and was in the middle of a hug. And soon there were two children hugging him. And before he knew it, another child who couldn't get in on it was pulling him away to hug for himself. Before long, Tomoyo found herself recording every little kid, except the one who had the habit of staring at them in wonder, struggling to get their hands on the adorable little guy.

"Hey!" he protested, "I've only got one of those! OW! No! That does NOT come off!"

As Tomoyo recorded, Sakura stared on remembering the exchange she had with Kero last night. "Tomoyo," she said, "are you getting this? I mean… ALL of this? Can you film this whole thing for me?"

"I am," she answered, "but if you go to fight with the card, I'm going to film you instead."

Sakura looked over and saw the Blank card sitting on the floor, going through children's math books and erasing the contents one page at a time. "It can wait," she said.

After a minute or two, Miss Sakamoto looked at the commotion with disbelief. "Children!" She stepped over to try and separate them and take the toy they were fighting over away, but she could barely get close to the child who had it before it changed hands and got further away from her.

Tomoyo turned her camera on Sakura and said, "I think this is the distraction you were looking for!"

Sakura nodded with a smile and set down the Windy card, hoping for a quick win. Drawing her wand and preparing to touch it to the card, she said, "Wind, form a chain to—"

However, before she could finish her chant, the Blank jester had a hand on the Windy card. Sakura looked down at it and saw that the Windy card was now blank!

"Ahhhh!" Sakura leapt back in surprise, then stepped forward, pointed at the card, and yelled, "Put it back!" The jester just taunted her, pulling down an eyelid and sticking its tongue out at her.

"Okay," Sakura said as she picked her card up and put it away, "the normal approach isn't going to work if you can just blank my cards out… What else do I have to work with?" Looking around the room, Sakura saw that all the children's toys were freely laying on the floor since there was so much commotion over Kero going on. But before she could figure out what good they would be, she looked up and saw the jester rolling a bag of marbles across the floor at her.

"Hey!" Sakura tried to take a step back to get away, but the marbles were already scattered around her enough to make her slip and fall. As she lay on the floor, she said, "Okay, I guess this is how it's going to be. We're having a toy fight." She situated herself upright and used her arm to roll some of the marbles back at the jester, who looked around surprised at the sudden trickiness of moving around. "Yeah, not so easy, is it?" Sakura taunted as she rose to her feet.

Sakura used the opening she made to walk over to a toy pile while the jester carefully tried to navigate to freedom. Sakura picked up and looked over a jumprope. "This could work for binding it so I can turn it back into a card…" She coiled it up and draped it over her shoulder when she felt herself get hit in the back of the head with a toy block. She turned to look as the jester picked up more blocks from a pile to throw.

Sakura leaned to the side at the next one and tried to tumble to the side as more were thrown, but she was quickly running into another problem. She hadn't completely gotten used to her bulky undergarments yet, and they were making it difficult to move her legs and shift her weight around. She took another block to the head and stumbled backwards, falling and knocking down a once-proud block tower.

It wasn't a hard fall to shake off, so she pulled herself up again and watched a snickering jester climb up a toy shelf to get away from her. She ran over and looked up at her adversary, sitting a little higher than the top of her head. Just out of spite, it dropped a teddy bear on her face, which she pulled off and set aside. "Hm… I wonder," she thought aloud.

She took the jumprope from around her shoulder, held one end, and swung it like a whip. The plastic handle thunked the jester on the head unexpectedly, leaving a single tear in its eye. It shook off its minor thump, stuck its tongue out at her again, and leered at her waiting for her next move. Sakura took a look back and forth, then smile as she formed a little plan.

She swung the jumprope at the jester again, who dodged to her left. She then spun around to whip it again, and the jester dodged back the other way, trying to keep its balance. With one more spin, almost like an expert, she swung the rope down from above on top of the jester. It tried to crawl backward keeping its eyes on the rope, but couldn't see the hazard behind it—while trying to balance with its arms, one of them landed squarely on a rubber ball and squeaked it.

The jester's balance was lost, and it flailed trying to grab onto the toy shelf, which began to tip. Sakura smiled and took a few steps back, watching her soon-to-be card holding on helplessly as the toy shelf came tumbling toward her with a crash. As the jester sat on the floor, head bobbing back and forth dizzily, Sakura and Tomoyo glanced at Miss Sakamoto to see if she was still busy.

Miss Sakamoto dove on the floor to grab Kero as he was being thrown and yelled, "Got it!" She held on tight in a breathless way, and Sakura and Tomoyo turned back to the Blank card to finish things up. Sakura tied the jumprope around the jester and tied it tight, just as its senses were coming back to it. She stood in front of it with her wand, smiling as it just looked up at her with a scowl.

"Return to your true form," she called out, "Clow Card!" With a touch of the wand, the jester glowed with a white glow and began to take the form of a card. She picked it up and turned to Tomoyo's camera, giving her a pose and a wink before the two of them turned their attention to Miss Sakamoto.

"This is no way for children to behave," the flustered teacher said as she stood up and dusted herself off. "Taking other people's things is just not allowed, and fighting each other over it is just as bad as breaking it! And you almost did that too! I'm just glad to see it's still in one piece…" As she continued to scold the children and try to pass on a life lesson to them, Sakura felt a small tug at her skirt. She turned to see what it was, and Tomoyo turned her camera back on her. The little girl who'd been watching them so intently was standing there.

"Oh, it's you," Sakura said as she crouched down to get eye level with her. "What's your name?"

"Genkai," the girl answered softly. "I can't believe… you were able to make the bad kid go away even though…"

"Even though what?" Sakura asked.

"Even though you're wearing a diaper…" Genkai continued meekly. Sakura blushed and pushed the bottom of her uniform down to try to hide it, but stopped when Genkai lifted her own skirt to reveal a diaper of her own. "My parents told my sisters that big girls don't wear diapers, but they said it's okay that I do 'cause I can't learn how to not to."

"Oh," Sakura said as Genkai let her dress hang low hiding it again, "you must have a medical condition then?"

Genkai wasn't sure what Sakura meant, but said, "You were amazing… You're definitely a big girl even though you have diapers… Which means even though I'll always have diapers, I can become a big girl too!"

"Just remember…" Sakura said while giving her a little pat on the head, "It isn't whether or not you wear diapers that makes you a big girl. It's what you do in diapers that counts!" Sakura smiled cheerfully, but her smile slowly faded to a bewildered blank stare as she realized what she just said. She was met with an equally bewildered blank stare from her new little friend, and Tomoyo gradually lowered her camera to reveal another matching one.

"Are you sure that's the lesson you want to pass on?" Tomoyo asked.

"No, I'd like to try again," Sakura replied. "What I meant was, the fact that you're wearing diapers doesn't have to stop you from being amazing. Just believe in yourself, and you'll grow up to be an awesome big girl, diapers and all!"

Tomoyo smiled as she recorded her friend's speech. "Maybe we should film you in diapers more often! That way we can show them to Genkai and she can be even more inspired!"

Sakura was stunned on hearing this. She certainly didn't want to agree to those terms, but she couldn't speak out against it while the girl she was trying to encourage was listening!

Miss Sakamoto handed Kero back to Sakura, saying "I believe this is yours, young lady. Sorry about what happened. Class? What do we say?" An unorganized volley of "We're sorry"s came from the rest of her classmates.

"Why yes," Kero said dizzily, "Clow's sisters are lovely, aren't they? They were so little the last time I saw them…" Sakura opened her bag and gently set him in, along with the new Blank card.

"Well!" Miss Sakamoto clapped her hands together with a cheerful smile. "After all that excitement, why don't we all sit down for snack time? Sakura, I believe there's another box of fresh juice for you~!"

Sakura smiled, sighed, shook her head, and said, "You know, after all that, juice actually does sound pretty good right now." As Sakura and Tomoyo took their seats (with Genkai next to Sakura again), the phone on the wall rang. As Miss Sakamoto walked to answer it, Sakura looked at Tomoyo and said, "So… Just because you and I are enjoying this snack time doesn't mean anyone needs to find out about it, right?"

As Sakura snacked, she took a look in her bag to find the Windy card, and she was happy to see that it was restored to its former self when Blank was caught. "Yes?" Miss Sakamoto said on the phone. "Ah, I see. Okay, I'll let them know right away. … Oh yes, I'll be sure to mention that! It might be a problem, but I'll pass the word along at least. … Very good, thank you!" She hung up the phone and called out, "Sakura? Tomoyo?"

Sakura looked up at Miss Sakamoto, since they weren't very far away from her. "Uh… Here we are, ma'am."

"Oh, you two! Of course!" Miss Sakamoto stepped over to their table with a smile. "I just got a call from the school board with good news. The backups of your school records have been found, and you're to be immediately promoted to the proper grade. We'll have you back in the correct classes effective tomorrow!"

"That's good," Sakura said feeling relieved. "This was kind of cute for a little while, but I sure wouldn't want to be stuck with it for too long!"

"There is just one thing though," Miss Sakamoto added. "Sakura, we STILL don't have the signature from your mother saying you're ready to be without diapers."

On hearing this, Sakura fell out of her chair with a face fault. With her legs in the air, her skirt fluttered down, leaving her diaper completely revealed to the whole classroom, and to Tomoyo's camera lens.