Fanfic / Shadow of the Dragon

Shadow of the Dragon is a Cardcaptor Sakura Continuation Fic written by Lord Archive.

Five years after the events of the anime, Sakura and her friends are drawn back into the world of magic when Sakura faces repeated attacks from an unidentified magical assailant.

Another fic, Sakura's Christmas Surprise, written by the same author, serves as a prequel to this fic.

Shadow of the Dragon provides examples of the following tropes (Beware of spoilers):

• Abuse Mistake: In chapter 12, the ghost of Reiko slams Sakura face-first into a locker at school, bruising her forehead. Since ghosts are Invisible to Normals and Syaoran was the only other person present at the time, Teikei, the school disciplinarian, assumes that Syaoran attacked her until Tomoyo, the team Camera Fiend, provides proof that he didn't do it.
• Abusive Parents: Satome's mother Himiko, Tomoeda's district attorney, is revealed to be one, constantly beating him because he is the product of rape and she only sees him as a reminder of said rape; as a result, Satome has become a Straw Misogynist and Serial Rapist. In chapter 19, when Satome is in jail for his Attempted Rape of Tomoyo, he tells the lawyer assigned to him that his mother put him in the hospital eight times for a total of fifteen broken bones, and that he's perfectly willing to confess to all of his rape charges as long as it keeps him away from his mother until he's twenty. Shortly after, however, his mother arranges for him to be assassinated and his death ruled as a suicide because his status as a rapist would reflect poorly on her career of prosecuting sexual predators.
• Adults Are Useless: The faculty at school repeatedly fail to take Satome's bullying seriously, resulting in multiple rape victims. It's only after he tries to rape Tomoyo in chapter 18 only for Sakura to stop him violently and him to be arrested that they finally take him seriously. By the time of chapter 30, Teikei, the school disciplinarian, has learned from this, as shown by his plan to deal how the school has gotten out of hand:
  Kiriha: You're not going to take care of this quietly?
  Teikei: Trying to take care of a "minor bullying issue" quietly and carefully got us multiple rape victims. This school has gotten out of hand. We need to reign in the trouble. Make sure the students know we're serious about the rules, or else they will grow bolder and cause even more damage to the school and themselves.
• All Chinese People Know Kung-Fu: Well, everyone in the Li family anyway. Meiling reveals at one point that all Lis are trained in martial arts from an early age.
• All Guys Want Cheerleaders: Invoked by Meiling as her reason for joining the cheerleading squad.
• All Periods Are PMS: Chiharu is going through PMS at the time she and Takashi convince Sakura to put them through a "Freaky Friday" Flip.
• Amoral Attorney: Himiko Satome is a minor example. She's Tomoeda's district attorney, as well as an Abusive Parent who beats her son at the slightest provocation.
• And There Was Much Rejoicing: In chapter 19, after Satome is arrested and jailed for his Attempted Rape of Tomoyo, not one of the other students is sorry to see him go, with one girl even coming right out and saying that she feels safer with Satome gone.
• Anti-Magic/Power Nullifier: Chapter 10 sees Sakura face a "Null Mage," a person who, while unable to actually cast spells, can negate magical powers at will.
• Ascended Extra/Character Focus: Sakura's classmates, i.e. Chiharu, Rika, Naoko and Takashi whom were previously background characters in the canon, play a much greater role in this fan fiction as it explores the lives of all the four classmates as well as their implications.
• Asshole Victim: Satome is a Serial Rapist who tried to force himself on both Sakura and Tomoyo on two different occasions. No one, in-universe or out, feels sympathetic towards him when Sakura beats him up and allows the Mirror to castrate him in chapter 18.
• Attempted Rape: Satome, the resident school bully, threatens to rape Sakura and her other female friends on several different occasions, but is thwarted every time. His final attempt, centered on Tomoyo, results in a furious Sakura brutally attacking him and using the Mirror Card to neuter him.
• Big Sister Instinct: In chapter 12, Reiko's ghost invades Syaoran's home, intending to hurt Syaoran to get at Sakura, but the ghost of Fanren is there to fend her off.
• Birds of a Feather: Naoko starts dating a geek-and-proud-of-it named Shinji Asaba, because they both share similar interests. Unfortunately, this relationship comes to an abrupt end late into the fanfic when Shinji cheats on Naoko.
• Brainwashed and Crazy: In chapter 25, Sakura is brainwashed into attacking Tomoyo, though Syaoran, Meiling, and Kurogane stop her and snap her out of it.
• Bring My Brown Pants: In the first chapter, Naoko wets herself at the sight of the dragon.
  • One of Satome's goons also wets himself after Meiling kicks the asses of his friends.
• Broken Bird: Reiko Ichimai. As she puts it in chapter 14, she had no friends, no girl ever called her, and all the boys only cared about her for sex. However, as Tomoyo points out, part of that is her own fault because she never bothered to reach out to anyone.
• Broken Masquerade: The fic opens with Sakura's friends Naoko, Chiharu, and Rika discovering the existence of magic and Sakura's powers after Sakura is forced to use magic in front of them to fight off a giant dragon golem. Takashi and Mr. Terada also become Secret Keepers as well.
• Brother–Sister Incest: In chapter 36, it's revealed that Meiling's Love Interest Matsumoto is a womanizer and had been cheating on her with Megumi, the school slut. Tomoyo reveals through a DNA test that Matsumoto and Megumi are half-siblings through their father, and Naoko had arranged for them to find out after they did it to get back at Megumi for seducing her boyfriend; Megumi is justifiably grossed out at this revelation.
• The Bully: Ryujin Satome.
• Bully Hunter: Syaoran and Meiling beat up Satome and his goons in defense of their friends, with Syaoran explicitly warning Satome that if he does anything to hurt Sakura or the others, he will make sure they never find his body.
• Burn the Witch!: During chapter 2, Takashi tells stories about witch trials and burnings... which obviously makes Sakura uncomfortable. As a result, Chiharu mistakenly believes that he too has found out about Sakura's magic and chews him out for scaring her, only to discover that he was merely telling a story that Eriol informed him of back in elementary school and end up blowing The Masquerade to him herself.
• But Not Too Foreign:
  • Sakura and Tomoyo are stated to be of British descent, their maternal great-grandfather, Masaki Amamiya, being a British immigrant to Japan.
  • In chapter 13, Rika is established as 1/4th American through her father Jyou.
• Butterfly of Doom: In chapter 8, Sakura uses the Time Card to travel back in time by one day to stop Tomoyo's mother Sonomi from getting killed by a drunk driver. She succeeds, but her classmate Reiko Ichimai is killed instead, much to her horror. Both Kero/Cerberus and Yue tell her that, regardless of what Sakura tried to do, someone was going to die that day, and her interference just changed who died and when.
• Calling the Old Man Out: When Sakura discovers her relation to Masaki Amamiya in chapter 24, she is quick to call him out over his disowning Nadeshiko for her marriage to Fujitaka.
• Canon Foreigner: Alternate Universe versions of Kurogane and Fye from Tsubasa -RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE- appear in the fic, here as Occult Detectives hired to investigate Sakura's attacker.
• Cast from Hit Points: Sakura and Syaoran both heal one another by transferring their own magical energy to the other on different occasions; the experience leaves them physically drained and requiring bedrest. In chapter 12, Syaoran transfers so much of his own magic and life force to Sakura that he rapidly ages; according to his mother Yelan, if Sakura hadn't shared her magic with him, he would have died.
• Child by Rape: Satome himself is one; his mother only sees him as a reminder and thus constantly abuses him.
• Complaining About Rescues They Don't Like: In chapter 3, Sakura is shocked at Syaoran for losing control of himself and brutally beating Satome to protect her. In this case, it's more due to the fact that he lost control and has been explicitly trained to kill.
• Continuation Fic: Of the Cardcaptor Sakura anime.
• Create Your Own Villain: Himiko's repeated abuse towards her Child by Rape Satome was responsible for turning him into the Serial Rapist and Straw Misogynist he is.
• Crippling Castration: In chapter 18, Sakura arrives Just in Time to save Tomoyo from being raped by Satome. After she kicks him into a wall, the Mirror Card manifests in the form of Tomoyo, shatters a mirror, and declares that Satome will never hurt a girl like that again before stabbing him in the groin with the mirror shards; the next chapter outright confirms that the Mirror castrated Satome.
  Shinji Asaba: Satome is a girl now.
• Crippling Overspecialization: Subverted; in chapter 10, Sakura actually trains to fight so as to has something other than her magic to fight the assassin with.
• Crossover: Two omakes features crossovers of CCS with Xiaolin Showdown and Avatar: The Last Airbender.
• Darker and Edgier: Definitely darker than the source material, exploring such themes as Attempted Rape, Abusive Parents, and the negative aspects of a Teacher/Student Romance.
• Dead Fic: The last update was Christmas Eve 2014 with no updates from Lord Archive until a surprise update of their Digimon Adventure fanfic The Red Digivice Diaries.
• Defiled Forever: Satome invokes this when he is preparing to rape Sakura in chapter 10, stating that by the time he's finished having his way with Sakura, not even a "foreign piece of shit" like Syaoran will want her. Fortunately, he's stopped before anything truly unfortunate happens.
• Disc-One Final Boss: To describe Satome as an "asshole" is a massive understatement, but he's not the main villain of the fanfic; he's dead by chapter 19. The main villain is an enemy striking at Sakura magically from the shadows.
• Doppelgänger: In chapter 17, the mystery Big Bad uses Sympathetic Magic to turn Reiko into a corporeal duplicate of Sakura.
• Drowning My Sorrows: After Sakura and Syaoran finally consummate their relationship in chapter 32, Tomoyo and Meiling spend the night drowning their sorrows with wine... with very little actual alcohol in it, of course.
• Dying Declaration of Love: Inverted; Renji, one of Reiko's one-night stands, confesses to her spirit that he loves her and wanted to be her boyfriend before she died. Reiko is so moved by this that she finally lets go of her anger towards Sakura and peacefully passes on to Heaven.
• Electromagnetic Ghosts: In chapter 14, Tomoyo uses a tape recorder to hear what Reiko's ghost is trying to say to her.
• Even Evil Has Standards/Villainous Rescue: In chapter 10, the assassin after Sakura saves her from being raped by Satome and brutally punishes him for it, remarking that only the "worst of scum" would stoop so low. However, he also tells Sakura afterwards that if Satome had intended to merely kill her rather than rape her, he would have allowed him to do so.
• Evil Lawyer Joke: In chapter 22, Meiling pokes at Takashi for his career choice as lawyer.
  Tomoyo: I always figured you'd make a good lawyer.
  Meiling: He certainly lies well enough.
• Et Tu, Brute?: An unusual retroactive example of this trope, as the act in question wasn't considered a betrayal at "the time it actually occurred", since no one knew at the time. The act in question is Tomoyo secretly videotaping Sakura and the rest of their friends while they were naked, or changing, or in swimsuits, etc. This is discovered in chapter 26, and since the tapes technically classify as child pornography, Tomoyo lampshades the trope by predicting in advance that her friends will react by feeling betrayed, which is exactly what happens.
• Everyone Has Standards: In the flashback in chapter 13, when a client at the adult bar discovers that all of the prostitutes there are only there because they were kidnapped and "trained", he is completely taken aback and punches out one of the employees, remarking that he may have bad luck finding a girlfriend, but when he "buys a girl's time," it should be her decision.
• Fair-Play Villain: Ryuji Akuma, the assassin hired to kill Sakura in chapter 10, states that he will fight Sakura his own way rather than the way his employer wanted him to… by giving her four days to prepare to a fight to the death, warning her that, if she does not do so, he will simply kill Sakura and her entire family, including Tomoyo and her mother.
• Fingore: In chapter 10, Satome attempts to rape Sakura, but he is stopped by an assassin targeting her, who beats Satome up and breaks his hand as a reminder to keep his hands off women.
• "Freaky Friday" Flip: In chapter 4, Takashi and Chiharu persuade Sakura to use the Change Card to swap their bodies so as to get a view on how tough the other has it. They both come out with better understanding of the other: Takashi has a better understanding of the inconveniences Chiharu has to deal with being a girl, and Chiharu has a better understanding of how much pressure Takashi's family places on him to succeed.
• Free-Range Children: Fujitaka states that he has resolved himself not to butt into his children's love lives because he doesn't want to make the same mistake Nadeshiko's grandfather did.
• Freudian Excuse: As revealed in chapter 6, Satome is the way he is because his mother constantly abuses him, and he attacks girls out of misplaced anger towards his mother.
• Generation Xerox: In chapter 13, it's established that Sakura, Tomoyo, Rika, Naoko, and Chiharu's mothers are similar to their daughters, albeit with slight differences:
  • Tomoyo is a Lipstick Lesbian and in love with Sakura, echoing the relationship between their mothers Sonomi and Nadeshiko.
  • Nadeshiko was in a Teacher/Student Romance, whereas Rika is in one with Mr. Terada.
  • Yuuka, Rika's mother, had a "foreign boyfriend" (Rika's father Jyou is Japanese-American); Sakura is in a relationship with Syaoran, a Chinese boy.
  • Chiharu's mother, Yukiko, had a tendency to strangle her then-boyfriend just as Chiharu does to Takashi, though in that case, it's for getting lost in sports stories rather than telling lies.
• The Ghost: The mysterious Big Bad who's targeting Sakura has yet to confront her directly, though in chapter 25 onwards, it's all but confirmed to be Meiling's grandfather.
• God Guise: Well more Angel Guise than anything but in Chapter 22, two robbers mistake Yue for this and promptly turn themselves in to the cops right after.
• Groin Attack:
  • In chapter 18, after Sakura saves Tomoyo from being raped by Satome, the Mirror Card, taking Tomoyo's form, shatters a mirror in the room and stabs him in the groin with a shard of said mirror, ensuring he will never hurt a girl as such again.
  • Naoko knees Shinji in the crotch with enough force to put him in the infirmary as payback for cheating on her.
• Head Desk: Sakura, Syaoran, and Meiling all do this when Takashi sings "You Make Me Feel Like a Natural Woman" in chapter 14.
• Heroic BSoD: Sakura spends several chapters after Reiko's death depressed and angst-ridden.
• Hollywood Tone-Deaf: Syaoran's singing has been described as sounding like a strangled cat.
• I Love You Because I Can't Control You: By chapter 32, Meiling and Matsumoto develop chemistry together, because Meiling decides to take Matsumoto's sexism as a challenge so she can be even more awesome just to prove him wrong, and Matsumoto could easily conceive an heir with more submissive girls, but they "wouldn't be as much fun" as Meiling.
  • However, the chemistry between Meiling and Matsumoto comes to an end in chapter 36, as Matsumoto cheats on Meiling with Megumi.
• I Want My Beloved to Be Happy: An unusual variation in that we only learn this after it's already backfired. After Shinji cheats on Naoko, Tsuda becomes furious with Shinji, and after reading Shinji the riot act on how Shinji's behavior means Naoko can't trust Shinji, Tsuda reveals that he's mad because Shinji had everything Tsuda wanted, but threw it away. Shinji asks in confusion whether that means Tsuda liked Naoko. Tsuda confirms it by immediately punching Shinji in the face.
• I Will Wait for You: Two different examples:
  • In chapter 15, when Fujitaka is conflicted over moving on from Nadeshiko and dating Hinami, the spirit of Nadeshiko herself appears and encourages him to go for it, wanting him to be happy.
  • In chapter 16, after Sakura and her friends finally manage to redeem Reiko's spirit, Renji vows to wait for her as she's going off to Heaven, but Reiko tells him to start a family and have fun with his life before then.
• Innocence Lost: Chapter 18 features Sakura furiously attacking Satome when he kidnaps Tomoyo and tries to rape her, climaxing when she allows the Mirror to break a mirror and castrate him. The chapter is rightfully named "Sakura's Loss of Innocence."
• Irony: As lampshaded in chapter 19, Satome's mother, Tomoeda's district attorney, has made a career stopping sexual predators, while her own son is a Serial Rapist.
• It's All My Fault: Sakura is reduced to a sobbing wreck after Reiko dies in a car crash, which Sakura herself was indirectly responsible for.
• It's Personal: Satome develops a feud with Sakura and her friends.
• Japanese Christian: Sakura mentions at one point that Tomoeda has a higher-than-usual Christian population and that she herself was baptized, though she identifies more as Shinto.
• Karma Houdini: Satome's mother, Himiko gets off scott free, despite her abuse of her son was largely responible for him becoming a rapist and arranging his murder to protect her reputation.
• Knight in Shining Armor: Played with. Shinji Asaba tries to defend Naoko from Satome and his thugs, but Shinji only gets his ass kicked. However, Naoko thinks what Shinji did was impressive anyway, because he lasted a while and actually managed to hit one of the thugs.
• Knight Templar Cousin: In chapter 13, Sonomi shows just how far she's willing to go for Nadeshiko's sake by breaking her captor's jaw with a lead pipe.
• May–December Romance: In chapter 15, Fujitaka finds himself attracted to a girl named Hinami Togashi, a girl around Toya's age. With approval from the spirit of Nadeshiko, he decides to go for it.
• Mistaken for Pedophile: Tomoyo unfortunately gets hit with this after tapes of Sakura and the rest of her friends changing for gym when in elementary surface. The fact that Tomoyo is the same age as the rest of the girls doesn't affect the damage to her reputation. It doesn't help that she later becomes a sponsor to Yuuki Tachibana, a female elementary-aged painter that seems to have a crush on her.
• My Fist Forgives You: When Renji discovers that Sakura's group knew that his Love Confession would redeem Reiko's spirit and let her move on, he remarks that he isn't sure if he should thank Syaoran or deck him. When Syaoran tells him to do as he wishes, Renji promptly punches him out, remarking that they could have let him know Reiko still had a few days so they could have gone on a real date. Nonetheless, he's grateful that he'll be able to see Reiko again because of them and walks off with a Tearful Smile.
• Necromancer: In chapter 24, Sakura's attacker reanimates the corpses of several of Sakura's family members at the Amamiya family graveyard, including her mother, so as to use Sakura's fear of ghosts and zombies to his advantage. Sakura uses the Light Card to free their souls, and both she and Syaoran agree that the fact that her attacker resorted to such a tactic is going too far.
• Never Got to Say Goodbye: Part of the reason Sakura decides to hit the Reset Button at the end of chapter 6 is because Syaoran and Chiharu never got the chance to say goodbye to his sister and her father, respectively, before they passed.
• Never My Fault: In her Establishing Character Moment in chapter 6, Satome's mother shatters a plate while ranting at her son, and then blames him for it before beating him.
• Not-So-Well-Intentioned Extremist: The entire reason that Meiling's grandfather is staging these attacks on Sakura is because he wants Meiling's engagement with Syaoran to be reinstated. However, while he claims he's doing it for Meiling's happiness, Sakura and Syaoran are able to piece together rather quickly that he's only doing it because he wants to "correct" his failings to the Li clan and produce a purer heir by having magic-wielding great-grandchildren; Fanren even states outright in chapter 18 that he's only doing it for himself. In any event, the fact that his plans have repeatedly caused collateral damage and endangered innocent lives prevents him from being sympathetic.
• Occult Detective: Kurogane and Fye run a private investigation firm and have past experience with magic and the occult.
• Our Dragons Are Different: The story opens with Sakura fighting off a giant dragon golem, exposing her secret to her friends in the process.
• Parental Neglect: One chapter reveals that Rika has been neglected by her mother Yuuka in favor of her little brother to the extent that Yuuka has no idea who Tomoyo is. She starts getting better after Touya confronts her about it.
• Parental Obliviousness: In chapter 19, Himiko Satome apparently had no idea just how much of a monster her son was (said son being a vicious bully and Serial Rapist who has been causing trouble at the school for a very long time) until after she discovers he's been arrested for trying to rape Tomoyo. Of course, this is at least in part because she never returned any of the school's calls or showed up at any parent-teacher conferences.
• Pay Evil unto Evil: In chapter 18, when Satome kidnaps Tomoyo and tries to rape her, Sakura shows up just in time, kicks him through a wall, and allows the Mirror card to castrate him with glass shards. While Sakura is left guilt-ridden over her part in it, considering he had tried to rape both Tomoyo and Sakura previously, and is confirmed to have raped seven different girls in the next chapter, you won't feel bad for him: Meiling states outright that even if it wasn't the right thing to do, Satome certainly deserved it.
• Perverted Sniffing: In chapter 23, Syaoran succumbs to temptation while waiting for Sakura to get ready for a shopping trip and sniffs the panties she had worn to bed. Unfortunately, Sakura reenters the room at that moment and catches him in the act.
• Politically Incorrect Villain: Not exactly villains in the true sense, but there are two examples:
  • Satome, due in part to his abusive mother, firmly believes that girls are only good for making babies and thus has raped at least seven different girls, as well as nearly raping Sakura, Tomoyo, and Naoko on different occasions. Furthermore, he also spitefully calls Syaoran and Meiling "foreign trash."
  • Likewise, Reiko, as part of her hauntings, derisively carves "lesbian" into Tomoyo's desk, and later calls her a "lesbian whore."
• Poltergeist: After dying from getting hit by a truck, Reiko becomes a vengeful spirit who begins to torment Sakura, who she blames for her death, and her friends and family as Revenge by Proxy. Upon discovering that Reiko will go to Hell if she keeps going down this road, Sakura manages, through much trial and error, to redeem Reiko's spirit and get her to peacefully move on. It's later discovered that Sakura's mystery attacker arranged for this as part of his campaign against Sakura.
• Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil:
  • In chapter 10, Satome attempts to rape Sakura, only to be stopped by an assassin hired to kill her, who firmly believes that "only the worst of scum use sex as a weapon against women."
  • In chapter 32, it's revealed that, prior to becoming a card, the Mirror was a girl who was raped and subsequently murdered, something that Clow Reed mentioned in his journals while trying to figure out how to save her. In retrospect, this adds new meaning to her volatile reaction to Satome's Attempted Rape of Tomoyo in chapter 18.
• Really Gets Around:
  • In life, Reiko is stated to has regularly slept with members of the school sports teams as a way to boost morale. When the Big Bad uses Sympathetic Magic to transform her into Sakura's undead Doppelgänger, she uses it to her advantage to have sex with other male students and tarnish Sakura's reputation. In chapter 16, she explicitly states she's slept with at least fifteen different boys.
  • Chapter 23 introduces Megumi, who is explicitly described as a slut and doesn't hesitate to flirt with and try to seduce even taken men. She even has plans to become a prostitute after school, stating it's "good money." Syaoran flatly turns down Megumi's advances, but she succeeds with Naoko's boyfriend Shinji Asaba, by offering Shinji the opportunity to experience what it's like to have sex with someone besides his girlfriend. This causes Naoko to dump him.
• Red Light District: Chapter 13 features the red light district of Shibuya as the third version in chapter 13. The brothel members are described as having been "trained" by the pimps, who state that one has to break a girl to make them a "good whore," and has a waitress described as not looking old enough to drink the alcohol she serves. Sakura's mother Nadeshiko was kidnapped by the employees there, but her friends raided the building and rescued her before anything truly unfortunate happened.
• Rule of Three: In chapter 8, three people die simultaneously: Tomoyo's mother Sonomi, Syaoran's sister Fanren, and Chiharu's father. Thanks to Sakura and the Time Card, Sonomi is saved, but Reiko is killed in her place.
• Rummage Sale Reject: Sakura's combat clothes in chapter 10 are described as a cross between a martial arts uniform and a Sailor Fuku.
• School Bullying Is Harmless: Completely averted. Satome, the local school bully, has committed all manner of violations, up to and including robbery, rape, and vandalism, but even when he's reported by Sakura and her friends, the school faculty doesn't take his threats seriously and believes it's all just a "minor bullying issue." Their blasé reactions lead to both Sakura and Tomoyo nearly being raped by him, along with at least seven other girls being actually raped, before his Attempted Rape of Tomoyo leads to Sakura attacking him and allowing the Mirror to castrate him. As of chapter 30, Teikei has learned from the staff's mistakes and refuses to deal with such things quietly and carefully anymore.
• Secret-Keeper: Tomoyo, Touya, and Meiling fill this role, but the first chapter adds Chiharu, Naoko, and Rika to the list. In the second chapter, Mr. Terada and Takashi know as well. Later, we also find out that this also applies to Fujitaka after he discovered Cerberus, and chapter 8 reveals that Sonomi apparently also knew for a long while.
  • Secret Secret-Keeper: In the chapter 7 omake, it's revealed that Tomoyo's bodyguards knew of Sakura's secret ever since the Shadow Card and have kept quiet of this, but now they're standard Secret Keepers.
• Serial Rapist: Satome confessed to his lawyer in chapter 19 that he's raped at least seven girls. He tries to rape Sakura, Tomoyo, and Naoko as well, but he's thankfully stopped from that.
• Shout-Out:
  • In chapter 2, Takashi's tall tales about witches and of the first (recorded) one being from Egypt could've been a reference to Puella Magi Madoka Magica were it not for the fact that this chapter was published well before the show was aired.
  • Chapter 10 has another of Takashi's tall tales where he said the first duels started in Egypt using stone playing cards, a reference to the Yu-Gi-Oh! animé.
  • Sakura's "battle costume" for chapter 15 had a logo that all but references The Ghost Busters.
• Spotting the Thread: Renji knew enough about Reiko to see through her fake Sakura body during sex.
• Straw Misogynist: Satome, hands down. During chapter 10, he states outright that girls are worthless and only good for making babies.
• Strong Family Resemblance: When Chiharu comes across the photo of her and her friends' mothers in chapter 13, it's noted that they all look so much like their daughters that Chiharu is briefly convinced that they are of her and her friends. However, she realizes otherwise when she notes Nadeshiko's feminine long hair and Sonomi's Boyish Short Hair.
• Sympathetic Magic: In chapter 16, the Big Bad uses a strand of Sakura's hair to convert Reiko's spirit into a corporeal duplicate of Sakura.
• Take a Third Option: When trying to find out how to help Reiko, most of the rituals and exorcisms Sakura researches either talk about forcing the spirits in question from moving on (which, seeing as Reiko is being consumed by hate and anger, means Hell in her case) or destroying the spirits outright. Sakura refuses to do either one, wanting to redeem Reiko.
• Tempting Fate: In chapter 18, Satome laughs off Tomoyo's warnings about Syaoran's threats and what her mother will do to him if he does rape her, stating, "I've heard that bullshit before. I'm not dead or in jail, am I?" After Sakura swoops in and saves Tomoyo, he does end up in jail, and by the next chapter, his own mother has been arranged for him to be killed and his death ruled as a suicide.
• Too Dumb to Live: Even after being beaten senseless and getting a death threat from Syaoran, Satome still keeps targeting Sakura and her friends. This not only gets his hand broken, but eventually gets him arrested and ultimately killed.
• The Unfettered: Sakura's attacker really does not care who gets hurt or how much pain he causes in his attempts to get at Sakura. On several different occasions, he has endangered innocent lives, including Sakura's friends.
• What Measure Is a Non-Human?: Sakura is extremely reluctant to harm, let alone kill anyone or anything, human or otherwise. In the first chapter, she attempts to peacefully calm down the rampaging dragon, but changes her tone as soon as she discovers that said dragon is actually a magically-animated golem and thus not actually alive.
• Whole Episode Flashback: Chapter 13 centers on a flashback featuring Sakura, Tomoyo, Rika, Chiharu, and Naoko's respective mothers and the parallels between them and their daughters.
• You Are Worth Hell: Sakura and Syaoran both state on different occasions that without the other, life is meaningless.
• You Can't Fight Fate: It's established that the world runs in balance and when it's someone's time to die, someone is going to die, and if another were to interfere and save the doomed person, another person who should have lived will be doomed in his/her place. Sakura finds this out in the worst possible way.