Written by: Sakura_Kinomoto
26/53. Running Out of Time
There's no school for the day and Sakura is at home raking leaves. She's still rather tired. Eli, walking by her place, offers to help her out and does so. When Sakura's about to move the bike out of the way, Eli does it for her and places a spell on it when she's not looking. The bike glows red from the spell. The card mistress immediately senses something and turns around. Seeing nothing, Eli only smiles at her.
Tori returns momentarily while Sakura is eating her dinner and when he sees the bicycle, he senses something strange. He asked her if she his bike and she only tells him it was moved so she could rake the lawn. He then tells her not to use it and steals some of her food before leaving again. Kero watches his leave from Sakura's bedroom window and she comes up to give Kero his pudding. Falling to rest on her bed, she opens the new book and greets the Star cards. They fly out of the book and encircle her. She also looks over the Clow cards that still need to be changed. After touching them, Sakura gasps; they feel cold to her.
Kero is worried and says she needs to transform them or they will become distant. She'll have to change them within a specific time or they will be loose and create havoc once again. With fresh determination, Sakura releases her staff and tries to change all her cards. She only transforms eight before she nearly faints from exhaustion. The newly changed cards float about her and she's happy that they no longer feel so distant. All this until they notice something wrong with the Dash. It breaks its seal, escapes, and merges with Tori's bicycle as a means to run away.
Sakura chases after the bike and Dash. Sakura changes Windy but it has no affect against Dash as the latter is too fast. Taking out her phone, she calls someone and reaches Li, telling him what happened. The chase has led them to the park. Eli, accompanied by Spinner and Ruby, observes them through one of his magic circles. Ruby says it's fun while Spinner objects, reminding her that a Clow card is at stake. Sakura uses Jump to chase after the bike that rode up the side of the wall but can't reach far enough. She falls and is caught by the wind incantation Li used. He tries to attack it using Thunder and it misses.
The bicycle continues to run away and Sakura can sense the frightened Dash in the bike. She stops Li from attacking again and uses Loop. Everytime the bike tried to run away, it kept returning to Sakura. Sakura slowly skates up to the bicycle and Dash leaves it, trying to run away again. She uses Windy again and it drops Dash into Sakura's arms. It tries to struggle at first, then finally calms down and licks Sakura's face. It then changes back to a card. Sakura thanks Li and falls back from exhaustion. Kero tries to catch her and ends up being squashed by her weight. Madison hurries over at the end and asks what happened. From the rooftop, Eli continues to watch them.