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"These Kaos Cards bring out the worst in all of us, don't they?"
Tomoyo Daidouji, Chapter 6.0: A Duality of Despair

Chaos Card Captor Sakura is a Cardcaptor Sakura fanfiction written by Drake The Duelist aka Kaos Drake.. In Tomoeda, between Seasons 2 and 3, a mysterious set of "Kaos Cards" from Clow Reed's past reappear and begin terrorizing Tomoeda. Leading them are two Guardians: Lycan and Damien, who have differing opinions regarding how best to reach their goals. Sakura and Syaoran both wind up involved in the effort to capture all eight Kaos Cards, but Sakura is aided by a mysterious substance called the Elixir of Fire, a potion capable of empowering the user with superhuman resilience to everything, as well as a few... personality quirks. After a few captures, infighting begins to break out between the Guardians of Kaos, as well as between the Card Captors themselves.

As of April 17, 2011, DrakeTheDuelist declared Chaos Card Captor Sakura to officially be a Dead Fic, partially because of Real Life difficulties and partially to avoid controversy from the ending, which he hints at not being a happy one.


General Tropes:

  • Apocalypse How: An implied Class X-4, when Orchid merges Gin’s kaos, her own natural kaos, and the kaos of the Elixir of Fire together. The result is so catastrophic that it causes the text of the fanfiction to be unreadable for several lines. The universe recovers when the Elixir of Fire finally burns itself out.
  • Armor-Piercing Question: One of the few things that can truly get to somebody filled with the Power of Kaos is one of these. While often given by Tomoyo, Orchid and Lycan will use them to jab at each other (which often proves rather foolish...).
  • Because Destiny Says So: When Syaoran finally confronts Gin, he learns that fate and free will are actually the same thing. How can such a thing be achieved? Because individuals are destined to be enslaved to their own whims.
  • Berserk Button: Insult Clow Reed with Yue in earshot. Not even Sakura gets away with that!
  • Big Damn Heroes: This is usually how the less-involved characters from each chapter get into the main body of the plot.
    • Syaoran in Chapter 2, even though...
    • Syaoran in Chapter 3, thereby introducing him for the first (real) time.
    • Yue and Damien in Chapter 6.5
    • Orchid (yes, by herself) in Chapter 7
    • Keroberos, Yue, and Damien in Chapter 8.0
    • A Big Damn Villains for Orchid (yes, by herself... again) in 8.5, presaged with Sarcastic Clapping.
  • Bolivian Army Ending: The end of Chapter 6.0. Syaoran is beaten, battered, and practically defeated. Yet he still gets back up. Thank you, Tomoyo.
    • Had the publication ended just one fragment earlier, the entire fanfiction would've ended with reality shattering around everyone, the ultimate Despair Event Horizon.
  • Break the Cutie: Pick a character, any character.
  • Chekhov's Gun: In Chapter 8.0, you aren’t led to believe that the pillars in the subway station do anything... until Orchid destroys the last of them and brings the entire station down on Lycan’s head!
  • Close to Home: Chapter 4’s title.
  • Curb-Stomp Battle: Most fights are very short (if you don’t count all the incessant yammering) and don’t involve more than just a few swings.
    • Probably one of the most egregious of these so-called “battles” is when the Clow Cards attempt to gang up on Lycan, only to get blown away.
  • Curse Cut Short: Once to Damien (by Tomoyo), and once to Touya (by Sakura).
  • Darker and Edgier: This might as well be the author’s mission statement.
  • Deal with the Devil: To use the Kaos Cards, you need to harness a “key that hides the powers of the Inferno”. (And by the Inferno, you can pretty safely bet that this means Hell.) And the Card Captor in question has to make a “contract” with this key.
    • Gin Clow makes a deal with Dncyltr to get his own kaos power. Later on, Orchid tries to make a similar contract, after absorbing Gin’s kaos, to get even more power! Fortunately for the Cardcaptor Sakura universe, Dncyltr ignores her pleas.
  • Despair Event Horizon: Was bound to happen with how dark the fic got. Here's how it happens: Lycan steals the Elixir of Fire, reclaims all seven Kaos Cards, feigns killing Syaoran, kills Damien, steals the Oblivion Card, and when Sakura / Orchid and the gang finally catch a break, Lycan unveiled his Gambit Roulette in their faces before ascending to his One-Winged Angel form! Orchid thinks of killing herself at the very thought of it all.
  • Did You Just Punch Out Cthulhu?: Did Orchid just crash DrakeTheDuelist's hard drive? Breaking the Fourth Wall, indeed!
  • Does This Remind You of Anything?: Pleas for Sakura to not use the Elixir of Fire make it sound like a drug addiction. A bit Anvilicious at first, but goes away later on as the Elixir is flanderized. And later stolen.
  • Drama Bomb Finale: Chapter 8.0 was about the climactic battle, while Chapter 8.5 and the epilogue mostly deal with the repercussions of everything that happened previously.
  • Early-Installment Weirdness: The end of Chapter 1, and parts of Chapter 2 that turned out to be a Nightmare-induced dream are the only times Sakura's crush on Yukito are even mentioned. By the time Yukito shows up again for a bit part in Chapter 6, this crush seems to be completely swept under the rug.
  • Expo Speak: Much of the dialog in Chapter 8.5, particularly Gin Clow’s dialog.
  • Expy: Gin Clow is this for Kurtis, a vindictive, heavily accented character from the far less successful fic that Drake wrote, Hive Fleet Akyron.
  • Face–Heel Turn: Sakura, as she turns into Orchid.
  • Fate Worse than Death: Anybody hit by the Fade magic will progressively lose their five senses, one right after the other, all while you go insane. While non-fatal in and of itself, how horrific would it be to live the rest of your life with no cognitive senses? And what happens to the Clow Cards is more like asphyxiation, which is fatal, not to mention disturbing considering how the Clow Cards aren’t just fading away in Season 3, but are painfully suffocating.
  • Fire, Ice, Lightning: Kaos (barring Orchid’s, but ‘’particularly’’ Damien’s) is constantly shown with fire and other flaming imagery and colors. Orchid shows an affinity for ice-based kaos power later on. And Syaoran sticks with his canonic affinity for his lightning ofuda.
  • First-Name Basis: In an attempt to fire back at Lycan (who recently “killed” Syaoran), Orchid accidentally calls Syaoran by his first name, albeit as part of a quote. She catches herself afterwards, but the Relationship Upgrade still stands.
    • Lycan has a rather interesting take on this. No character ever refers to Lycan with an honorific (except for Orchid calling him “Lycie-chan”). Similarly, Lycan only once refers to Sakura with a “-san” honorific, but drops this later on, more often referring to her as “Kinomoto Sakura”. According to Word of God, Lycan does this as a derisive reference to the fact that he’s a predator, and pretty much everybody else is his prey, something like a slaughterer calling a cow by its zoologically-correct binomial nomenclature. No one else refers to Lycan with honorifics because they’re just not quite sure what to make of him / it.
  • Fix Fic: Kind of. What originally started as an attempt to explain why Sakura could use the Clow Cards with a Star Wand, this fic poked more holes in the plot than it mended. Granted, some holes needed poking, while others were exercises of unnecessary cruelty.
  • Fun with Acronyms: The author is quite fond of these, having given every one of his previous major fanfictions (which did not exist) a three-character acronym. Didn’t work too well with ‘’Chaos Card Captor Sakura’’, given that getting the acronym to three characters would result in “CCS”, an acronym most commonly associated with the parent series. What’s an author to do? Answer: Chaos Card Captor Sakura -> CCCS. Shortening that down even further, there are three C’s, allowing the acronym to be shortened to “C (x) 3 (+) S”. Hence, "C3S".
  • Fur Against Fang: Damien is a half-human with monstrous fangs and bat wings. Lycan is a hyperspace wolf lizard. Much Fantastic Racism abounds.
  • Gambit Roulette: Lycan's, concluding in Chapter 8.0. Yeah, so he’s the supposed head honcho bad guy, and he really means for Sakura, his chosen Card Captor, to wind up with the Kaos Cards in the end. Normally a surprise, but given the source material, it’s not much of a surprise. The roulette comes in when Lycan deliberately forfeits his own Final Judgment, allowing Sakura to take the Kaos Cards, and for Lycan to scoop up Oblivion, the true eighth Kaos Card. But even this is a ploy, as Lycan expects Orchid to kill him with the Kaos Cards and rip open the dimensional barrier to Gin’s ‘holding cell’, so that she can use her power to turn Gin into the Life Card’s true form!
    • Lycan’s plan plays Gambit Roulette a bit more realistically, considering that his plan not only ultimately failed in the course of the fanfic, but it failed in every instance he tried it before off screen.
  • Good Is Not Nice: Gin Clow himself. Though it turns out that Gin wants Kaos destroyed just as much as any other protagonist, he’s actually a massive Jerkass when Sakura and Syaoran finally meet him. Considering Gin beats up on a chained up Sakura, he’s possibly even worse off on the karma meter than Lycan was!
  • Gratuitous English: Used as a literary language barrier against the language in which the fanfiction is written. Damien is supposed to speak mostly English and a little Japanese. Everybody else (except maybe Kero and Lycan) is supposed to speak mostly Japanese. The result: when Damien breaks out into Gratuitous English ("Little Wolf"), the rest of the cast hears this within their own accent ("Riteru Wurufu").
    • Used as a plot device when Damien doesn't realize that "the Cherry Blossom" (heard as "Chari Burosomu") is actually "Sakura", and then freaks out at seeing her in person.
  • Heroic BSoD: If you talk to Lycan for long enough, you will get one. Even if you're Tomoyo.
  • Hyperspace Is a Scary Place: Of course it's a scary place. Lycan lives there.
  • Impossibly Cool Weapon: The Inferno Crossbow.
  • Informed Ability: Apparently, Syaoran is a biology whiz. Justified, considering he's been studying it.
  • In-Series Nickname: A lot of characters have in-universe nicknames, either given by others, or self-assigned:
    • Sakura = Orchid
    • Gin Clow = Lycan
    • Lycan = Lycie-chan
    • Reed Clow = Clow Reed
    • Dncyltr = Kaos Encarnate
  • Insult Backfire: Lycan revels in how horrific everybody thinks he is. What's even more disturbing is that he enjoys it when you tell him how hurt you are.
  • Let Us Never Speak of This Again: One of the reasons why no character in season 3 of Cardcaptor Sakura will refer to events that occurred in Chaos Card Captor Sakura.
  • Lotus-Eater Machine: Chapter 2 starts out with Sakura and Kero being trapped in a reverse Lotus-Eater Machine in the form of the Nightmare Card, which plays out extreme forms of Sakura's insecurities and feeds off of them.
  • MacGuffin: The summer project.
  • Psycho Serum : The Elixir of Fire grants power at the cost of granting quirks. It gets flanderized later on. Whereas at first it’s an artifact so dangerous that one would have to cross the Godzilla Threshold to even consider using it, the Elixir of Fire is, in more recent chapters, as Bottled Heroic Resolve which is broken out repeatedly, deliberately, and seemingly without thought. It’s actually made of The Power of Love. Unfortunately, love can manifest itself negatively, as well as positively. Mostly negatively, though… bastards
  • Meaningful Echo: “Zettai Daijobu”, which Syaoran stews over throughout the entire fic.
    • Lycan: “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice… you shall not live long enough to do.” Sadly, this echo was rather obvious because this incredibly narmtastic line, echoed in Chapter 7, was first written back in Chapter 2, long before Lycan’s character was fully established, or even before the writing got all that good.
  • Meaningful Name:
    • Orchid: If you've ever seen an Orchid before [1], they're actually quite pale. This contrasts sharply with the Cherry Blossom (i.e. "Sakura") flower. Orchid actually chooses this name.
    • Gin: The Japanese word for "silver", which is the only thing that can kill werewolves, according to their most common depictions. (Of course, Our Werewolves Are Different.) Silver is also a very contrasting color to black, which in Japanese is "Kuro", which sounds very similar to the Japanese pronunciation of "Clow".
    • Lycan: Keeping in mind that Our Werewolves Are Different, Lycan claims that this was the name people devised to label him. He then took it and ran with it. Sort of the in-series version of a Fan Nickname. (Not to be confused with that nickname...)
    • Damien: Named after an excommunicated Catholic missionary.
  • Meanwhile, Back at the…: One of the few consistent formatting decisions in the entire fic, a scene change will always be signified with the same pattern: *-*-*. Word of God on this is that the keystrokes are (shift) 8 (un-shift) dash (shift) 8 (un-shift) dash (shift) 8 (un-shift). These keystrokes prevent auto-formatting on a line of straight dashes or asterisks that can potentially mess up the format when posting. The stated purpose for these abrupt scene changes are to make the fic read more like an anime and less like a book, harkening to the fic’s anime basis.
  • Mind Rape Is A Special Kind Of Evil: If CLAMP works have one ubiquitous trait, besides Ho Yay of course, it would have to be that the spiritual / emotional consequences always trump the physical consequences. Following that logic, this ought to make a fair amount of sense.
  • Monster of the Week: The Kaos Cards tend to this for a while. The first four chapters are reminiscent of the majority of the Cardcaptor Sakura series in that they involve the basic Find-Identify-Counter-Defeat pattern.
  • Most Writers Are Male: Evident in the amount of comparative attention (particularly in the internal thought processes department) that Syaoran gets, compared to Sakura.
  • Motive Rant: As a prose fic with Alternative Character Interpretation galore, most character development is done with this. Basically, if a character spends more than three straight sentences talking without interruption, you can bet you’re reading one of these.
    • Chapter 8.5, full stop.
  • My Death Is Just the Beginning: Lycan, whose death is the beginning of the events in the real last chapter.
  • Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Lycan, Damien, and a number of the Kaos Cards (most blatantly with the Oblivion) all qualify. But by far the name to run away from the fastest is Dncyltr, mentioned only once, with the only implication being that God Is Evil. note 
  • Neck Lift: Shown by Orchid (with her foot, no less!), to demonstrate how imposing she actually is.
  • Ominous Latin Chanting: There is a bunch of crazy-speak in Chapter 8.5, especially one line repeated over and over again (right as the entire universe caves in!) that would be otherwise indecipherable to the characters who hear it. Hint: read it backwards. Translated, the repeated message is All work and no play makes Drake a dull boy.”
  • Order Versus Kaos
  • OT3: invoked Tomoyo apparently loves both Sakura and Syaoran.
  • Punctuated! For! Emphasis!: Only instead of abusing capitalization, the author abuses italics. All! The! TIME!!!!! If you’re seeing capital letters, it’s because people are SHOUTING! PARTICULARLY! LOUD!!!
  • Purple Prose: Pretty much everything after Chapter 4, which carries onto the Shards of Kaos.
  • Put on a Bus: Meilin. Justified in the fact that she wasn't physically there at the time, but the author bypassed any opportunity to cameo her in somewhere, as was originally planned for Chapter 7.
  • Rage Against the Heavens: Chapter 8.5. Gin Clow does this a lot.
  • Red Eyes, Take Warning: Lycan. Rather than blinking with organic eyeballs, his eyes flicker red to signify blinking. Or getting beaten up so hard he can barely stay conscious.
    • The glimmer of kaos energy in the eyes of anyone possessing an unnaturally massive amount of kaos, such as the Elixir of Fire. See Sakura / Orchid and Gin Clow.
  • Refuge in Audacity: Sakura’s supposed successful suicide in Chapter 6.0.
  • Sadly Mythtaken: The Li family has a legend that tells an apocryphal story about Clow Reed defeating the forces of Kaos, including Lycan. (This story likely had an Unreliable Narrator, having been presumably written by the Li clan.) Aside from the basics (there really are Kaos Cards), just about nothing else in this story is accurate. (For instance, the Kaos Cards are not nocturnal. Chimera was only specifically handwaved to take on the characteristics of diurnal animals.) Cue Syaoran’s Heroic BSoD when he realizes all too late that Sakura had been fighting forces far beyond her abilities, at least thus far, by herself.
  • Save the Villain: Pretty much the entire point of Chapter 8.5. But... who is the villain?
  • Schrödinger's Butterfly: Chapter 2.
  • Sequel Hook:
    • Lycan: “Let’s just say that some things in this world that transcend even Kaos.”
    • One of the previous Card Captors of Kaos was mentioned to be Hui Sang, the Big Bad of Cardcaptor Torika.
    • Lycan calls Damien a “zaangr’t”, who, in Science and Sorcery, are a race of ancient demons who serve as the prison guards (and occasionally inmates) in a dimension-wide Fire and Brimstone Hell.
    • Another hint at the sequel crossing into Cardcaptor Torika: Gin Clow privately tells Sakura / Orchid that she isn’t the one he saw in his vision, and that she would be “laid low by a dear friend”, and that Syaoran will “shun her memory”. Oh look, Deria Avery just got her learner’s permit...
  • Shout-Out: Numerous in source and breadth:
    • "Broken", the title for Chapter 5, is from the Seether / Amy Lee song of the same name.
      • Ironically, the early scenes of Chapter 5 are indicative of Matchbox 20's "Unwell".
    • Lycan: “What did you mortals hope to accomplish by coming here?” A shout-out to The Maledict from Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil. The Maledict says a very similar line right before you begin the final showdown.
    • Keroberos’ comment, after Lycan surrenders the Kaos Cards and reverts to his real form, more amphibious than mammalian, diminutively suggesting that Lycan resembled a certain car insurance agency’s spokes-gecko.
    • Of all things, to Dawn of War. See how many you can find...
      • Kaos. Though that ought to be a given.
      • When Yue and Damien go at it, expect to hear a lot of “heretic”, “heathen”, and the all-purposed “scum” thrown around. While pretty scathing and out of place in your average Cardcaptor Sakura fanfiction, these are all ubiquitous catch-all terms for everything from cartoonish super-villainy to mild misdemeanors in the 40k universe.
    • Destruction and Despair, the two alignments of the Kaos Cards, are also two out of the three fires lit by Twinrova, in order to revive Ganon in The Legend of Zelda: Oracle Games. (The third fire, Sorrow, is basically Despair Lite when you think about it.)
    • Orchid seems to be rather skilled at twirling around a scythe...
    • See Ominous Latin Chanting.
    • Gin Clow: “Oh yes, witch. I am Lycan. And I have seen everything.”
  • Shown Their Work: All the way back in Chapter 1, the numeric combination that held the Kaos Cards in the museum was “520”, referencing May 20th, Nadeshiko’s birthday.
  • Spin-Off: Shards of Kaos. Depending on the ‘shard’, they can be prequels, sequels, expositional additions, focusing on tertiary characters, or other means of exposition that would otherwise deviate too far from the main plot. Word of God describes these as being analogous to Stories From the Sakura Book for Cardcaptor Torika.
  • Tailor-Made Prison: The world inside the Oblivion Card in Chapter 8.5.
  • Transformation Sequence: The "unfolding" of the Inferno Crossbow is described more briefly each time. You should know how it works by now.
    • The use of a Transformation Sequence is also averted on occasion when a character's Meaningful Name cropping up, signifying a transformation, sometimes because the actual transformation was either extremely subtle or off-screen. For example, suddenly referring to Sakura as "Orchid" signifies her change from one disposition to another, and calling Kero by "Keroberos" refers to him in "Big Kero" form (the latter of which isn't widely recognized as canon).
  • What Do You Mean, It's Not Didactic?: invoked Word of God’s explanation for the aforementioned Purple Prose is that Chaos Card Captor Sakura'' is an intentional and deliberate parody of this trope.
  • Xtreme Kool Letterz: Though the title is Chaos Card Captor Sakura, the titular magic is never stated to be "chaos", but "kaos". This is, in part, to differentiate between the magic (kaos), the entity (Kaos Encarnate; a.k.a. Dncyltr), and the state of disorder (chaos)]], in part to make the obvious reference a little less obvious, and in part as a Japanese Funetik Aksent. note 
  • You Cannot Grasp the True Form: Lycan. You physically cannot shine a light on his body such that you can get a clear look at him. Also, any projectile attacks directed at him merely sink into his skin, like shooting at a wormhole. In fact, Lycan uses this power as a Mind Screw in its own right.
    • Mirage. She tends towards looking like Sakura in order to allow people to see her.
    • The Life Card, which has no true form to grasp..
  • You Should Know This Already: None of the canon characters die. Also, neither Syaoran nor Sakura manage to confess their love without the threat of a Reset Button. There still has to be a Season 3.
    • "Sakura" means "Cherry Blossom", and "Syaoran" (also "Xiaolang") means "Little Wolf". If you didn't know this before, then the Gratuitous English will largely be lost on you.

Tropes present in the Shards of Kaos:

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