A/N: My taste in romance is a little less fluffy than yours.

Savage mouths gnash at the air near her. Their yellow elongated teeth have the sharpness and shapes of a carnivore with insatiable dietary requirements. She finds herself at the top of their food pyramid, as she presses her back against the leafless tree. Old and gray, its bark is crisp and crackling against her new fighting uniform. At remembering this, she moves away, but the rough trunk has already scratched the smooth leather of her corset, a pale pink and black creation produced by her best friend. It was matched by black pants, and boots with four-inch heels. It looks a lot easier in the movies. The archetypal Hollywood heroine of average talent but untouchable beauty, strutting in leather fitted cat-suits and well-heeled shoes that never compromise her movements in skillfully devised battles.

I must have taken in her outfit innumerable times, memorizing its every seam and laced grommet… and leather panels that held her body so dearly. Her breasts swell above the corset, and rise and fall in a beautiful tempo that matches my...

Thump thump thump…

Even now as she fends off the monsters, I gawk. It was a wonder they go for her, over me. I had a lot more muscle, more height - more meat on me to leave at least three of those lifeless beasts filled for days. They'd lick my blood from their skeletal limbs with black wet tongues if they were after quantity.

She is striking in her environment, standing her ground with an illogical perseverance, as a firefly in a web, fluttering and glowing against the sticky trap. Where life is the spider nearing with fuzzy steps. These ugly dead are the wind that rocked the silk lines, tearing them off altogether. Even the ugly dead of the world could not pass up the opportunity to taste beauty, to bite into its tender flesh to savor the garnet-colored fluid that burst out between jaws like a hot spray of saline mist.

Had she worn clothes more suitable for fighting, allowing better movement and speed, she would not be inches from the grotesque being, which resemble animal more than human, ragged skin and random scarring formed postmortem. It extends an angular hand, its muscles tightened and shriveled around each digit. They are an unnatural length with sharp claw-like nails at their ends, extending further to scrape across her like an old nightmare fiend.

Thump thump thump.

I have no reason to be worried. She handled much worse as a kid with only a stuffed toy for assistance.

She whispers two words. The Sword forms in a blue beam from the star scepter she held. She swings it with a momentum that belongs to Power, severing the thing's arm at a sharp elbow. A second calculated swing leaves the horrid head thudding and rolling on the grassy ground.

"Sakura!" At this, she takes off in my direction. There's a limp in her walk, as her right foot barely touches the ground, before the left one comes down hard to compensate for the other.

She throws her arm over my shoulders and I help her into a dilapidated shed that looks like it could collapse at the slightest breeze. "Are you hurt?"

"I'm okay. Shoes killing me." It wasn't the zombie-werewolf-vampire mutated thing that was the real threat. The enemy here is the torture of her boots, which end painfully right above the knees.

The elaborate lacing would take too much time to be undone. "I can cut them off," I offer. I hold out my pendant, a careful maneuver of my jian sword would release her legs of the incapacitating agony from the torture devices Tomoyo lovingly designed. Sakura shakes her head. She must subject herself to further pain in the name of fashion.

My frustration with the irrational decision is evident in a long, exaggerated exhale. She laughs weakly, still reclaiming her breath from the running. Her athleticism is also limited by the corset which restricts her intake of air. She leans into me, and I'm so close I'm sure she can hear me go…

Thump thump thump.

They are loud heavy sounds, inching closer to her, as she eases into my arms. "Really, I'm fine. Just tired," she says between tiny breaths. I imagine us in the comfort of safety but most importantly privacy, as the mutant beasts outside drag their limbs without stealth, lacking any aptitude for hunt. Grunts and low-pitched moans only grow louder.

In my mind, we're back at my place and she's in my bed, reading a novel from the latest dystopian trilogy to top the bestsellers' lists. I nuzzle close to her, as she asks me how we would fare in a world that strategies to tear us apart at every turn. I take her book and toss it behind me, to the part of the room where neither of us care to search for it. "We'll make our own world." I pull the blankets over us, and make her mine in every way I know.

Back in reality, my cheeks have certainly reddened because I feel heat creeping over my face. "Let's hurry up then. We still have to save Kero and Yue."

Her tongue sticks out and she wrinkles her nose. "Those things are so gross." She shudders, strands of her hair falling into her face. The auburn extensions that Tomoyo favored with her sultry new look had long been removed. If not torn out at the combs that were clipped under her chin-length hair, they were unevenly chopped by Sword.

"I know they're repulsive but they're your guardians."

She playfully punches me in the arm, and I grasp her wrist, pulling her against me. "They may not act like it, but they sort of like you." I roll my eyes. "Okay, Kero tolerates you at the very least. Yue doesn't mind you being with me. It's my brother that projects his over-protectiveness on him."

"Thanks for reminding me of another member of the I-Hate-Syaoran Club. Is Eriol the Vice-President, because I assume Touya-."

Thumps. But these come from outside of me.

A mutant thing breaks down a couple of planks making up a weak wall to our right. It stumbles towards us and I push Sakura away. A Raitei Shourai sends a lightning bolt into the corpse, making it shake in an awful dance. It sizzles in the small shed and it falls to its true death in another thump. An overstimulated nerve causing random fidgeting until the electricity exhausts.

My chest pounds. The powerful organ contained in my ribcage does not quiet. Like a fist, I feel it hurt and hit inside.

It goes thump-thump-thump.

Sakura observes me from across. "Are you all right, Syaoran?"

"Yes-No. No."

"I can call them off. It's okay. Tomoyo and Kero went a little overboard with the storyline this time." That part was true. This gruesome concoction must have been conjured up by the little guardian. It was as if he stepped into my worse dreams to pluck the ingredients to make these things specifically for me. I only blame Tomoyo for the poor choice in costumes.

"It's not the monsters I'm afraid of."

Her face looks puzzled. "What is it then?"

"It's you, um, here."

It doesn't click. "Don't you dare start calling me a monster. It's unbearable as it is coming from my brother."

"You're not a monster."

"Why, thank you!" She pulls up her corset, only to bare a bit of midriff and hipbone at the bottom. "So what's bothering you?"

"Seeing you in that earlier and just wanting you."

"We're surrounded by zombies and we gotta fake-rescue my guardians, and you're thinking of my outfit?" Her hands trace the boning on the corset, the pale pink piping contrasts the black of the panels.

"Have you seen yourself? I have a hard time concentrating on stopping the undead."

She sneers. "You're so romantic."

Thump thump thump.

I weave my fingers in hers. Hers are stained by a dark green blood caked on the nail grooves and plates, and in between the digits in the soft crevices. Mine are dry and cold. I bring her death-grimed hand to my chest.

"It beats for you."

Thumping.

She grabs my hair with both of her hands. There is no gentleness in it, but I don't care. She kisses me with the same urgency as I have for her. We're in the midst of a strange apocalyptic dystopia. The sky is burning and falling, the earth shivers beneath, and we're kissing like it is truly is the last day on earth.

It's not the first kiss we've shared, but my beating always quickens whenever she catches me by surprise.

Th-Th-Thump thump thump.

And we're ready to face any true or make-believe enemy, in any moment – past, present or future, dimension, alternate universes penned by novice writers, Clow Reed descendants, unnamed cards, romantic rivals, overprotective friends and family members…

Because we're meant to be.

"I can sense about twelve of them nearby," I say. Their earthshaking lumbering gives them away. We take a deep breath and catch each other eyes in a sideways glance. "Are you ready?"

Our swords share a metal kiss as they meet in an 'X' between us. "Together?" she requests.

"Always."

There are a few thumps right before we run. Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump.

We descent upon the monsters that threaten to devour us, their hunger aiming to break us apart in many different ways.

We flatline them all.

A/N: Yes, Tomoyo and Kero are having a little too much fun with the Create.