The Impossible Dream
He was't sure where he was going, he wasn't sure why he was still going. All Yukio Oikawa was sure of was that his world had died along with his best-his only-friend.
Why did you do it, Hiroki? Why did you leave me?
Why did he have to play the hero this once? That man Hiroki had been assigned to protect in his policeman duties hadn't been worth his life. He could go home to his wife and children, blissfully unaware of the life left shattered by his bodyguard's sacrifice. Oikawa hated that man, though he didn't know the name. He hated the man who pulled the trigger and ended Hiroki's life even more.
Oikawa wandered the streets, still in the same daze he had been when he had received that fatal phone call. He wasn't sure where he was, but it didn't matter. His dream of visiting the Digital World with Hiroki was gone.
The Digital World.
No, it wasn't gone. It was still out there somewhere, that bizarre place he and Hiroki had seen in their youth. The place he had tried so hard to reach.
But without Hiroki, what was the point?
He dimly realized that he was in some sort of warehouse district, and could hear distant music from a nightclub on the other side of the warehouses. Sounds of people celebrating their lives.
Pathetic. Pathetic, every one of them. They didn't care, nor would they ever understand what he was going through.
Hiroki.
Oikawa slumped against a nearby crate, too wrapped up in his grief and anger to notice that the music and laughter had turned to explosions and screams as an amorphous blob-like creature attacked the nightclub.
A sharp movement pulled him out of his grief. Was that a cat running through the boxes? Most likely a stray which had caught some unlucky mouse. Oikawa clenched his fists. The world couldn't leave him alone, could it? He forced himself to move, to find someplace where the world could leave him alone and he could just die in peace.
Something-someone-coming through the boxes nearly slammed into him, running at full-tilt. Oikawa couldn't recover quickly enough, and fell down onto his backside. The person who had crashed into him gave a loud cry of dismay in a child's voice as something-a bird?-flew over his head. No, that wasn't a bird. Oikawa's eyes widened as he recognized that creature. But, it was impossible! How did a Digimon, a creature that had only existed in the Digital World, get here?
"A Digimon..." the words were out of his mouth before he could stop himself. The Digimon, a bat-like creature with some kind of rectangular charm dangling from its claws, paused in mid-air. No, it definitely wasn't a bat. Oikawa remembered the name distantly. It was a Picodevimon, a Child-level Digimon. Its expression was almost as thunderstruck as Oikawa imagined his own to be.
"What-how do you know about us?" The Picodevimon shook its head (Body?) "No matter, I can take care of this one, too!"
It summoned a dart in one of its claws, but before anything else could happen its eyes suddenly went wide.
"Koushiro!" A booming voice cried behind Oikawa, but he didn't, couldn't turn away from the living, breathing proof of his dreams. Then the Picodevimon turned to fly away.
"You just got lucky," it yelled as it flew back over the crates.
"No, don't go!" Oikawa tried to run after it, only to trip over limbs too fatigued to do what he needed to do and land on his face. Not again! If he lost the chance to finally see that world after all this time...
"Are you okay, sir?"
The boy Oikawa had crashed into leaned over, reaching out a hand. Oikawa resisted the urge to slap that hand for scaring the Picodevimon away, instead settling for ignoring the hand and pulling himself to his feet. He had to find that Digimon!
There was a distinctive buzzing sound and he turned his head to see another Digimon hovering behind the boy. Tentomon, he recalled the name. It was another Child-level Digimon with electrical powers
"He looks a little funny for a human. Are you sure he's all right, Koushiro?" It asked. Oikawa felt the blood leaving his face at the sight. Two of them! Two Digimon! Hiroki! Why couldn't you have been here to see this? Why did you have to die?
"You...might want to sit down, sir." This time Oikawa didn't resist the boy's efforts to push him down onto a nearby crate. All he could think about was Hiroki, what he'd think of all this. He'd probably love every minute of it, taking pictures and everything so that they could show the world and his father. Hiroki should have been here, Oikawa thought as tears ran down his face. It was such cruel justice to lose him, and then meet an actual, living Digimon.
"Why are you crying?" The Tentomon hovered over his head, blowing back his hair and clothing. The breeze somehow made the situation even more real.
"Because I finally saw a Digimon." There was no reaon to lie, and it wasn't like the boy wouldn't believe him with the Digimon right there. He finally had someone to talk to about that world again, even if that 'someone' was a young boy who didn't look much older than ten years old. Frizzy red hair, an orange shirt with a slender backpack on his shoulders. The boy didn't look like anything other than the average schoolkid, but that didn't matter. He had a Digimon with him.
"I knew they lived in some place," Oikawa continued. "My friend and I could contact them through his television when we were young..."
"Excuse me," the boy interrupted politely, his eyes glowing with sudden enthusiasm. "Does this mean you actually saw the Digital World?"
"For a while. We never figured out how or why, but we could somehow contact that world until my friend's father threw the television out."
"Does this mean you and your friend were Chosen Children?"
"Chosen Children?" Oikawa blinked. "What do you mean by that?"
"Did you and your friend get any devices, like this?" The boy held up a small blue device that reminded Oikawa of a digital watch.
"No. We never found that world again after my friend's father got rid of the television." Oikawa had never forgiven Hiroki's father for saying that they had made up the Digital World. It had been right there on the television, but he'd somehow never seen it. Oikawa imagined the expression on Hiroki's father if he knew that Digimon existed after all, that they were real. He wished he could be there when that happened.
"What happened to your friend?" The boy asked curiously.
"He...died recently." The words felt like ash coming out of his mouth.
"Oh. I'm sorry to hear that."
The Tentomon settled down by the boy.
"What about the Village of Beginnings? Your friend should be right there waiting for you."
"Humans aren't like Digimon, Tentomon," the boy told it. "We aren't reborn like you are."
"Really? That's weird. What happens when you die?"
"We don't know, the dead can't come back to tell us." The boy turned to Oikawa. "Sir, since you know about Digimon, would you be able to help us? I should introduce myself, too. My name is Koushiro Izumi."
"And I'm his partner, Tentomon. What's your name?"
"O-Oikawa. Yukio Oikawa."
"It's nice to meet you, mister Oikawa. We could really use your help, since there's an evil Digimon called Vamdemon who's trying to take over the human world. He's searching for the last Chosen Child, and we must find him or her before he does. I found a signal from the child's Digivice earlier," the boy held up the device in his hand. "I was trying to track it down, but they got away before I could get to them."
"If I help you," Oikawa began, dreading the answer. "Will you bring me to the Digital World? It was always our dream to go there, and I want to go even if Hiroki's gone."
The boy-Koushiro, Oikawa reminded himself-hesitated. "Um, I'm not sure how we could do it, sir. We were just pulled into the Digital World, and came back through Vamdemon's gate, which closed just after we got through. I'm not completely sure how we will get back, but if we can find a way to get there and back without our parents noticing, then I will bring you."
His eyes widened.
"My parents! Excuse me, sir. I must get back home before my family realizes I'm gone. They'll be worried about me if they know I'm out here this late."
"No, wait!" Oikawa nearly tripped again as he pulled himself to his feet. "How do I contact you? Where do you live?"
Koushiro paused for a moment before pulling off his backpack and lifting a piece of paper and a marker out. "Do you have an e-mail address?"
"Y-yes." As a computer programmer, it was part of Oikawa's job to have an e-mail address. Koushiro nodded, then wrote an address on the paper before handing it to him.
"You can contact me there. I'd be happy to talk to you more mister Oikawa, but I really have to go. Tentomon?"
"Ready, Koushiro!"
Koushiro handed the paper to Oikawa who took it in a hand that only trembled slightly, then the Tentomon started glowing.
"Tentomon Evolve!"
The Digimon's form grew into an expanding pillar of white light before reforming as something much bigger.
"Kabuterimon!"
Oikawa watched in awe as the boy climbed the massive insect. Kabuterimon? That wasn't a Digimon he was familiar with. How much had the Digital World changed since he was a child?
But that didn't matter, did it? Digimon were real! He could finally go to that world, but Hiroki...
I'll do it for you Hiroki, He thought as the Digimon took off over the sea of crates. I'll go there, you'll see. Our dream isn't dead yet.
FIN
Author's note: I had initally planned to continue this, but a lack of time to re-watch the original Adventure series and the fact that my plot wouldn't start to get divergent from canon until after 01 kinda put an end to that. Since it's been floating around on my laptop for so long, I figured I'd put this up as a one-shot what-if.
The title comes from a old musical called "Man of La Mancha," which I used to listen to a lot when I was a kid. I thought it felt appropriate.