Digiworld Adventure
Part Twenty-ThreeA few hours of crying led me to a state where there simply wasn't anything left in my tear ducts. My eyes were sore and I just knew that they would be red, but I didn't particularly care about that. It was starting to get a bit later in the day, and all of a sudden I heard a light knocking at the door. I ignored it, but they were persistent to inform me.
"Ian?" my mother said lightly. "Dinner's ready downstairs, would you like me to bring you something?"
"I'm not hungry," I said, my voice hoarse.
I heard her sigh, the kind of sigh that says in extreme sarcasm, 'I'm okay, nothing's wrong.'
Anger twitched through me again, and I yelled, "don't sigh about it! I'm not hungry so leave me alone!"
There was silence for a moment, then I heard her footsteps going back down the stairs.
A couple long hours later, the sun had gone down. I rolled over to look at my clock, and I discovered that it was nine o'clock at night. With a deep sigh of annoyance, I heaved myself out of bed, my body cramping from being in such a confined position for so long.
The stairs took a long time to get down, and I severely hoped that I wouldn't have time to get the hang of it. I went right through the house, noticing in the corner of my eye that my family was sitting in the TV room, completely entranced by it. Shaking my head in disgust, I went by and back into the mud room and promptly went outside.
It was dark out and I went far out into our yard so I could see the stars well. Now I was thankful that we had such a big yard so I could escape. I went all the way out to the end on the bank, dropping onto my back with my arms behind my head to look at the stars.
When I first got to the Digital World, the night sky had been a mystery it. In fact, it remained that way until the second I left it. Now I was staring at a sky I had known my entire life, and I was extremely dissatisfied with it.
"I would give everything to be back," I thought in anguish. "Everything and ANYTHING. I don't know how those other kids could leave like that, but they must've been completely insane."
A cool breeze picked up and I shivered a bit. Intense loneliness sunk right back in, because I didn't have Guilmon around to light a fire and to embrace for warmth. It was as if something physical had actually been torn out of me and then smashed before my eyes. I rolled over onto my side, my arms wrapping tightly around myself for warmth. My eyes clamped shut, trying to visualise him, but my memory in this world worked in a different way. I could imagine everything about him, to the detail I could draw him, but his face was cloudy.
Tears worked their way up again, but not many fell. "Guilmon…" I whispered.
I woke up to my name being called. It was really dark now, and I was quite cold, despite the warm late spring air.
"Ian!" I heard my mother calling.
I rolled back onto my back, sitting up. I pushed the hair back behind my ears, shaking out the bits of yard waste. "Jeez, what the hell does she want?" I slowly got up, scrabbling blindly for my crutches in the dark. "What?" I called back, now fully upright.
"What are you doing out here?" she demanded. "It's past midnight!"
"I was sleeping until someone woke me," I snapped.
"You'll catch a cold if you stay out here," she said, not getting too close to me and her arms folded crossly.
"I've been sleeping outside for more than two months!" I nearly shouted. "Chilliwack weather isn't going to bother me that much!"
"Well come inside now," she said, starting back to the house.
"Will you just leave me alone?" I asked furiously. "You've been dying for attention, and I'm not giving any and I don't plan on it!"
"You shouldn't be like this!" she yelled, getting past her acceptance point. "We paid a fortune for your hospital bills and this is how you thank us?"
"I'm not thanking you!" I roared, quite pissed now. "You tore me out of the one place I was happy, and there's no way you can think of getting a thank-you for that! Christ! Just leave me alone! If anything, you should be apologising! Now leave me alone!"
Her mouth opened in rage, then closed. She started to look like a fish, opening and closing her mouth, but I was satisfied when nothing returned. "Fine!" she said lightly in her sarcastic voice. With that she returned to the house, stomping the whole way.
"Good," I snorted when the door slammed shut. "Now maybe I can get some sleep." I fell back to the ground, turning over to get back to sleep.
I woke up quite early the next morning. It was pretty light out, but that was just a sign that summer was coming. With a shrug, I got up and went into the house. No one was up yet, so I made myself a quick bowl of cereal. I went into the TV room and checked the date, pleased to find that it was Monday. "At least school isn't completely crawling with people I hate," I growled in a low voice, shutting the TV back off.
As soon as I had downed my bowl of cereal, I crept back upstairs to my room, or as quietly as I could with crutches. I felt so immobilised and pathetic carrying them around, like I needed inanimate objects to help me around.
Another wave of sadness crushed down on me as I remembered how Guilmon had carried me up the stairs in the Library at South Populous beach. I had had a broken ankle then, but he hadn't come close to hesitating to help me out then. With that my attention drew back to the empty feeling that still resided in me. I faltered for a second on the stairs, clutching at my chest with a pain of sorrow, but quickly continued.
I wasn't going to let these people know my secrets. No one seemed to realise what had actually happened to me, and I wasn't in a hurry to tell them. I guess my wounds just 'magically appeared,' then. Sadness quickly turned to disgust towards the people in this house, and I stormed the rest of the way to my room.
"Fresh clothes," I thought, moving to the dresser in my room.
I opened it, glancing quickly in all three drawers to conclude that there was nothing worth picking up in them. A discoloration on the bed caught my eye, and when I turned to it, I found my white shirt and beige baggy pants folded neatly on it. My heart warmed a little at the site of them, and I quickly picked them up. When I did, though, a slight weight in them captured my attention. Confused, I unfolded them resulting in a clank and a rattle of two things dropping to the floor.
"It couldn't be…" I started, looking down.
My heart leapt with joy to find my Tag and Crest with my digivice lying on the floor! As quickly as I could, I got down to the floor and scooped them up, holding them to my chest for comfort.
"I don't know how or why, but I don't care!" I thought with joy. "I've got more physical proof of my being there! Oh Guilmon!" I looked at my crest, my smile stopping dead in its tracks. What was usually a vibrant gold colour was now a deep and faded grey, like the life of it had been just sucked right out. "No!" I thought desperately, my eyes darting to the digivice. The usually lit black light screen was now just static, hissing away before my eyes. "GUILMON!"
My heart cried out in pain at the sight of them, but I still put them back to their usual places: the Crest around my neck, and the digivice with my pants waist.
I sneaked back downstairs to the big washroom of my house, then started the water running, hoping desperately that no one would wake from the sound of it.
I stripped off my current clothes, discarding them in the laundry basket nearby and stepped into the shower, hardly aware that it was on its coldest setting.
Life in the Digital World had given me a stronger body, more heat resistant, a stronger threshold for pain, and overall just plain stronger. As the icy water ran over my frame, I noticed for the first time since Leomon's bar my toned chest, lightly muscled arms and solid abdomen. I wasn't some freak jock thing, but I was no longer the scrawny and impossibly skinny child that had originally left this world for the Digiworld. Also, my skin was a dark shade of brown, which was why everyone had seemed to pale to me when I 'woke up.'
Not in a mood for dawdling, I rinsed off and grabbed a towel, quickly drying myself off before slipping back into the clothes I had worn for months on end. I sniffed at them in vain, hoping to catch a scent of the Digital World – anything other than this world – but all I got was a pleasant mix of Tide and Febreeze. I sighed, pulling the shirt on, then replacing the Crest of Life to its rightful place around my neck.
I stepped out of the steamy washroom and into the mud room, starting when I heard movement from upstairs. In and instant I slipped my sandals on, noticing instantly how uncomfortable shoes really were after an extremely long time without them, and then escaped out the door.
As fast as I could, I made my way to the end of the driveway, my crutches and my damned knee pissing me off to no end. I was on the verge of throwing the crutches away, but I wasn't at my stupid angry yet. With a deep sigh, I started down the short trip to the bus stop behind the Chilliwack High School.
"At least school will be the same," I said to myself rounding the corner of a side street. I often took this detour to avoid the main roads and enjoy the scenery of well-kept houses and yards.
When I got to the bus stop, I wasn't surprised in the least to find myself alone there. I had woken up considerably early today, so I didn't expect anyone to show up for at least half an hour from now. So, with that, I dropped down to the pavement, leaning against the small building behind me, and rested my injured knee, my crutches waiting obediently beside me.
Not too long later, a somewhat familiar green van pulled up, and out came Liam Midzain, another student from Chilliwack going to Sardis Senior for French Immersion. Frenchies, we called ourselves, I remembered.
He turned around after the van left and glanced at me, the did a double take as he realised it was me he was looking at.
"Ian?" he asked incredulously as he approached me. "I thought you were in a coma at the Vancouver Hospital!"
I nodded, pushing my almost dry hair behind my ears. "I was," I said with a smile, dragging myself back up to my feet. He extended a hand for help, and I took it with gratitude, my crutches coming right back under my armpits. "I left yesterday though, and I didn't want to stay home."
His eyes were still wide with shock; his attention stuck around my face. "What happened to you?" he asked. "We heard strange stories, but none of them made any sense!"
I sighed, still not planning on telling anyone about the Digital World. "While I was in a coma, it appears these wounds started appearing on me." I remembered that I had cuts on my face from in the Gates of Fire. "Broken nose, broken ankle, pinched ligament in my shoulder, fractured kneecap," I started listing them off on my fingers, Liam's face filling with more and more shock as I continued. "…And I guess random cuts and bruises everywhere too."
"H… h-how is that possible?" he asked in shock.
I shook my head. Liam had been a good friend to talk to, but not nearly a good enough friend to tell such a secret to. Besides, he was one of the sane ones who would think I was crazy anyway. "I don't know," I said, shrugging my shoulders.
Just then a white car pulled up, and out stepped Danene, her younger sister and her young brother. She clued in far faster than Liam had, and I had to repeat myself once more for her. She, like all my friends who came to this stop, was another French Immersion student. Her siblings, however, went to the Middle School just on the other side of the High School we were standing by.
When Taylor came up in the red Jeep, I just stopped repeating myself, telling him that I would tell everyone when they were all here, or when the bus came.
Ten minutes later, with a crowd of Liam, Danene, Taylor, Tyler, Josh, Joss and Quentin, I started on the story once more. Our bus pulled up early on, though, so I was cut out for a minute. As I got on, everyone on the bus noticed me, and I started to realise how strange I must've looked, and how far the rumours had really stretched. Still, I ignored the other people and made my way to the back of the bus, being greeted by Taija, Brianne and an extremely sleepy Tori. Brianne was the only one who wasn't a Frenchie in our part of the bus. I restarted the story once more, then finished to a barrage of questions.
Being in this world was pissing me off, but I was glad to have people to distract me from my dislike.
"Does it hurt?" Tori asked, pointing to the cuts on my face.
I guess they must've been pretty bad, because they all gasped when I shook my head. "I had forgotten about them until Liam pointed them out this morning," I said.
"That's incredible!" Tyler exclaimed, leaning over the seat in front of me.
It was then that I noticed that no matter how important I seemed to be to these people, I was still sitting alone in my seat. Everyone else except Taija and Tori had doubled up due to lack of space, but they were only like that because they preferred their space.
I was the talk of the bus until we got to the school, and I was bothered to see it crawling with kids already. Seeing people was so different now, as I was used to being the only human around for so long now. With a shake of my head, I gathered up my crutches and followed the line out the bus, finding going down the stairs far harder than going up.
As I stepped off the bus, I heard a gasp and a scream of shock as my friend Jaclyn came rushing up to me. "Ian!" she screamed, stopping in front of me, unsure if I was in a condition where hugging was okay.
"Hi," I said slowly. I had decided long ago that I would forget everything I left behind to stay in the Digital World with Guilmon, and I had been happy about it. Guilt started to sink in a bit as I looked at her worried eyes. With that, I balanced the crutches and hugged her.
She was far shorter than me, but it was always awkward for me. "You'll have to explain your… injuries," she said with hesitation.
"Can we wait until we find Caitlin?" I asked, preferring not to have to explain this so many times.
She nodded, looking at me with unease. I could tell that my current condition was bothering her, but she wasn't one to talk about such things.
We found Caitlin in her first block classroom, and she was so excited to see me that she didn't even bother to see if I was okay. She just hugged me, and I believe she started to cry.
To my surprise, I didn't even feel the slightest hint of guilt. I was off having the best time in my entire life for ages, while everyone else was worried sick about me. And I didn't seem to care. It seemed completely superficial of me to think, but Guilmon replaced even my strongest friends in this world. So, after she started to calm down a bit, I explained the story for the forth time this morning, and then the bell rang sending me off to my first class.
Throughout the rest of the day I not only had to relay the same story twelve more times, I also had to bear shocked expressions in the hallways, teachers and other adults demanding to find out what had happened to me, but the worst part of it all was being so handicapped that I couldn't be the same bustling person I was in the Digital World. That had been the second most excruciatingly painful parts of being back in this world: being changed back to the person I once was.
By the time the bus home rolled around, I was quite irritated; I was a boiling pot ready to boil over.
That's why what happened then happened at all.
I was waiting at the place where the bus stops, leaning against a tree, when my twin brother Robbie and some of his druggie friends came up to me.
"Dude," he said in his poser gangster accent, "my bro's wanna know what happened to yeh."
This was not what I wanted to do now, and even less for him and his friends. I simply sighed and ignored him.
"Ian!" he said loudly.
Still nothing forthcoming from me.
He roughly grabbed my good shoulder, pulling me around, and I was satisfied to see him recoil slightly from the anger that burned in my eyes.
Before he could even flinch, I balled my hand into a fist and slammed it into the centre of his face, a loud crack emitting from it. He howled in agony, falling to the ground, but I wasn't finished with him. Fifteen years of hatred were falling out of me in the form of fists barrelling into his gut, chest, and two more to his face. "DON'T YOU FUCKING TOUCH ME!" I screamed, blood from his nose spattering onto my fists. "I SWEAR TO GOD, IF YOU DO AGAIN-" I stopped in mid-sentence as one of his cronies grabbed me by the scruff of my shirt, pulling me up to a standing position. I could tell he was going this for show, because his fist took a considerably long time to actually raise. I ducked under the blow easily, my hand darting for one of my crutches. I grasped it firmly in my hand and swung it as hard as I could, the solid metal colliding hard into his side.
In a manner of seven swings all five of them were on the ground, clutching at the places where I had hit them.
I shook the hair out of my face, spitting on the ground in front of them. "If you ever fucking touch me again," I said again, "you won't be getting up from the ground."
Kids everywhere were rushing up to see the massacre and two duties came tearing up to me, gasping in shock when they saw the bodies on the ground, writhing in pain. "What happened here?" one of them roared.
A random kid stepped in, one who I think takes my bus, and said, "he tried to ignore the first one, but then they ganged up on him. He beat the crap out of the first one, but got the rest down in no time."
The woman glared at me, her porky little eyes sweeping over me. She then returned her gaze to the five on the ground, including my brother, recognising them as troublemakers. "You can go," she snarled to me, storming off to get help.
Thankfully, the bus pulled up within the minute and I got on first, glancing back to Robbie on the ground. "See you at home," I said with a smirk.
"Where's Robbie?" my father asked as I got in the door. He didn't seem to want to bother me after how cut-throat I had been to him and his wife the previous day.
I shrugged innocently. "I don't know," I said. "He wasn't on the bus."
Later that night, Robbie did make it back home, and I simply loved his excuse for the broken nose and the bruises. "I was play fighting with some buds," he said quickly, seeing me watching him from the doorway. "It got out of hand a bit."
When he walked by me he kept his eyes low, not speaking a word. I felt four inches taller then.
Dinner came and went, but I simply pilfered some bread from the bread drawer and ate it outside in the sun, falling asleep in the fading light when the time came. The entire day I had been smothered with attention and I had done something so incredible that would be talked about for weeks at school, but I still felt nothing but loneliness. There was still an extremely noticeable empty feeling inside of me, and it only seemed to be getting bigger.
My hands tapped idly at the Crest of Life and my digivice, but I knew that it wouldn't do anything. "Guilmon," I whispered before falling asleep.
The next morning followed pretty much the same pattern as the previous one, and I soon found myself on the bus to school. There weren't as many people on the bus this day, but it wasn't uncommon. There was actually a great deal of more middle school students sitting at the front, and I had taken the seat somewhere in the middle.
When the bus made it to school (Robbie had decided to stay home today), I heard some ruckus from the front of the bus.
"There he is!" one of them jeered, pointing out the window at a small child with sandy blond hair. He was a popular looking student, definitely waiting for a transfer bus, but he was obviously apart from the rest of the students, many of whom were also pointing and laughing at him.
"Where's your little monster friend today?" another laughed. "Or did you imagine some other creature?"
The poor kid was tiny, probably came halfway up my torso, and he was on the verge of tears. I felt extreme sympathy for him, understanding his position better than most, for my childhood had been like that a lot too.
When we got off the bus, he looked like he was about to break down, and that's when I decided to help him.
Gathering as much force as I could, I pushed strongly through the small crowd, tripping some of the small kids with my crutches. Trying to put out as much fierceness as I had the day before when I scared even my own brother, I roared at them. "What the hell is wrong with all of you?"
Most of the kids quieted down immediately.
"Leave the poor kid alone!" I continued. "You're all late for your busses as it is, and if you don't scram now, you're going to be a lot later!"
I guess word of what I had done the day before had travelled quickly, and the crowd instantly dispersed. The school bell rang then too, and in seconds, there were only a few stray kids left outside.
I turned back to the small kid behind me, looking kindly down to him. A steady stream of tears was pouring from his eyes now, but I didn't think that they were from what the kids had been doing to him. "What's this all about?" I asked, my most calm demeanour taking over now. "Why are they all making fun of you?"
The kid was wearing baggy jeans, a white shirt, long-sleeved shirt with a green striped button-up tee overtop, and he had a black backpack on the ground in front of him. "It's because of yesterday," he sobbed, dropping to the ground in tears.