Disclaimer: I own nothing involved in this story unless I invented it myself. This is written for fun, not for profit. All forms of feedback eagerly accepted. Concrit is loved the most, but everything is welcome.
Fandom: Digimon Adventure 02
Title: Not At His Best
Characters: Daisuke, Hikari, Ken
Friendship: Daisuke & Hikari
Word Count: chapter 1: 1,000||story: 1,000
Genre: Drama, Friendship||Rated: G
Challenge: Written for the Diversity Writing Challenge, section D9, a threeshot; Written for the 2015 Advent Challenge, day #3, write about a friendship; One Friendship Boot Camp, #24, sick
Summary: Daisuke really should've stayed at home, with that cold he has. But he couldn't resist the chance to blow up a few Dark Towers. Now the Kaiser is there, and his best hope to get out of this is Hikari.

"Did you just sneeze?" Hikari eyed Daisuke thoughtfully. She knew what she'd heard. He'd tried to hide it, but she'd heard it anyway.

He put on the brightest smile that he could and shook his head. "Nope! I'm fine!" He rubbed the back of his head and grinned at her. "Come on, let's get those towers down!"

This area had two of them; why, no one could figure out, except that the Kaiser liked to put up towers and probably figured the more, the better. Hikari didn't pretend to understand how Ichijouji Ken thought. Their job was just to ruin all of these things and remove his influence from the area.

At least for now. It would one day be their job to stop him completely, but they weren't in a position to do that yet. Hikari looked forward to it. All of this fighting wasn't what the Digital World was meant for.

She started to get on Nefertimon's back, when once again she heard that stifled sneeze, and turned to look at Daisuke. He grinned a bit ruefully at her from where he'd been ready to get on Lighdramon.

"Um, dust in my nose? That's all?" He sounded more like he was trying to convince himself than her. Hikari set her hands on her hips.

"You didn't have to come if you're sick." Partly she thought he'd be better off at home if he had a cold. Partly she couldn't help but wonder what that might do to the Digital World. She'd been sick here once and that hadn't done anything, but the days of the Dark Masters were different from now.

She also didn't like the idea of what the Kaiser might do if he saw Daisuke wasn't at his best. Even if their enemy hadn't done much since the finding of the Digimental of Friendship, no one thought he'd given up or that he wasn't watching them somehow. Watching Daisuke most of all, more than likely.

But he just waved it off, as he always did. "I'm really fine! It's nothing. You don't have to worry about me." He grinned at her. "But if you want to, I won't mind!"

She laughed at that. "Well, let's get these towers taken care of and then we can go back home." Besides, she didn't want to catch a cold from him anyway. Nor did she want anyone else to catch it. Who knew what the Kaiser would do if they were all sick.

Soon enough the tower crumbled underneath the combined attacks of Nefertimon and Lighdramon. Hikari patted her partner on the shoulder. "Good work!"

"Thank you," Nefertimon purred. How she could do that when she wasn't Tailmon, Hikari didn't know. But she did it anyway. They started back toward the ground, with Hikari thinking no more thoughts than if Daisuke would like some tea with honey in it. Her mother had always used that when she'd caught a cold. It didn't always work, but it tasted good, at least.

Nefertimon stopped for a moment in the air, and Hikari started to ask what was wrong. Then she saw it: Daisuke leaned hard against Lighdramon, coughing.

What made it even worse was that she could see something Daisuke would miss at his angle: a group of Digimon coming toward them, and riding majestically at the lead, the Kaiser himself, radiating rage.

Could this get any worse? Hikari decided it would be better not to ask that out loud. With the Kaiser in the area, he would probably work on making certain that it did.

Daisuke slowly managed to stop his coughing. He hated getting sick. It didn't happen a lot; Motomiyas were tough like that. He knew for a fact that when Jun got sick, she was the absolute worst patient ever. He'd had to put up with that over the summer when she'd sprained her ankle. Well, that wasn't being sick, but it was close enough for him.

Anyway, he did have a cold, no matter how much he tried to convince Hikari that he didn't. There was no way he was going to miss coming to the Digital World and stomping down on all the towers that they could. They needed to do this! He wasn't going to let some stupid cold get in the way.

And he hadn't. One tower down, one more to go, and then he could go home and get some sleep.

He hated being sick most of all because when he got sick, it was like the germs made up for all the other times they couldn't get to him. He didn't think that he could remember anything that they'd talked about in class that day, and not because he hadn't been paying attention. All that really sunk in was that they were going to go to the Digital World and annoy the Kaiser.

That always made him feel better. Even now, as his throat cleared a little, he could imagine the fury on the Kaiser's face when he saw the damage that they'd caused. That Daisuke caused.

"Motomiya Daisuke." He could practically hear Ken's voice! Ever since finding out Ken and the Kaiser were the same person, Daisuke took an especial pleasure in wrecking everything that the Kaiser had done. It made him feel better for having been tricked like that.

The sudden snap of a whip and Lighdramon nudging him brought Daisuke's mind into full focus on what was going on around him. The Kaiser stood a handful of steps away from him, with an army of enslaved Digimon all around. And the look on his face was exactly what Daisuke had imagined.

Only he'd rather imagined it being a lot farther away and not right here ready to strangle him.

He put on his best grin. "Hey there, Ken!" The Kaiser lived in a constant state of being angry at him. What could he do to make it worse? Sneeze on him?

Sounded like a good idea, anyway.

To Be Continued

Note: Thank you for reading and I hope that you enjoyed the chapter. Please let me know what you thought of it if at all possible.