Chapter 1

Digital Girl

Uchimon sat on the shore, basking in Sunset Beach's perpetual twilight. He gnawed on a large seashell, trying his best to carve a picture into it. It was a way to pass the time.

There was always peace and sanctuary in the Gatekeeper's private domain, mostly because it didn't allow any other Digimon in. Uchimon, by virtue of his innocence, was allowed a unique privilege in living here, but secretly, he wished to get out, see the world, and experience first hand the exciting life he had heard most other Digimon lived. Or failing that, perhaps run off with some humans. Humans hadn't passed through for years, but it was hard to keep track of time on the Sunset Beach. Uchimon was sure some would come eventually.

He looked at the seashell, a large pink and white spiral, that had once belonged to a Real World creature called a conch. What a mess! His attempt at engraving looked utterly messed up. He pushed it seawards with his nose, until it was swept up by the surf.

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"She really said that to her, did she?"

Allen Kirkley was beginning to worry about his daughter. No, not beginning. He'd always worried about her. But now his fears were coming true. He looked over the paper in his hands; the one the teacher had helpfully given him; one more time, then looked up at the woman.

She might have been attractive once, but now she seemed a little wasted, with cherry red lipstick on wrinkled lips, and her expression made her look like a bit of a shrew. She seemed to look over her lower eyelids at him, as if he were a student. Her brown hair was cropped short, perhaps to showcase a pair of elaborate gold earrings. She leaned on the table with her fingers steepled. Every time she spoke, she tapped her two index fingers together, and her long glossy nails clicked softly. She probably got manicured in her spare time. Oh good grief, Allen thought, Am I really that desperate to replace Camilla? I'm sizing up every woman I meet!

"I'm afraid Kimberly's classmates are singling her out," the teacher confirmed. In his current state of mind, Allen cringed as she said 'single'. "She reacts vehemently to their ridicule, which only encourages them. Even so, she has refused my help. If the problem is left to your daughter alone, I believe it will never be resolved."

Allan waited, and when she didn't continue, ventured to speak, "So, what you want me to do to stop the teasing is… not stop the kids responsible… but try and get Kim to change her…behavior… by any means necessary?" He waved the slip of paper vaguely.

The teacher smiled shallowly, and, like clockwork, clicked her fingernails. "Exactly. Though she doesn't show it, I believe your daughter is very deeply affected by this teasing. But since she isn't changing the behavior that causes the teasing, even when advised by a teacher, this is when you, her father, should step in and give her a little guidance. And if necessary, set her up for some professional assistance."

"…The councilor who's name you wrote on the paper. I hate to say it, since you've been so helpful, but I'm reluctant to put my kid in the hands of a complete stranger. Still, I'm not the expert, so if we have to I'll put the question to Kim." He tried to speak politely. Allen had never trusted councilors and therapists because of the way they, like teachers, would talk so coldly about people's emotions, and interfere so effortlessly in people's affairs. It was a little piece of naïveté left over from his heydays.

Instead of tapping her fingers, the teacher picked up a stack of paper and straightened it against the tabletop. "I think that will be all. Thank you for your time, Mr. Kirkley. And good luck in finding a wife."

Allen flinched again in the process of standing up. Good grief! How did she hear about that!

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Half an hour later, Kimberly Kirkley came home. Allen had only just gotten back as well, having returned to the office after the meeting. He had just opened the freezer when he heard the door slam and a high young voice start up.

"Be gentle when you close the door," Allen admonished automatically.

Kimberly rounded the corner into the kitchen. She was wearing a shapeless light gray sweatshirt that was much too big for her, the sleeves held up with barrettes. A pair of black shorts barely showed from beneath. She had brown eyes and her nose had a slightly squashed look, but there was only one thing about her, these days, that Allen would see even before she entered the room. Kimberly had done something almost criminal, to quote the apparently fashion conscious pediatrician, to her hair. It was already bristly like Allen's, and ginger like Camilla's, but the fifth grade girl had used paste to make it stick out like hedgehog's quills- or would, if hedgehog quills grew in sticky clumps. To complete the mismatched impression, a pair of goggles was pushed back like a hair band.

She didn't stop her monologue when she entered the room. "…Must be a grown up if I didn't like Usher, but I told her I'd hold my ideals proudly and wouldn't submit to the likes of her, and she laughed, maybe she'd taken notes on how to be a bully. Then she asked why I looked so weird, which was weird of her, because everyone knows…"

"Welcome home, Kim," Allen said loudly, putting a container of leftover stir fry on the table. He thought of his conference with her teacher, and the note crumpled up in his briefcase. He wondered how best to tell his daughter.

Kimberly took a fork off the silverware tray, a convenient feature added post Camilla, who'd liked to keep different types of silverware in separate drawers. She set her bookbag carefully on the table, and scooped stir fry onto a plate. "How many times do I have to tell you to call me Kimiko?" she whined, also automatically, before going on. "You're okay with leftovers tonight? Not too manly to microwave, I hope. …Anyway, that's not the worst of what happened today…"

Allen listened as Kimberly recounted the same incident her teacher had spoke to him about, from a rather different perspective. As her stir fry microwaved, she fiddled with one of her interactive keychains.

"I said I had to go to the bathroom, but I really just wanted to walk outside, and teachers don't expect the girls to do that sort of thing. But on the way I met a girl, and she asked me if I was the Digimon Girl. And I said yes, and she said I was stupid. And a boy. I told her she had no authority to say who was a boy and who wasn't, only a janitor can do that, and even then you have to be in the wrong bathroom."

Ah, Digimon, thought Allen. That's what it always boiled down to with Kimberly these days. She'd watched the show, among others, when she was little, despite Camilla saying it was too violent for a little girl, but nothing untoward had happened. Then one day he woke up and found a drawing on her bed labeled FaeriedraMon in his daughter's handwriting. Next thing he knew, her walls were covered in similar pictures, she had a collection of cards, and she was wearing goggles to school. Allen was worried about his daughter.

Kimberly continued, "And then she said I was weird, and even though I know I'm weird, I called her an instigator and a boy walking past gasped, even though he probably doesn't know what that means. All it means is someone who starts stuff. And then I said she was cold hearted and had no spirit of adventure, and she said she didn't care, and that it was better than being a weirdo. And she laughed.

"That's when Mrs. Wightman came out and gave the usual speech about respect, and somehow managed to fit doing your homework and getting to class on time into the matter, if only in her own mind. Then she made the kid go away and followed me to the bathroom like some kind of pervert, and I had to pretend I was going even though I wasn't, which was gross and embarrassing, almost as gross as a lady who follows kids to the bathroom.

"When I came out she asked me why I was fighting with the third grader. I didn't know she was a third grader. I said we weren't fighting we were just arguing over whether it was worse to be weird and good, or soulless and 'normal', and she said that she was only teasing me because I did weird things like spike my hair up and talk about Digimon all the time, and if I stopped, they'd stop. But I said that it's a soul's duty to itself to be loyal to his or her dreams, and I would gladly bear the ridicule of my fellows, because I wouldn't be able to live with myself if I gave up on my ideals. Then she said that that sort of thing was exactly what she was talking about, and then we went back to class. Man, I'm not at all sure about Mrs.Wightman. The principal may have said she's a model educator, but she makes me feel all cold and slimy inside." With that, Kimberly fell silent, devoting her full attention to her keychain.

Allen put a forkful of stir fry in his mouth, and realized he hadn't microwaved it yet. It was cold and slimy- like Mrs. Wightman. Allen chuckled quietly as he put the dish in the microwave oven. Sometimes the little girl reminded him so much of himself.

"Oh no! Nagainamon is still hurt! How could I have missed it?"

Then again, she just as often didn't.

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After dinner, Kim gravitated upstairs to her bedroom. As she did almost every time she walked up the staircase, she fluffed the off-white carpet with her feet. When she was really young, the stairs had been covered with sand paper to prevent slipping. But when Kim's parents had divorced, she and Dad had moved to a newish duplex, with carpeted steps, and ever since she'd just loved the feel of them. Yep, that's the sort of world I live in, Kim thought. Then she added, just to feel better, Not if I can help it.

Kim's room was second to last down the hall, just before the second bathroom. Having two bathrooms was almost unacceptably convenient, with only two people in the house. But Kim cut that train of thought short, because that wasn't the kind of world she wanted to live in.

The room had started out with white walls. For awhile those walls had been covered with pictures, mostly of Digimon, but some of simply exciting people and places. They were good pictures, if she did say so herself, but really, they didn't seem like enough. So, eventually, Kim took them all down. She made her dad get her some paint, and covered the walls in a mural of a red and gold desert stretching to the horizon, with a couple of rock formations sticking out starkly from the sand. Around her bed was a small oasis of plastic palm trees. Now when she walked into her room, at least in a certain mood, she felt like she was stepping outside rather than in. But in other, drearier moods, it still wasn't enough. She had painted the desert's sky pale and blotchy, like her favorite sky from the Digital World. She'd look at it as she fell asleep at night and wish she was seeing it for real.

For awhile longer she played with Nagainamon on her keychain. Nagainamon was her pride and joy. The keychain was so old it could almost be called vintage, and Kim took special care to keep it away from static and magnets, and anything else that might hurt the data. Under Kim's protection, the winged dragon-like Nagainamon had lived to a ripe old age- for a keychain pet, anyway. Kim kept two other keychain Digimon, mainly to do battle and keep Nagainamon in fighting form, since no one else Kim knew had even one. Oddly, those monsters often up and died for no reason, even though they were right next to Nagainamon, and so couldn't have been hurt by any outside interference. It was infuriating.

When the pixilated monster fell asleep, Kim returned the keychain gently to her bookbag, which was leaning against a deflating inflatable palm tree. She rooted through her toy box- which contained everything she didn't use anymore and a few of the things she just didn't want to display- and pulled out a bicycle pump. After re-inflating her oasis, Kim returned it to the bottom of the toy box. She'd gotten the bicycle pump when she was seven, and it sported a pink Barbie motif; these days, she really didn't want to live in that sort of world.

Kim stood in the middle of her room. Her eyes fell on her computer, nestled in the corner behind her oasis, with a few peeling stickers on the monitor. She considered logging on and chatting, asking about the weather in Britain and such, arguing with her old friend/nemesis Argusnaut over whether Kyuubimon was cooler than Metalgreymon. Nah. She'd lied about her age to get into those forums, but her box was so slow that by the time her posts get through, her lie will have come true.

So she did her homework.

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