Author's Note: Mild daftness ahead. I hope that won't diminish
anyone's enjoyment of the story but, if you're prone to take the series to
seriously, then this plot may not be your cup of tea.
Disclaimer: I
don't own the rights to Digimon.
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The feeling of being unconsious is a lot less fuss than most people would have you believe. You don't even realise you're doing it most of the time, for a start. On the rare occasion that you do have some form of awareness, it's of an extremely pleasant vacancy. Like sitting in your room with your eyes shut, the door locked, with nothing to do and nothing to think about ever again. It's perfect.
It's the waking up that's the catch. The feeling of your body, resenting whatever abuse you gave it to incur a loss of consiousness, booting back up. Of each of your senses slowly switching on, one by one. This was made even more unpleasant to Davis by the fact that with each new sense came new feeling of fresh unpleasantness.
Is that dirt I can taste? Yep, dirt. Why does my shoulder hurt? What the hell am I lying on? Whatever the hell it is, it's bleeding cold.
He was so confused by these new, unpleasant sensations that he forewent the usual ritual of the newly consious that involves lying very still with your eyes shut and feebly proclaiming that you're dying. Instead he sat up.
"Erk!"
The scream came from both him and the Veggiemon simultaneously. Davis shrieked because Veggiemon aren't the nicest of visions to wake up to, looking like a particularly evil breed of melon, as they do. The Veggiemon shrieked because Davis had narrowly missed head-butting him in his sudden return to the land of the living.
They screeched again several times, both in unison and individually, due to Davis realising at various points that the Digimon's dry, sinuous tentacles were wound around his ankles, that thay were in a very dark, cavernous room, that the comforting weight of the digivice in his front pocket was absent and that they weren't alone. The Veggiemon screamed because, hey, Veggiemon aren't really that bright.
"Is this going to go on much longer?" Inquired a dry voice from behind him.
"Not a bad act for a comedy duo, but it's wearing a little thin."
"Aw,
damn." Davis swiveled around as best he could to scowl at his nemesis. For a
moment he was presented with the genuinely disconcerting vision the Emperor's
head, floating as if by itself amongst a mass of shadowed objects against the
far wall of the dark room. Then, to his relief, his vision cleared enough to
pick out the back of a ridiculously over dramatic throne, over which his captor
was sat and peering over the back off. "I got captured? How?
What?"
"Disappointingly easy, actually." He said in a tone that was half
boredom, half smugness. "You should be embarrassed."
"Where's Veemon? If
he's so much as smelled one of your stupid rings, you're going to regret
it." He gave the Veggiemon a half-hearted kick, more out of spite than anything.
"Oh please," The Emperor sneered, irritated that his new captive had
already started interrupting him with such pointless questions. He was slightly
upset by the fact that Davis seemed as corpus mentis as he ever did. He'd
gleefully anticipated a good half hour of verbally tormenting what he assumed
would be a complete invalid. "He's happily frolicking in the forest for all I
care. You think I'd bring that walking time-bomb here with me? What do you think
I am?"
"I think you're a loon!"
"You only need one for a ransom,"
The Emperor continued levelly, tipping his glasses so he could give Davis a
proper grin.
"Aw, crap." Davis groaned. Way to go and drag down the team
again, Davis. Great leadership, as usual. Still, putting on a brave face he
snorted derisively. "You do realise that they won't take a single order from
you? They'll just come down here and beat your stupid head in, instead. All of
them."
The team may have had their ups and downs but he didn't doubt his
faith in them for a moment. Plus, now he knew that Veemon was safe elsewhere he
didn't have anything to be scared about at all. The Emperor couldn't do anything
to his friends and, if the Emperor tried hurting him, he'd get back double when
the rest of the gang tracked them down. He felt his own courage swelling up in
his chest and squashing the little fear that had been lurking in his
lungs.
"Well, that was the plan." The Emperor looked a little downcast.
"Was?"
The was a small, embarrassed pause.
"You've been
out for hours, you know?" The Emperor exclaimed defensively into the silence. "I
had some great ideas, you know, but..."
"But?"
"It's getting on
for six thirty. My mother wants me home for dinner."
"You've got to go in
for your dinner?"
"She sends out an police crack team if I'm not
there." He explained without embarrassment. "She's getting suspicious about my
non-appearance around the house already."
"You're not the evil dictator I
thought you were," Davis exclaimed with mock disappointment.
"Rest
assured, if I actually cared what you thought, I wouldn't be telling you this."
The Emperor sneered. "But it does raise the question of what to do with you. I'd
just gag you and chuck you in a dungeon somewhere but I really wouldn't want to
leave you unsupervised. Especially as I expect the rest of the Goonies to find a
way to track you down against the odds." He tapped his chin thoughtfully with
the hilt of his whip. "What to do, what to do, what to do..."
"You
could let me go?"
"I was thinking aloud, not asking you."
Davis
gave a theatrical sigh, and propped his chin on his arm. Out of the corner of
his eye he could see the Emperor's own Digimon, Wormmon, watching the two of
them with concern. It had crept stealthily across the floor while it's master
was distracted and was now peering at him from beneath the Emperor's chair with
fearful eyes. Weather it looked more worried for the captor or the captee was
debatable.
"I know," The Emperor dragged Davis's attention back and his
face broke into a wide, calculating smile that showed the faults in the set of
his teeth.
"About time,"
"Would you like to come to my house for
dinner?"
"You what?!" Davis screeched, lost for better words. All of the
sarcastic rebuttals he had prepared fell flat. "Why?"
"A simple solution
to both my problems. Your loud, boisterous presence should surely convince my
mother that I am happily pursuing social endeavors in my spare time rather than
whatever grim, motherly suspicions she may have, and I don't have to compromise
my security by leaving you here." The smile widened fractionally. "I want you on
best behavior, mind."
"Whatever this is, I ain't buying." Davis snorted.
"How dumb do you think I am? This is a lame ... whatsit!" he gestured wildly.
"You know,"
"False sense of security?" The Emperor
offered.
"That's the one!"
"Oh, dear, you're stupid." The
Emperor said, with genuine pity. "You were out cold for three hours. If I wanted
to get the drop on you, you'd already know about it. why would I have to coax
you into anything?"
"Personal satisfaction?"
The Emperor raised an
eyebrow.
"Could be." Davis said quietly. "But still, dude, you captured
me! I've seen enough movies to know what lameo over-dramatic, egotistical
villains do and, I'll give you a hint, it doesn't involve tea and
biscuits."
"I don't watch movies."
"I don't play
mindgames."
"I'm already late," He said, smiling with seeming genuine
amusement. "You are coming."
"Make me." Davis grunted. Being
gagged in a dungeon somewhere was probably a more secure future than whatever
bizarreness the Emperor had up his sleeve.
"How tiresome. You have
noticed your Digivice is missing, haven't you?" He turned fully in his throne
and gave Davis a hard look over the chairback.
"You're just full of
blackmail today, aren't you?
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Seeing the conversion from Emperor, whip wielding dictator, to Ken Ichijouji, model genius, was startling visually only. As the familiar sensation of being dissolved as once of the Emperor's monitors spewed bright light and sucked them in overtook him, he was stood with a shock-haired, lunatic dressed in the kind of get up that evn David Bowie would put back on the shelf. The next minute, once he'd picked himself up from Ken's bedroom carpet and disentangled himself from a lamp cable, he was with lank haired boy his own age dressed entirely in shades of grey.
However, even seeing him dressed in his school uniform in the setting of one of one of the most normal, boring bedrooms on the planet, minus his thematics, his slaves and his technology he didn't become any the less threatening. Davis hadn't really seen him properly without his dictator get-up since the day of the football match and he'd quite forgotten that Ichijouji had extremely creepy eyes.
He got up and dusted himself off, even though Ken's carpet was so frighteningly clean and immaculate that the only dust in the room would have had to have come in with him. Ken appeared to have somehow arrived standing, which was an impressive trick in itself.
"My mother should still be out, but I need to check. If not we'll have to sneak out of the window and walk round to the front." Ken opened his door a fraction and peered out, listening intently. "All clear."
"Jesus." Ken turned around to find, with some horror, that Davis was gamely pulling the drawers of his desk open and rifling the contents. "Your room's so organised. Woah, you've got a drawer just for pencils?!"
He would have explored further but he suddenly found himself pulled back and gripped in what he suspected were the beginnings of an extremely unpleasant judo maneuver.
"They were all sharpened, too. That's disgusting."
"Don't touch anything." Ken ground out, staring Davis hard in the eyes. "I mean that."
"But, seriously-"
"You do want to see your personal Muppet friend again, don't you?" Ken's face adopted a highly unpleasant grin.
"Fine, fine. Your wish is my command."
"Good." Ken shut his desk with a bang. "Now, prepare to become the perfect guest."
To be continued
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AN: Thanks for reading.