A/N: Written for:
Prompts in Steps Challenge, 4.05 - oneshot, serenade
Becoming the Tamer King Challenge, Sheer Valley task
Diversity Writing Challenge, c46 - write in present tense
Digimon bingo - the non-flash version, #120 - altering
The song at the end is the beginning of a poem of mine, also for the Diversity Challenge. It's called "We'll Go Together into the Light" if you're interested in reading the rest. :D
I Don't Mind Singing Loudly to the World
It might seem like an odd choice of career choice, but it's not. It's really not.
She can sneak close to people. She's always been good at it and, in the digital world, she's gotten to show that off as well. It's come in handy. Collecting information. Rescuing friends. Sneaking into castles of evil overlords. The works.
That's the acting portion covered. The skills, anyway. When they asked her in her first interview where her experience came from, she said dressing up for her friends and playing pranks on them. Because what else could she say? Saving the world from destruction? Even aiding that destruction, but she'd spent less time dressing up and more time following like a shadow and twisting little things along the way… Which is also quite a valuable skill in the acting industry, if she uses it right.
It's also useful in the circus industry, but she's not out to make people smile. It's both more superficial and more deep than what she wants, what she's aiming for.
When they ask her why she wants to become an idol, she can answer that more honestly.
It's mostly because of Taiki. Not entirely, but mostly. His faults as much as his strengths, and sometimes she thinks she's the only one who notices some of those faults because everyone else heads in the other direction when scolding him, telling him he tries to help too much. Not that she thinks he doesn't help enough. He helps in ways she can never do: in a way that's simply too intimate, and too costly. But this is different. This is a way to reach a lot of people all at once, and from a distance where she doesn't have to get tangled up in aches and pains she can't handle because she knows she won't be able to handle them. Look what her brother's pain did to her. Of course, she can't handle a complete stranger but she still wants to help.
And that's why. She can stand on the stage and be an inspiring figure. Bid kids to smile. Encourage them in whatever words she can, whatever songs she can – and she'll pour her heart into those songs and she's got more material than some songwriters ever will and someone else will polish them until they're perfect and she can stand on stage and sing loudly to the world… And that's another arm of it. Singing, acting… All of them are different ways to reach people and she'll be an idol and do bits of all.
Maybe there's a bit of vanity involved as well. People say she's pretty, and she makes an effort to be and this capitalises on that as well. But it's more a side-effect. Or a prompt. Maybe it's what gave her the idea but it's Taiki and his helping people thing that's made it closer to reality.
And that's her answer. And they like it. They like it a lot because they call her back for photo shoots and voice auditions and stuff. And though she doesn't make it through to their stage, she has a portfolio ready to go to the next agency, and the ones that follow.
And she starts small. Charity events because they're the people who need to smile and be encouraged the most: kids in orphanages, people of all ages in hospital, and the homeless folk. And things pick up. Faster than she'd imagined. She's suddenly whisked away to Hong Kong, going on stages where all of Asia can see her, and they're talking about the world. And it blows her head a little because that's a lot of people she's suddenly encouraging, and she knows here's where a lot of people crumble but she doesn't. Because she's got things they don't: her experiences in the digimon, and those life long lasting friends. And then the digimon come back and she's got even more: a totally different purpose, and friends that are back by her side. And it smooths out the rough patch between her and her father as well. And gets a friend in a movie, which is somewhat amusing since he has to accidentally knock out a co-star to do it, and on top of that it's her little brother's best friend who she's just meeting for the first time… But it all works, in the end.
And then there's saving the world again, and she has to plead personal excuses to get back to Japan because Hong Kong doesn't want her to leave. And that's a little depressing because she won't be able to go back for very long. Not for holidays, not for other things. And she's wrong in that she doesn't sacrifice much to reach out to the world because she does: she sacrifices a lot. She sacrifices time at home with her family, time in general. She's moved away from her home and sometimes it's a little lonely too, because everyone's so far away: watching on stage, talking through video calls… The people who help her and the people she reach out to are all so far away and sometimes she wishes she was more like Taiki who can be in the thick of things and really helping everyone.
Because she can only try, and she might fail a soul somewhere and never know.
But that's the decision she's made and she can bear with it, she thinks. The smiles she sees and the thanks she gets is enough to drive her on, and her friends and family are close enough, especially when DigiQuartz connects them and makes them even closer, so they can pop in on each other without having to wait for aeroplanes and free schedules and fares. And she has people come up to her and thank her for her songs, for the little skits she's acted, for the bigger movies she's been a part of, and they ask if even ordinary kids like them can reach out too, and of course they can. She doesn't just tell them about herself. She tells them about Taiki too because he's so different, he's everything she can't be and so she simply has to do it differently. And some of the people they see really do need a Taiki, and she can't do much except suggest some help because she's not him: she's far away, on the stage, smiling and prompting them to reach their hands out, to smile, or to take that first step…
And she's more than happy to do that, because there are people like Taiki who'll grab the hands of the falling and pick them up, and people who can get up with just a little encouragement from her. People who she can smile at and they'll smile back, as she rolls the mic in her hands and starts those first words, that new song:
'If you reach out first,
we'll go back to the light a little faster
but we'll go, we'll always go, together…'