AN: Twisted and bizarre, a lot of my strange ideas. This one is going off
my story called Father. The whole point of the switch was to keep him
hidden. But this story is trying to figure out what would happen if he was
discovered.
******
The young girl sighed as she sat upon the cold cement ledge inside the pink dragon. It was rather large, enough to fit maybe three older children. That's exactly who would take it over every day before and after school.
The fourth graders would chase away any one younger than themselves if they ever needed the ledge. The smaller ones had learned quickly to stay away. But they hadn't learned that at the morning bell to the school, there was no one to guard it. That was when she would go in.
The girl didn't want to be with the other children. They were far too immature for her taste. She relaxed and closed her eyes. No one would bother her as long as she stayed in this.
"MORNING!"
The girl shrieked, falling of the ledge.
Insane laughter exploded from upon the ledge as the girl stood and rid her clothes of the sand that had settled at the bottom.
She looked to see who had humiliated her, not in front of other children (they were all playing safely at the other end of the park), but herself.
Violet eyes met light blue and were trapped. The blue were studying her, looking all over her body though the pupils didn't budge. The girl struggled to look away at anything at all, just something away from the gaze. But the blue wouldn't have any of it. They held her there.
The eyes moved away and slammed forward again as two foreheads collided. The girl once again fell to the sand, and the blue eyes shut as the owner once again began to laugh until tears flowed out from between the eyelids.
"Thanks a lot, jerk. Don't you know your not supposed to be here?" the girl snapped. The child on the ledge stopped laughing and looked at her.
"Why not? You're here," the child with blue eyes asked, tilting his head to the side as a dog would have when confused.
The child was nothing but a boy her own age of six. His dress was casual formal, the type over protective parents force their children to wear. It didn't suit him, she thought, and obviously the feeling was more than mutual. The collar of the polo shirt had been tugged far enough that it now hung so that his whole shoulder could be revealed if he leaned the right way. His cru-cut was on an angle, his pants had grass stains on the knees, his shoes were untied, he looked horrible. But he was proud of the way he looked, and wouldn't hear anything on the matter.
"Yes, I'm here. But that's because I'm different," the young girl told him, standing up to look as important as she could with sand in her now frazzled pony tail. The boy didn't look upset by the comment. He merely leaned his head back so that he looked her in the eyes upside down.
"I'm different," he stated firmly.
"Not enough," she said back. "You're not strong enough for it." The boy giggled once again and sat straight up. When he turned his head back to look at her, there was a smirk upon his face.
"I got you off the ledge, didn't I?" She smiled at him and nodded.
"I'm Ruki."
"Hirokazu!"
It wasn't the boy whom had stated the name, but a man from across the playground. He blushed and motioned with his head to the direction of the call.
Jumping off the ledge, Hirokazu tore away from the dragon. Ruki watched him run, his legs and arms swinging around as if he had never actually learned to do anything of the sort.
It wasn't long before he was in a young man's waiting arms, nuzzling his messy brown hair into the man's chest. The man, whom Ruki had decided was his father, looked disapprovingly at the appearance of the child in his arms, but smiled warmly and nodded as Hirokazu went on about whatever was on his mind at the moment.
Ruki shook her head as her own parent called, and she trotted away from the dragon, the boy fading from her thoughts.
******
That was the first day the outside world had ever met Hirokazu.
It was like a drug. First time he had it, he knew he needed to find more, and damned if he wasn't going to get it.
******
The two met the next day at the park, as well as the next and the rest of the days after that.
They became friends, and close ones at that. Not that, on any other occasion, they would have, but there was no one else for Hirokazu.
He insisted that he have at least one friend, and Ruki was the first he had met.
But soon, it wasn't so much that Hirokazu wanted one, but that they began to need each other. They two would ban together on treks to whatever part of the playground they wanted to go to when the dragon began to grow old.
He would make her laugh; she would listen to him when no one else would. They became inseparable. But then one day, Hirokazu began to change.
It was suttle at first, he snapped at anyone who would dare get in their way. She thought it was nothing; the two of them had a reputation as being tough that they had to uphold. But then things began to get worse.
Everyday, he would clutch his head or his stomach and cry until he was dehydrated or his throat hurt too much to continue. He would recover soon after that and become as hyper as ever. Ruki suggested he might be sick, and he brushed her off with his hand. He swore he was never sick. It was just some thing he had for lunch or he hadn't slept well that night.
It wasn't long before he began to beat up children for something as simple as looking at him. These weren't just a scraped knee or a black eye, these were him punching and kicking and biting until the victim was bleeding and begging for mercy. He wouldn't even have stopped then in his father didn't snatch him away and scold him, then drag his son away from the park.
After those began to occur on a daily basis, the only time the two could be together was within his room or the porch outside if the whether was nice enough.
Then, he would pace back and forth on the rug, which he must have been doing when she wasn't around because in certain areas it was worn though completely.
She told him he should come back to the park, and he laughed at her. He ruffled her hair as an adult would when a child would say something cute. She hated when he did that, it was degrading.
The day came, right before his seventh birthday, that he told her he would be moving. She cried and asked him why, and he turned his head away. He, instead of explaining, gave her a gift.
Between her now unformed breasts, he cut a long, deep gash with a piece of a smashed toy car. She didn't cry as he mopped up the blood with a wet rag. She didn't cry when he sat next to the window with his knees curled up to his chest and watched the sun set. She didn't cry when he refused to look back at her. She only put on her coat, zipped it up so that no one couldn't see where the blood was seeping though her shirt, and left for home, which was beside the building he lived within.
When she got home, she dressed her wound and threw out the blood stained shirt alone. She never told anyone of the incident. In fact, she refused to let herself even think of him.
She didn't hear of him again until she was ten.
******
It was four years later when Hirokazu again rejoined the world. This time, it was at another school, another town. Where no one knew of his past, no one knew of him.
Perfect.
His father had driven him to school on his first day. Hirokazu fidgeted with the belt buckle, his finger circling around and around the release. His father pulled it away and placed it back into his lap to join its partner.
Hirokazu gazed out the window, watching the world fly by. The whirl began to slow until it was a stop in front of the school.
"…Is that clear?" His father asked.
"Yeah!" Hirokazu yelled, grabbing his book bag and galloping toward the playground. He stopped there, scanning for what he needed.
Outcasts. They were easy to befriend, because there was no one for him to compete with. There was plenty to choose from in this crowd.
His sights settled on two boys sitting on the far corner of the soccer field, trying to play a card game but getting no success. The team wanted the field and they wanted it at that exact second.
No one messed with the team.
Hirokazu strut over like the world was his. Not at all because he believed himself strutting, but because that was the only way he knew to walk. It suited him, which was all he knew.
When he arrived at where the two were playing, a game was already commencing. He knelt down beside it and waited to be acknowledged. Such things were delicate.
The brunette was the first to look up from his cards.
"Are you new here?" He asked. Hirokazu thought about the question for a second before deciding to nod. "Where'd you move from?"
"Down south," Hirokazu told the two who were now focused upon him. The boy with glasses nodded, placing another card down on the board.
"That was a mistake," Hirokazu laughed softly. The boy with glasses ignored the suggestion, but soon found the prediction to be correct. He lost, hard.
Hirokazu began to arrange the cards into an unbeatable force field. One that hit so fast and powerfully that the fact that it's defensive properties were next to none didn't matter.
That was how Takato and Kenta accepted Hirokazu. He wouldn't have to worry about his status until later that year.
******
Right before the saga in the Digital World was the meeting, where all the tamers and soon to be had to join up and decide to leave together.
Ruki was the last to arrive; she had some sort of lesson she was too embarrassed about to state what it was. Truth being, no one actually noticed. They were far to busy with the card game Jen and Hirokazu had begun over a rare. Not a bad match, but Ruki couldn't be ignored for something as simple as that.
She kneeled down and whispered into Jen's ear. He smirked and placed down a card.
Hirokazu took one look at it and cursed. He tossed over the card, collected his own, and walked over to where Kenta stood. He felt a little safer far away from the board where he could assess the situation.
He looked the new arrival up and down, trying to connect her in his mind with the past that he remembered. No, he decided. She wasn't the right one. Her hair was to light and her eyes weren't the right shade. They were colder than he remembered; the color almost like a plate of ice had been drawn over the iris.
Takato, trying to be the moderator of the group, introduced everyone. But it was obvious he had no idea what to say because the introductions were far from flattering. Ruki was unimpressed with Kenta and Juri, but trying not to show how much so.
Hirokazu had lost interest in waiting for Takato to arrive at him long before he was done with introducing the first person. He had, instead, taken to hanging from a tree branch by his knees and shuffling though the deck.
"And that's Hirokazu," Takato said, motioning to the hanging boy with his fist, "He's, well, he's Hirokazu. Let's leave it at that."
The boy looked up at the sound of his name, giving her a cheesy smile. It faded as blue and violet eyes became trapped in one another. They held for thirty seconds before Takato tore her away.
She mouthed "Meet me later at the dragon". He nodded.
******
Hirokazu had taken a seat upon the top of the cement overhang above the ledge, his long legs sprawled around the tan horns. He would shift uncomfortably as his weight would lean forward and one of the spikes would catch between his legs from time to time, but other wise, he was perfectly still.
All he could do was watch Ruki pace back and forth along the sand, her arms crossed. Renamon sat upon a tree branch, looking everywhere but at Ruki, as if it were just a coincidence that they were at the same place at the same time.
"Why did you come back?" She asked. Hirokazu looked at her silently and shook his head.
"No, the question is why did you seek me out?" He replied slowly, placing his foot before a spike so that it no longer bothered him.
"We weren't supposed to meet again," She told him, climbing up so they sat back to back. "It just hurts too much."
"I promise it won't again. There's no more need for pain," he told her, leaning his head back so that his now long hair intertwined with her ponytail.
******
The events of the Digiworld came to pass, all playing out with fights of which of the two would become dominant. They ended with a draw as neither saw a need to fight with so much else to worry about.
But the tension between the two only really lifted in the Arc going back to the Real World.
It was dark, almost completely if someone would have turned off the red light that really seemed there for mere decoration.
Ruki had chosen the back corner to nurse the injured Digimon she held. Impmon had passed out long before arriving onto the ship, and made no move to resist her touch. She wondered if he would have, had he been awake.
But without any tools or training, all she could do was run her hands through his fur. It sprung right back as her hand left it behind, short near black hairs fixing themselves to look exactly as they had before Ruki had begun to ruffle them.
"How is he?" Hirokazu asked, sitting beside her. She focused on a small cut upon the Digimon's left ear. It was so much easier than looking at the boy next to her.
"He won't be doing any better if you don't leave," she snarled under her breath.
"He's going to be exactly the same no matter where I sit on this thing, so he'll just have to learn to live with it," Hirokazu hissed back.
Ruki glared at him. "He shouldn't have to learn to live with a pompous, hyperactive little jackass. You should give him a little room."
"Maybe Impmon should stop being such a self absorbed bitch and figure out that there are other people in this world other than herself that she needs to deal with," Hirokazu roared. He moved to the other end of the ship.
Impmon shifted uncomfortably in his sleep. He wanted that boy, whatever his name was, to come back. It was warmer that way.
******
It was a few months after that the Tamers met once again. They sat within the shelter Guilmon had once used. No one was speaking; it had just been too long to jump into a conversation like they once had.
Everyone had returned, even the two twins with Impmon still in his Baby 1 stage sleeping. There must just not have been a reason to get out of it.
The silence went on for five minutes before Hirokazu, not surprisingly, began to bore of it. He had better things to do than wait for someone to talk.
He stood and began to walk away, calling his partner to his side with a whistle. The Digimon was all too happy to comply, bounding after him and until he tagged at the boy's heels like a puppy would.
Hirokazu didn't get four steps out before men in suits grabbed him by the arms and hand cuffed his limbs. Neither Hirokazu, nor his Baby 2 stage partner, were pleased with their situation, of course. Hirokazu tried to turn and bite one of his attackers.
"You have the right to remain docile. If you make a motion to harm anyone along the way, there is a warrant out to dispose of you," one man told him disgustedly. Hirokazu looked pleadingly back toward his friends, who were in a stunned silence. The men didn't even acknowledge the children as they scooped up the Digimon and shoved the two into a black van.
Before anyone of the children could break out of the trance to see where the van was going, it had already driven out of sight.
******
The young girl sighed as she sat upon the cold cement ledge inside the pink dragon. It was rather large, enough to fit maybe three older children. That's exactly who would take it over every day before and after school.
The fourth graders would chase away any one younger than themselves if they ever needed the ledge. The smaller ones had learned quickly to stay away. But they hadn't learned that at the morning bell to the school, there was no one to guard it. That was when she would go in.
The girl didn't want to be with the other children. They were far too immature for her taste. She relaxed and closed her eyes. No one would bother her as long as she stayed in this.
"MORNING!"
The girl shrieked, falling of the ledge.
Insane laughter exploded from upon the ledge as the girl stood and rid her clothes of the sand that had settled at the bottom.
She looked to see who had humiliated her, not in front of other children (they were all playing safely at the other end of the park), but herself.
Violet eyes met light blue and were trapped. The blue were studying her, looking all over her body though the pupils didn't budge. The girl struggled to look away at anything at all, just something away from the gaze. But the blue wouldn't have any of it. They held her there.
The eyes moved away and slammed forward again as two foreheads collided. The girl once again fell to the sand, and the blue eyes shut as the owner once again began to laugh until tears flowed out from between the eyelids.
"Thanks a lot, jerk. Don't you know your not supposed to be here?" the girl snapped. The child on the ledge stopped laughing and looked at her.
"Why not? You're here," the child with blue eyes asked, tilting his head to the side as a dog would have when confused.
The child was nothing but a boy her own age of six. His dress was casual formal, the type over protective parents force their children to wear. It didn't suit him, she thought, and obviously the feeling was more than mutual. The collar of the polo shirt had been tugged far enough that it now hung so that his whole shoulder could be revealed if he leaned the right way. His cru-cut was on an angle, his pants had grass stains on the knees, his shoes were untied, he looked horrible. But he was proud of the way he looked, and wouldn't hear anything on the matter.
"Yes, I'm here. But that's because I'm different," the young girl told him, standing up to look as important as she could with sand in her now frazzled pony tail. The boy didn't look upset by the comment. He merely leaned his head back so that he looked her in the eyes upside down.
"I'm different," he stated firmly.
"Not enough," she said back. "You're not strong enough for it." The boy giggled once again and sat straight up. When he turned his head back to look at her, there was a smirk upon his face.
"I got you off the ledge, didn't I?" She smiled at him and nodded.
"I'm Ruki."
"Hirokazu!"
It wasn't the boy whom had stated the name, but a man from across the playground. He blushed and motioned with his head to the direction of the call.
Jumping off the ledge, Hirokazu tore away from the dragon. Ruki watched him run, his legs and arms swinging around as if he had never actually learned to do anything of the sort.
It wasn't long before he was in a young man's waiting arms, nuzzling his messy brown hair into the man's chest. The man, whom Ruki had decided was his father, looked disapprovingly at the appearance of the child in his arms, but smiled warmly and nodded as Hirokazu went on about whatever was on his mind at the moment.
Ruki shook her head as her own parent called, and she trotted away from the dragon, the boy fading from her thoughts.
******
That was the first day the outside world had ever met Hirokazu.
It was like a drug. First time he had it, he knew he needed to find more, and damned if he wasn't going to get it.
******
The two met the next day at the park, as well as the next and the rest of the days after that.
They became friends, and close ones at that. Not that, on any other occasion, they would have, but there was no one else for Hirokazu.
He insisted that he have at least one friend, and Ruki was the first he had met.
But soon, it wasn't so much that Hirokazu wanted one, but that they began to need each other. They two would ban together on treks to whatever part of the playground they wanted to go to when the dragon began to grow old.
He would make her laugh; she would listen to him when no one else would. They became inseparable. But then one day, Hirokazu began to change.
It was suttle at first, he snapped at anyone who would dare get in their way. She thought it was nothing; the two of them had a reputation as being tough that they had to uphold. But then things began to get worse.
Everyday, he would clutch his head or his stomach and cry until he was dehydrated or his throat hurt too much to continue. He would recover soon after that and become as hyper as ever. Ruki suggested he might be sick, and he brushed her off with his hand. He swore he was never sick. It was just some thing he had for lunch or he hadn't slept well that night.
It wasn't long before he began to beat up children for something as simple as looking at him. These weren't just a scraped knee or a black eye, these were him punching and kicking and biting until the victim was bleeding and begging for mercy. He wouldn't even have stopped then in his father didn't snatch him away and scold him, then drag his son away from the park.
After those began to occur on a daily basis, the only time the two could be together was within his room or the porch outside if the whether was nice enough.
Then, he would pace back and forth on the rug, which he must have been doing when she wasn't around because in certain areas it was worn though completely.
She told him he should come back to the park, and he laughed at her. He ruffled her hair as an adult would when a child would say something cute. She hated when he did that, it was degrading.
The day came, right before his seventh birthday, that he told her he would be moving. She cried and asked him why, and he turned his head away. He, instead of explaining, gave her a gift.
Between her now unformed breasts, he cut a long, deep gash with a piece of a smashed toy car. She didn't cry as he mopped up the blood with a wet rag. She didn't cry when he sat next to the window with his knees curled up to his chest and watched the sun set. She didn't cry when he refused to look back at her. She only put on her coat, zipped it up so that no one couldn't see where the blood was seeping though her shirt, and left for home, which was beside the building he lived within.
When she got home, she dressed her wound and threw out the blood stained shirt alone. She never told anyone of the incident. In fact, she refused to let herself even think of him.
She didn't hear of him again until she was ten.
******
It was four years later when Hirokazu again rejoined the world. This time, it was at another school, another town. Where no one knew of his past, no one knew of him.
Perfect.
His father had driven him to school on his first day. Hirokazu fidgeted with the belt buckle, his finger circling around and around the release. His father pulled it away and placed it back into his lap to join its partner.
Hirokazu gazed out the window, watching the world fly by. The whirl began to slow until it was a stop in front of the school.
"…Is that clear?" His father asked.
"Yeah!" Hirokazu yelled, grabbing his book bag and galloping toward the playground. He stopped there, scanning for what he needed.
Outcasts. They were easy to befriend, because there was no one for him to compete with. There was plenty to choose from in this crowd.
His sights settled on two boys sitting on the far corner of the soccer field, trying to play a card game but getting no success. The team wanted the field and they wanted it at that exact second.
No one messed with the team.
Hirokazu strut over like the world was his. Not at all because he believed himself strutting, but because that was the only way he knew to walk. It suited him, which was all he knew.
When he arrived at where the two were playing, a game was already commencing. He knelt down beside it and waited to be acknowledged. Such things were delicate.
The brunette was the first to look up from his cards.
"Are you new here?" He asked. Hirokazu thought about the question for a second before deciding to nod. "Where'd you move from?"
"Down south," Hirokazu told the two who were now focused upon him. The boy with glasses nodded, placing another card down on the board.
"That was a mistake," Hirokazu laughed softly. The boy with glasses ignored the suggestion, but soon found the prediction to be correct. He lost, hard.
Hirokazu began to arrange the cards into an unbeatable force field. One that hit so fast and powerfully that the fact that it's defensive properties were next to none didn't matter.
That was how Takato and Kenta accepted Hirokazu. He wouldn't have to worry about his status until later that year.
******
Right before the saga in the Digital World was the meeting, where all the tamers and soon to be had to join up and decide to leave together.
Ruki was the last to arrive; she had some sort of lesson she was too embarrassed about to state what it was. Truth being, no one actually noticed. They were far to busy with the card game Jen and Hirokazu had begun over a rare. Not a bad match, but Ruki couldn't be ignored for something as simple as that.
She kneeled down and whispered into Jen's ear. He smirked and placed down a card.
Hirokazu took one look at it and cursed. He tossed over the card, collected his own, and walked over to where Kenta stood. He felt a little safer far away from the board where he could assess the situation.
He looked the new arrival up and down, trying to connect her in his mind with the past that he remembered. No, he decided. She wasn't the right one. Her hair was to light and her eyes weren't the right shade. They were colder than he remembered; the color almost like a plate of ice had been drawn over the iris.
Takato, trying to be the moderator of the group, introduced everyone. But it was obvious he had no idea what to say because the introductions were far from flattering. Ruki was unimpressed with Kenta and Juri, but trying not to show how much so.
Hirokazu had lost interest in waiting for Takato to arrive at him long before he was done with introducing the first person. He had, instead, taken to hanging from a tree branch by his knees and shuffling though the deck.
"And that's Hirokazu," Takato said, motioning to the hanging boy with his fist, "He's, well, he's Hirokazu. Let's leave it at that."
The boy looked up at the sound of his name, giving her a cheesy smile. It faded as blue and violet eyes became trapped in one another. They held for thirty seconds before Takato tore her away.
She mouthed "Meet me later at the dragon". He nodded.
******
Hirokazu had taken a seat upon the top of the cement overhang above the ledge, his long legs sprawled around the tan horns. He would shift uncomfortably as his weight would lean forward and one of the spikes would catch between his legs from time to time, but other wise, he was perfectly still.
All he could do was watch Ruki pace back and forth along the sand, her arms crossed. Renamon sat upon a tree branch, looking everywhere but at Ruki, as if it were just a coincidence that they were at the same place at the same time.
"Why did you come back?" She asked. Hirokazu looked at her silently and shook his head.
"No, the question is why did you seek me out?" He replied slowly, placing his foot before a spike so that it no longer bothered him.
"We weren't supposed to meet again," She told him, climbing up so they sat back to back. "It just hurts too much."
"I promise it won't again. There's no more need for pain," he told her, leaning his head back so that his now long hair intertwined with her ponytail.
******
The events of the Digiworld came to pass, all playing out with fights of which of the two would become dominant. They ended with a draw as neither saw a need to fight with so much else to worry about.
But the tension between the two only really lifted in the Arc going back to the Real World.
It was dark, almost completely if someone would have turned off the red light that really seemed there for mere decoration.
Ruki had chosen the back corner to nurse the injured Digimon she held. Impmon had passed out long before arriving onto the ship, and made no move to resist her touch. She wondered if he would have, had he been awake.
But without any tools or training, all she could do was run her hands through his fur. It sprung right back as her hand left it behind, short near black hairs fixing themselves to look exactly as they had before Ruki had begun to ruffle them.
"How is he?" Hirokazu asked, sitting beside her. She focused on a small cut upon the Digimon's left ear. It was so much easier than looking at the boy next to her.
"He won't be doing any better if you don't leave," she snarled under her breath.
"He's going to be exactly the same no matter where I sit on this thing, so he'll just have to learn to live with it," Hirokazu hissed back.
Ruki glared at him. "He shouldn't have to learn to live with a pompous, hyperactive little jackass. You should give him a little room."
"Maybe Impmon should stop being such a self absorbed bitch and figure out that there are other people in this world other than herself that she needs to deal with," Hirokazu roared. He moved to the other end of the ship.
Impmon shifted uncomfortably in his sleep. He wanted that boy, whatever his name was, to come back. It was warmer that way.
******
It was a few months after that the Tamers met once again. They sat within the shelter Guilmon had once used. No one was speaking; it had just been too long to jump into a conversation like they once had.
Everyone had returned, even the two twins with Impmon still in his Baby 1 stage sleeping. There must just not have been a reason to get out of it.
The silence went on for five minutes before Hirokazu, not surprisingly, began to bore of it. He had better things to do than wait for someone to talk.
He stood and began to walk away, calling his partner to his side with a whistle. The Digimon was all too happy to comply, bounding after him and until he tagged at the boy's heels like a puppy would.
Hirokazu didn't get four steps out before men in suits grabbed him by the arms and hand cuffed his limbs. Neither Hirokazu, nor his Baby 2 stage partner, were pleased with their situation, of course. Hirokazu tried to turn and bite one of his attackers.
"You have the right to remain docile. If you make a motion to harm anyone along the way, there is a warrant out to dispose of you," one man told him disgustedly. Hirokazu looked pleadingly back toward his friends, who were in a stunned silence. The men didn't even acknowledge the children as they scooped up the Digimon and shoved the two into a black van.
Before anyone of the children could break out of the trance to see where the van was going, it had already driven out of sight.