Tamed Wildcat

Nice. It's not something I've heard much in the past, but things have changed since then. No one would ever dare to call me that before. Too afraid that I'd punch their lights out as soon as I got wind of it. Oh, sure, they had a lot of other names for me at hand.

Tough cookie. Firecracker. Wildcat.

I don't hear those names anymore. Now, I hear things like sweetie, darling, and pretty little thing. And nice.

Strange thing is, I never minded any of those names people called me before. But nice makes me bite the bottom of my lip until I draw blood.

I'm not sure exactly when I stopped being me and started being nice. My friends would tell you that it certainly didn't happen overnight. They were the ones who had to put up with my jeers, my rage, plus the whole lone wolf routine. Ask them, any one of them, which version of me they preferred: before or after. They'd all tell you the same thing.

Maybe for boys, it's different. But when you're a girl, no one likes a tough cookie, a firecracker, or a wildcat. Not over a sweetie, a darling, or a pretty little thing, at any rate. My mother knew this way before I finally did. And because of it, I resented her.

As far as I was concerned, I was only a little doll to her; something to dress up and beautify at her every whim. Whenever my mother wasn't busy, which wasn't often, she'd take the time to comb out my hair and buy frilly little dresses for me to wear. More often than not, she'd even take me shopping with her, and I'd have to waste an entire day being shuffled from store to store and stuffed into my mother's idea of high fashion.

And did I ever hate her for that. I'd hide the pink hair ribbons and flowery skirts in the back of my closet the second they came home. Then I'd pull on my worn blue jeans and favorite old T-shirt, running out the door before my mother had a chance to object.

"I can't see why you insist on making yourself so ugly all the time!" she yelled at me once, when I bought a new pair of jeans instead of the skirt she had told me to purchase. I ignored her, like everything else, and just kept on walking through the door and down the street.

I wasn't anybody's doll. I wasn't a complete puppet. Whenever the world tried to force me into submission, I didn't have to obey it. I could fight back, and never hesitated to do so at the slightest opportunity. A lot of people viewed me as angry back in those days. Angry and lonely.

To tell the truth, I wasn't either of those things. Well, maybe I was a little angry sometimes, when people refused to let me be or things didn't go the way I wanted them to. But my anger was always justified, and it never got out of hand. I was always in control, and that's how I liked things to be. With me in control, I knew I could go far. A whole lot farther than with the world pulling me back, anyway.

Maybe that's why I chose to play the Digimon card game. I got into the whole fad when it was still relatively new, saving up my allowance every week to buy more cards. I didn't ask anyone to teach me how to play the game. I figured out all my cards and strategies alone. With Digimon, I was always in control. I alone would decide whether I was to win or lose.

None of the girls I knew were into Digimon at all, much less played the card game. My mother took this as another sign of my extreme abnormality and begged me to give Digimon up entirely in favor of a more suitable hobby. But by then, I more than used to ignoring her.

The card-playing boys didn't like the idea of being challenged by a mere girl. But I didn't give them a chance to disagree. I'm not sure whether I won all those matches because of my skill or because of my opponents' disbelief at fighting a girl, but the fact still remained.

I won, and I wasn't going to stand for losing anytime soon.

And with my goal in sight and my resolve tightening, the last thing I ever felt was loneliness. Friends were all well and good, but did I need them to win? Winning, after all, was what I was basing my whole existence upon. There was no chance I would sacrifice my winning streak for something as paltry as companionship.

I could walk down the street, amid masses and masses of talking, moving people. Ignoring them all, just as I did with my mother, and everything else that was worthless to my dream.

Friends? They were easy to forget in comparison.

At long last, I made it to the final tournament. Me against some cocky boy who everyone claimed to be even more of a card legend than I. There was nothing I wanted more than to wipe that smug smile off his sneering face.

I had never gotten smug. Conscious of my own ability, yes, but never smug. And I hated those who could not do the same.

I had come this far, and given up everything in the process. I'd lost nothing, save for my family and my chance at having friends. If anyone at that tournament deserved to win, it should have been me.

Maybe it was my nerves finally kicking in, or was it that I had finally lost control of my hate? Everything I had worked for was hanging precariously on this last moment, and what happened? I blew it. Plain and simple.

Mr. Card Legend went swaggering out of there with his huge crowd of friends and family, head bloated one size bigger.

I sat there for the longest time, running my cards through my hand over and over again until everybody had left. It didn't matter that I stayed so long. My mother had been too busy to come. Again.

Later, much later, a dying Digimon told his partner that everyone had their own destiny. For some strange reason, these last words struck a chord with me. Once, I had thought my destiny was to control my own life, depending on neither friends nor family in order to fight for my dream of becoming the best. At least, that was the destiny I would have chosen if I could.

But somehow, I could no longer bring myself to sacrifice everything for my dream. Not after my disappointment at the tournament. Not with seeing the sad, frustrated looks on my mother's face day after day. Not with my new teammates counting on me to support them. Not when Renamon, my Digimon partner, had almost abandoned me because of my aloofness and obsessions. There was nothing wrong with me stepping back from the fight and toning it down. Once. Twice. Again and again.

So I eventually became nice. Nice enough to hang back and hold little Calumon while the boys went off to do battle with the enemy. Nice enough to stand flower petals, put my hair down, and wear high heels. Nice enough to give the boy who had defeated me at that crucial tournament my chance to shine in the final battle.

Looking around at the friends I've found at last and the smiling faces of my family, I know that this destiny is one that I can live with. But sometimes, when sweetie, darling, and pretty little thing make me sick enough to hurl, I still wonder.

When I stopped being a wildcat, did I lose more than just my dream?

I wish they'd have more girls in Digimon, but it doesn't look that way with Season Four. But I've always admired Rika's tough-girl attitude. So many of the Digimon girls seem such (please excuse me) pushovers, that Rika was really something different. I would have never imagined she could get so nice, though. Nice enough that they'd put flower petals in her Bio-merge sequence! I don't know, but to me, that seems like something the old wildcat Rika would definitely not approve of.

Note: Ah, well, on second thought...Riah-Chan brings up an extraordinarily good point in her review. I never realized that the Sakura "flower" petals had so much meaning to the Japanese. Thanks for the explanation!