A/N: I dont own digimon or any of the characters or anything. I actually dont really own anything. Hope you like it!
The blonde haired boy woke up in a flash, his head drenched in sweat, his heart hammering out of his chest. Already the nightmare was exiting his mind as he became more and more awake. Remember, he thinks to himself. Just this once.
The bright sunlight intruding through the window served as a great contrast to the darkness that he was struggling to hold on to. I always forget. Not this time. Please.
In a few minutes, however, every aspect of the nightmare had been eradicated from his mind. He groaned in frustration and threw himself back down onto his bed, right on top of an orange pillow.
"Ow!" the pillow screeched in response. It stood up, shook in a vaguely dog-like fashion, and spread its wings. The boy laughed.
"Sorry, Patamon!" The boys smile faded as quickly as it had come. His blue eyes glazed over and he was suddenly lost in thought. The white and orange digimon went to the window, where the blind was only allowing strips of light to enter the room.
"Look, TK!" he laughed, allowing the dark parts from the blinds to create stripes on his orange fur. "I'm a tiger!" Patamon's smile fades as well as he turns to face his partner and friend. "It was that nightmare again, wasn't it?" He took TK's silence as a yes. "That's every night for a week now. Shouldn't you tell Matt?"
The 15 year old boy sat quite still for a little while. Then he shook his head and stared at the door.
"If I tell Matt, he'll have a heart attack. It's honestly probably just bad dreams. I've seen some things, you know?" It was true, and Patamon knew it. The things TK had been through, even as a child, were enough to cause most people nightmares.
"But TK," the squeaky voiced partner said anxiously. "You have to tell somebody! Bad things happen when you keep things inside."
TK knew that was true. Keeping dark things to yourself can lead to some pretty dangerous situations. He had his good friend Kari Kamiya to remind him of that.
He brightened. Kari! He could tell Kari about his nightmare. She would know what to do. The prospect of talking with his best friend, along with the time, made TK get ready for school with a renewed haste.
"Mom," TK yelled as he walked to the door. "I'm leaving for school!"
"Okay, honey have a nice day!" he heard back. "I won't be here until late tonight, will you be okay on your own?" He chuckled a little before reassuring his mother that he would be perfectly fine by himself. Her new job has required him to fend for himself quite often.
He met Yolei and Cody on the way down. The younger boy was carrying what looked like a small, off-white head with strange wings. The little head bounced up and down when he saw TK and Patamon come down.
"TK! Hey!" Upamon shouted, but was answered with a quick squeeze from Cody, who looked around in a panic.
"When will you learn to stay quiet!" Cody admonished his digimon partner, though he was quickly losing his anger.
"Yes, Upamon, we're supposed to be a secret!" Poromon squeaked, earning him an exasperated sound from Yolei. TK just laughed.
"I thought the whole point of saving the world from MaloMyotismon meant we didn't have to stay in hiding?" Patamon asked.
"I'd rather not be surrounded by press at every moment of every day," TK laughed. "There were so many kids that day that nobody knows what happened besides that a bunch of kids with shiny devices and strange looking animals saved the day."
"Strange looking? Who're you calling 'strange?'" Upamon said, struggling to launch himself at TK. Cody tightened his grip, laughing as the ball of fur wiggled around. The three friends exited the building and began their walk to school.
"Do you guys have that career counseling thing today?" Cody asked. Cody, even though he was two years younger than most of his friends, always seemed to know more about their lives than they did.
"I almost forgot!" Yolei shrieked. "I don't even know what I'm going to say. Do you have any idea, TK?" He thought he might, but he wasn't sure. He didn't want anybody telling him how impractical it was.
"Probably just basketball," he responded. "Hopefully I'm good enough to make it big time. Otherwise, I've got nothing." Well, not nothing, he thought.
"I'm thinking maybe computer science," Yolei stated. TK and Cody chuckled a little before she looked at them and asked why they laughed.
"Well, duh," Cody explained. "You're a genius with computers, plus its all you've talked about doing since you moved to the apartment!" Poromon and Upamon laughed.
The rest of the conversation for the duration of the walk was taken up primarily by Yolei and Cody. TK smiled and nodded when appropriate but could not focus on the conversation. The nightmare had made its mark last night, and he couldn't shake the feeling that he was being watched.
Why am I having these nightmares? Why am I the only one having them? Everybody acts so normal. Suddenly, a voice reached him and pulled him out of reverie.
"Hey, TK. You alright?" TK turned and saw his best friend, Kari, running to catch up to them as they enter the school. Her short, auburn colored hair bounced slightly, framing her high cheekbones. TK felt himself blush slightly as he caught himself thinking about her beauty.
He'd been struggling to come to terms with his feelings for Kari for quite a while. A few years ago, he told Kari that he cared about her, and she said she cared about him, but what did that mean exactly? Especially considering nothing had happened in the time past.
"What are you staring at?" Kari asked, curiously. "Is there something on my face?" TK loved the way she asked that. Not the way others would ask, in a panic, but calmly, as if she didn't care if there was something on her face or not.
"No, its nothing, you look..." He struggled to find a word that wasn't too overbearing. "...fine." She gave him a quizzical look, and looked as though she might press the matter further, but was interrupted by a whining Upamon.
"How come Gatomon gets walk freely?!" the tiny digimon complained loudly.
"The perks of being me," the cat-like digimon responded with a sly smile. Kari gave her partner a good natured shove and giggled.
"Gatomon looks pretty much like a cat," Kari replied. "So as long as she doesn't talk in public, we shouldn't have a problem." The digimon chuckled and ran up the tree in the front of the property, followed by Patamon.
The kids walked into the school and waved goodbye to Cody as he departed towards his classmates. Davis, still wearing Tai's goggles, came running up behind the trio. His momentum, and his clumsiness, caused him to run right into Yolei.
"Ouch! Watch where you're going, google head! Don't you play soccer? Why are you so uncoordinated?!" she screeched, as the rest of the group laughed at the ordinary occurrence.
"Sorry Yolei! Ah! Stop hitting me! Stop it!" He managed to get away from Yolei's claws, and turned to face everybody else. "Hey, guys! Did you see the flyer about the dance?"
"Flyer?" TK asked, while Yolei screamed "DANCE?"
"Yeah they're all over the place! Apparently, we aren't supposed to 'officially' ask somebody to be our date or something. I don't even know, I think its pretty dumb."
"Why?" Yolei asked. "Did you wanna ask Kari to the dance?" Kari blushed, and TK could feel his stomach churn violently.
"Nah. No offense, Kari, but you and me...we just wouldn't work out." Everybody looked at him in utter amazement. Suddenly, he was on the defensive. "What? It was a crush! I grew out of it!"
"Why can't we have dates for this dance?" Yolei asked, a little pouty.
"Could you have taken Ken anyway?" Kari asked, probably without thinking. "I mean, he goes to a different school..." Yolei turned beet red and opened her mouth, but Kari was spared Yolei's wrath by the bell.
"Oh, Kari," TK said as they walked to first period together. "Are you busy after school? I kind of need your help with something."
"Ugh, an afternoon with you?" She groaned sarcastically. She chuckled. "Of course I'm not too busy, TK. Not for you, anyway."
TK couldn't tell for sure, but she seemed to blush and turn slightly away. He wanted to believe that she did, but he knew that was unrealistic. He felt himself start to blush, again, and quickly changed the subject by asking her what she thought of the dance.
"I guess it's a little weird that there are no dates," she replied. "But it certainly does take the stress out of asking people."
"I heard somebody saying they don't want dates because of the drama it causes," TK remembered. "We're supposed to ask people to dance when we're there." Kari and TK chuckled as they approached their first class, Algebra II.
Once he was safely in the back of his math classroom (The teacher had had TK long enough to know that calling on him during class was pointless), TK began to think about his nightmare again. He could almost picture it; the icy voice that scratched at his ears, the darkness settling around his eyes and his heart.
Why did he feel that something had to do with Kari? Granted, she was always on his mind. Maybe he was just worried something bad was going to happen. He had gotten very paranoid lately. TK tried to rub the sleep out of his eyes, but ended up temporarily blurring his own vision. He could barely make out Kari talking to somebody. When he regained eyesight, he almost wished he hadn't.
Directly in front of Kari's seat sat Shinji Sakurai, star soccer player, class president, genius scholar, class flirt, and the current reason TK could hear his heartbeat in his own ears.
He could feel his stomach churning, threatening to explode; his blood boiled and his fists clenched; he couldn't decide whether he wanted to throw up or punch Shinji in his very popular face. His face felt burning hot and his breathing got shallow. He swallowed and tried to look away, but every time Kari giggled he felt like he need to punch in the wall, or cry.
"TK," he heard a voice say. He blinked twice and turned around. His guidance counselor was standing at the door. "Did you forget about career counseling?" TK mentally slapped himself in the face. He had been too preoccupied with talking to Kari about his nightmare that he had completely forgotten.
Apologizing profusely to both his math teacher and his guidance counselor, he got his bag and moved towards the door. He saw Kari turn away from Shinji and stare right at him, and mouth "I'll meet you at your locker after school!" He barely had time for his heart to skip a beat before he walked out of the room.