A/N ; Saturday May 31st, will be the last update until June 24th. I'll be out of state for a surgery from the 1st until the 13th, but I'll be recovering for the following weeks and will not be around my computer. I'll be putting up TWO CHAPTERS on the 31st though.
NatNicoe ; I'm glad you do! X3 Perhaps he will~! I'm still working on the later chapters, but it's definitely a possibility. ;3
Chapter Four: Trapped
Once evening rolled around, we were all called to the main house, much to the disappointment to those who were still running about, myself included. We were in the middle of an awesome game of hide and seek, and I only had two Koromon left to find! But, as the 'chief' said, we're 'just kids' and need to listen to the 'adults'. Blagh.
On the plus side, it meant we got to eat! Sadly, I didn't get to try fishing, because I didn't have the stuff to make a pole... so dinner consisted of what the Koromon normally gather; fruit! Or at least it looked like fruit. I was still debating on that, but it looked like the stuff someone had left for me in the morning, so I wasn't about to complain.
Dinner was actually pretty fun. I told them stories from my life, the few funny things I could recall, and they told me stories about the digital world. We all wound up laughing up a storm, causing me, more than once, to either choke on what I was eating, or swallow it whole. Though, one Koromon wasn't laughing. He didn't join in the fun, he didn't contribute to story time; he just sat off in a corner, nibbling... well, honestly, I couldn't tell what he had.
Something in my head clicked though. He was the Koromon from earlier. The one that ran off. Actually being able to get a better look at him, I could understand why the Koromon would label him as 'weird'. As opposed to the plain, baby pink color that Koromon were, he had blue stripes across him, and his eyes were a really pretty, clear blue color. As if feeling my gaze, he looked up from his food, making eye contact with me for a brief moment. I froze, a shiver running up my spine, and from the looks of it, he experienced the same thing.
We looked away at the same time, him immediately returning to his food. Me, on the other hand, leaned down to the 'chief', "If it's alright to ask, what's up with him." I didn't even have to point out which Koromon I was talking about; he just knew.
With a sigh, he answered, "There is something wrong with him. His appearance is a dead give-away, but... he's nothing like us. If not for his origin, I wouldn't think he was a Koromon at all."
That's kind of depressing. Made me a bit angry to. They treated him like the humans back home treated me, just with less abuse and more isolation. It's one thing to have your friends abandon you, but to be ignored, hated, by your entire family? Disowned by the very people you were forced to live with? I knew for a fact that he was hurting.
For the remainder of the meal, I kept an eye on him, though still participated in the conversation. He'd look over every once in a while, and I'd smile at him. It made him curious, confused, and I swear, he started smiling back, but tried to hide it.
"It's getting pretty late," I noticed as I looked out the window, "You guys go ahead and get some rest, and I'll go keep watch. If they show up, I'll give the signal, and we can fight 'em off. Sound good?"
"Yeah!" A pause, "What's the signal again?"
"Ah... me. Screaming very loudly." I nodded, smiling, because if a bunch of digimon jump out at me, my first instinct will be to scream, followed by a big ole' 'NOPE' which would involve me using them as soccer balls, like with Demidevimon.
They wished me good luck as I went off to the edge of the forest, near where I had went walk earlier. If Gazemon were hanging around, my guess was that they'd likely come from this area. And if not, it'd just give me more time to alert everyone.
For now though, it was quiet. No rustling in the forest, no footsteps. Nothing. That was good and bad. Good because, yay no fighting, but bad because being in complete silence with nothing to do meant the only thing I could do was think, which would lead to over thinking, which meant I'd wind up making myself upset.
Sad, but true.
"May not be how I'd want to spent my night, but it's better than doing nothing at all." Plus side, there aren't any mosquitoes, roaches, moths, or other unpleasant insects in the digital world! "I have purpose now." The thought made me smile, albeit sadly. "Of course, it had to be something that made everything they said true."
After all, back home, I was the bad guy, the villain. When it first came up, we made a game out of it, but after a while... well, they figured the label 'villain' fit me well enough to permanently stick it to me. It started off as small, stupid stuff. We'd get into small arguments about silly things. I didn't figure there was a problem though, everyone argues, and it was never hostile. Always a bit of fun.
Then they started paying really close attention to me. How I acted around people, the way I reacted to certain things, the way I spoke, what I said. They'd wait for me to mess up. Just once, any little thing, and they'd get angry, throw it in my face. I never knew what was wrong, so I'd get angry and retaliate, which just gave them more fuel, and I didn't realize what was going on until it was too late. One by one, they stopped talking to me, all still having fun with each other, but shutting me out.
I gave up after a while, trying to fix things, even though I didn't know what I'd done in the first place. It wasn't worth the stress, the pain. So I was left behind, while they all moved on with their lives, making new friends, having new adventures.
It's like with a dog. You buy a puppy because it's small and cute, but after a while, that puppy gets bigger, older. It loses the appeal it once had. You stop paying attention to it. No more fetch, no more walks. It might as well be a piece of furniture. Then one day, you get tired of seeing the dog, and it winds up in the pound, but because it's so big, old, it stays there. Everyone passes it by, no matter what it does to get their attention. The dog starts losing hope, it gets sick, and for all it knows, the end is coming.
Then by some miracle, if it's lucky, someone, one person, will see it for all it is, will take it home and give it a second chance. It gets to be a puppy again, but with someone that will love it forever.
It was sort of the same for me, if you count this as that second chance, especially since I really was turned into a 'puppy' again, so to speak.
That didn't really help me feel better though. I was still screwed. If my crest can do what he said it could, then I'd definitely wind up giving the kids a run for their money... but there's eight of them, and one of me. Maybe they'll wind up just killing me and freeing me from it all.
"Why are you crying?" I jumped, my back smacking into the tree I was sitting by. "I'm sorry! I didn't mean to scare you..."
"N-no.. it's fine." Taking a deep breath, I got back into a more relaxed position. My hand touched my face, and like he'd said, there were tears there. "I didn't even realize I was..."
"It's okay to cry, you know. It means you're brave." It surprised me... that when I looked down, it was the blue-eyed Koromon. "You have a lot of things going on in your head, huh?" Confused, I tilted my head, blinking at him, "I've been sort of watching you today... and when you're asleep, or when you start thinking, your smile goes away, and your eyes look really sad... or scared. You also looked like you were having a really bad dream last nig-"
He stopped, looking away embarrassed. "You're the one that left the food and water for me." Refusing to look at me, he nodded, his ears -are they ears?- going flat against his head. Smiling lightly, I picked up the little guy and gently hugged him, planting a kiss on the top of his head, before setting him in my lap. "I really appreciate that. I hadn't eaten in a few days, so you really helped me out."
Settling in my lap, he sighed happily, "I'm glad it helped." I rested my arms around him, my thumb caressing his cheek. "Hey Theodore," I looked down to see him looking up at me, "Thanks for.. well, not hating me."
"I don't have a reason to hate you. You're sweet and kind, very helpful too. His cheeks tinted again, darker, "And I think you look really cool. You look different than other Koromon, so that means you're extra special." Tears built up in the corners of his eyes, "I didn't mean to make you cry! I'm sorry!"
"It's okay. It's a happy cry! You're the first to ever be nice to me... And the first one to understand.."
"I'm gonna tell you a bit about me, before I came here." Deep breath. "You see, almost every single human I met hated me, after just looking at me. Now, no two humans look the same." Most of the time, anyway. "But to other humans, I looked really, really strange. My eyes are a bunch of different colors at the same time. My hair is really dark and messy." I laughed, "They thought the clothes I wear were ugly and stupid."
"Man, are humans blind? You look way cool!"
"I wish, haha. Humans are just very judgmental creatures. They don't like those that look, think, or act different than them. I'm not like that, though. As long as you're nice to me, I'll be nice to you... well, unless you're being mean to someone else."
It got quiet for a few minutes, Koromon drifting off into thought. I yawned, rubbing my eyes. Standing guard was cool and all, but staying up all night was going to be seriously difficult. Part of me wished they'd just attack already so we could get it over wi- My head shot to the right, chest tightening. I heard something... And from the feeling I was getting, it had to be the Pa-
"Theodore... uhm... can I.. I mean.. uhm.." I looked down to Koromon, tilting my head, "Can I... w-would you..." A smile was already making it's way onto my face; I just knew what he was about to ask. "WhenyouleavecanIcomewithyouandbeyourpartner!?" He gasped, taking in some much needed air, staring up at me hopefully.
Of course, in sheer joy, I burst into a fit of giggles, scooping him into another hug, "I'd love for you to come with me!" That weird feeling... the one I felt when I encountered that Gazemon.. but it was stronger now. It kind of stung. "Huh.." My crest was glowing again, which was weird, since it was a dark glow, but it lit up the space between myself and Koromon. It was also kind of floating. "Okay, now I'm a bit worried."
"What... is that?"
"That my cres-" Cut off by the dark glow turning into a blinding, burning, flash. Not an exaggeration either. It surrounded us in a bubble of dark glowy-ness, and my head felt like it was burning. Biting back the stream of curse words that I oh so desperately wanted to yell, I growled, clenching my head in my hands. Son of a muffin baking cracker jack eating jerk in a flamingo tutu, that HURT.
It flashed out in an instant, leaving us both confused and in pain. I tried to focus on Koromon, see if he was alright. Our eyes met, and my heart jumped into my throat as I saw his eyes flash red, a symbol momentarily appearing on his forehead. From the look on his face, I'd bet a weeks worth of cookies that he saw the same thing happen to me.
"What the he-" Cut off, again, though this time by more noise coming from the forest. Slowly, I got to my feet, Koromon in my arms. "Be as quiet as possible." I whispered to him. My eyes closed and I took a slow, deep breath, focusing on the sounds around us. They were there alright, but I couldn't determine exactly how many. There would at least be as many as there were Koromon, plus some Gazemon... "Hya!" One jumped out and just as the ugly little ball of evil appeared, my foot was planted in it's face, and away it went, flying far back into the forest. "Come and get it you bunch of f-"
Hey, who turned out the lights?
xxXxx
I wasn't even going to attempt to pretend that everything was a dream, because by now I definitely knew better. There was no point in getting my hopes up only to have them all coming crashing back down as soon as I opened my eyes.
"You're okay!" Opening one eye, I spotted my Koromon in a tiny cage by himself near the exit. "They hit you pretty hard... you've been out for almost two days!" Two days? Geez, what in the world did they hit me with? Felt like a lead pipe, ugh. "How do you feel?"
What was a way to word this in a way they might understand... "Like I got run over by a Trailmon." Didn't think they'd know what a semi-truck was, so that was the closest thing I could think of. "How about you? Everyone else?"
"We're all okay. They didn't hurt us. Just put us in these stupid cages!" Well here comes that dog bit again. I never should have said something about it because now it was haunting me. Sigh.
So, let's see. We've been locked up for two days and- hey they tied my hands behind my back. Shit. Ugh. Anyway, so it's been two days, we have no food, no water... there's no telling how long we would be stuck here. It takes about a week or so without water to die of dehydration, and about a month or so to die of starvation. So if it's been two days, we have about five left before we're really in trouble. We couldn't call for help either because they put us behind a bloody waterfall.
"Looks like all our prisoners are finally awake." All eyes turned to the waterfall, wherea Gazemon stood, two Pagumon by it's side. "Almost thought we killed the human. Good to see you're up and kickin'." Oh, I'm sure.
"Hey you stupid digimon, let out us of here!" My buddy was a hell of a lot more angry than I thought he'd be, especially considering all the other Koromon were scared shitless. "If you let us out now, I promise I won't hurt you..." His grin said otherwise, though.
"No way, brat. We got word from King Etemon," Etemon?... Etemon... well crap, I can't remember which one that is. "that the other digi-destined are on there way here, so we need to 'borrow' your village, in order to capture them." The Gazemon smirked, turning his attention to me, "We'd bring you now, but the reward's a whole lot bigger if we bring the entire set."
"Don't worry. We'll come check up on ya in a day or so to make sure you're still alive." The Pagumon laughed, and I growled loudly, narrowing my eyes at them. They jumped a bit, not having expected that, but just made a face at me before the group left, laughing the entire way.
Still growling, I threw my head back in anger, which turned out to be a bad idea since I made full on contact with the back of the cage. "Ow!" Huffing, an angry pout on my face, I leaned forward, gently resting my head on the bars. "I'm sorry everyone. They got us by surprise." More or less anyway. "Some digi-destined I'm turning out to be..." That last bit was mumbled to myself, not wanting them to hear it.
"It's alright, Theodore. We're all just glad that you tried to protect us. It really means a lot." I suppose it would... but that really didn't help us out now, did it? This entire scenario was a big combination of a lot of things that I really, really, really, didn't like, and if not for my burning anger, I'd probably be having an anxiety attack.
I began wiggling my fingers, to not only keep the blood flowing, but to see if I could maybe untie, or at least loosen the ropes. Tongue poking out of my mouth as I concentrated, I reached as far as I could, managing to grab hold of one of the ends. Digging my nails into it, I pulled, hard. "Thank the Higher Powers for small favors." A small smile on my face, I let out a relieved sigh. It'd be a nicer favor if there wasn't a padlock on the cage door, but I could move around now, well, sort of, so I'd take what I could get.
The digi-destined had better not take long to get here.
Chapter Four : End
