ETA 07/12/14: Chapter updated with revisions to story flow/dialogue.

a/n: To anyone who's made it this far in the story so far, thanks a whole lot for reading! I think this is the most I've ever written for a consecutive fic in such a short period of time, even if technically it's more like a bunch of wildly different stories all at once. I'm having a lot of fun with this, I really am, so I hope at least a few of you are too.

If you'd be willing to drop a quick review—even if it's just to tell me which characters (if any) you like and/or want to see more of—I would really, really appreciate the input!

DREAM BIG: A DIGIMON TAMERS STORY

"Better off Alone"

When he heard the sound of someone at the door, Micah was unsurprised to find Eva standing outside, waiting for him in the midday sun.

"Che, what are you doing here?" he demanded crossly, folding his arms and standing squarely in the middle of the doorway. "It's too early for you to be coming over. Shouldn't you be in class?"

Eva scowled at him, her expression bordering on mutinous. "I don't care about school," she said.

"Yes, you do," Micah countered with annoyance, mostly for the sake of arguing. "Nona told me how your mamá is always talking about your marks in school. You never earn anything below a 9 or 10, she says, the highest marks on all your papers!"

Eva reddened at his words, glancing away. "I'm just smart, is all," she muttered. "It's not like I actually study."

Micah didn't doubt this was true. Eva had always been smart with books and letters, even back in kindergarten—back in the old days, when she and Micah were growing up together on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. The two had been forced to walk to school together hand-in-hand throughout pre-primary school, because their parents wouldn't let them go alone. They had been inseparable as a result, either the best of friends or worst enemies depending on the day.

But that had been long ago. These days, Micah and his mother traveled with Micah's father, no longer remaining behind in Argentina while he moved from country to country to do his work. Micah only returned to his birth place on special occasions, such as this summer, when his parents had needed someplace for him to stay while they worked out the particulars of their latest move from England to America.

Micah and Eva were both eleven this year. For the past three months, despite the fact that their houses were as close as they had been throughout their childhood, the two of them had been neighbors only in name.

Micah rolled his eyes at her. "What do you want, Eva?"

Eva folded her arms defensively, mimicking his posture. "I just came by to ask if you wanted to, you know, hang out one last time before you go," she said, shrugging as if to suggest she didn't care one way or another. "I mean, after today...you'll be gone again. This is the last chance we'll have to see each other for a long time."

So she had remembered. For all Eva's attitude, Micah wasn't surprised: she had come by his grandparents' home numerous times to visit, since his arrival in Buenos Aires at the start of June. Sometimes, she'd head over to see him directly after school. Micah, who was starting at a new school in the United States later in September, didn't have classes like Eva and the other kids during the day. Despite that, he still managed to find plenty of excuses to turn her away whenever she showed up on his doorstep. Micah, for reasons he didn't like to share, preferred lately to be left alone by people his own age.

"I can't hang out today," he said flatly to Eva, keeping his arms crossed. "I'm busy. I've got to pack up all my stuff for the plane ride, tomorrow. My flight leaves early in the morning."

"Oh. Right." Eva's tone betrayed no disappointment, but she sighed and reached up absently to touch her shirt collar with her hand. It was a nervous habit, one that Micah recognized from her younger years. "I guess I knew that. I just figured we could...I mean, if you had the time, maybe we could hang out and do something tonight. For old times' sake."

"Old times' sake?" Micah repeated suspiciously.

Eva nodded, hunching her shoulders, so that her entire frame was dwarfed by the too-large coat she wore despite the temperature. Eva nearly always walked around in cheap, secondhand clothes these days, usually ones that didn't even fit her right or were out of season despite her parents' wealth—like she thought the style made her look cool, better than Micah or the other kids who lived around here in the neighborhood. None of them had bothered to approach him over the summer, only laughing at Micah's broken Spanish and European accent when they saw him with his grandparents. Micah would be glad to be rid of them after his next move, though he doubted his prospects for fitting in would be much better in North America.

"I was thinking..." Eva said, interrupting these troubled thoughts. "You know those Digimon cards? The ones that are always lying around on the floor of your room? I kind of wondered, if you wanted to play with me, we could always..."

Micah stared at her in surprise. Asking about Digimon had been the last thing he expected from someone like Eva. Every time she'd invited herself over in the long summer, Eva never once failed to roll her eyes in that infuriatingly superior way of hers, whenever she caught sight of Micah's scattered Digimon cards lying about his room. She called it a silly game, one meant for young and unsophisticated children.

Micah hadn't even let her see the cards in recent memory. He'd turned Eva away at the front door, the last few times she visited, so she couldn't come up into his room and tease him about his old obsession. He knew it would be easier just to pick up the cards up and throw them away, since he wasn't even using them anymore; but whenever he tried, Micah found himself overcome with bitter thoughts of England. And of Robyn.

It was for that reason that Micah had scarcely touched his cards or other Digimon merchandise for months, let alone played with them. What had brought on Eva's sudden interest?

"Digimon?" Micah finally demanded. "Since when do you care about that?"

Eva huffed, blowing a strand of indigo-black hair out of her face. "Never mind," she said, sounding annoyed. "It was a dumb idea. I just wanted to pick something you might like. Forget I said anything."

Micah bit his lip, uncertain of whether or not he should press the issue. Eva's suggestion had provoked a knee-jerk wave of conflicting emotion in him: despite the fact that Micah had told himself countless times, throughout the past three months, that he was completely over what had happened with Robyn and their Digimon v-pets back in England, a small portion of his residual anger and bitterness remained. It was hard to let go of the past.

"I'm not really that into Digimon much anymore," Micah eventually said to Eva, more or less truthfully, uncrossing his arms. "I only used those cards in the first place because they connected to this little digital toy I used to have, a Digimon v-pet. It was pretty dumb. Just a plastic digital device on a key chain..."

A strange look flitted across Eva's face. "Digimon v-pet," she echoed, in a voice that was rather odd. "In a digital device, you said? That's what it's called?"

Micah, lost in thought, didn't notice her change in tone. "Yeah," he said, caught up in memories from the previous year. "A v-pet. You had to feed the Digimon inside, and raise it, so that it could evolve into a bigger one. They could fight against each other, ones that other people had. Mine was called Witchmon, a lady sorcerer."

"What?" Eva cut in, sounding startled. "Witchmon? Are you sure?"

Micah frowned at her. "Yeah," he said, "why wouldn't I be?"

Eva flushed, and quickly amended her statement. "Uh, it just doesn't make sense to me, is all! That you'd have a girl monster for a pet, instead of a boy."

Micah thought there was something strange about that, but he explained regardless. "I didn't pick it for myself," he said. "I thought it was dumb, to play with a girl pet, but a friend of mine—I mean, someone I used to know back in England—she bought it for me, and I didn't want her to laugh, if she thought I was so bad at raising my first Digimon that I had to buy another one. Instead of getting a different v-pet, I bought cards to use on Witchmon, to make it stronger. Later, when Ro...when my friend's v-pet got stolen, I bought her one with a Wizarmon in it. That way, we'd be even."

Eva's eyes widened. "Wizarmon?" she demanded. "She had a Wizarmon? Not you?"

Micah's eyes narrowed. "Yeah?" he asked, not without a bit of suspicion. Eva almost made it sound like she knew what those Digimon were, even though he knew that was impossible. "It's not like it matters now, Eva. I don't have that v-pet anymore."

Micah had to tell himself that the memory didn't bother him, only that he'd been stupid enough to make such a big deal over it in the first place. The v-pet was just a toy; one from a friend he wouldn't be seeing anymore, at that. It shouldn't have mattered that he threw Witchmon away before leaving England.

"It was only a dumb bunch of pixels anyway," he said.

Eva continued to stare at him with a strange, unreadable expression, like she was trying to make sense of something he'd said. Belatedly, Micah felt a small creep of embarrassment over what he'd shared, and he decided he didn't want to endure Eva's talking and her odd scrutiny any longer.

"I think it's time you—" he started, only to be interrupted, by a familiar voice coming up from behind him in the hall.

"Who's at the door, chabón?" his Nona asked, walking up from behind Micah in the hall to put a hand on his arm. She peered around, straining her eyes against the bright afternoon sun to get a glimpse of his guest outside. "Is that Eva?"

Micah grimaced. He couldn't say anything about Eva leaving in front of his grandmother, she would think it was being rude. "It's no one—" he began, but it was too late: Nona had already seen who was standing on the doorstep, and her brown, wrinkled face lit up at once .

"Eva, mina!" Nona cooed, pushing her grandson gently aside to step onto the porch. "Did you take off from school to see Micah?""

Nona wrapped Eva in a warm hug that rocked from side to side, continuing, "That's not a good thing to do, niña. But it's so good to see you, and so nice that you came to visit Micah here at home one last time before his trip—"

"It's not a trip!" Micah suddenly shouted, unable to stand it.

Nona broke off, smile fading. Eva looked back to Micah from his grandmother, expression frozen.

Micah felt his face heat up, but he didn't stop. "It's not a trip, Nona," he repeated angrily, glaring accusingly at her and then Eva in turn. "I'm leaving for America tomorrow, and that's the place where I'm living from now on! I'm only stuck in this stupid country now because Papá was dense and didn't figure out his plans ahead of time, accepting a job in the States before we even had a place to live. Once I leave tomorrow, I'm not ever coming back if I can help it!"

Nona's face grew angry, and she opened her mouth to reprimand Micah for speaking this way—but Eva interjected first.

"You're right, Micah," she said in a clipped tone, forcibly uninterested. Her arms folded tighter, and she stared off to the side, refusing to meet Micah's eyes. "It's a big move tomorrow morning, I shouldn't be bothering you. You must have a lot of important things to do."

"No, mina, that's nonsense!" Nona said, giving Micah a stern look. "Micah has no business acting so rude to his friends, especially such a nice young lady! And you're practically family, besides. He has no onda sometimes, I don't know where Micah gets his attitude from!"

Eva frowned and shook her head, determinedly shrugging off Nona's attempts to place a conciliatory hand on her shoulder.

"It's fine, Sra. Vasquez," Eva said flatly, tucking her hands into the pockets of her faded jeans. "I get what Micah's trying to say. After all, his family's moved around so much that it'd be kind of stupid of him to think of this place as his home, still, right? I mean, when you've been all over the world, even a big city like Buenos Aires must seem pretty boring, after a while. Isn't that how it is, Micah?"

Something inside Micah boiled at her words. Did Eva think he liked being uprooted from his new home every couple of years? Did she think it was fun, having to learn so many confusing languages, and starting over at different schools full of kids he'd never met?

"Just go home, Eva!" he snapped at her loudly, voice shaking with rage. "We're not even friends anymore! Stop talking to me as if you know me, I don't even want to see you anymore after today! Go away!"

Robyn's face flashed through his mind, for a moment, replacing Eva standing before him with her wide-eyed stare. It was a painful reminder, of why someone like him couldn't have friendships that lasted: not because of his father's job, or because he was always moving, but because Micah was a jerk, plain and simple.

He'd made Robyn so mad when he left that she'd probably never speak to him again, and Micah wasn't afraid to the same to Eva now. After all, these sorts of fights were inevitable with him, weren't they? Micah had always messed up his friendships in the end. Why should Eva be any different?

Without another word, Micah spun around in the doorway and ran back inside the house, dashing through the hallway toward the stairs leading up to his bedroom. Nona shouted after him, and Eva's voice echoed worriedly after a minute later, but Micah ignored them both. He ran into his room and slammed the door closed behind him, locking it shut.

He flung himself down on his bed, refusing to answer any knocks that came at at his door in the intervening minutes. When he found a bundle of stray Digimon cards scattered loosely in his blankets, Micah threw them angrily onto the floor, where they fell in a mess.

"Qué un quilombo," he moaned miserably to himself, burying his face in his pillow as though he could block out the world. "I don't want to go, I don't want to stay. Why bother trying, when nothing will be the same after it ends?"

Unbeknownst to him, one of the Digimon cards he'd thrown to the ground suddenly began to glow.

As Micah kept his face buried, unseeing, in the sheets of his bed, the card transformed, with a shining burst of light: its appearance drastically changed, to become unmarked and completely blue, with a only holographic insignia of a crude monster flickering on the back.

Micah didn't see it happen. Time passed.

He lay shaking in his bed until he fell asleep.