Author's Notes

The Digimon pop up in this chapter…well, some of them do. My Shakespearian accent's not too good, but I did what I could manage. Sometimes it seems like another language…

As for Kouichi's memory, you only realise you can't remember something when you try to remember.

Apparently the twins' birthdate is on June 29 1993. Only the rest of the site is in, I think, Spanish, and I can't find a validation anywhere. Takuya's we know is in August from Canon, and it is, I guess, theoretically possible. Mostly I still like to play with the twins' birthdates and make them more versatile, but the "real" one suits in this fic. So it's already passed and Takuya's is coming up. The Digital World also took place between the two birthdays on the previous year, so Takuya is still eleven.

Enjoy, and tell me what you think.

Slaves to the Trade

Money. Power. Domination. These things caused his world to be stripped away. 'You may hold my body, but my soul is free.' Can that truth be saved, or is it doomed to be forever squelched beneath a master?

Character/s: Kouichi K

Genre/s: Drama/Angst

Rating: T

Chapter 5

'Lowemon! Hey, Lowemon! This ain't no time to take a breather!'

Agunimon's voice registered in his brain, even though the entire organ felt like it was filled with fog. But he was rather confused. Why did it seem like Agunimon's voice had darkened and become more mature since the last time he had heard. It hadn't been all that long ago; Agunimon had been shouting orders all day, and the two days before that since they had started chasing after the elusive Arachne.

'Silence ye fool,' another voice scolded, but without malice. Before Mercurimon could continue, a third voice, this time female, cut in.

'If ya'll spent less time yakkin' and more time kickin' we'd be done an over with by now.'

Over with what exactly?

'Yoo hoo, Lowemon. Up and at 'em sugah.'

He realised he was hunched over, and quickly straightened up, fighting the dizziness that plagued him before ducking as spider webs flew at his face. The staff appeared in his hand and he swung it at the next stream, spinning and striking through the white silk before ducking under a shot of rancid green acid as Agunimon beat it back with his fire.

The Archnemonclicked her fangs before scurrying up on one of the webs that hadn't been torn or burnt before being knocked down by a stream of water…into a net Mercurimon had constructed from reflected webs.

Archnemon opened her jaws wide, ready to blast the webbing with another burst of acid, but Ranamon sent another burst of water which, while reducing the effective stickiness of the netting but getting the spider in the eyes, causing her to spit and snarl until the knight of mirrors succeeding in tying her mouth shut.

Agunimon and Lowemon had both been standing idly, the latter a little heavily too on his staff while the former alternating between eyeing the other in concern and keeping a lookout for more reinforcements. The last time they had almost succeeded in capturing the elusive Arachne, a horde of Dokugumon had jumped on them. By the time they'd managed to reduce the number to eggs (it was impossible to drive them off), their prey had almost escaped. It was only due to the fact that Mercurimon could teleport that she hadn't.

Luckily, this time they both caught the movement, so the result was a clear path, a terrific burst of fire and darkness and a vexed Ranamon with burnt hair.

'Watch yah aim or ah'll squash you like tunafish!'

Agunimon just scratched his head as the water sprite doused her hair with a gust of water. Mercurimon shook his own metallic head.

'Art thou's numerous failed attempts sufficient to aid thy precision?'

'Leave it guys,' Lowemon interjected as Agunimon opened his mouth again, looking like he would soon become ready to spit fire.

'Speaking of…' The warrior of fire changed direction so fast it would have made the head of anyone unused to him spin. 'What was that? You feeling alright?'

'Fine,' the warrior of darkness sighed, flexing his grip as the staff vanished whence it came. At the two sceptical and one confused glance, he added: 'Just a dizzy spell, but it long since passed.'

'Oh, did one of the stingers get you?' He didn't look quite so worried anymore, now that the said worry had been largely placated. At a nod, he added: 'It's not like you to be distracted by such an attack.'

'Says the guy who'll keep fighting with a horde of Bullmon on yah tail,' Ranamon laughed, having gotten her hair back to normal. As used to as she was to Agunimon's antics, she'd long since forgiven him…till she got an opportunity to soak him as revenge.

'So'll that guy, buddy,' the fire warrior replied, jerking a gloved thumb towards Lowemon. 'And Wolfmon. And Chakkmon. And that's when we have good reason.'

Archnemon squirmed in her bindings, before finally giving up.

Lowemon shrugged again. 'For a moment, it felt like I was trying to escape from someone instead of catching someone else.'

'Ah, conflict of will.' Whatever

Mercurimon said after that made no sense to his three companions.

'Err…what?'

Agunimon though was the only one brave (or perhaps stupid) enough to allude the other to that fact.

Kouichi came to rather slowly, and it took a great deal more time to realise he was not walking between beside Ranamon, laughing at Agunimon's misfortune and Mercurimon's scolding, but rather sitting and tied rather uncomfortably to something hard. Judging from the position, he assumed it was a chair, but once he finally managed to get his eyes to open, he realised he couldn't validate that assumption by sight. Either there was no source of light at all, he had somehow lost the ability to see, or something, like a blindfold, was obscuring his vision.

He didn't even need to squirm to feel the rough ropes biting his wrists and ankles, but he did so anyway, partly to see if he could wriggle out of them and partly for the fear that suddenly clutched at him. When nothing gave except bolts of pain running down both his head and arms, along with yellow spots flaring to life in his peripheral vision before vanishing and leaving behind a feeling of inherent nausea, he squirmed more…before freezing as something viscous collated around his wrists along with the feeling of skin tearing, a cry escaping in consequence, and laughter responding to it.

If anything, being in such a vulnerable state, alone, in the dark and utterly powerless…he couldn't imagine anything more terrifying.

Especially when a sudden blow to his ear reinforced that with another cry of pain.

'Look,' a male voice snapped, completely unfamiliar. 'The less trouble you cause us, the more pieces you'll be in and the longer you're likely to live.'

The blow brought back the pain in his head and the prickling lights and he clamped his mouth shut, to stop both future sounds and the contents of his stomach from escaping. His heart hammered painfully in his chest, reminding him of his brief interlude in the Dark Area of the Digital World. There were a few notable changes though; he was quite sure he was alive, and unfortunately, not in the Digital World (he must have been dreaming) or wandering along the corridors of death. He certainly wasn't falling through empty space, chasing shadows and pinpoints of light, and crying tears of bitterness amongst pain while a large corrupted bunny hovered over him.

That last part was rather amusing; blindfolded but not gagged (if he was indeed blindfolded which seemed the most likely scenario as he thought he could feel cloth wrapped around his neck), he couldn't really tell whether there was a bunny hovering behind him, reading to corrupt him with "evil" or not.

And he had marvelled at how he had given in so easily the last time.

Ok, forget about that. Think about something else.

Like how they had played pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey at Tomoki's birthday party. Takuya had accidently managed to pin it to his brother's hair, and it had taken fifteen minutes before Yutaka, acting as chaperone, had managed to detangle it. As revenge following that incident, Shinya had-

What had he done? Why couldn't he remember?

Let's see. He definitely remembered Tomoki's older brother frowning over the mess that had become Shinya's hair, trying to get the make-shaft donkey tail out without pulling out too much hair. Now that he thought about it, had Takuya tried at all? Shinya was Takuya's brother after all. And what had Shinya done as revenge? He knew Takuya was mad enough to steal his brother's memory card, and that had escalated until…

Why couldn't he remember that either?

There had to be something else. Trying not to move, he stared into the blackness; he had found a few years ago that it was easier to focus when staring at something, and staring at black was better than staring at nothing at all.

He wasn't sure how long he'd sat there, digging up memories and things. It passed the time certainly, and helped ignoring other parts. He'd almost fallen asleep again, the headache and nausea fading slowly as time passed…or perhaps he had fallen asleep; black when awake and black when asleep made it very difficult to distinguish one from another, especially when pain existed in both realms, when something, or rather someone he supposed as he could feel the warmth through a thin layer of clothing he presumed was the set he had been wearing before-

His breath hitched slightly. Dammit. He had been trying so hard not to think about that. What would his mother be thinking; they'd lied to her, and they'd hurt her. Once she found out the truth, that would probably be rather insulting, and then…God, everybody must be so worried. Unless they'd lied and said he ran away or something like that-

No, his family and friends would never believe that. There was a small comfort in that.

The hand that shook him suddenly removed itself, before relocating to his throat.

'Open your mouth.'

He automatically clamped his jaw shut, a reflexive action which was immediately overridden as the hand tightened and he gagged. Something was forced between his teeth before a second hand, probably a part of a pair, covered his mouth and nose.

Every other thought flew out of his head except for the need for air, and he desperately tried to cling to them, body unconsciously thrashing as best as he could in his binds as a useless bid for oxygen. The natural instinct, to struggle for life. He remembered Kouji had an odd habit of counting when he was trying to control his emotion or calming down, and when normal numbers failed, sequences: Fibonacci, primes…he didn't know the Fibonacci sequence though.

Simple numbers would do. One, two three, four, five, six…

He forced himself to swallow, and the hand released him, letting him gasp desperately for air while his body still trembled involuntarily. The migraine was worse, rather uncontrollable; being deprived of oxygen was not a good way to fight headaches. The blood needed to be circulated, and red blood particles carried oxygen. They needed oxygen to be carried. The brain needed that oxygen for the cells to react to the pain.

He gagged again, reflexively, before tasting bile in his mouth. His throat burned. Painful tears pricked his ears and he coughed and spluttered, trying to both empty the contents of his stomach and stop himself from doing it again. He felt himself fall, and it didn't occur to him to think about how he had managed to do that (actually, the guy who had been holding had shoved him to his side, chair included). There was muttering over him, shouting for a moment, then something was tugging near his eyes and the blindfold came off.

The lights burned. He closed his eyes on instinct and threw up again, trying to turn his head away from the smell while he tried to spit the taste out of his mouth. He didn't care who was watching. Let them watch; he was tired, spent, otherwise an angry flare would have shot up. He never could stand it; he thought maybe after a year he would have been used to it.

There was some more muttering as he gasped like a half-dry fish and blinked desperately. Fuzzy people came into view. One was a woman, holding one eyelid back and peering into his eyes.

'I doubt it was the tablet,' she said quietly, straightening up. 'Too quick a reaction. Probably the migraine from that head injury.'

She made to replace the blindfold, but the only other in the captive's peripheral vision shook his head.

'Leave it off,' he said, before frowning. 'Did he throw it up?'

The woman shrugged. 'Maybe a bit, but certainly not all of it. Vomiting was an old-fashioned way of getting rid of ingested poisons, but it never was 100%, hence the failure.'

'Should I give him another one or not?' He sounded rather annoyed.

'You can when vomited within the hour, but let him recover first. Otherwise chances are he'll just throw it up again.'

There was a pause, then: 'Get the rag in here.'

Then echoing footsteps, then silence.

Eyelids dropped over the blue eyes again, once, twice, trying to get the room into focus. All he could get however were blurred colours. Mostly yellow. Either they had left the lights on or the sun was shining and reflecting of something. He couldn't tell which.

He closed his eyes again. That wasn't the best time to make something of his surroundings. Better to think about something else.

Like what he was going to get Takuya for his birthday in a couple of weeks.