DISCLAIMER: I don't own Digimon, but I do own the original characters introduced in this story and my other stories (except where stated otherwise here or elsewhere by myself).
A/N: Thanks to Crazyeight for beta reading.
DIMENSIONS
BOOK ONE
Links
Rewrite
By Blazing Chaos
CHAPTER SEVEN
The Morning After
THURSDAY, 15TH NOVEMBER 2007
Nonaka Residence, Shinjuku Ward
07:40 JST
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
Beep.
BEEP!
BEEP!
BEEP!
BEEP!
BEEP!
BEEEEEEEPP!
"I gett iit," groggily groaned a voice, as a hand scrambled around searching for something nearby. It found something long and extremely slim, and yanked on it, but the device refused to come with, the cable leaping out of it. It had the desired effect of silencing the beeping…through the earphones, at least.
Rika sat up and quickly grabbed for the MP3 player, silencing it before it woke up the whole household. Which, unless anything had significantly changed since the previous day, was currently just her and her grandma.
Even if her mother was there, it wouldn't have changed her plans. Rather quickly, off came her nightgown, and on went her new clothes from nearby, the futon promptly rolled up into a cupboard. Her bag was grabbed, and, with all the subtlety of her partner, her lunchbox vanished from the kitchen side as well. Indeed, it was remarkable that, as she quietly rolled the front door aside, there was a pair of eyes watching from behind at all.
The face attached frowned, and began pressing at a phone handset, as Rika's back vanished from sight, leaping out into the outside world.
Outside Matsuki Residence, Shinjuku Ward
07:49 JST
A pair of feet landed, with a fair bit of noise and a fair lack of grace, on the cracked concrete in the alley alongside the Matsuki Family Bakery. Eyes looked up to where they had come from, and over a shoulder to see if they had been noticed. Knees were rubbed, shoulders and hands shifted a bag on a back, and feet began to pound at that concrete once again.
Nonaka Residence, Shinjuku Ward
07:49 JST
"Hello?"
"I thought you'd never pick up. Where are you?"
"I'm still at the hotel. Mom, I met this editor for Eye magazine in the States, and he said he wants me to do a shoot in America this weekend, and he offered me a column in the magazine looking at Japanese fashion trends!"
"That's fantastic dear." The voice had a strong note of sarcasm, quite uncharacteristic for the source apart from when, as her daughter should've known, she was extremely mad. "Are you forgetting something?" she pressed.
"I think that's everything. I checked my calendar and I can clear up this weekend for it with a few calls. Oh, that reminds me, what did Rika want to say?"
"That she's running away."
"Wait, what?"
"The portal to the Digital World reappeared in the park, and she wanted to go back there with Takato and Henry and bring their Digimon back. After what happened last time, I told her she had to ask you, so she stayed up late at night waiting for you to get home. She needed your support, and you let her down."
"So she's run away for that? Stop her! She'll get killed!"
"Missy, you need to get your butt firmly back home, and stop her yourself! I'll see you in Shinjuku Park by 8:25, okay?"
Seiko didn't even wait for the reply, promptly slamming the phone down. Sometimes she felt like she didn't know her daughter any more.
Katou Residence, Shinjuku Ward
07:49 JST
Hands jammed down into the bed, and eyes snapped open, a lip quivering in fear. Glance was paid to the alarm clocks red numbers, flicking across to 07:45 before it let loose a ring.
The girl twirled across, hitting the off button. She didn't need to be woken up by it. She'd woken herself up. By 'falling'.
Making sure the floor was where it should've been, and that she wasn't still falling, she dangled her legs off the edge of her bed before leaping down, the feeling far too similar to the one she had felt only a few moments ago. Wandering across to her desk, past her already-packed schoolbag, she opened a drawer and pulled out a small book. Opening it and taking out the pencil clipped within, she wrote four words.
Dream.
The emotions attached to said words, unfortunately, failed to vanish as the psychiatrist said they would. The diary was not a magic bullet. But it was a start.
She caught a glimpse of her hair in the corner of her eyes, and looked up to see just how messed up it was in the mirror. Sighing, she slipping back a page, and another, and another. For whatever lie below on the rest of each diary entry, every one started with a play on the same words.
A few days ago.
Dream again.
A week ago.
I had that dream again.
A bit longer.
I keep having that dream every night, and still wake up frightened and thinking I'm falling. What's wrong with me?
And finally, the first, water damage in neat circles across it.
Dear Diary,
I had a dream last night, and I really don't know what to do. Leomon appeared, and I was really pleased to see him. But then he grabbed his sword and stabbed me, and I fell back in so much pain. One moment I thought I was on the edge of the Hypnos building, and then I woke up in bed, feeling like I was falling. I want to cry so much.
The reason why she felt she'd let him down she couldn't even bring herself to write in words. She knew it so much she didn't need to, and if she forgot it she simply didn't want to remember.
By standing here, further tears joining those already on the page, she knew she was letting him down, because she couldn't let him go.
Matsuki Residence, Shinjuku Ward
08:00 JST
"Takehiro, is that boy up yet or what? I'm not having him use his alarm as an excuse to miss school again," Mie said, as she set up the till for the day's work, sorting the float into the various money drawers in its bottom. By the end of the day, it would be bulging – not that it made much difference to their overall financial situation. The bakery business left them steady and level, but at least they weren't going under or anything, what with all the doomsayers in the media talking about how a recession was potentially on the horizon.
Her husband nodded, pausing from kneading dough and heading to the stairwell. "Takato! Are you up?" he called, putting a kinder voice on in spite of what he knew. Predictably, Mie had decided against him going. Not that Takehiro necessarily had any reason to complain – he didn't want his son killed – but he could still empathise with the boy's situation.
No reply. Takato was probably in a deep sleep.
"You'll never get him up unless you go and hammer on his door," Mie said absently while closing the cash drawer.
The man nodded, heading up the staircase before calling out again. "Takato, are you up?" he asked through the door, but, yet again, no response. "How deep a sleep is that boy in?" he whispered to himself, at first in amusement. But something increasingly nagged him about all this, and his wife, now peering up from the foot of the stairs, was obviously of the same persuasion. "I'm coming in," he said, after glancing down to his wife, who egged him on to do so. "Hope you're decent."
Takato wasn't wearing any clothes. Takato wasn't wearing any him. For, when Takehiro opened the door, all he saw was an open window and a colder room, a few bits of paper blown off the desk.
"He's gone!"
Almost instantly, Mie was standing there next to him, a shocked look on her face. "He's run off!"
A piece of paper lapped at the man's feet, and he reached down, finding a message in black marker pen in his son's handwriting.
I'm going to find Guilmon. Love, Takato.
Wong Residence, Shinjuku Ward
08:05 JST
"Takato's run away too," Janyuu said, putting the phone to his chest while he shared the news with Henry, the boy's ruffled hair in his hands.
Only a few minutes after they'd had a call from a worried grandma about Rika, here was an angry mother about Takato. Henry could hear her tone of voice even without needing to listen to the call, although whether that reflected on the volume of the woman or the volume of the handset was another question entirely. As for the question of 'whatever happened to asking politely', Henry hadn't a clue, but the actions of his friends had left him with a great deal of stress.
Returning it to his ear, the man continued. "Rika's grandmother said we need to meet in the park. I've already told Yamaki to bring the equipment we need there, but I'll call him again and ask him to hurry up."
'Guilmon's Hideout', Shinjuku Park, Shinjuku Ward
08:10 JST
Rika was early. She already knew that. That was part of the plan.
For how exceedingly early she was, however, there were surprisingly more people enjoying the park than she had expected. From the nearby playground, she could hear the sounds of children laughing, their parents taking them for an early morning play before they headed off to their respective dreary worlds of school and work. She had paused, on her way past, on the sight of a daughter on the swings, her dad pushing her, but she had quickly forced the sight into the depths of her memory and rushed to the hideout. Within it, she leant with her back to the concrete wall, forcing herself to tolerate the similarly hard floor, even in spite of a certain red dinosaur's comprehensive excavations. She tried to stay hidden from sight by using the door-side wall, but knew it was futile: her back was visible anyway, and she doubted anyone looking for her wouldn't make a closer check.
She looked at her school bag, lying against the nearest of the sidewalls. It wasn't going to be under her desk at 8:30 today, that was for certain. Their respective teachers would be well within their rights to hand them very long detentions if…when their group of three returned. She found it hard to care though. Renamon's telepathy made detentions far less boring before, and it would do again. She doubted Guilmon and Terriermon would be able to help their Tamers in the same way – more likely they would simply cause extended detentions.
The first thing she had checked, unsurprisingly, was that the portal was still there. Her nerves had bugged her ragged about that particular factor the whole way, and it had left her so greatly relieved when she found it was still there as ever.
An escape.
She frowned. Not the first escape she had made today. She felt so guilty letting her grandmother down, even if she had insisted that she had to ask her mother. She was only doing it because of what happened last time, after all, and now here she was, leaving the kindest woman in the world with a huge task to deal with. She would definitely have found out by now.
Rika's eyes twitched into the hole. The sooner she went the better. She didn't want anyone catching up with them.
Certainly not her mother. But she doubted the woman would. Any form of saving her from a bad mistake would require scheduling in advance to ensure it fitted in Rumiko's all-important calendar, and would obviously be a lower priority than any modelling job that came up in the meantime.
The noise of static from the portal remotely pervaded her senses, reminding her of the reality of what she was about to do. Last time, with the knowledge that she had Renamon by her side (even if that same Digimon had told her that the Digital World was no place for humans), she felt practically invincible, even though her better sense told her that she was taking up a very risky proposition. But now, and alone, the risks were huge. Would any parent have allowed their child to take them? She doubted she herself would in the same situation, as much as she wanted to believe she had some right to do this.
Reaching for her D-Arc, she raised and clenched it tight, just like she did with her eyes. This wasn't something about right. It was about need. It was about duty. She had to get Renamon back because she had a duty to her. They were partners, and they weren't about to stay separated, regardless of what some computer boffins intended.
An image of Janyuu flashed across her mind, and she grimaced sharply. As much as she knew it was an accident, and that he'd paid enough, his actions, and those of the Monster Makers as a whole, greatly angered her still. She clenched her D-Arc tightened, knowing this was a way to fix things. It had to be.
Would she be alone?
Would Takato come? Unless his parents had said no, she'd expected him to be here by now. Even if they said no, she doubted it'd make any difference; Takato is one of those people who followed an idea through even when a person with only one more brain cell would see it was completely hopeless. As a result, he was probably simply extremely late. She chuckled at the thought, a light blush coming to her cheeks.
"Or on time." Rika had forgotten just how early she was, perhaps optimistically given the boy's track record.
She shook off the warm feeling on her, and dismissed the urge to leap through the portal right that second to escape both that feeling and the static noise the digital anomaly made constantly. She openly admitted she was stubborn and rushed into things, but going alone to the Digital World was far too risky a move to attempt, even if in all likelihood it would result in Takato and Henry having to be allowed by their parents to go.
Even without that, would Henry be able to come? What with his father's clear guilt before about what he had done, she had hoped that the man might just agree to appease things, but she knew his mother might be less approving. And getting everything past Suzie would've been even more of a struggle.
She really hoped it'd just be them. She didn't want anyone else, any more stupid liabilities, along for the ride.
Promptly, she back-footed on the thought. It seemed really harsh, even for her, and particularly considering the kind of people she was lumping in there as 'stupid liabilities'. Sure, Kazu and Kenta had been walking bad luck the whole time before, but Suzie was just a child who didn't know any better, and Jeri…
She clutched her D-Arc. No static. Renamon was still alive. And Rika knew she couldn't live without her, and that was why she had to go to the Digital World.
Jeri couldn't do that. There was no quick-fix, magic bullet like that to solve her problems. Okay, so it wasn't exactly an easy quick-fix, but it was a damn sight better than knowing your partner was dead. Even with her shaken state, it was amazing the girl was coping at all, even more so that she was somehow still so kind.
Rika grated her teeth, recalling how at their reunion a few weeks back she'd seen Jeri and Takato talking. Even in spite of everything they went through, and what they'd seen, she still tried to be kind – especially to him, and he talked back so much, more than she ever did with him. Indeed, he was the first person to go up to her when she arrived. The sight, in spite of it being good and all, left Rika with a bad taste in her mouth, and the fact it did so left her with an even greater bad taste in her mouth. She hated herself for hating it, and as the feelings for Takato she so vehemently discouraged grew and grew, the irritation of how Takato talked to her without needing prompting through insult or otherwise grew exponentially, and the hatred of that irritation grew exponentially on top of that.
Because, all in all, she felt so sorry for Jeri. So, so sorry. She'd tried to put herself in the same position as Jeri before, with their common ground of a lost parent, but death was a great deal different to loss, and the same was true today with their partners. She hated herself for even trying to put herself in the same position, or for finding even a single bad word against the girl.
All in all, her head felt fit to explode.
Something flicked against the back of it, as if it were trying to spark it off, but it was a muted ping, caught up in her hair as it rang.
"Oops."
Something was set off, however. The flicked hairband fell free, and her hair dropped loose down the sides and back of her head, an aggravated expression rapidly growing on her face. She turned to face her aggressor, finding nothing but the boy she had just been thinking about, a horrified expression on his face.
"Uh-uh…you look really nice Rika."
Rika paused briefly, the smallest part of her mind wanting to accept the compliment, and a larger part wanting at least to avoid punishing him for it.
TWACK!
A punch in the arm. She had to keep up appearances, didn't she? Speaking of which, she reached for the hair band, returning it to her strands, trying to dismiss the fact that her face colour was now rapidly matching her hair colour, and the colour of Takato's arm as he rubbed it.
"So much pain he's endured thanks to me," she thought, before a comic thought turned into a saddened one. It probably wasn't just physical pain. And, indeed, she knew that if she let her feelings run riot like the sick thing at the back of her mind (called a 'heart' or something) wanted them to, she would definitely cause both him and herself emotional pain in dealing with the consequences, whether or not he said 'yes' to the big question.
She slapped the side of her head. What was she even thinking? She'd never ask him that. She wasn't looking for that. This was a silly bit of pining, pining for what you couldn't have. Takato had been gone, Takato had been nice, Takato was back, and in due course the feelings would subside. Jeri had been nice to Takato, and that was where his crush had come from on her. Unfortunately, that crush appeared to be proof that the presence of one's object of desire didn't really do anything to the feelings one held.
"So much for absence makes the heart grow fonder," she mused, before again cursing herself for the sappy thought.
"Did Rika just slap the side of her head?" Takato wondered, watching, but daren't ask. Rika didn't look like she was in the best of moods; although he was too busy nursing his arm to pay too close attention and hence had missed her blushes. "Guess a hair band doesn't flick like goggles do…"
"Don't even try to one-up me Takato, you're useless at it," Rika said in a dismissive and callous voice, ignoring the fun she had had herself yesterday with a similar concept. Takato felt immediately put off by it, and Rika in turn regretted it once she saw the look on his face.
"Oh. I can still try I guess," he said, with all the passion that'd gone into the initial attempt now dissipated.
"Sorry, bad mood," Rika said, not making any eye contact, not even as Takato moved around to sit on the other side of the door's frame across from her, dropping his bag by hers as he went.
"You ran away from home too, huh?"
"Yeah." It was a white lie. Running away from home had indeed given her a bit of a bad mood, what with letting down her grandmother and all, but that was hardly the cause of her actual bad mood. She wasn't about to tell Takato the truth though: although whether because she felt it was none of his business or feared he would convince her to let up on it. It was one of the greatest flaws in human nature that one would attempt to hold onto a depressive episode as much as possible, in spite of searching for happiness. Misery loved company, so long as it didn't try to destroy it.
"Wonder if Henry did too."
"He doesn't really seem like the type," Rika said absently, distracted by her own thoughts.
"Neither do I. I really don't know what possessed me to do this…my mom's gonna kill me."
Had she been paying more attention and thinking less about her present situation with the boy and with her mother, Rika might too have tried to work out exactly what had caused this remarkably rebellious act of Takato's. In the end, however, he offered his own explanation, although by this point he was practically talking to himself.
"I did promise Guilmon though."
And then there was silence. An uncomfortable silence for Takato, a welcome one for Rika. She tried to tell herself it was good to be rid of his talking, but if anything it itself was a welcome relief from the stirred emotions in her heart. No, what made it so welcome is that it passed the time, distracted her from what she knew was inevitably coming if they stayed here too long.
Takato quickly found a particular interest in chewing his lip, before finding a new one in the flicks of light emanating from the very edge of the portal, seen through the hole in the hideout. Anything to distract himself from this uncomfortable silence, his mind bereft of any means to make conversation.
And then he did a Very Stupid Thing, something he immediately cursed himself for. In fiddling with his pockets on his hooded jumper, he pulled out the grey pen drive from the previous day, something he had very nearly forgotten he had, flicking the tip out with its mechanism.
"What's that?"
Takato's mouth widened, and an "uh" sound came from it, before he quickly returned it to his pocket, and sheepishly laughed. "It's nothing."
She didn't buy it. Even someone with half a brain cell wouldn't think it was nothing (hence, she thought, the fact that Takato so often managed to one-up Kazu and Kenta, who didn't even have an eighth of one between them). "Let's have a look," she said, putting out her hand and making it clear the point was not for negotiation.
Takato felt worried, even though he knew she wouldn't immediately be able to access the files. Didn't he owe her an explanation about how he had her diary? Hell, didn't he still need to tell her he had at? At least the excuse that he forgot he had it on him would avoid him seeming like an insane hoarder of her most personal of belongings, her own thoughts. But, if she knew that he had it, and inevitably, had read it (so as to identify whose it was, for it lacked any name on it before the bottom), that would inevitably lead to a rather large quantity of manure hitting a rather large spinning object, and he wasn't certain that just before they went to the Digital World was the right time to do such a thing.
But, out of fear, guilt, or otherwise, he planted the memory stick into her hand with all the care and caution of someone handling nuclear waste. She looked at it confused, not expecting it.
She raised an eyebrow, trying to understand why this was so important. "Bringing your porn collection along for the ride?" She held the pen drive up like a piece of evidence.
While Takato invented a new shade of red on his cheeks, his lips managed a miracle: they made a word. In fact, they made four. "No, n-not at all." Albeit with much stuttering and stumbling in the process.
"I was joking Takato – it's only a random pen drive," she said sardonically, tossing it back to the boy without any care for its contents or value. He'd probably just left it in his pocket after school. Still… "Why aren't you?"
"Uh…no reason."
The new shade of red became part of a family.
"What's he hiding?" "Whatever. Porn doesn't seem like your kind of thing anyway. You go for the kind girls who leave you speechless." She forced down her urge to know what was really on the stick, and her sadness about the comment, an obvious reference to a certain brunette. She hoped Takato wouldn't notice either bubbling through.
Takato's unconscious mind did notice both, in fact, but his conscious one was wondering if his current uneasy embarrassment would ever subside. It wasn't just what Rika was saying, but the whole situation, and the underlying facts he knew, that left him completely off-guard by proceedings. What could he say? It felt so wrong to completely ignore what he knew, and leave Rika sadder…but he knew that speaking out would be just as bad.
"Come on luck, I need something right now. You owe me. Something to distract everything from all of this…"
"Takato! Rika! Is that you?" called out a voice. A familiar voice. And a less-than-pleased voice.
Takato leaned out to look around, while Rika barely gave the effort to turn her head, not least because of who she feared might be with the voice.
"Hey Henry," Takato called back, before Rika saw his eyes widen in his sockets. "Wow, you brought a crowd," he said, laughing nervously and glancing to Rika, another signal to her that her worst fear at this moment had come true. Of course, to him, she simply feared her mother and grandmother would catch up and scold her for running off, but she knew there were deeper issues at stake here.
She couldn't resist it any longer. She had to look.
"Rika!" called her mother when their eyes met. It wasn't even intentional, but Rika cursed her bad luck in doing so, and her own actions in turning around. She could easily have just leapt into the portal. She still could. What was her mother going to say that would change things?
With her mother stood Henry's father, her grandmother, and, quickly approaching, Takato's parents up the path, while Henry was rapidly crossing the gap between the path and the hideout to join them. Her grandmother had a concerned look on her face, her eyes pleading with Rika to talk to the blonde who right now was lower down than anyone else on her list. It was a surprise to see the model known as 'Makino' out without her full makeup or attended-to hair, a creased dress, probably from the evening before, a strange sight at this time in the morning.
"Takato Matsuki, you come right over here now!" Mie shouted, louder than Rumiko did, an action which led to her son almost jumping behind the wall of the hideout in fear. Rika wanted to laugh at the squirming expression on her face, but she could barely take her eyes off her mother's for a moment, as much as she pleaded with herself to break the stare.
"I don't think running away was one of your smarter moves Takato," Henry whispered as he arrived to join them, frowning. Rika wanted to glare at him for his seemingly Judas-like qualities right now, but was still transfixed by her own situation.
Takato glanced into the portal and stood up straight, his fists clenching and his voice suddenly losing all of its fear. "Mom, I'm going to the Digital World, and I'm going to get Guilmon back!" This finally made Rika look away and notice, and, indeed, left her somewhat surprised.
"Takato, what are you going to do without any partners?" Takehiro said, trying to be a voice of reason beyond his son's and wife's shouting. All the while, the group of adults was advancing towards their children, although their pace and stride was slow and extremely cautious, like a police officer approaching a gunman.
Takato looked quite nervously towards Rika and Henry for a moment, before trying to put his façade of confidence back on his face. "W-We'll survive…we'll wing it. We always do."
Henry felt like slapping himself in the forehead. After running away from home, shouting at one's parents and planning to go to a highly dangerous world, saying that your plan was to 'wing it', and not even lessening the blow by dancing around the point or sounding confident, was an extremely idiotic thing to do. The blue-haired boy felt torn between the two sides, wanting to go to the Digital World under the terms he and his dad had agreed (involving parents agreeing to it) but knowing that he himself wanted to go regardless of what they thought. He had to see Terriermon again. And he didn't want this tense stand-off to be the end of that dream.
Hearing movement, he turned, to his surprise seeing Rika holding a bulging rucksack over the portal while another one now sat on her shoulders.
It was a moment before the penny dropped for Takato, and he realised that the bulging bag before him was his bulging bag.
Unfortunately, it took only that moment for it to be dropped, and his hand leapt out too late. "You coming?" Rika said confrontationally, feeling plenty of pangs of guilt rising in her heart as the static flared up briefly, the bag absorbed by the otherworldly portal.
"What the hell did you do that for?" said Takato, his hands flailing wildly in surprise.
"Are you coming with or not?"
"Rika, I don't want to lose you!" called out her mother, now standing near enough the doorway to see almost everything. All of the parents were now close enough to watch, but seemed to still fear approaching any further.
Rika was already riled up enough from her guilt and anger about what she had just done, which in itself was her attempt to escape from a rabbit-caught-in-headlights situation. And so, she turned, and spat out what she wanted to say to her mother since that evening before, and, perhaps, even before then.
"You've already lost me! I hate you! Maybe if you'd taken some time to understand me, to actually be a mother, you might have avoided that, but no, your career and your future was far more important. This is my future Mom, and you're not stopping me getting it!" In spite of her attempts to show contempt and force, tears still threatened to push their way onto her eyes.
With a hiss, she dismissed them, and turned, straight past Takato and Henry (the former now understanding precisely where her earlier mood had come from), and to the hole in the floor. She practically leapt down like the bag before her, the sound of dirt scattered at the bottom followed soon after by a far louder sound of static.
And to Rumiko, watching, that sound was followed by an even louder and more unbearable sound.
Silence.
"I'll bring her back. I promise." Takato's fists were clenched, as he had yet another of those moments he would look back on in the future as 'promising too much for his own good'. Rumiko fell into her mother's arms, bawling her eyes out, leaving Takato's promise to fall to her own mother.
"Be careful," Seiko said, knowing that she didn't want the guilt of losing him too in getting her granddaughter back (and hopefully bringing her daughter and granddaughter to some resolution).
The boy's eyes scanned across to his parents, pleading with them to go too. His mother went to open her mouth, but his father promptly put his hand on her shoulder, and spoke louder. "Do us proud."
Mie looked surprised up to her husband, then somewhat tearful, before she looked into the boy's eyes. "Just be careful Takato,"
"Thanks," Takato said, addressing his father in particular. "I won't let you down."
He turned to Henry, the boy clutching a rucksack on his shoulder, and reminding the Gogglehead that thanks to Rika he now had very little choice about going to the Digital World or not anyway.
"Let's go."
And, with a spout of dirt, and a static glitch, the boy was gone.
Henry looked down into the hole as it 'gobbled up' his friend, turning to look at his father. "I'll be careful Dad. You can trust me," he said, knowing how empty his promises really were. He had no idea what would happen, or what to expect.
But his father still nodded. At least someone trusted him. "I do."
"Tell Suzie that I'm sorry she couldn't come with – I know she'll find out," he began, before putting out a finger. "But don't let the other Tamers know…any of you!" he said, spreading his gaze to the whole group of adults. "They might risk coming with, and we need to keep small and safe as a group."
"What do we say if they ask?" Seiko questioned, her arm round her distraught daughter (half-restraining her from following her own daughter into the portal).
"Wait up!" called a new voice, before Henry could reply (that they'd have to make something up, and that his time was rather pressing in this instant). Instead, his attention was drawn past the adults to a boy about his age running towards them, followed by a taller blonde man, clutching a bag.
"Ryo?" he asked, before a closer analysis confirmed it. Of all the Tamers he'd expected to turn up (and he was surprised that Kazu or someone hadn't done so yet), Ryo was definitely at the bottom of the list. He was far too far away, and, to his knowledge, no-one had called him.
"Looks like I got here just in time. Where are Takato and Rika?"
Henry hesitated, glancing to Rumiko, no longer crying but still looking very worried. "They've already gone through."
"Oh. Did I miss something?"
"I'll explain later," Henry said, although he doubted that he could. What was going on? Even after watching and listening, all he could truly ascertain was that Rika was angry at her mother. He was feeling thoroughly knocked-for-six by this morning so far. Glancing to the portal, he knew it would only get worse.
Before he could head into it, however, the blonde man caught up with his younger companion. "I had something for you all," Yamaki said, before noticing Takato and Rika were absent. "But looks like it's just you two who are still here," he frowned, opening up his bag and taking out a pair of PDAs, expanded with an extra antenna at the top. "They're D-Navs…I mean, Digital Navigators. Sorry, Riley came up with the nickname." He hated nicknames. But Riley, on the other hand…
"D-Navs, got it, thanks," Ryo said, grasping one while Henry took the other, peering over it.
"Thanks. What do they do?" Henry asked the head of Hypnos.
"I've upgraded two of my PDAs to be able to better communicate in the Digital World than the one I gave Takato before, or, at least, that's the theory. I would've made ones for all of you, but time was a factor." His voice certainly didn't hesitate to demonstrate his distaste for the hurry. "When you need to get home, call us on these things and we'll send the Ark programme. In case they don't work, we'll send the Ark down at midday in three days' time – it should land where it did before but we can't be sure of that. You will have to be on-board if that happens – we have no way of knowing if you're there or not without you sending us a message."
"Thanks." Henry pocketed the device and the information, before turning to the portal, noticing the bag on his friend's back. He had so many questions he wanted to ask, but they would have to wait. "Ready?" Besides, it would definitely help to have someone with them who knew the Digital World pretty well.
"I was ready all the way here, now I'm just getting anxious. Let's hope this works," Ryo replied, wandering forward, and, after a brief glance back, leaping down.
Dust and static. Gone.
Henry took a longer glance back, nodding to his father, before he took the fateful walk forward. This was worse than any fear of any test, any fear of any Digimon battle, any fear of falling. They were going alone to a visceral world where they could very well be chopped limb from limb the moment they landed. This was crazy. It was suicidal.
"Momentai."
He fell down, into the pit, into the dust, and into the blurred ball of static, his last thoughts rendered into nothing by the embrace.
"What are we getting oursel…?"
TO BE CONTINUED…
And here we are at the end of Chapter 2 of the original, and I hope you've enjoyed all the improvements I've made. Meanwhile, I'd like to let you know about a new forum I've set up here on this website, accessible via my profile. It's called The Writer's Corner for Digimon, and is intended for two things. Firstly, it will allow anyone who has an idea that they can't/don't want to use (a plot bunny) leave their idea for 'adoption' by another writer. I've had a lot of these in the past, and it always seems like a shame to let them go to waste. Secondly, it will be for discussion of Digimon writing in general (and any other writing if you feel like it), both from a writer and a reader's point of view. I hope it gets popular, but so long as it provides a place to drop off any random ideas I have (but can't use – I have a lot of them), it'll serve its purpose, and I hope others do the same. It is co-moderated by Crazyeight and I, so at least it has one pair of capable hands managing it. Hint: they're not mine, heh.
If you'd like to read on without waiting for the rewrite, start from Chapter 3 of the original book one.
Until next time…
B.C.
