Author's Note: This one skips around again, sorry. I hope that's not super annoying. I just have a lot to get going.
Disclaimer: Sadly, no, it's still not mine.
"Daisuke-kun, open the door!"
Jun tapped her foot impatiently. She had knocked on her younger brother's door quite a few times at this point. She'd knocked louder. She'd even pounded. But there was no answer.
"Daisuke!" she yelled. Still nothing. She rolled her eyes; he was probably ignoring her as usual. She shrugged to herself and said, "Well, I did knock first."
She opened the door. The first thing that hit her was the stench. She swore Daisuke never washed his socks after a soccer game; she was half afraid that she would be greeted by a pair of them become sentient someday. She looked around the room and didn't see him anywhere.
"Chibimon?" she called, a little more gently. She saw a pair of bright red eyes pop up from the blankets on Daisuke's bed, just barely visible over the pile of (clean?) laundry. She smiled at the tiny Digimon and held her arms out to him as she walked closer.
Chibimon smiled and jumped up into her arms. She gave him a gentle scratch behind his ears and snuggled him close for a moment, then said, "Did Daisuke go out somewhere?"
"I don't know, I was sleeping," Chibimon said brightly. He stretched and yawned widely.
"Of course you were," she teased, scratching his belly. He cooed softly and rolled over onto his back. "Do you know when he'll be back?"
"Nope. No idea."
"Alright, well, he's not answering his phone, and Ken called trying to get a hold of him." She smiled mischeivously. "He told me to bother Daisuke until he called back."
"Can I bother him too?" Chibimon asked. Jun laughed, carrying him out to the kitchen for snacks.
"Absolutely."
"Moshi-moshi!"
"Nii-san." Hikari's voice sounded strange. Taichi knew something was wrong the second he heard her speak.
"Hikari, what is it?" he asked seriously.
"I think something is wrong with Daisuke," she said quietly. He could hear it in her voice that she was unsure, worried, and even a little scared.
"What makes you say that?" He wasn't sure how much Daisuke had told the others; Yuki was usually who he talked to first, but Daisuke was very close with the rest of the Chosen Children as well.
"He's been off lately," she said pensively. "And I know he talks to Yuki-chan."
"Yeah, he was over here the other night," Taichi said. "But I don't know what for." That was only half a lie-he knew it had something to do with Ken, but he wasn't sure of the specifics, and he hadn't asked.
"Did he seem strange at all?" Now he heard nothing but worry and fear in her voice.
"Strange how? Hikari, what's wrong?"
"I don't know," she said. "I just have this terrible feeling that there's some sort of Darkness in him. Takeru has noticed it too."
Taichi thought for a moment. He hadn't noticed anything of that sort when he'd seen Daisuke in the morning. They'd had breakfast and chatted and Daisuke had seemed mostly his normal self, albeit tired. But then, he always deferred to Hikari's judgement when it came to matters like this; as the Child of Light, she was extremely sensitive to any sort of shift in the balance between Light and Darkness.
"I didn't notice anything," he said. "But I believe you." Now he was starting to worry a bit; he'd never known Daisuke to succumb to Darkness. During the battle against BelialVamdemon a few years ago, Daisuke had been the only one untouched by the Darkness and had managed to save them all. He was the Child of Miracles, and that had always emanated from him.
"Do you know where he is?" Hikari asked. "He isn't answering his phone and he never showed up last night."
"Hang on a second." Taichi pulled the receiver away from his face and called out, "Yuki-chan, do you know where Daisuke is?"
"No," she replied, walking into the living room with a basket of laundry on her hip. "Why?"
"Hikari is trying to get a hold of him and he's not answering. Apparently he never showed up to their weekly gathering, either."
"That's strange," she said, her brow furrowed. She held out her hand for the phone, which Taichi handed to her. She put it to her ear and said, "Hikari?"
"Yuki-chan! I need your help."
"What is it?"
"I need to know where Daisuke would go if he were upset," she said. "He's not answering me and Takeru and I want to find him and talk to him."
"The park down at the other end of town," Yuki said instantly. "He likes to run through the woods there when something is bothering him."
"Thank you, Yuki."
She hung up the phone and looked over at Taichi, who looked distracted. She set the laundry down on the table and sat next to him on the couch.
"I'm starting to get worried," she said. "Daisuke doesn't just disappear like this."
"He's a tough kid," Taichi reassured her. "Crest of Courage, y'know."
Yukira rolled her eyes. "That's not the only thing that makes him tough."
"Okay but that's a lot of it," Taichi teased. Yuki managed a small smile, which Taichi returned. He squeezed her hand and added, "Hikari and Takeru are going to find him and help him figure things out."
"I hope so," she said. "I've never seen him like this before."
"None of us have," Taichi said. "Maybe being-well, Daisuke all the time finally caught up to him. Can't be happy every waking second."
"True." She thought for a moment. Maybe that's all this was. He'd been the happy one for so long, and maybe he finally snapped. Still, if anyone could bring him around from it, it was Hikari. She had a way with words and she cared about them all so much. Her best friend was in good hands.
Daisuke awoke from his nap to the sound of muffled screaming. He snapped awake, looking around the room. He looked over to the other bed in the room and saw the girl sleeping there tossing and turning and screaming into her pillow.
Quickly, he swung his legs out of the bed and in barely two strides made it to her. He gently shook her shoulders, and with a final scream she shot straight up, reflexively punching him in the jaw.
"Ow!" he cried, stumbling backwards.
"I'm so sorry!" she cried, jumping out of the bed. "Sometimes I wake up a little...well, violently."
"It's okay," Daisuke said, rubbing his jaw. "You've got quite the right hook."
"Thanks, I think," she said sheepishly.
"Are you alright?" Daisuke asked.
"Mostly," she said, rifling through her bag as she spoke. "I've been having a lot of nightmares lately. That's why I'm staying here."
"I know the feeling," he said, sitting back down on the bed.
"Aha!" she exclaimed in triumph. She pulled from her bag a small white bottle, which rattled in her hand. She opened the lid and popped out a couple of the tiny white pills into her hand, then slapped them into her mouth and swallowed hard.
"Headache?" he said.
"No. It shuts up my friends for a little bit." She smiled shyly at him and said, "My name is Nanako, by the way."
"Daisuke," he said, holding out his hand. She shook it vigorously and said, "So how long are you staying here?"
"Probably just a couple days," he said. "I just needed to get out for a bit, y'know?"
"I ran away too," she said brightly, as if this didn't faze her one bit. "My parents didn't like my friends and they wanted to put me in a hospital."
Daisuke's eyes widened a little bit. Why was she telling him all this? He tilted his head to the side and looked at her quizzically. She was a nice enough girl, looking to be no more than sixteen. She had bright blue hair pulled into two messy buns on either side of her head, and the greenest eyes he'd ever seen. They were wide and unblinking, staring directly into him. It was a little unnerving.
"I think she likes you," came a faint whisper at the back of his mind. He shook his head, ignoring it.
"Why would they do that?" he asked.
"Because of all my friends," she said, grinning. "They talk to me and keep me company. They're really nice, but sometimes I can't sleep or they try to wake me up so I have to make them go away." She rattled the bottle of pills in her hand.
"What about you?" she asked, scooting herself to the edge of the bed. "Why'd you run away?"
"Nightmares," he said. She nodded enthusiastically.
"I knew it!" she proclaimed, turning to her side and speaking to an invisible person. "I told you, Hideki! I could tell the second I saw him!" She turned back to Daisuke, her eyes wide with curiosity, and said, "What kind of nightmares?"
"Uh, I'd rather not talk about it, if that's okay," he said, a little uncomfortable.
"Oh, it must be bad stuff then." She hung her head solemnly. Then, her eyes snapped back up to meet his and she said gleefully, "Mine are usually about torture."
"Oh," he replied. He wasn't exactly sure how to respond to that. Why was she so happy about her nightmares? Something in her must have snapped.
"And soon after the nightmares start," she said, "then you start making friends. Mine come and go, but they always come back."
Just like Katsu, he thought to himself. Is this what I'm going to turn into? Am I finally going crazy?
"Maybe you are," came Katsu's creeping voice. "But hey, we're friends now."
