Chapter Nine: Growth Spurt
"Get up." Niko nudged at his desk. "C'mon man, face up to it."
Taiga groaned. "My brain hurts. You go look."
"And brave that crowd by myself? Like hell that's happening. Come on." Niko shoved the desk, but that only caused Taiga to cling to it tighter like a very young and very dumb barnacle. Well, he wasn't that dumb, he had passed so far. IT was just that competitive streak in him, that's all. "Seriously, I do not want to stand there by myself and look at Rina's stupidly high scores on my own. Humor me. I'll get you a burger."
Taiga peeked an eye open. "… And fries."
Niko sighed. "Yeah, yeah, duh." You couldn't face impending grades without the promise of a burger and fries. It was a tradition by now.
Taiga groaned and pulled himself to his feet, gray hair drooping over his goggles. "Fine, let's get it over with." He tried to ignore Fergus' murmured admonishments of his self-deprecation, because what did he have to worry about? You didn't have to go to school in a V-Pet! Well, you kind of did but training didn't exactly count.
"You will be fine, child."
Taiga swallowed and nodded, making sure Niko couldn't see.
Though, he had to admit, it was nice to hear things like that from someone who wasn't his own age.
He trailed after Niko, not even bothering to crane his neck. He'd let the walking beanpole get the information or at least the predetermined idea. The crowd was already buzzing there, whispering and groaning to each other. In the sea of black and brown and dull as storm clouds school uniforms, Rina's bright green is almost blinding. She didn't turn around, staring up towards the left of the ranking board. Right where her name would be..
Taiga didn't even have to look to see Shinomiya Rina in carefully typed kanji next to the number one. The whispers grew like an angry hive of bees. Rina stepped to the side to let others pass, already turning to look for them. Someone's foot stuck out, something Taiga could only notice because of how Rina dodged it. She jumped over it, and the student gaped, like that was something surprising and new. Well, it was weird but Rina did weird things, like make it to the top spot every time like it was a game, or challenge random people to digimon fights when they were alone in the back of a classroom, or not know what an arcade was.
Niko's teeth audibly ground at the sight of her jump, eyes narrowing into slits behind his glasses. Taiga grabbed his arm as carefully as he could without making a big scene.
"This is probably a bad time for you to go guard dog," he whispered. Niko almost glared at him, but Taiga jerked his head forward.
"They'd deserve it," Niko said, voice mutinous.
"That would be ill-advised, as you can't punch people very well, master."
Fergus laughed, a choked sound of amusement. "That is a good point, Sashenka."
"I try."
Honestly, that was the thought Taiga had. Niko couldn't fight anything. He couldn't even fight the cats that stalked his apartment. Taiga figured he himself was the only one who outranked him in terms of being a complete weenie.
"She's fine," he tried instead. "It's Rina. She ignores it. She cares about what we think. That's what matters right? She's more worried about our grades and our lives, and our everything and-"
"And it drives me up a god damn wall," Niko muttered. He forced out a heavy exhale of breath. "You're right, as usual." He rubbed his arm, where Taiga's grip had gotten surprisingly bruising. Taiga immediately jumped away as if burnt, noting how red his best friend's arm had gotten. "Geez bro." Niko cracked a smirk. "I still need that."
"S-Sorry." Taiga stared at his own hand like it would give him the answers he was looking for. Then he shook his head. "Can you see?"
Niko made a face. "Yeah, yeah, hold on…" He leaned up a bit and then stared, eyes sliding right, then left. "Found you. You're like: five below me. We're on the upper levels." He grinned, a full-blown smile. "Nice one, man."
Taiga just blinked, open-mouthed. "I… I did what no-" He was cut off by the delighted tackle hug that Rina shoved them both into, one under each arm.
"Nice!" she shouted, right in their ears. "What's your secret, Taiga? You jumped up, way up!"
"I, uh-" He had none. Maybe he had studied harder, maybe he had worked a bit more than usual. But he couldn't think of anything.
What Taiga could notice, however, was how quiet Fergus had become. He could hear V.V. and Sashenka chattering quietly, but Fergus hadn't let out a peep. After school he would have to ask.
He didn't. Instead, Taiga went home with his friends and talked about the tournament that weekend, pretending Rina's smile didn't seem a bit more brittle than usual and that that knock from Rina's roommate did not bother him or Niko at all, especially when she left with a cheerful finger wave, and none of her customary affection.
They were changing. They were all changing.
Taiga didn't like it much. Not like this.
…
The day of the tournament had arrived.
Kuga Yuuya, exploring the real coliseum his former company had designed, did not even notice until the hours had counted down and the notification had arrived on his phone. Said notification almost woke him up from a doze in the slowly churning elevator.
No humans could see him, supposedly. The Digimon reacted, but they mostly reacted to the bouncing, quick form of Black. He had never remembered his partner to be so… excitable. Not that he didn't like it. One of them had to be the emotive one.
"You are near me," the dinosaur would say whenever he asked. "It is enough. I can repent."
Simple sentences, soft words, gravel in the throat. Gravel that was all his fault, all due to his own fear. Due to his own childish warped denial and things he could not -would not- think about. They made him think of his father directly, and Yuuya couldn't-
"Why not?"
Think of that or he would be sick and useless and he couldn't do that. Not now. Not now that he was finally doing things he never got to: like get legitimately dirty.
Black sneezed loud enough to interrupt his thoughts. Yuuya pulled out a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped him off.
"Cobwebs," the BlackAgumon grunted. Yuuya agreed, sneezing himself. "Old place."
"Very," Yuuya agreed again, holding out his phone like a flashlight. The elevator door closed and wheeled shut. The sound was too loud, much too loud in this cobwebbed area that seems to echo every time his still well-made shoes touch the floor. "Do you remember this room from the blueprints, Black?" Because he certainly didn't, and he had been required to draw them from memory at least twice.
"Don't." Black sniffed, "Shouldn't. Too old. Wet. Musty. Dead."
"Dead?" Yuuya shifted back towards the elevator. He should probably head back, speak to Mirei, let her know the room was there. She might not know. But she had told him to look for something, something strange.
"It might call out to you, I am not certain," she had said. "Still, it is worth looking into before you leave File CITY for a while."
Though what he was leaving for, he had no idea. Mikagura Mirei was an incredibly vague person, and it was making him regret, just a tad. But it was too late now, and for some reason, even thinking of stopping made his heart throb with indignation.
So he kept walking, ignoring the echo that made his ears ring. Then Black let out a snuffle and raced ahead of him and his flashlight. He sniffed at something the light was not able to quite illuminate and then looked over at Yuuya himself.
"This." His single word was more insistent than a peck on the arm. "This, Yuuya. Here it is."
Yuuya, however, did not move. "Any idea what it is?"
"No."
Yuuya almost laughed. Surely, his paranoid partner wouldn't be trying to get him hurt. So he stepped closer and almost tripped the entire way up the steps. He threw out his hand to catch himself, V-Pet clattering to the ground.
The second his hand touched whatever it was Black had been sniffing, the world around them lit up with light. A tingling sensation raced up his back and spine and spread out and out. He hit his knees for the three seconds it took for him to think about it. Then he started to float and the world spread out around them, full of vivid song.
Then, because this was his life, the tingling grew to pins and needles and he groaned. Down here, no one could save him.
He wasn't going to die, don't be melodramatic. He was just going to have to save himself from… whatever thhis was.
…
Akiho started awake. It was not a good feeling. She hated that sort of wake up call. Beside her, Rina slept on, curled up in a good half of the sheets. She mumbled and Akiho made herself relax, made her heart slow. It thumped loudly in her ears for a moment.
For a moment, she had thought…
A dragon's hiss, a pleasant smile, missing face all over any screen…
She almost wanted to look to the window. If this was an anime, he'd be right there, admitting he had run away from responsibility or something equally unrealistic and dumb but meant to be a heart-pounding indication of love.
Akiho almost laughed out loud. Then she rolled out of bed, landing on her good leg with barely a wince.
That wasn't how love worked. This, her life, was.
Still, she couldn't shake that feeling in her heart.
