Chapter 11

Fool's Errand

"My… room…"

Takuya couldn't believe the sight that met his eyes. What greeted them were the different trappings and furniture that filled his bedroom on the second floor of his parent's house. His clothes from the day before were resting on the floor before the bed after he had been too tired to get them into the hamper before he slipped into bed. Half finished homework sat on his desk between the pages of a worn math textbook, reminding him that he still had an hour left of problems before his next math class rolled around again. The room was no different than when he had left it that morning.

"How the hell did I get here…?" His thoughts tuned out the blaring song of the alarm clock on the nightstand beside his bed. "Wasn't I..."

"Where else should I be on a Wednesday morning?" His mind quickly returned from the farthest reaches of his cortex. Those words were enough to choke down the question in his throat and dilute his concerns.

"…That's right… Where else should I be today…?" The words leaked from his mouth unconvincingly, before he shook his head a few times and slapped his hands against his cheeks, forcing the ideas into his head.

Takuya threw off his covers and jumped out of the bed, slapping the off button on the alarm clock as he did, and onto his feet. The sudden movement sent a gurgle of hunger forth from his stomach and set the idea of breakfast in his mind. "Time to get something to eat," he laughed at the predictability of his own stomach.

He glanced in the mirror at what he was wearing, a long thin pair of red cloth pajama bottoms and nothing else. He patted his abs a few times with his hands, stirring up a clapping sound as flesh met flesh, before he decided to grab a white t-shirt from his dresser and put it on. With his clothes situation sorted out her exited his room and headed downstairs. Before he had even taken the first step the smell and sounds of cooking bacon and eggs washed over him, making his stomach rumble even more in response to the stimulation.

"Good old, mom," he smiled before rushing down the stairs, skipping two or three at a time before finishing with a five stair jump at the end.

He quickly made his way to the kitchen and found a plate of eggs and bacon waiting for him on the kitchen table. Right before the table he paused and stared down at the plate of steaming food. The sensation of hunger the smell had summoned up faded from him for a few moments as he stood there with a confused look on his face, but the confusion faded after a few seconds and the hunger returned, so he pulled out the chair and sat down.

It didn't take him long to finish the food and lick the plate clean, his returning hunger driving to quickly and fully indulge it. With a satisfied sigh he patted his stomach and got up from the table to drop his plate in the sink.

Exiting the kitchen he followed the sound of voices to the living room, where he found his mother watching an early morning news program; accounting for the fact that he had been hearing multiple voices during breakfast.

The woman sitting before the television was a woman of about five-seven, a few inches shorter than her teenage son; however, he had yet to reach his peak so the height difference would only continue to grow. Her auburn hair fell about her soft round face and small shoulders in curls that turned upwards at the ends.

"Morning…" His greeting hesitated for a second as the confused look from earlier flashed across his features, but it passed as quickly as it had appeared and he continued. "…mom."

There was a short pause as the woman sitting on the couch picked up the remote and hit the mute button, silencing the television, before she turned and smiled at him.

"Morning, sweetheart," she smiled warmly at him. "By the sounds of you furiously gulping down your breakfast I assume you enjoyed it. Or you were just extremely hungry."

"You heard that from in here, huh…?" Takuya chuckled embarrassedly with a nervous rub of the back of his neck thrown in for good measure.

He didn't think of himself as a noisy or messy eater, and normally he wasn't, but when he was hungry all his self-awareness of his eating habits went out the window. Those lapses in his manners weren't something he usually felt uncomfortable about, but when someone pointed them out he felt awkward.

"We're just lucky the neighbors didn't hear. They'd think that I wasn't feeding you enough. That I was downright starving you," she laughed as she shifted her light brown eyes from him to the stairs that lead back upstairs. "It's strange for you to be up before your little brother. Do you have something going on this morning?"

"It's not that strange," Takuya defensively countered. "I've been getting up early for the last six months to… to… Why have I recently been getting up early?"

Again it felt like the words had slipped away along with his memory. The process only seemed to move faster the more he thought about it, until he couldn't even remember the reason for the question anymore.

"Okay, whatever you say, early bird," his mother chuckled to herself as her eyes wandered to the clock on the wall. "And here I thought you were getting up early today because you had that morning soccer practice today, which you're going to be late for if you don't get going."

"Damn!" Takuya yelped, his eyes jumping to the clock to check the time for himself. When he saw that it was already seven o'clock… was that time right… he ran up the stairs before returning three minutes later dressed in a red and white soccer uniform with a blue duffle bag slung over his shoulder.

Grabbing the last piece of toast from the plate on the table he yelled a, "See you later," to his mother before dashing out the door.

"Be careful. And remember to stay away from areas where d-" his mother called after him, but the door shut long before she could finish.

Running the whole way Takuya made it to the practice in under ten minutes, giving him another ten to catch his breath and watch his team get in some extra practice time from the hill overlooking the field. He couldn't help but smile as he watched some of the more experienced players try and teach the newbie's how to kick straight. It wasn't going well and often resulted in someone having to chase down a loose ball.

"I've miss this. Even the early morning practices," Takuya chuckled reminiscently to himself. "I wonder why I ever quit… Wait…? I never quit. Why would I ever quit?"

There was that feeling again. A contradiction had arisen in his mind, but a cold fog quickly rolled over it and dulled it until it vanished and the whole incident was forgotten.

"I should probably get down there and-"

"Hey, Captain! About time you showed!" The voice of boy with black buzz cut hair called to him before he could finish his thought.

"Yeah, yeah. Sorry about that," he rubbed the back of his neck is his patented mixture of embarrassment and apology as he descended the hill on his way to the field.

"What's wrong? Did you oversleep again?" The boy laughed as he tossed Takuya the soccer ball he had been holding against his hip.

"No… I guess the time just got away from me…" The time he had somehow lost that morning should have been what was on his mind and causing him to trail off in mid-sentence, but what was pulling his attention was a group of three boys sitting in a group in the bleachers off to the sides of the field.

Two of them had brown hair and were of average size and build for their age while the third was blonde with a slightly bigger frame. He couldn't recalled the three boys names, but they did seem familiar, and they had on the same soccer uniforms as him, so he assumed they were part of the team.

Nothing about the three stood out, except for the fact that they were huddled together, looking down into the screen of a smart phone; an iPhone by all appearances. Again, there was nothing strange about watching a television show or movie while one waited for practice to begin, though as team captain he wished they would be warming up at least, but it had been a word they used that had attracted his attention to them.

He hadn't heard it too clearly and he couldn't repeat the word if asked. He had no idea what word they had said was, but somehow it had briefly ignited a flame in the back of his mind, but after finding no meaningful connection within his memory the spark faded and vanished once again.

"So you ready to start captain?" The shorthaired boy asked as he eyed the target of his question.

"I don't know," Takuya shook his attention lose from the three boys and back to the field and who he was talking to. "I don't see the coach anywhere."

"Yeah… He's probably running late again. He's been pretty flaky this week. But on the positive side it gives you the opportunity to play coach," the boy smirked slyly at Takuya. It seemed that he knew Takuya liked to play the part of leader whenever given the chance.

"I guess I could get everyone started on practice drills while we wait for him," Takuya responded as he made a quick visual sweep of the field, trying to locate all of his teammates and soccer equipment. "Would you mine gathering everyone in the middle of the field while I get the equipment out of the sports shed?"

"Sure. I prefer the requests that don't require all of the heavy lifting, coach," he playfully added the title before going off to gather the others.

Twenty minutes later Takuya was running his team through a sixth set of goal kicks when the coach finally came running onto the field.

"Sorry. Sorry," a semi buff thirty year old man dressed in a blue track suit apologized as he made his way across the field.

"It's nothing. I got everyone started with some drills while we waited, so we're ready to go when you are," Takuya looked towards the man trying to place him. He knew he was the coach, but he couldn't come up with a name. However, despite the fact that he couldn't recall the name, something he was usually very good at, he let it slide.

"Oh, thanks. I got stuck behind another construction area from the last incident this morning. It just had to happen on the only road between my apartment and the school," the man tiredly rubbed his left temple as he thought about whatever situation was causing him to run late each morning.

"What incid-" Takuya wanted to inquire as to what the man was talking about, something within him wasn't making a proper connection with the meaning behind his use of incident, but before he could the coach lifted his whistle to his lips and blew.

"Okay, everyone, good drills, now let's get into your positions for a practice match," the coach ordered while pointing to different spots around the field, guiding the newer players to the positions they might not have been too sure about.

Letting his question drop Takuya quickly made his way to the middle of the field, anxious to get a game underway. He couldn't wait for the chance to engage the others in battle… no, he meant competition… right? Why would he be thinking about fighting?

Halfway into the practice match Takuya was leading his half of the team to a six-to-two lead. His performance was fierce and focused, and only intensified each time his heart beat faster and spread more adrenaline through his body.

The more intense the game got, the more students who were showing up early for school began to fill the bleachers. It was only a match meant to improve the player's skill, but despite the fact that it had no bearing on anything, the stands filled out to one-tenth their capacity.

Weaving from side to side Takuya managed to dribble the ball past three defenders and line up the prefect angle in which to increase his teams score to seven. However, as he made the shot the sound of his pounding heart vanished from his ears and was replaced by a low droning sound.

Takuya didn't watch as his kick flew past the goalie and growled against the white nylon netting at the back of the goal. No, his attention had been pulled towards the city skyline by the sound of a droning siren as it suddenly began to bellowed froth from it.

"What the…?" Something in Takuya's gut told him that the siren had a foreboding and dangerous meaning behind it; he just couldn't remember where the feeling was coming from or what it meant.

"Another one," one of his teammates remarked.

"That makes three just this week," another added.

"There were twelve incidents last month. With three in the first week of this month we're on our way to a new record," the worried tone of a third boy suggested that the record breaking count wasn't a good thing.

For the first time since Takuya had heard the siren he returned his gaze to the field and practice game, but both had grinded to a dead stop. His coach, teammates, and even the students who had stopped by to watch before class started, were standing at attention with their eyes focused in the same direction as the sound. Somehow the alarming sound had a universal affect on people.

"It must be pretty close to us if we can hear the siren so clearly from here," the boy Takuya had talked to at the beginning of practice stepped in beside him without taking his eyes off of the direction the alarm was being sounded from. "Maybe just a little less than half a district from us."

"Wha…?" Takuya mouthed a quiet half question, but when an all too familiar vibration rushed over and through his body his focus returned to the city.

The feeling that coursed through the air and washed over him was something somehow forever stuck in his bodies muscle memory. He didn't need to see the flash of red or the growing gray cloud rising up from the streets of the city in the distance. Somehow he knew the feeling of an explosion in and out.

"It looks like it's started. It didn't take them long to arrive on the scene this time. The new response system seems to be doing its job," the coach remarked.

Whether Takuya heard him or not wasn't apparent by the blank stare on his face. Whatever was happening in the distance had forced him to retreat into his own mind as he tried to comprehend what he was feeling. The siren, the explosion, and everyone's reactions, they all culminated in a sense that he should stay away, possibly even take shelter; but on the other hand, something about it all beckoned him forward, towards the danger.

His body began to shake with fear or anticipation, he couldn't tell, but what he did know was that he had to act on one or the other or he would go crazy.

"Okay, enough gawking. You all know the drill. Everyone inside the school," the coach pounded the point that he was a teacher into his own head and had an important job to do.

The coach orderly guided all the students off of the field and into the school, making sure to count each member of the team as they entered. In that count he finally realized that a certain member was missing.

"Has anyone seen Takuya?" The coach looked out over the seas of worried faces, but they all just gave him the same blank stares back.

"This is probably a really bad idea, but I have to see it for myself," Takuya told himself as he ran along the streets, his final goal the location of the sounds he heard coming from the distance.

As he had gotten closer to the city strange, but familiar, sounds had begun to fill the air. He could hear the fracturing of cement and steel, powerful impacts as unknown forces crashed against each other, and the crackle of power in the air. But what really grabbed his attention were the deep voices hidden amongst the sounds that cried out every so often.

Once he had reached the city he had expected to find crowds of people fleeing from the site of the explosion or some people braving the danger to gawk at the destruction, but so far he hadn't run into anyone in the streets. He could see groups of people in shops and offices, standing around televisions which they were intently focused on. Takuya couldn't tell what was flashing across the screens, he didn't have time to stop and check, but whatever was happening it had the camera tracking around quickly in all different directions.

Another large explosion echoed forth from ahead, but Takuya didn't stop running in that direction until a thick wave of white dust came rolling around the corner and over him. With the loss of visibility he was forced to slide to a stop while he waited for the cloud to clear so that he wouldn't run into a wall or car.

"Come on! Come on!" Takuya impatiently waited for the obstructive cloud to pass; however, that impatience would turn to apprehension when the echo of heavy footfalls began to fill the air.

The weighty footsteps were quickly followed by a powerful impact as something hit the pavement somewhere a short distance from Takuya. It wasn't close enough to blow away the dust cloud, but it was enough to make the asphalt beneath his feet shake and threaten to throw him down. However, Takuya managed to stay on his feet and keep his wits about him. He knew he had to be sharp now since whatever had caused the explosion was close, meaning the danger was close as well.

He stared into the field of pale white, looking for the source of whatever was running rampant through the city. After a few seconds he finally spotted a large shadow lying on the road a hundred feet from him. It was barely visible through the dust, but its darker gray color made it stand out.

For a few moments Takuya thought it might have been a pile of something that had been knocked loss from the buildings above by whatever had caused the explosion, but when it began to shift and grow in height he knew it had to be… alive.

"What the…? Is it… Is it standing up?" Takuya mumbled to himself as he remained transfixed in his location and on the shadow.

"ANTYLAMON! HE'S ABOVE YOU! COUNTER HIS ATTACK!" A feminine voice cried out from somewhere within the fog.

The voice sounded young and urgent, but what made Takuya's heart skip a beat was the name she had called out. It was a name right? The girl's voice was calling out to something, maybe the large shadow ahead of him; if the shadow had a name that was.

"BUNNY BLADES"

A battle cry erupted from the shadow as it extended two long protrusions, most likely arms, and raised a foot off of the ground before it began to twist violently. It quickly worked itself up to a speed that turned it into a blurry tornado seconds before a hissing roar came pouring down from above.

"MEGA ICE BLAST"

The moment those words were uttered the temperature in the street steeply dropped and a stream of blue light crashed into the spinning shadow. Upon impact the blast of blue light was brushed off to the two sides by the furious rotation of the mysterious figure. This unfortunately sent half of the, attack he assumed, towards Takuya.

"Damn it!" Takuya grunted as he dived to the side, narrowly avoiding coming into contact with the light.

He hit the asphalt with enough grace to not harm himself and quickly spun back around to face where he had been standing a second ago.

"What the hell is happening?" Takuya stared awestruck at the road before him as he breathed visible breathes into the cold streets; streets that had once been hot from baking in the summer sun.

It was what he saw that explained the sudden drop in temperature. A long line of jagged spears of ice, ranging in length from two to ten feet, appeared to have erupted from the street. Though, upon closer inspection it appeared that they had instead burst forth from a sheet of ice that had been laid over the road where the blast had struck.

"I could have been killed…" Takuya tried to get the rapid beating of his heart under control as he stared at his ghostly reflection in the shimmering surfaces of multiple chilling lances.

By now his sense of self-preservation was screaming at him to turn tail and run until he could no longer see or hear the battle, maybe even further until the siren went out as well. However, something whispering in the back of his mind told him to stay and see for himself what was happening.

"I need to get up higher," he let the small voice win out and began looking around for a way to get above the rolling cloud of dust.

Thanks to his dive roll he had put himself closer to one of the buildings, close enough to spot a fire escape whose ladder had been left in the down position. Without a second thought he climbed the ladder and began to ascend the platforms. With each story he rose the dust cloud grew thinner until he was finally able to spot the twinkle of the sun through it. After the tenth floor he burst through the cloud and found clear sky and air all around him.

He didn't stop at that floor, but instead continued on until he reached the roof. The moment his foot hit the tar roof he ran to the side of the building that put him closest to where he had seen the shadow in the fog. His eyes scanned the dust filled streets below for the shadow, but when a deep growl reached his ears he turned his attention to a skyscraper a block away.

"…!?" Takuya couldn't find the words to describe what he was seeing. A massive red seas serpent with fins covering its body, a golden helm enhanced with a long metallic curving blade in the forehead from under which green hair jutted out, and a white underbelly, was wrapped around the twenty-first, twenty-second, and twenty-third floor of a steel and glass skyscraper.

"What is that!?" Takuya thought about taking a few steps back from the creature in the distance, but either the voice in the back of his mind or the fear kept him in place; so instead he just watched it without blinking.

The dragon's lips curled up into an angry sneer, displaying its rows of large razor sharp teeth, as it focused its blue lizard eyes on a tower a few buildings across from it before it fully opened its mouth and let out a surprising cry.

"LIGHTNING JAVELIN"

The blade protruding from the forehead suddenly ignited with a yellow glow that rushed up its length to the tip where it was discharged as a powerful bolt of lightning.

The golden bolt of electricity snaked across the air just as a familiar cry went up again.

"BUNNY BLADES"

Takuya's eyes were just fast enough to see the twisting figure again in the middle of its whirlwind attack as it took the bolt head on and deflected it like the earlier attack of ice. This unfortunately resulted in electrified arcs being cast into the surrounding buildings, causing some minor structural damage to three of them.

"I guess it's better than dying," Takuya noted on the destruction as he waited for the figure to stop spinning so he could get a look at it.

After a few seconds the twister of brown gave way to a large rabbit monster standing on two feet. It stood about two stories tall with brown fur and long bunny ears tipped with pink. It was dressed in a white shirt and purple pants with a red midsection. Its arms were long, only a foot or two from dragging on the ground, and they looked quite powerful. They looked like they could easily tear a bus or human like him in half.

Before he could marvel at the giant rabbit and sea serpent for much longer a voice angrily shouted at him from behind. "What are you doing here?"

"…" Takuya whipped around to find a girl about his age stomping across the roof towards him.

Her hair was tan and done up in two long pigtails. Her dark blue eyes were focused on him and shone with the agitation displayed in her facial features.

"Answer me! What are you doing out here in the open?" She barked when she didn't get a response. "How did you get passed the government personnel? Don't tell me they're getting lack on the security patrols again."

"…I had to see…" Takuya finally managed to get out before turning his gaze back to the battle between the giant rabbit and sea serpent.

"You act like you've never seen this kind of thing before. They've become a pretty painful fact of life for the last two years, so I can't imagine that someone your age hasn't seen one yet. Does your family not own a television or computer," the girl seemed unhappy with his reply and attitude. She actually didn't seem to like anything about him or his purpose for being there. "Don't tell me you're one of those people who feel they just have to see a digimon battle up close. There's a reason so many people like that die."

Takuya could tell that she was still angry and yelling at him, but that word had once again sent him retreating into his own mind, making it so he couldn't hear anything over the beating of his own heart. It was the same word he had overheard the three boys on the bleachers use; the one he had only half heard. But this time it echoed throughout him, seeking a connection deep within him. What did that word mean? Digimon?

"Whatever… Well, you're not dying today or watching from the front row anymore. Get him out of here," the girl said, pulling Takuya's attention back to the rooftop.

Now, standing on either side of him were two large men in black riot gear. They must have come up on him while he had been lost in his thoughts. Before he could react the two men grabbed him by the arms and began dragging him across the roof, towards the open stairs access door.

"Wait!" Takuya cried out, but they just continued to drag him.

"I have to know why this seems so familiar! Please let me go!" He continued to beg, but the men weren't having any of it and dragged him through the doorway, leaving him with the final image of the girl stepping up to the lip of the building while the two monsters clashed in the distance.

What was happening to his world? That was all he could think.

To be continued…