Thursday
Her bright orange pencil tapped steadily on her ancient school desk as her mind wandered, letting her thoughts go to anything but health class.
To say the least, Kari was disappointed by the outcome of yesterday's recruit. Yolei and Cody wouldn't be easy to convince that there was another world. She recalled their first trip to the Digital World and their utter shock and awe from the sight. Without taking them there or shoving proof in their faces, it wasn't going to be easy for them to believe anything.
She awoke from her thoughts to fing her gaze on a rainbow-colored, 'hugs not drugs' poster on the opposing wall. She shifter her gaze to the blonde slouching in the seat to her left. TK wasn't too ecstatic about yesterday's failed attempt either. It had left him and Kari both irritated and on edge since they had no clue where to go from here. That is, until Kari got an idea.
She used her arm to nudge TK, and he bolted upright in his chair as if he'd been so zoned out he fell asleep. First, his eyes went to the worksheet in front of him that he was supposedly completing then to the oblivious teacher in the front of the room and finally to Kari who leaned close to him and whispered in his ear.
"We need to take Yolei and Cody to the Digital World."
TK scrunched up his nose and pulled back from her. "Why?"
"We won't convince them any other way," she reasoned.
He shook his head slowly and turned on her with empathetic eyes. "We can't take them there until we can trust them."
She scoffed, "This is Yolei and Cody we're talking about!"
TK quickly hushed her, and she looked around the room apologetically hoping no one overheard.
TK continued, keeping his voice low, "No, Kari, that's it. It's not them. They don't know us."
"Yes, they do! Even if they don't know it… It'll come back to them." Her voice trailed off as she doubted her own words.
He gave her a sideways glance. "You can't seriously believe they're the same with their memory wiped."
She folded her arms. "Maybe I do." Honestly, she didn't believe that, but by this point, she was too stubborn to be proven wrong.
He thought aloud, "Then why wouldn't you take the pill if you thought you'd be the same?"
He instantly froze as did Kari. He wanted to slap himself. His suspicions had caused accusing thoughts like that to pop into his head more and more, but he'd never let them slip out like that. By the look on Kari's face, she wanted to slap him too had they not been sitting in the middle of a classroom.
She settled for hissing in a way that made him cringe. "You think I'd do that? Why? Because you've lost more of your memory than I have? What, are you jealous?"
He started into an apology, "Kari, that not what I meant to-… wait, jealous?"
"Yes, jealous. It's not my fault you think a world that's been your second home for years is so dispensable." Her words were harsh and cut a little too close to home. If it weren't the heat of the moment, she might have realized that.
He was snarling in an eerily calm way. "I'm so sorry I'm not dependent and afraid of change like you. Maybe I just know how to grow up."
"Maybe you're too afraid to hold on," she growled.
"Maybe you need to let go," he retorted.
"Bring-ring-ring-ring-ring"
The rest of the class got up and out into the hallway in record time. TK and Kari hadn't even noticed them packing up. Their eyes were locked; it could've been frustration from yesterday or fear from what's been happening these last two week and what was about to come, but they had taken out only a fraction of their anger out on each other and left the classroom in opposite directions, still fuming.
'A thousand eleven, a thousand twelve… huh, maybe they're not home.'
TK rang the doorbell again and stepped back a couple feet. He couldn't believe he was doing this. Here he was, he'd ditched school after first period (something he'd never dream of doing for anything but dire Digiworld matters) and hopped on a subway to their last hope in Tamachi.
TK didn't know what he'd been thinking. It was the middle of the day and last he heard, both of Ken's parents worked and the dim hope he had that Ken wouldn't be at school was being extinguished.
Ignoring his doubts, he continued to stay posted at the door for a good couple more minutes. He was caught off guard when someone actually did open the door.
Standing in front of him was none other than Ken Ichijouji. He looked different than in TK's memory; in fact, he even looked different from the few times TK had caught him on the news for academics. It didn't look like he'd smiled in weeks. His hair covered his eyes that probably were as pitiful as the rest of him. The skin and bones that was Ken slouched, clothes wrinkled, and gave off an overwhelming aura of despair.
But in the true nature that is TK, he smiled and politely said, "Hello. Ken?"
"Another one? What do you want?" The hostile words didn't sound like Ken. Oddly enough, TK wished that he could at least sound like the emperor; he would know how to handle him.
Figuring he should introduce himself this time, he explained, "My name is TK. I go to Odaiba High School, and I need your help with something."
The other teen, who was supposedly still a genius, rolled his eyes, and TK wanted to cringe. "More tutoring."
"No, nothing like that!" TK assured knowing he couldn't lose the attention of the already uninterested and reserved Ken, "I wanted to talk about you!"
He scoffed, "You're doing a report on me? What, Einstein was already taken?"
TK blinked not particularly sure if this Ken was conceited or this was a normal occurrence. "It's not a report. I know something about your past that I think you deserve to know."
Despite his scornful words, Ken's face had stayed emotionless and hidden, but his mouth now formed into a scowl. "I highly doubt you know something about my past that I don't." With that, he tried to slam the door, but TK reacted too fast. His foot was in the door, and his eyes were trained on Ken's behind the mess of hair.
"Please, you don't understand. I just need a few minutes." His voice came out ten times more desperate than intended, but at least it worked. Ken stepped back and let him in all the while not looking the least bit happy about it.
TK walked in and looked around with a tinge of nostalgia. He remembered everything in the apartment as though he had been there only yesterday and not years ago in a buried past; the dusty floorboards, the sagging spider plant in the corner, the fridge coated with magnets from what must have been every business in town.
He went and casually sat down at the kitchen table. Ken only scowled. "Talk. What about my past?"
Not wanting to get into some 'other life out there' debate, TK decided it best to just start his explanation as a hypothetical situation. He could work on Ken believing it later. "Now, I'm not sure how you feel about this, so let's just say for a minute there are other worlds, alright?"
The genius nodded, the only indication that he was even aware of TK's presence as he leaned on the wall and let his hair droop.
TK continued, "And those other worlds have problems just like ours with fighting and war and stuff, so they look to an outside force for help: our world. But it's more like certain people in our world that they can contact, so they contact them, prepare them, and they fix that other world… a couple of times."
TK hoped some of this made sense to him. It was awful hard to explain without giving away too much information. "That means that the other world is safe, and the people from our world don't have to hang around anymore, but now our world is in trouble because they found out about the other world, and they're panicking and trying to change the other world, so we separate the worlds and make everything go back to normal, but now the other world is in trouble again, and it needs help from the people it contacted before."
He finished in a panic, just wanting to get the words out. "In order to save that world, we need help and to make sure our world doesn't figure out what's going on."
There was a long pause in which Ken didn't move. TK half-considered poking him awake before he muttered curiously, "We?"
"Huh?"
"You started saying 'we' like we were the ones who could contact this other world."
Leave it to the genius to figure everything out. TK might of well have told him everything outright.
Despite already knowing, Ken spoke hypothetically. "Let's say that, if such a world exists, we are those people who can connect to it, except it seems that you know of that world, and I don't. Now why is that?"
TK also talked hypothetically, "Something must have happened like you having your memory erased."
Ken scratched his head, and in the process pushed several clumps of hair out of his face. Now only a few stray strands stood in the way of the world and Ken's rich dark eyes. The eyes turned to him, and all TK could think was how bright they used to be. But then again the dull eyes were probably as bright as they'd been in awhile judging by his interested expression. "So what happens in this memory I can't recall?"
TK paused. There was so much to tell. He better start with the good stuff. "Well those of us who are connected to the other world have formed a team to defeat the evils that caused the problems in the other world… and we're all friends."
"Friends." He repeated the word as though it were a foreign concept or contagious like the stomach flu.
TK thought back to that morning and his blow up with Kari, last week and the boys' arguments over the pill. They used to bounce back from things like that so quickly but now with their time as digidestined coming to an end he wasn't so sure. "Yeah, good friends… A lot changes."
"Tell me more," Ken demanded, and TK grinned at his excitement.
"Does that mean you believe me?"
"About what?"
'What do you think?' TK moved his hands around the air either in frustration or a second attempt to explain without words. "The other world and you being a part of it."
Ken was nodding before the blonde even finished talking. He even thought he caught a hint of a smile on the raven-haired boy's face.
TK sighed in relief. They'd convinced one out of four. He prepped himself to explain in more detail.
"Good because the other world needs your help again."
At the word 'help,' TK swore Ken visibly flinched, any hint of a smile completely obliterated. His voice came out cold, even colder than when he'd first opened the door. "You only came here so I could help you?"
TK blinked not seeing the problem. "Well, yeah."
"Get out."
"But-"
"GET OUT!"
Ken pushed himself off the wall and was heading towards the table. TK stood up immediately and held his hands up in defense.
TK was reduced to pleading as the other mentally forced him out of the apartment with his fiery eyes and snarl. "Whatever I did, I'm sorry, but you have to listen-"
"I don't have to do anything! Get out of my apartment!"
Ken was closing in, and TK backpedaled to the door. Honestly with the despairing, and probably weak, condition that Ken was in, TK wouldn't have a problem physically staying in the apartment but couldn't help retreating from the pure malice and rage of Ken.
"Ken, please, you really don't understand!" He went on, but his voice was drowned out by the insanely inappropriate noise coming from his pocket:
"HOO HA HOO HA!
NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA NA!
Have you ever been in looooove?"
An even red hue spread over his face, and he expected his friend to laugh at his embarrassment. But then he remembered this wasn't his friend, and he was in no mood to laugh. After letting the ringtone play for much longer than he should have, TK answered the phone.
"This isn't a good time," he whispered into the phone while sneaking a look at the irate Ken.
"Well make it one. Izzy needs us." He instantly recognized the voice of his older brother.
"Now?" With that, TK had been scooted out the door far enough, and Ken slammed it. He tried to reach out one more time but knew today was not the day to get through to his former friend.
"No, after school. Are you in class? I was planning on just leaving a message, but you answered so…"
TK hurriedly replied, "Uh, yeah, class, huge math test in a few minutes, need to cram, gotta go!"
Matt, who hadn't sounded the least bit suspicious before, had an accusing tone to his voice. "Why are you lying?"
The fact that his brother always knew what he was up to could be both helpful and hurtful. Especially the latter when he was trying to get away with skipping school.
"I'm not," he defended, "What's Izzy need?"
Matt didn't believe that in the slightest but also didn't see a reason to question him further. "He needs as many of us as possible to go talk to Gennai and find out what's going on."
TK asked apprehensively, "Kari's not going, right?"
"…Why?"
TK paused not wanting to have to explain his fight with his best friend only a few hours previous. Due to that, his words came out uneasy. "She, I kind of- There was... we're not on the best terms at the moment."
He thought he heard Matt mutter something about the Kamiyas in general before continuing into the phone, "What did you do?"
"Me? Maybe it was her fault!"
"Fine, what happened?" The elder honestly hadn't been trying to place blame on his younger brother, just figure out what was wrong.
"We got into this fight…" he trailed off not wanting to explain in detail what it was about, "Just please don't invite her to see Gennai… or she can go, and I can stay. I don't mind."
"Actually, Izzy already said don't call Kari because she could tell Tai," Matt explained
TK blinked. "Oh, um, alright... What's with Tai and Izzy anyway?"
There was a pause where he knew his older brother must be rolling his eyes. "Who knows, who cares. They're big boys; they'll solve their problems eventually, so are you coming?"
He nodded. "Yeah, I'll be there as soon as possible."
"So after school?"
"…right." He looked around guiltily at the apartment complex's seventh floor hallway. "See you then."
Matt hung up his cell phone and gently massaged his temples. Only half of the digidestined were able to come. He remembered the days when they all just lived a block away and calling ahead wasn't necessary. You just showed up, and if it wasn't a good time… well, you stayed anyway.
Hence the nature of their rag-tag group: nothing was ever too personal and if anyone had a fight, it would blow over because they were a family, and in Matt's case he often times relied on the digidestined more than his own parents.
Pushing his thoughts aside, he strolled around the Izumi's kitchen while listening to the ringing phone of his last call.
"Hello?"
"Hey, Joe," he started casually while fumbling with a stray pen that lay next to the Izumi's shopping list, "think you can help us out today?"
"With what?" came the innocent question that caused Matt to raise an eyebrow.
"…What do you think?"
There was a pause that was too long for the blonde's liking before Joe exclaimed glumly, "Oh right!... That. Listen, uh, I shouldn't."
At the very least, he had been expecting an 'I can't.' The shouldn't irked him. "Why shouldn't you? You're supposed to help and pull your own weight around here."
"I don't think it's a good idea to be messing with this stuff," Joe explained, "We can let them sort it out themselves."
"…That's one idea. Or we could help like we always do." His response was deadpan.
The elder went on defending his opinion, "It's just that we don't have much time left anyway, and this sounds really dangerous."
Matt lost grip of the pen, and it toppled to the ground. "We're not even fighting! All we're doing today is talking to Gennai!"
"Which could lead to many more things that I don't want to be involved in."
Matt almost laughed at that. "Hate to break it to you, pal, but you're already involved."
"Well I don't want to be, and I never did," he said, his voice bordering on a whine. It reminded Matt of all of Joe's complaining on their first adventure.
The blonde reached down to pick up the pen and sighed to calm his growing annoyance with his difficult friend. "This will all be over soon enough, so can't you just help us until then, today?
There was another long pause. "…I shouldn't, Tai."
He tried to keep his voice calm and emotionless so as not to explode on Joe. "It's Matt."
"Whatever…" The word faded into silence.
A dial tone could be heard.
Matt slammed down the phone to let all of his frustration out. He kept an overall calm, if not slightly irritated, expression as he made his way back to Izzy's room.
He made it just in time to hear the tail end of a conversation him and Mimi were having.
"Mori showed up at the flower shop?" Izzy leaned forward in his computer chair, obviously very interested.
"Yep," Mimi replied surprisingly casually. She had gotten over the initial shock and found Izzy's questioning repetitive, but he wasn't done.
"What'd you do? What'd he do?"
She studied her nails. "Nothing, just talked, threatened, left, said he'd be back."
"He does that a lot," Matt cut in as he leaned on the wall next to the door.
Changing the subject, Izzy asked suspiciously, "You didn't say anything, did you?"
A look of horror spread over his friend's face. "Oh… oops" -Izzy's mouth grew wide and just before he could start yelling Matt snickered- "Relax, Iz, I know the drill. I didn't say anything."
Just like with reading the text messages, Izzy was convinced someone must have bugged the telephone. Matt thought he read too many conspiracy books.
The redhead was unamused but continued anyway. "How'd it go?"
"TK's coming, Sora's working, Joe 'shouldn't'," he finished his recap bitterly. The other two took notice.
"Shouldn't?" Izzy questioned.
"Shouldn't," Matt repeated.
"Aren't we all supposed to help?" Mimi asked innocently.
"Yep," Matt responded with more bitterness taking over his voice, "but Joe's too good for us."
"What did he say?" Izzy asked. He didn't doubt his friend's words, but he wasn't above being biased.
The blonde's eyes hit the ceiling as he thought back to the conversation. "He said it was dangerous, and we shouldn't be involved."
"He always used to say stuff like that!"
Izzy sat back in his chair with a melancholy expression. "Precisely, Mimi, which is why it's easy to tell Joe's memory is going the fastest."
Matt looked to Izzy curiously who never changed his expression. "You really think it's the pill?"
"I know it is."
"My feet hurt! Where's Palmon?"
"Why? Gonna make her carry you, princess?"
"Be nice, Matt."
"I'm always nice. Joe's the one who's not nice."
Matt, Mimi, Izzy, and TK had been thrown out of a television not more than a couple yards from Gennai's hidden home. They had not run into their digimon and decided to head straight to their destination.
Despite traveling down it a million times, the stairway into the lake could still amaze them as the brightly colored fish swam around them and a humble cottage appeared seemingly out of nowhere.
They heard a worn but strong voice call out, "Hello, children!"
"Hey, Gennai," TK answered for the group. Years ago right after the memory wipe, they had all been furious with the old man, but now most of their resentment had faded. That is, except for one…
"What's going on around here?" Izzy jumped right into it as soon as they had all gathered in a circle, lounging around on Gennai's lawn. The sooner he could get away from this guy the better. "I've scanned, tracked, and analyzed, but I can't find any probable reason for all of these digimon to be acting up all of a sudden."
Gennai merely shrugged as though uninterested in the attacks. "That's what digimon do; they fight sometimes."
"But one of them went for Tai," Izzy pointed out, "They would only go after a human because they were ordered to."
Gennai waved the notion off. "They must have thought he was a foreigner trespassing."
"He's not exactly a foreigner," Izzy said with a pointed look to the man in a way that made the others feel like they missed something.
Gennai ignored the look and changed the subject. His previously dull demeanor turned interested and almost venomous. "I hear your pills are in affect."
"Yes, they are." His words came off as resentful; maybe they were supposed to be. Over the last few years, Izzy seemed to harbor something against Gennai. Sure, they had all been originally mad at him for not stopping the Memory Wipe, but with how much those two communicated it has to be something more.
"I hope the other kids won't mind your own personal decision too much."
Izzy froze up. 'He wouldn't… Who am I kidding? He is.'
"What's Gennai talking about, Izzy?" TK asked curiously looking to his friend who always had the answers.
"You mean, you kids, didn't know?" Gennai's smirk was fueled by pure joy and cruelty. "Izzy didn't take his little pill."
TK and Ken's scene was the inspiration for this story, and I originally posted it as a one-shot titled "Help." This is the same scene as in Help but focused on TK instead of Ken. The same things happen though; most of the dialogue is word for word. I hope people don't think I was lazy for doing that. There was just no point in changing the scene even if it was previously written.
Thank you for reading!