Thank you to , Shara Raizel , Mitchie Love , RabbitArchangel , tetrisvinil , helen ess , Sweet Cari , Taiora-AAML-Serena-Darien, and twiinklestar for all the wonderful reviews =) I'm so glad that my story has intrigued you, some from the start, and some just recently =) I hope this next chapter doesn't disappoint!
Thank you to all the aforementioned, and to everyone else who has read this and is still checking back for new chapters =)
Things are going to start happening a bit faster now haha, that chapter after this one is why I changed the rating from K+ to T… so hopefully that goes well too.
This chapter has quite a few allusions to an event in the first season, as well as finally connecting the clip that was the inspiration for the fic!
ANYWAY! I hope you enjoy and I'd love to hear what you think so don't be shy! =)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
It looked like Alcatraz.
Miles and miles away from the lush Digital-World forests, he stood and started. The cold winds chilled Takeru just as much as the returning memories did.
Scratch Alcatraz, Takeru thought. It looked like Mayan Ruins. Dark stone towers on a cliff-side that once looked powerful and looming now looked damaged, broken. Forgotten.
Just as he had seven years ago, he climbed the steps carved into the mountain, but instead of what he saw back then, he looked up at a collapsed building. Another shiver ran up and back down his spine.
"Come on, Napoleon." Miyako scoffed as she marched past him through the heavy metal doors doors. Takeru froze. He could still picture the Devidramon pacing inside, blocking their only gateway to the real world. But they weren't there, he wasn't following Yamato, Taichi and the others. He was the leader now.
It was abandoned. The walls had caved in all around and only the central building stood somewhat reliably. That's all he remembered, and it was okay, because that was all they needed.
"And I do mean Napoleon." Miyako elaborated as she turned around to face the blond boy. Her face was only half visible through the slowly closing door, looking like she was inside a departing elevator as she continued, "I was going to say Columbus 'cause you're like leading me through all the unfamiliar digital world territory but now you're just acting like a ruthless dictator. My feet hurt and I'm tired and I'm pretty sure wherever we're going and wherever Hikari and Ken are and Taichi and the others are will still be there… definitely no closer or farther away to where we are now, if we stop and rest for like… a week."
"We can't stop, not now." Takeru said softly, disregarding her dictator comment and forcing his hand towards her face, pushing his way through the dented and bent steel bolted door.
"How long is this going to take, then?" Miyako moaned, not even attempting to disguise her discomfort and impatience.
Takeru, half-answering his companion but mostly trying to reassure himself. "I'm looking for something. It has to be in here." He began moving stones and digging through rubble. The once glorious room, (albeit slightly terrifying with the stone-turned-Digimon protectors that guarded it) was destroyed from the battle that happened so many years ago. Mental holograms of their Champion-level Digimon fighting those black winged Digimon with the four red eyes, played in front of Takeru.
Where had Taichi been standing? Takeru looked around the room and tried to imagine it as it had been, with Tai in the midst… trying to figure out which card to choose.
Miyako sighed dramatically and raised her arms above her coiffed head. "Okay, super. But ever since we got to the Digital World you won't even let me do anything! Not even find Hawkmon and Patamon! It's been 'we gotta go here, we have to find this, we have to look for something else', I sucked at Where's Waldo, Takeru… I don't want to be playing some freaking real life version when I don't even know what the heck I'm supposed to look for!"
Takeru grunted as he lifted a stone, this one the diameter of a dinner plate but the thickness of twenty of them stacked one atop the other. "Not now, Miyako."
"Then when? I'm not here to be your mascot. I don't know if you're putting on this wounded act to get pity from everyone but it's getting really annoying. Either let me help or I'm going to find the others my way."
She doesn't even know how important this place is! Takeru thought, And how would she find them when this is our best bet?
Irritated, Takeru stuck straight up from moving the next boulder. "You wouldn't get it! You weren't here! You weren't one of us!"
"One of you? A wounded teenage boy who can't even stick with his girlfriend and acts like a child at the slightest confrontation! Damn right I'm not!"
"YOU'RE NOT A REAL DIGIDESTINED!" Takeru, his volume caused by a mix of frustration and hurt more-so than anger, but the effect was instantaneous.
She lifted her chin defensively but everything else seemed to droop, her shoulders, her mouth, even her glasses and one of her curls.
"Screw you." Miyako whimpered, dropping her hands limply to her sides as her eyes began to fill with tears, fogging up her large framed glasses.
She turned back to head towards the door and Takeru considered stopping her and apologizing but decided against it. He refrained from moving any more stones until he heard how distant her footsteps got. About ten feet. With the tiniest tilt of his head he watched her settle into an inlet of the stone wall, probably made from Garurumon or Birdramon smashing against a Devidramon. He sighed.
Miyako knew nothing but Hikari's side of the story. He knew he had to understand that the strength of the girls' friendship preceded any codes of relationship secrecy….. but he wished it didn't. This was always a match struck when they fought. It had something to do with Catherine, Hikari was jealous. Or something.
Takeru lifted another small boulder and added it to the growing pile he had created.
The rounded soft corner of thin cardboard poked out from under a pile of dusty, gravelly stones. Takeru's heart leapt. The gritty dust stuck to his hand and clothes and was making each breath difficult.
With that, came memories.
The adrenaline. Chasing Myotismon and… Gatomon through the portal. So much has changed since those days. His eight year old self saw Gatomon with contempt, a childish fear with an adult loathing. But then she became one of their greatest allies. The eighth digidestined's digimon. Hikari's partner.
His eyes began to sting from emotions or the gritty dust, he couldn't tell. "Miyako." He said lowly, a grumble.
"I really don't want to talk to you." She retorted.
TK pulled at the sleeve of his Henley shirt and cleared the grit out of his face. Breathing slowly to calm himself. "You have to understand, what Hikari and I have been through together… I don't think anyone can fully comprehend it, not even us. Our bond is so…" He paused in search of a word. "Transcendent. You have no idea what we had to go through to find her." Takeru felt the thin cardboard in his hand and sighed, pinching it with one hand and then flicking it with the other, over to where Miyako sat. Just like how he and Daisuke flicked paper at each other in class. It sailed through the half-demolished room until it landed a couple feet from Miyako's shoe, her sneaker mismatching the skirt of her purple dress that gathered around the curve of her knee. She picked it up. "Gomamon?"
"It's a card. When we were here before, well… before before. We had to find Hikari. We just… didn't know it was Hikari we were looking for."
"I know the story." She said, but it was unclear if she was snapping at him or just urging him on.
"This, years ago, was a huge cavern with stone-Digimon gargoyles. But they could come to life... Devidramon when Myotismon commanded them. You remember Myotismon, obviously?"
"Which one?" Miyako scoffed. How she kept her sense of humour, however cynical it was, somewhat eased Takeru.
"This is just the original one. He wanted to find the eighth child before us, and those stone gargoyles came to life… into digimon, to stop us. God, you have no idea how terrifying it was. These huge stone doors," Takeru motioned up ahead of them at the huge walls the lay in front of them that were blockaded by the remnants of the ceiling and boulders, "Are the gate between worlds. All worlds."
Miyako stood up and slowly walked towards Takeru. "And this." He pointed to the Gomamon card in Miyako's hand. "Is the key."
"The key?"
"Well, rather… a puzzle piece." He crouched down to lift the stone that had sandwiched the card to the ground. One by one he pulled out the other cards, wrinkled and dented and bent… but time-capsuled in the shelter of stones. "One of many."
He took the card back from Miyako and gathered the others in his hand, fanning them out as if he was playing Poker. "We're missing one. But… different arrangements of the cards open different gates to different worlds. Our world, this one, the dark ocean."
"It's like... with the destiny stones! How they were holding all the worlds together and… she took her finger and drew lines in the fine blanket of sand that coated the ground. "Our world, the Digital world, The dark ocean." The words seemed to echo in their minds as they stared at the three lines Miyako drew, with a slight tilt of their heads, their eyes met.
She has been here. Takeru thought. She's a Digidestined.
"And remember about hose other worlds…" Miyako said, "You even said yourself, I remember… there could be hundreds!" She began drawing more and more lines, overlapping and erasing others as she swiped her finger horizontally, drawing a divide between her and Takeru.
"There could be hundreds of different combinations of the cards." Takeru said, looking at the nine cards in his hands.
"No… eighty-one."
Takeru sighed. "I guess without Tai's card we cross out all the worlds that card opened."
"Well, you didn't need that card to find Hikari last time-"
"We're looking for Yamato and the others." Takeru amended, half of him urging this fact, the other half not believing himself.
Miyako stood up. "You're not fooling me, Takaishi. You're embarrassed and pissed that she trusted Ken to go along with her plan more then you. Truth is, you're stubborn. You pretend to be the peacemaker in our group, but you're just as stubborn as Daisuke. Probably more-so. You're in love with Hikari and you want her back. You are going to yell at her and get mad at her for going off without you, but all you want to do is hold her. That's all you've ever wanted to do."
She was right. Or was she? He was fifteen for heaven's sake! He wasn't supposed to be in love. All his other friends had girlfriends for a week, made out at parties, had dated 30% of the cheerleaders… But he was half of Takari.
But when he was with her, just them, it didn't seem to matter. Fifteen is just a number. They were infinite.
But was it bad that he wanted to be friends with Catherine?
Miyako slumped into herself and leaned her head back against a smooth boulder, shuffling the nine cards anxiously in her hands. "So are we just gonna play universe nicky-nicky-nine-doors or what?"
Takeru picked up the board, the stars and symbols faded but still present and passed it to her. "We have to think of a pattern. I know what will get us back to the real world but… we need to go somewhere else. To another one of those worlds. To another line."
Miyako began stacking the cards, half listening, into a pyramid on top of the ornamented stone. "Well, what kind of pattern?" She placed the last card on the top of her house of cards and smiled, "I made a castle!"
The card castle collapsed, sending a gush of dust and an echo throughout the room, oddly loud for just nine cards.
But then they lit up. First the cards, then the platform and finally the doors as they began to separate, filling the musty room with a bright blue-white light. The cards illuminating the former pedestal faded, but as they did so, the heavy doors lurched, and the rocks blockading them fell away.
"Is this what happened last time? Miyako asked.
Takeru was about to answer but before he could open his mouth, a seawater wave emerged, curling around the whole door, slithering through the room. As if it was a giant snake, it coiled around the two Digidestined and retracted into its lair with its newly acquired prey.