Chapter 47: Real World: Where the average tilts
Pressure, not painful yet confining. Heaviness. Eternal darkness, cold seeping into every matter, full of solitude and loneliness. Dissonance, breaths not taken, power. Ray of light, crystallized, breaking into colors for what may be an instant, for what may be days. Darkness, cold ever present, softly swaying motion, dark and infinite.
The sun was steadily rising over Odaiba, tainting the sky orange and piercing through curtains to awake school girls who wanted to sleep some more.
Jun groaned, rolled to the side and draped her pillow over her eyes, finding comfort in the habit of it. Under her blanket, her body was freezing and she burrowed deeper into the covers, pulling her knees up to her chest and blowing her breath onto her frozen skin. She shuddered, not just from the cold. A nightmare stealing her peaceful slumber, the rest she really, really, needed was not a good way to start the day.
Even more so when it refused to leave in Jun's waking hours. Jun closed her eyes and tried to focus on warmth. The warmth her own breath, of the blankets around her. Of the blood in her veins, which was definitely cold and sluggish like syrup no matter what the residual fear has to say about it. If only the usually comfortable darkness under the blankets on her bed would not make her feel caged and claustrophobic...
The alarm exploded into noise beside her head.
With a practiced motion, an arm reached out, patting around on the bed-stand and fiddled with the old fashioned clock.
Blessed silence followed. But not for long.
"Jun! Are you up?"
Muttering something incomprehensible that was in no way loud enough to reach her mother downstairs, Jun threw her covers back ignoring the blast of what felt on her skin to be freezing air, determined to go about her day like usual and not let some fragment of her sub consciousness be in the way of it. Very little, Jun had discovered over the course of her life, was still standing after she steamrolled over it - if it did...well, then it was something worth turning her attention to.
Steamrolling in this case meant sticking to habit and not doing anything different just for the heck of it. Positive thinking. Very important.
Reluctantly, Jun crawled out of her oh-so-warm cocoon of blankets, groggily blinking at the distance between her and the door. The distance between her and the door seemed to become bigger every day. Irritation worked wonders for energy, still...
Damn. When was the last time she's had a not early morning?
Weak and unmotivated, Jun rolled once more, staring up at the ceiling. Where, her brain registered, a bob of color flashed across her vision, yelling, "Wake up, Jun! Wake up, upupup!"
Jun rolled to the side. Hopmon landed next to her, grumbling disappointed.
'Get up, Jun. Up, up, up. Staying doesn't make it better', she told herself. 'The bathroom is not further away than yesterday. That's just your mind, playing tricks. Plus if you don't, Hopmon is going to attack you. You have a nice room. You don't want to end up having to redecorate it because Hopmon wanted to help you.'
With a groan, Jun heaved to all fours and then to her feet. She yawned, tugging her bathrobe over her shoulder and stumbled to the door.
Yawning, she made her way into the shower and let the cold water startle her awake.
With her clinging tiredness blown away, Jun found herself immediately in a better mood, switching to hot water as she hummed. Awake, however, Jun was never one for inactivity and far from enjoying a hot shower, she got bored quickly. After slipping into her bathrobe and wrapping a towel around her head, Jun passed her room again on the way down. "Breakfast, Hopmon."
Despite having been asleep in her warm blanket, Hopmon reacted immediately. If there was a bribe to get a digimon moving, it was food.
There was an automatic squeak, followed by some thuds and then the little digimon jumped into her arms. She caught her partner, well-practiced, and carried the small but not light digimon down the stairs.
They passed Davis' room on the way; empty, cold, silent, no curses or fight over who got to use the bathroom first. Lost and gone and without word. If Hopmon was particularly still and looked particularly sad, if Jun's hands around her partner tightened, then neither mentioned it. Perhaps they didn't even notice. Not anymore.
"Good morning, sweetie," her mother greeted, just putting the last dishes for breakfast on the table. "Newspaper later, dear. It's family time now."
"Jun," her father pushed the paper over to her, frowning. "Do you know something about this?"
The headline read: Internet overload - Fighting in the world wide web? Spokesmen of the government refuse to comment. With a really horrible feeling in her stomach, Jun scanned the front page article. It dredged up the two incidents with Diarbormon, not in the way Jun knew them to have happened, and went on to speculate what it meant. That there was fighting in the net again. Fighting in the net. And not speculated.
With effort, Jun tore her eyes away from the article. "I haven't got any idea," she told her parents. Hoping her feelings didn't show on her face, Jun fought to make her expression something less than shocked, irritated and panicking. Given the odd looks her parents gave her, she wasn't sure she succeeded.
In the net?
Jun had no idea when she had gotten so much self-control that she could just lower her eyes and start eating instead of bolting up the stairs and checking her D-terminal and trying the gate and-
Her thoughts fell over themselves, trying to make sense.
"You can talk to us if you need to. You know that, right Jun?" Her mother said, looking worried and sad. Davis was gone and they hadn't had any idea it could be a possibility that he might be out overnight like he had before. He hadn't come home and Jun had found an avalanche of mails in her account (not that she had told her parents about the latter). They knew Jun was involved. They just didn't know how much. And because Jun didn't want to worry them, didn't want to fight them too to let her do what someone had to, she didn't tell them.
If they ever find out, I'm grounded for life.
"I really don't know anything," Jun repeated. If she set her bowl down with more force than necessary, then hopefully her parents would think it was because she was frustrated and annoyed. Not because she really, really should know what this was about. "But don't worry about it. It's Davis. He can take care of himself and besides, he isn't alone." How many times had she said something along those lines already?
Her mother still looked worried. It had become a permanent look on her and was only getting worse with every day. Her father was different from that. He was proud of Davis and believed there was nothing Davis couldn't do - problem was with every day Davis didn't return, in other words, didn't solve the mess, he too became more concerned, re estimating the danger to be more than he thought, because Davis wasn't back yet.
If they ever find out, I'm done for. Like the mountain of information. Like the knowledge that Davis and the rest of the first and second generation DigiDestined were outnumbered a hundred thousand to one, if they were lucky.
Jun was ready to bet her father was still miles off from hitting anywhere close to the real amount of danger her brother faced.
Conversation at breakfast had become one pattern weeks ago and was quickly dying down now that said one pattern was over and done with . Jun held eye-contact with her chopsticks instead of her parents and finished her meal in silence. "Thank you for the food."
Carrying Hopmon back up to her room, Jun had to fight the impulse to dash the way. Closing the door behind her, she took a deep breath. Then she promptly dropped her partner, ignoring the resulting indignant squawks, scrambled for her computer and D-terminal. One was taking its sweet time to get properly running, the other was ready to spit out a over a dozen mails at her prompting that had apparently arrived overnight. Or rather within the last two hours, according to the date.
Her belly flipped and nervous tremors made the terminal shake in her hands. The first mail was an alert. The second more precise information. The third same as the second, along with beginning of an estimation. Jun didn't have time to really read them, just scanning through the first three and getting a picture that made her stomach drop to her feet.
Jun exhaled, skipped to the last mail, just checked that it wasn't an emergency call, (which would have been bad. If it had been, and Jun had been sleeping and not hearing it - she had to do something about that) and closed her terminal. That was for later.
Tentatively, she eyed her computer. What would it say? Was there a chance...? She pointed her digivice at it. "Gate open!" Jun held her breath. The program built. The status signal was red, red, stayed red-
Light flashed, something shooting out of the screen. Jun would have screamed if it hadn't gotten stuck in her throat. The gate status was still closed.
Jun lowered her hand. Disappointment welled up in her, making her eyes sting. No, she told herself. No!
There is nothing to be done. Nothing changing. She was not going to allow a crack in her armor. Not just because she had been stupid enough to let her hopes get up. It was only when she put her digivice down to dress for school that she noticed it. She stared, picked the little device back up. And stared some more.
It was different. Definitely different. The color theme had changed to half blue, half her partner's color. It was bigger. Where the antenna had been, a smooth reddish square was glinting in the light of the morning sun. A strange symbol was fading from the screen as Jun watched.
What the hell -?
Jun had no idea how long she just stared at the little thing before her brain kicked back into gear. Looked like she was going to be later for school today. She carefully put the device into an adapter, where it oddly enough fit, used the scanner and formulated a mail to one of the technological geeks Izzy was working with and who now (more or less) answered to her.
A digivice. Her digivice, changed. Why, how, what? Her digivice, the medium that let her be a chosen child, changed. The more Jun thought about it, the more that fact loomed over her like a tidal wave, just waiting to break. That didn't just happen. Unless it was an updated model and everyone's were changing...?
"Hopmon, do you know what this means?" She held her partner the changed device under their nose.
The digimon eyed it and sniffed. "It smells funny." Big, round eyes looked at her. "Like great, big water and fishies!"
Jun felt her eyebrows climb. "Um, okay... So you have got no idea?"
In training digimon had the attention span of a fly when it wasn't about food or any fighting. Hopmon stole the digivice from her hand by biting down on it and started hopping through her room, giggling. Expecting a chase. Jun ignored her partner with practiced ease and changed her clothes, feeling like the day ought to be over instead of beginning.
Her mother called up to remind her of the time.
Jun muttered a curse under her breath.
Today was not going to be her day. She could already tell. A glance to the clock revealed her to be already half an hour late. Shoving the stuff she needed for school carelessly into her bag, she hesitated on her D-terminal a moment, before just putting it into a pocket of her jacket.
"Let's go, Hopmon."
Her partner's lively squirreling stopped and her Digivice was dropped in front of her like from a well-trained dog. Hopmon wasn't happy. The goggles that Hopmon would not let her leave the house without around her neck swung forward as she leaned down to pick the device up and let her partner find a comfortable place either on her head or in her bag.
Leaving, she shouted her good bye into the house. As the door slammed shut behind her, Jun was already out on the street.
It was cold enough for her breath to puff in the air, the sky was clear and the ground was dry. A few days ago, it had snowed and Jun hadn't been able to use her shortcuts without slipping left and right off the wall. It hadn't been fun, but Jun was lately not in a position to be able to afford skipping out on cutting her way. She had no time!
Today Jun was already late enough that taking the normal way wouldn't make it much worse. She took her time too, needing it to read all the mails she had gotten over night. Hopmon shifted on her head. "I wanna read too!"
Jun took Hopmon down from her head, settled her partner into her arms and together they read through the mails. The distant part of her mind that was not feeling particularly doomed and horrified wondered just how much Hopmon actually understood from what was written in those.
The newspaper article had implied fighting in the net. Apparently that was a great understatement. Very great. Even now live feed was running in the deepest and most obscure parts of the network, showing from many different angles a hourglass shaped black form, lots and lots and lots of dark digimon, internal parts of said hourglass which went from empty corridors to digimon doing as of yet unidentified somethings, several international agencies doing their best to prevent said live feed to reach the easily accessible parts of the net (in other words the public), and the overall message that apparently said the fortress was trying to enter the real world.
Okay, Jun thought, her hands trembling. Okay. She forced a deep breath out. No need to panic. Nothing has happened yet. The world isn't ending. Everything is still fine. Everything might stay fine. Just because the fortress that Davis and the others basically labeled as Big Bad Evil and that they'd obviously be fighting when stranded in the digital world doesn't mean that something has happened to him. The digital world is a big place. Everything fine. Davis is fine.
Jun felt hysteric and angry and hopeless. She just wanted to smash the D-terminal against the wall and pretend she hadn't gotten those mails, pretend that nothing was wrong, that dealing with the fortress that was the beginning of this entire mess was not on her shoulders. She felt like sitting down and crying.
-better to be angry. Anger was constructive. Anger she could use. No use in crying!
"Jun?" Hopmon asked, looking up at her with big eyes. "Are you upset?"
She hugged Hopmon like a silver lining. "I don't want this. Why me? Why can't it be anyone else? I don't - why me?"
"Because Jun is the best," Hopmon sounded convinced and like it was the most obvious thing in the universe. "Because Jun can do what she wants."
Jun could not. She wanted to stomp on her D-terminal and throw all the responsibility away. She didn't. And if she did, someone else would have to and Jun didn't want to be a coward.
Hopmon believed in her. Hopmon was there for her. Hopmon...probably didn't even understand how bad things really were, but it didn't matter. Because Hopmon believed Jun could do anything. A campaign, building a defense, lazing about was all the same to her partner.
Jun didn't want to - but...
That didn't mean she couldn't do it. It'd be reasonable to think she couldn't. What eighteen year old could? All Jun saw was this giant mountain of responsibility and things that had to be done and that would have to be done and she couldn't even see how high it was and she was supposed to climb it?
She could do that. One step at a time. If anyone told her she couldn't, she'd get angry.
Jun got angry. What the hell were they thinking, dropping this mess on her feet. Could those aspiring to world domination or whatever do that when it didn't involve her? Jun had more than enough to do, thank you very much!
Stomping, Jun reached the school and by the time she stood outside her classroom, she was taking deep breaths to calm her temper.
Jun was sent to stand outside till the teacher called her in and she used the time to circle messages and instructions around, things like making in mandatory to train, to remind everyone to keep their mouths shut, to organize the chosen children into groups, to tell them that she wanted to have one person out of one of those groups speak for them and if they didn't pick one themselves, she'd pick one by coincidence, exchange a number of notes and ideas and suggestions with other DigiDestined spread around the world who were vaguely in a similar situation to her and open a new forum for people to sign in if their digivices had or still were changing.
If the teacher caught her doing something other than reflecting on how horrible it was to be late, Jun would be in trouble. But it's not like I can just waste time doing nothing!
Keeping her ears sharp, Jun heard steps coming and was just quick enough to stuff her D-terminal back into her pocket without the teacher catching her. Jun gave her absolutely best innocent face as she was waved into the room.
Jun was graduating soon and ought to study hard for it, but really, she didn't even have time for that. A morbid voice in her head whispered that, duh, ensuring that she had a future was more important than studying for one. Putting up a book in front of her face, Jun went back to tackle the mountain she still had to do.
"You were pretty late today," Kenji commented off hand, once the first lesson was over.
Jun didn't look up from her D-terminal. "Well yeah. Things kind of happened that need my attention."
"Huh," said her friend. "Things like this?" He shoved something under her nose. At first Jun tried to glance past it to finish the mail, then she resisted what she actually saw.
A brown digivice. A form that was identical to Jun's. To Jun's now. The response she got from the network said that no one else had had a different digivice.
There was one right before her eyes. Jun all but tore it from Kenji's hands, ignoring his mutterings and inspected it. The color theme was a light brown as opposed to Jun's blue.
This did not make any sense at all. "Where did you get this?"
Kenji shrugged. "Good things come to people who wait. That is, um, I just walked past an electronics store on the way to school and one of them spit light out and did that to my digivice."
For a long moment, Jun just stared between him and his device, before digging out her own.
Kenji stared. "Yours too?"
"I don't know how many more," Jun told him quietly, ever aware of the ears that would all too much like overhearing something juicy. "But I've already asked for a second opinion. I've got no idea what this means."
Taking back his Digivice, Kenji nodded. "A mystery is a labyrinth for the adventurous. I'm not feeling very adventurous, though. I'd rather know why my Digivice changed."
Jun made a noise of agreement and before they could exchange more words, the next lesson began.
Spread out through the day, Jun received many more messages. As it stood, Jun was absolutely lucky, that the mess with the fortress appearing in the net had only started two hours before she had woken up. Things were only now starting to kick into gear with time moving forward and those that had been sleeping through the first wave, like her, were waking up now and adding to it. Around the globe, the, for lack of better term, higher ranked DigiDestined caught on to what was happening and joined the discussions. The nearest DigiDestined in that limited forum was located somewhere in China.
As of tonight, though, it meant putting her D-terminal's volume high and waking up every other hour to check the latest development. It's going to be hell.
By the end of school, Jun had no idea what her lessons had been about and her head swum with things she still had to do today, still had to think about, and what kind of training they had to do today. Apparently there had been a few instances of a battle of some kind caught on feed and going by that...well, positive thinking...
Jun stood in front of a lot of people. Definitely more than before. Putting her hands on her hips, she began, "People, we've got a problem coming in. If you've kept up on your D-terminal, then you'll know it's pretty bad. Therefore, let's not rest easy and assume it's going to get a lot worse before it get better. So! Worst case - we are going to be on our own and the real world really does rely on us. And I mean us. Not as proxy, not as place holder but on those of us who are here and on us alone."
There were some uneasy mutterings, people shifted and eyed her warily. Jun knew how they felt. "Today's practice is going to be a bit different because of it. We are going to play a game. It's called tag. We are going to split into two teams. The first one, the bigger one with all those of In-training and below, with a few Rookies mixed in are the hunters. They will have to catch the others and do that by subduing their digimon partner. The playground is all of Odaiba. The hunted get a head start. The hunters can use the time to put up some strategies. All those that have been caught will have to be returned here. If the hunters don't manage to catch everyone before nine, it's their loss. If they manage, it's their victory." Jun smiled, trying for a very evil version of it. "Since I don't think you are all going to stay motivated unless there is something at stake, there's going to be a punishment for the losing side!
The crowd shifted again, some uneasy, others unimpressed. "I haven't thought about what yet, but believe me, I'm not going to go easy. Whoever losses is going to wish they hadn't. Scheduling a swimming lesson in a garbage heap sounds like a good idea so far, but I don't want to let you off easy, so -" She grinned.
Norkio looked caught between disgust and horror. Kenji had an expression on his face that spoke of untold suffering.
Jun looked over the assembled people. Not even half she knew by name. "Questions?"
A hand raised somewhere near the back.
"Yes?"
"It's got nothing to do with the exercise, but-"
"What group are you? Hunters or hunted?" Jun interrupted.
"My Koromon can't evolve more -"
"Hunters then. Do any of the hunted have questions?" No one raised their arms or voice. Jun clapped her hands. "What are you waiting for then? Off you go! You've got fifteen minutes before the hunters come after you!"
The people dispersed, muttering and incredibly slow, as if they weren't sure what they were supposed to do, some throwing glances back at Jun. To prove her point, Jun tapped her foot impatiently. "The time is running," she called at them. "You are supposed to be running too. You are aware that besides having partners that can evolve higher, you are at a serious disadvantage? Digivices can seek out other digvices, you know."
Ah, it seemed not many had thought of that. The few dozen moved a bit faster. When they were almost all gone, Jun turned back to those remaining. "Now those of you that have questions that have nothing to do with the game can come to me and ask. The others get to planning. You got to beat Rookies, the occasional Champion and bring them back here!" Jun clapped her hands again, feeling like a preschool teacher where the kids didn't want to listen much.
It wasn't a nice feeling.
The one boy who had spoken out earlier approached her, looking somewhat hesitant and Jun did her best to look friendly, smiling at him. And his friend. The two boys seemed to be maybe five or six years younger than her. (Still children, still so young - they shouldn't have to be here; Jun forced the thought aside, reminding herself that her brother had been younger.)
"So, what can I help you with?" She smiled extra nice.
The boy with a Koromon in his arms jabbed his companion in the side, who, Jun noted didn't have a digimon anywhere in sight. The second boy glared at the first, but held something out for her to look at.
Jun stared.
You have got to be kidding me.
It was a digivice. A bit bulkier than Jun's, but the design was very clearly based off each other. It had the same (as Jun had been told) data scanner in the upper right side, had a grip colored in a darker brown than the rest of it, several buttons and a screen that was a bit larger than even Jun's. Just for confirmation, Jun took out hers to compare. Yes, they definitely looked way too similar for it to be a coincidence.
"Where did you get this?" Jun asked the boy, who was chewing at his lip.
"It shot out of my computer today. Is it a digivice?" He looked anxious and hopeful, eyes darting to his friend.
Jun sighed. "What's your name?"
"Shinya Kanbara," the boy said. "My friend is Takumi."
Jun forced another smile. "My name is Jun Motomia. Is the digivice all that came out of your screen?"
The boy nodded, shifting on his feet. He looked very lost when he asked, "If this is a digivice, why don't I have a partner?"
"I'm sure you noticed," Jun told him kindly, "That it's a different model from Takumi. Digivices, you see, have purposes and can do different things. Yours and mine too are new models. We don't know yet what they can do that the other models can't. I can't tell you why a partner digimon didn't come along with it," though she had a few ideas, none of which she should voice, "But one thing is for sure." She put a hand on his shoulder. "Welcome to the Digi-Destined."
A smile spread on the boy's face, if still a bit unsure and confused, but definitely happy. Jun took out her D-terminal and made a number of pictures with it from the other new device, then send the two boys off to mingle with the many people still left and planning, encouraging them to do their best.
Off at the side, Hopmon bobbled up and down with many other digimon, playing with them. Jun darted a glance at her partner, then borrowed Noriko's laptop and went to work. The game was going to last till nine, latest, and that meant she had about four hours yet to get somewhere. First order of business was sending off the pictures and reporting the digivice without digimon to the techno geeks...
This is the beta-ed version. Many thanks to smfan!
This is the chapter for April, a continuation of # 41, chapter 40. This is not the directly following day, though. Some time has past already.
Is someone else totally disappointed with the as-of-yet-not-aired continuation of 01? I was really looking forward to that this month and nothing came...*sigh*
Do you have suggestions? Critique? Likes? Dislikes? Complains? Or things you just plain noticed?
TBC...
