Disclaimer: I do not own Digimon. Toei Animation does.
Ch. 32 A Wish The Heart Makes
Izzy stood outside the bathroom's open door wide-eyed, tiny chittering noises escaping from the back of his throat, making him sound like a deranged chipmunk. Behind him, the other children continued to pack their belongings and food supplies unaware of the drama that was unfolding a few feet away. It seemed none of them had been close enough to hear Tai except for poor Izzy who had the misfortune of checking on his friend at the exact wrong moment.
Tai yanked him inside and slammed the door shut fast before anyone else decided to wander over and inquire on his health. He shoved Izzy against the wall alongside Joe and pointed emphatically at them both.
"Okay, damage control now: Mimi and Joe were bonding over their crushes—not having a bookworm romantic outing like I mistakenly assumed. Yes, Izzy, Mimi has decided of all people who walk this earth, you are ideal boyfriend material—"
Izzy unleashed a garbling squawking that resembled more of a panicked chicken than a chipmunk this time as he clutched the drawstrings of his green winter jacket and pulled on them tightly causing the hood to bunch up around his neck. He looked like a shocked turtle retreating back into the safety of his shell.
Tai swatted at his hands until they fell away from the drawstrings and smoothed his friend's hood out. This was not the time for Izzy to have a mental break down, not when they were depending on his tactical mind for the stakeout ahead.
"It's ok," he tried to soothe him. "She doesn't know that you know, so you can just act naturally around her like nothing is out of the ordinary."
Izzy choked back on what sounded like a crazed cackle so only a disbelieving snort came out instead.
"It's not that hard actually," Tai said dryly. "You are really dense, you know that? A girl practically sits on your lap and you still can't tear your eyes away from the blasted computer screen. Count yourself lucky she finds your mad genius attractive in the first place or you wouldn't have any prospects at all."
"W-Wha… on my lap…" Izzy sputtered red-faced, struggling to form a coherent sentence before indignation sharpened his senses. "Are you saying I am not physically appealing to girls?!"
"I suppose you might be considered cute in a nerdy sort of way. No offense, Izzy, but I think Mimi's attraction to you stems more from your personality than looks," Tai shrugged, a distant part of his brain screeching at him on how the conversation had veered this direction, but they were at the point at no return now. "Jun says I have a handsome enough face to make other girls jealous of her," he couldn't help brag.
"That's great," Izzy bit out. "When she's a top anchorwoman on national news, you can be her idiot trophy-husband she shows off at parties."
Tai grinned at him. "Head calmed down any?" he asked, noting how Izzy's fast breathing had slowed to normal and how his hands were no long shaking at his sides.
Izzy glowered at him before straightening his spine and turning for the door. "I don't have time for this," he said, reaching for the handle.
Tai blocked his path.
"This can't leave this room, understand? We can't tell anybody we know about Mimi's little crush on Captain Oblivious here—"
"Hey!"
"Of course," Joe said, looking quite relieved it wasn't him Mimi had her sights on after all.
"I mean it! Nobody! Not Tentomon, or Gomamon, or even Matt!"
That got Izzy's attention. "Why not?" he asked with a clear curiosity on why Tai would not share info like this with his best friend.
"Matt can't keep a secret to save his life!" Tai burst out in disgust. "Ok, so our last year in primary school, our homeroom teacher always assigned a student to take home and look after the class hamster over the weekend. Supposedly to promote personal growth and development skills, blah, blah, blah, just another excuse for a lazy grown up not wanting to adult. So Matt's turn comes around and he panics because T.K. is spending that weekend with him and his dad and the poor little guy is sick with allergies. Matt doesn't want to make the situation any worse so he free-loads the hamster off on me without telling the teacher—didn't even pay me or trade me any pokemon cards to hamster-sit for him. I have a cat of which the laws of physics do not apply. Miko can phase through walls and crawl up sides of buildings like some supernatural spider-kitty. So yes, she ate the hamster."
"It wasn't my fault!" Tai cried because now both Izzy and Joe were staring at him with twin slack-jawed expressions as his story rambled on. "I locked up the office where its cage was. Mom and Dad swore they didn't open the door and yet the hamster is gone and Miko didn't touch her dinner that night. I don't know what happened, but Matt starts having some existential crisis when I explain things like the hamster dying while on his watch—which it never was in the first place may I remind you—is gonna make his parents not trust him to safely take care of T.K. in the future. I give him the whole 'dude-we-just-saved-two-worlds-from-the-apocalypse-what-juice-are-you-on' speech, but you know what he's like when he shifts into Hyper Emo Focused Mode. So, I lay out the brilliant plan of just replacing the hamster with a similar-looking one and no one will be none the wiser. We go out, buy one, and Monday morning it's in its cage back in the classroom doing its stupid happy run on the wheel thingie just like every other hamster out there."
Tai paused for dramatic effect. Izzy and Joe leaned forward slightly, too far invested in the wild re-telling now to ask him to stop.
"And we would have gotten away with it too if it weren't for Matt's veracious, unavoidable impulse to always tell the truth no matter what!" Tai exploded, slamming his fist down on the bathroom's sink, years of frustration bubbling up. "He didn't even last one whole day! Didn't even last through lunch! So, here we are, everyone enjoying their bentos in the classroom and Matt shoots out of his seat not even subtle and screams 'We killed Pika-Pika! Please forgive us!' and just does a dogeza right there on the ground. Naturally, everybody is confused because the hamster is in the cage so we have to explain, and then all the girls start crying when they find out my psycho-cat ate it, and then Matt starts crying too, and then the teacher, who is also crying because she apparently raised Pika-Pika from a baby, gathers everyone up in her arms where the rest of lunch is spent sharing fond memories of Pika-Pika to comfort each other in one messed-up cry-therapy session."
Tai huffed and puffed between parts of the story caught up in the memory of it. Finally, he relaxed his tense shoulders and finished the winding tale in a droning flourish. "Then the teacher next door walks in to ask a question, sees everyone sitting on the floor in a one jumbled dog-pile with tears on our faces, and long-story short, that's how Matt and me ended up doing after-school chores not just for our classroom but our entire grade for the rest of the semester."
Tai crossed his arms. "And that's why we can't share a secret of this magnitude with Matt."
"Well…" Izzy was the first one to break the silence. "Actually, I can sort of see why Matt may have told—"
"It doesn't matter! He snitched!" Tai cried throwing up his hands. "We were in on the sham together and he broke the bro-code of secrecy! Even you would have never cracked under the guilt! Because you possess such a thing as bff loyalty!"
"I think I should feel offended by that, but I'm not."
Izzy had a satisfied gleam in his eyes and smug grin lingering around his lips at the notion that Tai held him higher regards than Matt in the act of subterfuge at the very least.
"I'm going to be honest and say that I too would have probably caved and told," Joe put out cautiously.
"It's ok, Joe," Tai said patting his friend on the back. "I know you well enough that I would never have put you in the predicament in the first place."
"Oh, thank goodness!"
"And I know that neither of you are going to let Mimi know that we know," Tai proclaimed leveling a warning stare at them both.
"I'd rather just get this all out in the open," Izzy said, with a mask blank enough to rival Ken's. "A straightforward approach is more practical in this situation, especially since we need to be a well-coordinated team. Actions and decisions will run more smoothly if our minds are not preoccupied on something else. Remember, repressing emotions can be very unhealthly—"
"This team doesn't need another distraction!"
The words escaped from his lips faster than he could think to swallow them down. There was no taking them back. Tai turned his head away from his friends to hide the shame he could feel creeping out on his face.
"You're not a distraction, Tai," Izzy said quietly.
"Really?" Tai scoffed. "I don't see anyone else on it getting a dual bond pushed on them by their partner and glowing threads leading them down the yellow-brick road, but not before Digital World Satan decides to piggyback on them to the real world and hijacks your body. Let's not forget I'm the reason the entire police force and their mothers are on the lookout for twelve runaway kids and making it that much harder for us to move around."
"I admit… you may have encountered more obstacles than the rest of us," Izzy acknowledged. "But there is no need to place an excessive amount of blame on yourself or think you are holding us back. No one thinks that of you but yourself. What will impede us going forward are those negative thoughts and doubts that you continue to cling to. It's detrimental not only to you but your partners as well.
"Just promise not to let Mimi be aware we know and I'll promise to try and only focus on happy, positive thoughts, okay?"
Izzy didn't seemed pleased by that offer, but at last he sighed and nodded.
A knock came at the door. "Guys?" Matt's voiced drifted from the other side.
"Not. A. Word," Tai hissed at Izzy and Joe with a meaningful glare before throwing the door open. " 'Sup, Matt?" he asked leaning casually against the doorframe.
"Uhhh, we're all ready to leave, just waiting for you three," Matt said eyeing him oddly. "What were you guys doing in there for so long?"
Three different answers bombarded him at the same time.
"Talking."
"Just doing a standard examination."
"The wifi reaches better at this point."
Matt's brow wrinkled in confusion. Finally, he focused on the last statement. "You don't have your laptop with you," he said glancing at Izzy's empty hands.
Izzy resumed making the panicked chipmunk chittering noises from earlier. Tai grabbed him by the front of his hoodie and shoved him forward past Matt, forcing a laugh. "I know right? Yet he claims that the 'electric magnetic field feels stronger here'. I swear he's part android or something."
Izzy's panicked chittering transformed into angry sputtering but he closed his mouth fast before any protests fell out. Tai could feel eyes burning into the back of his head as he dragged his friend along and knew Izzy was plotting his revenge in that mad genius mind of his.
"Let's examine that wrist before we set out, shall we?" Tai heard Joe say behind him, slipping back into his Obsessive Doctor Mode and giving them a chance to slip away before Matt realized they were trying to hide something from him.
oOo
The younger kids split up with their respective DNA Digivolving partners to tail the Spore children. There had been some initial worry of what would happen if Daemon showed up again. Gatomon couldn't remain beside Ken's side at all times. But Davis had cheerily declared, "We're partners, Ken. We have the fastest escape route. If he shows up, we'll just Imperialdramon outta there and regroup with the others. We're stronger as a team, remember!"
Izzy assigned the older Digidestined into pairs to wait at designated junctions he had calculated were spread out far enough to cover a wide enough radius but close enough to come to the others' aid quickly if needed.
"Do not confront Oikawa if he crosses your path," Izzy reminded them all. "This is a stakeout mission first and foremost. We do not engage with him until we are all together. It's too dangerous until we figure out his endgame."
They had gone their separate ways with each of their Digimon partners covered up by a plastic trash bag cut up to poorly resemble a rain poncho. It was all the materials they could find in the storehouse to work as a disguise and it was better than nothing at all if they wanted to avoid any unwanted attention.
So now Tai found himself loitering near the entrance of an alleyway, the hood of his coat pulled up over his head with Matt beside him wearing his brother's floppy hat since he had lost his when Sora pulled that stunt at Shimbashi Station. Gabumon stood further back in the shadows of the alleyway occasionally poking his head out to look around and sniff the air. All three were trying their best not to look suspicious as they began their wait for who knows how long until either one of the Spore Children revealed the secret location or the scanner picked up Oikawa on its scope.
Tai watched as Matt gingerly shifted his injured wrist in his scarf to alleviate the pain better. He felt the guilt gnaw at him and the urge to apologize surfaced again, but knew that Matt would not appreciate it. He made an attempt at small talk, partly to push out any lingering regret and partly out of boredom from waiting.
"You better polish up those vocal cords of yours," he commented airily. "Because as soon as all this is over and we go back to our mundane teenage lives, we're gonna have a karaoke contest between me and Jun and you and Sora. And I don't intend to lose."
Matt raised his eyebrows. "You two decided this when exchanging goodbyes?"
"The karaoke thing was Jun's idea, but Sora was the one wanting the double date."
"She tell you that while you two were on the run?"
There was an odd expression on Matt's face. He looked conflicted, like he wanted to say something else but didn't know how to phrase it.
Sora had said Matt's whole weekend get-together plan was because he felt somehow in the wrong about accepting her confession at his Christmas Eve concert.
"I think he was afraid we might have accidentally hurt you."
Suddenly Tai understood about how Matt didn't want him to apologize for something he was not to blame for. He certainly didn't want Matt to begin second-guessing his romantic relationship all due to some ridiculous notion that he had stolen his girlfriend from his best friend.
"Hey, you went on a date with Jun before, right?" he interjected quickly. Hopefully he could sidetrack him long enough for him to forget his mistaken assumption. "When she blackmailed you into it for not tattling to her parents about the real reason you brought Davis home late. How'd it go?"
Matt shot him a cynical glance. "You really want to know about that? It's not going to make things awkward between us, is it?"
Not as awkward as it was going to get, Tai thought before his lips curled into a grin.
"Are you kidding? I could use a good laugh right about now! What exactly did you two talk about over dinner? Or was it just her staring into your sapphire eyes and swooning breathily the whole time?"
Matt shrugged. "Aside from her trying to be all handsy with me, the conversation was fine. She wanted to know when I first had discovered my talent for music and said the lyrics to all my songs were 'truly inspirational'. She didn't seem to want to talk about herself. It was a mostly one-sided twenty questions gig the whole night," Matt said with a roll of his eyes. "I felt like I was being interviewed and the extravagant restaurant was a level up from the usual diner."
Of course Jun had conducted an interview unwittingly on her special date with Matt, and she hadn't even realized then what career path she wanted for her life.
It looked like their date had been a dud. No wonder Jun had been so desperate to switch schools to start a second chance to get closer. Little did she know what the future had in store for her…
A stray thought struck him abruptly. "She didn't give you a ride on her moped, did she?" Tai asked, his grin slipping slightly.
"What? No. She rented a limo. Dad thought it was the cutest thing ever. He and the chauffeur had a nice chuckle about 'kids these days'. He took pictures. No, you cannot see them," Matt scowled at Tai knowing his next question. "I deleted them off his camera at the first opportunity."
Tai nodded relaxing. "Understandable."
There was a brief pause where Matt tilted his head to the side and studied his face before remarking in an offhanded manner, "But you know… her moped does seem like a sweet ride. I think I might buy one for myself."
An irritable feeling churned in Tai's stomach. "Do you even have a license?" he prodded a bit too sharply.
Blue eyes shining with amusement found his own. "Got one when visiting my grandmother in Tottori. You need one down there anyway. Everything's rural and all spread out. There's not much public transportation available. Besides," he said, his tone growing more serious. "I think having a moped will be a good image for me and the band."
"So you only want one just because it will make you look cool?" Tai sneered. "That's buying into capitalist consumerism right there, Matt."
Matt narrowed his gaze at the mockery in his voice. "Wait, are you jealous of the thought of me getting a moped because you want a moped too?"
"What, you don't think I can handle riding one?" Tai replied defensively. "I totally can. I already did if you remember."
"I remember you crashed it."
Matt wasn't even trying to hide his smile now, the smug bastard. Tai couldn't tell if he actually wanted one or if he was only pretending he did because he could see how much Tai admired them and wanted to get a rise out of him.
"Just get a freaking Mazda, Mr. Pop Idol!" Tai yelled. "Sora would appreciate that more!"
At least that wiped the smirk off Matt's face. "What does Sora have to do with any of this?" Matt asked ever so carefully.
It was apparent that Matt still had that foolish concept in his head that he liked Sora despite being with Jun and was not going to let that train of thought go of his own free will. Time to knock some sense into him.
"We had a heart to heart before our run-in with Jumonji and his gang. Sorry to inform you but I am not pining over your girlfriend while wistfully imagining 'what-may-have-been's. I am perfectly happy with Jun and all the chaos she hauls around with her. By the way, Sora wants to kiss you," Tai stated, driving home the point blankly. "Desperately, passionately, from what it sounded like."
Tai had never seen Matt's face erupt in color so fast before. His red complexion clashed terribly with his blond hair and he had begun to imitate the very same panicked chipmunk noises as Izzy before. It must be contagious.
He leveled a flat stare at him. "She doesn't understand why her boyfriend keeps running away."
Matt swallowed several times and seemed to find his voice. "I'm just afraid… I'm afraid of getting in too deep and ruining it over something stupid," he admitted begrudgingly.
"Oh, no need to worry there. You're already past that first hurdle. You insulted her cooking."
Genuine confusion broke across Matt's face. "Is she not over that?"
"Omigawd, Matt, you are more oblivious than Izzy," Tai huffed in disbelief.
Really, how was he the only one sane one in his group of friends when it came to understanding the complexities of a female's mind? He had a theory that anyone who spent a lot of time around Jun must master the ability to unlock all the difficult levels first.
"What?"
Tai hurried on before Matt could think too hard on the last comment. "I don't think serenading her with a song is going to fix things this round."
"Yeah, well," Matt said, looking both miffed and offended. "My parents didn't really give me a good impression of what a stable relationship resembles. Forgive me if I'm a little cautious going forward."
"I'm sure Sora is aware of that, but you need to explain things to her," Tai urged. "Tell her you need to go slow. You just need to let her know you haven't changed your mind on taking it further past friendship."
Matt stared at him in amazement. "Did dating Jun turn you into a love guru or something?"
It was Tai's chance to smirk smugly now. "Dating Jun is not a choice. It's a game and I'm winning."
"Hey, you're a Digimon, aren't you? You can come out. I won't hurt you."
Tai and Matt's heads whipped around at the sound of a child's excited voice to see a young boy standing at the entrance to the alley trying to coax Gabumon to come closer.
"Are you wearing that because you're afraid of what people will do if they see you? I promise I won't let anything bad happen to you," the boy swore fiercely. His happy expression morphed into a frown as he caught sight of the two older boys behind Gabumon. "Oh, I see…" distaste clear in his tone. "You're with them."
It was one of the Spore Children, it had to be. No one else besides Ken could master that cool, condescending ice mask other than those who harbored darkness inside them.
"My name's Matt and this is Tai. What's your name?" Matt asked as he walked slowly towards the boy so as not to scare him off, speaking in a calm and soothing voice for little kids like he used to do when T.K. was younger.
The boy tossed him a frosty glare from beneath the brim of his baseball cap, a sullen, "Kaoru," dropping from his lips.
"Kaoru," Matt said in a Serious Adult™ voice. "Listen, I know you've been promised some things that seem tempting, but Oikawa is a very bad man and can't be trusted. You need to tell us where you're going."
Kaoru lifted his head up, a rebellious spark appearing in his eyes. He then proceeded to say something so derogatory that Matt choked and Gabumon tugged on his sleeve asking if humans could really do that. Tai wasn't even sure what the phrase itself meant but the implication was clear: the kid wasn't going to tell them anything.
He stepped up beside his friend deciding to take over. It was clear that Matt was at a loss of what to do when a kid refused to obey orders. He suspected T.K. hardly went against his brother's wishes even to this day. Contrary to his parents' beliefs, Kari was no perfect angel and babysitting her with Davis thrown occasionally into the mix had not been all fun and games.
"Drop the soft talk, Matt. It's a lost cause. Look here, brat," Tai growled, pointing a finger at the kid. "You followed the scary adult into his Candy Truck of Doom and struck a deal with the devil and you knew exactly what you were doing. Your mother would be ashamed to learn her child didn't heed all her stranger danger advice!"
He seemed to have struck a nerve.
"What do you know?!" Kaoru exploded. "You don't understand! You've always had Digimon! And now that we finally have a chance to get one too, you're trying to stop us because you feel threatened by us!"
"What lies has Oikawa been feeding you kids?!" Tai shouted feeling his temper rise. "We're not the bad guys here!"
"At first we thought you guys just didn't want to share the spotlight at saving the world. You had to be only special, Chosen heroes. No one else could join." Disdain dripped from Kaoru's tone, his gaze accusing. "But then ever since Christmas and the portals appearing, we all realized the truth. You guys haven't stopped the Digimon from coming through. You're just letting them do as they please. You don't want to be heroes. You want to be the ones ruling over everyone else!"
Tai couldn't believe how misguided this kid's logic was. He wanted to yell at him to wake up and see the bigger picture. It wasn't like they hadn't tried to stop further Digimon attacks and rampages. It was just that they hadn't figured out a way to stop the portals from closing.
Ah, but that's not quite true, is it? A small voice hummed in his head. Tai pushed the thought aside not wanting to look at it.
"You're wrong!" Gabumon cried. "Matt and everyone else have no desire for control! We are just concerned that you children might get hurt if you keep listening to shady deals from bad men like Oikawa!"
"You're with them so I can't trust you," Kaoru said, whatever sympathy or joy he had initially felt towards the Digimon having been erased by the simple fact that he belonged on their side. He squared his shoulders and stared defiantly at them all. "We're going to have our own partners soon. Oikawa-san found a way to the Digital World and we don't need your selective gizmos to get there."
"That's too dangerous!" Matt snapped. "There are other gateways that open to other places not just the Digital World! You don't know what you're doing!"
Kaoru cocked his head sideways, his lips twisting into a superior smirk. "We know the dangers of rogue gateways. Oikawa-san warned us not to run into the first portal that popped up just because there were Digimon coming through it. He said the passage would be different for humans and we needed to be careful. We're not stupid."
Matt and Tai exchanged glances over the kid's head. Tai wondered if his expression looked as baffled as Matt's did. They couldn't yet be sure what extent or why Oikawa intended to use the Spore Children for his own purposes, but at least he was giving them safety precautions for the present time.
"You may not realize it yet, but I'm on your side, you know," Oikawa had told Tai in the Land Rover.
He had seemed to genuinely want the general public to realize that Digimon were not brainless monsters except his execution on that concept had gone askew with his poor choice of wording.
Then there was the simple fact that he had shot him as a cover for his get-away.
What game was Oikawa playing?
Footfalls on the pavement made Tai jerk his head up to see the back of Kaoru's red and white jacket as he fled from them. Apparently he had decided their conversation was over.
They couldn't just let him run off now though. What if he managed to warn the other children before they met up at their location? What if he contacted Oikawa?
Matt and Tai broke into a run after him with Gabumon close on their heels. Tai tried to keep sight of the boy's red baseball cap as he weaved and bobbed through the crowd of pedestrians. He tried his best not to bump into anyone. Last thing he wanted was for his hood to fall back and expose him. The kid was small and fast and kept artfully dodging between the narrowest of spaces between people.
Up ahead a four-way crosswalk met at a heavy traffic junction. If they lost him here, there was good bet Oikawa would be tipped off on what they were up to, whether he chose to do anything different from his plan, who knew. But they couldn't take the chance of Oikawa retreating back into the shadows again.
Tai didn't like admitting it, but Matt had an inch on him in height if you didn't include his hair in the measurement. His strides soon outmatched him and reached the kid first, snagging him by his collar before he reached the intersection.
"Let go!" Kaoru yowled sounding like an enraged kitten, squirming wildly in Matt's grasp. "Help! He's kidnapping me!"
Some curious passerbys stopped and eyed the two of them as if wondering how true the child's claims were.
Matt's face turned red from underneath his hat but he shook Kaoru roughly as the boy continued to kick and holler and scolded him loudly, "That's enough, ototo! Mom's been worried sick all night! We're going home and you're going to apologize to her for breaking her computer! Stop acting like a selfish brat!"
His words seemed to shock Kaoru and the boy gaped at him as he dangled on his tippy-toes from Matt's tall grip. He resembled the very picture of a berated child from his older brother.
A few muffled chuckles escaped the people who had paused at the scene and they resumed walking content in believing the façade Matt had pulled over their eyes.
Tai should have known better than to smile and relax.
Three things happened simultaneously.
Izzy's voice crackled out of his digivice tense and excited.
"Tai! I've gotten a ping on the program for the facial scanner! It just picked up Oikawa in your and Matt's near vicinity! Look around! Do you see him?!"
A pained shout erupted from Matt's throat as Kaoru reached forward and in a desperate and low move, squeezed his captor's injured arm tightly. Matt released him involuntarily as he hunched over clutching his wrist, his face twisted in agony. Gabumon rushed to his side and Kaoru took off, disappearing into crowd.
Tai literally felt the threads that surrounded him—invisible as they were at the moment—prickle like a current of electricity throughout his body, the small flame in the back of his head blaring an alarm.
He turned his head across the intersection not sure why to see Oikawa standing on the opposite side of the crosswalk, his mouth curving into a wide, crooked grin as their gazes clashed.
Oikawa threw his head back and laughed, "Oh, how the mighty Chosen Children will fall—at the threads of their own partner's destruction!"
Malevolent laughter cascaded from his throat in exhilarated throes. Then it was like someone had pressed the mute button. The loud noise of the traffic around them, the mumbled murmurings of the people that walked past him, Izzy's voice from the digivice—it all abruptly cut off. The silence that followed lay still and oppressive as Oikawa stared unblinkingly at him with dark, onyx eyes.
Eyes that suddenly flashed blueblueblueblueblueblueblueblueblue…
The color consumed his vision, enveloped his mind, caressing his limbs until a creeping numbness settled in, until he was drowning in nothing but blue.
oOo
The sky was a vast, endless blue above him.
Sunlight splashed across the open field littered with rows of baskets containing digi eggs, too numerous to for one to count. He stayed in the shade under the trees that ran about the perimeter of Primary Village. The sounds of children's laughter and the happy cries of baby Digimon drifted over to him beckoning him to come join but he remained in the same spot, content to merely observe.
A rustling nearby made him look around to see that Elecmon had wandered over, a striped claw raised in greeting. "There are so many of you kids coming here these days. You humans grow older every time I see you. I barely recognized you. Are you here to do another report?"
"No, this is personal."
"Ahhh," Elecmon's face crinkled up into a fond smile as he cast his eyes out over the field searching. "Is it today? I'll leave you to it then."
A few moments later, he was alone once more. Or was he?
A shadow lurked behind him, not part of the forest, its aura not-quite threatening, but brimming with a possessiveness that was almost hungry. Tai felt its presence against his back, tall and intimidating, but didn't turn to look at it, keeping his face forward, never taking his eyes off the patchwork quilt of baskets that lay dotted over the field and the small figures running and playing within it.
"Tell me, boy, can dreams become real?" the shadow rumbled.
"Dreams are just wishes… your deepest desires the mind pulls from the heart."
A dark flare of anger swelled in the shadow at his words.
"Then tell me why I keep seeing this place if I do not have one. I've visited you in your other dreams as well. Is it the threads' doing?"
A smile played around Tai's lips as he answered. "How can you prove whether at this moment we are sleeping, and all our thoughts are a dream; or whether we are awake, and talking to one another in the waking state?"
Aggravation rolled off the shadow in thick tendrils of darkness as it followed along the golden light that connected them and plucked the source of the cryptic statement out of Tai's mind.
"I will hear no more of this Plato and his filthy human lies, boy." the shadow surged forward, settling around Tai's shoulder like dark claws. "Is this a memory?" it demanded, its voice seeming to shudder in desperation. "One of yours? Tell me."
"It's a vision."
oOo
Tai no longer understood anything that was happening. He blinked, alright. He freaking blinked, and between one second and the next Oikawa had vanished. Between one breath in and one breath out, the man across the street was gone… including everything else in the surrounding vicinity.
Tai spun all directions in one position, casting his gaze about searching for any familiar landmarks, but there was nothing but rows and rows of warehouses as far as the eye could see. Water sloshed in gentle waves against the concrete making up the harbor's edge. Above him the sun dipped low in an orange sky, threatening to disappear beyond the body of water that made up Tokyo Bay.
Questions filled his mind in a rising panic.
How had he gotten here?
It was almost sunset. Where had the rest of the day gone?
Where was Oikawa?
Where was Matt?
The last thought spurred him into action. He fumbled for his digivice looking at the screen to see no visible red dots. There were no other digidestined nearby in his immediate location.
The day was nearly over. Their goal had been to put a halt to whatever master plan Oikawa had engineered. What had he missed in his most recent time lapse?
Heart pounding in his chest, Tai raised the digivice to his mouth and called for Matt half afraid he wouldn't get a response.
Matt came blazing through a second later absolutely furious. "Where the hell are you?!" He screamed. "You just ran off and left!"
"Matt…" Tai heard the fear in his voice, but couldn't summon the strength to block it out. "What happened with Oikawa?"
He heard Matt curse on the other end before speaking again, his voice more soft this time. "Don't worry. Whatever he planned, it's been delayed. It's… complicated. Look, I'll explain later. Where are you?"
"Somewhere on one of Tokyo Bay's many ports," Tai said looking across the water at a familiar structure he had missed before. "I think it's the Port of Tokyo. I can see Rainbow Bridge from here."
"How did you get there?"
"I… I don't know."
Matt was silent for a brief pause. "Was it like the time on the train?"
"Yeah," Tai said, his voice barely above a murmur. He felt an odd burning sensation behind his eyes and shut them quickly before any moisture welled out. He was more upset than he realized to not have more control of his emotions. He was glad Matt couldn't see his face right then.
"Promise you just stay where you are. I'll be there in a few minutes."
"What? How?" Now Tai was confused. His digivice reading claimed no one could get there that quickly unless they were close by, which they were not. "Minato district is too far from—"
"Not when your ride is a metal wolf, it's not."
Matt couldn't be serious.
"Anyone will be able to see you!" Tai cried, visions of Matt being gunned down from the sky from Self Defense Forces' tanks flashing across his mind.
"I don't care anymore!"
The anger and frustration ringing in Matt's voice halted Tai from any further protests.
"You blanked off our radar for hours, Tai. Not even the D3's picked you up. We thought you might have fallen into one of those portals. We didn't know what to do. We're all out searching right now. So can you please not move for the next few minutes until I get there?"
The last part sounded more like a warning than a question, but Matt was audibly distressed and was not likely going to listen to safety advice from his friend who disregarded the very same rules himself most often.
"Ok," was all Tai managed to say, guilt gnawing away at him anew.
He had done it again. Become a distraction for the team.
A cold breeze blew through the narrow strip of harbor, seeming to carry the faintest whisper of words buried in the wind.
"Even now so close to the finish, you are still a distraction."
Tai shivered feeling light-headed.
The golden flame that flickered soft and warm in the back of his mind burst like a wildfire in warning just before the first wave of red-hot rage flooded the bond that connected him to his partners. It was so staggering, so intense, Tai nearly fell over. He clutched at his chest feeling like all the breath had been knocked out of him, a storm of volatile emotion that was not his own stretching across the threads that tied them all together.
He lost his focus on Matt, ending their link on the digivice as he struggled to wade out of the turbulent chaos that crowded his mind. It was like fighting a riptide. Just when he thought he might break free from the raging tempest and cold black waves, the current would sweep him back under in a powerful, wrathful embrace.
Then all at once it was like someone had thrown up a wall. He could still feel the freezing waves crashing against mercilessly on the other side, but he was no longer slowly suffocating from them. A halo of golden light enfolded him almost protectively; the warm flame in the back of his mind hummed reassuringly before flaring outward once with a single impulse that seared vividly into Tai's head.
Run.
Tai gasped as he was released, his feet already moving of their own accord. A shadow fell over him and he glanced over his shoulder instinctively to see the sun's fading light glinting off a dark, armored figure slicing through the sky, a molten energy ball igniting between its claws.
Denial and terror waged war inside him as he forced his face away and continued run until adrenalin overpowered any rational thought he had left inside his bruised brain except pure survival. He ran, but not fast enough.
The orange-red glow of the Terra Destroyer passed over his head like a blazing comet—striking with swift and deadly intent. It ploughed into the concrete a few yards ahead, sending out a meteor shower of rubble and a thick cloud of debris.
Tai skidded to a halt and cried out, throwing his arms in front of his face as the debris cloud surged forward, tearing into his clothes and biting into his skin. The heat from the blast hung suffocating and thick in the air around him. He coughed, yanking up his coat over his nose so he could breathe better and tried to stumble his way blindly out of the haze. He tripped over what felt like a large slab of pavement and went tumbling on his side as the ground rushed up to meet him hard and unforgiving.
He rolled over and tried to scramble to his feet, ignoring the aches in his elbows and knees, but something heavy came crushing down on his chest and pinned him flat on his back to the ground.
BlackWarGreymon loomed over him through the swirl of debris, a dark cloud blocking out the sun, waves of cold black fire singeing furiously through the threads of their bond.
Tai froze beneath the giant armored claw that held him place, painfully aware of the position his head was in lodged between the space of two very sharp clawtips. All the Mega needed to do was to snap them shut…
"STOP! Have you gone mad?!" a voice thundered from above and then WarGreymon landed roughly a few feet on their left.
BlackWarGreymon barely spared him a parting glance before returning his attention to the boy prone and helpless before him. His golden gaze glinted dangerously and the black flames burned with such a searing chill it felt like shards of ice stabbing into Tai's mind. He couldn't stop the shiver that coursed through his body.
"It's because of you two," BlackWarGreymon snarled. "You stole what little delusion of freedom I had left. And in return you gave me grief and suffering. These threads that bind me to you are a curse. One I will have to break myself."
He pressed his claws closer together so that the sharpness of them brushed on either side of Tai's neck.
"DON'T!" WarGreymon roared.
BlackWarGreymon snorted, finding dark amusement in the other's anguish. "Give me one reason why I shouldn't."
"Because… cliché," Tai spat in disgust, purposefully pushing his neck further against the sharp edge of the claws as he glared up at the hulking Mega in a silent dare.
Golden eyes narrowed in warning. "Don't test me, boy. I don't have time to play pet monster with you in this game of house."
"All those memories," WarGreymon pleaded with his brethren, trying to reason with him. "Did they mean nothing?"
"Those memories are yours and his, not mine. No matter how hard you try to find a place for me, I will always be an interloper, second best." Ugly black jealousy leaked across BlackWarGreymon's tongue.
"I thought I had my destiny figured out. True, it wasn't the most ideal one, but it was mine nonetheless. But you have denied me from it countless times over, twisted my threads with yours, and making me care," he choked on the last word as if it were something foul-tasting. "I should have let that creature devour you. Instead I came running to the rescue like the rest of your whipped pet monsters." Scorn and disgust oozed like a toxin over every word he spoke. "You are nothing but a distraction."
Distraction, distraction…
The word rang cruelly in his ears.
"So why didn't you just let him finish the job?" Tai asked through the throbbing in his head.
"Because you are also mine. This bond," BlackWarGreymon yanked at golden chain that shimmered briefly into focus before fading away, "is ours. For now. Until I decide to end it. At least it would be my choice."
Tai's vision blurred. The black flames emanating from the Mega swelled outward with a dark possessiveness threatening to engulf him.
"You know… you talk the talk, but you don't walk the walk," he said, the words slurring from his headache as he squinted crossly at his captor who held his life between his claws.
"What foolish human idiom are you spouting now?"
"I'm honored to be placed on a higher pedestal of obsession than Oikawa, but what about once you've actually done it?" Tai demanded, his voice growing stronger as the pounding in his head started to ease. "Going to kill him too? And after that? Where are you going? What's waiting for you out there that you so badly want to be free from us?"
"Nothing! NOBODY!" BlackWarGreymon roared, tearing his claws away from pinning Tai to the ground to send a Terra Destroyer skimming across the water's surface. The energy blast left wide ripples trailing behind its wake before it finally sunk like a fizzling cannonball into the depths of Tokyo Bay.
BlackWarGreymon stood with his back turned to them, his armored vambraces held stiff and trembling at his sides, the lack of sun symbol glaringly obvious on the back of his split shield. "Nobody," he repeated hollowly.
Tai sat upright, wriggling his fingers and toes to make sure nothing had been crushed, before getting gingerly to his feet. He glanced at WarGreymon in a silent question to which he received a helmeted nod. Only then did he begin approaching BlackWarGreymon ever so cautiously.
He raised his wrists up knowing the golden manacles were there but they did not manifest this time. "WarGreymon did this because he thought it was the only way to save you. But we would have found a way even without the bond in place if we only had more time."
"Why?" BlackWarGreymon scoffed. "Why do you care so much what happens to me? Because it's the 'right thing to do?'" A vambraced arm shot out, wicked claw-tips stopping mere inches from Tai's face to halt him from coming any closer. "Because it would stroke your children's heroic egos to help a wretched, tragic mistake that exists such as myself?"
"Because you don't deserve to become lost."
The words came to him, Tai didn't know where, but they sounded right.
BlackWarGreymon didn't lower his claw, but Tai noticed the tiny tremors that raked throughout his outstretched arm.
"Gatomon says our paths are entwined now," Tai said trying to read the Mega's expression but his face was set in stone. "She keeps rambling on that its destiny or some crap, but believing in destiny is too hyped up. If you go through life with that mindset, every choice is exhausting. All you need is a future. Destiny is fated, but you decide your future."
Tentatively, he reached up and slid his fingers along the underside of the vambrace, ready to pull back at the slightest motion, but BlackWarGreymon never even flinched from his touch. He stopped when his palm was flat against the cool skin of BlackWarGreymon's own.
A small hand pressed against a giant claw.
An echo in reality of a distant dream.
"We can share ours if you want."
Only then did BlackWarGreymon's stoic expression crumble, golden eyes flaring wide and vulnerable beneath a silver horned helmelt.
Tai felt his heart skip a beat as the warm flame at the back of his mind flickered happily shooting up tiny sparks.
"TAI! GET AWAY FROM HIM!"
Tai jolted from the reverie, feeling whatever connection that had begun to form curl away. He jerked his head up to see MetalGarurumon bearing down on them from the sky, Matt astride on his back.
Too late he realized how precarious his position must look from another angle: BlackWarGreymon towering over him with his claws pointed at his head and Tai's hand reached up as if to ward off the attack.
"Matt! No! Wait! Don't!"
But MetalGarurumon had already fired four energy beams from the laser sites on his snout aimed straight and true at his target.
Blue blasts of freezing ice pierced down through the air only to blocked from their mark by WarGreymon intercepting their path. He crossed both his vambraces in front of his chest allowing them to ward off most of the impact so not much damage was done. All the assault did was send him flying a few feet back in the air.
"Cease fire now!" WarGreymon ordered.
"What are you doing?!" Matt cried in confusion.
BlackWarGreymon whirled on Tai wrathfully. "You called him?! You sought to weaken my defenses so you could destroy me?!"
"What?! No!" Tai yelped recoiling at the cold black rage he could feel tingling against his skin. "This is all a misunderstanding!"
BlackWarGreymon was finished here. Of course the boy would betray him in the end, just like his own creator who called him a mistake. Of course he wanted no part of an abomination like him, not when he already had his true partner.
Anger swirled around him like a snake ready to lash out. He welcomed the emotion gladly. Better to feel fury than the pathetic sting of hurt when he realized the boy's intentions. He let the Terra Destroyer form between his claws until it had grown to a sizeable degree larger than usual. He fired the attack at his two opponents in the sky ignoring the boy's frantic pleas for him to stop.
WarGreymon fired off one of his own in response, knocking it away from him and into the water. The twin attacks met with a powerful clash sending out a crater of water spewing up from the bay.
"Would you stop firing off explosions and just listen for a second?!" Tai yelled at the top of his lungs, feeling as if he might be going hoarse.
"You will not play me for a fool any longer, human!" BlackWarGreymon seethed his attention on him now, raising his claws to summon another Destroyer. "At least Oikawa was truthful about my existence from the start. He would never give such false hope as you have in an attempt to vanquish me."
The resentment that bubbled up in Tai's chest at the implication that Oikawa was on a moral scale higher than him outweighed the fear at seeing BlackWarGreymon ready to blast him into smithereens. He lost what little rationale he had left in his head.
"Hey, DarkBroodingmon!" he shouting running directly at the Mega, ducking under his arms to leap onto his back, throwing his arms around his helmeted head and blocking off his line of vision. "SHUT UP!"
BlackWarGreymon unleashed an enraged roar, flailing blindly about. Tai was certain any moment he would either get violently thrown off or have a set of claws spear him through.
He never once fitted a portal opening right beneath their feet into the equation.
The last thing Tai saw was Matt's horrified face before the darkness closed over his head.
oOo
They were falling, falling, falling…
They fell into the yawning darkness and existed and did not exist at the same time.
It was like floating in black water adorned with a sea of stars and all around them tunnels of light popped up showing different places and creatures within them.
None of the scenes were recognizable.
"There are other dimensions besides this one…" a voice sighed ghostily across Tai's mind, but he could not recall who said it or when.
"Where are we?" BlackWarGreymon demanded turning his head and searching for a way out.
Tai's arms had slid down from his helmet to latch loosely around his neck in a mockery of a hug, but it was only because Tai was afraid of slipping away into the inky abyss of nothingness below them.
"We fell through the portal," Tai said trying to squash the panic down inside him. "D-Didn't you come to our world this way before? Can't you get us out the same way?"
"It was not like this when I came through," BlackWarGreymon said glancing at the tunnels of light with a speculative eye. "Perhaps one of those will lead us out."
"If we chose the wrong one, we might get stuck somewhere we can never escape from," Tai warned, remembering the gateway in Myotismon's castle.
"I will not be swallowed up in this meaningless void!" BlackWarGreymon proclaimed, eyes roving wildly about until they landed on a tunnel that seemed to shine more brightly than the rest.
He flew a little closer until the glow retreated and revealed the landscape inside: blue sky above a green field dotted with small brown boxes… or were they baskets?
"That looks like Primary Village," Tai said pointing to it. "I think we'll be ok if we go there."
Something was wrong though. Tai felt BlackWarGreymon seize up in shock, his pupils dilating to pin-prick slivers at the sight before him.
A small voice floated out from the tunnel, soft and childlike, both familiar and not at the same time.
"I'll become a happy butterfly and ride the glittering wind…"
oOo
"You might even remember events you had forgotten before the time lapses started," Ken's voice spoke to him in this dark expanse out of space and time.
oOo
The sky was blue above him, vast and endless. He was waiting at the edge of the field of Primary Village. Elecmon had given his greetings and left. Agumon had joined him by his side and was now shuffling impatiently on both feet. "Is it time yet? You said it was today! How can you be sure though?"
"Matt finished it last night, so I taught him the words this morning."
oOo
The song was drifting out of the tunnel, haunting and beckoning. BlackWarGreymon flew now like a moth to a flame towards the sound, towards the small picturesque painting that hung in the darkness, reciting the rest of the lyrics, "I'll come to see you soon…" with a crazed furor that would not be denied.
oOo
"Oh!" Agumon gasped pointing to a small figure on a spot in the field. "He's started already! I'll go help!" He darted past him sprinting into the bright sunlight, singing along to the melody. "I wonder if we'll reach the skies!"
oOo
The thick, braided coil that tied him and BlackWarGreymon together in their bond shimmered visibly in front Tai's eyes. The connection vibrated weirdly, the golden glow seeming to grow dimmer by the second.
The bright, warm flame inside his head was flickering weakly, causing a hollow coldness to crawl into the space remaining.
"No, don't leave me…" Tai had abandoned all pride and squeezed his arms around the Mega's neck in a vicegrip. "No, no, no!"
His universe was narrowing down until it was only him and BlackWarGreymon and the fragile thread stretched taunt between them, tugging at the edges as if struggling to break free.
As if it wanted to unravel from him completely.
And Tai who had already experienced the horrific shock of a severed bond and the overwhelming ache of loneliness and despair even from so brief that moment in time, was truly and utterly terrified.
"Don't go there! It's a dream! It's just a dream, stop!" he screamed, focusing hard and clinging fast to the thread in his mind's eye with a wild and fierce stubbornness.
"No, it's real! It has to be!"
There was sheer desperation and raw yearning in BlackWarGreymon's tone and the tunnel was almost upon them.
A voice reverberated up from the darkness, echoing jarringly in the black chasm.
"Do you know the terror of he who falls asleep? To the very toes he is terrified, because the ground gives way under him, and the dream begins…"
Tai reached up before he lost his nerve and yanked hard on one of BlackWarGreymon's horns causing him to emit a pained bellow and fly sideways inside of straight into the tunnel.
"No! No!" BlackWarGreymon cried swerving around in another attempt to enter.
But somehow the tunnel was so very far away now. It winked mockingly at them across the star-filled abyss, the scene within it gradually fading back into the cool glow of light.
"What have you done?!"
Tai winced at the accusing roar and the despair drenched it; knew that he was going to be dropped into the abyss now for his action.
Except that there was a new thread tugging at him from somewhere above, slim and fragile, shining and blue and someone calling his name. For one bright moment, he thought he was saved, but BlackWarGreymon was flying across the gulf towards the tunnel that was barely a small spot on the dark horizon. The golden manacles had clapped themselves around his wrists and were pulling him in the opposite direction. They were chained to BlackWarGreymon's coiled belt and he was so much stronger.
Tai buried his face into the yellow tufts of hair poking out from beneath the helmet. "I'm sorry…" he mumbled, not quite sure of what he was apologizing for except for the fact that BlackWarGreymon was in pain because of him.
He had shut his eyes so he didn't see the bright pulsing light that had begun to surround them or the abyss itself shrinking as they were being pulled up by the frail blue string now strung around another thicker braided golden one.
oOo
There was sun on his face, the biting chill of wind against his clothes, and arms helping him sit upright. Tai opened his eyes to see Matt standing over him, eyes wide in disbelief.
"How is this possible?" MetalGarurumon asked, his expression mirroring his partner's shock.
"We Digimon respond to our partners' innermost desire," WarGreymon said.
Tai looked down, realizing his arms were full of something, and a black Agumon stared back at him with piercing golden eyes.
His breath hitched and he could not think of anything to say or explain because he did not quite understand himself, but the black Agumon spoke for him.
"You found me."
The voice was higher-pitcher than his Mega counterpart's yet still as gravely and the teeth that bared into a crinkly grin mirrored Agumon's perfectly.
The black Agumon's claws encircled his waist and pressed his head against Tai's chest. The boy's heartbeat resounded comfortingly in his ears and he closed his eyes.
It was wonderful.
Soothing like a lullaby.
Like a dream come true.
To Be Continued…
A/N: Me writing this chap: oh, there's a lot of weird shavit going down here and BWG is being a diva emo Mega rn. How do I balance the dark woo-hoo stuff out?
Also me: *raises Tai's level of sass to 1000%* srsly, I just let him say whatever he wanted. I did not rein him in this chap. That 3 paragraph hamster story? That was all him. I was just typing as he dictated. This is how my mind works, hahahaha…
So yeah, that happened… If anyone is confused, haha, go reread ch29. The weird dream sequence is also in there from another perspective. That's why BWG was freaking out.
Fun facts: that line "do you know the terror of he who falls asleep?" is a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche, who has already been quoted in Digimon before. Not this quote, another one more eerie and foreboding, gawd. Actually most of his quotes are really effing freaky and dark, and yet somehow they make sense? Also, the title was inspired by Cinderella. "A dream is a wish the heart makes when you're fast asleep..." Congrats you now have that song stuck in your head now.
Does Izzy like Mimi back? What will this new form of BWG's bring for the team ahead? What happened with Oikawa? Will Kaoru ever get the just spanking he deserves?
Find out next time on the next Digimon: Digital Monsters!
Oh, I finally figured out how to post links and there's this spectacular fanart lina-vera did for Interlude III. Yes, THAT SCENE. Link in my profile. Go see!
Updates will be longer now, monthly probably, because c'est la vie! If you have any questions or theories, just voice them in a review. I don't mind if you want to brain-splode any comments. Or if you have a favorite scene you can just tell me (or recite some lines, I love when you quote lines from the fic never stop). Until the next update, my lovely readers!