Kindred Pairs
by milesprower06
Rumiko Nonaka sat in the spectator seats of Chou's dojo, watching as her daughter and Henry stretched in the center of the room, with Sensei Chou overlooking. It made her reminiscent of the few weeks Rika had taken karate lessons when she was younger, but like most of the other hobbies she had taken up as a kid, she hadn't stuck with it for long. By far, her attendance for these tai chi lessons with Henry outlasted her karate lessons tenfold.
"Very good, you two are stretched, and have centered yourself with your breathing. Today, we're going to reverse the exercise we did on your first day, Rika. Henry will attack, you evade and counter."
Rika and Henry bowed to Sensei Chou, then faced each other and bowed, before going into fighting stances.
As Rika began leaning to evade Henry's first punches, Rumiko felt her cell phone vibrate in her pocket, having it set to silent since they began stretching. Digging it out of her pocket, she flipped it open and put it to her ear, not taking her eyes off of the sparring pair in front of her.
"Hello?" She began quietly. "Coco, you've caught me at a pretty bad time, I let the office know that I was going to be busy today... Yes, but this would hardly be the first time you've asked me to walk out on time I've set aside to spend with my daughter... I don't care how much they're offering above the standard rate... No, I'm sorry Coco, my scheduled time off was quite clear, now they can either reschedule or find someone else. We'll talk tomorrow."
Without even waiting for a response, Rumiko flipped the phone closed, ending the call and returning it to her pocket. Thankfully, Rika was so focused on parrying Henry's offense that she hadn't even noticed the thirty second phone call. They way they rotated around each other like some intricate, fast-paced dance.
Rika was laser-focused on watching for the slightest hints of telegraphing from her blue-haired opponent, batting aside every punch and kick away from her body, taking only one or two steps backwards at times, but otherwise holding her ground. Then, she began to take steps forward with each block, slowly returning them to the center of the mat. When they had returned to their original positions, Henry dropped without warning, and sent a low sweeping kick towards her ankles.
But she was ready. With barely a split-second to react, she hopped over his sweeping leg like a jump rope, and saw her window. When her feet landed on the mat, she dropped to one knee, and lunged forward with a grapple, grabbing Henry's right wrist as he was returning to a standing position, and pulled down, while simultaneously performing a forward kick, knocking his leading foot out from under him, sending him into a forward somersault. He came to a halt on his back, and Rika's right palm came down on his chest immediately.
Rumiko diligently resisted the urge to stand up and cheer. This was no tournament, after all.
"You let me have that one, didn't you?" Rika asked Henry, smirking down at him as he caught his breath laying on his back. A few weeks ago Henry's sweeping kick came a bit faster and had planted her on the mat nearly all of the time he used it.
"You can't prove that," Henry replied, smirking back at her. She retracted her palm and let him sit up, pulling him up to his feet, bowing to each other.
"Besides, wouldn't want to sprain anything when you have that rematch with Takato tomorrow."
"Heard about that, did you?"
"More than heard about it, I'm gonna officiate it. I think he's determined to get his mile under nine minutes tomorrow."
"Excellent form, both of you." Sensei Chou complimented. "Alright, again."
Music, as it turned out, was doing wonders for Takato's pace. In the two days since he had gotten the MP3 player, he had already shaved another 10 seconds off of his best time.
Once he got his playlist set up, he started off with a warm-up lap at a brisk walk, and the song with a perfect tempo for that was Change Into Power, one of the songs from the Adventure TV series. After that, it was time to break into a run, and most of the Digimon Adventure rock songs were perfect for running paces. There was even a song named Run Around. The third song on his playlist was one of his favorites, Strange, and it really motivated him to keep his pace moving. The fourth one was the Digimon Adventure theme song.
He sometimes wondered what it would sound like with a little electric guitar added in.
The fifth song was from the second season, Here We Go, and if his pace was fast enough, he'd complete his mile before this song's runtime was up. This way, it was an awesome dual purpose. It helped him keep his feet moving, and it also acted as a timer of sorts, pushing him to cross the finish line earlier and earlier in the song, without having to glance down at the stopwatch. There were plenty of other songs to add in too, when he was ready to lengthen his distance to a mile-and-a-half, and even beyond that. Going Digital, Kick It Up...
Except for the Digi Rap. That was the first one he deleted from the player.
"Alright, Togemon digivolves to Lillymon!" Kenta declared, slapping the ultimate card down on top of the champion card already in play.
"Aw too bad, here comes my System Crash Card." Kazu responded, taking the card from his hand and dropped it into the play mat's modify zone.
"Ugh..." Kenta replied, his glasses sliding down the bridge of his nose. Sooner or later, he was going to have to come up with a counter to that. It was one of Kazu's favorite plays. He looked out at the rest of the park, glancing at the shadows being cast by the dinosaur-shaped huts to judge how much time he had before he had to head home for dinner.
"Kazu, I have to admit... A lot of the time, I really don't like how we've, well, gone back to normal, ever since our partners left." Kenta admitted, as he removed Lillymon and the lesser forms from play, putting them in the discard pile and drawing another card from his deck.
"Yeah, I can understand where you're coming from, but look at it another way; this 'normal' is exactly how we pushed ourselves to tag along with the others and become Tamers." Kazu countered.
"You think they'll come back soon? Not a day goes by when I don't think about MarineAngemon. I can't believe how much I worry on a daily basis about a mega level."
"Maybe if those Hypnos spooks don't keep burying every portal we tell them about. But I think you're in plenty of company right now, dude. I've got to get my hands on some de-digivolution modify cards, got any spares? I didn't really like having to leave Guardromon in the backyard, especially with my mom flipping out over her garden. But just the other night I had a dream about biomerging with him into HiAndromon... Dude, best dream ever. Maybe one day it'll happen." Kazu said, leaning back against the wall. He remembered saying as much to Guardromon in his message packet.
Kenta laid down a Solarmon and immediately played a modify card to digivolve him to Clockmon, having drawn a decent defense card if Kazu had some other crazy offense cards to screw with his field. They both turned when they heard footsteps jog up to them.
"Hey there, guys. Mind if I play loser? I think I'm finally ready for a full match." Jeri said, digging out her cards from her tote bag.
"Yeah, if Kenta doesn't mind his dinner being a little lukewarm this evening." Kazu answered, chuckling.
His long-time opponent scoffed.
"Hmph. Game's not over yet, Kazu."
A/N: I'd like to offer special thanks to OmnicromXR, Chaotic Skunk Demon, and again to Crazyeight, who have all happily been letting me pick their brains and helping me hone some finer plot points here and there. I don't really think I can claim I've improved all that drastically without taking a shot at bringing in as much of the supporting cast as I can, something that was woefully lacking back in my early days.