BTW, if it seems I'm solving 'problems' (related to relationships etc) way too easily, I think so too and I'll be trying to change that a bit. Reality doesn't wrap itself into nice, neat little packages, after all. ^_^;
Also, sorry that some of these characters I'm writing about later are getting a lot more written for their parts than earlier characters. Originally it was just gonna be a coupla brief scenes to show how they were handling things but I kind of got carried away. ^_^;
After the Storm
by Leto
Part 4 - "This is how our summer should have been!"
~~TK~~
"Matt! Matt, Matt, Matt!"
TK ran to open the door, tripped and ate carpet. Crawling eagerly on hands and feet he clambered the rest of the way and made it to the door in one piece.
"TK, be careful! You really should slow down!"
TK opened the door and sure enough, his Matt was there. He grinned and the two brothers hugged briefly.
"Hey kid, good to see ya," said Matt, obviously pleased. TK pouted.
"You said you wouldn't call me 'kid' any more!"
"Sorry, kid," teased Matt. TK squawked in protest and hit him.
"Maaaatt!"
Matt ruffled his hair, so that it almost resembled his own, and soon the two were tumbling in a mock wrestling match.
"You two boys stop that right now!"
Matt and TK glanced up, both looking rather comical. Their mother didn't think so. She stood, arms folded, staring disapprovingly at them. Matt's expression instantly changed and he glared back.
"Matt, what were you thinking?!" continued Nancy, "you could hurt him! You should take better care of your brother, or you won't be allowed to take him out any more!"
"That's not fair," said Matt, "we were just playing!"
"Yeah," said TK, "I got away from Puppetmon and everything!"
Nancy blinked.
"He means, he's not a fragile baby like you seem to think he is."
"Don't speak to me like that," she said, "and don't teach your brother bad ideas."
Matt glowered but said nothing, wondering why she kept calling TK 'his brother' instead of using his name.
With Nancy Takaishi's overprotective nature aside, and Matt's resentment of her, the relationship between the two families - or one family - had improved.
Nancy remembered her ex-husband putting a reassuring hand on her shoulder as they watched the battle in the sky. This had made things awkward later, yet somehow some of the rift between each other had slid away. At any rate, the two were able to acknowledge the selfishness of keeping two brothers who obviously loved each other seperate, especially after all they had been through together.
TK noticed that there was some weird hostile atmosphere around when his brother and parents were all in the same place, but it didn't really bother him. Anything was an improvement on before. At least now he could actually see his dad and brother sometimes! His mom seemed kind of strange about it but at least it was happening and that's what mattered.
That particular Saturday, the two brothers were going to the beach. Tai had called Matt the night before. As they left the house, Nancy called out things like are you absolutely sure you have your train tickets and make sure you swim between the flags and don't run around barefoot or you might step on broken glass and make sure your brother doesn't drown.
Once outside, the two grinned at each other and relaxed. TK went along the footpath, jumping from plate to plate over the cracks. Matt followed more sedately, smiling after his brother. After everything, he still hadn't lost IT. He remembered when TK challenged Tokomon to a cleaning race, at Piximon's place. The same attitude was still alive, no Dark Master could squash that.
Some time later, when they actually reached the beach, they looked around for Tai where they said they were going to meet. Tai wasn't there, but Mimi and Sora were.
"Hey!" called Matt, running to meet them, "I didn't know you girls were coming!"
"Did Tai ask to meet you too?" said TK, "oh, I hope that means Kari's coming!"
"Hi, Matt," said Sora. She was sitting on a low wall, wearing bathers and a t-shirt. Mimi had her hair down for once and was wearing - rather predictably - a pink bikini.
"Hi, Matt," echoed Mimi, and added, "please tell your weird friend Jake to leave me alone."
Matt laughed and Mimi looked unimpressed. But she did seem to be in a better mood than usual.
"Tai's the one who told us to meet him here," said Sora, "and he's not even here himself."
"Tai's always late," said TK happily. He squatted down and started building a sand castle. Matt nudged sand across with his foot, helping without looking too involved.
They waited for a good ten minutes longer until Tai ran up with Kari tailing behind.
"Sorry I'm late!" shouted Tai, "thanks for waiting!"
"Tai, do you even OWN a watch?" asked Matt.
Tai stuck one hand sheepishly behind his head.
"Well, sure, but it's kind of broken or slow or something, anyway I don't use it, but actually there's a really good reason why I was late, you see Dad was trying to fix our broken washing machine and he asked me to -"
"Yeah, that's great," said Matt, hurriedly interrupting.
Kari sat down next to TK and helped him with the sandcastle. TK felt very happy. The beach, this was like the summer vacation he'd missed. And he was here with his brother and other friends, the big kids, and his mom wasn't telling him off.
It would be even better once Patamon came.
"Well, let's go and get busy relaxing!" said Tai happily.
"Hey, I didn't get to finish," TK protested.
"No prob," said Tai, taking off his shirt and scooping up the sandcastle in it. Everyone sweatdropped.
"Hey, Tai," said Matt, "the whole beach is covered in sand, I don't think you really need to carry it around with you."
"We're just relocating, right TK?"
TK laughed as Tai imitated (poorly) the sound of a moving van. "Mwee, mwee, mwee, vrooooooooooooooom -"
"Have you got indigestion?" asked Sora, and Matt snorted. He no longer minded that his little brother liked Tai; it was like Gabumon said, Matt was his brother, Tai wasn't.
"Tai, that's disgusting!" said Mimi, wrinkling up her nose.
Tai grinned, "you can help me carry it if you like!" and tossed a handful of sand at her. Mimi squealed, bent down and threw some sand back.
Predictably, five seconds later the six children were engaged in a massive sand fight, even Mimi and Matt whooping and dodging and ignoring the one or two disapproving stares they were getting from nearby beachgoers.
When they did calm down, Matt had sand heavily caked through his hair.
"You know this is gonna take hours to fix," he complained half-heartedly.
Mimi was caked with sand almost completely. "Well, they say mud masks are good for the skin, I guess a sand mask is just as good! But can we go swimming soon anyway?"
Sora laughed and dug her toes into the sand. TK and Kari settled into a new sandcastle, which TK claimed would contain turrets and underground passages and a moat. In fact, it turned out to look exactly like a big lump of sand with holes in it, but the others pretended to admire it anyway.
Tai was glancing all around as though he were expecting to see someone.
"Hey Tai," said Sora, "is Izzy coming?"
"Nope," said Tai, "he said he had to do more work on the Digimon."
"He still didn't let me help him yet," said Kari.
"He's working way too hard," said Sora worriedly, "I really think he should be resting more."
"Yeah," said Tai, "his mom said he's been at Jennai's every night this week, and even stayed overnight once. I bet he was working all night."
"Jennai should make him rest," said Sora, "what sort of father is he anyway."
"Izzy's been kind of strange lately," said Matt, "I agree with you two, he's getting way overinvolved with this. I mean, it's really important that our Digimon come here but it wouldn't matter that much if they took a few extra days, would it?"
"Yeah, he's gone weird," said TK, "he got mad when I asked him about Patamon."
"If only he'd pry himself away from the computer for long enough so that one of us could talk to him!" said Sora, "I'm sure this isn't good for him."
Tai glanced around as a few people walked behind him.
"Why do you keep looking around then?" asked Sora.
"I'm looking for Joe," said Tai.
"Was he supposed to meet us here?" asked Mimi, surprised and sounding a little odd.
"Well, no, but he said he was coming to the beach today so I thought we might surprise him!"
"Do you even know what time he's coming, Tai?"
"Well... no, but I'm sure he'll be here any minute, hahahah..."
"Hey, I know how to find him if he's here," said TK. "Matt, guard the castle!"
He ran into the water until the water ran level with his neck. Then he started floundering around, sputtering and shouted "help, I'm drowning!"
"I don't think he should pretend about things like that," said Sora dubiously, but at the next moment someone had waded up to TK and was holding his head above the water.
"Hey, take it easy," they could hear him say, "breathe, little guy... hey, TK?"
"Hi, Joe!" said TK happily, and grabbed his hand, "we were looking for you!"
"You were?"
Joe sweatdropped as he saw his friends at the shore, all covered with sand. They waved sheepishly as the two came back to them.
"I don't know why it works," said TK, "it just works! Surefire way of finding Joe!"
"Hey, everyone," said Joe in his usual calm way, "what are you all doing here?"
"Well, it was such a nice day," said Tai, "we just thought we'd keep you company!"
"Yeah, the beach is a much nicer place to be when you're with your friends," said Sora.
Matt nodded. "For sure. I mean, if you go by yourself you don't get sand in your hair, or your brother making a public scene by pretending to drown, or Tai embarassing you by looking like the Abominable Sandman or something."
"Hey, I always look like this," said Tai.
"Hit the nail on the head!"
"Hey!"
Joe sweatdropped as the two started scuffling, sending sand flying. "Why is it those two are always engaged in some sort of wrestling match?"
"They're boys," said Kari, with the air of someone long-suffering.
"They're brothers!" said TK, and laughed.
This was what life should be all the time! thought TK. Everyone was back together again. Everyone had been acting weird and kind of different at school, and everyone expected him and Kari to stay with kids their own age. But somehow those kids seemed kind of childish.
TK puffed his chest out a little; he DID feel older. Maybe he was still the shortest but he'd catch up. At least nobody was acting embarassed to be seen with him.
Kari giggled and dumped wet sand on his chest. He yelped and jumped to his feet, grabbing sand in both hands.
"Hey, don't start that again!" protested Sora.
Mimi and Joe lay back on their towels, smiling at each other a little self-consciously before staring out at the sea, enjoying the feel of the sun on their skin. Tai pulled Sora to her feet and, procuring an inflateable beachball, challenged her to a game of water-soccer. Sora, probably out of morbid curiousity as to how exactly such a game would be played, accepted the challenge.
Matt sat and watched as TK and Kari patted sand around the front of their sandcastle (the drawbridge, apparently), occasionally offering a word of advice here and there. Tai ran into the water and started screaming that it was horribly cold. Sora laughed and splashed him until his huge mop of hair was hanging down around his face, completely obscuring his vision.
"See, that's why I wear goggles!" he said, trying to prop his hair over his goggles, but they weren't strong enough to support such a mighty structure. He gave up and instead ran up to Sora and threw a big wodge of wet sand down her top. She screeched, grabbed the inflateable beachball and started beating him over the head with it.
Then, the others simultaneously found themselves unable to resist the water any longer. Kari ran in to 'defend her brother' (in other words, send up a great torrent of splashes in Sora's direction, half of which hit Tai anyway), TK shouted that they should have a waterfight now that they'd had a sandfight, Mimi laughed and ran into the waves, dragging Joe behind her.
"Sea water really ruins your hair," said Matt, which for some reason made everyone crack up. Tai tried to splash him from several metres back, but Matt lay back in the sun and smirked; there was no way he could reach. So Tai ran up, grabbed his sand-covered shirt and soaked it in water.
Everyone else was laughing really hard by now, as Tai ran back to Matt and squeezed the wet shirt over his bare chest. Matt leapt up, screaming and swearing as cold water poured all over him. He jumped up at Tai who nimbly leapt back and fell on his butt in the sea.
In two seconds, the two boys were wrestling again.
"You know, you two should really think about joining WWF," said Mimi.
"Hey, Matt, what does *$%@ mean?" asked TK innocently. In fact, he knew perfectly well, but the question had the desired effect; Matt turned bright red.
"Uhhhhh, you don't need to know that TK!" he said hurriedly, "uh, I think I'll come into the water now. AND KILL TAI!"
Actually, Matt was already in the water, but nobody picked him on that. They were still laughing too hard.
A couple of hours' worth of 'water-soccer', swimming races, lying on the sand in the shallow water, jumping waves and waterfights later, everyone was back on the shore again. Mimi sunbathing, Matt drawing in the sand with a stick, Kari and TK digging a huge hole (for what purpose, nobody quite knew, but someone had stepped on their sandcastle when they were in the water), Sora and Tai were building sand 'cars' around each other and Joe was lying on his stomach, reading a book.
"Hey," said Matt, drawing a picture of Gabumon, "in a few weeks' time, we should come here again. Same place, same group of people, except we bring our Digimon too."
"Yeah, this has been the best day," said Sora.
"Draw Patamon next!" said TK.
"What is that picture?" asked Mimi, pointing.
"That's Gabumon!" said Matt.
"Oh," said Mimi blankly, "it looks kind of like an iguana to me."
"An iguana?! Don't you know true art when you see it?"
"I sure do," teased Mimi, "so I guess I'm not seeing it, huh!"
"Hey Sora," said Tai, "that car brand is infinitely inferior to mine!"
Sora sweatdropped. "This car has a brand? It looks just like a bunch of sand built around my legs to me."
Mimi leaned over helpfully. "Well, if you just make one or two little tiny modifications, you could get a really stylish automobile going there!"
"Yeah, I'll help too," said Matt, "you'll cream Tai's car!"
"Hey, no fair!" cried Tai, trying to reach out for more sand while rendered immobile by the sand caked around him, "you're getting help!"
"We'll help you, Tai," said Kari.
"Yeah, we'll use the sand we scooped out of our hole!" said TK.
"Thanks," said Tai, with a little sweatdrop.
Mimi was trying to make Sora's 'car' sleeker and more feminine, while Matt was trying to make it into a real man's car, the good ol' four-wheel drive. Needless to say, it began to look pretty odd.
"Hey guys," said Joe, with interest, "that car looks more like a mutant tank to me."
"It's not a tank," said Matt, "it's a technological masterpiece."
"Otherwise known as a bomb," cracked Sora.
"Hey, Mimi!"
Mimi turned in surprise to hear her name called. Her legs and hands were covered in sand, and there was some streaked through her hair as well. She was in the middle of patting sand onto Sora's legs, and she looked rather a contrast to her friends Sera, Claire, Pai and Katarina, who all looked perfectly composed and pretty in bikini tops and sarongs.
"Oh, hi guys," she said, sweatdropping. They looked, a little disdainfully, around at her friends. Joe put his book down and sat up a little, resting his head on one hand. Kari and TK smiled, a little confused at why everyone's expressions had changed.
TK stood up and smiled at Mimi's friends.
"Are you girls friends of Mimi's?" he asked, "nice to meet ya!"
Claire smiled and bent down to his height. "Hi kid," she said, "what's your name?"
"I'm TK! And I'm not as small as I look!"
"Well, you look pretty small from where I'm standing," said Sera, but not in a nasty voice, "Mimi, are you babysitting?"
"Oh no," she said, laughing, but guarded - nervous, "I'm just hanging out, you know."
Katarina's cool eyes scanned the group quickly. "These are friends of yours?"
Mimi was on the spot now, kind of frozen. She didn't seem to know how to answer. TK thought he would help.
"We sure are!" he said, "we're the digidestined!"
"'Digidestined'," repeated Pai, "what does that mean?"
"You know those monsters that appeared a few months ago?" said Kari quietly, "we were all the ones who fought them and saved the city."
Matt groaned inwardly. Younger kids were too honest.
"Sure, little girl," said Katarina kindly, "but really, Mimi, you should have told us you were going to the beach. We could have gone together! Instead of you with these... um..."
"I thought you said you weren't friends with Sora," said Claire, looking from Mimi to Sora. Mimi opened and shut her mouth, still saying nothing, and Sora went very still. Her face was impassive.
There was a long silence, while all the digidestined looked at each other, and at the girls. TK decided to 'help' again.
"Oh, you must have heard wrong!" said TK, "those two are really good friends! They fought Cockatrimon together and everything, and Sora helped Mimi up when the huge angry Kuwagamon was attacking and at the convention centre Sora left to get help!"
"Do you, like, understand a word he's saying?" whispered Pai.
"Not one," whispered Sera.
Mimi finally unfroze, standing up, brushing sand off her legs and laughing nervously. "Ahahahah," she said, "can we possibly-maybe discuss this somewhere a little further away?"
"I don't know, Mimi," said Katarina, "it doesn't really look good for our image to have you clowning around in the dirt with a bunch of... er..."
"A bunch of what?" snapped Matt.
"Well, YOU'RE alright, Matt," said Claire cautiously, "but, ah..."
"I don't think we want to hear more of this," said Joe calmly, "look, why don't -"
"No," said Sora suddenly, and she sounded angry, "I want to hear this, I think."
"Yeah," said Katarina, "what's it going to be, Mimi? Them or us?"
Everyone looked surprised at this.
"That's a... little drastic, don't you think?" asked Sera, worried.
"All week long, she's been acting like she's been embarassed by us," said Sora, "I think it's a fair question, actually. She was fine hanging out with us when there was nobody else around to see her, but now that her friends are around she's frozen."
"Well, there's more than two sides to every story," said Matt, cautiously.
Mimi was biting her nails, and scuffling the ground with one foot. For a moment, Joe was worried she might cry or run away. She had been quite sensitive to fighting lately. But he was underestimating her.
"I don't want to decide between my friends!" she said finally, "I shouldn't have to, anyway! But TK was right... Sora and Tai and TK and Kari and Joe and Izzy are all friends of mine!"
"What about me," protested Matt.
"Well, they wouldn't care if I was friends with you," said Mimi, and everyone facefaulted. But they knew what she meant.
"They're all friends of mine," she continued, "I met them on summer camp. They turned out to be... the best friends I've ever had! Even if you don't approve... I can't... but I don't want to choose between you, you guys have been my friends since I started school. Does it matter if I have two different groups of friends?"
"The whole point of 'our' group," said Pai, "is that we're totally different from the other kids, right?"
"Right," affirmed Katarina, "you can't have it both ways, Mimi."
Mimi knew they were right, really. She couldn't keep hanging out with people who made rude comments about the other people she hung out with. Yet she had heard her digidestined friends making snide comments about the sort of group that she, Sera, Claire, Katarina and Pai fell into.
"Just remember your crest," said Joe. He was telling her, in a sort of code that the other girls wouldn't understand, to follow her heart. But it also reminded her of their last battle. Her crest was part of a collection, her self was part of a team.
She knew her digidestined friends would probably understand if she chose to go with her old friends, and realising that helped her to make up her mind.
"Well, you know what I'd have to choose," said Mimi finally, "I know you girls probably don't really understand but we did have to work as a team on summer camp, and we really did become kind of close, I guess I'm going to have to choose them, but you know I still..."
"Summer camp only lasted half a day," muttered Claire, jealously.
"Well, thanks a lot Mimi, it's nice to know how much you value your real friends," said Katarina snidely. She turned to walk away, Pai and Claire following. Sera hesitated, hissed something at Mimi and then ran after her friends.
"She likes Jake!"
"What's that supposed to mean?" asked Sora.
"Sera was, like, apologising, I think."
Mimi was silent for a moment.
"Don't worry, Mimi," said TK reassuringly, "you can play with us at lunch instead!"
"Raahraaah, I'm an allosaurus!"
Everyone got a mental image of Mimi running around pretending to be a dinosaur, as the younger kids had been doing the day before. They all started laughing.
"Or hang out with Izzy in the computer club room!"
"Yeah, and crash the whole network five minutes later!"
"You could take up soccer!"
"I might break a nail!"
Everyone was laughing very hard at the thought of Mimi fitting into one of 'their' groups. People at school naturally tended to fall into distinct groups of friends; the digidestined were unusual to be friends. They each represented a different group, a different person, yet they were all friends. And none of them had to choose which they belonged to, except Mimi. Yet.
"Hey," said Tai, speaking for the first time in a while, "how come Matt's someone they wouldn't care if you're friends with, but I'm not?"
Mimi winced delicately. "Well, I hate to tell you this Tai but you are sitting there with a car made out of sand all around you, and that shirt IS yours, isn't it?"
He sweatdropped.
"What's wrong with my shirt?"
"You wear the same clothes every day," she said, "I hope you're going to give that shirt a good wash tonight, it's absolutely disgusting."
"Hey Mimi, I think the colour of it suits you!"
"No way, pink's my colour!"
"Try it on, Mimi!"
Tai looked positively evil now. Mimi backed away from him as he jumped up, exploding crumbling sand everywhere. He grabbed his sodden, sandy, filthy shirt and advanced on her.
"You are one of the fashion challenged digidestined now!" he said in a zombie-voice, "resistance is fertile!"
Everyone got large sweatdrops.
"Don't you mean futile?" ventured Sora.
"I hope he meant futile," said Joe.
"I don't get it," said TK.
"Don't worry about it," said Matt quickly, "Tai's just showing how he has the same IQ as your sandcastle."
"I'm sure there'd be lots of micro-organisms in that sandcastle," said Joe, "you don't want to belittle them, do you?"
Matt snickered and Tai looked blank.
"Speaking of IQs, it's getting kind of late," said Sora, "should we go and visit Izzy?"
"Yeah, good idea."
"Maybe we can talk to our Digimon too!"
The group brushed the sand off themselves (Matt still muttering in dismay at the state of his hair) and were ready to go and find Izzy.