~*Project: Moment*~
A Digimon Fanfiction by Bandit
~*Chapter 7- Bomb the Town*~
"So, we're hitting all the fun spots, right?"
"Right," Tai answered TK. The younger man grinned.
"Sounds like a kick. Where first?"
Kari cleared her throat. "How about the Arena?"
"Aw, Kari," TK complained good-naturedly. "You know I can't aim those things."
"Oh, shove off, TK," Tai said with a grin. "You and I both know you're the terror of the Arena. The management needs a separate secretary to file all of the requests to disable the mines whenever Takaishi Takeru is playing, just to even the field."
"Fond friend. All right, fine. The Arena it is."
"All right!" Tai and Kari both jubilated, and they took off down the hallway, dragging their respective 'partners' behind them. Sora yelped, trying to get her feet back under herself.
"Hold on a minute! What's the 'Arena'?"
"You'll see," Tai said cheerfully over his shoulder. Any more questions were ignored as she was propelled out of the building and through the courtyard 'village' toward a particularly strange-looking building, surrounded by a scattering of people walking into and out of it.
To say that the building didn't match the other ones around it would be a gross understatement. Large, square, and painted black from the foundation to the roof, two stories high, it had no windows whatsoever. It did, however, have large double doors at the front, below a neon sign that read THE ARENA in three-foot-tall, violently green letters. Halfway up, at about the place where the junction between first and second floors would be on a normal building, was an enormous digital clock, counting down, that presently read 00:06:35. The whole effect was made even more strange as Sora watched a trio of teenagers go inside. What looked like smoke billowed from the door as it opened, and colored light shone from the depths of the insides.
"Um, Tai?" she said nervously, tugging at his arm as he continued to forge ahead. "Why are we going into a place that looks like a cross between a disco and the mouth of hell?"
Both Kamiyas burst out laughing, and Sora blinked.
"What? What's so funny?"
Instead of answering, the other three went inside, dragging Sora in their wake. This was as eloquent as any answer; Sora's jaw dropped as she looked around.
"Whoa...."
The Arena was an arena, all right. In fact, it was (from the bits of it she could make out) the biggest laser tag arena she had ever seen. The foursome stood in a side room, a sort of entrance hall. The air was misted with smoke. Racks on the walls to their left and right held rows and rows of gun-and-harness sets, and the opposite wall from the way they'd come in had a huge door set into it, and a waiting queue of metal railings leading up to it. The queue was about half full of people, watching a clock over the closed door that seemed to be set in sync with the one outside. It now read 00:05:12, and the numbers were steadily ticking down.
On either side of the door were twin columns of TV monitors, showing scenes that were presumably being relayed by cameras in the arena itself. Sora allowed herself to be steered over to the ammo racks, watching the screens. Presently, a boy in a harness that blinked green from rows of tiny light bulbs was chasing a girl in yellow down a smoke-filled 'alley', taking potshots at her heels.
"This is amazing...Tai, I love laser tag!"
He grinned. "I know. Here, grab a harness." TK and Kari were already strapping themselves into the harnesses, which consisted of chest plates that displayed scoring and hit-miss ratios, a hip holster and gun, shoulder guards, and back plates, all studded with tiny, unlit light bulbs and held together with buckles and straps. TK seemed familiar with the setup; he buckled his own harness on without any trouble.
"Does it matter which one I pick?" Sora said uncertainly. "How do they do teams?"
"That varies from game to game. Right now, they're playing a team-vs.-team-style game. The teams are set; green vs. yellow. Our game, the one coming up in..." He checked the timer. "...three minutes and fifty seconds, is repeat-randomizer-style. That means that every few minutes, the team affiliation is going to change. You lose points for getting hit and for shooting team members, so it can get tricky. Scoring is personal; it's pretty much every man for himself, since the teams toggle so much. We've got three minutes thirty-two seconds, so you might want to get strapped in and activated."
He was already in his harness, and doing something with the chest plate as he talked. Sora blinked, then grabbed the nearest harness and strapped it on. She had been mountain climbing before, and you had to wear a harness for that. This couldn't be that different, right?
Wrong. She was hopelessly tangled in ten seconds flat. Tai glanced over from fiddling with his own harness and laughed. "Here, let me get that." He slipped it off over her head, unknotted it and put it back on, tightening the straps to fit her shape. "Is that okay?"
"It's fine. Thanks," she said sheepishly.
"Want help signing in?"
"Signing in?" Sora echoed blankly. Tai pointed to the screen on his chest plate-it now read 'dragonfire91' in bold letters across the top.
"I'll help you get a signature chip later, but for now you can do a temporary name. Signature chips keep track of your win-loss and personal records. You put them in here." He gestured to a slot. "For now, though...what name do you want?"
"Um...Phoenix Five?" Sora said, quoting her Email address, minus the '@mechanet.com'.
"Right." Tai did something with a few buttons at the bottom corner of the plate, and a second later 'phoenix5' blinked into existence at the top of her screen. "There you go. Now let's go catch up to TK and Kari."
They joined the other two at the back of the line. TK's screen read 'lookoutbelow' and Kari's read 'angel_maiden'. Sora frowned.
"'Look out below'?"
"You'll catch on later," TK said with a grin.
"Especially if he's not on your team," Kari added dryly.
The buzzer above them went off in a pitch that made Sora wince, and there was a murmur of excitement through the crowd of players. There must have been fifty people waiting to play, which told Sora a little about the size of the arena. A tinny recorded voice boomed through the room.
"Welcome to the Arena. Please wait while the previous game's players exit the arena. The next game will begin in one minute. It will be played in repeat-randomizer style, red vs. green vs. yellow vs. orange. You have one minute to scatter before the harnesses activate teams. Shooting teammates will deduct from your score. Collective team scoring is irrelevant; this is personal competition. Good luck, and play safely. May the best player win!"
A canned fanfare rang through the room, and the doors opened to a blare of rock music from within the arena.
"Woooohooo!"
"Yeah!"
"Let's par-tay!"
With shouts and war cries, the waiting players poured into the arena. Sora grabbed Tai's arm, trying not to be lost in the general uproar.
"Tai, what do I do now?!" she cried over the music as they were jostled from side to side.
"We scatter!" Tai said with a grin over his shoulder. "Follow me!"
The arena seemed to be a maze of tunnels, hallways and catwalks, filled with smoke and colored spotlights. Sora just ran at Tai's heels, catching the occasional glimpse of other players making for favorite hiding places as they passed. After a few seconds, Tai ducked into a hallway that was made up of a chain of tiny, square rooms, all the same size, with archways in two walls of each to allow passage. He pulled Sora in with him, just as several sets of feet thundered by in an adjacent hallway.
"Now we wait," Tai whispered. "In a few seconds, the computer is going to trigger teams, which means that our harnesses will light up in one of four colors. At the same time, our guns will unfreeze, so that we can shoot. If we're the same, we can stick together. If we're different, run like hell, because I'm trying to work my way up the competition ladder and I need points however I can get them."
Sora rolled her eyes. "Oh, thanks a lot."
"Hey, just making conversation. So, that's your gun. You aim it like a regular gun; you shoot it with that trigger there. You get points for hitting people. Try to avoid being hit; it docks points from your score. You can go into the negatives, and that's a bad thing. When you're hit, your gun freezes and won't shoot for five seconds. That's also a bad thing."
"That's not very long..."
"You'd be surprised."
A low hum sounded from their harnesses, and Sora looked down to see the lights blinking in rainbow colors on both of them. She braced herself to run, in case Tai decided to make good on his words. The blinking slowed, slowed...
Stopped.
They were both orange.
Sora let out a comical sigh of relief, and Tai blinked at her.
"What?"
"I was hoping you would let me tag along for a while. Just so I don't get totally slaughtered."
"You'll do fine. Now come on, the game's just getting started. I hope you catch on by the next team scramble, because I doubt we'll end up on the same team twice in a row."
At that moment, they heard footsteps coming down the corridor, and froze. Tai pulled his gun from his holster and waited, silent, for the walker to come into view. Sora watched him and copied his movements, drawing her own gun and figuring out how to hold it, then aiming as well.
A figure in yellow wandered into view, obviously not expecting ambush. Tai and Sora let loose with a hail of fire, making the person drop their gun in surprise, swearing loudly. Tai let off a few more shots, and then took off down the corridor.
"Hey! Where are you going?!" Sora yelled, and followed. Tai slowed for her to catch up, but didn't stop. "We had that guy cornered! Why did you-"
At that moment, a bevy of players in yellow rounded the corner, drawn by their teammate's loud yells.
"That's why," Tai said, running faster. "Anyone shouting that loud was bound to attract trouble. Let's get out of here!"
Sora had no problem with that plan of action. They rounded a few corners and climbed a ramp onto a raised platform, looking around. From their vantage point, they could see the maze of open-topped corridors below; they had definitely lost their pursuers.
Tai spotted a few green lights bobbing along below them, several halls away, and started taking snipes at them. Sora followed suit, and smugly watched her scoring counter rise.
Suddenly, the rising stopped. Sora frowned and pressed her trigger.
It clicked.
At that moment, she realized that her score was beginning to fall. Also, her harness was making canned exploding sounds.
"Um, Tai? I think somebody's shooting at us!"
Tai swore. "Yeah, my gun's out, too. We're sitting ducks up here-let's get moving before we lose all the points we just won."
They fled the platform and entered a network of tunnels below the floor. It was even darker down here, lit only by black light that made the whites of their eyes and their teeth shine purple.
"You look like Radioactive Man," Sora giggled. Tai shrugged.
"What can I say, I'm a real superhero...hel-lo! What have we got here?"
More canned explosions were sounding from up ahead. Peering around the corner, they saw a room dotted with thick pillars and full of smoke and red light, presently playing host to a massive firefight between a dozen people decked out in red, green, and orange lights.
"Perfect..." Tai whispered.
"Oh, wait, let me guess!" Sora said, pleased to be catching on. "We fire at them, rack up a bunch of points, and scram before they realize that anyone extra is shooting at them?"
"Bingo," Tai said, grinning at her. "You're not so bad at this...for a girl."
"Hey, I resent that," Sora commented absently, already firing into the melee. Tai joined her, and they watched their scores rise for a few minutes before making a quick doubling-back exit.
"Better safe than sorry; there's a lot more of them than us, and the teams could change at any minute and send them all off after us," Tai explained as they retreated.
They left the tunnels. As they reached the middle floor, Sora heard a commotion, and ducked under cover with Tai right behind her. They watched a girl in red hurry past, pulling a girl in green by the arm. The green girl looked fit to kill; the red one looked immensely pleased with herself. Sora frowned.
"What are they doing?" she hissed to Tai. "Why aren't they shooting at each other?"
"I'm guessing Green there is a hostage," Tai said.
"A what?"
"A hostage. If you're dumb enough to let someone on the opposite team get close enough to fire their gun into your holster, you're taken hostage. The computer freezes your gun until you and your captor both put your guns in a hostage station. Captors get mondo points, because it's so hard to do. Hostages get points taken off."
Sora nodded. "Oh, I get it..."
The hostage and captor walked away into the distance, and Tai and Sora walked off again. They got into a few firefights, but came out generally on top.
Passing under a catwalk, Sora heard a dull boom from above and jumped with surprise as her gun went dead and a round twenty points dropped from her total, instead of the usual two to five for being shot.
"Hey! What the..."
"Look out below!" came a yell of triumph from above. Sora looked up.
"TK?!"
Indeed, TK was waving cheerfully down at her from the catwalk, his gun in hand and aimed at a white box set in the floor of the catwalk.
"Hi, Sora! Having fun?"
"TK, what on earth did you just do?"
"I blew up a depth charge!" he announced smugly. "I can't aim, so I let off the wide-range boxes instead!"
"He's good at what he does," Tai admitted. "Now let's get out of here, before that thing charges up again and clobbers our scores for another twenty. See you later, TK!"
"Bye!"
As they ran out of the range of the 'depth charge', they heard another boom and several outraged yells from TK's vicinity. Sora laughed.
"I've got to hand it to him, he's smart. Are those things all over the arena?"
"Pretty much. He migrates from box to box, so you never know when you'll be hit. There's two kinds; depth charges and mines. DP's go off the minute you shoot them, in one direction; down. The points taken from victims go to the person who fired the gun at the DP. Mines give you five seconds to get away and then blow in every direction. You have to be careful not to get caught in your own blast. They both recharge every twenty-five seconds."
"Nice way to make a living. Nobody can shoot at you, because their guns are all dead."
"Exactly. He spent days in here memorizing the layout. He knows it by touch, now, maybe even better than I-ack!"
Sora and Tai's scores had dipped by another twenty points, and their harnesses were making exploding sounds again.
"Was that...a mine?"
"Yup. Let's get out of here!"
They took off down the hallway-and ran smack dab into a hive of Yellows. By the time they lost them, they were sweating and breathless, and more than happy to find a quiet corner and lean against the wall to get their wind back.
"How long...has it...been?" Sora gasped.
"Fifteen...or twenty...minutes, I...think," Tai managed. "We've got another...fifteen minutes...at least."
"You're kidding! I'm going to...croak!"
"You'll be...fine, you...baby-"
Suddenly, a familiar low hum filled the air. Tai stopped talking mid word, and Sora frowned and looked down at her harness. It was blinking rainbows again.
"Huh...?"
Taken by surprise, Sora failed to make the connection in time. The blinking ran down and stopped...
Sora was Green.
Tai was Yellow.
"Ack!" Sora yelled as Tai grinned and took a step forward. "Bug off, you moron!" She fired off her gun a few times at him, backing away nervously. He dodged the shots, then lunged for her, grabbing her around the waist.
The image of the Red and her hostage flashed through Sora's mind, and she shrieked and tried to wriggle away, but it was too late. Tai's gun fired, and hers went dead.
"Taichi Kamiya, you jerk!" she yelled, fighting an impulse to fling her useless gun at his head.
"Thank you," he said with a grin. "I try. Can we go to the hostage station now?"
"No!" she said, struggling not to give in to amusement at the whole situation. She was mad! "Hostage or not, I'm not going anywhere I don't want to!" *That should bottle him up.* she thought in satisfaction. *Maybe I can get him to beg me to go with him...*
"Oh, that's not fair," Tai said, sounding petulant. Sora grinned.
"Maybe not, but I'm not going to just walk peacefully to your dumb station."
Tai paused and looked her up and down for a minute, as if sizing her up. Sora squirmed, not sure what this was all about...
"Okay," he said nonchalantly, grabbed her by the arm and lifted.
"Ack! What the hell? Tai!!!" Sora shrieked, kicking and struggling. Before she had had time to react, Tai had slung her across his shoulders in a variation of the fireman's carry and was now calmly abducting her.
"What, aren't you having fun?" Tai said innocently. Sora swore poisonously in reply, and he tsked. "You know, you've gotten a real dirty mouth in the last few years."
Pounding on his shoulders with her free arm proved useless; she was at such a bad angle that her blows could have come from a two-year-old having a tantrum. *Having a tantrum sounds pretty appropriate right about now,* she raged silently. "You put me down right now, Taichi Kamiya!!!"
"Not a chance. I want my hostage points." He shook his head melodramatically. "You know, you could have avoided this, but no, you had to be difficult."
Sora froze mid-kick, lapsing into silence. Tai stopped walking for a second, confused.
"Tai?" Sora said meekly, after a second or two of standing in that awkward position and listening to distant 'explosions'.
"Yeah?" he said, apprehensively.
"You sound exactly like my mom."
There was another moment of silence, as the full hilarity of the situation sank in. Then they both burst into hysterical laughter. Tai staggered back against the wall, having trouble holding Sora's weight, and made as if to put her down, but he miscalculated on exactly how hard they were laughing, and they tumbled to the floor in a heap instead as he lost his balance.
They just lay there for a minute or two, winding down to the occasional comfortable giggle.
"Ohhh, I have got to see if they have the surveillance video of that," Tai said weakly. "I am so buying it..."
"Yeah, then we can show TK and Kari how you dropped me," Sora accused good-naturedly.
"What? I did not drop you, you fell!"
"You dropped me!"
"Your feet were on the ground when I let go! Therefore, you fell!"
"I wasn't ready! Therefore, you dropped me!"
"Did not!"
"Did too!"
"Did...oh, man, this is exactly the kind of thing I've been *missing* for the last three years!" Tai suddenly burst out. Sora smiled.
"I know. Mimi's fun, but she never horses around anymore, not with the baby and all..."
"Yeah, I suppose that would put a lid on...hold on one God-forsaken minute here!" Tai cried, sitting up suddenly. "Baby? What baby?!"
Sora winced. "Oh, great. I was going to wait for a good time to tell you all..."
"Mimi's pregnant?!" Tai sputtered, sounding quite stunned. "What...when...*who*?!"
Sighing, Sora crossed her arms behind her head, looking up at the ceiling. "Your good friend Ishida has about six months of relative freedom left before he becomes a daddy. They tied the knot a year or so after you and the rest of the gang were whisked away."
Tai whistled. "Man...I don't know what to say. I mean, that's really great, and I'm happy for them...but what's Joe going to do?"
"I presume he doesn't know, then?" Sora said, raising an eyebrow.
"If I didn't, he doesn't," Tai said flatly. "Izzy's the one with the info line, and I talk to him a lot more than Joe does about things back home. Besides, Izzy has the sense to let someone else break that kind of news to the good doctor."
"Great, just great," Sora said softly. "I hope he doesn't kill the messenger..."
"Well, whether Joe flies off the handle or not, I'm glad Matt finally found somebody," Tai said, with a firm change of subject tone. He settled back onto the floor next to her. "How are they?"
"They're wonderful," Sora said happily. "They act like teenagers in love half the time...he's a songwriter now, you know, for bands that don't want to write their own stuff? And he and the Young Wolves still get together every so often and sing. He's giving Mimi harmonica lessons, so she can join in. She picked the instrument."
"Matt's a lucky guy," Tai said with a warm smile. Sora blinked.
*Why is he...looking at me like that?* she thought, her stomach beginning to twist into knots.
"Um...Tai?"
"Mmhm?" Tai said absently, his eyes holding hers.
Sora took a deep breath. Why hadn't she realized how close their faces were? The knots were beginning to turn into butterflies, and she realized her heartbeat had begun to race. "I, um...I..." she stammered, her mind refusing to stop spinning in dizzy circles long enough for her to form a lucid sentence. Tai had the oddest look on his face, and as they began to lean toward each other, Sora vaguely realized that it was probably mirrored on her own...
"ATTACK!!!"
Tai and Sora stumbled to their feet in confusion as a contingent of players in red descended on them from above. They had almost forgotten where they were, and were consequently-and without warning-now the mutual target for at least a half-dozen guns. To top things off, as Sora fumbled for her own gun she remembered that it still didn't work...
Tai suddenly recognized a face.
"Davis, you moron!"
Davis grinned. "Hey, Tai, having a little trouble-" He froze momentarily, looking like he'd seen a ghost, and Sora realized that he had finally recognized her. For a split second, there was one less gun pinning them down. Sora had never been one to let an opportunity slide, and in this case she grabbed it by the throat.
"Run away!!!" she yelled, grabbing Tai's hand and fleeing. He fired off a few parting shots over their shoulders as the red players disappeared behind them.
When it was clear that they had escaped, Sora stopped and turned to face Tai.
"Okay. Where is this hostage station, and how fast can we get to it?"
Tai grinned. "Why the change of heart? I thought you hated my guts."
"Oh, the gut-despising hasn't changed," Sora said cheerfully. "I just want my gun back. Then I'll gladly get out of your sight."
"Deal," Tai said, and headed off down the hallway. Sora gamely followed, and they quickly reached another white box, this time mounted on a wall instead of the floor. It had two holes in it, each about the size of a gun barrel, and a button between the two.
"Your gun goes in that one," Tai explained, pointing. Sora obliged, and Tai did the same and pressed the button. The machine lit up and chimed. Wincing as she watched her score drop and Tai's rise, she glared at him.
"Oh, you are so paying for this, Taichi."
"Whatever you say," Tai said, and pulled his gun out of the machine. "You've got five seconds before both of our guns start shooting again, and then it's open war."
"Right, then. See ya, Kamiya," Sora said, and took off down a hallway before he could blink. As soon as she was safely away from him, however, she stopped and leaned against a wall, sighing with relief. *Oh, man, I needed to get out of there!* It wasn't that she didn't like Tai; far from it, she thought he was great. A little too great sometimes, in fact. *Whoever invented chocolate-brown eyes should go into either jail or military warfare,* she thought dryly, remembering the shakes they'd given her. *Anything with the ability to do that to a person ought to be illegal...*
Standing straight again and giving herself a mental shake, she headed out into the arena. While she might mask it with jokes even to herself, what really made her nervous was exactly how close she had come to kissing her best friend, just before Davis's attack...and exactly how much she wanted to try that again...
__________________________________
Coming soon- Chapter 8: Scars
(AN) Minna arigatou gozaimasu! Thanks to y'all, this fic now holds place as fourth-most-reviews among my fics! (After 'Tears of an Angel' (3rd), 'Shadows in the Snow' (2nd), and the unkillable 'Not-So-Great Outdoors', with my biggest list of reviews at 27 (and also the only one of my fics to ever be plagarized...it showed up on the Digiexperience message boards once under a ficthief's name -_-*).
There's your double shot of romance right there, folks...and more coming up, along with pathos, humor, and the introduction of two new characters of my own devising, one of them kind-hearted and the other...shall we say, most unsavory. M_~* Keep your eyeballs peeled for the next chapter...'Scars'! -Bandit O_o
A Digimon Fanfiction by Bandit
~*Chapter 7- Bomb the Town*~
"So, we're hitting all the fun spots, right?"
"Right," Tai answered TK. The younger man grinned.
"Sounds like a kick. Where first?"
Kari cleared her throat. "How about the Arena?"
"Aw, Kari," TK complained good-naturedly. "You know I can't aim those things."
"Oh, shove off, TK," Tai said with a grin. "You and I both know you're the terror of the Arena. The management needs a separate secretary to file all of the requests to disable the mines whenever Takaishi Takeru is playing, just to even the field."
"Fond friend. All right, fine. The Arena it is."
"All right!" Tai and Kari both jubilated, and they took off down the hallway, dragging their respective 'partners' behind them. Sora yelped, trying to get her feet back under herself.
"Hold on a minute! What's the 'Arena'?"
"You'll see," Tai said cheerfully over his shoulder. Any more questions were ignored as she was propelled out of the building and through the courtyard 'village' toward a particularly strange-looking building, surrounded by a scattering of people walking into and out of it.
To say that the building didn't match the other ones around it would be a gross understatement. Large, square, and painted black from the foundation to the roof, two stories high, it had no windows whatsoever. It did, however, have large double doors at the front, below a neon sign that read THE ARENA in three-foot-tall, violently green letters. Halfway up, at about the place where the junction between first and second floors would be on a normal building, was an enormous digital clock, counting down, that presently read 00:06:35. The whole effect was made even more strange as Sora watched a trio of teenagers go inside. What looked like smoke billowed from the door as it opened, and colored light shone from the depths of the insides.
"Um, Tai?" she said nervously, tugging at his arm as he continued to forge ahead. "Why are we going into a place that looks like a cross between a disco and the mouth of hell?"
Both Kamiyas burst out laughing, and Sora blinked.
"What? What's so funny?"
Instead of answering, the other three went inside, dragging Sora in their wake. This was as eloquent as any answer; Sora's jaw dropped as she looked around.
"Whoa...."
The Arena was an arena, all right. In fact, it was (from the bits of it she could make out) the biggest laser tag arena she had ever seen. The foursome stood in a side room, a sort of entrance hall. The air was misted with smoke. Racks on the walls to their left and right held rows and rows of gun-and-harness sets, and the opposite wall from the way they'd come in had a huge door set into it, and a waiting queue of metal railings leading up to it. The queue was about half full of people, watching a clock over the closed door that seemed to be set in sync with the one outside. It now read 00:05:12, and the numbers were steadily ticking down.
On either side of the door were twin columns of TV monitors, showing scenes that were presumably being relayed by cameras in the arena itself. Sora allowed herself to be steered over to the ammo racks, watching the screens. Presently, a boy in a harness that blinked green from rows of tiny light bulbs was chasing a girl in yellow down a smoke-filled 'alley', taking potshots at her heels.
"This is amazing...Tai, I love laser tag!"
He grinned. "I know. Here, grab a harness." TK and Kari were already strapping themselves into the harnesses, which consisted of chest plates that displayed scoring and hit-miss ratios, a hip holster and gun, shoulder guards, and back plates, all studded with tiny, unlit light bulbs and held together with buckles and straps. TK seemed familiar with the setup; he buckled his own harness on without any trouble.
"Does it matter which one I pick?" Sora said uncertainly. "How do they do teams?"
"That varies from game to game. Right now, they're playing a team-vs.-team-style game. The teams are set; green vs. yellow. Our game, the one coming up in..." He checked the timer. "...three minutes and fifty seconds, is repeat-randomizer-style. That means that every few minutes, the team affiliation is going to change. You lose points for getting hit and for shooting team members, so it can get tricky. Scoring is personal; it's pretty much every man for himself, since the teams toggle so much. We've got three minutes thirty-two seconds, so you might want to get strapped in and activated."
He was already in his harness, and doing something with the chest plate as he talked. Sora blinked, then grabbed the nearest harness and strapped it on. She had been mountain climbing before, and you had to wear a harness for that. This couldn't be that different, right?
Wrong. She was hopelessly tangled in ten seconds flat. Tai glanced over from fiddling with his own harness and laughed. "Here, let me get that." He slipped it off over her head, unknotted it and put it back on, tightening the straps to fit her shape. "Is that okay?"
"It's fine. Thanks," she said sheepishly.
"Want help signing in?"
"Signing in?" Sora echoed blankly. Tai pointed to the screen on his chest plate-it now read 'dragonfire91' in bold letters across the top.
"I'll help you get a signature chip later, but for now you can do a temporary name. Signature chips keep track of your win-loss and personal records. You put them in here." He gestured to a slot. "For now, though...what name do you want?"
"Um...Phoenix Five?" Sora said, quoting her Email address, minus the '@mechanet.com'.
"Right." Tai did something with a few buttons at the bottom corner of the plate, and a second later 'phoenix5' blinked into existence at the top of her screen. "There you go. Now let's go catch up to TK and Kari."
They joined the other two at the back of the line. TK's screen read 'lookoutbelow' and Kari's read 'angel_maiden'. Sora frowned.
"'Look out below'?"
"You'll catch on later," TK said with a grin.
"Especially if he's not on your team," Kari added dryly.
The buzzer above them went off in a pitch that made Sora wince, and there was a murmur of excitement through the crowd of players. There must have been fifty people waiting to play, which told Sora a little about the size of the arena. A tinny recorded voice boomed through the room.
"Welcome to the Arena. Please wait while the previous game's players exit the arena. The next game will begin in one minute. It will be played in repeat-randomizer style, red vs. green vs. yellow vs. orange. You have one minute to scatter before the harnesses activate teams. Shooting teammates will deduct from your score. Collective team scoring is irrelevant; this is personal competition. Good luck, and play safely. May the best player win!"
A canned fanfare rang through the room, and the doors opened to a blare of rock music from within the arena.
"Woooohooo!"
"Yeah!"
"Let's par-tay!"
With shouts and war cries, the waiting players poured into the arena. Sora grabbed Tai's arm, trying not to be lost in the general uproar.
"Tai, what do I do now?!" she cried over the music as they were jostled from side to side.
"We scatter!" Tai said with a grin over his shoulder. "Follow me!"
The arena seemed to be a maze of tunnels, hallways and catwalks, filled with smoke and colored spotlights. Sora just ran at Tai's heels, catching the occasional glimpse of other players making for favorite hiding places as they passed. After a few seconds, Tai ducked into a hallway that was made up of a chain of tiny, square rooms, all the same size, with archways in two walls of each to allow passage. He pulled Sora in with him, just as several sets of feet thundered by in an adjacent hallway.
"Now we wait," Tai whispered. "In a few seconds, the computer is going to trigger teams, which means that our harnesses will light up in one of four colors. At the same time, our guns will unfreeze, so that we can shoot. If we're the same, we can stick together. If we're different, run like hell, because I'm trying to work my way up the competition ladder and I need points however I can get them."
Sora rolled her eyes. "Oh, thanks a lot."
"Hey, just making conversation. So, that's your gun. You aim it like a regular gun; you shoot it with that trigger there. You get points for hitting people. Try to avoid being hit; it docks points from your score. You can go into the negatives, and that's a bad thing. When you're hit, your gun freezes and won't shoot for five seconds. That's also a bad thing."
"That's not very long..."
"You'd be surprised."
A low hum sounded from their harnesses, and Sora looked down to see the lights blinking in rainbow colors on both of them. She braced herself to run, in case Tai decided to make good on his words. The blinking slowed, slowed...
Stopped.
They were both orange.
Sora let out a comical sigh of relief, and Tai blinked at her.
"What?"
"I was hoping you would let me tag along for a while. Just so I don't get totally slaughtered."
"You'll do fine. Now come on, the game's just getting started. I hope you catch on by the next team scramble, because I doubt we'll end up on the same team twice in a row."
At that moment, they heard footsteps coming down the corridor, and froze. Tai pulled his gun from his holster and waited, silent, for the walker to come into view. Sora watched him and copied his movements, drawing her own gun and figuring out how to hold it, then aiming as well.
A figure in yellow wandered into view, obviously not expecting ambush. Tai and Sora let loose with a hail of fire, making the person drop their gun in surprise, swearing loudly. Tai let off a few more shots, and then took off down the corridor.
"Hey! Where are you going?!" Sora yelled, and followed. Tai slowed for her to catch up, but didn't stop. "We had that guy cornered! Why did you-"
At that moment, a bevy of players in yellow rounded the corner, drawn by their teammate's loud yells.
"That's why," Tai said, running faster. "Anyone shouting that loud was bound to attract trouble. Let's get out of here!"
Sora had no problem with that plan of action. They rounded a few corners and climbed a ramp onto a raised platform, looking around. From their vantage point, they could see the maze of open-topped corridors below; they had definitely lost their pursuers.
Tai spotted a few green lights bobbing along below them, several halls away, and started taking snipes at them. Sora followed suit, and smugly watched her scoring counter rise.
Suddenly, the rising stopped. Sora frowned and pressed her trigger.
It clicked.
At that moment, she realized that her score was beginning to fall. Also, her harness was making canned exploding sounds.
"Um, Tai? I think somebody's shooting at us!"
Tai swore. "Yeah, my gun's out, too. We're sitting ducks up here-let's get moving before we lose all the points we just won."
They fled the platform and entered a network of tunnels below the floor. It was even darker down here, lit only by black light that made the whites of their eyes and their teeth shine purple.
"You look like Radioactive Man," Sora giggled. Tai shrugged.
"What can I say, I'm a real superhero...hel-lo! What have we got here?"
More canned explosions were sounding from up ahead. Peering around the corner, they saw a room dotted with thick pillars and full of smoke and red light, presently playing host to a massive firefight between a dozen people decked out in red, green, and orange lights.
"Perfect..." Tai whispered.
"Oh, wait, let me guess!" Sora said, pleased to be catching on. "We fire at them, rack up a bunch of points, and scram before they realize that anyone extra is shooting at them?"
"Bingo," Tai said, grinning at her. "You're not so bad at this...for a girl."
"Hey, I resent that," Sora commented absently, already firing into the melee. Tai joined her, and they watched their scores rise for a few minutes before making a quick doubling-back exit.
"Better safe than sorry; there's a lot more of them than us, and the teams could change at any minute and send them all off after us," Tai explained as they retreated.
They left the tunnels. As they reached the middle floor, Sora heard a commotion, and ducked under cover with Tai right behind her. They watched a girl in red hurry past, pulling a girl in green by the arm. The green girl looked fit to kill; the red one looked immensely pleased with herself. Sora frowned.
"What are they doing?" she hissed to Tai. "Why aren't they shooting at each other?"
"I'm guessing Green there is a hostage," Tai said.
"A what?"
"A hostage. If you're dumb enough to let someone on the opposite team get close enough to fire their gun into your holster, you're taken hostage. The computer freezes your gun until you and your captor both put your guns in a hostage station. Captors get mondo points, because it's so hard to do. Hostages get points taken off."
Sora nodded. "Oh, I get it..."
The hostage and captor walked away into the distance, and Tai and Sora walked off again. They got into a few firefights, but came out generally on top.
Passing under a catwalk, Sora heard a dull boom from above and jumped with surprise as her gun went dead and a round twenty points dropped from her total, instead of the usual two to five for being shot.
"Hey! What the..."
"Look out below!" came a yell of triumph from above. Sora looked up.
"TK?!"
Indeed, TK was waving cheerfully down at her from the catwalk, his gun in hand and aimed at a white box set in the floor of the catwalk.
"Hi, Sora! Having fun?"
"TK, what on earth did you just do?"
"I blew up a depth charge!" he announced smugly. "I can't aim, so I let off the wide-range boxes instead!"
"He's good at what he does," Tai admitted. "Now let's get out of here, before that thing charges up again and clobbers our scores for another twenty. See you later, TK!"
"Bye!"
As they ran out of the range of the 'depth charge', they heard another boom and several outraged yells from TK's vicinity. Sora laughed.
"I've got to hand it to him, he's smart. Are those things all over the arena?"
"Pretty much. He migrates from box to box, so you never know when you'll be hit. There's two kinds; depth charges and mines. DP's go off the minute you shoot them, in one direction; down. The points taken from victims go to the person who fired the gun at the DP. Mines give you five seconds to get away and then blow in every direction. You have to be careful not to get caught in your own blast. They both recharge every twenty-five seconds."
"Nice way to make a living. Nobody can shoot at you, because their guns are all dead."
"Exactly. He spent days in here memorizing the layout. He knows it by touch, now, maybe even better than I-ack!"
Sora and Tai's scores had dipped by another twenty points, and their harnesses were making exploding sounds again.
"Was that...a mine?"
"Yup. Let's get out of here!"
They took off down the hallway-and ran smack dab into a hive of Yellows. By the time they lost them, they were sweating and breathless, and more than happy to find a quiet corner and lean against the wall to get their wind back.
"How long...has it...been?" Sora gasped.
"Fifteen...or twenty...minutes, I...think," Tai managed. "We've got another...fifteen minutes...at least."
"You're kidding! I'm going to...croak!"
"You'll be...fine, you...baby-"
Suddenly, a familiar low hum filled the air. Tai stopped talking mid word, and Sora frowned and looked down at her harness. It was blinking rainbows again.
"Huh...?"
Taken by surprise, Sora failed to make the connection in time. The blinking ran down and stopped...
Sora was Green.
Tai was Yellow.
"Ack!" Sora yelled as Tai grinned and took a step forward. "Bug off, you moron!" She fired off her gun a few times at him, backing away nervously. He dodged the shots, then lunged for her, grabbing her around the waist.
The image of the Red and her hostage flashed through Sora's mind, and she shrieked and tried to wriggle away, but it was too late. Tai's gun fired, and hers went dead.
"Taichi Kamiya, you jerk!" she yelled, fighting an impulse to fling her useless gun at his head.
"Thank you," he said with a grin. "I try. Can we go to the hostage station now?"
"No!" she said, struggling not to give in to amusement at the whole situation. She was mad! "Hostage or not, I'm not going anywhere I don't want to!" *That should bottle him up.* she thought in satisfaction. *Maybe I can get him to beg me to go with him...*
"Oh, that's not fair," Tai said, sounding petulant. Sora grinned.
"Maybe not, but I'm not going to just walk peacefully to your dumb station."
Tai paused and looked her up and down for a minute, as if sizing her up. Sora squirmed, not sure what this was all about...
"Okay," he said nonchalantly, grabbed her by the arm and lifted.
"Ack! What the hell? Tai!!!" Sora shrieked, kicking and struggling. Before she had had time to react, Tai had slung her across his shoulders in a variation of the fireman's carry and was now calmly abducting her.
"What, aren't you having fun?" Tai said innocently. Sora swore poisonously in reply, and he tsked. "You know, you've gotten a real dirty mouth in the last few years."
Pounding on his shoulders with her free arm proved useless; she was at such a bad angle that her blows could have come from a two-year-old having a tantrum. *Having a tantrum sounds pretty appropriate right about now,* she raged silently. "You put me down right now, Taichi Kamiya!!!"
"Not a chance. I want my hostage points." He shook his head melodramatically. "You know, you could have avoided this, but no, you had to be difficult."
Sora froze mid-kick, lapsing into silence. Tai stopped walking for a second, confused.
"Tai?" Sora said meekly, after a second or two of standing in that awkward position and listening to distant 'explosions'.
"Yeah?" he said, apprehensively.
"You sound exactly like my mom."
There was another moment of silence, as the full hilarity of the situation sank in. Then they both burst into hysterical laughter. Tai staggered back against the wall, having trouble holding Sora's weight, and made as if to put her down, but he miscalculated on exactly how hard they were laughing, and they tumbled to the floor in a heap instead as he lost his balance.
They just lay there for a minute or two, winding down to the occasional comfortable giggle.
"Ohhh, I have got to see if they have the surveillance video of that," Tai said weakly. "I am so buying it..."
"Yeah, then we can show TK and Kari how you dropped me," Sora accused good-naturedly.
"What? I did not drop you, you fell!"
"You dropped me!"
"Your feet were on the ground when I let go! Therefore, you fell!"
"I wasn't ready! Therefore, you dropped me!"
"Did not!"
"Did too!"
"Did...oh, man, this is exactly the kind of thing I've been *missing* for the last three years!" Tai suddenly burst out. Sora smiled.
"I know. Mimi's fun, but she never horses around anymore, not with the baby and all..."
"Yeah, I suppose that would put a lid on...hold on one God-forsaken minute here!" Tai cried, sitting up suddenly. "Baby? What baby?!"
Sora winced. "Oh, great. I was going to wait for a good time to tell you all..."
"Mimi's pregnant?!" Tai sputtered, sounding quite stunned. "What...when...*who*?!"
Sighing, Sora crossed her arms behind her head, looking up at the ceiling. "Your good friend Ishida has about six months of relative freedom left before he becomes a daddy. They tied the knot a year or so after you and the rest of the gang were whisked away."
Tai whistled. "Man...I don't know what to say. I mean, that's really great, and I'm happy for them...but what's Joe going to do?"
"I presume he doesn't know, then?" Sora said, raising an eyebrow.
"If I didn't, he doesn't," Tai said flatly. "Izzy's the one with the info line, and I talk to him a lot more than Joe does about things back home. Besides, Izzy has the sense to let someone else break that kind of news to the good doctor."
"Great, just great," Sora said softly. "I hope he doesn't kill the messenger..."
"Well, whether Joe flies off the handle or not, I'm glad Matt finally found somebody," Tai said, with a firm change of subject tone. He settled back onto the floor next to her. "How are they?"
"They're wonderful," Sora said happily. "They act like teenagers in love half the time...he's a songwriter now, you know, for bands that don't want to write their own stuff? And he and the Young Wolves still get together every so often and sing. He's giving Mimi harmonica lessons, so she can join in. She picked the instrument."
"Matt's a lucky guy," Tai said with a warm smile. Sora blinked.
*Why is he...looking at me like that?* she thought, her stomach beginning to twist into knots.
"Um...Tai?"
"Mmhm?" Tai said absently, his eyes holding hers.
Sora took a deep breath. Why hadn't she realized how close their faces were? The knots were beginning to turn into butterflies, and she realized her heartbeat had begun to race. "I, um...I..." she stammered, her mind refusing to stop spinning in dizzy circles long enough for her to form a lucid sentence. Tai had the oddest look on his face, and as they began to lean toward each other, Sora vaguely realized that it was probably mirrored on her own...
"ATTACK!!!"
Tai and Sora stumbled to their feet in confusion as a contingent of players in red descended on them from above. They had almost forgotten where they were, and were consequently-and without warning-now the mutual target for at least a half-dozen guns. To top things off, as Sora fumbled for her own gun she remembered that it still didn't work...
Tai suddenly recognized a face.
"Davis, you moron!"
Davis grinned. "Hey, Tai, having a little trouble-" He froze momentarily, looking like he'd seen a ghost, and Sora realized that he had finally recognized her. For a split second, there was one less gun pinning them down. Sora had never been one to let an opportunity slide, and in this case she grabbed it by the throat.
"Run away!!!" she yelled, grabbing Tai's hand and fleeing. He fired off a few parting shots over their shoulders as the red players disappeared behind them.
When it was clear that they had escaped, Sora stopped and turned to face Tai.
"Okay. Where is this hostage station, and how fast can we get to it?"
Tai grinned. "Why the change of heart? I thought you hated my guts."
"Oh, the gut-despising hasn't changed," Sora said cheerfully. "I just want my gun back. Then I'll gladly get out of your sight."
"Deal," Tai said, and headed off down the hallway. Sora gamely followed, and they quickly reached another white box, this time mounted on a wall instead of the floor. It had two holes in it, each about the size of a gun barrel, and a button between the two.
"Your gun goes in that one," Tai explained, pointing. Sora obliged, and Tai did the same and pressed the button. The machine lit up and chimed. Wincing as she watched her score drop and Tai's rise, she glared at him.
"Oh, you are so paying for this, Taichi."
"Whatever you say," Tai said, and pulled his gun out of the machine. "You've got five seconds before both of our guns start shooting again, and then it's open war."
"Right, then. See ya, Kamiya," Sora said, and took off down a hallway before he could blink. As soon as she was safely away from him, however, she stopped and leaned against a wall, sighing with relief. *Oh, man, I needed to get out of there!* It wasn't that she didn't like Tai; far from it, she thought he was great. A little too great sometimes, in fact. *Whoever invented chocolate-brown eyes should go into either jail or military warfare,* she thought dryly, remembering the shakes they'd given her. *Anything with the ability to do that to a person ought to be illegal...*
Standing straight again and giving herself a mental shake, she headed out into the arena. While she might mask it with jokes even to herself, what really made her nervous was exactly how close she had come to kissing her best friend, just before Davis's attack...and exactly how much she wanted to try that again...
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Coming soon- Chapter 8: Scars
(AN) Minna arigatou gozaimasu! Thanks to y'all, this fic now holds place as fourth-most-reviews among my fics! (After 'Tears of an Angel' (3rd), 'Shadows in the Snow' (2nd), and the unkillable 'Not-So-Great Outdoors', with my biggest list of reviews at 27 (and also the only one of my fics to ever be plagarized...it showed up on the Digiexperience message boards once under a ficthief's name -_-*).
There's your double shot of romance right there, folks...and more coming up, along with pathos, humor, and the introduction of two new characters of my own devising, one of them kind-hearted and the other...shall we say, most unsavory. M_~* Keep your eyeballs peeled for the next chapter...'Scars'! -Bandit O_o