Author's Note: I've now got a website up so that I can post illustrations
for "Replaced"! It's at:
http : // groups. msn. com/ ReplacedIllustrations/ shoebox. msnw (you'll have to delete the spaces . . . the address won't show up without them)
They aren't great pictures, but at least you'll know what Katamon looks like now! Which is a good thing, because I'm not renowned for picture- quality descriptions. ~_^
Now, on with the story
~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~
Chapter Seven: United We Fall (part 2)
"Ka-Katamon!" Mimi stuttered, inching away from the small, blue Digimon. "What are you doing here? What do you want?" She managed to ask. Katamon smiled at her, a sneer more of, as if to say "you're beneath me; be surprised I'm even speaking to you."
"Is this the thanks I get for saving you? I can un-freeze the Bakemon at any moment you know. If you don't want my help, you can face them on your own again," Katamon said as she turned back towards the river.
"Fine!" Mimi spat angrily. "What do you want, to beg for forgiveness for suffocating me before?" Mimi could feel her blood boil and her head throb painfully. Behind the anger though, she wanted to run away. That would solve her problem: running.
"That wasn't purposeful," Katamon frowned. "I was hoping we'd have a caring relationship as partners, but apparently that's just a dream." She closed her eyes and sat there on the riverbank. Slowly and so gradually that Mimi and the others didn't even notice immediately, Katamon began to rise into the air. "However," she continued, "it would appear that you need me. Maybe not right away, but soon you will find your team too weak." Katamon hovered in the air, level with Mimi's head. "And," she said forcefully, "you will find me to be valuable." She opened her eyes again. "So I'll be back." She back flipped through the air and dove into the river.
Yamato pointed and stuttered. "Th-th-that was your partner Digimon?! How do you know her? I thought you said that you never met your Digimon!" Mimi glared at the ground, but the glaring gave way to tears.
"So maybe I did meet her, but I wish I hadn't! Just my luck I'd end up with an arrogant, disrespectful, and reckless Digimon partner."
Yamato stood, wary of a Bakemon hovering over his head. "Well, maybe you should just be nice to her-"
Mimi turned and glared at him through teary eyes. "Nice to her, nice to her? Maybe it hasn't gotten through your thick, playboy head that she tried to kill me? As in she, using some crazy psychic powers or something, suffocated me!"
Yamato glared back, insulted. "We obviously need all the help we can get surviving here, and Kata-whatever is obviously powerful! Not to mention," he added, turning away from her, "I think an arrogant, disrespectful, reckless Digimon makes a perfect partner for you."
Mimi ground her teeth sharply, contemplating a comeback. Not finding one and feeling the tears threatening to cascade down from underneath her eyelids, she turned and ran into the woods, almost tripping over a log.
"Stupid girl," Yamato grumbled, "of all of the girls in the world, I had to get stranded here with her, HER!"
Koushiro, meanwhile, had dashed off after Mimi. "How naive is she?" he thought, panicked, "she can't just go running off into the woods like that! Who knows what other Digimon there are in there, and she's totally vulnerable."
"Ahem" Koushiro turned around and saw Mimi with her back leaned up against a tree looking down at the ground. He stopped running and walked over. Mimi glanced up. "I may be mad, but I'm not stupid." She smiled weakly.
"Matt has a point you know." Mimi nodded.
"I know. I just wanted to pretend that what happened really didn't and . . . a different partner Digimon was just waiting for me to find." She rubbed her eyes with her wrist. "At least I got that much."
"You got what?" Koushiro asked. Mimi shrugged.
"Katamon, when I first met her, seemed innocent and, well, bubbly almost. Back there, well, you were there. Bubbly she was not." She sniffed and looked up, rubbing her eyes again. "It was like she was a different creature entirely."
"Maybe she thought she had killed her own partner. Thinking that she was a murderer could have easily caused her to harden up."
"Probably." Mimi shrugged again, turned, and walked back to the riverbank.
"'Bout time" Yamato greeted her as she exited from the woods. "Gabumon, Patamon, and Tentomon just woke up, and I'd rather not be around when those ghosts wake up too." He stood up, holding a terrified Takeru in his arms and, as a second, reluctant thought, bent down and picked up Mimi's backpack, slinging it over a shoulder. "Mimi, do you think it's time to go?" he asked, mockingly.
Smirking, she replied, "yes, oh fearless one, lead the way." With that, they stomped off.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
After thirty minutes of total silence, Takeru whimpered, "I need to go." Yamato put him down on the ground and was about to walk him into the woods.
"I'll take him!" Koushiro interjected abruptly. Yamato stared at him as he shuffled over and took Takeru by the hand. Nonchalantly, so Mimi didn't notice, he leaned over and whispered, "Apologize to her! I don't like emotionally distressed girls, and particularly not this one." With that, he and Takeru disappeared into the trees.
Yamato glanced over at where Mimi was standing, hands-on-hips, staring at the southern horizon. "Whatcha looking at?" he mumbled, so soft he figured she could not hear him.
"The river," she replied, to his surprise. "To where we are headed; the river never seems to end or even twist off course, you know. The monotony is eerie in a sense." Her mild tone prompted Yamato to be blunt.
"So you're not mad." Mimi shook her head slightly.
"Not really, not anymore. Being angry eats up energy, energy obtained from food. No food, no anger." She twisted her head to face him. "Feel fortunate; I'm typically not like this after an argument."
"Just an argument, not a fight?" Yamato asked, encouraged. Mimi chuckled weakly.
"Not a fight. Trust me, you'd know if it was a fight. People do not come out of fights with me with all four limbs." She sat down on a boulder. "Of course, I'd never actually do that. Might want to, but that's different of course."
Koushiro, hearing the silence, picked now to waltz out from the trees again with Takeru. "I suppose," he told himself, "that's the closest these two are getting to an apology" and he handed Takeru back to his brother.
"I wanna go home," Takeru sniffled as they continued down the path. Yamato didn't even answer; he didn't have the energy or willpower to keep lying to himself and his brother about how much fun this "adventure" was.
"We're getting nowhere," Mimi moaned.
"Actually," Koushiro replied, "we've covered a commendable about of ground in the time-"
"No, not that," Mimi interrupted, "I meant that it feels like we're stuck on an old record that keeps skipping backwards and replaying the same few seconds over and over. We're all hungry, we're all walking down a path in never-changing scenery; we keep doing the same things over and over again. Takeru wants to go home, someone gets mad at someone else; it's like being stuck in a painting."
"Apparently you need some brain fuel to come up with a conversation topic like that," Yamato muttered.
"If you're going to be so grouchy about it, I suppose we could have a lunch break." Mimi unzipped her backpack and pulled out the remaining chocolate pocky sticks. "Enjoy the nourishment as there's a good chance you won't be seeing anything this good for dinner. Or breakfast for that matter. Or lunch." She handed out the sticks: each of the seven members of the group got one and a quarter pieces.
They continued walking in silence, slowly munching their sticks of pocky. It was difficult for them to keep the relatively speedy walking pace, but the thought of the slim possibility that a berry bush lay around the next bend helped. Koushiro, however, had managed to push all thoughts of food to the back of his mind by forcing himself to try and ponder the complexities of the position he was in. Quickly, he stumbled across an intriguing possibility.
"Do any of you remember your dreams from last night?" he asked.
"Well, not really," Yamato replied, "of course I didn't get much sleep last night anyways."
"I don't" Takeru replied wearily.
Mimi, on the other hand, was having a more difficult time finding a truthful answer. Although she couldn't remember the plot or content of any of her dreams, she felt as if the memory of one was resting just out of reach of her conscious mind.
"I think I had a dream last night, but I don't really remember it. Why?"
Koushiro shifted his laptop slightly, as the straps were digging into his shoulders, before answering. "I was just thinking that if we're in a place called the Digital World, with digital monsters and whatnot, and our thoughts and dreams are really just electrical currents traveling through our brains . . ." he paused, trying to find the right words to explain his thought process. "It's like connecting two unrelated electrical appliances. If you have the right adapters, you can get them to communicate to each other. This world, if it truly is of a digital make, is composed of electrical currents, much like our brains. Meaning that, somehow, it should be possible to mentally connect with this world and everything in it, maybe even control it. Get it?"
"Mmm," Yamato replied, exhausted and apathetic. Mimi, on the other hand, got some insight of her own.
"You could have worded that better, but I think you've got something there. It does provide an explanation about how Katamon can bring about paralysis. If the brain communicates with the rest of the body through electrical currents, and Katamon can somehow control the electrical flow of creatures in the Digital World, she could stop the brain from sending messages to the rest of the body, causing paralysis."
Koushiro nodded. "Try and remember your dreams tonight; dreams, unlike conscious thoughts, are much more susceptible to influence by outside factors. We may be able to strengthen our connection with the Digital World through them. If we could alter the environment around us, like Katamon can, we'd be able to program whatever we want, be it food, shelter, safety, etc."
Mimi groaned. "That would be sweet, programming food I mean. I could go for some sashimi about now; no wasabi, no sauce, nothing but raw fish." The group stumbled along, dreaming about the different foods they'd create for themselves with the ability, and their attention strayed from the path and their surroundings. For this reason, they were taken completely by surprise when a group of ten or so rock-like Digimon surrounded them, pointing relatively primitive-looking weapons inward.
"Oh shit," Yamato murmured, "we never get a break from this madness, do we?" Takeru clung to his brother's leg and started crying.
Suppressing his anxiety, Koushiro calmly asked them "for what purpose do you hold us prisoner? If we have somehow insulted or disturbed you in some way, we apologize; it was not intentional. We are just passing by, trying to get home." The largest of these walking rocks thrust a spear at his throat, stopping centimeters from his skin. Koushiro's heart raced and his muscles tightened as he stared at the spear.
"Silence!" the Digimon demanded. "The chief will decide your fates, and punishment for your lies. Your feigned ignorance insults us! How can you claim to the death of five of our innocent children was 'unintentional'? You humans are murderers who threaten the members of our, and other, clans and for that obvious purpose, we arrest you!"
Mimi, her logic blinded by fatigue, hunger, and frustration, stepped forward and pushed the spear away. "Point that twig somewhere else, why doncha? He was just trying to be diplomatic and solve this mess peacefully, and you go and threaten to punch a hole through his neck? And you say we're dangerous? Like he said, we're just trying to get home, not to mention the fact that we're starving, tired, and in all honesty are in desperate need of a bath."
"Mimi," Yamato whispered harshly nudging her, "knock it off."
"Oh shut up and let me finish," she snapped back. "Listen, we've already been through more than enough, and I don't know anything about your murdered children; you are the first we've ever seen of your species anyway. So how about letting us go so you can go and catch the real criminals here and we can leave this goddamn place already!" The Digimon appeared surprised and taken-aback by Mimi's sudden and rather aggressive outburst, but quickly regained his composure.
"The chief will determine whether you are innocent or not, and how best to sew your clamorous mouth shut," he added, with a smirk. Mimi ground her teeth and clenched her hands, but surprisingly did not retaliate. Angrily, she and the others allowed the Digimon to lead them off through the forest at spear-point.
"Great going, genius," Yamato growled at Mimi, "now you've got them mad. I'm sure they'll but in a wonderful note about our innocent-seeming behavior when we get dumped off for judgment."
"And what did you do, Mr. You'realwayswrongI'malwaysright? You just stood there trembling in your boots, I'm sure. Or are you just upset that a girl took the initiative to prove that we're not going to keep putting up with all this B.S.?"
"Now what's that all about? What gave you the idea that I'm some sexist 'playboy'? You act like you know me so well. Obviously you don't know everything, despite the fact that you are convinced you do! Sorry, but this group's only got one child prodigy in it, and, my apologies, it's not you! So stop acting like you're so above me." Yamato clenched Takeru's hand tightly. Wisely, Takeru refrained from mentioning the slight pain to his brother and just kept silently walking.
"Oh, I'll tell you why. Not only do you go through my stuff and read my notebook and disagree with every little thing I say and constantly try to put me down, do you remember how we met? I do believe it went something like this: it was sunrise and you were just coming back from a girl's cabin. On the first day, of course, you couldn't wait to have some fun."
"Stop it!" Koushiro snapped. "Like you said, Yamato, the-whatever-are already mad enough, and the last thing we should be doing is fighting each other. And like you said, Mimi, we're all hungry and fatigued and have obviously lost all sensibility!" The uncharacteristic violence in Koushiro's voice silenced them immediately. They marched on in silence until they reached the Digimon village.
The largest Digimon pointed towards three separate buildings. "The other Digimon go in there, the normal humans in that one, and the noisy one goes in there." Mimi scrunched up her nose and snorted as she was led off towards the building.
Suddenly, Yamato broke free of the grip of his captors and ran towards Mimi. "It's not what you think!" He yelled.
"What?"
"The girl I was with that night, Kaede, I was helping her get through withdrawal." The Digimon grabbed hold of his arms and dragged him back. "She's an acquaintance from school; her parents suspected that she was doing drugs, so they sent her to camp for a week to confirm their suspicions," he explained, trying vainly to shake off the Digimon's grip. "She did crack nearly every day, and she . . . she couldn't go through it alone, ok? So there's your explanation!"
"I-" Mimi tried to respond, but she stumbled trying to find the words. "I, I didn't know," she shamefully whispered, and was pushed into the doorway of the stone building.
~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~
Author's Notes:
Writing, the art crafted in complete darkness, save pale blue shadows cast across the floor. The air, still and cold. The moon a muse, the sun a distraction. Solitude provides inspiration; others leech away the atmosphere the writer strives so hard to create. In this way a writer can create another world as they have been sucked into a vortex themselves.
Considering the difficulty involved in this mood-setting process, writing opportunities rarely present themselves, and typically must be filled with schoolwork. This in itself is the main reason why the writing process is so slow for me, it can only occur at certain times in certain situations. I apologize, but without the correct environment, my stories suffer greatly, and I can say with certainty that my audience would rather a slowly developed story than a quick, but poorly constructed, one, ne?
Also, to clear up any confusion, Jou is in 12th grade, but everyone else is in 11th or possibly 10th. Takeru is the same age as he is in the 1st season TV show.
http : // groups. msn. com/ ReplacedIllustrations/ shoebox. msnw (you'll have to delete the spaces . . . the address won't show up without them)
They aren't great pictures, but at least you'll know what Katamon looks like now! Which is a good thing, because I'm not renowned for picture- quality descriptions. ~_^
Now, on with the story
~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~
Chapter Seven: United We Fall (part 2)
"Ka-Katamon!" Mimi stuttered, inching away from the small, blue Digimon. "What are you doing here? What do you want?" She managed to ask. Katamon smiled at her, a sneer more of, as if to say "you're beneath me; be surprised I'm even speaking to you."
"Is this the thanks I get for saving you? I can un-freeze the Bakemon at any moment you know. If you don't want my help, you can face them on your own again," Katamon said as she turned back towards the river.
"Fine!" Mimi spat angrily. "What do you want, to beg for forgiveness for suffocating me before?" Mimi could feel her blood boil and her head throb painfully. Behind the anger though, she wanted to run away. That would solve her problem: running.
"That wasn't purposeful," Katamon frowned. "I was hoping we'd have a caring relationship as partners, but apparently that's just a dream." She closed her eyes and sat there on the riverbank. Slowly and so gradually that Mimi and the others didn't even notice immediately, Katamon began to rise into the air. "However," she continued, "it would appear that you need me. Maybe not right away, but soon you will find your team too weak." Katamon hovered in the air, level with Mimi's head. "And," she said forcefully, "you will find me to be valuable." She opened her eyes again. "So I'll be back." She back flipped through the air and dove into the river.
Yamato pointed and stuttered. "Th-th-that was your partner Digimon?! How do you know her? I thought you said that you never met your Digimon!" Mimi glared at the ground, but the glaring gave way to tears.
"So maybe I did meet her, but I wish I hadn't! Just my luck I'd end up with an arrogant, disrespectful, and reckless Digimon partner."
Yamato stood, wary of a Bakemon hovering over his head. "Well, maybe you should just be nice to her-"
Mimi turned and glared at him through teary eyes. "Nice to her, nice to her? Maybe it hasn't gotten through your thick, playboy head that she tried to kill me? As in she, using some crazy psychic powers or something, suffocated me!"
Yamato glared back, insulted. "We obviously need all the help we can get surviving here, and Kata-whatever is obviously powerful! Not to mention," he added, turning away from her, "I think an arrogant, disrespectful, reckless Digimon makes a perfect partner for you."
Mimi ground her teeth sharply, contemplating a comeback. Not finding one and feeling the tears threatening to cascade down from underneath her eyelids, she turned and ran into the woods, almost tripping over a log.
"Stupid girl," Yamato grumbled, "of all of the girls in the world, I had to get stranded here with her, HER!"
Koushiro, meanwhile, had dashed off after Mimi. "How naive is she?" he thought, panicked, "she can't just go running off into the woods like that! Who knows what other Digimon there are in there, and she's totally vulnerable."
"Ahem" Koushiro turned around and saw Mimi with her back leaned up against a tree looking down at the ground. He stopped running and walked over. Mimi glanced up. "I may be mad, but I'm not stupid." She smiled weakly.
"Matt has a point you know." Mimi nodded.
"I know. I just wanted to pretend that what happened really didn't and . . . a different partner Digimon was just waiting for me to find." She rubbed her eyes with her wrist. "At least I got that much."
"You got what?" Koushiro asked. Mimi shrugged.
"Katamon, when I first met her, seemed innocent and, well, bubbly almost. Back there, well, you were there. Bubbly she was not." She sniffed and looked up, rubbing her eyes again. "It was like she was a different creature entirely."
"Maybe she thought she had killed her own partner. Thinking that she was a murderer could have easily caused her to harden up."
"Probably." Mimi shrugged again, turned, and walked back to the riverbank.
"'Bout time" Yamato greeted her as she exited from the woods. "Gabumon, Patamon, and Tentomon just woke up, and I'd rather not be around when those ghosts wake up too." He stood up, holding a terrified Takeru in his arms and, as a second, reluctant thought, bent down and picked up Mimi's backpack, slinging it over a shoulder. "Mimi, do you think it's time to go?" he asked, mockingly.
Smirking, she replied, "yes, oh fearless one, lead the way." With that, they stomped off.
~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~
After thirty minutes of total silence, Takeru whimpered, "I need to go." Yamato put him down on the ground and was about to walk him into the woods.
"I'll take him!" Koushiro interjected abruptly. Yamato stared at him as he shuffled over and took Takeru by the hand. Nonchalantly, so Mimi didn't notice, he leaned over and whispered, "Apologize to her! I don't like emotionally distressed girls, and particularly not this one." With that, he and Takeru disappeared into the trees.
Yamato glanced over at where Mimi was standing, hands-on-hips, staring at the southern horizon. "Whatcha looking at?" he mumbled, so soft he figured she could not hear him.
"The river," she replied, to his surprise. "To where we are headed; the river never seems to end or even twist off course, you know. The monotony is eerie in a sense." Her mild tone prompted Yamato to be blunt.
"So you're not mad." Mimi shook her head slightly.
"Not really, not anymore. Being angry eats up energy, energy obtained from food. No food, no anger." She twisted her head to face him. "Feel fortunate; I'm typically not like this after an argument."
"Just an argument, not a fight?" Yamato asked, encouraged. Mimi chuckled weakly.
"Not a fight. Trust me, you'd know if it was a fight. People do not come out of fights with me with all four limbs." She sat down on a boulder. "Of course, I'd never actually do that. Might want to, but that's different of course."
Koushiro, hearing the silence, picked now to waltz out from the trees again with Takeru. "I suppose," he told himself, "that's the closest these two are getting to an apology" and he handed Takeru back to his brother.
"I wanna go home," Takeru sniffled as they continued down the path. Yamato didn't even answer; he didn't have the energy or willpower to keep lying to himself and his brother about how much fun this "adventure" was.
"We're getting nowhere," Mimi moaned.
"Actually," Koushiro replied, "we've covered a commendable about of ground in the time-"
"No, not that," Mimi interrupted, "I meant that it feels like we're stuck on an old record that keeps skipping backwards and replaying the same few seconds over and over. We're all hungry, we're all walking down a path in never-changing scenery; we keep doing the same things over and over again. Takeru wants to go home, someone gets mad at someone else; it's like being stuck in a painting."
"Apparently you need some brain fuel to come up with a conversation topic like that," Yamato muttered.
"If you're going to be so grouchy about it, I suppose we could have a lunch break." Mimi unzipped her backpack and pulled out the remaining chocolate pocky sticks. "Enjoy the nourishment as there's a good chance you won't be seeing anything this good for dinner. Or breakfast for that matter. Or lunch." She handed out the sticks: each of the seven members of the group got one and a quarter pieces.
They continued walking in silence, slowly munching their sticks of pocky. It was difficult for them to keep the relatively speedy walking pace, but the thought of the slim possibility that a berry bush lay around the next bend helped. Koushiro, however, had managed to push all thoughts of food to the back of his mind by forcing himself to try and ponder the complexities of the position he was in. Quickly, he stumbled across an intriguing possibility.
"Do any of you remember your dreams from last night?" he asked.
"Well, not really," Yamato replied, "of course I didn't get much sleep last night anyways."
"I don't" Takeru replied wearily.
Mimi, on the other hand, was having a more difficult time finding a truthful answer. Although she couldn't remember the plot or content of any of her dreams, she felt as if the memory of one was resting just out of reach of her conscious mind.
"I think I had a dream last night, but I don't really remember it. Why?"
Koushiro shifted his laptop slightly, as the straps were digging into his shoulders, before answering. "I was just thinking that if we're in a place called the Digital World, with digital monsters and whatnot, and our thoughts and dreams are really just electrical currents traveling through our brains . . ." he paused, trying to find the right words to explain his thought process. "It's like connecting two unrelated electrical appliances. If you have the right adapters, you can get them to communicate to each other. This world, if it truly is of a digital make, is composed of electrical currents, much like our brains. Meaning that, somehow, it should be possible to mentally connect with this world and everything in it, maybe even control it. Get it?"
"Mmm," Yamato replied, exhausted and apathetic. Mimi, on the other hand, got some insight of her own.
"You could have worded that better, but I think you've got something there. It does provide an explanation about how Katamon can bring about paralysis. If the brain communicates with the rest of the body through electrical currents, and Katamon can somehow control the electrical flow of creatures in the Digital World, she could stop the brain from sending messages to the rest of the body, causing paralysis."
Koushiro nodded. "Try and remember your dreams tonight; dreams, unlike conscious thoughts, are much more susceptible to influence by outside factors. We may be able to strengthen our connection with the Digital World through them. If we could alter the environment around us, like Katamon can, we'd be able to program whatever we want, be it food, shelter, safety, etc."
Mimi groaned. "That would be sweet, programming food I mean. I could go for some sashimi about now; no wasabi, no sauce, nothing but raw fish." The group stumbled along, dreaming about the different foods they'd create for themselves with the ability, and their attention strayed from the path and their surroundings. For this reason, they were taken completely by surprise when a group of ten or so rock-like Digimon surrounded them, pointing relatively primitive-looking weapons inward.
"Oh shit," Yamato murmured, "we never get a break from this madness, do we?" Takeru clung to his brother's leg and started crying.
Suppressing his anxiety, Koushiro calmly asked them "for what purpose do you hold us prisoner? If we have somehow insulted or disturbed you in some way, we apologize; it was not intentional. We are just passing by, trying to get home." The largest of these walking rocks thrust a spear at his throat, stopping centimeters from his skin. Koushiro's heart raced and his muscles tightened as he stared at the spear.
"Silence!" the Digimon demanded. "The chief will decide your fates, and punishment for your lies. Your feigned ignorance insults us! How can you claim to the death of five of our innocent children was 'unintentional'? You humans are murderers who threaten the members of our, and other, clans and for that obvious purpose, we arrest you!"
Mimi, her logic blinded by fatigue, hunger, and frustration, stepped forward and pushed the spear away. "Point that twig somewhere else, why doncha? He was just trying to be diplomatic and solve this mess peacefully, and you go and threaten to punch a hole through his neck? And you say we're dangerous? Like he said, we're just trying to get home, not to mention the fact that we're starving, tired, and in all honesty are in desperate need of a bath."
"Mimi," Yamato whispered harshly nudging her, "knock it off."
"Oh shut up and let me finish," she snapped back. "Listen, we've already been through more than enough, and I don't know anything about your murdered children; you are the first we've ever seen of your species anyway. So how about letting us go so you can go and catch the real criminals here and we can leave this goddamn place already!" The Digimon appeared surprised and taken-aback by Mimi's sudden and rather aggressive outburst, but quickly regained his composure.
"The chief will determine whether you are innocent or not, and how best to sew your clamorous mouth shut," he added, with a smirk. Mimi ground her teeth and clenched her hands, but surprisingly did not retaliate. Angrily, she and the others allowed the Digimon to lead them off through the forest at spear-point.
"Great going, genius," Yamato growled at Mimi, "now you've got them mad. I'm sure they'll but in a wonderful note about our innocent-seeming behavior when we get dumped off for judgment."
"And what did you do, Mr. You'realwayswrongI'malwaysright? You just stood there trembling in your boots, I'm sure. Or are you just upset that a girl took the initiative to prove that we're not going to keep putting up with all this B.S.?"
"Now what's that all about? What gave you the idea that I'm some sexist 'playboy'? You act like you know me so well. Obviously you don't know everything, despite the fact that you are convinced you do! Sorry, but this group's only got one child prodigy in it, and, my apologies, it's not you! So stop acting like you're so above me." Yamato clenched Takeru's hand tightly. Wisely, Takeru refrained from mentioning the slight pain to his brother and just kept silently walking.
"Oh, I'll tell you why. Not only do you go through my stuff and read my notebook and disagree with every little thing I say and constantly try to put me down, do you remember how we met? I do believe it went something like this: it was sunrise and you were just coming back from a girl's cabin. On the first day, of course, you couldn't wait to have some fun."
"Stop it!" Koushiro snapped. "Like you said, Yamato, the-whatever-are already mad enough, and the last thing we should be doing is fighting each other. And like you said, Mimi, we're all hungry and fatigued and have obviously lost all sensibility!" The uncharacteristic violence in Koushiro's voice silenced them immediately. They marched on in silence until they reached the Digimon village.
The largest Digimon pointed towards three separate buildings. "The other Digimon go in there, the normal humans in that one, and the noisy one goes in there." Mimi scrunched up her nose and snorted as she was led off towards the building.
Suddenly, Yamato broke free of the grip of his captors and ran towards Mimi. "It's not what you think!" He yelled.
"What?"
"The girl I was with that night, Kaede, I was helping her get through withdrawal." The Digimon grabbed hold of his arms and dragged him back. "She's an acquaintance from school; her parents suspected that she was doing drugs, so they sent her to camp for a week to confirm their suspicions," he explained, trying vainly to shake off the Digimon's grip. "She did crack nearly every day, and she . . . she couldn't go through it alone, ok? So there's your explanation!"
"I-" Mimi tried to respond, but she stumbled trying to find the words. "I, I didn't know," she shamefully whispered, and was pushed into the doorway of the stone building.
~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~ - ~
Author's Notes:
Writing, the art crafted in complete darkness, save pale blue shadows cast across the floor. The air, still and cold. The moon a muse, the sun a distraction. Solitude provides inspiration; others leech away the atmosphere the writer strives so hard to create. In this way a writer can create another world as they have been sucked into a vortex themselves.
Considering the difficulty involved in this mood-setting process, writing opportunities rarely present themselves, and typically must be filled with schoolwork. This in itself is the main reason why the writing process is so slow for me, it can only occur at certain times in certain situations. I apologize, but without the correct environment, my stories suffer greatly, and I can say with certainty that my audience would rather a slowly developed story than a quick, but poorly constructed, one, ne?
Also, to clear up any confusion, Jou is in 12th grade, but everyone else is in 11th or possibly 10th. Takeru is the same age as he is in the 1st season TV show.