Yay! People have noticed! Yes, it is a Kaisuke (Daizer?), but yes that was season 1's Taichi Kamiya. Throughout the ficcy, Daisuke is going to be changing clothes faster than Madonna, unfortunately we won't be seeing any skin for a while. Future lemony-goodness in the making, much angst, and eventual character death. Hopefully nothing too bad, but I can't really make promises. Extremely eppicy. Saga-ish. You'll see what I mean.
Disclaimer: Sorry?
Warning: Yaoi. Epic. Er. Yeah.
Archive: Please? à gelfling8604@yahoo.com
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It was late in the afternoon the next day when Ken finally decided to get to sleep. He continued to replay the brief interlude with the Boy Creature over and over again in his mind. He could have made a movie out of his memories, with his photographic memory and the amount of time he spent on revisiting that moment.
He wasn't that impressive. Far too short and geeky to be.
Every detail from the individual spikes of hair to the depth of the tan to different curves and angles of the smile. Ken could tell by the way the Boy walked that he was right-handed, used to running or at least walking very quickly, and somewhat careless. Over-confident, naïve, and dripping with mediocre-ness. SO why couldn't the Kaiser stop worrying about him- it? Stop thinking about him- it? Envisioning him- it?
What did It want anyway?He hated losing, the feeling of being lost and left out, of not knowing, mystery, and that's what the encounter with the Boy creature left him feeling.
Not that he wasn't looking forward to finding him again, because it meant a rematch and a chance to redeem himself. He kept a constant vigilance, every monitor in the surveillance room that wasn't dedicated to analyzing what that Boy Creature was watching every section of his fortress and all the places where the weak boundary areas where.
Where is that stupid jerk? He comes out of nowhere and now he has me looking for him while he's God-Knows-Where!
It was…disconcerting, to be waiting for someone, and not the other way around.
These were normally not the thoughts nor emotions that Ken enjoyed entertaining as he walked down the hallways of his fortress, but there you were. And in result you had one very edgy and frustrated Kaiser. And if you add the whole day without incident or progress, and a whole day of those types of thoughts and anxiety, you get a very pissed off Kaiser.
He had accidentally caused two digimon to be reduced to digital data, simply because they were in an inopportune place at an ill timed point. Several more suffered similar-though less severe-states.
The Kaiser had stared at his bed with bloodshot eyes before climbing into it. The area the Boy Creature had touched had already been scanned for chemical and organic traces, and had come up empty. Ken had put his hand the spot where the Boy had been splayed, and could almost trick his touch into believing the sheets were warm instead of cold and hard.
The Boy had so confident, so cheerful, so blatantly relaxed in a proven murder's room that the memory seemed…surreal.
Sleep was troubled, and flighty.
*****
Next morning…
Ken woke up at his usual time of 5:30, showered efficiently as always, and made his way down the dark hallways. Even when he had been engulfed in mounds of work, so encompassed that he occasionally-actually quite often-starved; he had always found time to shower.
Cleanliness was very important to him, and showers were one of the few aspects that made his life bearable. One of the only really. For some reason he always felt safe in the porcelain room, the water falling on him.
He was willing to discredit the whole ghost-boy affair as a result of over working himself and poor maintenance of his body. He was not going insane. He was not lonely. He was perfectly normal.
He was imagining things. And since he had taken proper care of himself for the first time in years yesterday, the hallucinations had not come. Nor would he…they, come, today.
Shoulders squared, head high and back straight, Ken proceeded down the hallways as regally as 17-year-old boy is capable of. Only better.
Due to his improved mood, and because he didn't want to be bothered with it, he didn't eat breakfast.
The Kaiser fell asleep roughly after 785 minutes of work, and was awakened a few hours later by the grumbling in his stomach. He had eaten breakfast yesterday, and lunch, which was a first, but not dinner because his stomach was unsettled, and hurled up anything he put into it, including some of lunch.
Grumbling and stretching his facial muscles painfully-he had fallen asleep on the keyboard again-he ordered food from whatever ingrate was staffing the kitchen, and didn't bother to wait for a confirmation. If no one had heard his demand, he would have the perfect excuse to trash and thrash somebody and hear them scream; it would help feeling grumpy and frustrated as he always was whenever he couldn't find an answer to a mystery. The archives were still coming up empty, but he had found a new section of data. It was rather old, and it took the system a while to upload. Ken wasn't eager to read it.
He sighed and turned his attention back to the screens, stretching the cramped muscles in his neck. His subconscious registered that someone entering the portal to the room.
Damn. Someone had heard.
"Here yare Mac, that'll be 3.75 for the first cup and 50 cents for every refill." Came a voice from beside his ear. The Kaiser turned his head intending to smack whatever digimon had dared get so close to him as well as demand payment, even as a joke.
Looking to his side was a white china teapot and cup in two dark skinned hands. Human hands. The Kaiser looked up and came nose to nose with a pair of grinning, or leering more accurately, red plastic Hawaiian sunglasses.
Complete with little palm trees on the side.
Letting out a high and undignified shriek, Ken backhanded the figure blindly, and scrambled out of his chair, hand on whip. The figure let out a similar shriek, and bounced back.
"Owwww shit, damn, ah crap man just look at my shirt, it's all ruined." He pulled his stained shirt away from him looked up at the Kaiser, who was a couple inches taller than him, with his eyebrows pulled down indignantly.
"This shirt cost me twenty frixin' bucks man, so that's going on your tab! Ah, fuck…" The creature was looking at the floor where several pieces of shattered china, brown liquid pooled in between the shards. "And that'll definitely costcha, even if I can't get my boss ta charge you for my shirt. That's a whole 17 bucks right there, not counting how many cups we coulda sold."
The boy was dressed in a mulberry polo shirt, with baggy orange Hawaiian print shorts and light lavender hair. Still spiky, but this time his skin was sporting a deep fried tan.
"What?" Confused, agitated, and hand burning and soaked from the liquid that had spilled on it.
The Creature looked at him reproachfully, like a teacher scolding a child. "Tea. It's something that people drink. And try not to spill. Ken."
Ken paused, then rallied magnificently.
"Who the hell do you think you are? To call me by that-, no one has permission to call me by that name." Ken all but yelled, convinced that he was finally going insane. How did he know my name?
"Geez, well screw me sideways with a paperclip, next time I won't call ya anythin'. Cause I sure as hell ain't gonna start callin' ya Kaiser, that just sounds way too weird."
"What are you?" Well, at least it wasn't likely that he was going crazy. "Who are you?"
The Creature's expression became bemused, and a little lost. "Well, that depends, who do ya think I am?"
That snapped him.
Nothing ever questioned him, not in this dimension, not in any other.
Growling rather impressively, Ken marched across the distance between them, hand inches away from ripping the ridiculous glasses off the boy's face and thrusting them down his throat. He was close enough that he could see his reflection in the Hawaiian shades, the chip on the right tooth, feel the heat coming from the boy's forehead through the pads of his fingers.
His hand stopped in midair.
He was paralyzed, his back arched painfully and frozen in place, his legs burning under the position that they were being unnaturally forced to endure. He couldn't move his eyes either, they were latched on the maniac grinning in front of him, his own refection bewildered and just the tiniest bit unnerved. The boy was unnaturally quiet and still, though Ken could feel the eyes behind the lens burning into his. The room dropped a few degrees, and Ken was no longer unnerved. He was scared.
"Maybe I should have gotten one thing straight before I started serving ya breakfast." Though still smiling there was nothing innocent or warm about it, the boy's voice was chilly, cold, words forced through clenched teeth. "Never, ever, try to touch me, or my shades."
Then he grinned again, the malice and chilliness gone. "Guy's gotta have priorities, after all."
And with that the paralyzation was broken, and the boy bounced passed the Kaiser and over to the Kaiser's, his, chair, and flopped into it.
"We really gotta do something about your tastes though, this place is just way too Spartan, too dark. Its so boring, geez, if I were the Emperor I woulda added a whole lot more stuff."
Ken quirked an eyebrow from behind his own glasses. He breathed in deep, and unconsciously clutched his arm. What was that?
"Maybe some chili pepper lights and some neon sign pictures. You seen those before? They're really cool looking."
"Get out of my chair."
"Awww, I ain't gonna break it, and these controls look pretty cool." Fiddling with the controls on the right armrest, the back of chair reclined, the entire structure swirling in lazy circles.
"It's my priority, now get out of it"
"No it's not, that damn cape of yours is. And that blue bird's nest that you call hair. I swear, I don't know how you can go out in public with that thing, I know I sure couldn't. I'd probably die of embarrassment. It just shows how insecure you are. Trying to be something your not."
The whip rang out against his better judgment, tearing at the back of the chair while the figure inside jumped at the sound and cringed, trying to avoid the lash. "What?! I rule this whole world, what reason do I have to be insecure, which I'm not! I'm everything I want to be, you're the delusional one."
"Sure ya are," the Boy Creature smiled cheerfully. "That's just a way ta make yourself look bigger, stronger than ya really are." The chair swerved to face the Kaiser. That insufferable grin was still plastered there. "Like birds or dogs do. If ya ask me I think it makes ya look like a bat or somethin'"
"I didn't ask for your opinion." The Kaiser took a deep, long breath, and restrained the urge to strangle the boy. He had the power to come and go at will by teleportation, so provoking him would have been useless. "All I want to know, is what you are, and why you're here. And how you knew my name."
"Hmmm…" Still swirling lazily in the chair with his feet, his head tilted towards the ceiling and arms laced in front of his lenses protectively, the boy considered the question. This position left his stomach and chest open for the Kaiser's perusal. One well placed strike with the whip and he might be able to have the Creature's innards out of his stomach and in his lap.
"Well, what I am, is well, a lot of things. Some of 'em you know and some of 'em ya don't and some of them ya can't know and some of them I don't wantcha ta know. And since that only leaves out with whatcha do know and whatcha don't know I'm just gonna do those ones if that's all right with ya?"
The boy didn't wait for an answer.
"Let's see, you think that I'm ghost, challenge, threat, magic, a something of your imagination, a holowhatsits," the Kaiser stopped breathing. The thing…could read thoughts.
"An elephanism, no wait what was it you called it, a uh, a um, oh yeah a phantasm, a level, a default mekan isism, insanity, and a ummm, en, eng, anna, no what was ya said Kenny, it sounded like egg nog."
Kenny? Oh god…
"You don't have my permission to call me that."
"Hmm? Call ya what?" the Boy said absently.
"By that name. I am the Kaiser and you will address me as such."
The creature stopped its revolutions and constant grin long enough to puzzle out. "Damn what was it? The word ya used," he mused. The Emperor studied him critically, aware that he was dealing with something of obvious power but limited intelligence. "It's called an enigma."
The creature smiled broadly, his dilemma solved.
"Oh yeah, that was it, an enigma. Like a puzzle or something right?" He continued grinning. "But there was one thing thatcha called me that I still haven't been able to figure it out yet. You only called me once, and not very loudly either. Actually…I'm not even real sure it was you calling me." The boy smiled.
"Koi."
The creature continued to look up and whipped his arms off his face, staring straight into the Kaiser, poised above him, whip stretched out to strangle him. Ken's eyebrows shot up, mouth agape. The boy continued to smile. "What didja mean by that?"
The whip descended with breakneck speed, fully intending to break a neck. And ended up strangling his chair and snapping the headrest off. Though the boy was gone, the chair was again, still warm, and the china teapot and cup shards were still on the floor.
*****
Anyone guess the motif? It's Miyako! Or it was supposed to be, from her "earth" clothes, not the Digiworld edition. Er. Yeah. How do you like it so far?