Chapter 1: The Goggleheads
Makino Ruki rarely frequented the card shops, or at least the mainstream chain ones. Though they had the flashiest cards, the easiest to obtain, even some rare ones if you just kept buying, they never held her interest after Renamon. You didn't need flashy cards to kill an ogre, just a few well placed power ups and counters.
No, her interest usually lay in the obscure little card shops, in the rare finds and battered boxes. They also paid her less attention. She was the Digimon Queen; she had all the attention she could ever need. Therefore, since these places got little notice, so did she by being there. They usually had little kids who didn't know or care about the tournaments yet, so they wouldn't know her title, or collectors too busy to care. Much quieter that way.
She cycled through the booster packs with her fingers, eyes thoughtful. She hadn't changed her deck in a long while. Not since Renamon had appeared to her, promising her power and glory and an ultimate partnership. Back then, they hadn't been equals, at least, not in mind. They probably were now. It was kind of hard not to be, with the whole 'combining into one ultimate Digimon' thing. After the D-Reaper, they were probably even closer than that.
Hirokazu would make something of that. Urgh. Thinking about him made her head ache.
She turned her brain away from him, entering the building with the sound of a jingling bell. The shopkeeper greeted her casually, like he hadn't seen her and her friends on live television during the almost death of the entirety of Tokyo and potentially the world almost a year ago. It had been that long and still, no sign of Renamon coming back.
Takato, gogglehead and good friend extraordinaire, had of course tried to find them, tried to bring them back (She wasn't sentimental enough to call Earth their home, though it was pretty likely that was what home was for them, since they worked so hard to come there in the first place.). It had failed for mostly metaphysical reasons. Real life was not always full of miracles, as she knew very well. It didn't mean it was impossible.
She flicked her fingers through the packs once more. It was a good thing that she wasn't an avid collector. Imagine trying to find all the editions of one pack. She snorted at the thought. Not even Ryo was that overprepared. Tamers that would try to carry four or five decks were probably more of a personal hazard than a real help, unfortunately. Though that only would have mattered if Digimon were still around.
And they weren't.
The bell clanged and Ruki barely flicked her eyes up to see the new customer. She caught a flicker of messy brown spikes and looked down. They were too tall to be Hirokazu or Takato, and she hardly saw Ryo buying cards these days, so there wasn't much chance of being hailed while looking at them. She picked up a third pack, trying to remember the trick Jen had mentioned about being able to peek at the contents of the awkward packaging. Not that he should know how to do this, he was a good guy after all.
"Uh… 'scuse me?"
The voice was close to her ear. Ruki looked up, tugging on her ponytail and tucking the third pack of cards in her other hand. "Yeah? Am I in your way?" Whoops, that had come off a little strong, hadn't it? Oh well. Looking him over, she saw the spikes of hair. That guy who had just come in then. She hoped he hadn't recognized her and was planning to bombard her with fan noises or something. Seriously just because you were the Digimon Queen didn't mean you liked that sort of thing.
"Nah, nah." The boy waved a flippant hand. "I just saw you looking super hard at those packs. I figured you would know what kind of starter deck to get."
Ruki raised an eyebrow. That was kind of simpleminded, and optimistic. Well, to be fair, it wasn't wrong. She could figure out what kind of deck he would make and what to buy. "Depends," she finally hedged, discomfort prickling the back of her neck. She still wasn't good at talking with strangers and people in general. Heck, she was still losing the awkward words with her mom. "What kind of fighter are you?"
He blinked at her, kind of like he was saying, 'It's not obvious?'. Well, that was a challenge if she'd ever heard one. "I like facing stuff head on and charging in."
"It's not that he likes it." Someone behind him said with a deadpan laugh. "It's just his way of doing things."
The other boy turned red behind the ears. "Ken!"
Something about that name, and their voices, struck a cord. Ruki dismissed it and narrowed her eyes. "You'd probably need a few dragons, and some support skills. A lot of powerful Digimon attacks would be useless after a while. No point in having them if you run out of points first."
The two boys looked at each other. "Huh." The first laughed. "I was thinking I'd get an army."
"You would hate that," the other boy said, examining a blue Digimon toy.
Ruki let out a snort before she oculd stop herself. She went to one of the shelves and pulled off a red Digimon toy, similar in looks to the one that Takato had had once before.
(Before it broke, but no one really liked to think of that.)
The Digimon toy had, not too surprisingly, grown all over again in popularity after the kids had been found using them to save the world. Everyone wanted to be a Tamer now. Everyone was mostly failing. Maybe that would change. But not now.
That uneasy feeling continued as she handed the plastic to him. "Here. This'll work for you."
The boy took it. "Huh. Nice toy."
"They can take a beating." It was half a joke, half true. She'd seen her D-Arc take more punches than anyone, even Guilmon the Indestructible.
"It should," the other boy said with an appraising eye. "For that price."
Ruki chortled before she could stop herself and went to pay for her cards. As she moved aside and went to open her pack, the bell over the door clanged again. Instead of a person though, in came a little blue dragon and an even smaller green caterpillar. "Daisuke," whined the dragon. "Are you done yet? We've gotta find those kids!"
"And he's hungry," supplied the caterpillar, both creatures oblivious to Ruki's blood running cold at the sight of them, at the sight of Digimon.
'Daisuke' groaned. "V-mon, you're worse than me!"
As if on cue, his stomach growled.
Ruki felt sick as the other boy-when had he gotten there, he had not been there five minutes ago- laughed. "We did just universe-travel. It takes a lot out of us."
"Yeah, Ken, you warned me." Daisuke grinned sheepishly and looked over at Ruki. "Scuse me again. Thanks for your help, but I've got one more question: do you know where any of those so called… Tamers are? Ken and I are supposed to be looking for them." He paused. "I didn't introduce myself, did I?" He straightened his goggles over his head, something she had just noticed again, what was up with today? "I'm Motomiya Daisuke, and that's V-mon over there with Wormmon. And this is Ichijouji Ken. Don't worry, he's a nice guy." He paused. "So, uh, do you know any of them Tamers?"
Ruki shifted and plunged her hand into one pocket. She pulled out her D-Arc and managed to deadpan. "You're looking at one."
A/N: Hello! Oh look, keeling over, don't mind me! Hey Onix, I did it! We did it! Please let me know how my Ruki is. I tried to balance her between snark and not-snark. Dunno which won out. Lemme know how you feel everybody!
Challenges: Diversity Writing I19. a multichap with chapters between 1000-2000 words, Pairing Diversity Boot Camp prompt 37. relation, and Advent Calendar 2014 day 11.