FINALLY! I took so long some people thought the last chapter was the end^^; Anyway, I wrote this chapter extra good and although there is no Black Wargreymon, we can assume he was either walking or sitting the entire time. There's a little bit of groatiness in this chapter, but not too bad. Also, no one is a couple unless stated in the show. That means that Yamato and Sora are a couple, and that's it. The rest are just friends or trying to be more than friends. That way, everybody's happy. I didn't mean for this to be a romance novel, and it will not become a romance novel - ever! it's just that sometimes it comes up. Anyway, thank you for your patience and hopefully I'll have the next chapter up sooner. Thank you for your reviews!
Chapter Six: Interlude
Ken's mother was in a panic. Her darling son hadn't shown up for dinner. She had to reheat the rice over and over because Ken was so late coming home. Now she was sitting on the couch with her husband, oblivious to the fact that the rice was burning beyond recognition on the stove. He was rubbing her back in slow, calm circles, and holding both of her hands in one of his. She had a habit of tugging viciously on her hair when something went wrong and as a result, lost most of the hair that she had when she was younger. When Osamu died, she began ripping out her hair faster than it would grow back, leaving her bald in some areas. Before her husband took her to the doctor, she began to improve because her other son, Ken, was displaying remarkable genius. Growing up in an average family with average intelligence, Mrs. Ichijouji appreciated the mind talents of both her sons perhaps a little too much. Ken soon realized he could make his mother well just by reading Advanced Physics, even though at first he only pretended that he was reading. Soon after his mother enrolled him in the gifted school, he was forced to spend the majority of his time reading about things that children should never have to concern themselves with. Ken only wanted to go outside and play. But he learned discipline quickly, because if he got kicked out of the gifted school for being stupid, his mother would start pulling out her hair again.
As a result of hard work and with the aid of the dark seed later on, Ken was able to gain attention for his smarts. He was aware that his classmates were jealous of him and only talked to him because he was somewhat of a celebrity. Geniuses were quickly made into celebrities in Japan and this fact made Ken wish he had lived in North America. Then maybe he could make a couple of nerdy friends and become teased for his smarts. Again his mother's health inspired him to go on with the charade and he did.
The dark seed later helped him with his studies to the point that he was engaged for nearly twelve hours a day. If he was told to learn about any subject at all he would read textbooks, library books and internet pieces out the subject until he was too tired to learn anymore and simply passed out in the array of books and papers. His mother would lovingly pick him up off the floor and put him onto his bed, completely unaware of the dark bags under her son's eyes and the gradual distancing between him and his parents. More often now he didn't join them for dinner, or play games and everything seemed to drive him to anger. If his mother so much as touched a paper on his desk he would holler as if in pain and throw all of his books around the room. His mother didn't know how to stop that sort of behavior because she had never experienced the need to discipline any of her sons, so she just left him alone. It came to the point that if she stepped into Ken's room while he was in it she would be severely injured by a trap. Ken, one day, decided it was a good idea to set these traps in his room while he was gone so that *nothing* would be touched, but neglected to tell his mother. She came in the next morning trying to make his bed and discovered that it had not been slept in. Seconds later a painfully sharp trap clamped down on her foot, making her cry in agony. She couldn't go to work for days because of the ache deep inside her foot that the trap had caused. Ken's excuse was, "If she wasn't so nosy, it never would have happened."
Even Ken's teachers started to notice the change in his attitude. By then it was too late to kick him out of the school without some controversy. Ken had started writing messages to his teachers on his tests. First they were written in Chinese so that the teachers wouldn't understand their meaning. Then Ken became bold and started using Japanese characters to express himself. How Ken managed to finish the test, point out the teacher's mistakes on the test and write crude remarks about everyone all over it *and* finish first was mystery. They constantly thought back to the smaller Ken who had cried when he couldn't answer his teacher's questions and who was the bunt of all the other students' jokes. Now the same Ken refused to answer questions from teachers who considered him a child. "I'm not a child," he would say, "I just resemble one."
When Ken disappeared, he came back the child they first remembered. They kept him in the system because he was visibly traumatized. Students were sent to the principal's office in hordes for commenting on the young boy's lack of performance. The students who refused to comment believed that Ken was even more of a genius for creating this stupidity in order to escape the harsh and studious life of a genius. They recognized that look on his face during class, the one that begged to be anywhere but there. They could even see that he was in pain for whatever happened, but was slowly recovering. At first they had come to a consensus that he was kidnapped and raped, then given drugs and placed in his bedroom afterwards. In a long, sad interview with police, Ken denied any knowledge of what had happened. The police almost had him saying that he ran away from home, but that almost was as far as they got before boy clasped his hands onto his eyes and cried silently.
After that, a long ride home in the family vehicle caused Ken to fall asleep. His mother crawled into the backseat with him, being reunited with her son after consciousness for only three days. She collected his heavy head into her lap and caressed his soft skin and hair. After some deliberation, she planted a kiss on her son's smooth cheek, leaving her trademark lipstick smear. "We never stopped hoping," she whispered in his sleeping ear.
~*~
Daisuke was beyond crying. Just moments before he had been stopped by Hikari because he wanted to ask Wormmon where Ken's body was. He just wanted to be *sure* ; didn't she understand that? Now Daisuke was sitting on the sandy ground below a tree, clutching his stomach and trying not to puke. The rest of the Digidestined were trying to perform a life-saving operation on Wormmon. Daisuke decided that, since he had no medical knowledge, he would only get in the way. He sat in a trance watching the tumbleweeds flop in and out of his view. Their jolted movements only made Daisuke feel sicker. The rest of the Digidestined pretended they were helping Jyou, but really they didn't want to face their and Daisuke's pain.
Daisuke was weightless now. His jaw cracked when he moved his face suddenly up towards the sky. As a happy boy he wasn't used to frowning and looking up at the same time. He and his big mouth. *Now* he had a problem - his best friend was dead and he couldn't cope with the sadness.
Daisuke felt an arm around his waist and moved only his eyes to see who it was. It was Miyako. Her left hand was stained with Wormmon's blood and she was looking at it now with disinterest. Beforehand, she had commenced uncontrollable crying, but now she seemed to be in the same state as Daisuke. Daisuke's gaze returned to the clouds and Miyako's followed. It was a long time before either of them spoke a word.
"How is he?" Daisuke asked the same way someone would ask "Would you like fries with that?" after a twelve-hour shift.
Miyako showed him her left hand. Silence ensues. Daisuke begins to notice that his partner is at his side, holding his hand with his claws and rubbing his head against Daisuke's shoulder. V-mon looks like he has been hollowed out because of his slumped posture and his unblinking gaze. It's been another hour since the Digidestined decided they had enough tools and knowledge to keep Wormmon stable until they could find him some better help. But who would help them repair a Digimon? Certainly no one from their world would be able to understand. Besides, they were the Digidestined, it was their eternal job to help save the Digimon.
Poor Jyou was coming to the end of his ropes. He had taken several deep breaths before he started repairing Wormmon in order to keep his vomit away from his throat. Wormmon's lower belly had split somehow from swelling and his intestines were in a tangle outside of his body. Jyou had to look inside Wormmon in order to combat the swelling. He also used his stitching kit for the first time in his life to repair the split in Wormmon's intestines and the long crack on his head. Mandibles were cleaned and bandaged to the best of his ability. The mandibles were hard, like bones, therefore Jyou considered casting the bandages in order for the bones to heal faster. Old, newly opened whip marks were bandaged after a cleansing of iodine. Wormmon's fever began to subside all by itself as the poison that had been rushing through his body began to lose its potency.
"Hey, I have an idea!" Koushirou's voice ran through the desert like a gunshot. No one had said a word the entire time Jyou was patching up Wormmon and they all jumped a little bit even in their state of wariness.
"What's that?" Jyou asked, bandaging the last of the wounds.
"Why don't we take him over to where Gennai used to live? I bet he can help give Wormmon a complete recovery."
Everyone seemed ecstatic about the idea. Before they could begin carrying Koushirou off on their shoulders, a quiet voice rang through the area.
"You forgot one thing," Miyako told them.
"What?"
"We don't know where the hell we are!" Miyako and Daisuke shouted simultaneously.
"Well I don't see either of you trying to help!" Takeru screamed back.
This started a flurry of arguments, which ended as abruptly as they had began. Hikari began to sink to her knees and cry as the screaming escalated, convincing her brother Taichi to speak up on her behalf. "Stop fighting everyone!" he shouted weakly, "One of our friends has died, we shouldn't be fighting! We should be mourning like ordinary people."
"In case you haven't noticed, we aren't ordinary people." Yamato met his eyes and an internal conflict began again between the two friends.
"How are we going to tell his parents?" Hikari shrieked suddenly.
"I've thought about it. I think that we should tell his parents that he disappeared again, at least until we find his body." Jyou choked on the last word. When he recovered, he spoke once more. "I think that Daisuke, as Ken's best friend, should do this. They know and trust him the most. I'm sorry, Daisuke."
"I can't do it! I can't! I'm having enough trouble right now keeping myself together as is!" Daisuke's eyes swelled a dark red as tears stained them again. "Please don't make me, Jyou."
"C'mon Dai-kun, we'll stay behind and find Ken. Just be strong." The child of Crest of Love embraced him and Miyako, the two children closest to her arm's reach.
Behind them, the injured creature stirred. Though in much pain, Wormmon was able to cry out Ken's name before remembering what happened and bursting into tears. At the sound, Miyako soon began to cry and soon after everyone joined in. They couldn't really afford to lose any more water, since they had been stranded on the desert for hours. Iori came to his senses first and realized that it was getting quite dark and that as soon as it got dark the desert would freeze. They would have to wait until morning to find Ken's body, which they assumed would be easy to find if Ken and his D3 ended up in the same place.
This did not rest well with Daisuke, especially considering the knowledge that the youngest Digidestined had never thought Ken to be their friend in the first place. Wormmon began to shiver violently from shock, and then Daisuke changed his mind without much fuss. He would still have to skip dinner to tell Ken's parents what happened. They had asked Wormmon, rather carefully, if he was sure that Ken was dead and that was a definite yes. The insect Digimon burst into tears for a second time, but the Digidestined were able to make out "Ken-chan…cliff!" from the rest of Wormmon's tearful blather.
"Guys," Jyou called out suddenly, causing everyone to jump and look tiredly in his direction. "We have to move. I think it's getting hotter before it gets dark, and we don't have enough water left. We can come back tomorrow."
"What about Ken? What if he's still..." Daisuke stuttered, ignoring Hikari's comforting hand on his bony shoulderblade.
Koushirou shook his head and said rather abruptly, "Let's go home." Most of the Digidestined were either to thirsty or too tired to argue, except Daisuke, who always seemed to have exponential amounts of energy.
They walked across the endless surroundings. As they moved forward the scenery remained constant; it was a dusy, vast and dry spot of the Digital World. The older Digidestined had memories of their desert to think about as they walked. They would have much rather walked through the desert they had encountered before because it, at least, had powerlines and mountains and cactuses. This desert was so devoid of any life that it felt like they'd found the ends of the earth.
The younger Digidestined found desert memories as well, but theirs were more powerful and saddening than the older kids'. The older kids were missing one important element, Ken. There had been a great many powerful enemies defeated in the deserts of their time, yet their other battles paled in comparison to Ken's ironic defeat. They had never seen a young boy deal with such grief and they were stunned to silence when the poor boy crumpled to the desert sand, crying.
Daisuke still idolized Ken. But now it was different, it was more personal. He had stopped the unsentimental idolization of Ken's soccer skills and had begun to idolize the person behind the skills. Daisuke was pleased when Ken found a comfortable and happy medium between socializing and studying that also worked well with Ken's parents. Of course, Ken's level of social activity was minimal in comparison to Daisuke's, but it was more than Ken had ever wanted before "the change." Daisuke knew that Ken hated to talk about "the change", but that was the whole reason behind Daisuke's idolization. Ken was a great and fascinating person, like the heroes on TV, but unlike TV, Ken was much more concrete because of his imperfections, no matter how few and far between. Daisuke could never bring himself to admit to Ken that he idolized him. This was not because it was embarrassing; it was because any form of flattery Daisuke gave to Ken pushed the pause button on their growing friendship. His modesty was beginning to upset Daisuke because Daisuke loved to please people and tell them nice things. Especially to Ken, because he did deserve it.
Gift giving was often an awkward event, as one can probably imagine. Daisuke would produce a gift for some absurd event and present it proudly to a bewildered Ken. Daisuke gave up trying to give Ken a gift without some sort of anniversary event attached to it, because Ken would simply refuse to take the present.
"I don't deserve it," he would say before pushing the gift back into Daisuke's hands. "Besides, I didn't get you anything."
"You don't have to give me anything in return! I just felt like giving this to you. I don't want anything."
"Don't you expect something back?"
"Well when you give something you should never expect anything in return. It defeats the purpose."
"But you gain nothing."
Daisuke made a little gesture with his hand, "Exactly," he said.
From then on Ken insisted they should only give each other gifts for some sort of event to defeat the purpose of Daisuke's surprises so that Ken could at least prepare. Then Daisuke recharged his element of surprise by making his own events including "Ken Day", "Daisuke Day" and, Ken least favorite of all, "Fun Day" - a full day of exhausting activities and joy and laughter which caused Ken to feel so uncomfortable and bitter. That one came *twice* a year. Daisuke took pride in making Ken's life active and miserable but Ken appreciated the fact that Daisuke, in his own way, was trying to help him, to "normalize" him. Ken could not escape Daisuke's radar for sad cases, even if it meant that Daisuke would force him to enjoy his company. Besides, if he really thought that his relationship with Daisuke was so miserable he would have ended it as abruptly as it had begun.
'But,' Daisuke now thought, 'It doesn't matter anymore.' He bit his lip and began to breathe in short, sharp gasps. He tried to stop his overflowing eyelids from dropping their large teardrops, but the attempt was in vain. The drops stung and reddened the flesh that had momentarily dammed them. Then they rode the curves on Daisuke's sun burned face; first over his cheekbone, then his lips and then over his chin and onto the head of his Digimon, who was walking directly below him. Veemon looked up at his partner and saw his lip quiver and his tears fall. Veemon lovingly took Daisuke's hand in his claw to comfort the depressed boy. Veemon saw this coming as soon as Daisuke had lapsed into silence. From his experience, it was best just to remain a comfort and that alone spoke volumes.
Hikari, who was walking right behind Daisuke (with Takeru at her side, naturally), noticed what Daisuke's Digimon was trying to do, but did nothing herself. Maybe she had a good reason for acting so oblivious. Beside her Takeru was thinking suspiciously - and *briefly* - that Hikari is taking Ken's death a little *too* hard. Then he decides that he is not taking this situation hard enough and begins to blubber because he likes the feel of Hikari's hand on his lower back. And don't think that Daisuke hasn't seen this, because, somehow, he has. Perhaps he has a sixth sense for when Hikari is burning him. He says nothing.
Farther back, Iori and his Digimon walk together. It came as a shock to some of the Digidestined when the smallest one insisted that he be the one to carry Wormmon home. They knew of this boy's tangled emotions when it came to Ken, but then decided that perhaps the child felt badly for the worm Digimon, who had not only lost the boy he loved to the Kaiser, but to untimely death as well. There were many questions Iori had lined up to ask, but knew better than to ask them now. He would feed and care for Wormmon and then try to ask these questions.
Behind him are Jyou and Koushirou who are engrossed in conversation. The two pale boys have burnt themselves badly during their time in the Digital World, and they feel the discomfort their shedding skin is giving them. They were discussing what excuses they would give their parents when they got back, because not only had they missed supper, but they also contracted a possible melanoma nightmare. All they were able to come up with was a possible mishap at the tanning salon - that meant, of course, that everyone except for Iori, Miyako and Daisuke, who were remarkably unburned, would have to admit to being at a beauty salon. In actuality, Jyou and Koushirou were using their brains to try to forget what had happened on the field.
Up at the front, ahead of Daisuke, were Mimi, Sora, Taichi and Yamato. Yamato's skin had taken very badly to sun, and it stung so bad that if he wasn't already brought to tears from the tragedy, he would have cried from the pain. Sora was aware that her boyfriend was becoming more and more like a tomato-stuffed lobster and was too afraid to take his dark hand in hers.
Mimi, who stood beside Sora and to the right, sobbed continuously into her hands. She had only seen the boy on a few occasions and now was upset that she had not gotten to know him better before he… passed. She had her fists lodged into her eye sockets just like when she was a child, and was crying loudly. Her friends did nothing to comfort her as they were caught up in their own vexation.
Taichi, who stood beside Yamato but really wanted to be beside Sora, was suddenly dislodged from his thoughts when his foot connected with something large and hard. Taichi fell hard onto his face, clogging his nasal passages and mouth with large wads of sand.
"Taichi, are you all right?" Sora asked, helping her friend (No more than *friends*, Tai) pull his feral hair out of the ground. Taichi stood shakily on his right leg, which had received quite a severe laceration during the fall, and spat to Sora's left in a very unmannerly fashion. He sneezed most of the sand from the confines of his nose, except the grains that were trapped in mucus. Then, he shook the remaining sand from his hair, spraying everyone within five feet of him. Yamato took a moment from his skin problem to yell at Taichi for being inconsiderate. Taichi's strained response was, "I have sand in my *mouth*."
"You found the TV! Oh thank you!" Mimi, suddenly cured from her case of the blues, leaped past Miyako (whom everyone had forgotten until Mimi bumped her) and was digitalized into the portal. Everyone else ignored her erratic behavior and jumped in after her. All except Miyako and Daisuke. Daisuke had caught up to Miyako and swung his arm around her waist in a comforting, friendly gesture. She leaned her head onto his shoulder and they both paused for a brief moment to gaze past the raging sun to the blue sky. Then a wish was made, a wish of wondrous proportions. A wish made without the aid of special stars or birthday candles. Yet, somehow, it was still a magical wish because, as it was cast into the sky, the wish of the boy and the girl was selfless and one in the same. 'Please let Ken be alive' we assume was that wish.
Through the portal the two went. At the end of the trip they landed softly on their rears, which was rare. The two children were much too preoccupied with their grief to notice the simple gesture life had thrown at them to make things a little better.
All of the children had wound up in a park not too far from any of their homes. Had Ken been with them, he would have stayed at Daisuke's place because he did not live as conveniently close as the rest. Surely Mimi lived the farthest away, but when she came to Japan she always stayed with her parents, and thus Ken would have been the only person to complain.
Had he been there.
~*~
A boy stirred from an unnatural sleep, suddenly awakened by the frigid cold gnawing at his fingertips. Briefly he finds it odd that only his fingertips would feel cold, but he dismisses it because he has much more important things to worry about.
He'd had the Osamu dream again. The one where his lost brother suddenly came back as an angry spirit and tried to take him to the other world because he was so alone by himself there. In the dream, Ken almost obliges, but in the last moment he realizes that the spirit is trying to seduce him and it isn't really his brother at all. It's just like a movie, and it always used to scare Ken.
That's right, it used to. He'd had the dream for weeks when he was a boy, but he'd never had it since becoming the Kaiser. Ken had dismissed the dream, so now it was no longer scary. But why would it resurface?
Ken was so delusional that he didn't realize that his body was so severely broken that his nerves stopped sending signals to his brain. His fingers were still feeling, but soon they would be destroyed by frost. How could it have gone from so hot to so cold so quickly? The answer was, of course, that this is the Digital World, and in this strange world, most anything you dare to imagine can become real. This place can create dreams to be real and it can also breed nightmares.
The boy forgets the dream. He forgets that he has parents and friends and Wormmon because his fingers are so damn cold and the blanket he's wearing is doing nothing to warm him. There is no such a blanket. Before the boy has a chance to open his eyes, it's back to darkness, which now is the only thing he remembers.
He is unconscious.
Chapter Six: Interlude
Ken's mother was in a panic. Her darling son hadn't shown up for dinner. She had to reheat the rice over and over because Ken was so late coming home. Now she was sitting on the couch with her husband, oblivious to the fact that the rice was burning beyond recognition on the stove. He was rubbing her back in slow, calm circles, and holding both of her hands in one of his. She had a habit of tugging viciously on her hair when something went wrong and as a result, lost most of the hair that she had when she was younger. When Osamu died, she began ripping out her hair faster than it would grow back, leaving her bald in some areas. Before her husband took her to the doctor, she began to improve because her other son, Ken, was displaying remarkable genius. Growing up in an average family with average intelligence, Mrs. Ichijouji appreciated the mind talents of both her sons perhaps a little too much. Ken soon realized he could make his mother well just by reading Advanced Physics, even though at first he only pretended that he was reading. Soon after his mother enrolled him in the gifted school, he was forced to spend the majority of his time reading about things that children should never have to concern themselves with. Ken only wanted to go outside and play. But he learned discipline quickly, because if he got kicked out of the gifted school for being stupid, his mother would start pulling out her hair again.
As a result of hard work and with the aid of the dark seed later on, Ken was able to gain attention for his smarts. He was aware that his classmates were jealous of him and only talked to him because he was somewhat of a celebrity. Geniuses were quickly made into celebrities in Japan and this fact made Ken wish he had lived in North America. Then maybe he could make a couple of nerdy friends and become teased for his smarts. Again his mother's health inspired him to go on with the charade and he did.
The dark seed later helped him with his studies to the point that he was engaged for nearly twelve hours a day. If he was told to learn about any subject at all he would read textbooks, library books and internet pieces out the subject until he was too tired to learn anymore and simply passed out in the array of books and papers. His mother would lovingly pick him up off the floor and put him onto his bed, completely unaware of the dark bags under her son's eyes and the gradual distancing between him and his parents. More often now he didn't join them for dinner, or play games and everything seemed to drive him to anger. If his mother so much as touched a paper on his desk he would holler as if in pain and throw all of his books around the room. His mother didn't know how to stop that sort of behavior because she had never experienced the need to discipline any of her sons, so she just left him alone. It came to the point that if she stepped into Ken's room while he was in it she would be severely injured by a trap. Ken, one day, decided it was a good idea to set these traps in his room while he was gone so that *nothing* would be touched, but neglected to tell his mother. She came in the next morning trying to make his bed and discovered that it had not been slept in. Seconds later a painfully sharp trap clamped down on her foot, making her cry in agony. She couldn't go to work for days because of the ache deep inside her foot that the trap had caused. Ken's excuse was, "If she wasn't so nosy, it never would have happened."
Even Ken's teachers started to notice the change in his attitude. By then it was too late to kick him out of the school without some controversy. Ken had started writing messages to his teachers on his tests. First they were written in Chinese so that the teachers wouldn't understand their meaning. Then Ken became bold and started using Japanese characters to express himself. How Ken managed to finish the test, point out the teacher's mistakes on the test and write crude remarks about everyone all over it *and* finish first was mystery. They constantly thought back to the smaller Ken who had cried when he couldn't answer his teacher's questions and who was the bunt of all the other students' jokes. Now the same Ken refused to answer questions from teachers who considered him a child. "I'm not a child," he would say, "I just resemble one."
When Ken disappeared, he came back the child they first remembered. They kept him in the system because he was visibly traumatized. Students were sent to the principal's office in hordes for commenting on the young boy's lack of performance. The students who refused to comment believed that Ken was even more of a genius for creating this stupidity in order to escape the harsh and studious life of a genius. They recognized that look on his face during class, the one that begged to be anywhere but there. They could even see that he was in pain for whatever happened, but was slowly recovering. At first they had come to a consensus that he was kidnapped and raped, then given drugs and placed in his bedroom afterwards. In a long, sad interview with police, Ken denied any knowledge of what had happened. The police almost had him saying that he ran away from home, but that almost was as far as they got before boy clasped his hands onto his eyes and cried silently.
After that, a long ride home in the family vehicle caused Ken to fall asleep. His mother crawled into the backseat with him, being reunited with her son after consciousness for only three days. She collected his heavy head into her lap and caressed his soft skin and hair. After some deliberation, she planted a kiss on her son's smooth cheek, leaving her trademark lipstick smear. "We never stopped hoping," she whispered in his sleeping ear.
~*~
Daisuke was beyond crying. Just moments before he had been stopped by Hikari because he wanted to ask Wormmon where Ken's body was. He just wanted to be *sure* ; didn't she understand that? Now Daisuke was sitting on the sandy ground below a tree, clutching his stomach and trying not to puke. The rest of the Digidestined were trying to perform a life-saving operation on Wormmon. Daisuke decided that, since he had no medical knowledge, he would only get in the way. He sat in a trance watching the tumbleweeds flop in and out of his view. Their jolted movements only made Daisuke feel sicker. The rest of the Digidestined pretended they were helping Jyou, but really they didn't want to face their and Daisuke's pain.
Daisuke was weightless now. His jaw cracked when he moved his face suddenly up towards the sky. As a happy boy he wasn't used to frowning and looking up at the same time. He and his big mouth. *Now* he had a problem - his best friend was dead and he couldn't cope with the sadness.
Daisuke felt an arm around his waist and moved only his eyes to see who it was. It was Miyako. Her left hand was stained with Wormmon's blood and she was looking at it now with disinterest. Beforehand, she had commenced uncontrollable crying, but now she seemed to be in the same state as Daisuke. Daisuke's gaze returned to the clouds and Miyako's followed. It was a long time before either of them spoke a word.
"How is he?" Daisuke asked the same way someone would ask "Would you like fries with that?" after a twelve-hour shift.
Miyako showed him her left hand. Silence ensues. Daisuke begins to notice that his partner is at his side, holding his hand with his claws and rubbing his head against Daisuke's shoulder. V-mon looks like he has been hollowed out because of his slumped posture and his unblinking gaze. It's been another hour since the Digidestined decided they had enough tools and knowledge to keep Wormmon stable until they could find him some better help. But who would help them repair a Digimon? Certainly no one from their world would be able to understand. Besides, they were the Digidestined, it was their eternal job to help save the Digimon.
Poor Jyou was coming to the end of his ropes. He had taken several deep breaths before he started repairing Wormmon in order to keep his vomit away from his throat. Wormmon's lower belly had split somehow from swelling and his intestines were in a tangle outside of his body. Jyou had to look inside Wormmon in order to combat the swelling. He also used his stitching kit for the first time in his life to repair the split in Wormmon's intestines and the long crack on his head. Mandibles were cleaned and bandaged to the best of his ability. The mandibles were hard, like bones, therefore Jyou considered casting the bandages in order for the bones to heal faster. Old, newly opened whip marks were bandaged after a cleansing of iodine. Wormmon's fever began to subside all by itself as the poison that had been rushing through his body began to lose its potency.
"Hey, I have an idea!" Koushirou's voice ran through the desert like a gunshot. No one had said a word the entire time Jyou was patching up Wormmon and they all jumped a little bit even in their state of wariness.
"What's that?" Jyou asked, bandaging the last of the wounds.
"Why don't we take him over to where Gennai used to live? I bet he can help give Wormmon a complete recovery."
Everyone seemed ecstatic about the idea. Before they could begin carrying Koushirou off on their shoulders, a quiet voice rang through the area.
"You forgot one thing," Miyako told them.
"What?"
"We don't know where the hell we are!" Miyako and Daisuke shouted simultaneously.
"Well I don't see either of you trying to help!" Takeru screamed back.
This started a flurry of arguments, which ended as abruptly as they had began. Hikari began to sink to her knees and cry as the screaming escalated, convincing her brother Taichi to speak up on her behalf. "Stop fighting everyone!" he shouted weakly, "One of our friends has died, we shouldn't be fighting! We should be mourning like ordinary people."
"In case you haven't noticed, we aren't ordinary people." Yamato met his eyes and an internal conflict began again between the two friends.
"How are we going to tell his parents?" Hikari shrieked suddenly.
"I've thought about it. I think that we should tell his parents that he disappeared again, at least until we find his body." Jyou choked on the last word. When he recovered, he spoke once more. "I think that Daisuke, as Ken's best friend, should do this. They know and trust him the most. I'm sorry, Daisuke."
"I can't do it! I can't! I'm having enough trouble right now keeping myself together as is!" Daisuke's eyes swelled a dark red as tears stained them again. "Please don't make me, Jyou."
"C'mon Dai-kun, we'll stay behind and find Ken. Just be strong." The child of Crest of Love embraced him and Miyako, the two children closest to her arm's reach.
Behind them, the injured creature stirred. Though in much pain, Wormmon was able to cry out Ken's name before remembering what happened and bursting into tears. At the sound, Miyako soon began to cry and soon after everyone joined in. They couldn't really afford to lose any more water, since they had been stranded on the desert for hours. Iori came to his senses first and realized that it was getting quite dark and that as soon as it got dark the desert would freeze. They would have to wait until morning to find Ken's body, which they assumed would be easy to find if Ken and his D3 ended up in the same place.
This did not rest well with Daisuke, especially considering the knowledge that the youngest Digidestined had never thought Ken to be their friend in the first place. Wormmon began to shiver violently from shock, and then Daisuke changed his mind without much fuss. He would still have to skip dinner to tell Ken's parents what happened. They had asked Wormmon, rather carefully, if he was sure that Ken was dead and that was a definite yes. The insect Digimon burst into tears for a second time, but the Digidestined were able to make out "Ken-chan…cliff!" from the rest of Wormmon's tearful blather.
"Guys," Jyou called out suddenly, causing everyone to jump and look tiredly in his direction. "We have to move. I think it's getting hotter before it gets dark, and we don't have enough water left. We can come back tomorrow."
"What about Ken? What if he's still..." Daisuke stuttered, ignoring Hikari's comforting hand on his bony shoulderblade.
Koushirou shook his head and said rather abruptly, "Let's go home." Most of the Digidestined were either to thirsty or too tired to argue, except Daisuke, who always seemed to have exponential amounts of energy.
They walked across the endless surroundings. As they moved forward the scenery remained constant; it was a dusy, vast and dry spot of the Digital World. The older Digidestined had memories of their desert to think about as they walked. They would have much rather walked through the desert they had encountered before because it, at least, had powerlines and mountains and cactuses. This desert was so devoid of any life that it felt like they'd found the ends of the earth.
The younger Digidestined found desert memories as well, but theirs were more powerful and saddening than the older kids'. The older kids were missing one important element, Ken. There had been a great many powerful enemies defeated in the deserts of their time, yet their other battles paled in comparison to Ken's ironic defeat. They had never seen a young boy deal with such grief and they were stunned to silence when the poor boy crumpled to the desert sand, crying.
Daisuke still idolized Ken. But now it was different, it was more personal. He had stopped the unsentimental idolization of Ken's soccer skills and had begun to idolize the person behind the skills. Daisuke was pleased when Ken found a comfortable and happy medium between socializing and studying that also worked well with Ken's parents. Of course, Ken's level of social activity was minimal in comparison to Daisuke's, but it was more than Ken had ever wanted before "the change." Daisuke knew that Ken hated to talk about "the change", but that was the whole reason behind Daisuke's idolization. Ken was a great and fascinating person, like the heroes on TV, but unlike TV, Ken was much more concrete because of his imperfections, no matter how few and far between. Daisuke could never bring himself to admit to Ken that he idolized him. This was not because it was embarrassing; it was because any form of flattery Daisuke gave to Ken pushed the pause button on their growing friendship. His modesty was beginning to upset Daisuke because Daisuke loved to please people and tell them nice things. Especially to Ken, because he did deserve it.
Gift giving was often an awkward event, as one can probably imagine. Daisuke would produce a gift for some absurd event and present it proudly to a bewildered Ken. Daisuke gave up trying to give Ken a gift without some sort of anniversary event attached to it, because Ken would simply refuse to take the present.
"I don't deserve it," he would say before pushing the gift back into Daisuke's hands. "Besides, I didn't get you anything."
"You don't have to give me anything in return! I just felt like giving this to you. I don't want anything."
"Don't you expect something back?"
"Well when you give something you should never expect anything in return. It defeats the purpose."
"But you gain nothing."
Daisuke made a little gesture with his hand, "Exactly," he said.
From then on Ken insisted they should only give each other gifts for some sort of event to defeat the purpose of Daisuke's surprises so that Ken could at least prepare. Then Daisuke recharged his element of surprise by making his own events including "Ken Day", "Daisuke Day" and, Ken least favorite of all, "Fun Day" - a full day of exhausting activities and joy and laughter which caused Ken to feel so uncomfortable and bitter. That one came *twice* a year. Daisuke took pride in making Ken's life active and miserable but Ken appreciated the fact that Daisuke, in his own way, was trying to help him, to "normalize" him. Ken could not escape Daisuke's radar for sad cases, even if it meant that Daisuke would force him to enjoy his company. Besides, if he really thought that his relationship with Daisuke was so miserable he would have ended it as abruptly as it had begun.
'But,' Daisuke now thought, 'It doesn't matter anymore.' He bit his lip and began to breathe in short, sharp gasps. He tried to stop his overflowing eyelids from dropping their large teardrops, but the attempt was in vain. The drops stung and reddened the flesh that had momentarily dammed them. Then they rode the curves on Daisuke's sun burned face; first over his cheekbone, then his lips and then over his chin and onto the head of his Digimon, who was walking directly below him. Veemon looked up at his partner and saw his lip quiver and his tears fall. Veemon lovingly took Daisuke's hand in his claw to comfort the depressed boy. Veemon saw this coming as soon as Daisuke had lapsed into silence. From his experience, it was best just to remain a comfort and that alone spoke volumes.
Hikari, who was walking right behind Daisuke (with Takeru at her side, naturally), noticed what Daisuke's Digimon was trying to do, but did nothing herself. Maybe she had a good reason for acting so oblivious. Beside her Takeru was thinking suspiciously - and *briefly* - that Hikari is taking Ken's death a little *too* hard. Then he decides that he is not taking this situation hard enough and begins to blubber because he likes the feel of Hikari's hand on his lower back. And don't think that Daisuke hasn't seen this, because, somehow, he has. Perhaps he has a sixth sense for when Hikari is burning him. He says nothing.
Farther back, Iori and his Digimon walk together. It came as a shock to some of the Digidestined when the smallest one insisted that he be the one to carry Wormmon home. They knew of this boy's tangled emotions when it came to Ken, but then decided that perhaps the child felt badly for the worm Digimon, who had not only lost the boy he loved to the Kaiser, but to untimely death as well. There were many questions Iori had lined up to ask, but knew better than to ask them now. He would feed and care for Wormmon and then try to ask these questions.
Behind him are Jyou and Koushirou who are engrossed in conversation. The two pale boys have burnt themselves badly during their time in the Digital World, and they feel the discomfort their shedding skin is giving them. They were discussing what excuses they would give their parents when they got back, because not only had they missed supper, but they also contracted a possible melanoma nightmare. All they were able to come up with was a possible mishap at the tanning salon - that meant, of course, that everyone except for Iori, Miyako and Daisuke, who were remarkably unburned, would have to admit to being at a beauty salon. In actuality, Jyou and Koushirou were using their brains to try to forget what had happened on the field.
Up at the front, ahead of Daisuke, were Mimi, Sora, Taichi and Yamato. Yamato's skin had taken very badly to sun, and it stung so bad that if he wasn't already brought to tears from the tragedy, he would have cried from the pain. Sora was aware that her boyfriend was becoming more and more like a tomato-stuffed lobster and was too afraid to take his dark hand in hers.
Mimi, who stood beside Sora and to the right, sobbed continuously into her hands. She had only seen the boy on a few occasions and now was upset that she had not gotten to know him better before he… passed. She had her fists lodged into her eye sockets just like when she was a child, and was crying loudly. Her friends did nothing to comfort her as they were caught up in their own vexation.
Taichi, who stood beside Yamato but really wanted to be beside Sora, was suddenly dislodged from his thoughts when his foot connected with something large and hard. Taichi fell hard onto his face, clogging his nasal passages and mouth with large wads of sand.
"Taichi, are you all right?" Sora asked, helping her friend (No more than *friends*, Tai) pull his feral hair out of the ground. Taichi stood shakily on his right leg, which had received quite a severe laceration during the fall, and spat to Sora's left in a very unmannerly fashion. He sneezed most of the sand from the confines of his nose, except the grains that were trapped in mucus. Then, he shook the remaining sand from his hair, spraying everyone within five feet of him. Yamato took a moment from his skin problem to yell at Taichi for being inconsiderate. Taichi's strained response was, "I have sand in my *mouth*."
"You found the TV! Oh thank you!" Mimi, suddenly cured from her case of the blues, leaped past Miyako (whom everyone had forgotten until Mimi bumped her) and was digitalized into the portal. Everyone else ignored her erratic behavior and jumped in after her. All except Miyako and Daisuke. Daisuke had caught up to Miyako and swung his arm around her waist in a comforting, friendly gesture. She leaned her head onto his shoulder and they both paused for a brief moment to gaze past the raging sun to the blue sky. Then a wish was made, a wish of wondrous proportions. A wish made without the aid of special stars or birthday candles. Yet, somehow, it was still a magical wish because, as it was cast into the sky, the wish of the boy and the girl was selfless and one in the same. 'Please let Ken be alive' we assume was that wish.
Through the portal the two went. At the end of the trip they landed softly on their rears, which was rare. The two children were much too preoccupied with their grief to notice the simple gesture life had thrown at them to make things a little better.
All of the children had wound up in a park not too far from any of their homes. Had Ken been with them, he would have stayed at Daisuke's place because he did not live as conveniently close as the rest. Surely Mimi lived the farthest away, but when she came to Japan she always stayed with her parents, and thus Ken would have been the only person to complain.
Had he been there.
~*~
A boy stirred from an unnatural sleep, suddenly awakened by the frigid cold gnawing at his fingertips. Briefly he finds it odd that only his fingertips would feel cold, but he dismisses it because he has much more important things to worry about.
He'd had the Osamu dream again. The one where his lost brother suddenly came back as an angry spirit and tried to take him to the other world because he was so alone by himself there. In the dream, Ken almost obliges, but in the last moment he realizes that the spirit is trying to seduce him and it isn't really his brother at all. It's just like a movie, and it always used to scare Ken.
That's right, it used to. He'd had the dream for weeks when he was a boy, but he'd never had it since becoming the Kaiser. Ken had dismissed the dream, so now it was no longer scary. But why would it resurface?
Ken was so delusional that he didn't realize that his body was so severely broken that his nerves stopped sending signals to his brain. His fingers were still feeling, but soon they would be destroyed by frost. How could it have gone from so hot to so cold so quickly? The answer was, of course, that this is the Digital World, and in this strange world, most anything you dare to imagine can become real. This place can create dreams to be real and it can also breed nightmares.
The boy forgets the dream. He forgets that he has parents and friends and Wormmon because his fingers are so damn cold and the blanket he's wearing is doing nothing to warm him. There is no such a blanket. Before the boy has a chance to open his eyes, it's back to darkness, which now is the only thing he remembers.
He is unconscious.