Dark Reflections: Shattered Mirror
by Creedogmon
edited by Godeerc VanDrey
Category: Digimon
Genre: Fantasy, Action/Adventure
Rating: PG (The chapters vary in rating, but the overall fic is PG-13)
Language: English
Summery: One more left…
A/N: When I was looking through the original manuscript for this series, I noticed that I put in something that I hadn't put in this story yet. Because I find it tacky to put a big long author's note at the beginning of a chapter (sort of), I will do it in this one through a series of vignettes. Yes, I know I haven't told you what "it" is yet. You'll find out.
Chapter 8: Shattered Mirror
Diana sits quietly in the library, reading the newspaper. Actually, she is scanning, going through the front page in about fifteen seconds. She flips the page twice and beings to scan again. Her eyes lock on, then widen.
Casually, but briskly, she removes the page from the stack, carelessly leaving the rest of the paper to float to the floor. She walks directly to the scanner, laying down the paper. Some of the edges are folded and others are hanging out from the lid, but Diana seems confident. Taking a floppy disk out of her pocket and inserting in to the bulky machine, the presses the button. Diana taps her foot in rapid motion, waiting for the machine to finish. She leaves the paper inside the machine and walks over to the computer, inserting the disk.
A blurry photo appears on the screen. She does a long series of clicking, zooming in on the middle of the picture and trying to clarify the picture as much as possible. Squinting, she stares at the photo. She touches one nearly indistinguishable face. She shakes her head. Then another, doing the same. She looks at the third. She tilts her head, as to try to see the turned-away face. But her eyes pop open. She quickly clicks another button, taking the disk out of the drive, and practically runs to the printer, where she pulls the paper out before it's quite done printing.
She opens her binder, which is spotlessly organized and lays the paper delicately on top, and walks out without saying a word.
: : :
James sits in the school library, working on math, when someone plops down beside him. He looks up, "Hey, Diana, what's up? Need help with the math homework?" He immediately finds his question odd. Diana is one of the smartest students in school, and though math is not her subject, she has an exception student tutor.
"No," She then drops down a sheet of paper. One it is a fuzzy newspaper photo with a face circled in red ink. James is silent. "James, it's you."
Looking around and whispering, "Yes," he finally mutters. "That's me."
Diana, also whispering, but in a matter-of-fact way, continues, "James, the funny thing is… you didn't disappear last month. You're also not wearing one of those weird necklaces like Matt and Phillip, who are the other two in this photo. And I'm sure they're not carrying any large stuffed animals in their backpacks."
"What?" James says, suddenly bombarded with deductive statements and a half-solved mystery. Diana points downward, under the table. James, bemused, looks under.
Diana's backpack is opened, and there's a large bird's head popping out from it, looking at James, very much alive. He pops up, "Is that a… digimon?"
"Yeah, is this?" Diana asks, pointing to the large, feathery creature in the photograph. James nods, leans over, and opens his own backpack. Under the table, Diana and Hawkmon are treated to the sight of Delcomon's salmon-colored face. James grabs the beak-like mouth before it can exclaim. James and Diana both rise from the table.
Diana starts, "What do you know?"
"A lot," James says in a final tone, but gets a straight face from Diana, "where do want me to start?"
: : :
Jessica sits on the bathroom floor of her house, eyes heavy, at forty-thirty in the morning, brushing broken pieces of glass from the floor. The light above the shower—the overhead light was too bright—casts a strange, eerie glow through the frosted, semi-transparent shower curtail. Out the window, the sun had yet to come up, but there was a barely visible glow on the eastern horizon.
It's not my fault! The groggy Jessica sweeps up the last of the pieces and throws them in the trash. I saw something in the mirror, and I tripped on the rug. The only downside to Jessica's power was her vivid dreams. Luckily, she wasn't sleepwalking, but her dreams were too real. Many people claim their dreams are "so real," but Jessica couldn't help but feel different. She recently had a dream where she was standing in the middle of the deserts, mesas in distance. The only thing in sight was a long stretch of railroad tracks. As she walked, she could feel the individual grains of sand on her bare feet. She could feel the sweat going down her neck and the sun's rays on her face. When she looked up at the sun, it was too bright for her eyes, and her eyes actually hurt. Dreams didn't hurt. When she breathed, she felt the dry air. The air in Raytonville was usually moist in the springtime, reminding her of the DigiWorld.
Jessica, sitting on a log in front of the fire, stares at Christopher. He writes in his journal, completely absorbed. He is several feet away, but she can almost read his scribblings. Well, his handwriting's not that great, but she can make out every curve as if it were right in front of her. Wishing she could see over his shoulder, a figure appears behind Christopher. It is of herself, a perfect Jessica replica, only her clothes are clean and her hair isn't unkempt. Christopher turns around and the mirage disappears. Wishing she were in her room, the room appears. Lying back on the log, she pretends she's in her bed. Visually, the bed realistically sinks in, but she can still feel the rough texture of the bark on her back. Opening her eyes, she looks back at Christopher's words. Now, they seem blurry, but her eyes return to focus after a minute.
: : :
Justine hasn't been sleeping well. She can't seem to conk out until four in the morning, and wakes up at six, not the least bit tired. In fact, she doesn't recall dreaming, only the daydreams she has in the late hours. She thinks that her afternoon naps help, but it still figures out to less than half the sleep she needs. She feels healthy, energized, and is able to concentrate on school. Not that this would be a problem anyway. Justine looks down at her math test. She knows how to do it, but a voice keeps telling her the answers. She finishes doing a problem. It doesn't come out the same as her clairvoyance tells her. She looks over the problem and realizes she switched a negative sign. She redoes it and it comes out the same answer. She does the next problem and doesn't check it when the voice and her calculations agree. She knows she is doing this, but doesn't like it. However, is she to get the answers wrong on purpose when she know that it's possible that she could have gotten a perfect score anyway? She looks down at her paper, "You missed number four," a voice not unlike her own tell her in her head, "you didn't expand the polynomial correctly." Letting her hand move by itself, she sees the mathematical formulas appear on the page.: : :
It's a humid day. Although Anna's hair is completely frizzled anyway, it bulks up even more when she goes outside for Physical Education. After the shower, it won't dry. Hiding in a corner, she runs her fingers through her hair, completely drying it. Walking out, she's greeted by Justine in the hall. "Hey," she says in her soft voice.
"Hey, Justine, what's happening?"
"I aced my math quiz today."
"We took it today. How you know you aced it… Justine! Did you…?"
"Not on purpose. But I got this voice in my head, telling me when I'm wrong. I can't just ask for information like you birthday or something." A brief pause, then, "August ninth. By the way, when did they start letting you use a hair dryer?"
"Uh…"
Justine turns her head, and they exchange glances.
Justine starts again with safe talk; "It's hot out there."
"It's getting cooler."
"No, it's not."
"You just can't sense it."
"And you can?" Justine's question is returned with a look from Anna, and her clairvoyance kicks in, "You can sense heat and humidity change now?"
"Anna!" calls a girl, walking up behind them, interrupting Justine's thoughts. "See you at pom practice,"
"Oh, you'd better believe it, girl! It's booty-shaking time!" Anna grins.
Her friend smiles politely, toned down, "Hi, Justine."
Justine responds uncomfortably, "Hey."
"Justine, you're always there at the end of the practice. You know what you need to do? Show up while we're practicing and tell us what you think of the routine or something."
Justine, shooting a look at Anna, caught off guard by the extrovert, replies, "Sure, that'd be great."
"See you there," the girl turns and leaves.
"Confidence…" Anna sings.
"I know…" Justine replies in a similar tone of voice.
: : :
Matt was never a weight lifter. He didn't care about getting big muscles or being good in sports. He, however, found himself spotting for Daniel in the weight room this particular day. Daniel was athletic, but didn't need to be working as hard as he was today. He was trying really hard, visibly sweating, teeth clenched. Matt smiles at the sight. Daniel, finally fully extends his arms up, and comments, "What's so funny? This isn't easy."
"I'm sorry, man, it just looks weird from up here." Neither notice that Daniel's arms are relaxed, but the weights stay in the air. "I'd like to see you try." Matt grabs the weights, puts them on the holders, and switches places. "Ooh, slippery," he jokes, wiggling on the wet backrest. Putting his hands around the bar, Daniel helps him to put the bar down at this chest. Matt immediately feels the full weight of the bar when Daniel lets go.
"Here, man, let me help," Daniel offers, but the bar swiftly comes up. Almost without effort, Matt extends his arms fully. Amazed, he relaxes and the bar starts to fall as swiftly as it came up. Daniel grabs it and holds it in place. Matt, curious, suddenly lets go, but keeps eye contact with Daniel. The bar doesn't move downward as Daniel keeps his grip on it, holding it unknowingly with a single hand. When Daniel realizes this as Matt scoots out from under the bench, he lets go and it falls. The two quickly put it back into place.
They leave quickly and quietly, both staring in awe at their open palms.
: : :
Phillip woke up last night at midnight, hungry. He'd done that a lot the past few days, almost being able to smell the food in the kitchen. He got out of his bed, walked downstairs in pitch darkness, even avoiding his brother's skateboard, and got a snack. He froze when he heard his parents shifting in their bed, but started again when he realized they hadn't gotten out of bed, in their bedroom, on the other side of the house.
Today, Phillip, for once, is excited about biology. Today, his class is going on a field trip to the zoo. Not only that, but they're going into the laboratory to meet some of the new arrivals. Some of them are a group of seven monkeys, which the class finds hilarious.
"Yes, we're very excited. These are all capuchin monkeys," a zoologist tells the class, referring to the dark, small monkeys. "Unfortunately, we're going to have to put one to sleep. He's too aggressive."
"Which one?" a girl asks.
"That one. We're not sure why."
Out of the blue, Phillip speaks, nearing the monkey, "He's terrified. He looks young. Where's his mother?"
"We thought this older female was."
"He doesn't look too happy about her being around."
"Well, there's no explanation. And please, don't go to close. He's liable to bite."
Phillip is too slow to back up. The monkey jumps and lands on Phillip's shoulder. Phillip is startled, but the monkey crawls behind his neck and start to jump and screech, but settles down quickly, grabbing Phillip's head is a sort of hug. The zoologist takes it off Phillip with a leather glove and sets it down at arm's length. It immediately walks over to the rest of the group and starts wrestling playfully.
"Strange…" the zoologist, remarks.
"I guess he was just scared. He just needed to know we weren't going to hurt him." Phillip comments, in an almost knowing sort of way, but glad his words were conjecturing.
: : :
Mrs. VanDrey was somewhat worried about the family cat. Katmondu had spent all morning running around, wrestling his catnip mouse. But come noon, the cat suddenly stopped dead in his track to nap in front of a window. She dismissed this as normal cat behavior, but couldn't dismiss him lying down in ice. Mrs. VanDrey had gone to a brunch that morning, taking the drinks in a cooler. When she emptied in on the lawn, she soon found Katmondu frolicking in the melting pile.
Katmondu sat smugly on the ice. It felt good, especially in this high heat, which made him tired. He hears something. The slightest sound, but he picks up on it. He scans the driveway, piece by piece. The wind rustled the leaves of a fern, but it's not the right sound. Little by little, he picks up each individual sound when… there! Small animal! He jets away from the ice pile, the ice crystals falling to the ground, melting, and evaporating. He listens intently, moving his ears. Plant rustling, plant rustling, running animal! He pounces and blindly grabs a baby rabbit, which gets away and runs across the street. Katmondu scans again for sounds, but the rabbit is gone.
: : :
Mrs. Frend is equally worried. Virginia had spent all day outside. She never seemed to tire out. Even when she got scared that Virginia would sunburn or get heat stroke and brought her in, she insisted on sitting in the window. It wasn't cloudy all day, even though the weatherman had predicted partial cloudiness, they never came. When Mr. Frend came home that night and switched on the weather channel, it showed the cloud cover making an awkward turn northward as it neared eastern Georgia.
"The strange move of the cloud was probably due to upper atmospheric winds over Atlanta…"
Virginia didn't take a nap that day, but nearly collapsed with sleep at around seven-thirty in Mrs. Frend's lap while watching the sunset.
: : :
I am glad for the shady trees on this hot, nearly summer day. Waiting for my mom, I sit down on the concrete benches provided in front of the school. I rub my arms, bored. They feel warm. I would think that they were sunburned, and I wouldn't be surprised, since I forgot to put sun block, but my arms are nicely tanned. I get up to move to another bench. There were ants on mine. As I sit down, I realize I didn't actually see the ants. I'd felt them in my aura. Strange.
I look down at my watch. Mom's late, I think. I pull out my water bottle, but only take a small sip before cringing. The water's warm and I'm not the least bit thirsty. In fact, my skin is moist, but I assume that's my aura. For some reason, I get to thinking about how fish absorb water through their scales instead of drinking it.
A girl walks past me and into the parking lot across the street. It was Catherine Yell, who's not exactly my friend, so I disregard her, but feel weird about. I realize why. I didn't sense her as she walked past. I turn around, looking for Jessica, but she's not there. I close my eyes and try to feel farther.
The roof, I think, and sure enough, there is Jessica, standing on the roof. Knowing this isn't the Sister's typical behavior, I materialize my blue-green protection aura. Just then Jessica walks out, waving and smiling. Her smile disappears when she sees me in Caretaker mode. I create a dome around her.
"Delirium of Illusion!" the Jessica-clone calls, blasting Jessica forward, our combined defense auras disappearing. Jessica floats back up, dressed in her robes as I am.
She floats down to us, landing gracefully on her feet, "So, I'm the last of the True Force. That's what we like to call ourselves. The parts of you all you don't like to think about. The Sinners, the Mundane, the True Selves."
Jessica and I are silent. I realized it's my duty to kill this one. Why are they all so chatty?
"I'm the Rival of Deceit. It has a nice ring to it, don't you think? Anyway, I know it's an outdated motive, but I'm here to avenge my brother's death."
"Who, ironically, was the Avenger." I comment.
"Yes, blasted idiot. He was the first one, right? What he have to avenge? I mean, we didn't get along. I'm too competitive. So's he. We made a great pair," she comments sarcastically. "So, where was I? Oh, yes, avenging my brother's death. You killed him."
"No, I didn't." Jessica says.
"You profaned it. You made it look like a bloody sparring match! It didn't even look like him! I made the Saboteur promise to avenge it for me, and, typical of him, he failed. I don't think you even realize what you're doing."
"Defeating evil clones of ourselves?" I say.
The Rival laughs, "No, you're killing yourselves. Yes, you could go on about all that mumbo-jumbo about it being the evil parts of yourselves, but you have to realize that those parts are still there. All you've accomplished by 'killing' them is hurting yourselves."
"Funny, I fell fine." Jessica rebukes.
Flatly, the Rival answers her, "Then why does the Caretaker have scars? The same with the Magistrate and the Patron and the Champion. The Inquirer's neck is burnt. The Sanguine's chest hurts when she breathes. The Defender looks like he went through a fight, which he did."
Jessica's face stays stern, but I can see she's backing down. "J.J., she's right. We're not quite in perfect health. But remember our powers heal us. Plus, even if they are the bad side of us, they'll kill us anyway. I think that's worth a stash to the hip."
: : :
There is a large flash, blinding the figures temporarily. When the flash subsides, the Sister is gone, but the Caretaker remains. "Ooh, magic tricks," the Rival taunts, "I like those."
She falls off the roof. Jessica smiles, "Funny thing is… you can also mirage, but you can't undo my mirages."
"And you can't undo my actions." The Rival grabs Christopher, ready to snap his neck. "Your Brother dies at the swipe of my hand."
"Oh, really?" Justine says confidently, but her smile gone.
"I guess you lose then." With a quick snap, the Caretaker falls to the ground. Jessica, in fury, jumps down. "Whoops, did I do that?" the Rival sarcastically says, with a fake frown. "Well, I'm all done avenging my Brother's death. I guess one more heartless Avenger could die. Come at me, Sister."
"You know," Jessica starts, her teeth clenched, "you seem so superior for someone who hasn't master miraging as well as I have." The Rival tilts her head, unaffected. "I bet you didn't know that could create sounds, too?" Her voice continues, but her lips cease to move, "Did you?"
"Last night, I started to recreate the feeling of matter in illusions." A cat brushes up again the Rival's leg, meowing. The Rival kicks forward at the cat, and it disappears like a smoky shadow. "In fact, I might even be able to bring the Caretaker back to life."
"I bet she could," the Caretaker says from the ground. He suddenly erects himself and pops his neck back into place.
"Impossible!" the Rival hisses. The Caretaker removes his sword and pierces the body of the Rival, who is unaffected.
"Another mirage…" the Rival smiles as the Caretaker disappears. "You're wrong then. You can't bring him back to life. You're not Jesus and he ain't Lazarus."
Suddenly, a hand goes across the Rival's neck.
: : :
My hand around the Rival's neck, I whisper in her ear. "You're right about some things. Her, not Jesus. Me, not Lazarus. But, me, dead? You just shattered a mirror. My blade comes out from her sternum, and I see Jessica double over, one hand over her mouth, the other over her chest. The Rival falls to the ground, blood dripping from her mouth. Her head hits the pavement, and the blood pools around her head before disappearing, with the rest of her body, and from my rapier.
The Caretaker gone, and Christopher back, I go to Jessica. I touch her sternum through her shirt. I feel a scar there, but no blood. I even sense for it with my power, but it's not there. I roll her over, looking around, realizing Jessica can no longer control her power, but we're alone. The violet tress hangs over her eye and I hug her. She finally hugs back.
"I guess we won…" she whispers.
"I guess we did…" I answer.
She moans. "Vision… big one…"
And things disappear in a purple haze.
: : :
A/N: And we have one more part to go. This has been the longest chapter yet. I'm definitely getting more able to expand these fics. The third one will be amazing, assuming I don't give up on it like last time. Don't worry. It only took me two years to start over! Give me two more years, and you'll get an even better first two parts! I'm not that reassuring, am I?
(Sonriso) - He can't finish! There's so much more that needs to go into this series. You've left too many ends not tied up! And all the planning you go through! Plus, I'm not going to get the chance to make sarcastic or corny comment about Digimon if you don't! It's your duty, Creedog! Oh well.
