Jaken Tendou
C1: Different Than A Previous Habit
[Disclaimer: TOEI owns Digimon. I own whatever I write/create. Don't steal and don't sue.]
If there were ever a jumpy and peculiar bunch of kids, it would have to be the Chosen Children that took residence in Japan. Granted, they were under a bizarre amount of pressure to keep their mutual secret hidden. Despite all the strange occurrences in Tokyo (including a rampaging wooly mammoth fighting a phoenix and a walking pile of sludge) they managed to keep their digimon relatively unseen and unknown.
No one seemed terribly upset about the monster problems. Perhaps there was something about Tokyo that made its denizens rather oblivious to the monsters. Or maybe the beasts had the proper rampage permits. No one really knows. In any case, the Chosen Children were facing their greatest opponent yet—Vandemon—and searching for another person for their team. Both sides were quite frustrated due to the week or so they had spent searching with no results.
Around the same time, there was a string of minor thefts in shops in the heart of Tokyo. Most of the thefts took place at night when the stores were locked up, but it never seemed to matter. Not only were the stores robbed at night, but the stores were usually convenience stores with food or bookstores. The storeowners soon became desperate and decided to take action.
One night, about a week after the search for the eighth child began, the storeowners hid in their stores after locking up, turning off all the lights and watching through cameras equipped with night vision. After a few hours, in the dead of the midnight hour, the door opened. With the fog obscuring everything, the storeowner, a man concerned for his books, wouldn't have seen the door open if he hadn't had a camera.
A person wearing black all over their body slid soundlessly into the store. The man readied himself as the person grabbed a few books from shelves and slipped them into their pocket. He took a careful step forwards before leaping and tackling the person to the floor.
"I got him!" he shouted. "Hit the lights! Call the police!" The man's wife, who had also been hiding, quickly flicked on the light and ran for the phone. With a triumphant grin, the man grabbed at the mask covering the person's face and pulling it off. He froze when he saw the person's face. It was a girl, barely older than twelve. She had obviously hit a growth spurt early, and was about five foot nine. Her blue eyes glared at him, and her scruffy brown hair fell over her face.
"You're…the Shazaki girl," he murmured in shock. "The prime minister's secretary's daughter. What are you doing stealing everything?" She did not answer, averting her gaze and sneering. The man frowned and sighed, but did not let the girl go until the police arrived. After a few questions for the storeowner, the police took the girl to her home just on the edge city's main district. It was one of a few places that were not highly developed, and the girl actually lived in a house.
When the door opened, a frantic looking woman with brown hair and black eyes greeted the police and the girl. Her eyes alighted on the girl and she heaved a sigh.
"Shinji, where on earth have you been?" she questioned. "Officers, what happened to her?"
"She's the one that's been stealing from the shops, ma'am," one of the two officers said grimly. "She was caught red-handed. The storeowners are going to wait for you and your husband to give a statement before they decide to press charges or not." With a few parting words and a deep bow from the woman, the police left.
"You've been out all night for all this month," the woman said in a tear-strained whisper. "I thought you had been taken every night by someone—being hurt every night. Now I learn that you're the one who's been stealing. Why would you do such a thing?" The girl, Shinji, did not answer. She put her hands in her black jeans' pockets and stared angrily at the ground. Soft footsteps came from a stairway, but Shinji did not look up.
"You've been stealing?" a man growled. "How dare you slander our name with petty theft! How dare you use honorable ninjitsu for this! What in the seven hells do you think you're doing?" Shinji did not look up, her lips pulling to a sneer.
"It's none of your business what I chose to do," she snarled. "If I want to steal something, then I'll steal it. I don't care about honor or any of that! If I can do something, I will and I don't care at all about your stupid ideals!" She stalked by him and put one foot on the stairs.
"If you hide in your room, you won't come out until school starts again!" the man shouted. "Not for food—not for anything!"
"Fine with me!" she yelled in return. "I don't need anything from you! I don't want anything from you! I hope you both rot in early graves!" She stormed away up the stairs and into her room. Shinji slammed the door behind her and fell onto her bed. Her blue eyes stared up out her window as she frowned. The fog obscured the moon, and it only intensified her anger. After a moment, she reached inside her pocket and pulled out a small silver device, as well as pulling a small tag out from under her shirt.
"What are these things?" she whispered to herself. "Why did I find it the other night? What is it supposed to mean?" When she could not find her own answers, Shinji rolled over and fell asleep.
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Izumi Koushiro was always an early riser, and it hadn't changed with his trip to the digital world. He woke one morning and booted up his computer, checking his mail once it was possible. The red-haired boy was quite surprised to find a somewhat familiar figure dancing across his screen with an envelope in his gloved hand.
"Gennai?" the boy muttered in confusion. "What's up now?" The file opened itself and Gennai's voice rang out from the computer's speakers.
"Koushiro, drop everything you're doing and listen!" the strange old man squealed. "You need to hear what I have to say!"
"I'm listening, I'm listening!" Koushiro protested, shocked by Gennai's fervor. "What is it?"
"You have to hurry up and find them!" Gennai ordered sharply. "You have to find them both before the Dark Masters go to your world!" Koushiro blinked blankly at Gennai's words.
"Find who, and what are the Dark Masters?" he questioned. Gennai let out an angry shout, causing Koushiro to wince and lean back in his chair.
"You have to find the last two Chosen Children!" the old man shouted. "I don't know who the ninth one is, but I discovered who the eighth one is! Call Taichi! Tell him his sister Hikari is the eighth Chosen Child!" Koushiro gave him another blank stare.
"Hikari?" Koushiro repeated. "Taichi's little sister? She's the eighth child?"
"That's what I've been saying!" Gennai cried in anger. "You have to find the ninth child before the Dark Masters discover their existence and destroy them! Listen—you have to be careful with the ninth child. What I've read about the eighth and ninth children, they are the children that carry the crests of Light and Dark. Hikari will accept her destiny, but the ninth child is going to resent their fate terribly—they're not going to be happy with it! They might take it out on you!"
"So if Hikari's the eighth child, then who's her digimon?" Koushiro asked. "And how do we make sure that Vandemon doesn't destroy both of them? And what if he figures out that there's another kid and goes after them?"
"Take a look out your window," Gennai said, his voice a shade calmer. "Vandemon's fogbank is gone. His forces have returned to the digital world."
"What?" Koushiro murmured in further surprise. "So he's just giving up? What on earth is going on?"
"Don't look a gift Greymon in the mouth!" Gennai snapped. "Go tell Taichi about his sister and fast, before the Dark Masters have a chance to learn about the new Chosen Children!" Without further ado, Koushiro nodded and quickly closed the laptop before hurrying off to the phone.
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Vandemon frowned as he stared up at the stars. He stood on the roof of a house, arms crossed as he turned his gaze to the building below him.
So I'm a Chosen digimon, he thought with a sneer. One of those preordained to save the world instead of conquering it. And the child I must protect is in the room below me. Piemon must have realized something had changed when I sent my forces away. No doubt he's discovered his own way of breaking through the barrier of the worlds.
Even as he thought it, he felt the other monster's immense energy beginning to pulse in the world. He froze and looked down. Piemon was emerging in the house just below him, unawares that he was within twenty feet of both his old ally and his unknown enemy. Despite his lack of knowing this, a curse rose up from where Piemon was. It was followed quickly by a scream.
Below him, he sensed the human waking from her slumber and moving about. She had heard the scream and was confused by it. The girl abruptly realized that the scream came from another woman—someone of importance to her. Vandemon could not hear the door open or the girl moving towards another room, but he felt her energy connected with his.
She slipped into one room and paused for a moment before turning about and moving silently to the stairs and padding silently down each step. Vandemon swore under his breath and slipped into the shadows—the girl was going to get herself killed if he didn't get her away from there.
Inside the house, a few moments before, Shazaki Shinji jerked awake at the sound of a scream. She leapt up from her bed and looked about, retrieving her bearings swiftly. With a faint twinge, Shinji realized that it was her mother that had cried out with fear. Calling on all her ninjitsu training, Shinji stilled her emotions and moved silently with the shadows in the hour of one o'clock.
Without pause, she moved into her father's study and knelt briefly before the sword stand carrying her treasured sword. It had been one of the few things that her family had gathered peacefully around. Shinji had accompanied her father at the age of ten to the residence of one of the few remaining swordsmiths in Japan. They had traveled to Mt. Hiei-zan and Enryaku-ji Temple to find the swordsmith.
Though it took a month and a half to craft the sword, Shinji and her father avoided arguing, as they were wont. They lived out the time in the good graces of the monks, practicing both their martial art and their faith. When the sword was completed, her father gave the sword to her and instructed her to shed her own blood on the blade—to make it hers and hers alone. The remainder of the month was spent trekking back to Tokyo on foot.
Shinji and her father rested only every three days, and spent the night training with their swords. Because of their ancient ninja heritage, they did not carry the samurai's katana or wakizashi, but wielded the ninja's to sword. They did not wear armor or let out battle cries. The Shazaki family had forever carried out the assassinations necessary in Japan, moving constantly in the shadows. Each generation was taught ninjitsu from birth until the age of twelve, when all knowledge was imparted from parent to child.
That night, Shinji did not hesitate and reminisce. She took her sword and moved in silence. She slid fluidly down the stairs, her ears pricked for any sound. As she slipped around the corner, her blue eyes scanned the still-lit room for any signs of why her mother had screamed. The air in the room was thick and heavy with peculiar heat, even for the summer.
"Ah, a little one," a taunting voice drawled. Shinji had frozen as she stepped out from behind the corner, finally seeing why her mother had screamed. Her father's corpse lie stiff and pale on the floor, a pool of darkening blood surrounding him. Shinji pulled herself away from her emotions and looked towards the voice, freezing once more when she saw its owner.
A clown, wearing a strange red shirt, green pants with yellow eyes, and a split black and white mask, stood with a broadsword drawn and dripping with blood. His free arm was wrapped around her mother, his gloved fingers holding her chin with strange gentleness. He was obviously not human.
"You seem to be in the wrong place at the wrong time," the creature chuckled. "But I cannot let you live, you know. Terribly sorry." With those words, he turned the woman's head and began to swiftly twist it back. In the few moments she had before she died, she looked directly into Shinji's eyes and said, in the silent way that she and her daughter had, that she was sorry for any wrong that had or would befall the girl, and that she and the already dead man loved Shinji dearly. Her neck cracked loudly in the silence.
The creature let the dead woman slump to the floor with a faint smile. Shinji watched her mother hit the ground with a soft whump without an expression. Her eyes alighted on the creature, and her blood began to boil. With a cry of rage, she rushed forwards and drew her blade as she ran. Shinji, in her blind fury, did not notice the strange vortex open up behind the creature, nor did she notice the blood red energy tear past her. She hit the ground hard, her sword slicing through air.
"So you're my partner?" another voice rumbled. "Pathetically foolish. You run headlong into battle without knowing who your opponent is." Shinji stood up and turned about, glaring at the new creature that stepped from the black shadows on the wall. He was amazingly tall with short blond hair and eyes the same blue as Shinji's. Just as the strange clown had not been human, this new creature was not human.
"Now what are you going to do?" he asked. "Attack me? Curse me for saving you from sheer suicide against Piemon? Well, human? Answer me." When she could not, he strode to her and took the sword from her hand. He looked it over in an appraising manner, running his long fingers over the blade.
"For human craft, it's a very well-made sword," he murmured. "But if you ever intend to take revenge for these dead people, it will have to be stronger—just as you will need to grow stronger. Here—one of many favors that I'll give you." His hands lifted away from the sword, leaving it to hover in the air. "Bloody Stream!" Red energy flared up from his hands and he pressed it against the blade.
The metal glowed the same color red as the creature's energy, but did not melt. It cooled quickly and shone brightly in the light. The creature handed the sword back with no expression. Shinji looked at him and the weapon with utter confusion on her face.
"Your name," he said coldly. "What is your name?"
"What are you?" she asked in return. "What was that thing that killed my parents?" The creature looked at the two corpses with mere apathy.
"A very powerful Mega digimon by the name of Piemon," he answered, eyeing the blackening blood with a slightly mournful air. "Why must he always waste so many good things like this? It's one of so many reasons that I despise him. My name is Vandemon, if you were wondering. Now what's your name?"
"Shazaki Shinji," she replied. "What…what on earth is going on?" Vandemon grinned slightly.
"Do you think you have the mental ability to comprehend a very long and complex story in a short amount of time?" he questioned. With an angry sneer, Shinji nodded. Vandemon chuckled his wicked laugh and smirked at her.
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"Taichi, Hikari's standing out there talking to…to—Tailmon's out there!" At the small dinosaur's words, Yagami Taichi leapt out of his bed and ran to the glass doors. He pressed his face against the glass, leaning over Agumon as best he could. When he caught sight of the Adult cat digimon, he threw open the door and rushed outside.
"Get out of here!" Taichi shouted. "Agumon, blast her!" Before Agumon could move forwards to open his mouth, the girl near Tailmon jumped up and stood before the digimon, arms thrown wide.
"No, Taichi!" she cried. "You can't hurt her! She's my friend!"
"No she's not!" Taichi snapped. "Hikari, she's a bad digimon! She—wait. Why are you still here when Vandemon sent all his digimon back to the Digiworld?" He suddenly remembered what Koushiro had told him only a few hours before—about Hikari being the eighth Chosen Child.
"Because I had to find her," Tailmon replied rather simply. "She needed me—and her crest and digivice." She held up the aforementioned tag and crest, the pink stone glinting in the fading sunlight. Hikari lifted the pale blue digivice and held it out to Taichi, as if to present it for inspection. Taichi responded by falling on his backside, staring in shock at his sister and her digimon partner.
"Wow," he murmured. "After all this fighting and all this time…we've found the eighth Chosen Child. Wow. Oh wow! All right!" He leapt back up and grabbed Agumon's clawed hands. "We did it, Agumon! We did it! We're finally going to beat Vandemon! We're going to kick his pointy-eared butt all the way back to the Digiworld!" He and Agumon shrieked with joyous laughter, jumping up and down in glee. Tailmon cleared her throat loudly.
"He might already be back there," she said. "He told us that once he killed the Chosen Children, he'd establish a few places where some of us—myself included—would maintain order while he returned to the Digiworld and gathered reinforcements. That's how he sent back everyone else."
"Then we should get back to the Digiworld as soon as possible!" Taichi said quickly. "We need to stop Vandemon before he gets any more digimon to join him!" With that, he grabbed Hikari's hand and pulled her off the balcony and out to meet the others.
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"So this is your home?" Vandemon chuckled, smirking wickedly at the human that was staring around the dark forest.
"I'd have to say that the Dark Masters have changed things," he replied. "My castle was probably destroyed when those other children returned to the human realm."
"The other children?" Shinji questioned with a sneer. "Who cares about them? I'm not here to make friends. I'm here to kill that clown and nothing else." As if reacting to her declaration, the digivice on her belt began to beep. "Now what?"
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"Come on everyone, hold out your digivices!" Taichi commanded as the devices started beeping. "It's time to go back to the Digiworld!"
"Taichi, I'm trying to tell you that—" Koushiro tried to protest.
"'Insufficient output'?" young Takaishi Takeru questioned, scratching his green hat in lieu of his head. "What's that mean, Yamato?"
"Got me," Ishida Yamato replied, rubbing at his chin. "Koushiro, do you have any ideas?"
"Yes I do!" Koushiro snapped. "We're not—"
"But we're all here!" Tachikawa Mimi wailed. "One, two, three, four—"
"We know, Mimi!" Takenouchi Sora said quickly. "All eight of us are here!"
"We can count, you know," Kido Jou murmured under his breath.
"STOP TALKING!" Koushiro shouted at the top of his lungs. Everyone fell silent as Koushiro panted for breath. "Listen, I know it sounds weird, but not everybody is here. What Taichi failed to mention to you is that I told him that besides Hikari, Gennai said that there's a ninth child. Before you ask, no, he doesn't know who it is."
"Then Vandemon might have already found them!" Mimi gasped in terror.
"Don't you notice anything?" Yamato questioned. "All that weird fog is gone and all the digimon are back in the Digiworld. Vandemon might not even know that there is a ninth Chosen Child."
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"OK, you're the digimon," Shinji grumbled. "What's wrong with this dumb thing?" Vandemon, barely containing a few chuckles at the human's irritation, took the digivice and glanced it over. A moment later, he put it back in her hand and curled one of her fingers to press a button. A beam of light burst from the screen of the device and cut into the sky. It went on forever, it seemed, until the sky itself began to rend itself apart. Long, large strips of the sky broke away and revealed an inverted view of Earth. Despite this, Shinji did not seem to care much.
"What did you make me do?" she questioned. "What did that button do?"
"The screen was trying to tell you that it was requesting input to the human world," Vandemon chuckled. "If you had taken the time to read it, then you might have noticed that on your own." Shinji frowned at him, but not before noticing that the light had faded away. She looked up at the sky, wondering why exactly eight points of light were gleaming just over the image of Japan. Vandemon's response to her gaze was simple: he grabbed her and leapt away into the nearby trees.
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"Look at the sky!" Hikari said, her voice ringing with shock. The other children looked up and gasped at the sky's rending. The digivices in their hands began to beep in accordance and let loose rays of light. The lights connected with another beam that shot down from a bar of sky that showed the Digital World.
When the lights connected, the children were sucked into a vortex and thrown, spiraling madly, through the path between worlds. They burst from the sky and fell quite a distance to the ground in the dark forest below.
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"That's them?"
"Yes, if you can believe it."
"What about the one that's got his head stuck in the ground?"
"Their leader."
"How…is ludicrous the word I'm looking for?"
"Yes. You've seen them, let's go." Hikari let out a faint groan, her eyes twitching open.
"One's awake." The young girl forced her eyes to work and sat up slowly, looking about. She couldn't see who exactly had been speaking, but she knew it wasn't any of the other Chosen Children that she knew.
"Who's there?" she questioned, her voice barely hiding her latent fear. The shadows seemed to hesitate, but when they began to move, Hikari realized that someone had been hiding in them. When they stepped forwards, her fright only grew. A tall person—it seemed to be an adult to the young girl—stepped out of the black, wearing black jeans, black sneakers, black gloves, a long black shirt, and a black mask. Her fear continued to grow until she saw the faint blue digivice on the person's jeans' belt loop.
"Are you the ninth Chosen Child?" Hikari asked, standing and walking towards the person. The person nodded slightly. "What's your name? Who's your digimon?" After a moment, the person reached up and pulled off the mask.
"Shazaki Shinji," she said, her blue eyes hard. "You?"
"I'm Yagami Hikari," Hikari answered. Shinji nodded at her words before turning about and starting to walk away. "Where are you going?"
"To do what I'm here for." Shinji said in return, not stopping. Hikari paused for only a second before running over and grabbing Shinji by the wrist.
"But we're all part of a team!" the smaller girl protested earnestly. "We need to stay together!"
"Don't you dare talk to me about teams," Shinji snarled. "I don't care at all about that. I'm here for one reason, and it's not to be part of some little 'help-everyone' team."
"But we're Chosen Children!" Hikari continued to object, tugging at Shinji's wrist. "Please, we need to do this together!" She lowered her hands to clasp Shinji's long fingers, looking up at her with innocent hopefulness. For one moment, Shinji's eyes softened. The next moment, she was tackled by Taichi and pinned to the ground.
"Taichi, no!" Hikari shouted. Even as she ran forwards to try and pull her brother away, Jou and Koushiro leapt forwards to hold her back.
"What were you doing to my sister?" Taichi snapped. His hands were clenched around Shinji's collar, pulling her up and yelling directly into her face. "What are you—some kind of ninja digimon? Vandemon probably sent you to try and kill us!" Shinji's eyes hardened again and she sneered at him. The next thing Taichi knew, he had been punched in the eye and thrown back to the ground.
"See, Hikari?" Shinji said with a frown. "There's another reason I don't want to be part of this stupid Chosen Children team." She stood back up, dusting herself off and turning away.
"Wait a minute!" Yamato cried out. "Hold on! You're a Chosen Child? Then who's your digimon?" A deep, dark chuckle rose up and rang through the forest.
"I remember that laugh," Sora murmured, shivering at the dread memories. "I can't stand that laugh."
"Then your newest ally is your worst nightmare," a frighteningly familiar voice to the first seven Chosen Children chuckled. Everyone turned to look at Shinji, who stood near where the voice originated. The shadows turned loose a figure that none of the first seven children wanted to see. Vandemon smiled at them.
—to be continued—