Joy is like pain
It feels like a miracle
You can't turn back, you're in chains
Never again
Return from a cynical world."
Original: "Cynical World"
Recommended Music:
Changing/Explanation—"The World"
Piano/Jeri—"Before Dawn"
Family problems/Conversation with Jeri—"Cynical World"
Mother to son/Son to grandmother—"Aura," awakening version
Fiction
Track 02: "Cynical World"
"Home," as Alice called it, was a small apartment on the fourth floor of a complex in east Shibuya. It didn't seem very impressive on the outside or the inside, but the Kimura-Minamoto twins didn't say anything about it. They'd learned not too long ago to be thankful to even have a home after their world was destroyed entirely.
All around the apartment were nautical mementos: sailboat models, figurines of marine animals, shells. Alice took her shredded and red-stained shirt and placed it in a special container within a white box with a light blue anchor painted on it. She then walked right past the boys, warning, "Stay right here. I'll be out in a minute, and my grandfather should be around somewhere."
She entered her small bedroom and slid the traditional paper door shut before removing the borrowed coat and placing it carefully on her bed.
This is pretty expensive for two kids, she observed. They definitely bought it for someone they care about—most likely their mother. And they never thought twice about giving it to a stranger, not knowing whether or not they'd get it back. It's no wonder they had been chosen for their task before.
She removed a white-and-black T-shirt from her dresser drawer and pulled it on over her bra. The shirt was a style her old friend Rika wore: white with light-colored sleeves and a dark-colored heart. Rika's had pale blue sleeves and a blue-violet heart. Alice's had heather gray sleeves and a black heart. When she was finished, she gently folded it and carried it out to the boys.
"Thank you for loaning this to me. I assume you just bought it?" They nodded. "For your mother, then." They nodded again. "Koichi's idea." Now, they stared at her, their eyes wide open.
"How…how did you…?" Koichi stammered.
"We didn't even give you our names…" Koji added.
"You didn't need to," a genial male voice explained. "Alice and I have been looking up everything on you we could get our hands on." A red-haired man in a wheelchair appeared seemingly out of nowhere. The twins had been so shocked by Alice's knowledge of them that they didn't hear him coming.
"This is my grandfather," Alice introduced, "Professor Rob McCoy."
"Just call me Dolphin," he offered. "Everybody else does."
Koichi felt really stupid for asking this, but… "Why?" To his good fortune, Koji didn't hit him. If it was anyone else, he would have.
Dolphin McCoy gestured to all of the ocean memorabilia around them. "Kind of obvious, isn't it? I'm a self-described mariner. I've piloted a few sail- and motorboats, but none of the big ships. Could have though. I'm absolutely in love with the sea and everything about it. I even joined the U.S. Navy for a couple of years to pay off my college tuition. But the Navy and I had differing views, so I left to teach in the new field of computer programming in the '80s at Palo Alto University."
"He's essentially retired now," Alice explained, "and devotes most of his time to the study of Digimon and helping me apprehend and neutralize Jeri Katou."
"Is she the girl that attacked you earlier?" Koji guessed.
Alice nodded and produced a picture of a sweet-looking twelve-year-old girl with shoulder-length brown hair. She wore a yellow blouse under a green dress and a sock puppet adorned her right hand. "One year ago October, she was captured by an entity called the D-Reaper and used as its power source and key to the Real World."
"Don't you mean 'Human World'?" Koichi corrected.
"No," Dolphin answered. "Where we come from, it's called the Real World, though your name is a lot more politically correct. Everything in this apartment—the furniture, my collections, everything but you two—came from another Human World and another Digital World."
"We came here in order to stop Jeri," Alice provided. "The D-Reaper was powerful enough to nearly delete every non-organic thing in the world and melt the polar icecaps with its heat. When our team of Digital World saviors, the Tamers, defeated it, everything was brought back to normal—including Jeri. But the D-Reaper kept some of itself in her—I could see it reflected in her eyes—and it resurfaced not too long ago. She came here to continue the D-Reaper's original mission to keep Digimon and humans from expanding past their natural boundaries."
"Why was she after us then?" Koji questioned.
"You two are very special in your roles of DigiDestined—or should I say Legendary Warriors," Dolphin explained. "You have talents that nobody else does, and no one's sure if it's because you were born with it or if it's just from your Spirits. Koichi has the ability to fuse the powers of Light and Darkness so that ten different Spirits can be used to create one all-powerful Digimon, and Koji has the ability to bring people back from the dead."
"But Ophanimon helped me," Koji protested. Dolphin's face was stern. "Didn't she?"
"As far as I know, all she did was provide you with enough strength so that you wouldn't pass out. Try and recall that day. Were you in any way dizzy or tired after the experience?"
Koichi looked at his brother, whose face took up a slight red tinge. From his memory, Koji had been physically and emotionally exhausted when they all left the hospital. But it hadn't seemed so important then because he had cried uncontrollably for quite a while before. But a new revelation pierced his mind, one that he felt foolish for not having noticed before: "You started getting sick just after that." Koji gave him an angry glare while Dolphin considered this new development with a serious "Hmm."
"This might have caused even more severe ramifications than we initially thought," he commented after a while. "I wonder if there were any more adverse reactions or if this is the worst of it."
"What Koichi means by me being sick is just a couple of colds and stuff," Koji answered, his voice as emotionless as he could make it.
"Still, that indicates your immune system is weakened," Alice pointed out.
"Right," Dolphin agreed. "You'll have to watch yourself around Jeri. Anyway, the point I was trying to make is that these characteristics are what Jeri's targeting you for. Koichi could be a powerful weapon for good or evil, and Koji can certainly turn the tide of a battle. The ability to bring people back from the dead means humans will be able to disregard all boundaries and invade all frontiers. Jeri would kill him for that."
"There's no way I'm letting her do that!" Koichi declared, his brotherly instincts taking over him completely.
"Neither will I," Alice calmly stated. "I promised myself when I started out that I wouldn't let anyone die. I'm not about to break that promise."
"Another danger is the fact that we don't know exactly what Jeri's planning," Dolphin added. "The D-Reaper is easy to figure out, but the human factor is always unpredictable. Where the D-Reaper may want to kill Koji to prevent his ability from allowing humans to expand their boundaries again, Jeri may think the opposite. She never liked killing, so perhaps she would use it differently so that she could bring back anyone who died. Can you imagine what would happen if an entire army—dead only five minutes ago—suddenly sprang to life and went back to killing?" He shook his head in disappointment. "It would be chaos."
"Which is exactly what the D-Reaper stands for," Alice informed. "While in this world, Jeri is taking up the name of Mishio—after her birth mother. But even with this obvious alias, she still evades us and is still very dangerous. You saw what she can do with the chaos. My entire shirt will be gone in a few hours. It can't act as well on humans because we're organic, but…"
"We understand," Koichi assured.
"You'd better," Alice replied seriously. "The D-Reaper is an enemy unlike anything you've faced. You've dealt with Lucemon's 'beautiful order.' Think of facing 'glorious chaos,' with the world covered entirely by red antimatter that can and will delete anything made of data. I've seen it, and the effects scarred us all forever."
"But then what do you need us for?" Koji questioned. "We can just avoid her until you stop her."
"Think about what you're saying," Dolphin instructed. "Can you really avoid her? She'll come at any time to ambush you. Can you avoid going to school, being with your family, spending time with your friends, or saving the world again if you have to? Can you dodge your responsibilities to yourself and to others just to keep from being killed? It's not possible. That causes chaos, and the D-Reaper inside of her feeds off of it. The feeling of being isolated will cause enough inside of you for her to find you, and then there's no escape."
"We need you both to help us stop her. She has limited amounts of power, but she does know how to detonate chaos in a way that won't cause it to be as widespread as the Tamers faced it. You saw the detonation at the store. It doesn't harm people very much because its power is still contained. But it does cause enough damage to an area. If she uses enough, it would outweigh a nuclear explosion." Alice's voice was grim, even more so than before.
"How are we supposed to stop her?" Koichi asked.
"You can't evolve," Dolphin pointed out, "and even if you could, the chaos would delete you easily in your Digimon forms. But I have obtained a couple of weapons that release an algorithm that will overload the D-Reaper until it dies from her mind. All courtesy of my old colleagues, the Monster Makers and Yamaki."
"But won't that algorithm overstrain her mind?" Koji checked.
"No," Alice replied. "It's specially designed by a man named Shibumi so that it will only affect anti-data. Jeri is organic, and if she went into the Digital World, she would be data. It couldn't harm her at all."
"These weapons Alice brought over from our old world," Dolphin added. "She has the only thing close to being deadly: a knife for just in case of emergency. Yours won't have quite as much of an effect. You all have a few electrodes that will attach to any part of her body. They send an electrical impulse through her nervous system as they—in a way—fry the D-Reaper's hold on her brain. The worst she'll experience is a loss of consciousness and guilt for a while, but that's a lot better than the alternative of killing her. In addition, all of your clothes will be protected by a network of algorithms that will neutralize chaos. It'll keep you from facing the same Alice did. The rest of her clothes will also have those algorithms."
"It sounds like we'll be mostly unarmed," Koji determined.
"Not entirely," Dolphin corrected. "You've both learned a lot from your fighting in the Digital World. You won't need deadly force like Alice does—she wasn't a Tamer, so she doesn't have much experience in this area. You can make do with whatever you find."
"We'll meet again sometime after school," Alice decided. "I'll contact you on where and when." She escorted them to the door and locked it behind them.
"This isn't going to be easy on them," Dolphin commented. "This isn't anything we had a right to ask them for."
"Who has the right to ask anyone for anything?" she answered, fingering a pewter cross at her neck. "Grandfather, I need to go play."
"Go right ahead, Alice. Hopefully it'll make us both feel better about this."
Alice entered her room and removed an old keyboard from a corner. She turned it on and made sure it was set to replicate the music of a piano. Slowly, she pressed the keys in a soft melody, trying to find comfort in the song. It was wrong to call on people to do this sort of thing, especially to call on children.
Destiny, she thought as she continued playing. Destiny was cruel, all right. She always thought it was fun to play with humans' lives and watch them struggle in agony. Joy, sorrow, they were both the same to her—she couldn't feel them. It was the same as a tone-deaf person analyzing a piece of classical music. Allegros and crescendos would be mistaken for falling adagios. Adagios were allegros. Nothing was right. Everything was wrong. Order didn't exist. Chaos ruled.
"Destiny…" she murmured.
-------
Jeri Katou stood atop the building overlooking the one that housed the McCoys. The Kimura-Minamoto twins were making a slow descent to ground level and would walk slowly to the train to home. It would be easy to assault them now, but that was not her plan at the moment. She would wait and watch them for now.
The younger of the twins was clearly tired for some reason. He placed his hand against a wall and tried to catch his breath while his brother stared at him in concern. He would not reveal that he felt sick, so he just shook his head and moved along. Jeri took note of these things with interest. She knew that the events to come would be even more taxing on those two than either Alice or her grandfather thought. And why?
"Destiny."
The one word ruled all. Destiny was their guiding force, and though it was possible to choose a way to change one's life, some things were just too far-gone. Some people were just too far-gone.
"Destiny."
Piano music drifted from Alice's open window to reach her sharp ears. The purpose of the music was to relieve some of the chaos in the girl's heart. It was all meaningless in the end. If the chaos wanted to come, it would make it so that Destiny brought it to this world. But the music brought back some dear memories for the girl within the demon. Familiar faces flashed in front of her vision, familiar voices played in her ears, familiar events drifted through her mind…
A red-haired girl with a fiery spirit and an often cold demeanor…
"I don't think fighting's fun anymore either, Jeri…"
A naïve boy with goggles whose dreams helped save the world…
"Leave Jeri alone and quit messing with her feelings!"
A noble lion Digimon who saw her true strength…
"A part of me will always be with you. Remember, you have a lion's heart…"
"Leomon?" she voiced out of nowhere.
More memories arrived, this time by the thousands. It took all of her concentration to sift through them and find any that made sense…
"I'm gonna save Jeri if it's the last thing I freakin' do!"
"Don't listen to that rag!"
"Jeri, what I mean is, can you ever forgive me?"
"I'd do anything to make you happy again…""Impmon? Calumon?"
The being that she housed burned with in her skull, forcing her to grab her head and rock back and forth while sobbing in pain. Human-Jeri fought with D-Reaper-Jeri, both of whom wanted different things. Finally, a bit of human-Jeri won, and she leapt from the roof of the building, landing perfectly on the ground below. There was someone she needed to see at the moment, someone who may have had answers for her questions…
-------
Koichi froze just outside the gate of the Minamoto home in Yokohama. In all of ten years, this was as close to the house as he had let himself come. The rest was a new frontier that he was afraid of experiencing, and it had haunted him for as long as he could remember.
"Koichi?" Koji asked. It was apparently his turn to be concerned.
"You can take it from here," he replied rather quickly. "After all, I don't want you thinking that I'm babying you or anything." His excuse soon faded when the door opened to reveal their father, Kousei Minamoto. It only took a second for the father and elder son to meet each other's eyes, but it took an even shorter time to intimidate father inside the house and son to lower his gaze to the sidewalk. If either had chanced to look, he would have seen a disappointed expression on Koji's face from the inability for either to face his fear of the other.
"Fine then, Koichi," Koji answered. "Tell Mom that I'll be there for dinner on Thursday."
"I will." His eyes were still focused on the ground.
"Should I hold on to her gift?"
"Probably. She'd just notice it too easily if I carried it in."
Koji figured this would be the only chance he'd have to introduce both his brother and his father, so he decided to take his chances. "Koichi…"
"Well, gotta go," the elder twin interrupted suddenly. "Have to finish the last of my homework before school tomorrow. See you later, Koji!" He ran off, a little too fast for Koji's taste.
"Yeah," he muttered. "Later." It was always "later" with his brother when it came to meeting their father. Koji had informed him numerous times that their father was not the cruel, hard being Koichi had feared in all of his nightmares. But each time he tried, Koichi brushed it off as easily as Koji himself would in the same situation. And he didn't even try talking to his father anymore about the subject; Kousei always found a way to change the subject or ignore it entirely.
Koji entered the house with a sigh and walked to the stairs to his room, half-determined to bottle in his frustration with all of his other feelings until the combined emotions spilled all around his fingers as he played his guitar. But after the Digital World, he was less inclined to do that. He felt like he had to even come close to telling someone, even if it was just going to amount to listening to advice he didn't need or ranting for a few minutes while someone silently overheard. So in that aspect, he was fortunate enough to bump into his stepmother, Satomi, along the walk from the front door to the staircase.
"You don't look so well," she observed. "Is everything all right?"
Satomi Minamoto was Koji's stepmother, but she wasn't at all trying to replace his birth mother—especially after the boy had come to know the woman who'd given him life. She had even released him from his promise to call her "Mom." In a way, she was almost like a sister to him—and given the small size difference between them, it wasn't hard to momentarily believe she was just an elder sister rather than a tall, strong mother. Her role for him was advisor and the listener that he needed just at this moment.
"Not really."
"Is it anything you want to talk about?"
Had Koji not been so wrapped up in negative feelings, he might have smiled. Satomi always was sure to ask if he wanted to talk about things just in case there was something he wanted or needed to handle on his own. Even his own brother didn't respect his privacy in that way! It wasn't that Koji was ungrateful for his brother's help, or the help of the other DigiDestined, but there were times when he just wanted people to stop flinging themselves into his problems. So he nodded.
"What is it then?"
"It's Koichi and Dad again. I told you about the Digital World thing, right?" He hoped he had; he never needed to mention it before. If he was wrong in recalling it, he would have an even longer explanation than he wanted.
"Yes."
"Koichi was able to face all of his fears there, even manage to stand up to Cherubimon and reconcile with his being Duskmon. But he can't come near the house without shaking. And Dad—he's been sort of okay with me visiting Mom once in a while, but he hasn't even tried meeting Koichi. Each time I try to ask him if Koichi can come over, he figures out a way to say no without actually saying it. It's driving me crazy that they can't even look at each other."
"The past is always a difficult thing to face," Satomi explained. "Your father looks at Koichi and sees the mistake of keeping the truth of the divorce from you. Koichi looks at your father and sees the mistake of his ill-placed anger. They see a past they don't want to relive."
Koji nodded his comprehension. He didn't like the answer he got, but it was what he needed to hear. Why was it that the answers he wanted to hear were always withheld from him in order to incorporate them with answers he didn't want?
He suddenly began coughing again, nearly losing his balance from the force of the phlegm in his chest. Satomi looked at him anxiously.
"That sounds terrible," she determined. "I'll get you some cough syrup."
Koji wanted to say no. Satomi happened to be one of those people that believed the worse a medicine tasted, the more effective it was. With that in mind, she always managed to buy the most rancid cough syrups imaginable. Even Koji wasn't immune to shuddering when he took it. But he knew that his mother's birthday dinner was in a few days, and he didn't want to break his promise and be sick for it. When Satomi returned with a tablespoonful of syrup, he tried his hardest to drink it without vomiting.
After a successful attempt at downing the medicine without gagging, he placed the bag with his mother's coat in a corner of his room, promising himself to wrap it the first second he got. If Koichi didn't like it, it was too bad; he could just pay Koji back for the paper later. But when he got up, he heard a voice from the terrace window asking, "Why do you give up so much for a person you met not long ago?" He turned to see Jeri standing atop the balcony wall, watching him passively.
"What would it matter to you?"
"You tried to give your life for your unknown brother many times, even knowing that he tried to kill you before. Why would you do something like that?"
"Because he's my brother." It was the answer Takuya had hammered into him, forcing him to realize in the heat of battle that sometimes the only way to be family was to engage in the worst possible aspects of it, in his case, the fights to the death they'd had in the Digital World.
"And if he was not?"
"Then I would still help him."
"Why?"
There were two things currently running through Koji's head at the moment. The first, and most logical, was the question of "Why am I carrying on a civil conversation with someone who obviously wants to kill me?" and the second was "How can I explain the way we all were?" The Legendary Warriors had been incredibly close, a second family for them all. They lived for each other, and they died for each other. Though they would never say it, they all agreed that they would do that without a second thought. It was just the way things were.
He sighed and tried it as best as he could. "Because even if we weren't related by blood, we would still be family."
"Why is your family so important to you that you would give anything for it? Wouldn't it be easier for you to distance yourself from them?"
The words ignited a previously unseen rage within Koji's heart. How could she dare tell him to become the person he once was?
"You apparently have no idea what it's like to experience true chaos. I am a younger brother who often must be the older, and when the older brother does act older, he sounds like a father. My father lied to me for ten years about my mother's death and my brother's existence, and my stepmother acts like she's my older sister. I don't even know what my real mother is like! And I don't have any idea what a real family's supposed to be like either. That's true chaos—when you yourself are caught up in it." He was not prepared for her answer.
"You would be surprised."
She jumped backwards from the terrace and seemed to disappear. Koji's expression became even more serious as he considered how easily she could have killed him if she wanted and how she chose just to talk. He decided that he would not mention Miss Jeri/Mishio's visit just yet to Koichi and Alice. He would wait for any more oddities from the young woman before doing anything about it.
-------
Koichi sighed as he opened the door to his apartment and removed his shoes at the doorway. He took off his jacket and walked to the closet to deposit it.
"Koichi, you were out longer than I expected," his mother observed, walking in the kitchen to greet him. "Did you and Koji get into any trouble?"
Koichi forced a smile as he decided to bend the truth a little bit. Why was it that mothers always knew everything? "Not really, Mom. We just had to help a friend take care of a little problem. She then took us to meet her grandfather."
"Was it that Zoë girl you both met in the Digital World?" Hearing her mention the Digital World was an oddity in itself. The situations Koichi had described were too hard for her to admit having happened. Still, there was no denying it after having the chance to finally see her other son after so many years. But even though she had to believe everything that had happened truly existed, she didn't have to continually mention it. And Tomoko Kimura was a master at making certain events seem as though they'd never happened, such as her divorce and leaving behind one of her twin sons. Sometimes it seemed that Koichi was the only one who was immune to it.
Koichi shook his head. "Some girl from America, I think. At least, I think that's where her accent's from. Her name is Alice."
"I'm glad to know you both are making friends. I worry about you, Koichi. Even around your other friends, you seem a little distant."
"You don't have to worry about me," he assured. "Sometimes it's harder to keep up a friendship when you're not all in the same place all the time anymore. We just don't have as much of a chance to see each other." Wishing to change the subject, he glanced at the stove. "It's my night to cook dinner, so I'd better get started. Else we'll be eating late again."
The sudden, abrupt subject change didn't escape his mother. "Koichi, are you okay?"
"Of course, Mom. What could be wrong?"
"I don't know," she answered. "You seem a bit distracted."
"Just the normal things," he replied. "Oh, and just to let you know, Koji swears he's going to be here Thursday—no matter what. He's determined not to let anything stop him."
"Why would anything?"
Koichi shrugged slightly as he placed a pot of rice on the stove to boil. "I thought he might have had a cold or something, but he says he's all right. Just hope he tries to keep it that way this time. He's been sick so often… I keep wondering why. He won't admit that there's any problem, but…"
"Whatever problems Koji has, he'll solve them on his own," his mother explained. "You don't always have to interfere with his life when you try to be a good brother. Some things he just has to do alone." She then examined the now boiling pot. "And you'll want to stir that before it burns."
Koichi sighed again. "Yes, Mom." It wasn't right that Koji would continue to keep things to himself. They were brothers; they were supposed to trust each other with things like this. If something was wrong, he had to mention it. But then again, it was always Koichi who had denied having a problem. Koji, for the most part, shared any misgivings or problems with him. If he wasn't talking about something like this, it couldn't be a problem in his mind. But that still posed the question of whether or not it was a problem in actuality. Rather than answer his own questions, Koichi just turned the rice over and added a dash of seasoning before looking at a picture of his deceased grandmother.
"Grandma, when you told me I was a brother, you should have mentioned that the job wasn't going to be easy," he commented. "Koji's not the easiest person in the world to relate to. Other times, it's too easy to get in his head. And on top of that, Alice and Dolphin are practically telling me that we have to protect each other even more fiercely than in the Digital World in order to keep some crazed girl from either killing us or using us as her weapons. I'm not really sure what I'm supposed to do from here." There was no answer, but he didn't really expect it. From his belief of Buddhism, he believed that his grandmother would either attain nirvana or be reincarnated in another form. Because of that, he didn't entirely know what he was doing right then and there. From Koji, it would be less awkward, as he believed more in the existence of ancestral kami due to being raised with both Buddhist and Shinto backgrounds. His personal belief was that the souls of the deceased were always protecting their loved ones on Earth. He'd offered that bit of comfort one of the times when Koichi was grieving his grandmother's death. It wasn't often that Koji got sentimental like that, so Koichi paid close attention to the words and didn't forget them. The idea wasn't too against his own personal belief system anyway; after his temporary death, he had in a way protected Koji by handing over the Spirits of Darkness. So then why did he feel so silly doing this?
It didn't matter. He wouldn't get an answer because there was no answer that anyone else could give him. He'd have to figure it out on his own.
Again, Mishio is not really the name of Jeri's real mom; nobody knows what that was. The scene with Alice playing the piano was inspired by R. Dorothy Wayneright from Big O—according to TV Tome, Alice is somewhat based on Dorothy, who often plays the piano. And for a short explanation on Shinto and Buddhism: Shinto is the belief in the kami—nature and ancestral gods—and the four main codes of conduct are respect for the family and tradition, respect for nature, cleanliness, and worship and honor for the kami. Buddhist beliefs are that cycles of reincarnation can be broken by attaining nirvana, spiritual enlightenment. There's no other way to really explain these without going into superfine detail, and there's just not enough room in the notes for that. If you have any more questions about either religion, run a search on them. I want to warn everyone in advance, any similarities between this and Raven Nightstrider's incredible "Half of My Soul" are purely coincidental and/or subconscious. The same goes for if anything sounds like it came from Lord Archive's Diaries Universe, which I have recently immersed myself in. Whatever similarities are not intentional unless I say so. This concentrates on Koichi, and everything that happens in his life at this point. Things will get more complicated later on, and certain things will come that will surprise some readers.