I don't own digimon and it is very unlikely that that will change.
Nothing to say really so here is chapter 4 of IBD. (You know the initials should be IDBD but they just aren't) I finally found music to play for mood setting. If you have it or can find it play 'Kryptonite' by 'Three Doors Down' it is really close to the impression I am aiming for.
-I didn't believe in destiny,->
C4) Friendship --->
narration->
Telling my story to you is making it all come back, little by little. I'm not sure if it all should be told, after all, the past is carved into the bedrock of time. Don't worry, I will still tell you the story…
Brent>
Brent stood atop a ladder amongst the many braches of a tall leafy pear tree. He took a moment to enjoy the sun glittering between the many leaves, giving everything a mystical quality and a green tint. The sent of green growing things was heavy in the air and made his head spin after so long inside.
For two days he was stuck inside, forced by Fay to eat everything he could without bursting and probed for information by Alex. "This is Not physical training." That was something he didn't tell Alex, or anyone. He wasn't overly fond of having a voice in his skull that always talked of the distant past or told him how to kill different digimon or disable weapons and direct military actions.
"Its outside and I am working. Its physical enough." He didn't know why he talked to the voice, under his breath of course, just that it didn't seam to matter if he said anything or not it still knew and would rather hear his own than nothing. Brent reached out and twisted a pear from its branch, dropping it over his shoulder into the tall wicker hamper hung on his back. He was out helping pick fruit with the village digimon, anything was better than laying in bed ignoring Alex's incessant droning about some three kings or royal army.
Brent picked another pear and began to put it with the others when he saw a brown eye looking out from behind the leaves. He decided to ignore it, it was the forth or fifth he had seen watching him, and none of them where the same pair of eyes. Some of the rookies had snuck back up from the caverns and saw the fight with the armored shock troops.
He made sure his grin was gone before he turned to where the eyes could see him. None of the other villagers believed the rookies and Fay and the others purposely told another story. No one knew that a comatose man was locked down in a cave that Fay's house had a tunnel into. "you should accept that even if you didn't kill him eventually someone will die at your hands. You are a warrior and warriors kill so that others may live."
Brent's face became a scowl, "I wont kill anyone. I'm no warrior, I am a fighter. And fighters don't play to kill, they play for the rush of adrenalin as their opponent is beaten down and made to surrender." Brent wasn't sure but he felt the voice leave, a sensation of something suddenly gone and leaving a gap behind.
"do you alvays talk to yoursllef?", Brent twisted around and saw the blue head and white face of Veemon, before he fell from the ladder. thump thankfully the ladder was short enough that nothing was broken, only very painful. "sorry" Veemon dropped down from the tree beside me holding the hamper he had caught. The brown eyes where his, before this all the rookies just avoided Brent or spied on him, this was the first time any of them came and talked to him.
"Veemon get back. You saw what he did before." The owner of the voice was hidden but Brent wagered that it was in the trees too, along with a handful of others. He stood up and brushed the dust from his clothes and tucked the small medallion back under his shirt. He didn't know he was wearing the medallion, his crest, until it got caught on his shirt the other day. It was a small round metal disk of swirled white and black with the crest of fate printed on it with gold. The crest refused to come off his neck, the moment he tried the fine gold chain would tighten around his neck and the crest would adhere to his skin right above his breastbone.
Veemon turned to a different tree and looked right at where the voice was hid, "I don't know vhat I saw. But he just fell from a twee, and I don't think a suber-hero would fall fwom a twee." This Veemon had a lisp far worse than the one Brent remembered from the show, and made no attempt at making his words clearer.
"Silk thread", a long sticky thread came out of another tree and wrapped around Veemon's legs, pulling him up and into the foliage.
While Brent was watching the shaking tree leaves and listened to the muffled sound of fighting something happened he wasn't expecting. "poison ivy" six green vines came from the tree with the first voice and caught his arms, right over the bandages still hiding the gauntlets and yanked him back. He slammed against a tree trunk and while he was still trying to stop the ringing in his head a yellow blur came from somewhere and tied him to the trunk with thick ropes.
"we got him. Tee-Hee. He wasn't that hard to catch." Brent blinked at the rookies as they came out of the foliage. There was Veemon, of course, covered in spots of white webbing. And behind him was a Wormmon sporting a black eye. Over to the side was a Renamon without gloves or tattoos that was currently jumping around singing, "we got him, we got him." Then there was a Palmon with a yellow flower on her head and a toothy grin showing a few missing teeth. And there trying to hide back behind everyone was a very small pink Biyomon with golden tips on her feathers.
It was more than a little odd to Brent that the rookies that had been stalking him where destined digimon in the shows. He hated odd things here, they usually ended painfully and more than a little bloody. it was becoming a normal occurrence for him to be tied up, far too normal for his likening, he struggled to get free of the ropes.
"yeah. We caught him. So if he is a gweat hewo like we saw how did we catch him." Veemon was actually more understandable with a swelling lip. Brent twisted around trying to reach his pocketknife but the Renamon darted in and pulled the ropes tighter. As Brent wheezed in what air he could she calmly searched his pockets, taking the knife and lighter and the nice handkerchief Alex had given him.
From back behind everyone came the small voice of the Biyomon, "maybe it was the sword that made him so good." The statement clearly made them think, they began to wander away towards the tree where Brent had been picking pears. So Brent was left wheezing for air and deciding he would catch them all and spank them for this.
Brent was getting lightheaded from too little air when the voice returned, "I'm gone a few moments and you get caught by a couple of rookies. This is embarrassing, for me. You must be humiliated. So I suppose you want to know how to get free?"
Brent had to gasp deeply several times, making the rope dig into his chest before he could speak, "no. I am going to get out myself. Now shut up and let me think" Brent was beginning to get very dizzy and wondered if this would be considered as a slow asphyxiation. He heard a slight tearing sound and rolled his head towards the sound, he had been flexing his hands and the bandage on one had caught on the tree. And now three armored fingers tipped in sharp claws where showing.
Twisting his wrist he began to cut at the first rope around his waist, the short claws making the work slow and hard going. After a blink the claws looked longer and they cut faster as if shaper than before. The first rope broke with a slight pop, the slack letting Brent breathe a little easer. "He's getting out!" Brent looked up at the rookies in time to see Wormmon shoot another sticky thread, the white goop trapping Brent's hand against the tree.
"give him another layer Wormmon. We don't want him getting away before we find out how he beat those other humans when Violet couldn't." Brent amended his earlier thoughts, only the Palmon would get spanked for this and he planed to remove the bandages from his gauntlets first. Wormmon started spraying layer after layer of webbing across Brent trapping him farther and soon only his head was free of the white sticky ball attached to the tree.
He was outright angry now but worse than that, he was beginning to freak out, his eyes started to dilate and his breathing came in and out in a panting rush. "hey are you ok?" the Wormmon had crawled up the tree and was beside Brent' head. Brent shook his head and was trying to move any part of his body but the webbing held too tight and clung to everything like glue.
The rookies where all staring at him now but his sight had narrowed down to the ball of cotton candy he was encased in. over and over his thoughts shot around his head, 'trapped! Trapped! Got to escape, run. Run away.' His thought told him the ball was tightening, squeezing him making it hard to breathe.
"Black Pulse!", Brent screamed out those strange words and everything flashed with darkness around him. When he came to later, he wasn't sure how much later, he was clinging hard to the blackened bark of the tree. His claws and armored fingers sunk down deep into the living wood as his breathing returned.
When finally he understood what he was seeing he gasped and felt the wood under his fingers crack as his hands tensed. All around him for twenty yards every tree was bare of leaves and fruit, looking like trees during a long drought. Pulling his hands free he looked at the tree he had been tied to and saw it had turned nearly black and was missing all but its oldest branches.
"well that was interesting. I didn't think you would use that attack given all your talk of not killing." Brent felt his heart skip a beat at the voice's words.
Brent had to lick his lips a few time before talking, "what do you mean. What did I do." Brent thought he had drank all the sands of the deserts with how dry his throat had become.
The voice actually laughed, the sound ringing around inside Brent's mind. "you used the black pulse. It drained the energy from everything all around you, restoring your heath but also weakening everything near you. Those rookies' fractal codes are probably ready to shatter."
Brent couldn't think as he began running around the trees looking for the digimon he had hurt. He found Renamon first, grabbing her and taking her back to the blackened tree he returned to looking. Then he found Biyomon and Veemon hanging limply from the braches of a tree. Then he found Wormmon half barred under the roots of a tree where the attack had driven him. Finally he found Palmon lying battered and bruised under the branch she had hit and broken off after her short flight during his attack.
Now that he had them all lined up before the blackened tree his thoughts came back in a rush and he let them come out his mouth. "I didn't do this. I couldn't have done this. Look at them, they are just kids. I didn't do this. You did this you bastard. Help them. Heal them." The last of his words where directed to the voice in his mind and his hysteria was clear in the high tone he screamed those last words in.
The voice was silent for long moments before speaking, "there is one way but you wouldn't survive it five times, not all at once even on rookies."
Brent didn't answer because an image came into the back of his mind. A pair of gauntlets like he wore, the very ones actually, placed on the fractal code of a blackened digimon and began mending the cracks and tears with small bits of fractal code taken from his own body.
The image passed and Brent dropped to his knees waiting. And as if it had been waiting for Brent to ready himself the fractal code appeared around Wormmon. Brent reached out and griped it, feeling it slither and twist like a serpent of life energy. Under his gauntlets he could feel countless cracks and knew they would heal by themselves and couldn't be helped, feeling along with his hands he found it. The short gap, nothing more than a centimeter thick but deadly to a digimon. Without caring how or even about the pain it caused him he reached his glowing hand into his chest, his hand passing into him easier than into water, and pulled a piece of glowing light from his chest.
The pain continued to burn in him as the light replaced the gap and Wormmon returned to his normal coloring as his code returned to him. "you saved him. Not a bad chose for your first…" Brent didn't know how he had silenced the voice or even gave it a second of thought. He sat back on his heels and waited for the next fractal code to appear, still feeling as if a part of his body was torn away.
Renamon and then Biyomon, they laid silently unconscious after he had given them part of his own fractal code and he hoped they would be ok, he hoped they all would be. He ignored the burning pain in his body and began working on Veemon's fractal code. He could feel Veemon's life energy jump and writhe under his hands, fighting him, fighting death, and fighting just to fight.
Before he had even let go of Veemon's code Palmon's burst from her body as if trying to escape. Brent snapped out a hand and griped tight as it tried to fly out into the world. His other hand guided Veemon's fractal code gently back into him and saw the colors return to the black statue that was Veemon.
Turning his attention back to the code in his hand trying to escape he felt the pain of his own lost code beat in his mind and body with an irregular thumping, and in a corner of his mind he knew it was his heartbeat. His own life was as thin as the one beginning to fade in his fist. He didn't care. He reached into his chest again feeling the pain double as his fingers tore another peace of himself free and heard his heart stop for a few moments before laboring on.
He stared down at the fractal code griped tight in his fist and then at the shining light he held in his hand. Then with a thrust he drove the light, part of his life, into the widening gap of the fractal code. The light and code tried pulling away but he griped each hard and twisted them closer together, blending them until one was like the other. He saw her coloring returning before the world spun and he fell to the ground besides her idly wondering what his own fractal code looked like before everything turned black and silent.
Fay>
Fay was sitting in her living room writing in her journal. She had been neglecting it lately and was now trying to catch up with what had been happening. Some of the things she wrote, most of them actually, she couldn't believe even now. She shifted her set trying to get comfortable but her tail in its log hard cast made any seat uncomfortable and the stab in her shoulder throbbed even just from her moving her pen across the page.
She smiled as she heard some near silent swearing behind her as Alex tried coming into the room. his wings had to be splinted and kept spread wide so they would heal properly and because of this he had to duck low and step sideways through doors. She was smiling because it was so strange to hear an angelic digimon swear, especially with some of the more vulgar combinations he used.
Fay closed her journal and clicked the lock before the swearing behind her stopped. Alex came into the room and stood near the mantle of the small fireplace, a fireplace that Fay could never remember needing before and almost never using. Alex had finally gotten around to fixing his helmet but his staff was still cracked and looked about ready to snap in two.
He didn't say a word as he stood there and Fay was wondering why he could be there. It couldn't be about the man down in her supply cave, the dugout cave where she stored her herbs and medicines as well as a few older journals locked in a chest.
She sat her journal down on the coffee table and slid the key under her glove. "what is it Alex. If you want to know about your wings its still going to be just as many days as you asked this morning." She saw his frown, not his everyday one but the bad news one and a thought occurred to her. "please tell me that Brent didn't go and get in a fight with someone."
While Brent had been recovering she had managed to dig out more about him. He was what he called a street fighter, someone who will fight anyone, anywhere, with anything often until surrender or a terrible injury took someone out of the fight. Somehow she ended up listening to one of his more gruesome fight stories. Him and a friend against a five others. His friend had walked away with a dislocated shoulder and a smashed jaw and Brent had taken only a few cuts. She winced as she remembered the list he gave for the other five, most of witch left them in the hospital for days.
Alex pulled her from her thoughts with a shake of his head before she could begin recalling the blow-by-blow account Brent had given her. "no but I am concerned that the royal army might return."
"why? they left after they thought Brent killed their leader. They couldn't be coming back for him they thought he was dead. And very nearly he was." she still didn't know why the man was comatose but she had hopes he would wake. After he woke up she would have to wonder what to do with him but not right now.
"the shock troops left. And even if they never come back they will report what has happened and others will be sent to, to deal with us. The town could be run under with little trouble by a medium troop of Calvary and Brent isn't strong enough to fight even one Calvary knight." He began to lean back against the mantle but straitened up with wince as his wings bumped the clock on the mantle.
Fay saw her claws beginning to cut into the couch arm and pulled her hands(paws or whatever) away. "then we need to get the everyone out of town. We can call a town meeting after the elders get back from the mill." Even as she was saying it she realized just how hard it would be to leave herself, not to mention having to convince everyone in town to leave what had been their families homes for more generations than anyone could recall.
"we could never get them to leave. And even if we could there would be nowhere they could all go. And a group of digimon this big would be too easy for the royal army to fallow." Beezlemon had come in after Alex but had stayed so silent Fay hadn't even known he was there. He struck her as very strange, he wasn't the fist mega she had meet, she hadn't meet many though, but he was extremely old. he never responded to anything except Beezlemon and said he had never taken a name. And then there was that bike of his, the day after his wreck he had gotten out of bed almost entirely healed and went outside for less then an hour. He had totally repaired his bike in under an hour.
"then what should we do? If they come back everyone will be killed. We have to do something." Fay was getting even more scared than she thought possible. Beezlemon walked over beside Alex and she was suddenly struck by an unbelievable thought that slid from her mouth. "you two are related."
She didn't know why she had said it but just the way they stood and moved and the hard angular lines of their faces screamed relations. It was impossible, or next to it really, virus digimon and vaccine digimon rarely had such mixed families to produce two such drastically different types of digimon that shared so many traits. She was about to apologue for her stupidity when Alex cut her off, "yes actually. Beezlemon is my younger brother. I was hoping no one would notice because the first questions is always, 'how is he your younger brother?' am I right Fay?"
Fay closed her jaw with a click knowing that, that was exactly what she was going to ask. She had another one as well but it was a little too personal to ask, she wondered how it was possible for a demonic virus digimon and a vaccine angelic digimon could be brothers. Whenever a virus digimon laid an egg that had a vaccine father the digimon inside would be a virus and vise-versa for a mother vaccine and father virus. Data digimon could have either but it tended to go towards the fathers type or if both parents where data digimon they could have anything. But data types that had an egg with another data always laid the same type after the first.
Her head was spinning and she didn't even try asking any of the new questions forming in her mind, it was far worse than rude to ask into someone's genetics. The two brothers must have been used to the confusion caused by their imposable being because Beezlemon began speaking, not caring that he was speaking of something considered extremely personal in most the digital world. "our mother was a Garudamon and our father a Megaseadramon, talk about a strange marriage, they don't get much stranger than that. Anyhow dearest mummy's first egg hatched as twins, odd enough in the world but even odder was that one was a virus the other a vaccine, Alex here. So like true genetics next time she had an egg, something that nearly drove dad into the seabed with shock, she had another egg hatch with twins. One vaccine and the other viral, me."
"as for how I'm the older brother while he looks far older is a story that is too long to tell because of more pressing matters. We need leave. Just us Fay. You, Brent, Violet, Beezlemon and myself. We are the ones they are after and they will likely leave the town alone after searching it and not finding us." Alex was obviously trying not to shock her anymore than she was but it still did just that.
She thought leaving the village with everyone else would be the hardest thing she could do but her heart actually felt tight as she realized that she wasn't going to just leaving behind her life with a place she loved but with so many old friends that she may never see the village again, never return home. she had to clear her throat several times before she could speak, "how long do we have before we have to leave?" voicing the words hurt even more than the thoughts had but she wouldn't have her home destroyed because it hurt her to leave.
"we should leave at once but we have perhaps three weeks before the shock troops reach anywhere that can carry a message ahead of them. From that point we could have as little as another two weeks depending on the troops they send and how they send them. We can't wait here any longer than a week and still have any hope of escaping." Beezlemon spoke with the clam demeanor of someone used to running away and not likening it but knowing that getting caught was worse.
Before the conversation could continue any farther the door in the clinic slammed open and there was a good deal of shouting. Fay feared the worst as she sprang over the back of the couch, even if it had nothing to do with the royal army or Brent the few times she was needed this urgently meant someone was seriously hurt.
She had no time to even be surprised by the flood of digimon in her clinic. She began to literally toss out anyone not hurt at a glance. Once that was done she found herself with a truly shocking sight, five rookies badly injured and unconscious and Brent in a much better physical state but also unconscious. She began working immediately, jumping from cot to cot finding the rookies in better shape than they looked.
She couldn't find anything physically wrong with Brent except a somewhat irregular pulse and nothing she could do about it. the rookies where worse than she could imagine coming from anything except an attack, a powerful attack. But for every cracked bone or dislocated joint she set she found herself questioning what attack could do so much harm and not kill. There where few cuts or scratches and they could have easily came from anything but almost every inch of their bodies where bruised.
Finally she slumped down against Biyomon's cot. She considered getting a few painkillers for her tail when Alex came out of the living room with Beezlemon behind him. Alex knew better than to bother her while she was in any kind of situation like this but now that she was done he came in and saw Brent. he all but flew to Brent's side, she had expected that reaction from him but not for Beezlemon to do much the same. They both talked to each other silently and she made no attempt to hear them.
She took a pill bottle from a cabinet and swallowed a few pills before walking outside and into a churning mass of worried pacing parents. She was almost thrown back inside by the sudden rush of questions concerning their children.
She started on her left and worked around talking to each pair of parents, or parent in two cases.. She made her way down the line of parents comforting and reassuring them that their children would be fine. She told them she wanted to keep them for at least the night to watch them and that they could visit when they woke up.
She got down to the end of the line and found herself facing Renamon's mother, a Kiubimon named Jean. the two of them were new to the village, having only moved in about three years ago and neither ever mentioned a father or husband. Truth be told Fay wasn't the only one in the village intimidated by Jean. Somehow Fay managed to convince Jean to come back later after her daughter awoke and not tear Fays doorway apart trying to get in, Fay's doorway being built for digimon of about human size and smaller.
Then she had to deal with Vincent, for a sheriff he was a very easily unsettled digimon. "are Biyomon and Veemon ok? Please let them be ok. Are they hurt very badly? They looked so bad when I saw them." Fay could understand his worry, she was feeling it towards Brent, disturbing as it was to her, and it seamed to grow stronger every time Brent wound up unconscious.
She told him much the same thing she had told everyone else but had to say it many time over before he began to calm down. Vincent was Biyomon and Veemon's father and ever since their mother had died he had become very concerned for their safety. He wasn't overprotective, far from it in fact, he was just always worried for them. Everyone could see Biyomon's mother in her, she even looked like her mother when her mother was a rookie, but it was clear she would always be a timid digimon.
Veemon on the other hand was only like his father in the fact that they where both blue. When he was a rookie Vincent was always the last one to do anything, preferring to sit around and watch TV until his friends dragged him out to play. Veemon was the opposite in many things. He would be the first one to take a dare, several of which Fay had to give him stitches for, and pick a fight. He actually was a lot like Brent in those regards.
"Vincent." She called to him as he started to walk away. She saw him pale and realized what he was thinking, "I have a question for the sheriff." The made his color return and puffed out his chest with pride. "what happened to them out there?"
Vincent dropped his eyes and seamed to deflate, "I don't really know. Nobody dose. Sting found them when he went looking for Wormmon, he said he didn't want Palmon influencing his son too much. For twenty feet around every tree was withered as if it had been suddenly forced into a dry spell, worse than that one a few years back. The kids and Brent where under a nearly dead-dry blackened tree in the center just like how we brought them to you."
"do you think it was a wild one?" Fay had other thoughts about what it may have been but she wouldn't say them, even to Vincent who had some understanding of Brent.
Vincent shook his head and twitched his wings, a gesture that he did when totally confused, "I don't know what it was. except for the kids and Brent there wasn't any other tracks or scents. And if a wild one that powerful was there why did it attack them, and further more why did it let them survive. I honestly don't think all the kids could have taken down something that did what it had to the trees."
Fay had caught the slight change in tone he gave that word, he didn't think Brent and the rookies could have defeated it. she kept her face blank somehow, "thank you Sheriff. Ill let you know when they are awake." Vincent went off towards the split-sized home he still lived in with Veemon and Biyomon despite the larger rooms having been made for a much larger digimon like his wife had been.
Fay turned and reentered he house only to find total chaos. Brent was still unconscious but Alex was shouting and Beezlemon was keeping a very angry looking couple of rookies from attacking Alex, but just barely.
She considered just leaving and coming back after this had sorted itself out. But if she did that she would probably find someone needing bandaged up again, and nobody in the room needed any more bandages than they already had. She walked into the room laughing at the thought of nine Mummymons fighting and screaming at each other.
Everyone stopped screaming and struggling to stare at her like she had lost her mind. she couldn't stop and soon everyone was laughing and she doubted anyone knew why except her.
She finally sat up and wiped the tears from her eyes, the pain in her side was only part of the reason she had stopped. "so why are you trying to kill Alex?" the laughter stopped dead, and she looked around at the rookies. They where all looking over, not at Alex but at Brent where he was still unconscious. There faces where a big blend of emotions that she could sort free, but right on top was resentment.
"what happened out there? What attacked you?" nobody looked at her as they pulled their eyes away from Brent, looking anywhere except her and each other. She really hated being around Brent when he did or caused something like this, and the funny thing is he often did too.
"it turns out that the children here decided to get the answers Alex and you refused to give them. They cornered Brent and tied him to a tree and were planning to tickle him and feed him livered beets until he told them." Beezlemon was just as crisp as always but his voice had a bit of humor in it, he even had a faint twist in his lips that could have been a smile.
"he flipped out and tossed this funky attack at us." Renamon was far from her usual hyper self, she looked ready to cry.
"it was this big black ball that spread out around everything." Wormmon managed to speak past the several layers of bandage holding his cracked exoskeleton around his head together until it fused again, he would probably have some disfiguring ridges across his face.
"the thing tossed us all avay like we wernt anythin." Veemon was all right but his eyes looked a bit lighter then she remembered.
Little Biyomon was actually mad, showing her mother's temper for the first time, "the attack pulled the energy right out of us even as it smashed against us. It rammed into us just like a Miotismon's grisly wing and tore our energy away."
Fay turned her eyes towards the unusually silent Palmon, normally she was very in-your-face but now she was staring at Brent in a silent confusion as her emotions raged against her so strongly Fay could see them as they crossed her face in sudden shifts. Her voice was nearly unperceivable, "he saved us from his own attack. But he also…" her voice cracked and she hid her face in her hands.
Fay heard sobbing and not just from Palmon, Renamon and Biyomon where in each other's arms crying into each other and Veemon had tears trailing down across his face. She couldn't see any tears make it past Wrommon's mask of bandages but she saw in wince as the salty water stung his wounds.
She didn't know what he had done to them but she found herself on the verge of hating him, all it would take is knowing what to toss he over that line and she would kill him with her own claws.
"he saved their lives." Fay turned and found Alex had a similar wash of emotions playing across his face. "they would have died if he hadn't. but the price they paid is terrible when not given a chance to choose. Brent also paid, even more they did but they will feel their own far more than he will ever feel his own."
"what was it he did?", She didn't know what to feel now. Brent had hurt the children and then saved them only to trap both them and himself in something. Something that sounded even more horrible because Alex acted as if he had been though it as well, and was just as unsettled.
"Brent bonded his fractal code to their own. They will age slower and feel his emotions even half way around the world. They are bound to him, compelled to obey his every word until their deaths. Trapped into his service because he didn't want to be responsible for their death. He will never understand what he has done to them because they can never tell him." Fay sat down on the floor with a thump, not even feeling the jolt of pain from her tail.
Brent was sitting up and looking over at her. But it wasn't Brent, his eyes were like carved blue-green stone and his voice was louder and held a resonance she remembered. This wasn't Brent Speaking, it was Fate. "he can't accept blood on his hands. He refuses to take life but is more than willing to fight to defend it, despite any risk to himself."
"Break the bonding!" the shout came from five different mouths but every one of them was full of quivering rage. Beezlemon stepped closer only to step back as the stone eyes of Fate glanced at him.
"I cant." Fate began to unwind the torn bandages around his gauntlets, the sight of them made the children gasp. "not even Brent can. He will carry his side of the bond until he dies. He will feel every pain you feel, know every emotion in your head and both you and him will draw energy from the bond. You will all be stronger than ever before as long as he remains a part of that bond."
"its slavery." Alex's voice held none of the venom Fay would have used herself, it sounded as if he was resigned to it.
"yes, in a way. The bond carries a compulsion from whoever forged it, Brent, into the one the link holds. He won't even notice it because most of the thoughts will be down under his subconscious, he has it very cluttered there already. In short if he doesn't want something done you wont be able to do it, your thoughts of doing it will just slide away because his are stronger because of the bond."
With the bandages free of his gauntlets fate flexed his fingers as if seeing how it felt, not the gauntlets but moving. "deep down in his mind I have been training him but every morning when he wakes it gets pushed down because he can't accept any of it. he knows deep down what he did to you but he doesn't want to know that either, so you five will never be able to tell him it unless he opens his mind."
Fate's hands clenched, crushing the wadded ball of bandages tighter as he turned toward the three older digimon. "and until I find a way of opening his mind and forcing him to accept realty you three will not tell him anything that these five cant. In fact they are now your superior officers. And you Fay have just been drafted to help overthrow the corrupt kings. I don't have enough time before Brent wakes or I would have you swear the oaths of sprit friend."
Without warning Brent slumped forward, sliding from the cot and hitting the floor with a thump. Almost immediately he sat back up and rubbed his head, pulling his hand away as a claw tip scratched him. "what's going on." He saw the rookies and jumped to his feet, only to fall as they refused his weight. He looked up at them as Alex helped him back onto the cot. "I wont ask for forgiveness. I didn't mean to almost kill you but I freak out when I'm trapped." Even with all that was happening Fay realized he suffered from Merinthophobia, a fear of being trapped. "That isn't any kind of excuse, but I don't know what to do, I will find some way to make it up to you."
Fay wanted to say so many different things but the threat in Fate's words, not even hidden, drove them all away. Five voices spoke almost as one, "you will find something, and we plan on being right there to see you do." Fay looked to the rookies and wondered if that was them speaking or the bond pulling them like puppets on strings.
'zzzzzzzzzzz', Fay turned back and saw that Brent was asleep sitting up where Alex had sat him. She gave a sigh and started chasing the rookies into different cots, and pushed the mysterious, more now than ever, brothers out the door.
She walked into her living room again and sat on her couch staring down at the floor and wondering what was left of her old world where the most excitement was when the carnival came to town for more than a month. Where the worst thing she ever had to deal with was a broken bone or crushed foot from a falling tree branch.
She reached out and took her journal from the coffee table. She opened it with the key from her glove and opened to her marker. There in her spiraling handwriting was the last thing she had written, 'I wonder what part of my world will Brent turn upside down next?'
In a fit of anger at her naivety just a few hours ago he stabbed her pen into the page, feeling it punch out the hard cover on the back. She griped the covers of the book and looked at the fireplace for a moment before wrenching the pen free again. writing around the small hole she continued to write where she had left off.
After the clock on the mantle had stuck three she was still writing, after four she heard low voices in the other room but kept writing. Just after five thirty in the afternoon she put her pen down and looked at the last lines, 'I like Brent, he has so many admirable quality. But at the same time I don't think I will ever trust anything to go right when I'm around him. Simply him being here has started changing the world as I thought I knew it.' Fay closed the cover and locked it, after that she sat there for a long time simply looking at the key in her palm.
Narration ->
you know those journals Fay wrote are the one reason I haven't gone off and hid away from the world. They are probably the only reason I started telling you this story.
All right another chapter done in record time, on this fic at least. Anyhow, I might have to go and polish this up a bit latter.
And no I don't suffer from Merinthophobia, I can deal with it I just don't like it. I have Acrophobia.
I think I am using too many rookies but I can't stand the idea of taking any out. And what I find really funny is that none of them are any of my top ten-favrote digimon rookies and I can't even think of changing them to a different rookie.
Oh and before you think of flipping out on me. I am against slavery and used the term as a negative, but frightfully accurate, description of someone who took the bond without wanting it. A willing bond is totally different. I fully plain for the rookies to find a way out or around the bond, maybe even have it work the other way. I don't know at this point.
Reviews welcome. All reviews flames or rantings are wanted.
Later
(after thought inserted next day: I think my mood is starting on a down swing. Sorry if this chapter was freaky but its probably not going to change until my mood gets better, if then.)