Enter The Light
Part Thirty: Paildramon
Standard Disclaimer Thingie: Digimon and all related characters are not mine. The plot is, as well as the handful of original characters I've tossed in. Please, don't steal, don't sue, don't forget to moo!
Moo.
A message had arrived in the beak of a Piyomon around midday, much earlier than Iori had expected a response, barely two days after he had sent the driver back to the palace. It seemed that the driver had taken the task seriously and hurried quickly. It also seemed that the Piyomon had been told to seek out Iori, for it found him in the village rather than reporting to Koushiro at the manor house, which would have been far easier.
Iori was assisting with the rebuilding process, a task which required and enlisted the eager assistance of almost every single villager. Unsurprisingly, Ami's grandmother had taken charge of the women and children, who had taken it upon themselves to clear out the buildings, salvaging anything that was still in good enough shape to be used and categorizing it so that it could be returned to its rightful owner. A great deal of things were destroyed completely, and some families found themselves suddenly without clothing or furniture or other important items, but there were also a great deal of salvageable items.
The farms had continued, though at a smaller scale than when the Lord of Hida had been around to oversee the planting and harvests. The plantings had been beginning before the attack, and it was essential that they be completed if the village expected to make its way through the next year's harsh winter. Therefore, half of the men went to the fields to tend them as they always did while the remainder took charge of felling trees from the nearby forest for the wood necessary to rebuild the homes and businesses that had been destroyed.
The entire group had continued to take shelter at the home of the late Lord, and those who were too old or weak to travel to the village every day and help rebuild or clean up remained there, keeping themselves busy preparing food for the entire village and making the house itself more livable for all who now had to dwell there.
Iori was helping with the cleanup, knee deep in a pile of ashes in the center of what had once been a small store, examining a stove to see if it could be saved. The outer sections had been severely burned and charred, but it seemed that the object would still function. Outside, he could hear voices shouting to each other, but this was an ordinary, normal occurrence, and so he had tuned them out and focused on his task. Armadimon was sniffing a lower cabinet experimentally, smelling something odd from within and trying to determine what it was.
"Iori?" said a voice in the doorway, and he looked up to see one of the young women. "I think you ought to come out here…."
"I think this stove is still good," Iori said absently, not paying much attention. There was always something that someone claimed to need him for, often something which the others could figure out themselves. He tugged at it, wondering if he could lift it. "I don't know how we'll get it out of here, but it seems to still be useable." He sighed, finding it too heavy, and shook his head. The woman was still standing in the door, and so he turned in her direction.
"Sorry," she apologized, smiling. "It's just that Kimiko is in an argument with a Piyomon, and the Piyomon is demanding to see you."
Kimiko was the name of Ami's grandmother, and somehow the idea of her arguing with one of the messenger bird digimon was not surprising. "A Piyomon?" he asked, pushing the half-usable stove from his mind immediately. "From the palace?"
"I assume so," the woman answered. "He won't say. He just keeps saying that he was sent to see Iori and he won't talk to anyone else."
"Kimiko insisted on arguing with him," the woman's partner, a Floramon, put in, shaking her head and frowning. "He insists on arguing back. We thought we'd come find you before he flew off and didn't give the message."
Ami's grandmother was indeed involved in an argument with a Piyomon, or rather, had been involved. Apparently each was now so upset with the other that they had given up trying to speak and each was merely glaring at the other.
"I'm here," Iori announced, addressing the Piyomon directly. "You have a message for me?"
"I do," said the Piyomon, recognizing Iori at once. "Help is on the way."
"What sort of help?" Kimiko demanded, but the Piyomon ignored her, instead passing a rolled scroll to Iori, who unrolled it immediately and scanned the words within, nodding satisfactorily.
"A lot of help," he told Kimiko, who was frowning as though she didn't quite think that sort of thing was likely. "A number of doctors as well as a great deal of volunteers to help with the building. They're also sending along shipments of wood, food, medical supplies, and clothing and blankets." He was frowning intensely at the scroll now, which only raised her suspicions.
"How long will this take?" she asked, her own frown having calmed while his grew more pronounced.
Iori looked up from the scroll. "They'll be here in two days," he responded. "It seems they're leaving as soon as possible." He rolled the scroll back into its original shape and glanced up at the Piyomon. "You'll wait for a message?"
"A message and maybe something to eat and a short rest if you don't mind," the Piyomon answered. "They're eager for a response, but they'll wait if I'm about to fall over from exhaustion and hunger."
"I need to go back and talk to Koushiro for a bit," Iori told Kimiko. "I think you can handle things here." He turned to head back to the manor. "Come on, there's food where I'm going," he informed the Piyomon.
It was only when he was a significant way down the path that Kimiko turned toward the other woman present and said, frowning, "There's something else in that message he didn't tell us."
Koushiro had found himself a room that had once been an office, perhaps that of the late Lord's personal secretary, and made himself at home. The room was cluttered with empty bookcases and other such cabinets, most of which were completely empty save for dust and cobwebs. As was his fashion, the wizard had not bothered with cleaning anything except for the top of the desk and had settled down not on a chair (there were not many to be found in working order) but on a large wooden crate and made himself as comfortable as possible. He was, as Iori had expected, buried behind a heavy volume of ancient spells, a scroll of paper beside him, covered with a myriad of scribbles Iori didn't bother to attempt to decipher.
Knowing that speaking to Koushiro at a time like this would be mostly futile, Iori set the curled scroll on the desk across from him, knowing that the wizard would be powerless to resist the force of written words even though he might ignore a shout in his ear. As he'd predicted, it was not long before Koushiro emerged from behind the volume.
"It's come already?" he asked. "It seems our driver was in a hurry to return home."
"I think he expected he'd have to stay a few weeks," Iori said, taking a seat on another box. "I suppose he was anxious to get home again, instead of staying up in what he probably thinks is the middle of nowhere."
"Can't blame him," Koushiro said, opening the scroll, although Iori knew he was thinking of the piles of books in the palace, in his own cluttered space. "Well," he murmured, halfway through the scroll. "That's certainly an impressive amount of aid."
"I told the driver to be as dramatic as he felt was necessary to convey the situation. He saw it for himself – he was in the village when it happened. There wasn't time to write something, and I figured a firsthand account would be more efficient."
"The last part is vague, though," the wizard noted, frowning. "They're 'taking steps to assure that the village is placed under effective leadership'? That sounds like they're finding someone to replace the dead Lord, finally, but who?"
"Doesn't seem like they have any idea yet," Tentomon noted from his perch atop one of the tall bookshelves, where he'd been napping in the warm sun that flooded the room through the tall, though dirty windows behind him.
"Well," Koushiro said, searching his brain for memories of a map of northern Yagami and the Lords who owned the land in that area. "They could try to get in touch with the Lord's heir, though that might take weeks. I expect that there's a record of her existence somewhere in the palace."
"She hasn't paid much attention to this place in the last twenty years, why would she start now?" Iori asked, frowning.
"She might even be dead by now," Armadimon pointed out cheerfully.
"Wonderful," Iori muttered darkly. "A village left with no Lord and no leader for two decades and nothing's done about it. Now what?"
"If it's possible, it would seem wisest for one of the other Lords in the area to acquire it. Some of them have sizable tracts of land already, with two or three villages. I don't know that any of them would want to take on this place, however."
"Being as it's half destroyed," Tentomon put in.
"Right," Koushiro agreed, nodding. "It doesn't seem wise to give it to any one else – they could hardly give any more attention to land that wasn't anywhere near their current properties. Maybe it could be passed on to someone else."
"Someone else who?" Armadimon questioned.
"Perhaps the second son of a Lord who doesn't stand to inherit his father's land," the wizard mused. "So rarely does land become available that it's actually rather surprising that no one was granted the title twenty years ago. Still, if it's still in the name of the last Lord's heir, then it could hardly be given to anyone else, and if she didn't formally renounce it…."
Iori sighed. "In the meantime, until they figure out who is responsible, it's apparently our responsibility."
"If by 'our' you mean the King's, then yes," Koushiro answered. "Land not owned by any of the Lords or Ladies is by default the responsibility of the King. Or Queen, if that were the case. Unless, of course, it's beyond our borders, in which case it is owned by whoever would be the sovereign of that country."
Iori sighed again, leaning back against the heavy bookshelf behind him. It creaked anciently but didn't wobble. "Politics," he mumbled, closing his eyes, feeling tired.
"Hmm. Fun subject, isn't it?" Koushiro said sympathetically. "How goes the rebuilding?"
"There's been a lot of wood cut," Iori reported. "There's been a lot of garbage hauled away. We've managed to completely clean out most of the stores in what was the town square, and we've gotten a good part of the houses done. Some of them have a lot of useable things left, and they're making sure to keep track of what belongs to who and all that." He sighed yet again, shaking his head slightly. "It's a lucky thing that everyone knows everyone because otherwise they wouldn't trust each other with that. Still, they did all agree that it was best to work as a community rather than as individuals, and that seems to be working."
"Maybe they don't need 'effective leadership,'" Tentomon thought aloud.
"Oh, no, they need leadership," Iori disagreed. "They're all equals. Everyone has an idea and everyone else disagrees with it. It takes hours to get things done and everything by committee. Kimiko tries to tell everyone else what to do, but not everyone agrees that she should lead and so a lot of people have to tell her that they don't think so and then they disagree with her ideas and they're not afraid to tell her. If they had 'effective leadership' then that would be someone who told them 'this is what we're doing' and they said 'yes, sir,' or 'yes, ma'am' and did it rather than arguing about it for a year, first."
"Hmm," Koushiro said, vaguely, his mind apparently elsewhere.
"Any luck locating a crystal? Or if there is one nearby?" Iori asked, changing the subject.
"Some," the wizard answered, glancing down at his paper filled with what was gibberish to Koushiro. "I think that I have discovered a spell that, when performed, will lead me in the direction of a powerful crystal, if there's one within a reasonable distance."
"How far is a reasonable distance?" Armadimon wondered.
"About as far as you can walk in a day, I should think," he answered. "I could adjust the radius, make the spell more powerful, but I don't think that's necessary. No one would attack this village if the crystal was more than a day's journey away."
"What do we do when we find it?"
"That, I haven't figured out yet," Koushiro confessed.
"This?" Hikari asked, looking up at the wall above the fireplace in the tiny house. Hanging on a nail was a long thread, at the end of which was a small crystal. It was small enough to be worn as a necklace, not much bigger than a thumb, glittering in the sunlight that came in through the windows.
It was late in the afternoon, the sun slowly beginning to sink in the west. The tiny sitting room of the tiny hut was filled with five people, all of them staring at the small crystal as it hung from the wall, casting tiny rainbows around the room in the light of the sun.
"Yes," Miyako answered with a voice that conveyed total certainty. "It's a crystal, and it has a concentration of magic within it that's stronger than anything else in this village." She had pushed the spectacles up on her nose now and was looking at it without the sight of magic, a sign that the magic was strong enough that she could see it intensely. "It's been growing more powerful the longer I've been here. When we first came in the house it didn't look magic at all, and the longer I stay here, the more it seems to intensify."
"Is that a good thing?" Takeru asked, eyeing the object with some wariness.
"I'm not sure," Miyako answered.
"Has it got a good sort of magic in it?" questioned the house's occupant.
Miyako frowned, folding her arms. "It's hard to say if magic is good or bad," she said. "In this case, I would say that it appears that way, but it's hard to say. It isn't dark magic, if that's what you're afraid of," she added hastily, for Mama was looking a bit nervous, "but magic can change shape quickly and it could be used for dark purposes."
"Do you know how this came to be here, or what it is?" Daisuke asked. Mama frowned for a few moments, squinting at the crystal.
"The boys found it down by the river," she answered, remembering a far distant memory. "It was years ago; I'd almost forgotten about it. Shijo came in and gave it to me one morning. He was barely six then, and it and he was covered with mud. I cleaned it off and it sparkled in the light. I hung it by the window for a while, and then later we moved it over the fireplace."
"That's a coincidence like none I've ever heard," Takeru said, his eyes wide. "First he finds this crystal, and then he finds the digivice?"
"It was really more Maigo that found the digivice," Hikari reminded him. She thought to say something about how Shijo had been at the prison, but she didn't want to alarm or confuse his mother, who had been asleep like the rest of the kingdom through the entire ordeal. "It is a strange coincidence, though."
"Well, take it if you need it, if it's important," Mama said, shrugging. "I've liked having it over the fireplace, but it's not so precious to me that I don't mind giving it up."
Takeru, easily the tallest among them, stepped forward and stretched one long arm up to take the object. Miyako frowned deeply for a moment and lowered the glasses just in time to see that his hand had come in contact with some sort of magical barrier, and he could not reach it.
"I don't feel anything," Takeru said, straining to reach, "and yet I can't get any closer." He moved his arm to the left and found that he could touch the cool stone of the chimney without a problem, and yet, when he tried to move it back to the right, he encountered some difficulty.
"It's got some sort of barrier around it," Miyako noted, peering over the tops of her glasses now. "I would guess that, like most important magical objects we've come across, it's not just anyone that can take it."
Takeru pouted, abandoning his attempts. "So I suppose I'm just anyone, then?" he grumbled. Patamon patted his partner's head sympathetically from his perch atop it.
"It's your village, Daisuke," Hikari pointed out. "Maybe it will let you take it?"
He shrugged. "It's worth a try, I guess." He stepped forward, stretching onto his toes, and reached the object easily, taking it by the string. When he stepped back, he reached out with his free hand to touch the cool glass.
The other three Chosen present let out a gasp of surprise, though for three entirely different reasons.
The ground shook and the walls of the tiny house rattled in the force of the quake. Anything else that might have been said or done was forgotten.
"Three Tyrannomon, two Mammothmon, and it looks like about a billion Veggiemon and Lopmon," Takeru called from the doorway, which he'd thrust his head around briefly enough to get view of whatever was out there. "They're coming from across the water."
"Well, if this is what they wanted, they're coming after it now," Daisuke noted, glancing toward the crystal in his hand.
"Keep it safe, then," Miyako advised. "Let's go, Hawkmon."
"Coming along," Hawkmon answered, following his partner out the door.
The house was not far from the river, beyond which could be seen the massive army of digimon that Takeru had reported on.
"Patamon evolve! Angemon!"
"Hawkmon armor evolve! Holsmon!"
"No, stay behind," Hikari was saying to Miyako, who was contemplating climbing aboard and flying into the fray. "We might need you to protect the innocents – especially if Mummymon comes along."
"It's likely he will, too," she said, agreeing readily but watching with some amount of disappointment as her partner soared off rider-less.
"Can't I help, too?" V-mon questioned. "I'm going in."
"It is our village," Daisuke agreed, nodding. "Let's go."
"V-mon evolve! XV-mon!"
"You remember what I told you – about how I will find you someplace else to live if necessary? That I will build you a new house if it must be?" he asked, turning toward Mama, who was standing in the doorway staring at the approaching digimon. She turned and stared at him as though she thought he was crazy.
"It looks like you might have to make good on that deal?" she finished. He nodded. "What possible – they want that? That crystal? For – what possible use could they have?"
He shrugged. "I don't know."
"Whatever use it is, it's likely not a good sort of use," Hikari pointed out. "Look! He's back!"
The "he" that she had just spotted was a powerful (and fast) green bug-type digimon speeding directly overhead, headed straight for the army approaching. "Spiking Finish!" he shouted, plunging directly into the fray, diving into a crowd of Lopmon, sending them flying.
"Damn," Miyako muttered under her breath, only just loud enough for Takeru to turn toward her with a confused expression. She was frowning severely in the direction of the battle, not even aware of his gaze.
"He's not the only one that's back," Tailmon warned, pointing across the water. "Mummymon."
"Damn," Miyako said again, this time loud enough to be heard by all. "Stay close by. The smaller the shield, the stronger it will be."
"Oh, Mummymon is not going to be your problem today, I assure you," said a female voice, and they turned to discover that the sorceress with the silver hair had appeared only a few steps away. "In fact, there will be no problems if you'd just hand over that crystal." She held out one hand, long fingers beckoning.
"Not a chance," Daisuke retorted, the crystal in question still within his fist, tightly grasped between his fingers. "You'd have to kill me to get it."
"Don't say such things," Miyako told him, her voice a hoarse whisper. "She's likely to do just that."
The woman laughed throatily. "She's right," she said, obviously having overheard Miyako. She tugged on her silvery hair, removing one single strand of the shiny material, and twisted it casually within her fingers. It grew longer as she massaged it, until it was the length of her arm, and stiff and solid, like a blade. Then, moving so swiftly that none could have predicted her movements, she threw the dart-like object in his direction.
A solitary arrow, moving swift as the moonlight through the dark night, collided mid-air with the silvery strand that had once been hair, and an explosion occurred, throwing everyone present back and off their feet. A huge cloud of smoke erupted from the place they had collided.
"Damn," Miyako said, loudly again, frustrated by the lack of visibility. Even speaking just that one word was difficult, and she could say no more because she was overcome, coughing.
"Don't interfere!" shouted the woman sorceress. "That crystal belongs to me now."
"To you?" questioned another voice, the voice of the bandit who had shot the arrow, standing now waist-deep in the thick smoke. "To you or to your master? Whichever it is, you won't have it."
"What do they want with it?" Daisuke asked, getting to his feet to find that the stranger in question was only a few steps away from him. A flash of memory chose just that moment to light in his brain, and he squinted through the dust. "Do I know you?"
"Not anymore," he answered shortly, not glancing in his direction.
"I'm sorry to interrupt your reunion, gentlemen," said the woman's voice, and they could see her rising from the smoke, "but I'm afraid that the time has come for both of you to die unless you're willing to give me that crystal now."
A blast of wind parted and dissipated the smoke, scattering it into the breezes and sending all those nearby flying backwards once more except for Daisuke and the sorceress herself.
"Miyako," Hikari called over the wind. "Can you do something? Shield him?"
"I will try," Miyako called back, "but I can't see anything."
The dark stranger got to his feet immediately. "I don't know what you want it for, but you're not getting that crystal," he said, grunting with the effort of opposing the wind. He had managed to remove his sword from his belt and was holding it before him as he headed toward the eye of the miniature storm.
"Come now," the woman urged, holding her hand out once more. "Give it to me. Let me have that crystal. You don't even know what it's for."
"What do you want with it?" Daisuke asked again. "You want to use it for some sort of evil?" He glanced around him – there was only space now between him and the sorceress, the wind like a wall whipping around him, separating him from everyone else.
"Evil?" she echoed. "No. I mean to use it to bring order to the world, to bring justice to the vanquished, to bring hope to the oppressed. Isn't that what we all want?"
"They were vanquished because they brought about the deaths of thousands," retorted the stranger, slowly making his way closer through the wind. "They were sent to the shadow world because that is where they belong."
"One could say the same of you," she retorted. "The shadow world is like a prison, an unholy and continuous land of violence and nightmares."
"And you want to open it!"
"I want to bring order to the world of shadows and release those who were sent there unjustly!" she shouted. "I want no evil! I want to free them from evil! Is that not what you want?"
"I want to free from evil those who are deserving of freedom! You want to free those who create evil from an inescapable prison they were sent to in order to protect innocents!"
"Innocents? There are no innocents in this world," she returned. "Give me the crystal or I will do as she said and kill you to take it."
"No! Daisuke, it was placed in this village to protect it from evil. If you give it to her, you give her control of this place."
"Control of this place? I don't want control of this place," she answered. "I want to turn the first key in the gate of a prison and set free the oppressed."
"And what of the people of the village?" Daisuke questioned. He could feel the crystal in his palm, the pointed edges of the object digging into the soft skin, but it was no longer cold glass – now it felt warm, it felt like it was emitting some sort of magic, or perhaps he was only imagining that it was helping him in some way. "This is my village. It is my job to protect them. You've attacked this place, you wish to destroy homes so that you can get this one crystal?" He shook his head. "No. You'd have to kill me to take it."
She was quiet a brief minute, one long finger idly twisting a strand of silvery hair between her fingers. "Very well. I gave you an option."
"Got it!" Miyako shouted over the roar of the wind, a split second before the woman sorceress let loose a shout of pure anger and flung another long, silvery dart in his direction. It bounced off her hastily-raised shield, leaving Daisuke unharmed within.
There was a continuous sort of high pitched noise sounding high above the wind, and then the wind let out one last gasp of anger, blowing another gust outward from the eye of the storm that once again threw nearly all concerned off their feet. The woman screamed again and leapt into the air, a long, silvery, spear-like object in her hand now.
Over the sound of the wind and the high pitched wailing and the sorceress's battle cry came another shout. "XV-mon evolve!"
Five heads turned sharply in the direction of the blue dragon-like digimon, speeding across the water, a single gasp of shock emerging from each one. "Another - ?" Takeru managed to say, but no other words could be heard.
Another shout sounded a split second later, almost at the same time. "Stingmon evolve!" And there, just a short distance away from the blue blur, was a dark green one, speeding at the same time across the water. Then, there was a blinding light, over which two voices became one and then shouted, together:
"Paildramon!"
He appeared, a single digimon, in the tiny space between Daisuke and the arriving sorceress, deflecting her spear-like blade without difficulty. She leapt backward, the blade dissolving into nothingness, landing gracefully on her feet.
"You think you can prevent the return of the vanquished?" she questioned. Instantly, the battle beyond the river was over, the enemies gone into nothingness as easily as the spear had vanished, only Mummymon standing on the far bank, smugly watching the proceedings. In the time it took to blink an eye, six large Tyrannomon appeared behind her, each with a glare of anger in its eye. "This is the beginning," she declared. "I'll get that crystal, and I'll get the rest. You can throw new adversaries in my direction as much as you'd like, but none of them will be able to defeat us."
With that, she was gone.
"Stay and fight yourself, you coward!" shouted three – or was it four? – voices in unison, but she was long gone and so was Mummymon, only the Tyrannomon remaining.
The battle ended shortly after, the Tyrannomon not being much of a threat. As before, they deleted not as ordinary digimon, their particles scattering into the wind, but strangely, as the last had done, dissolving into a black shell that cracked and scattered.
"Something strange about those digimon," Patamon noted, having de-evolved, landing on his partner's head. "Too easy to defeat, too strange a deletion."
"Something else strange, too," Takeru observed, crossing the open space between himself and the house, making his way toward Daisuke, who was bending over to take Chibimon into his arms. Exactly what had become of the green bug-like digimon Takeru couldn't see.
"That was amazing!" shouted the voice of a small boy, the one who lived in the house that had been nearly destroyed. Takeru guessed that he and his sister had been hiding near the riverbanks, watching the whole battle in relative safety. Their mother turned pale when she saw them approach, the realization of how near they had been to danger making her grow weak at the knees. She sank down into the dirt, wiping the sweat from her brow.
"Amazing!" the young girl echoed.
"You destroyed them all like they were nothing! Six Tyrannomon! Six huge monsters! Wow!" The boy, Kodo, was practically jumping up and down, eyes huge and wide in his small face. "Do you get to do that all the time? Wow. I bet Shijo would be so jealous. Wow."
"How'd you do that?" his sister, Onna, asked. "They all went poof, and they're so big!" She was so excited that she was almost depriving her partner, a small Pyocomon, of air.
"Yes," Takeru said, turning toward Daisuke. "How did you do that?"
"I – don't know?" Daisuke asked, rubbing the back of his head with one hand, Chibimon sleepily resting in his other. He grinned sheepishly.
"Well, you'll have to go back to the palace now," Miyako told him, a grim expression on her face. "Everyone else is going to want to know about this, and they're going to want to know what happened and why."
"I'm sure Koushiro's going to spend a few months lost in a book over this one," Takeru agreed. "At least we got what we came for, though."
The evening was quiet, the sun having gone down, the sound of water trickling in a nearby stream the only sound. They would leave, it was necessary now, the next day, early, and yet Miyako had not been able to sleep, for she still had too many unanswered questions. She left her room, leaving Hawkmon sleeping contentedly on the bed, snoring lightly, and wandered out to the garden. She'd been watching the water flow past in the moonlight for some time when she heard a voice.
"I remember meeting you in the dark once before," Daisuke said, his feet crunching in the grass on the bank. "Is there something else I'm not remembering that I should?"
Miyako stared at him for a few moments and then shook her head. "It's amazing how you remember some things and not others," she told him, leaning against the side of a thick tree. "It was once that we met in the dark, and it was days from here."
He shrugged slightly. "Once, now twice. I'm getting the impression that there's some things I'm remembering today that aren't supposed to be shared with everyone."
"Yes, I thought you might have. I don't suppose there's anything else you'd like to share related to those memories?"
He shook his head. "There's a few things I don't remember that I'd like filled in, though, and I was coming out here to see if I could. Since you're here, maybe you wouldn't mind telling me if my memories are correct."
"You haven't remembered anything that was false yet, have you?"
"Not that I know of," he said grimly, and sat in the grass. After a moment, Miyako came and sat next to him.
"There wasn't anything – I mean," she began, pausing. "I'm not sure how to say this correctly without being rude about it, but there wasn't anything like…."
He waited, staring at her with some confusion, expectation.
Miyako sighed. "We had one secret meeting in the dark," she said, speaking quickly, turning to fix her gaze on the water. "You said you remembered that we shared a secret and we met to talk about that secret. There was … there was never anything…between us. That wasn't the secret."
"I know that much," he answered. "I remembered the secret today."
"I thought you might have."
There was quiet for a few minutes. Distantly, they could hear conversation from the kitchens, not far away, and the water flowing past them in the river. The night air smelled of blossoms and flowers and the cool, clean water. Overhead, a few puffy clouds drifted in between sparkling stars and a shining moon.
"What do you suppose he remembers?" Daisuke said into the silence, leaning his head back, looking at the stars.
"I don't know," Miyako admitted. "I thought maybe you might have some idea." When he didn't answer right away, she plunged in. "What happened today?"
He shook his head and sighed. "I'm not sure," he answered after a long moment of thought. "Some sort of merge. It isn't like I could hear his thoughts or anything like that, if that's what you thought. It's just that for a moment, for just a brief moment, it felt like nothing had changed in the last year and everything was as how it had been and I remembered everything and nothing was different. It felt like…like we were on the same side again…."
"You were on the same side," she reminded him. "Neither one of you wanted that sorceress to get hold of the crystal. Maybe that's why – you had some sort of a common goal? I mean, Daisuke, you shouted the same words at the same time."
He frowned. "It's not the same as it was then, though," he disagreed. "It's amazing how much has changed – not that I remember it all, but…. I'm not the same person. This isn't – this isn't some dream we have together anymore, you know? This is….I don't know what this is."
"But it is the same dream," Miyako argued. "You're both Chosen, you both proved that today. Don't all Chosen have a common goal of … of protecting the defenseless and … and keeping the world safe?"
"Do we?" he wondered, thinking for a moment on this. Then, however, he shook his head. "It's not that simple, Miyako. It's not as simple as keeping the world safe and protecting the defenseless. I think he'd say the same thing. I don't even know who I am anymore."
He got to his feet and Miyako watched him as he turned to leave.
"Now that you – now that you and he have merged your digimon, what's to say that it won't happen again – that you won't have to work together?" she called after him, but he didn't stop, didn't call back an answer.
Wow. I haven't updated this since last year. Heh.
Well, this is fun. Exciting battles and such and explosions and all that stuff. Hope you enjoy all this action!
Coming soon: Iori had a bit of fun, and next I'll devote a section to the adventures of Jyou as he travels north to the city of Kido, wherein he and Koushiro have a bit of action of their own. Hopefully, it won't be another year before I update.