Lost Not Forever
I don't own Digimon.
Chapter One:
Swept Away
The school headmaster stood on the stage, lit tonight not by the reading-lamp fixed to a lectern, but by the glimmer of a silver disco ball. He smiled down at the children, all of them dressed up to the nines in pretty dresses and smart shirts. "I now declare this dance open," he beamed, without a trace of his usual sharpness. There was a cheer, and the coloured lights flickered into life, illuminating the room in pink, blue and yellow. As the music began, the first of the dancers took to the floor.
One of the teachers, busy collecting tickets from excited latecomers, took a moment to glance across the hall. To her delight, she saw a small, dark-haired girl dancing with a blond child in a turquoise top, his white hat turned blue by the spotlight. Both were laughing, enjoying the music and showing off to each other in a spirit of innocent mischief. It was wonderful to see those two children, in particular, captivated by this simple pleasure. For more than four years now, they had never been quite the same carefree youngsters as before. But by and by, their friends had learnt how to speak to them once again; they had stopped staring into space with little to do and less to say. They seemed to have begun to… well, to live again.
A boy with ruffled dark hair, a friend of the pair, came over to them wearing a clumsily knotted tie. "Hey, Kari," he smiled. "Want to dance with me? I'll buy you some lemonade."
TK looked as if there was something he wanted to say, but Kari smiled, genuinely flattered. "I'd love to, Davis."
They danced. Then Kari took TK for her partner, while Davis spun his younger sister in circles, excited by the thrill of it all. When they were tired, they stepped off the dancefloor to drink warm lemonade and watch the swirling, rainbow lights.
It was good to dance. It was good to be with their friends. Only once or twice did Kari or TK falter, looking for a moment as if something was wrong; when a beautiful, long-haired ten-year-old swept past them, twirling to show off her new red dress; when the teenager playing the music stood up to reach for another record, the light glinting off his glasses. Then the moment was gone, and the two of them were as bright and joyful as before.
As the night drew on, the lights began to flicker gently. The headmaster, watching from a distance, looked up with a frown. "They shouldn't be doing that. We checked all the connections last night."
"I'll check what's going on," nodded one of the teachers, hurrying away.
By the window, Kari had turned to stare outside. The noise she had heard was easily explained—a tree branch, rattling against the window—but she continued to watch, her attention drawn. The next moment, the entire branch tore itself from the tree, sailing away in the rising gale.
"TK," she said quietly. "There's a storm."
The hall became quieter as the DJ turned down the music. Now the wailing of the wind could be heard from inside, and the children began to cluster at the windows, worried.
"Attention!" The headmaster's voice rang out. "If you could all please listen. I've just been informed there's a severe storm breaking outside. There's nothing to worry about," he added hastily, as the children murmured anxiously amongst themselves. "Now, some of you have parents coming to pick you up by car. That's fine. As for the rest of you, we think it would be too dangerous to let you walk home right now. You can stay in the school building until the storm subsides. If you have any questions, please ask myself or one of the teachers. Thank you."
For a moment, there was nothing but stillness and silence. Then, one by one, the students began to leave the hall, needing to find somewhere they could shelter, somewhere they saw as safe.
---….---
Two hours had passed.
TK huddled in the computer room, Kari and Davis sitting close to him. Normally, the three of them would have laughed and joked, and TK would have bickered with Davis as the cocky young man tried to win Kari's attention. Now, though, they were silent and still. Outside, the gale rattled the windows as it swept over the buildings.
"We should get home," Kari said, with a worried glance at the storm. TK shook his head. The teachers he'd spoken to had been telling all the children not to leave the building without permission, and he didn't want the two of them to turn up missing if a register was taken. For a moment, he thought longingly of the days when he could have simply emailed his mother: Freak weather, dance cancelled, come and pick me+Kari up please?
The door opened, to reveal not a teacher, but two children of TK's own age, dressed up like him for the dance. The taller one, a girl wearing what looked oddly like a flying helmet above her lilac dress, pushed a smaller boy into the room. "There you go. I told you we'd find someone if we kept looking," she said, taking a seat without being invited. "It's warmer in here, too. I know you," she continued breezily. "You're TK and that's Kari Kamiya. I'm Miyako, but most people call me Yolei around here."
"Well, as long as the power doesn't go down, I can do my homework in here at least." The boy swung himself onto one of the chairs and turned on the nearest computer.
"I used to love coming in here with my brother, when he was studying," Kari mused, and smiled as the words came out more easily than she'd expected. "There was always so much you could do." Her hand brushed idly across the keyboard.
"You think?" The girl—Yolei?-- looked at her oddly. "Didn't you get a bit lonely? I mean, even if you played games and all that instead of working. It must've been a bit boring after a while."
Kari gazed at her classmate for a few moments, wondering how she could even begin to recount what they'd been able to do with computers back then, the messages you could send instantly to people on the other side of the world, the games you could play, not just by yourself, but with anyone you could imagine. She supposed it was probably impossible. She'd only been seven or eight years old herself the last time she'd entered that online world.
The five of them waited, casual and tense by turns. Kari fell into a doze, resting her head on Davis' folded jacket. She dreamt of a cat, or perhaps only of the voice of a cat; miaowing plaintively, it seemed very close at hand to her, if still out of reach.
And she dreamt of voices, from the stars above.
What's meant to be will find a way. For lost you are, but not forever…
When she woke an hour or two later, the storm was still surrounding the building, wailing as though in distress. The two children that she didn't know were close together now, not necessarily out of friendship as much as worry. TK and Davis were both nearby, quiet now as the winds raged outside. The whole building seemed to rattle and shake in the gale.
"We should go and see what the others are doing," Yolei whispered. Nodding, Davis got to his feet and pulled at the door-handle.
The door was jammed.
"What?" The girl stared in terrified disbelief. "We're locked in? But nobody knows we're here!" Her eyes widened beneath her glittering goggles. "What if the building collapses? We could die up here!"
"We aren't going to die," TK told her, though he wasn't sure himself. It was no use; she wasn't listening. Picking up her shimmering purse, she made her way to the window at the other side of the room.
"We've got to get out of here," she told the others, giving the window a tremendous shove. "This old place sounds as if it could collapse any second."
With agility and skill that would have surprised any watcher, Yolei manoeuvred herself out of the window and onto the ledge outside. "There's bricks sticking out all the way up this wall. We can get down that way."
Kari gave TK a look that said eloquently: Well, what can you do? Climbing onto the desk, she followed her new friend outside. TK and Davis reluctantly did the same, taking the dark-haired boy with them.
Lost not forever. You are lost not forever.
The night was cold and dark, and the gale seemed to have grown even more powerful. The five children clung to the brickwork for dear life, hoping that the girl had been right about finding a safe way down.
"This is c-crazy, Yolei," the younger boy stuttered, scrabbling for his next foothold. "We sh-should go back in."
The girl in lilac turned to reply, and gasped in horror.
Above the children's heads, the storm was no longer a simple gale. The tornado spun like a vortex over the school, lifting roof tiles as if they were blades of grass.
What is meant to be will find a way, even if the whole of destiny stands in its path.
"Get inside! Get back in!" Davis, the quickest to react, scrambled back up the wall towards the window of the computer room, not knowing what he'd do there, just desperate to get away from the swirling storm. He had just time to notice that every screen in the room was glowing brilliant white. The next moment, there was a scream from behind him.
Kari was clinging to the nearest ledge by one hand. Flashes of white light sparked off her body, as though she'd been hit by a stray bolt of lightning. As she tried to pull herself closer to the wall, her fingers slipped, with no-one close enough to grab her hand.
Yolei screamed. Davis stared in terror.
TK didn't need a moment to think. Silently, he closed his eyes.
I told you I wouldn't ever leave you, Kari, he thought. Whatever happens to you, happens to both of us.
Davis's wordless gasp was carried away by the wind as TK let go of his handhold. The next minute, he too was pulled away from the building by the strength of the wind.
In the chaos below, nobody bothered to notice five missing children, swept away from everything they knew and into the heart of the storm.
For you are lost. But not forever.