Eternal
by Sweet-chan
Rating: M – for sexual suggestions in later chapters and yaoi m/m relationships.
Summary: Taichi and Yamato were just training at a dojo. They didn't expect to meet their destinies again (i.e. Digimon series) by having to become creatures of the night. Now they must both leave their past lives behind and follow a strange man named Larten Crepsley and his young apprentice Darren Shan to help save the vampire race from extinction. Digimon/Cirque Du Freak (the Saga of Darren Shan) crossover.
Sweet: What was I thinking when I started to write this fanfic?
Yamato: Absolutely nothing?
Taichi: That was my guess.
Sweet: Well, obviously I had to be thinking something, or else I wouldn't have been able to write at all. Duh.
Yamato: Don't be a smart-ass.
Taichi: Then don't encourage her, Yama.
Sweet: Yeah, Yama. Just shut up and do the disclaimer.
Yamato: Me?
Sweet: Do you see another Yama here?
Yamato: Uhh… yes.
Sweet: Oh really? (looks interested) Where is he/she then?
Yamato: Uhh… look behind you!
Sweet: He/she is behind me? Wow! (turns around)
Taichi: Bakas! Sweet-chan doesn't own Digimon or Cirque Du Freak – the Saga of Darren Shan.
Sweet: Yama tricked me…
Taichi: Sad, isn't it?
Yamato: Yes, very.
Darren: Just get on with the friggin' story already! You're taking up too much of the reader's time!
Sweet: My apologies. (only did this because the next chapter will be review responses…) Here we go!
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-Chapter One-
The Lake
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Above a small dojo in the city of Odaiba, the orange soft glows of the mid-morning sun peeked through the sakura leaves, casting spider web shaped shadows on the concrete stones leading to the entrance of the estate. The main building was there for sparring and training purposes – where one worked to get their bodies in shape, leaning kung fu styles and things similar to that. The dojo was free; a local dojo, not needed payment for how little people went there. It seemed dojos were slowly dying with the old ways…
In one of the main rooms of the main building on the estate, two males faced each other. Both males were slender; one with a mop of spiky brunette hair, bunched up even higher with his dark blue headband, while the other let his layered blonde hair fall in front of his crystalline colored eyes, hiding some of his serious expression. They both bowed to each other before taking a formal sparring stance, preparing to launch onto each other.
The brunette was the taller of the two, his dark chocolate eyes firm, boring into that of the blonde male across from him. He was the first to thrust his body forward at the other across from him, starting out with a few kicks and punches. They were dodged easily, though the blonde male didn't get any hits on the other either.
For minutes their bodies danced together, trying to catch the other off guard, faking a punch here, kicking at the other's heels there. They were equal for a while, until they began to get tired. The blonde was the first one to get a good hard punch. With his middle knuckle slightly erect, he jabbed the brunette in the middle of his shoulder blades while he had tried to spin around and give him a roundhouse kick.
The brunette, slightly irritated, lashed out and jumped onto his hands, spinning his body around and kicking the blonde male in the face. It must have hurt, for the one hit let out an aggravated cry, and kicked the brunette in the stomach, sending him off his hands and landing on his knees in a crouched position feet away.
They both glared each other down for a few moments, and reacted at the same time. The ending was quick after that; the brunette dodged a reckless punch from the blonde, and drew up a foot, kicking the other in the stomach hard, which sent him flying into the nearest wall – which, actually, wasn't too far away.
After deciding their sparring match was done, the brunette dropped his guard and walked forward to the blonde's side, grinning from ear to ear, which, evidently, was the exact opposite of his face just moments before. "Jeeze, Yamato," he started, leaning back up and offering a hand to the fallen blonde. "You hit the wall pretty hard there. Sorry. I guess I don't know my own strength."
The blonde, said to be Yamato, looked up at the offered hand, and hesitantly took it, so with the brunette's help, got to his feet once again.
"It's okay. I guess I deserved that, huh? Sensei says reckless actions always lose the battle." The blonde shrugged. "You've always been better than me at stuff, Taichi. This is just another one of them."
Taichi frowned, and then turned, stalking towards the door, where he had placed his small pack. He lifted the bag and searched through it, and then finally pulled two water bottles from within it. He dropped his pack onto the ground and stepped over the wooden boards of the dojo floor, near the center of the room, and threw one of the bottles to Yamato, which the blonde caught easily.
"You know, you have low self-esteem, Yama," Taichi stated nonchalantly, twisting the cap of his water bottle off and taking a large mouth full of its contents. "You can do a whole bunch of things better than me, and you know it."
"Like what?" Yamato asked, annoyed that Taichi had used his nickname. Only Taichi would dare to call him that, since they were good friends.
"Like..," Taichi thought about it for a moment, and while he did, took another sip of water to cover up his thoughts, and act like he already knew. "You're fast. See, you're skinner than me, and most of the time I have a hard time trying to match your movements so you can't get a good punch on me." Yamato rolled his eyes and took a drink of his water.
"Yeah, like I enjoy being this thin," Yamato stated.
"Well, why don't you eat more?" Taichi asked him, as he screwed the cap back onto his water bottle, and went back to his bag to place it back where it belonged.
"You mean like you?" Yamato asked teasingly, then chuckled at the other's expression and twisted the cap onto his water bottle as well. "I dunno. I just get full more so than you, I suppose."
"You suppose." Taichi lost the look he had given the other, and swung his pack onto his shoulder. "C'mon," he said, "sensei wanted to see us, remember?"
"Ah? Oh, yeah," Yama said, after tossing his water bottle into the trash on the way out of the room, following Taichi. The two, after leaving through the back door of the main building, descended down a stone path way leading through a marble arch into the forest behind the estate. Yamato found himself looking up as they passed through the white-stoned face of the archway, amazed how clean it was, since it was so old. But he guessed sensei's helper cleaned it often, since the stone represented good chi. Only that was how his sensei put it.
Like expected, it took a long time to travel to the lake where their sensei was usually found at. Yamato guessed that, because his sensei was nature-loving and happy, the man had found it while taking a jog through the dense forest behind the dojo. Neither Yamato nor Taichi ever actually asked how it was found, nor felt the need to do so. Although it might hadn't crossed Taichi's mind, since the brunette was usually always asking questions.
Yamato was the more worrisome one of the two. He always thought a concept over before taking action, though, when he did, he was fast; quick to the point. And, even though he allowed Taichi to be more of the "leader" of the two of them, even in the past as Digidestined, he liked to take control of things. That was just the way he liked things to go.
On Yamato's story, he was the true-born leader, and only let Taichi become it because he was "considerate," though some of the choices the brunette made were the opposite of what should have been done. That was the reason why he had gotten in so many fights with Taichi back in "the day" as Digidestined. He had thought Taichi only thought of power and himself, whilst the brunette was only using his own style of being a leader. It had taken a while for that concept to fully go through Yamato's brain, but when it finally had, the two ended up becoming inseparable as best friends.
The ground under the blonde's feet began to dampen, and immediately he knew that the lake wasn't far away. The path that Taichi was leading him was blocked by overgrown bushes and low branches, but the brunette dug through it and allowed Yamato to be first to cross into the small clearing, where the lake sat stilled, only rippling occasionally by a frog hopping from a Lilly pad, or a fish from underneath the water waking from a nap under the muddy depths of the lake's bottom.
The lake was shadowed under large trees in some places, and on the far right corner of the lake sat various large boulders stacked on top of each other where their sensei usually sat and took a nap, or focused on chi. What they found, or rather, what they didn't find, was bewildering.
"Where's sensei?" Yamato asked. The spot where the man usually sat on top of the boulders was empty, leaving the area cold and somewhat forgotten. It gave the blonde an eerie feeling. "He told us to meet us here, didn't he?"
Taichi was silent as he crept along the right side of the lake, stopping when he reached the boulders. He stared at them, as if the answer was hidden there, and then parted his lips to speak.
"He did."
Sometimes Taichi confused Yamato. One moment, the teen was hyper and happy, and then the next serious and thoughtful. The brunette had never been like that when they were Digidestined. Had coming to the dojo changed his friend?
"Then why isn't he here?" Yamato asked when his friend didn't say anything more. The silence was making him uncomfortable, especially with his best friend involved.
"I dunno," Taichi said, and then hopped onto one of the boulders, crouched down, and ran his hand along the smooth surface of the rock underneath. "Maybe someone called him out for important business."
"How would they contact him? Sensei doesn't have a cell phone," Yamato stated, watching, confused, as his friend continued to brush his slender fingertips against the smooth rock.
"Who knows? Sensei works in mysterious ways." Taichi stood back up and stared at the rock, rubbing his hands together in front of him.
"I think that's God, not sensei," Yamato mused, rolling his eyes as the brunette atop the rocks grinned.
"What if sensei is God?" he asked.
Yamato only shrugged. "So what do we do now? Wait for him?"
"I guess that's all we can do," Taichi said, but then added, "But if he doesn't show up by noon then we'll go back to the dojo," when Yamato gave him a look of annoyance.
The brunette haired ex-holder of courage sat down against one of the lower rocks, with his back resting on a higher one. Yamato climbed on as well, sitting next to his brunette-haired friend. They both sat in silence for what seemed like ages. When in reality, only an hour had passed.
Taichi pulled his pack off of his back while Yamato slept, his blonde head rested against the brunette's shoulder, and dug through it for his water bottle. When he found it, and began to pull it out, he lost grip on the pack and it went tumbling off the rock into the lake water below.
"Damnit," Tai cursed, as he gently lowered Yamato's head onto the rock, and then got up quickly, jumping from the rock onto the damp dirt by the left side of the lake from the way they came. With a bit of struggle for keeping on the bank, the brunette reached for his pack and snatched it up before it drifted any further into the center of the lake.
Sighing, Taichi stepped away from the edge of the water with his pack, and kneeled against the dirt, not caring that his knees got muddied from the damp soil (he was wearing shorts). He dumped the contents of his pack onto the ground to inspect their condition after being in the water.
In his backpack, Taichi always carried five things: his old goggles, a water bottle, a Swiss Army Knife, his wallet (full of money and family photos), and the dagger he had received from training with his sensei.
The dagger was tucked within a protective leather sheath, and on the hilt of it was connected a dark crimson ribbon, representing his courage. Once he had turned sixteen, he had received that from his coming of age, and for advancing so much (as well as Yamato, who had received a similar dagger with a dark navy ribbon, representing wisdom) in his class.
Taichi picked up the dagger, inspecting the leather covering the blade, then pulled it from its small sheath and inspected it further. But just as he was pulling it out, the bushes to his right shifted, and a figure shot from its hiding place to where the brunette was. The figure knocked the dagger from Taichi's hands and tackled him, pinning his arms to the ground in a swift movement, before the brunette could even comprehend what was happening.
"You die!" the figure said said, in a rather loud voice, as it shot his fist and connected it with the side of Taichi's head. Before falling unconscious, Taichi saw the pale and slightly scarred face of a boy around his age, looking angry and pumped with adrenaline.
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To be continued…