YamiKibou-Hope - Thank you! I love Kenta so I'm glad he came out entire class knowing about Guilmon is just so cute 3
KingPhoenix666 - now I'm so curious as to who you thought Mr. Matsuki was before the reveal!
Puberty7756 - I hope that what I'm trying to get at will become more obvious a little later on! It's just a small detail to continue to attempt to justify aspects of the story. I sppose you'll just have to wait and find out :3c
oOo
"Wait, how did you do that Kenta?" TK and Kazu leaned over as the boy effortlessly flicked the strings of paracord together into another link.
"By following the directions." He replied, gesturing to the instruction sheet in front of him.
"Now I know that's a lie, because I followed it and I got this." Kazu held up his big ball of knots he'd spent the first two minutes making and the past ten minutes attempting to unravel. TK glanced at the progress he'd made on his own bracelet, which is to say, none. He'd gotten his fingers tangled in his knots somehow twice already.
"It really isn't that hard." Jeri said from across the table, holding up her finished bracelet. Kazu and TK stared at it with slightly open mouths in shock.
"How the heck did you do that so fast?!" Kazu shouted, emphatically waving around his bundle of knots.
"I was hoping to make one for Guilmon and Takato too since they aren't here." Jeri gave a soft smile as she sifted through some more cords, picking out red and black. "Oh, maybe I'll make one for Terriermon and Henry too… do you think Calumon will want one?"
"That's a lot of bracelets." Tk said, eyes wide, and Jeri gave a shy smile.
"With the pace you two are going at they'll all be done before you are." Kenta inserted with a somewhat smug smile as he continued to weave his cords together. "I can help you make them when I finish mine, Jeri." They worked in relative silence for a bit, TK finally getting a bit of a handle on how to thread the cords through, leaning over to help Kazu with his mess.
"So how long have you guys known Takato?" He asked, and both the boys instantly broke out into smiles.
"Oh, Chumley? Like, only our whole lives!" TK raised his eyebrows. No wonder they seemed so close. "Well, Jeri here's only known Takato for a few years, but Kenta and I have known him since before we could talk!"
"Really? That's… a long time." It was weird to think, but the only person he'd known that long was his parents and Matt - the other digidestined he'd met when he was young, sure, but not that young.
"Oh yeah." Kenta nodded as he finished his bracelet, turning it this was and that with an appraising eye. "Our parents used to constantly dump us at the others house to watch us. Playdates were the name of the game."
"Mostly it was Takato's parents that got lumped with us. Both Kenta and I have single parents, so when we were young they used to drop us off at the Matsuki's while they went to work. Even after that I had their phone number drilled into my head so much that I pretty much knew it better than my own name!" Kazu exclaimed, and gave another firm and earnest tug at his knot, which had somehow gotten bigger.
"You guys have single parents?" Tk asked, and then placed his hands over his mouth in mortification. "I-I'm sorry I don't mean to-" He knew how he could feel if someone went around prodding him about his parents. Kazu just waved his hand.
"Don't worry about it - I don't mind talking about my super awesome mom." He adjusted hat a little, focusing intently on his big mess of cords.
"Jeri, what colors do you think will work best for Takato?" The conversation drifted from there, and TK was glad for it, still feeling guilty for his nosiness and not wanting to have to explain his own family himself. Instead he turned his attention and focus onto the bracelet he was attempting to put together, trying to hold back the tears that pricked his eyes as he thought about his mom and his dad, about Matt, and how much he missed them.
Takato and Henry didn't show back up with their digimon until dinner, which was hot dogs that they got to roast on the fire themselves. Kazu had to be careful he didn't light his 'bracelet' on fire, his bracelet being the big old knot he had made that he had just stuck his hand through one of the loops. The boys naturally got a ton of hot dogs and tried to fit as many onto their sticks at a time in order to make enough for Guilmon and Terriermon as well, who were off playing with Calumon in the woods for now. After they had roasted their hotdogs their small group hid away in the trees to enjoy their dinner with the digimon before the teachers had their last activity for the day - scary stories - then lights out time in the tents.
"Something smells good!" Guilmon hurried up to them almost immediately, sniffing them up and down, tongue lolling out.
"Thank goodness you guys showed up, I thought I might have to scavenge for berries like some kind of animal!" Terriermon exclaimed, greedily taking a hotdog from Henry's plate and wolfing it down in two bites.
"Looks like they've been enjoying themselves." TK said to Takato as he watched them. Kenta, Kazu, and Jeri were handing out the bracelets from earlier, much to the glee of the digimon. Realizing that Terriermon had such a small wrist, Jeri was helping him fit it around the base of one of his ears.
"Yeah, they really deserve it." Takato agreed, taking a seat on the ground, back to a tree as he ate some of his chips. "They've had to do a lot of fighting recently." Tk took a seat next to him, nodding his head sympathetically.
"It's sweet that you guys are so concerned for them." TK smiled as he watched Kenta prepare to take a bite out of his own hotdog before Guilmon came in and ate it right out of his hand.
"I mean, you'd do the same for your digimon, right?" Takato glanced over at TK, who immediately looked down at his shoes.
"Of course. If I ever see him again."
"I'm sure you will." Takato said confidently. "I guess it's just taking your Digimon longer than it took Guilmon to get here for some reason." TK tried to give Takato a smile, but it faltered as doubt continued to creep in from the corner of his mind.
"Yeah…" TK sat and was fully prepared to let himself mope a bit, but instead Calumon plopped onto his head.
"Time for a game! You're it!" They cried and ran off. With a fond grin TK got back to his feet. Immediately the other digimon and kids ran away from him, laughing as they stayed out of reach. No point in letting himself fall into that dark hole - hadn't he learned by now that holding onto hope pays off? They continued to goof off for a while until finally Kazu (in an odd moment of responsibility) told them that they were expected to be back at the campsite by now.
The teacher whose name TK couldn't remember told them a ghost story, trying to scare the kids until he looked beyond them, his face going sheet white. TK was almost positive he had seen one of the digimon when he cried 'monster!', making most of the kids jump out of their skin. Ms. Asaji just gave him the most unimpressed look TK had ever seen. After that the kids, bleary eyed, went back to their tents for the night. He wouldn't be surprised if Takato and Henry ended up staying up to do more things with their partners, he might've even asked to join them but he felt exhausted, instead letting himself sink into his sleeping bag as sleep overtook him.
oOo
Ms. Asaji walked around, toting Mr. Mori behind her. At every shadow he seemed to jump, every single whisper of children in their tent or rustle heard from a sleeping bag sent shivers down his spine. She just rolled her eyes at his nonsense.
"W-what was that?!" He exclaimed, point directly at one of the children's tents. Ms. Asaji had to dig down deep in order to not just facepalm herself.
"Mori, it's just the children preparing for bed. There are no monsters." She said sternly. He continued to quake in his shoes.
"I-I'm sure of what I saw Ms. Asaji! Come on, you must believe in monsters." He pleaded, and she just shook her head as if to clear away the loose thoughts the word brought up.
"Not since I was a child."
"Then what about ghosts?!" He asked, searching desperately for validation. Ms. Asaji paused, mind drifting to the voices that could have been the wind she'd been hearing this trip, the glimpses of a blonde haired boy that she could never seem to get a good look at, the laughter that echoed among the children's laughs.
"I don't believe in monsters." She repeated, and left it at that.
oOo
TK was walking the hallways of his school. Well, he kept telling himself it was his school. The hall's extended and curved and intersecting in ways that his middle school never had. There was a voice calling his name from somewhere in the depths, or maybe hiding in the shadows, it was impossible to tell. Everytime it cried out is sounded like someone else. At first it had been Matt, yelling in pain. Then Patamon, desperately. That was followed by the other digidestined like Kari and Joe and Cody. He continued to dive deeper and deeper into the winding hallways.
The further he went, the higher the water got, until he was simply trying to run under water, the tide pushing against him. Finally, a person emerged from the murky black. There was Kari, hair floating freely around her in the water. Her face was expressionless as she glanced at him.
"How can you help anyone when you have no hope?" She asked curiously, and TK looked down to see a gaping hole from his chest, oozing orange sludge pouring from it onto the ground - which didn't make sense if they were under water.
"I-" He glanced up to see that Kari was gone, vanished in the water. The voices continued to call from somewhere deeper. TK tried to fight against the water, but suddenly he couldn't breath, the water forcing itself down his throat and into his nose, leaving his lungs burning and begging for air.
He had to reach them, they needed him-
Tk surged awake with deep and desperate breaths, eyes wide and panicked, struggling as he felt restricted, his arm's couldn't move he was trapped he was trapped he was… in a sleeping bag. Of course. In the panic of waking up he had forgotten where he was. He slowly extracted himself from the sleeping bag, or as he would now be calling it, death burrito. Untangling himself he glanced around to see sunlight streaming into the tent, Kenta and Kazu already gone. He must have slept through the wake up for the morning.
Stretching out his limbs and getting dressed into proper clothes for the day he emerged from his tent to the delicious smell of breakfast emanating from the picnic tables. Kenta and Kazu were already there, along with Jeri. Henry and Takato were missing for mostly obvious reasons.
"Enjoy yourself, sleeping beauty?" Kazu asked, wiggling his eyebrows.
"We didn't want to wake you up, you looked like you needed the sleep." Kenta explained, grabbing his bag that had been occupying the seat next to Jeri and reserving it for TK.
"We were going to grab you some food, but we didn't want it to be cold when you got here." Jeri added. TK nodded his thanks and munched down on his breakfast greedily, thankful for the food. After breakfast Takato and Henry emerged from the forest with empty plates, and it took no leap of logic to know what they had been up to. The schedule was pretty low key for today, and most of the kids seemed particularly excited about the prospect of swimming and water games. With mild embarrassment TK realized that he didn't in fact have a swimsuit to wear. All it really meant was that most of the day was spent with TK sitting off to the side, fiddling with his digivice and hoping that eventually it would start working. He was pretty sure that it used to have some kind of function that would show where other digivices are located, and that would definitely help him track down the others.
"So, where's your partner?" Jeri was back in normal clothes, though her hair was still soaking wet. She kept running her brush through it. TK pushed one of the buttons again.
"I don't know." TK said, looking down.
"Have you met him before?" She asked, turning her head to the side curiously.
"Yeah, and somehow we keep managing to get taken away from each other." He frowned, trying some button together only to be greeted with a still black screen. "It happens… a lot."
"Parting with someone is hard." Jeri replied solemnly, and TK could tell from the way she said it that she knew exactly what she was saying, and he could sense a kindred spirit in her. She knew sorrow like he did. Hesitantly he stretched out his arm before carefully placing it around her shoulders. She seemed surprised, but then turned and gave him a soft smile. He smiled back. "Oh, I forgot!" She exclaimed and reached into her pocket. "I made you this!" She pulled out a yellow and white paracord bracelet. "Since you couldn't manage to make one earlier!" She exclaimed with a proud smile.
TK was at a loss of word, reaching out and gingerly taking it.
"Th-thank you." He stuttered. "C-can you help me put it on?" She nodded and snapped it onto his wrist. A perfect fit.
"You're a really nice person TK. I'm sure you and your partner will be reunited." She gave a bold smile again. "I think Kenta and Kazu we're talking about this way to make huge bubbles, do you want to go and check it?" TK nodded and got up. He would continue to try not to let himself fall into despair. Everything would be okay. He'd find the other and find out how he was supposed to help everyone. He would be reunited with Patamon.
oOo
I hope you enjoyed this chapter! I know it's kind of low key as chapters go, and this is about all the time I'm gonna devote to this episode, but I figured I should at least give it more attention than I did in my previous draft. Have a lovely day! 3