The characters of Digimon don't belong to me. This is a story written just for fun. If you enjoy fantastic AUs, you could like it.

Chapter 1: The demon

The ship that had brought him from the Old Continent had taken nearly two months to complete the journey to Turtle Island, as expected. Takeru had sent letters to his brother, asking Yamato to wait for him at the port, but he didn't show up. With no other option, Takeru requested a cab to take him to Ishida Farm. However, nobody paid him attention.

Or almost nobody.

A young lady with orange hair and reddish eyes offered him a ride on her cart, which was attached to a beautiful brown horse. Takeru found amusing how that woman was wearing pants, boots and a large yellow shirt. Back in the Old Continent, he had never seen a lady wearing something other than long puffy dresses or, at least, long rounded skirts with buttoned shirts. The fashion of the colonies should be different.

"My name is Sora. Nice to meet you!" She greeted while helping him to put the luggage on the cart. "You're not from around here, are you? I mean... your clothes..."

"Oh, yeah! I bet you don't see high fashion from the Old Continent every day!" Takeru exclaimed. He could only imagine how much of an effect his lustrous black boots and the linen suit he was wearing could have on people who had never experimented the finest things in the world. As courtesy, he posed to her, letting Sora admire his elegant form for as long as she desired. Takeru even tipped his fedora, knowing how much that act increased his natural charm.

"So... are you coming to the cart or...?" Sora asked. Shockingly, she didn't seem too impressed by him.

"Yes, of course! I need to go to Ishida Farm! My name is Takeru Takaishi, by the way!" Takeru said, trying to get on the cart. He failed on the task, which made Sora help him.

"You have quite strong arms for a lady," Takeru praised, after being pulled into the vehicle.

"Thanks. But, to be honest, you happen to be very light."

Takeru blushed.

"Well, you see, I weight as much as any other man from the Old Continent. I'm also an intellectual, I don't really do labor work. But if you could measure my capabilities with a pen, I'm sure you would find them quite remarkable. You see, I'm about to write the greatest novel of the century, ought to become a classic. Therefore, I came to the bucolic environment of my infancy to seek the right inspiration."

"The way you speak is so cute!" Sora giggled. "From what I understood, you're an aspiring writer and you're here to be inspired by your family's farm. Oh, wait! Yamato has told me about his little brother and his mother living in the Old Continent! It's you, isn't it?"

"Oh, so my brother has talked about me?" Takeru was surprised.

"He talks about you all the time!" Sora told him. "Yamato showed me some of your letters, with your short stories."

"I can't imagine my brother showing personal letters to anyone. Since he was a kid, he has always been the broody, solitary type," Takeru commented. "He would have to be really close to someone to do that..."

Takeru observed Sora's cheeks getting pink and knew there was something up. However, Yamato's personal relationships weren't his most pressing concern, despite how amusing it would be to tease his brother about them.

"Why didn't Yamato come to pick me up?"

"That is strange," Sora said in a concerned voice. "Something must've happened!"

In about 30 minutes, they arrived at the farm. It seemed smaller and dirtier than Takeru remembered from his childhood. The wooden house behind the vegetable garden was old and in need of repairs on the roof. Standing on the porch, there was a blond and bearded young man pointing a shotgun to the front door. It took a couple of minutes for Takeru to realize that the tall and muscular individual was his big brother.

"Yamato! What's the matter?" Sora asked, jumping from the cart and running towards him. Yamato immediately turned to her, while putting the shotgun down.

"Sora, you have to go away, it's dangerous!" Yamato told her.

"If you're in danger, then I must stay by your side!" Sora stated, pulling a knife from her belt, which had been hidden by her shirt.

"YOU WERE CARRYING A KNIFE WITH YOU THIS WHOLE TIME?!" Takeru shouted, getting out of the cart. Yamato and Sora stared at him.

"Takeru?" Yamato muttered as his eyes shone with tears. "Is that really you?"

"Yes, it is I, Takeru Takaishi!" Takeru announced. "The brother you haven't seen in person for more than 12 years and, yet, you forgot to pick up upon his arrival!"

"I didn't forget to pick you up, something more urgent happened," Yamato told him.

"What could possibly be more important than picking me up?" Takeru asked.

Yamato pointed to the vegetable garden, where a hole was visible among the carrots, some of which lay on the soil.

"I was tending the carrots when a demon crawled out of the dirt," Yamato told the others. "A horrible creature that seemed to be made of mud itself... it's inside the house now!"

"A demon?!" Sora gasped.

"Demons don't actually exist!" Takeru stated.

"I know what I saw!" Yamato raised his voice. "A creature from Hell came out of the soil, stared at me with eyes as dark as the night and told me, in a horrifying hoarse voice... 'could you please let me use your bathroom and lend me some spare clothes?'"

Sora and Takeru exchanged confused looks.

"I didn't know demons could be so polite..." Takeru murmured, muffling a smirk.

"Then, you actually let the demon use your bathroom and wear your clothes?" Sora asked, raising an eyebrow.

"What was I supposed to do? Say no to that abomination from Hell? It could've cursed me!" Yamato said, anxiously holding one of his suspenders.

"I actually think it was a good idea to be kind to the demon," Sora told him, showing Yamato a reassuring smile. "Having a supernatural creature owning you a favor could be good for our cause."

"Cause? What cause?" Takeru asked. "What are you talking about?"

"Ehhrrrr... n-never mind that!" Sora stuttered, exchanging nervous looks with Yamato.

These two are hiding something from me! Takeru thought. Something other than their budding romance!

Suddenly, the knob on the front door began to move. Yamato, once again, pointed the shotgun at the door. Sora had her knife at hand. Takeru didn't know what to do, therefore he stood behind to give moral support if necessary.

As an intellectual, Takeru shouldn't believe in demons. However, he knew his brother wouldn't make up such a story. Besides, a part of him found the possibility of encountering a supernatural creature exciting. That could be what his soon-to-be-classic novel would be about! Fantasy tales were popular, after all! Better than writing boring stories about a farm! An idea for the title emerged in his head: The fantastic adventures of Takeru Takaishi!

Once the door was open, the creature at the other side did not live up to the expectations Yamato had created. The so-called demon was a young man with red hair, thick eyebrows and black eyes wearing identical brown pants, white shirt and suspenders to the ones Yamato had, with the difference that those clothes were clearly too large for the stranger.

"Thank you so much, Mr. Yamato! Now that I've cleaned myself, I feel actually alive again!" The young man said, slightly bowing to Yamato.

"I'm a bit confused..." Sora whispered in Yamato's ear, "is the demon possessing him?"

"I'm not a demon," the other corrected, looking into the young woman's eyes. "People might call me that, but that's not what I am. My name is Koushiro. It's a pleasure to meet you, Miss Sora!"

"How do you know her name, demon?" Yamato inquired, making the shotgun almost touch Koushiro's face. "Are you planning something wicked involving her? If you even think on touching a single hair of Sora's head, I will send you back to Hell myself!"

"Again, I'm not a demon, my name is Koushiro," the other said, taking a step back. "I learned her name the same way I learned yours. You could think of it as a kind of special power I have."

"A demonic power! I knew it!" Yamato nearly yelled.

"Yamato, please, stop bothering him," Sora requested. "Koushiro keeps saying he's not a demon. Stop calling him that."

"Yes, big brother, stop it!" Takeru said. "There are more important matters we have to discuss, such as..." he got closer to Koushiro "how long were you buried in the soil? Why were you there? How did you survive?"

"How long... well... what year is this?" Koushiro asked.

"The year of 1892 after the ascension of the Goddess," Takeru replied.

"Then, that means that I stayed buried for 52 years," Koushiro said.

"52 years?! You don't look like you're more than 20 years old!" Sora was astonished.

"Oh, I'm way older than that, actually," Koushiro told her.

"Are you saying that you're immortal?" Takeru inquired. "Is that how you stayed alive all this time under the vegetable garden?"

"I wasn't alive," Koushiro explained. "I was shot to death 52 years ago and then my corpse was buried. I only came back to life today and had to dig my way out of the soil. By the way, sorry if I startled you, Mr. Yamato."

"There was a corpse under my vegetable garden... for 52 years...?" Yamato muttered, terrified. "And then you just... came back to life...?"

"With the due respect, Koushiro, you don't seem too shaken for someone who just resurrected," Takeru commented. "That's especially odd, considering that I've never heard of anyone coming back to life in the history of the world."

"I've been dying and coming back to life for a really long time now," Koushiro told him. "Honestly, this last death wasn't as bad compared to the other ones I had."

"Are you telling me that you've had many horrifying deaths? That's fascinating! Tell me everything!" Takeru asked. "Your life sounds like an exciting horror story! Yes! I shall call the first chapter of my book 'The demon!'"

"I thought we had agreed not to call him that anymore," Sora commented.

"Maybe we could discuss that later, Mr. Takeru," Koushiro said, turning his attention to Sora. "There's something more important right now. Miss Sora, your mother and allies are in grave danger. Yamanaka's forces are preparing to ambush their camp this night."

"What?!" Sora and Yamato said at the same time.

"Yamanaka? Isn't that the name of the Lord appointed by the Emperor himself to guard Turtle Island?" Takeru questioned. "Why would such a remarkable person ambush anyone?"

"Hey, Takeru, don't defend that guy!" Yamato scolded his brother. "Old man Yamanaka has been exploiting the poor people of this island for decades! We've been fighting against his oppression!"

"W-Wait a second..." Takeru was getting increasingly nervous, "i-if you're opposing someone appointed by the Emperor, doesn't that mean you're opposing the Emperor...? If you're opposing the Emperor, that makes you..."

Sora exchanged a long look with Yamato. Then, she approached Takeru and gently touched his shoulder. She showed him a warm smile and let him know:

"We're called many terrible things by the Empire, but what we call ourselves is revolutionaries."

"My own big brother... a subversive... a traitor to the Empire..." Takeru murmured, "it can't be! I can never accept this!"

"Takeru, you have to understand!" Yamato tried to reach him. "You were raised in privilege, so you don't know, but there are countless people around the world suffering because of the Empire! We're fighting to help those people!"

"My mother and I don't always agree on things..." Sora muttered, looking down, "but she's fighting for the sake of the oppressed! I can't let her and the others get ambushed! We must go and help them!"

"Y-You can't expect me to simply cast aside everything I've learned to this day to follow you into a revolutionary camp!" Takeru stated.

Koushiro approached Takeru and told him:

"You know? Once the revolution is victorious and the Empire falls, I bet many people would like to read a book about how it all happened. The author of such a book would be famous in the entire planet."

"Hey! Leave my brother alone, demon!" Yamato hissed. "Takeru needs time to adjust his whole understanding of the world!"

"I see... I see... I can see it all now!" Takeru exclaimed. "An oppressive regimen, dashing heroes and their love story, the unlikely contribution of an actual demon! Oh! Everybody is going to want to read a book with all these elements! Let's go to the revolutionary camp, at once! Off to chapter 2: Daughter of the revolution!"

"Daughter? Wait, is that going to be about me?" Sora asked.

"What was that talk about love story? Whose love story is that?" Yamato inquired, blushing.

"How many times will I have to tell you that I'm not a demon?" Koushiro questioned.

While Sora prepared her horse, Yamato led Takeru and Koushiro to the stable to get three more animals. As the sun hid behind a cloud, the sound of bells entered their ears. They knew that sound came from the chapel in the village.

Koushiro gazed at the hills on the horizon, thinking about the last encounter he had with that person, knowing that he was still around, waiting for him.