Series: Division of Destiny||Story: Reign of the Undead King||Chapter: The Beginning
Characters: Piemon, Vamdemon, Chosen Children, others||Pairings: Ken x Daisuke/Daisuke x Ken, Mimi x Sora/Sora x Mimi
Chapters: 12-40||Words: 2,733||Total: 31,992
Genre: Romance, Drama||Rated: PG-13
Summary: Vamdemon and Piemon rule supreme. Only now, ten years after their victory, are things about to change. For good or for ill.
Jun absolutely refused to let anyone around her get the idea that she in any way worried about her younger brother. He was eighteen; if the world had remained anything sane, he would've been legally adult and capable of being responsible for himself.
Well, legally, anyway. Jun doubted that even in a world that wasn't the twisted mess they had to live in that Daisuke could ever completely take care of himself. But that wasn't the world they lived in, and she didn't worry about him. At all. Ever.
Which was, of course, why she positioned herself on guard duty near his usual entrance and kept her eyes pinned to the monitor system. The cameras were set up to look like little more than trash or tree branches or sometimes rocks or debris, all carefully arranged not to draw attention to themselves, on the off-chance that someone came through with a mind to do a little cleaning up.
No one really expected that to happen. Their entrances and exits were always set up in areas that the vampires and Digimon weren't likely to want for themselves, giving them a better chance to remain hidden.
The quiet sound of a door clicking behind her and footsteps moving toward her didn't distract her from her observation. She'd be a poor guard if that could happen, and Jun enjoyed guard duty. It gave her a chance to relax, since very little tended to happen near the doors. All the fun events were elsewhere.
"He's not back yet?" Miyako drummed her fingers on one the tables, and Jun didn't have to look at her to know the expression on her face. Exasperated and annoyed, since Daisuke had once again taken out the crossbow she'd designed. If that broke, she didn't know if Miyako had the supplies to make a second one.
Not that Daisuke gave a single thought to that if it came to putting a bolt through Vamdemon's heart, or that of one of the pack. Though the head vampire would forever be his most prominent target. And she didn't blame him one bit. She'd do the same thing if she had the chance.
"Not yet." She peered a bit closer at one of the monitors for a few moments, then shook her head. Nothing more than a stray cat. Which was rare enough in and of itself; few wild animals survived in the remains of the cities these days. This one seemed to be doing well for itself, since it was slender instead of bone-thin. Lucky beast.
Miyako sighed and threw herself down into one of the other chairs. "He's going to get himself killed one of these days. Or worse, caught."
Jun's hands clenched at the thought of Daisuke caught by the vampires. He'd survived it once, and escaped by what she still called sheerest dumb luck, and to have it happen again, when they were just building themselves into a position where they could strike back? That would be worse than a nightmare. It would bring everything they'd fought for collapsing around them.
"He knows how to stay away from them." Jun kept her voice calm. She didn't think she could've done that when she was younger and shrieked with joy at the slightest sight of a popular actor or musician.
"I know he knows how. Is he going to want to, until he can actually pull off a kill?"
She's right. Jun knew Daisuke as well as anyone else, and until he managed to kill a vampire, he'd find a way to go out as often as he could. He'd probably keep doing it even after he killed one, until they were all gone.
When she said nothing out loud, Miyako nodded, lounging back in the chair. It didn't look comfortable, being a cobbled together seat made half of wood and half of metal, beaten into suitable condition with hammers and prayers, but she did it anyway.
"I need to go out and look for more materials if he's going to keep taking the crossbow." Miyako tilted her head up so she stared at the ceiling. "Just in case."
She didn't say what she meant by that. Jun had her own thoughts on the matter, which coursed from 'in case my idiot brother breaks or loses the one we have before he gets himself killed or caught' to 'in case he actually manages to kill a vampire with it, which means we'd need to get more because they're actually useful against them'. Of course, Miyako could just want more crossbows either way. She didn't howl with bloodlust, but Jun suspected that was because howling was a very good way to get all of their enemies after them, and Miyako wasn't stupid enough to want to do that.
"Talk to Ken or Osamu about it. They should be able to give you some good pointers." Between the two of them, they knew where almost all of the usable trash and materials were. What was left of them anyway; it was getting harder and harder to find anything they could get without someone noticing.
All the vampires' fault, of course, and the Digimon. Jun remembered vividly the day it all began, when what had begun as something she hadn't believed, thinking it was just people in costumes causing trouble, turned into a nightmare that the world had yet to wake up from.
She could never forget that day. Though there were times she wanted to.
"Jun! Daisuke!" Motomiya Ariko slammed the door closed hard, leaning up against it even as she slammed all the locks shut. "Get in here!"
Jun didn't even want to look up from her magazine. She'd heard all kinds of interesting things about her favorite musician and this article promised to tell everything. "Whatever it is, I didn't do it, Daisuke did!"
"I did not!" Daisuke stomped his foot, shaking his head at the same time. "I didn't do anything!"
"Get in here!" Mrs. Motomiya snapped the command out, and the siblings looked at one another, each as confused as the other, before they headed into the living room.
Their mother still pressed herself against the door, and Jun noticed quicker than her brother: she was ghost-pale. She'd never seen Mom looking like that before, not even when Dad got into that train accident and broke his arm.
"Mom? What is it?" Jun took a careful step closer, eyes darting this way and that. "Is Dad all right?" She hadn't heard anything about any accidents, but maybe there'd been a phone call or someone had come to the door and she'd missed it…
Ariko drew in one sharp breath, then another. "I don't know. He's still at work. But I don't want either of you going near the doors or the windows." Her gaze flicked behind them, and Jun glanced over to see the broad window of the living room, giving them a rather nice view of the city itself.
There were things moving around out there. They didn't look right, but they weren't close enough for her to figure out why. Jun frowned, starting to move closer to get a better look, when her mother moved past her and quickly shut the curtains.
"Don't look. Don't go near them. Go to your rooms and stay out of sight."
"Mom!" Daisuke stamped his foot again, quivering with curiosity. "What is it? What's going on?" His eyes suddenly grew round with childish delight. "Is it monsters? Is it aliens? Are we being invaded?"
Before her brother had been born and eventually developed a personality, Jun hadn't known what it meant to want to facepalm. Before he reached the age of six, she'd set a personal record for how often she wanted to do just that. Momoe hadn't told her that being an older sister came with moments like that, and there were times she wanted to deny her best friend privileges for withholding the information.
"Daisuke, be quiet, please." His mother offered a weak smile, and Jun wasn't deceived one bit. Something was going on, and while she didn't know what it was, she knew her mother was terrified.
Before the older woman could stop her, Jun darted over to the television and turned it on, scanning for the nearest news channel. She knew most of them by heart, if only by what she wanted to avoid, and landed on one quickly. Now all she could hope for was that they were carrying something that would shed a little light on this situation.
"Jun." Her mother reached for the remote control and Jun pulled it away from her, shooting a sharp look at her.
"Whatever's going on, hiding from it isn't going to make it not happen." She'd learned that from reading as much as she could about her favorite stars. Besides, if Daisuke were that excited about it, the sooner they found out the truth, the sooner he'd actually calm down.
Before her mother could say anything else about it, the news anchor appeared on the screen, wearing the usual practiced smile that those of her profession the world over perfected before they were ever allowed on-screen.
"Something strange has been going on in downtown Odaiba since this morning," the anchor began, but Jun quickly stopped listening in favor of watching the video itself.
Monsters. Dozens of them, perhaps even hundreds of them. She couldn't count them all, and stopped trying after the first few minutes. A cold ache centered itself in her heart and she glanced at her mother, who stared at the screen with a lost and confused look in her eyes.
Jun still wasn't entirely certain of what was going on, but what she did see, she didn't like at all. She didn't want to think the things she saw on the screen were real, especially not with the way Daisuke squealed and stared at them. If they were real, then they were all in a lot of trouble, and she didn't want trouble. She wanted to finish her magazine and read the next one and call up Momoe and chat about the latest cute boys they'd both seen and what the chances were that she'd ever fill every inch of her special autograph T-shirt with names.
Her mother's voice whispered in her ear, soft and terrified. "I saw some of them outside in the streets. They're coming this way."
Jun tensed, eyes flicking to the curtained window, part of her wanting to yank it aside and stare the danger in the face, just to make it go away that much faster. That had worked with her fears of the monster that lived under the bed. She'd spent weeks getting out of bed every night after her parents closed the door and stared at the bed until she knew nothing was under there at all.
"What are they? Where did they come from?" What did they want? Questions that she'd heard in a dozen monster movies and this time there weren't any convenient answers.
The building shook. It was too well-made to hear anyone from outside, but Jun stifled a shriek of her own as ornaments and books fell from shelves and she had to struggle to stay on her feet. Again the building shook, harder than the first time, and now sounds could be heard, shrieks of fright spiraling higher and higher.
"Mommy!" Daisuke clung to his mother with an eight-year-old's death grip and Jun kind of wished she could do the same. She wasn't sure if Daisuke thought he was protecting Mom from the monsters or being protected from them, and she really had other things to think about right now anyway.
"We should get out of here." Jun wasn't sure why the building was shaking, only that it hadn't stopped, and it didn't feel like an earthquake. She'd gone through a couple of those before, and this just wasn't like them.
Mrs. Motomiya hesitated only for a few moments before she nodded and hurried as best she could down to her bedroom. Jun followed, going the extra few steps to her own, and threw what she could into a bag, even as the shakes continued, and strange cries came from outside, cries she didn't understand even though they were in clear Japanese.
She wanted to look out and see what was going on, and started to reach for one window, when glass suddenly exploded inward, and she caught a little glimpse of gleaming white feathers that weren't like any swan she'd seen in her life.
"Jun!" Her mother's voice cracked sharply and she didn't waste any time. She'd probably get a better view from outside anyway, if they could get out there in one piece.
She took just enough time to grab a few things for Daisuke, mostly changes of clothes, and his favorite soccer ball, something that would keep him occupied.
Her mother unlocked and opened the door carefully, taking her time to make certain that if anything was out there, it wouldn't notice them. She needn't have taken the trouble; there were enough people screaming and running up and down the hallways that they easily blended in once they left the apartment.
They'd never seen the apartment building again. Half an hour after they'd left it, the building hadn't been there for them to return to anyway.
A month after they left it, the city as they'd known it hadn't been there at all.
Jun breathed in, trying not to focus on the whirlwind of memories that shot through her mind. She didn't think about that day too often. She had too much to do usually to worry about it, much less about the events after that. Surviving took precedence over everything else.
Miyako's fingers pressed into her shoulder suddenly, and Jun's attention snapped to the monitors, wanting to make certain she hadn't missed anything while caught up in her memories.
"Is something there?" She murmured the words as softly as she could. Miyako didn't answer, only peered harder at the screens from over her shoulder, and Jun checked again.
Something was moving around there. She couldn't tell what it was; he, she, it, or otherwise – one couldn't always be certain with Digimon – seemed to be good at hiding just where it was. But not the fact it was there at all. Wind dusted over dry leaves and trash, sending them swirling past the monitors, and Jun's own fingers clenched on her chair arms. No one had ever made it this close to one of their entrances.
Their standard protocol demanded that at least one person be in the area to make certain nothing went wrong. Digimon could die, or be reformatted, she didn't know what the technical term was, and now wasn't the time to quibble about it. They'd never managed to kill one themselves, but they'd seen it happen, usually at the hands of Vamdemon himself.
"Is anyone out there now?" Jun wished Daisuke had stayed closer to the entrance, just for something like this. But he listened to himself more than here. That wasn't likely to change any time soon, and she hadn't made up her mind on if she wanted it to.
"Ken's in the area."
Oh. Well, that didn't surprise her. She leaned forward and flicked one finger over the communications system, sending a soft frazzle of static across to him.
Well, 'communications system' was really a fancy word for something that was little more than a slightly more complex walkie-talkie in her opinion. Osamu and Miyako had worked on it together and it generally worked. Daisuke never bothered to take a headset with him when he left, not wanting to get distracted when he was hunting. She reserved her special smacks for him whenever something he should've known about and would have if he'd had a headset on him happened while he was out.
"Ken, be on the alert. There's something in the area. Could be a Digimon. We can't really see it."
"Right." Ken's reply was terse and to the point; the less time he spent talking, the more time he could spend finding out what was going on.
Jun watched the screen; whatever was going on, she couldn't help but be worried. Her brother was out there somewhere, and if he'd gotten himself caught up in this, whatever it was, she needed to know.
To Be Continued