Series: Division of Destiny||Story: Reign of the Undead King||Chapter: The Meetings
Characters: Piemon, Vamdemon, Chosen Children, others||Pairings: Ken x Daisuke/Daisuke x Ken, Mimi x Sora/Sora x Mimi
Chapters: 17-40||Words: 2,579||Total: 45,373
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.
Ken knew that he should've stayed in the shadows, where the Digimon and her prisoner couldn't see him. The idea of doing so sparked briefly in his mind before fading away as he realized they were on their way back to Vamdemon's castle. To see a human mewed up in there when they were out of it, so close to being free…he inched just a fraction closer. Perhaps that was what caught the girl's attention, as she turned to look directly at him.
Now that he'd been seen, he wasn't going to back off just yet. He would need to find a way to distract them so he could use one of the lesser entrances and not bring too much attention to their gateway here.
"Who are you?" He thought she looked vaguely familiar, but not like anyone that he knew personally. It bothered him, and he wanted to figure out why.
The girl blinked a little, head turning up toward her captor before she looked back at him. "I don't know." Her cheeks tinged a faint bit of red. "I've…kind of forgotten my name."
Ken's hands clenched together and he bit back a hiss of anger. Daisuke hadn't even been that bad, and he'd spent years as Vamdemon's blood pet. He looked toward the Digimon.
"I don't suppose you know her name?" Not that he expected an answer if she did. The Digimon would likely fly away at the first chance anyway.
The reply definitely wasn't what he expected. "What concern is it of yours?"
"It's only polite to exchange names when you meet someone for the first time." Ken flashed his warmest smile, one that he'd practiced to use when he and the others encountered other groups of rebels or refugees or anyone that he could get something out of. Osamu had told him many times he was very good at looking very innocent.
She didn't move, except to draw the girl closer to her. "You don't have any reason to see her again."
"LadyDevimon…" The girl leaned herself in more to the Digimon. "He hasn't done anything."
The Digimon looked down at her, and Ken would've sworn that he saw genuine concern in her scarlet eyes. "You remember Vamdemon-sama's instructions." It was not a question, and Ken could see the way the girl's shoulders slumped down at once.
"I remember."
LadyDevimon turned her attention back to Ken, eyes narrow and cold. "We have no time to speak to you. Best that you hide yourself, human, and forget that you ever saw either of us."
Ken wanted to do far more than just talk. He wanted to grab the girl and pull her away from the Digimon, to take her to their base and make certain that she didn't have to suffer whatever life she endured that gave Vamdemon, of all beings, such control over her life.
He had no chance, however. As quick as thought, LadyDevimon whisked away, the girl still held tight in her arms. Ken watched as they faded into the distance, and leaned his head against one of the tree trunks behind him.
What was that? He'd hoped to have…something more happen. To have more of a conversation, to know more about whoever she was. He'd barely even squirmed out a name, and it wasn't even hers.
How can she have forgotten her own name? It didn't make sense, at least from what limited information he had. Had Vamdemon done something to her? Why do whatever it was and not make her one of the pack?
He shook his head. He needed to make certain Daisuke made it back in one piece, and so far there hadn't been any sign of him anywhere. That didn't bode well.
Daisuke could've strangled something, or someone, if he'd had someone there to strangle. Hours and hours of walking through the city and all he had to show for it were sore feet and being as bored out of his mind as someone could be when their world had been all but destroyed and vampires ruled everywhere. He'd seen a few quickly moving shapes that he guessed were humans scavenging, since none of them demanded to know who he was and what he was doing, and most of the Digimon would gladly interrupt any stray humans they found to do just that.
Never did find out what those noises were. He'd heard a furious scream, but it had been several streets away and by the time he'd made it over there, all he'd found were a few hints of something having burned.
He stared for a few more moments at the remains of whatever fight this had been and decided that was enough for now. He'd done his best to track down Vamdemon, Taichi, or any other vampire that wanted to turn up and he didn't have a single thing to show for it. It was time to go home.
Even with as annoyed as he was and as empty as the streets were now, he didn't turn directly back the way he'd come. He knew at least four different ways to get back to the refuge from here, and he picked one he hadn't used in at least a month's time. Ken had taught him that; never to use the same route twice in a row, and to put as much time in between the routes as possible. It would keep the odds of being trailed back a little thinner.
He darted along with his usual speed, crossbow held ready in one hand, and still watching for vampires, just on the chance that he got lucky. If he hadn't after spending what had to have been at least half the day, if not more, out on the streets where his scent would draw any hunting vampires to him, then he likely wasn't while on the way home. But he hoped anyway.
Wonder if I scared them. Daisuke smirked at the thought. To think that the big, bad, powerful flock of Vamdemon's vampires would be scared of little him, just because he had something that could kill them. It wasn't as if they hadn't torn an entire city apart, and gone on to shred the world itself. No, they were scared of a teenager with a crossbow.
He hoped they were. The thought of scaring the bastard sent a thrill all through his veins.
He wondered for a moment what that would taste like and shoved his thoughts away from that without hesitation. He hated wondering what someone tasted like, what blood tasted like. For the most part he'd managed to stop himself from thinking it, but he'd been told that after being a blood pet, it was only natural.
Daisuke really didn't want to think about what it meant for their world that people knew that.
It really just made him far more determined to find a way to plant a stake through Vamdemon's heart and then the rest of the pack. But Vamdemon first, if at all possible. He'd take any of the others he found, but that blue-eyed bastard was always first priority.
Shoving those thoughts away as well, for the sake of making better progress without losing awareness of what was going on around him, he did a quick check and nodded. He was close enough to the entrance to start being extra cautious.
He still remembered what it was like to relax going home, instead of preparing to plow through security measures. Only vaguely, but he remembered.
Before he stepped into the arch that defined the way home, at least for this particular area, a slim shadow moved closer. Daisuke started to bring up the crossbow, adrenaline flooding through him, and the shadow froze where it was.
"Daisuke." Ken's voice floated out of the shadows, and Daisuke relaxed a fraction. "You've been making people worry."
Daisuke rolled his eyes. Great. Just what he needed. Smothering from more people than Jun. "She told you to wait for me, didn't she?"
Ken, now a trifle more visible as Daisuke's eyes adjusted quickly to the deeper darkness here, shrugged. "I wasn't doing anything else with my time. Did you have any luck?"
"No. Not so much as a glimpse of a fang." He would come back out. He knew that. Ken knew that. They all knew that. Until they had definite proof one way or the other on how much use a crossbow could be, until Daisuke found one of those vampires and did something about them, he'd be out there regularly.
Ken made a noncommittal noise and turned, starting the first of the entrance procedures. Each of them was different for each entrance, and keeping them all straight was a nightmare. Daisuke didn't mind. He'd had worse nightmares.
"I saw something interesting while I was out here." Ken murmured, keeping his voice pitched low. "I think everyone should hear about it, though."
Daisuke glanced over; Ken called very few events interesting. And to not want to tell him about it right away? That caught Daisuke's own interest right away.
Damn. Now he was jealous. Something interesting happened to Ken while he killed time and his feet prowling for creatures that could take his head off if he didn't find them first. Some days were just not fair at all.
Once again the leadership group gathered together. No one was especially thrilled about a meeting so close to the appointed time for going to meet this spy of Gennai's, but Ken insisted. In the hour or so since he and Daisuke returned from above, he'd made certain that all of them came.
"You did what?" Osamu stared at his brother as if he'd never seen him before in his life.
"I saw a female Digimon carrying a human and I spoke to her." Ken shook his head, hands clenching on the table before him. "I hadn't meant to. If she hadn't called to me first, I wouldn't have, but once she did, I reasoned it was better to meet them on my terms rather than have the Digimon start attacking the entrance shelter."
Osamu took a long breath, shook his head, and turned to Shuu and Shin. "We're going to start making preparations to close up that entrance permanently."
The Kido brothers nodded and would've started to list what they needed right away, if Ken hadn't interrupted.
"You're missing the point. Vamdemon is keeping a human prisoner. Not for the feeding pens. She wasn't fed well enough for that." Ken's lip curled at the thought but he continued with what he was saying. "The Digimon – LadyDevimon – said that Vamdemon had 'given instructions'. Which means she's a personal prisoner of some kind."
Daisuke hadn't said a word throughout Ken's whole speech. He held a cup of hot tea in his hands, but it had gone untouched for nearly five minutes before Jun touched the side of his hand, asking if he were all right.
"Huh? Yeah." Daisuke took a small sip of his drink. No one genuinely believed him, and for good reason. Ken cast a quick glance his way, though he wasn't sure if Daisuke noticed or not.
Miyako, ever the embodiment of tact and sensitivity, leaned over to stare at him. "You spent a couple of years there. Any idea of who she might be?"
Ken groaned and slumped back in his seat. There were times for Miyako's complete straightforwardness. In his opinion, this wasn't one of them. Though, he had to admit, it was a good question.
Daisuke shot a heated glare toward her, but answered anyway. "That's the problem. I was trying to remember if I had." His fingers tightened on the cup, almost bending the poorly made metal. "I…I think I do." He stared down for a few moments. "You know I don't try to think about then very often."
No one protested; Daisuke's way of thinking about what happened was to either punch something or go hunting for something. They simply waited.
"He didn't take me everywhere with him." Daisuke slowly began to dredge the words up from the deepest pits of his memories. "I never heard everything. But every now and then I would hear him talking about someone. I never heard a name. It was like no one wanted to say this person's name. It might not even be the person you saw, Ken. But I think I remember him calling whoever it was a 'her'. So…I don't know."
"What would he say about her? Or whoever it was?" Ken asked, his voice low and thoughtful. Daisuke scrunched his face up, thinking harder.
"He would just…ask how she was doing. Sometimes I heard him tell one of the pack that he was going to see her." Daisuke slowly shook his head as he fought for other memories. "That's about it. If he did anything else about her, I can't remember."
Osamu, more interested now than he had been, leaned over. "So what we know is that Vamdemon is keeping a human prisoner, one that he's not using as a blood pet, and she has a very powerful Digimon guarding her, and she's also allowed out for air."
Ken nodded, his mind racing to put all of these pieces together. "He's had her for years, if who Daisuke remembers is the same person." Something else occurred to him. "She didn't seem…scared of LadyDevimon. Not at all." That was something unusual all by itself. Digimon weren't creatures of comfort to them, but he knew he'd seen trust in that girl's eyes. Trust centered on the demon that held her close.
"So what are we going to do about it?" Miyako asked, eyes bright with annoyance. "What if she can help? What if she knows things?"
"We need to know more about her." Ken pointed out a bit reluctantly, his more practical side surging forward. "If she doesn't even know her own name, she might not know anything that could help us."
Miyako threw herself back in her chair, drumming her fingers on the table. "So, like I said, what are we going to do?"
"Gennai said that his agent is very highly placed in Vamdemon's power structure." Osamu spoke slowly, thoughtfully. "It's possible that the Digimon you saw could even be the same one we're going to meet. If not, the agent might be able to tell us something more. Or find out. That's probably the best way we have to get more information right now."
Ken nodded, straightening up more. It always felt better to have some kind of plan in mind. "We don't have that much longer until the meeting. Is everyone ready?"
"As ready as we'll ever be." Iori said. He still didn't look entirely convinced that any of this was a good idea. Ken made a point to talk to him about it when he had more of a chance. They needed everyone committed to this, or something stood a chance of going wrong.
As the others began to disperse, Daisuke remained where he was, still sipping at his tea, but with an air that indicated it was more out of not wanting to waste a drink than actual interest in it. Ken watched him, not sure at all of what to say. He had few moments like that, but so many of them seemed tied up with Daisuke.
So for now, he said nothing at all, but remained by his friend's side in companionable silence.
To Be Continued