Play of Spirits
Chapter 2 – The Last Trailmon (Takuya)

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The trains looked more like something out of a dream than something Takuya should be running at break-neck speed to catch. And he probably would break his neck if he missed it, or worse, because the train tracks criss-crossed and there was no guarantee that, if he went sprawling onto the tracks, there wouldn't be another weird-looking train coming up behind him.

And considering he'd ran out onto the road to catch a ball and wound up in the path of an incoming truck, he couldn't count on Lady Luck being on his side anytime soon.

But if Lady Luck did happen to be listening, he promised the strawberry he'd tried and failed to pinch off his brother's birthday cake in exchange for catching the train's rails.

And then the edge of the platform was coming up and he decided to discard Lady Luck in favour of reciting the mantra in his mind – let me catch it, letmecatchit – as his heart thudded even louder than before.

Then he jumped, closed his eyes (which, in retrospect, wasn't the most sensible thing to do) and snatched out blindly. His fingers caught rails and his foot caught moving ground and he breathed a sigh of relief and opened his eyes and got a more solid grip.

Another train whizzed past him.

The kid on the elevator was there. The one with one hell of a glare when he'd poked the other's shoulder – but really, what else was he supposed to do when he was being ignored? He supposed the other guy didn't have any siblings or anything. No way could one escape being touched and prodded and poked and annoyed in far more roundabout ways otherwise.

He wondered how the other would deal with doctors, then, but the creak of the rails told him he should be thinking about more important matters. Like getting inside the train. And where it was going. And when he'd need to start heading home before he faced being grounded for the rest of the year. And what sort of game this would turn out to be. Sure was interesting, with the trains looking so different from each other, so personalised. The one who'd passed him was blue. The one he'd jumped on was red and he was pretty sure he'd seen a row of white teeth as well. As long as those teeth didn't open, it'd be cool – but really, what sort of train had a mouth that could actually open? Weight probably made that impossible.

'You might want to get inside, kid.'

…apparently not. Though why he jumped to the train talking being the first possibility, he wasn't too sure. But when he hurriedly shoved himself through the door and looked around, there was no-one in the carriage. And though he could make out a few shadows on the one up ahead, surely they couldn't talk that loud? Then again, if it was staff they probably had a microphone or speakers or something.

'Of course,' he repeated out loud to himself. 'Trains don't talk.'

'They do when they have something to say,' was the reply.

And that cinched it. It was definitely the train talking.

Or someone pretending to be the train. That made more sense. Like those puppet shows where the puppet masters became the voice of their puppets. Or a ventriloquist who could toss their voice around and make it seem like anything could talk, was talking… Though lips moving often gave that away, or something common in their tone or something. Then again, the guys who performed in the middle of the shopping centre were probably a far cry from professional ventriloquists.

But still, he'd never seen one pretending to be a train before. And if the train was in a chatty mood… 'Anything you can tell us about this game we're heading to?' he asked hopefully.

The train chuckled. And this time, there was no doubt a few seconds later to remind him that trains didn't talk, because the carriage bounced and threw him to the floor in perfect time to that laughter. He supposed that was the definition of a belly laugh and the carriages doubled as the train's belly – and that was actually kind of gross. Meant passengers were always sitting or standing in a train's stomach.

The train responded to his question while he was still trying to wrap his head around that revelation. 'You're already in it, kid, and I dunno if you should be rooting to pass or fail this bit to be honest.'

Takuya picked himself off the ground and processed that. 'Why?' he asked, a little tentatively. Then again, if it was a haunted house or something, that'd be fun. 'Is it something bad?'

'Well…' And the carriage bounced and almost threw him down again; he grabbed at the nearest seat to hold him. 'Depends on whether you want to fight for something no-one else is fighting for.'

And before Takuya could ask what that meant, the seat he was gripping disappeared, as did the floor beneath him.

This is your first test.

And that time, it was a woman's voice but he didn't note that till a bit later. He was too busy falling again – but this time it wasn't a quick and dusty collision with the carriage but a freefall into nothing. Like one of those dreams that never ended until he managed to roll out of bed and it was the main reason Shinya got to keep the upper bunk – and that was really unfair because all the cool kids slept in the upper bunk it would do more than just hurt if he fell off the bed from that height so it really was more practical like that and Shinya didn't really roll off his bed. He just sat up and screamed when he had weird dreams, or nightmares. And they weren't always the same thing, either.

Though this time, no matter how Takuya twisted and turned his body, he couldn't seem to roll out of his bed. Which decreased the likelihood of the whole thing having been a dream but the train, in all honesty, gave the possibility more points. After all, he'd never heard of a talking train outside of cartoons in the waking world before.

Then again, it could've been the conductor doing ventriloquism.

Yeah, that was probably it.

Though it really sucked how he had the time to think about that and he was still falling. He was going to wind up as a pancake at this rate!

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The boy who wore goggles wound up alone as well. That was interesting, because he'd tried to communicate with everyone he saw, no matter how often he was snubbed. And yet he'd run for Worm and barely made it.

She, of course, wouldn't have let him fall if he hadn't made it. Though she'd heard those thoughts, snaking up the walls of his mind. As she heard now when he did fall, and fall, and fall…

Every mind had shadows, after all. And even though her dominion was not the shadows, she could hear their cries as loud as the light in their souls – and perhaps it was precisely because it wasn't her domain but the opposite to her domain that she could hear them so very well.

And she could use those to strike the embers of those souls and light them up.

Even if it went against the principles she stood for, she had to.

She watched him continue to fall.

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If he was asleep and Shinya was in the bunk above him, then couldn't he do his big brother a kindness and wake him up from this?

'Shinya…' The rushing air snatched the words right out of his mouth and swallowed them and he didn't get to hear them at all. And if he didn't hear it himself, how was anybody else – namely Shinya or the train conductor or the train himself (because that was a male voice, yeah?) – supposed to hear him? 'Shinya!'

Yeah, that was better. And kind of spooky how his voice echoed all around him like that.

And Shinya wasn't replying, but then again, how was he supposed to know if his voice was travelling through the dream world and into reality?

Or was this part of the game he was promised? Wasn't there a fairytale that went like this? They floated down eventually, didn't they? And there was a cat guiding them too. But the only cat he knew was his neighbour Michi's and she was such an old frail thing who only lounged under the tree in the back yard all day and wasn't going to be useful as any sort of guide – unless it was a guide to a nap.

And having a nap while there was no ground under his feet sounded pretty… impossible.

Though was this really falling from a great height? Somehow, the wind didn't sting as much as he expected. It hadn't blown the hat off his head or the goggles with it (and he patted his head just to make sure of that when the thought occurred to him), and though he couldn't see a thing, it wasn't because he'd squeezed his eyes shut because something was trying to claw his eyeballs out. He just couldn't see anything because it was dark. Pitch black.

Heh, maybe he was floating in something instead. Breathable water… which might also explain where the train disappeared to. He tried swimming a few strokes, and then wondered how long he'd have to swim before he proved himself wrong – or just gave up on it.

But really, the chances of him reaching something were pretty good, considering how long it generally took for him to give up on something.

So he resumed his swimming with a gusto, waiting for his fingers to smash (or even lightly graze) something: the plastic coated wall of the inside of a train carriage, or the colder windows, or the fuzzy seats or the thin rails or just something –

And he decided he better start calling for Shinya again, in case it really was a nightmare. It was good to explore every available option, after all, and if the Kanbara brotherly vibes could wake Shinya up and, in turn, have him wake Takuya up, then that would work just fine…

Even if it would be a bit of a letdown as far as the super-exciting game he'd been gearing up for went.

Then again, floating or falling in the middle of nowhere wasn't exactly fun, either.

Perhaps he should add how useless and boring this was in between calling for Shinya. After all, it didn't appear as though he needed to hold his breath while swimming – which meant this wasn't water, at least.

Not that he was feeling wet, in any case. Though would someone completely immersed in water even know? It's not like they felt wind-blown except on particularly windy days – or if they were free-falling.

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His thoughts were quick. Dizzying. Rubbing against the tendrils of light and humming and generating heat via friction. And that just made it warmer and more dizzying. A fire whose flickering flames changed every second, every moment –

And he was a flame. Without even realising it, he was calling out to more people than he named. The boy he called – his little brother – didn't seem to have been on the Trailmon and it was a stroke of luck that he'd wound up on an empty compartment and so wound up alone. Flames that had no air to call upon would choke and die soon enough but the ones who could reignite those flames without a flint or match were the truly special ones.

And she promised a reward if he was one of those, and a return if he was not.

She wasn't a cruel creature out of habit after all, but of necessity – and there was no need to pay more than the price the world demanded in return for their saviours.

And it was cruel the world demanded a price at all – but it was in effect the price of their own failures: the digimon who'd failed to uphold the responsibility of their own world and now turned towards outside help.

And they chose this path because they knew they needed the help. Something specific, that only the humans could provide.

And if they were careful enough and lucky enough, something that only one human could provide.

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He could feel water now, and it was choking him.

He was a human, after all. Humans breathed on air and fish breathed water and he was positive he'd never been a fish in a past life. Maybe a cat for all how he drooped and curled up in bed when it rained but ran about happily in the sun, but he was honestly crossing his fingers for something cooler.

Not right then, of course. Right then he was swimming as fast as he could manage and hoping he was going the right way, though he was pretty sure he hadn't been turned around – or, at least, as sure has he could be without any sense of direction to speak of.

All he needed was a little light to know if he was going in the right direction. And a landmark. And some air.

Well, when he thought about it like that, he figured he sounded pretty selfish to the gods above. No wonder they hadn't answered when he did breast strokes through what he was going to label for the time being air, then when he floated, and now as he swam through water and held his breath and hoped he'd hit air before three minutes were up – but what else was he supposed to do? And his list was shrinking by the minute, or second, or whatever. His lungs felt like they were being crushed and it made it hard to hang on to other thoughts: thoughts that were starting to seem far more trivial than they were.

Because finding a way out was pretty important still. Just not as important as breathing.

Honestly, he didn't know how the people who drowned themselves on purpose even managed it. It was like putting one's hand on a hot pan and snatching it away because your body said so before the mind's even processed the pain and he just wanted to take a breath and it was getting harder and harder to fight that –

But if there was no air, how the hell was he going to get that breath? He could imagine it already, and quite clearly too. Open mouth, take breathe – and gulp in water because there's nothing else. And then choke on water and die choking on water because there's nothing else, die with limbs twitching and he can't even scream because his mouth and throat and airways are all clogged up with water and –

Was that spluttering?

It was. He could hear spluttering. To put it correctly, he was spluttering. Coughing up water in his lungs though nothing was coming into his mouth. Maybe his lungs had soaked it all up like a sponge, or maybe he hadn't swallowed any water after all. Maybe he'd made it out.

But when he forced his burning eyes open, there was nothing. Just the same blackness that surrounded him and his heart plummeted.

Even after all that, he'd gotten nowhere.

…but that wasn't quite true, was it? He'd gone through air and water and air again and if that sort of terror that left him shaking still (even if he wasn't going to admit it to anyone else who asked) hadn't woken him up or had him screaming in real time and Shinya and his parents rushing to his bed, then he wasn't dreaming. He wasn't asleep.

And if it wasn't a dream, then there was a way out. Basic world law, after all.

And another basic law was that there had to be someone or something, somewhere.

So all he had to do was keep on moving in one direction and calling and he'd bump into the nearest someone or something.

Right. He could do that. He could keep going.

Even if he wasn't sure how many starts and stops he could manage.

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A fair few, it turned out. He didn't count them. He couldn't count them because that would make the despair hang even more heavily and he was already dragging a weight that grew heavier every time. But he couldn't just stop, either, because staying in the dark and silence was unbearable and allowing himself to drown in the water portions was even worse. He was dragging his feet (though not literally and it would be so wonderful if he was dragging them literally because that would mean there was actual ground beneath his feet) but he couldn't stand the silence or the lack of someone to talk to or something to stare at or something to hold on to –

But then, just as he struggled through another step and fought the instinct to just stop, someone grabbed his outstretched hand.

His worn face twitched into a smile. 'Shinya?'

It was the first name that popped into his head, but when he thought about it later, the hand firmly gripping his own was closer to his own size than Shinya's.

And his other hand was gripping the seat again. That wonderfully scratchy fuzzy material he'd complained about so many times in the past.

He was never going to complain about those scratchy fuzzy seats again.