Play of Spirits
Chapter 13 - Failing the Tests
At some point, Kouichi managed to piece together the fact that only he hadn't gotten the message of passing the second test – and that was only after Takuya mentioned the loss of his cell phone games and that the messages were now coming on the devices they'd transformed into.
The same device that rested in his over-shirt pocket now. His fingers lightly brushed it. Large and uncomfortable, and yet in a world where he couldn't open his eyes to look, everything was big and uncomfortable, wasn't it?
And now they were dawdling. They had no idea what to do and they were going over things they'd already talked about, just for the sake of a conversation topic.
And then even that was discarded. 'Oh, let's just kick back. Tell me more about yourselves.'
Takuya… Breaking the awkward silence again. He seemed gifted at that. The torch in the darkness. It had been a careless description on his part but it described him well. And they were probably right in that darkness fit him as well.
Look at him now, not even willing to open his eyes.
He sighed.
'Why do you think we don't have instructions now?' Junpei mused aloud, when they'd exhausted that conversation topic too and right on queue.
'I think…' He began. The others were silent. They'd picked up on that quirk of his already. 'It's because I haven't passed yet. The second test.'
'The second..?' Takuya blinked. 'You didn't get a message?'
He shook his head.
'You didn't transform into a weird thing and then change back in the time I was fighting that three headed dog?'
He shook his head again.
'Oh. Whoops.'
The other three stared. 'Why would you assume something like that?' Since they could be forgiven for not knowing how much time they'd spent together or apart.
'So now we wait for another life-threatening something or other to occur and let you have it?' Junpei asked. 'I'll say I'm just glad it's not me.'
'Ditto,' Izumi agreed. 'Though I guess it's not very nice in retrospect.'
'I think…' Kouichi said again. 'If Takuya and I had gone together, we wouldn't be in this situation now.'
'Or not.' Takuya shrugged. 'It's not like we had a neat pair of instructions to go by. It's whoever made up this weird game that should have told us.'
'It's not a game!' Bokomon cried, affronted. 'You must save this world. You must.'
'We can't save a world if we're walking blind,' Kouichi pointed out flatly – especially since, in his case, he was quite literally walking blind.
.
They wound up sleeping there: cramped but probably far safer than the outside. Or the others did. The heater never went out and so it never really went dark and even with his eyes covered, Kouichi was too wound up to get to sleep.
His circadian rhythms didn't like this town one bit.
And he knew it was a poor choice to wander outside. But it was uncomfortable. And he'd crash hard tomorrow if he couldn't get to sleep and it always worked at home: walking about in the dark apartment with all the curtains drawn so the street lamps couldn't creep in. Except here the street lamps were compressed into the heater and the dark place that escaped that would be where they found the spirit of light in the first place. That place under the forest.
No-one even saw him go. Or he didn't think so anyway. No-one called after him. No-one followed him either. It was just him: quiet footsteps crunching leaves as his reaching fingers lost walls to feel and found trunks instead.
And then he realised he had no idea how to find that entrance anyway.
He peeked out from under Takuya's goggles. The light burned and his eyes watered immediately, but he could see a little. Blurry shapes. Hopefully a hole in the ground would be prominent enough. If he kept his back to the town, it should be enough.
It didn't wind up mattering because the ground gave way under his feet instead.
He fell and rolled down stairs and it was terrifyingly dizzy and terrifyingly familiar.
.
Ofanimon watched. The boy had wandered away on his own. Perhaps he'd instinctively known what he had to do: what was still left. Or maybe that was his nature: wandering when there was even a hint of light and only finding comfort in true darkness. Because he was a perfect fit for the darkness, really.
No wonder the light burned him so.
But he had to soldier through it. Of all the children, he was the strongest and the most fragile and she had no idea why: no idea why he was so different from the others because he only seemed less complex than them. As though something had brushed off the loose threads that clung to him and everything about him was raw and pure and unsullied by day to day life…
She wondered if that was what death did to a person. She wouldn't know. Digimon did not taste true death like humans did but humans changed with the death of people close to them, didn't they? They seemed to, anyway. She only ever saw examples through these children and as for him: he was always like that, and very often the one who was sacrificed in the end. The most transparent of them, the most easily fitted… Light and darkness were the key but nowhere did it say one of them had to die for that power to come alive? Nowhere… And yet it happened. Far too many times. And it was a wasted sacrifice in the end because the world couldn't regrow on that spilt blood.
So he had to overcome it. Whatever it was he carried from possibility to possibility to make him so likely to die. He had to overcome it to survive the endgame, and if that meant he had to suffer in the opening hands, then so be it.
And after that would be a new hurdle, with Cherubimon.
Light and darkness… The two of them had the most hurdles to jump through, because they were the key.
.
Kouichi groaned and opened his eyes. The goggles had slipped or else off and the side of his head throbbed as though he'd struck it against the edge of a stair. He probably had. It was still too bright. His eyes still watered and he could see nothing but indescript blurs but he felt around.
The glasses were in one piece. Good.
He was still on stairs. That part wasn't so good, but it was manageable. He crawled along the width, searching for the world and then dragged himself up. His legs shook a bit but otherwise held him up. Good.
And as he made his way in deeper, he could make out more things.
There wasn't all that much to make out, really. Rows of stone making up the wall and the floor. And they went on and on and on and he wondered where they were even going?
He figured it out eventually, when he finally reached the end of the staircase and saw other staircases climbing down… Or climbing up.
All the stairs converged in this one place. A place with a hole in the floor.
Was that where the spirits had been?
He peered over the edge. Black. Pure black. But he could see something else as well. Something white. He could hear it too, now that he wasn't moving anymore. Something swishing about in the darkness.
'Hello?' he called. 'I'm sorry to disturb, but –'
And something suddenly emerged from the darkness and swallowed him.
.
It was pure darkness now, but it just didn't feel right. It was too small for one, and he wasn't a claustrophobic person by nature. He couldn't walk in this though. He couldn't even stand up: stuck crouching and feeling the walls. Six dimensions. He really was boxed in.
His heart hammered. He wasn't claustrophobic by nature but he was really and truly trapped here. Looking for darkness. Unable to sleep in the same room as the others and that would have been infinitely more comfortable, infinitely safe…
But you're more comfortable alone, right?
Was that true? he wondered. Wasn't it the light? But it was true he wasn't much of a people person. He preferred to stay in their warm company and silent: part and yet apart from the crowd. Not standing in the spotlight. Not left behind in shadows but rather wrapped in them. That wasn't alone. That wasn't company either. Was that, then, just him taking the middle ground?
But was he more comfortable alone? No, definitely not.
He really shouldn't have gone off on his own, especially when he knew full well he was handicapped. Even now, his eyes burned. Even when there was no light at all. And for all that light burned, he needed at least a dash of it to see.
Light…
Pack…
He needed light.
His heart began to beat even faster. Faster until it burned, and until the inside of his mouth began to burn as well, trying to breathe in enough air. His fingers found something and grasped it. His eyes went from seeing black to seeing white and they burned but everything was burning now so it didn't really matter.
Something cracked and split apart, and suddenly the confining orb was gone and he could stand straight again. Something swished around him. He could hear them, and see their shadows dancing on the white wall he painted.
He reached for them. Pierced them straight through with whatever it was he held.
'That's Phantomon,' said Bokomon's awed voice from somewhere nearby. So they'd followed after all. 'Don't let him catch - '
Something tore. And then the blinding light settled and so did the white on the wall.
.
'You sure fall unconscious on me a lot, you know,' Takuya said, sounding amused.
Kouichi took that to mean Takuya had spotted something in his face or hands or something that told him he'd been waking up, otherwise that comment would've been pretty useless.
'You missed one,' he said instead. His head still throbbed but someone had put some sort of paste on it. His hands came away sticky, anyway, and he was pretty sure that wasn't blood.
'Yeah, and you fall down a flight of stairs or something when I do. What were you even doing?'
'Trying to get to sleep.' Which sounded rather silly, now that he said it. He'd fallen unconscious twice in that interim, after all. But he was feeling somewhat rested so one of those had probably been accompanied by a much needed nap. 'The heater's too much like the sun.'
He cracked his eyes open now. They burned, but it was like a dull echo than something new and fed. He blinked a few times. Yep, he could see pretty clearly now. Izumi was naturally the only girl: the blonde with green eyes. Which left Tomoki and Junpei. He'd figure out which one was which when they spoke, he supposed.
'By the way, what happened?'
'I got stuck in some sort of orb,' Kouichi took Takuya's proffered hand and sat up and shrugged. 'And then everything began burning.'
'We found burn paste,' Tomoki – so he was the smaller one – said. 'It's not perfect on the sort of burns you seem to have, but it should help.'
'It does help,' said Kouichi, who noticed they ached but didn't sting at all – and he could put up with aches. 'Thank you.'
'You're welcome,' Tomoki said brightly.
Amazing what a single thank you could do.
'The orb was Phantomon's,' Bokomon explained. 'He has a nasty habit of catching digimon in there – and they never come out. You must have turned into Wolfmon to break the orb and escape it. That must have been the burning you felt. But when you just stood there after that…'
'I couldn't see,' Kouichi explained. He seemed to be doing that a lot here. Not being able to see. Everything was white – but the… Phantomon? Was like a shadow in the white so all I had to do was pin it down.'
'Well, you certainly did that,' Izumi said. 'You'd be great a Pin the Tail on the Donkey.'
'Maybe.' He'd never actually tried it.
'We should do that some time. Too bad my birthday's already passed.'
'My little brother's is… yesterday. Oh crap.' Takuya groaned. 'I missed the cake and ice cream!'
They all laughed, but the laughter was muted at thoughts of home. They'd been gone all night now, without a word to their families. What would they be thinking? Were they worried? Scared?
And how long until they could get back home? How many more tests to get through, stages to pass? When would they open the final gate?
'Congratulations.' The message came from the device in Kouichi's over-shirt this time. 'You've passed the second test. Now only one of you remains to try it.'
'Remains?' Junpei echoed. 'What happened to everybody else? There were hundreds of us!'
'Those who passed remained,' the voice explained. 'Those who failed have returned to their world. All that remains in this one final person to take their trial.'
'Who?' Takuya, this time.
'Minamoto Kouji… To earn the first handshake of the spirit of darkness.'
Kouichi's eyes widened so much they hurt. But he couldn't help that. 'Kouji?' Of all the people it could have been.
He didn't know if it was good or bad, really, that he could still try and reach him in this world.
Because the one who missed the other opportunities was he himself, wasn't it?