Digimon Fan Fiction ❯ Blue Card Diaries ❯ On The Run ( Chapter 3 )

[ T - Teen: Not suitable for readers under 13 ]

David rushed through the city streets, sprinting as if his life depended on it. He looked down at the D-Arc, making sure he was following where the compass was leading him. He had to dodge and weave through people but eventually found an alleyway that would lead him straight to where he needed to be. V-mon seemed to know as he rushed ahead down the alleyway, following along the rooftops and ledges on the buildings above him.
David eventually came up to a brick wall, towering over him at ten feet tall. "Damn it!" David shouted, looking around for another shortcut.
"David?" V-mon asked, looking down at his Tamer.
"Keep going! I'll find a way around!" David told him. V-mon nodded and ran ahead. He was forced to run back towards the entrance of the alley and run around the corner of the next main street. He had to duck between lots of people, but eventually found where the rest of the alley continued.
David ducked into the alleyway, free of people traveling its passage. He continued to sprint down, rounding a corner and coming out to the devastation he expected awhile back. He saw V-mon land on top of a car at the alley's exit in front of him, just before diving off as a ball of electricity slammed into it, causing the car to erupt in an explosion. David stopped at that, looking up for the new opponent.
David looked at the D-Arc as it finally displayed the insectoid digimon with four arms and two legs. The head looked like one giant mouth with the rest of the head covered by an exoskeleton helmet. Four insect wings flapped rapidly behind. "Kabuterimon," the boy muttered. "Looks like the bugs want to get revenge on us for bug zappers."
David reached for a card sitting in a belt-mounted deck holder, an accessory Stan suggested. If it weren't for the reality he was facing right now, he would have waved it off. He just grabbed a card and started to swipe it through the D-Arc. "Card Slash! Aero Wing!" David called out as he slid the card the rest of the way through. At that, a pair of blue wings sprouted from V-mon's back. V-mon spread them and took flight as another electric ball hit the ground beneath him.
"There, at least the playing field is level," David said aloud, watching V-mon evade more attacks from the giant insect. He tried to remember what Stan told him that took down insects, but it was drawing a blank. "Of all the times to have a brain fart," he berated himself. He just picked a card from the deck and looked at it. "Guess we're just gonna have to overpower it somehow."
The next electric attack, V-mon propelled up in evasion and looped around back at Kabuterimon, trying to dive down on the oversized bug. "Card Slash!" David called out as he slid his card through the D-Arc. "Grapple Chip!" V-mon's dive seemed to increase in speed, hitting Kabuterimon head first with a power even V-mon didn't know he was capable off. The insectoid was launched down into the ground hard, keeping it down.
"V-mon! Dive bomb him again! Aim for his core!" David called out as he took out a third card. He slid the new card through, once again calling on the Card Slash power. "Iron Drill!" While V-mon was in full dive, a drill formed on his head, before it started spinning. Kabuterimon, finding it difficult to pick himself up, shrieked in horror when it saw the drill aiming down for it. The lizard pierced right through the adult level digimon, only stopping when he hit the asphalt below. Kabuterimon burst into data as the Child digimon that defeated him absorbed it. Both the wings and the drill vanished as the power expired.
David rushed towards V-mon, only to stop when something caught his eye inside one of the destroyed cars. David turned to see the charred remains of a person trapped within, burned in the explosion Kabuterimon caused.
"I'm sorry," V-mon said as he walked up to David. "I…tried to protect them, to warn them, but I couldn't."
"If I had been here sooner, this wouldn't have happened, would it?" David asked, continuing to survey the scene around them. There were injuries from burns in the area and debris all over the place. The deaths were limited, but casualties appeared to be numerous.
"I don't know," the child digimon answered. "Maybe."
David didn't say a word. He turned away back down the alley he came in. It had been a couple of weeks since Ogremon realized. Having gone through this before didn't make it any easier the second time. All the boy knew was that he had to find a way to make it to the battlefield quicker if that meant saving more.
David took out a business card in his pocket with a phone number scribbled on it. He cursed his lack of a cell phone, looking around for any of the few payphones that still exist in the city. "V-mon, why don't you explore the city more? Get to know the place better. Just come back home this evening."
V-mon looked at his Tamer, "David, are you okay?" he asked.
David sighed. "I'm fine. I just need to blow off some steam."
V-mon shook his head before he climbed up the building next to them. David didn't pay much attention as he found a payphone and started reaching in his pocket for some change. Finally pulling out a quarter and dime, David dumped them in and dialed the number on his card, waiting for someone to pick up. After a moment of silence, listening to the phone ring, he finally said, "Hello, Jared? It's David. I've decided to take you up on your offer."

Blue Card Diaries
Entry 03: On the Run
Author: Izumi Ryu
Tamers Diaries Concept: Lord Archive
Disclaimer: Digimon belongs to TOEI animation.

Stan opened the door, looking down at the child-level digimon standing there. "Hi, Stan," V-mon greeted the boy. Upon seeing the lizard, the boy let him in, trying to hide him from the public. V-mon just sat down on the sofa as Stan stood across from him.
"Where's David?" Stan asked.
"David…said he was going out for a run," V-mon told him with a shrug. "In reality, I don't know. "
Stan cocked an eyebrow. "What do you mean 'in reality'?" he pressed.
V-mon stood up. "He never went on runs before the battle with Kabuterimon. I have no clue what he's really doing."
"That was a couple of weeks ago, wasn't it?" Stan asked, still not happy with the two about not taking him with them. V-mon nodded. "And how long is he usually gone?"
"Most of the day. I mean he comes home and we still spend time together, but his mind is elsewhere," the lizard explained.
Stan shook his head. He should've noticed this, having spent time with David almost daily since they've met. The only friction was when David yelled at Stan after he gave the Tamer a hard time about leaving him out of the last battle. He should've known something was wrong then, but all he did was back off and left the matter as it was.
Stan took out a cell phone and after tapping the screen a couple of times, waited for someone to pick up. "What are you doing? " the lizard asked.
"Hi, Jessa. Think you can meet V-mon and I at David's apartment? We're on our way there," Stan suggested. There was silence before he asked. "You need to know where it is?" The boy remained silent before relaying the address to her. Then his eyes went wide. "You live in the same building? How come I… Never mind. I forgot about your family. I'll see you there in a few minutes."
Stan hung up the phone and looked at V-mon. "Think you can let us into the apartment? If we're going to find out what's wrong with David and what he's doing, we all need to confront him."
"I think so. I mean opening the door seems easy enough," V-mon shrugged.

The apartment door opened to the sight of Jessa, Stan and V-mon sitting around the room. Both humans looked intently at the person that came in the door. David had a confused expression as he saw the current occupants of his home. "How did you guys get in?"
"It took V-mon ten minutes to figure out how to unlock the door," Stan said as he glanced at the digimon.
V-mon threw his arms in the air. "Give me a break! I come and go through a window all the time!"
"Hey, David. What's wrong?" another voice spoke up from behind. Jared walked up from behind David and stopped right behind them.
"Jared? What happened to you two?" Jessa asked.
Both David and Jared not only appeared sweaty from whatever they had been doing for the past few hours, both of them appeared to be bruised up a bit. "Long story," David said.
"Does it have to do with what you've been doing for the past couple of weeks?" V-mon asked accusingly.
"Is that…what I think it is?" Jared gawked at V-mon out of surprise.
"Shit," David cursed under his breath, having forgotten that Jared never met V-mon yet.
"David, what have you been keeping me out of?" Jared asked him accusingly.
"And us," Stan spoke up.
David sighed. "This is gonna be a long explanation for both parties involved. Can we order a pizza first or something?" The boy hoped the delay while he placed the order would help him organize the explanation in a way to benefit everyone. "Jared, this is V-mon. A friend and my digimon partner."
"Good to meet you, all things considered," Jared said to V-mon.
"Same here," V-mon told him.
David got an agreement on the pizza and placed the order. While waiting for it, the group sat around the dinner table, everyone looking intently at David. David wanted to hide. "After the battle with Kabuterimon, I needed to come up with something to help me get to the battlefield faster. The people that died there, they died because I couldn't get there fast enough."
"You've gotta quit blaming yourself for that stuff. You can't do anything about it," Stan told him.
"What if there was something?" David asked seriously. Stan sank back at that question, not sure how to answer.
"Wait, if there were digimon battles here, why haven't I heard about them all over the media?" Jared asked.
"No clue," David shrugged. "I'm concerned with having my face show up on the 5 o'clock News, but it hasn't so far."
"Enough sidetracking," Jessa told them. "What have you been doing and what happened to you today?"
"Well, that's…a little easier to answer. I needed a means to reach the battlefield quicker, and I remembered Jared offering to teach Parkour to me. I decided to take him up on his offer," David explained.

David rolled as he hit the pads, breaking the fall after botching another attempt at a climb. He stood up, looking ready to go at it again, looking at the wall in front of him, towering over him and leading to a raised platform above. Then he bolted for the wall. Within a couple of steps, he planted his toes towards the wall and made a couple of steps before reaching up for the top of the wall. The boy hung there, trying to climb up. He eventually muscled his way up, pulling himself by the arms, and rolled onto the raised platform.
Jared watched from some distance away within the gym, filled with various rails and platforms for training. Watching someone get so much into Parkour always gave the veteran some level of pride, but something didn't feel right about David. For the past couple of weeks, he had been practicing like a man possessed.
David jumped off the platform and landed the ten-foot drop bending his knees before rolling on the ground to burn off momentum. He looked around and saw Jared watching. He nodded and walked over to his teacher, a friend, the boy had to remind himself.
"So, what's wrong, David?" Jared asked.
"What do you mean?" David asked in reply, looking at Jared suspiciously.
"It's one thing to train hard, but you've been trying to burn yourself out these last couple of weeks," Jared accused. "What's going on that has you so worked up?"
David didn't want to tell Jared the truth. The young man wouldn't believe him. David asked, "Jared, have you ever failed after trying everything you could to your abilities? That despite doing everything you can, you felt like you should have done more?"
"That's the nature of learning anything," Jared told him. "You're supposed to keep trying until you figure it out."
David sighed. "And what if there are no second chances?"
"That's the whole point of parkour. You could completely botch one thing, but you don't have time to think about how you failed it. You can only focus on what's in front of you," Jared explained. "If there's nothing you can do about it, why worry?"
David wanted to kick himself. He knew that answer already. The problem wasn't whether he knew what to do, it was doing it. That's one of the things Jared had been trying to teach him the entire time. Probably not intentionally, but that was the whole point of it all. If he wanted to help others, he had to do everything in his power to do so. And if he couldn't do it, then add to that power.
"Come on," Jared told him. "I was debating making you take the day off today, but I think I need to go a different path with you." Jared led the boy down the stairs from the gym, leading the boy out of the building.
"So, what's that? We're not training in the gym?" David asked, as he walked out on the entryway with concrete stairs leading off to the left. The railing wrapped around the outside of the concrete slab, but blocked anyone that wanted to get off by moving the other direction.
"No," Jared said. "You're going to dive right into the real thing. You have one simple objective." Jared looked at David with a smirk. "Catch me if you can."
Without warning, Jared grabbed onto the railing and vaulted over it, landing from the 3-foot drop with a slight bend in the knees, he bolted down the alley.
"Hey!" David protested before following suit. When he vaulted over the railing, he kicked his legs out to the side and dropped himself and landed on the pavement below. He started sprinting in the direction Jared had left, trying to keep his teacher in his sights.
Jared rounded a corner closely followed by David, finding a parking lot with a car right in front of him. Without missing a beat, Jared jumped up and over the car's hood, leaning forward in the air. He reached down for the hood with one hand, using it to propel him forward and clear the hood, landing on the other side of the car and continuing his sprint.
David saw the stunt and didn't even think when he followed suit, his hand planting on the hood to help him across as he vaulted over the car hood.
He barely had time to register what he had just done as he saw Jared rushing towards the rear of a single story building, seeing Jared jump and kick on the wall as he climbed up and grabbed the roof.
David jumped up next to him, his feet kicking the wall as he propelled up and hung on the edge of the roof next to Jared, both of them hanging with their feet planted against the wall. "Caught ya," David said.
"Is that a fact?" Jared asked as he swung his feet around and rolled onto the roof. David pulled the same move to climb up and as he got up on the roof, tried to reach for Jared, but the Parkour veteran was already out of his reach.
David gave chase across the roof, jumping across generators and pulling balancing acts across beams. As Jared reached the end, he jumped down off the building. He landed in a crouch and rolled along the ground. As Jared got up, he felt someone grab him by the arm and throw him against the wall, pinning him against it with an arm held across his chest. "So, what's a running pansy like you doing now?" JR asked.
"You know the track team would probably do anything for us if we beat the crap out of you. Maybe even a bonus if we break your legs," Evan told him.
"Look out below!" David shouted as he jumped off the building, causing JR and Evan to scatter and free Jared. Crap, those guys again, he thought, nearly blowing the landing when he recognized the boys he met before. He recovered and rolled on the ground to use the last of his momentum, before getting up. David looked at Jared who seem distressed, only to be punched in the gut by the third member of the boys' entourage.
David doubled over as he stepped away. He looked up in annoyance at Adam, the senior high student glaring at him in contempt. "That's not even a tenth of what you deserve for the embarrassment you caused us last time."
"Get over yourselves," David spat back, not certain where this assertiveness came from. Adam and his cronies just simply didn't seem as intimidating as before. That didn't change how much fear David had for these guys as he would still get beaten up badly in a fight.
As if to prove that point, Adam grabbed David by the head and brought it down as fast and hard as possible. Face and forehead met Adam's knee hard. He stepped back even further, clutching at his forehead, trying to restore his vision.
"David! Run!" he heard Jared yell, before someone, either JR or Evan, hit him and told him to shut up.
David's vision cleared. The last time he escaped these guys, V-mon was the one that helped him out. Of course, the digimon wasn't here , only meaning he had to get out of this scenario somehow or another. He had to get Jared out, too. He couldn't leave him to these guys.
David sprinted for the same wall Jared was pinned against. He kicked up onto the wall and grabbed onto the window ledge from the second story.
"That's right, you coward. Run and abandon him. Everyone knows he deserves it," Adam taunted.
"Who said I was running?" David asked, looking down at JR and Evan. He let go of the ledge and kicked off the wall, starting to fall towards Adam's cronies. The two dove away from Jared and out of the way as David landed on the pavement. "C'mon!" he told Jared, getting him to climb back up the way they came, rolling onto the roof of the single story building and running across it as they got up on their feet.
"You two can't run forever!" Adam yelled.
"Wanna bet?" David remarked, well out of Adam's hearing range at this point. Jared smirked at his response. However, he knew the bully was right. One of these days, he was going to have to face the senior high student. Today, wasn't that day, but David knew he'd have to prepare for the eventuality.
"Well, that wasn't what I had in mind," Jared remarked as he came to a stop, sure no one was going to bother him anymore. "You okay?"
"I'll manage somehow," David told him, waving it off.

"After taking a breather from that encounter, we just decided it was best to let it go. We continued our run for a few more hours, Jared leading me through the city on a chase," David told them, then he turned to Jared. "You never told me what the point of that was."
Jared looked at his student seriously. "Did you enjoy it? I mean other than the run-in we had." He was answered with a nod. "That's all that mattered. If you can't, then there's no point."
"It's true," Stan spoke up. "It can't all be about work."
"Yeah, I get it," David sighed. "There's just too much on the line for me to let up, even a little. It's not like there's another Tamer anywhere near here or they'd have shown up by now."
Jessa, Stan and Jared all looked at each other uncomfortably. "What?" David asked, unsettled by the air in the room all of a sudden.
"David, how long have you lived here?" Jessa asked.
"A little over four years now. Why?" David didn't break his stare at Jessa.
"That would make sense then," Jessa said. "We may know of another Tamer."
David stood up, frustration apparent in his face. "What? Where are they?" he demanded. "Why haven't they shown up? And why tell me now?"
"We don't know. She vanished five years ago," Stan spoke up. David looked at him but sat down as he calmed down. "She had this strange dog with her, too. Kind of like an oversized Doberman. In fact… " Stan pulled out a deck of cards. Stan took a card and put it flat out on the table for everyone to see. "It looked exactly like this."
David looked down at the card labeled 'Dobermon'. He wanted to know if Stan was joking, but the look Stan gave told him he was serious.
"I remember that dog, too," Jared said. "Scared the shit outta me when I saw him. I was kinda glad it disappeared too."
"Her name was Alice McCoy," Jessa continued. "She was a year or two ahead of us, but some of us knew from around here. She's been presumed dead, but considering what's happened lately…" Jessa looked at V-mon at this. "…she may still be alive. She could be wherever V-mon came from."
"I doubt she's alive if she is," V-mon told them, earning strange looks from the humans around him. "Never mind," the digimon sighed, trying to avoid explaining what he meant.
David looked around at everyone. "Is there any way we can find her? Someone that knows her?" he asked.
"No one has ever been able to contact her family since her disappearance," Jessa said. "Even if we could, they probably wouldn't talk about her."
"There's always Brad," Stan suggested with shrug.
"Oh, no way. We're not going near that weirdo," Jared shook his head.
"Come on, Jared. David needs help. We can't give him the help another Tamer can, especially one as experienced as Alice," Stan pleaded.
David wanted this headache to end. "Okay, I'm sorry for being the dumbest guy in this room, but who's Brad?"
"He's someone from Alice's class," Jessa spoke up. "He had an obsessive crush on her and believed her to be alive, even now. If he actually knew she was alive, maybe he knows something we don't."
"That very same obsession is why he gets picked on, too. Besides, he creeps me out," Jared told him.
"You don't have to go." Stan looked at Jared seriously. "Jessa, David, and I can go to his place."
"Not today, Stan," Jessa said. "I'd feel more comfortable talking with Brad when we have numbers anyway. I should have a day off coming up soon we can go."
"Fine." Jared sighed in defeat. "I'll go, too. Just don't say I didn't warn you when he goes psycho killer on us."
David didn't know what to feel about what was going on. The way Jared resisted, he had a feeling he had to keep his guard up around Brad. He couldn't lose focus now, though. He had to follow what leads he could to find anything that could help, even if they couldn't find Alice.
As the pizza arrived, the discussions of the evening turned a little more relaxed. Everyone spread around the living room, enjoying the pizza. Stan had broken into the game system and beat up on everyone at what little games David had. Jared was the first to leave, needing to shower, as tired as he was. Jessa left next, using work as her excuse. Much to his surprise, Stan asked if he could stay the night. David agreed, glad for the company at least.