Digimon Fan Fiction ❯ One of Us ❯ Prologue

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One of Us

A Digimon 02 (second season) fanfic

by Alicia Ashby

Author's Notes: This episode is set, not surprisingly, a few
hours after the ending of the episode "Genesis of Evil."
Spoilers for that episode and the Kimeramon arc included. I know
a character vignette is out of the ordinary for me, but the
experience of watching that episode the first time demanded it.
I'm not sure if I'll write more of these in the future; I suppose
we'll just have to wait and see. I also don't know how well this
will fit in continuity with whatever's going to happen in the
next batch of new episodes we get; it might not work completely,
but I hope its enjoyable nonetheless. ^_^

***

Night was settling over Tokyo. The city was beginning to glow,
the multicolored lights of a thousand neon signs throwing a
bright radiance over the sky. All the colors blended together
into one white aura that made the stars seem fainter and more
distant from Earth than ever.

However, this did not stop a young boy by the name of Ken
Ichijouji and a baby Digimon named Leafmon from trying to see all
they could of the night's stars. Leafmon rested comfortably in
Ken's hands, pulling his leaf-like tail back so he could glance
out the open window more easily. "Night isn't so dark here as it
is in the Digital World," Leafmon spoke, his voice seeming as
tiny as his little body. He scrunched into the warmth of Ken's
long, slender hands, eyes crinkling up in happiness. "I think
I'll like it here."

"I'm glad," Ken smiled. He'd been smiling a lot in the past few
hours, smiling and crying, and seemed to have no control
whatsoever over when or why he did it. The tears were gone,
leaving his eyes feeling tight and a little sore. He was tired,
exhausted not in body but in spirit. He had felt more emotion in
the past day than he had allowed himself to feel in years, and
its sheer power was still a little painful to him. But it was a
welcome pain. It would help him learn to know when someone else
was hurting, and that way he could try to reach out to them and
make it better. He wouldn't always succeed, he'd already
admitted that to himself. He had dwelled on death so long
that he didn't know nearly as much as he should have about being
alive. There was so much he would have to learn.

And yet, he could not stop smiling. He didn't want to.

"What are we going to do now, Ken?" Leafmon asked.

Ken blinked and thought. "Well... it's late. We should probably
go to bed soon. Digimon do need sleep, right?"

Leafmon wriggled around in Ken's hands so that he could face his
human. "Uh-huh. But that isn't what I meant, Ken."

"What did you mean, Leafmon?"

"If I'm still your partner, Ken, that means you're still
Digidestined."

Ken fell silent for a moment, surprised into silence. He was
still Digidestined, wasn't he? And he had the Crest of Kindness.
A Crest was a very powerful thing, at least judging from the bits
and pieces of information about them he'd managed to dig up while
he was the Emperor. The power of the Armor Digimon had been only
a fragment of the true power of the Crests their Digimentals
drew from, and yet it had been more than enough to shatter his
reign of terror completely.

And... there was something else he was trying to remember.
Something someone said? Yes, that was it. A girl had said it, a
pretty girl his age with kind eyes and the quiet dignity of a
queen. She was one of the Digidestined who had defeated him.

"You have a responsibility to both worlds."

"If something went wrong..." Ken spoke slowly, carefully. "...
I'd do anything I could to stop it. But you're not ready to fight
yet, Leafmon, even if there was something to fight."

"The bad place is still there, Ken. I can feel it. I bet the
others can, too. Something's there that wants to destroy the
Digital World. It tried to use you to do it for him." Leafmon's
voice was painfully serious.

Ken shuddered. He remembered "the bad place." It was the place
he'd been drawn to, the place where he'd felt compelled to put
his Digivice into the evil lake. Just that touch had instantly
corrupted and blackened it, just as it had corrupted and
blackened his soul. He had only thought it was part of the
Digital World before now, though. If it was something else,
something hostile, then so much of what happened made more sense.

"... just visiting that place made me into a monster, Leafmon.
What if it changed me again after I went back? I don't want to
turn into the Emperor again. Not after I've come so far..." Ken
felt tears building up in his eyes.

"You wouldn't have to go alone, Ken."

Ken sniffled slightly, a tear running down his cheek and dropping
with a tiny pitter-pat onto Leafmon's leaf-tail. "... but who
would go with me? I don't... I don't really have any friends..."

"I'd go with you! I'll always be your friend, Ken," Leafmon
snuggled the palm of Ken's hand as the teardrop splashed down
onto the top of his tiny head-body. "And... I'm sure the other
Digidestined would go, too."

"The others... you mean the ones who fought me?" Ken blinked in
surprise. Suddenly, the image of the pretty girl - the Digimon
Queen, if ever he had seen such a thing - widened. He saw her
friends, too. Another pretty girl with lilac-colored hair, her
expression stern and angry in a way that seemed ill-fitting for
her. A blonde-haired boy standing at his Queen's right hand, an
incongruous, terrifying righteous wrath written across his young
face. A much younger boy, quieter, his serious face gone cold in
an expression of utter contempt.

And there was another boy, standing before the others. He looked
earnest, sincere, as if hiding any emotion he felt, even if for a
fleeting instant, would have been impossible. His dress and
appearance were memorably absurd; goggles on his head,
banana-yellow gloves, an impossibly flashy jacket with stylized
flames running up the sleeves. His eyes were cloudy with some
strange feeling that Ken had not understood. It seemed more
familiar now, though. Had it been... compassion? Had this boy
felt sorry for him? He suddenly remembered something the unknown
boy had said, something he had heard as he was stumbling away,
back to the Real World.

"You're one of us, Ken!"

But why would this boy - what was his name? 'Motomiya' or
something, wasn't it? - why would this boy say something like
that? Ken had been cruelest of all to him. He had recognized
Motomiya in the Real World, playing soccer against his team as
bravely and valiantly as if he'd had a chance at winning. It had
made him so angry, then. He'd gone out of his way to embarrass
the boy, to frighten him by threatening first his Digimon and
then his friends, to humiliate him by making him beg for their
lives. Motomiya had allowed all of it to be done to him, had
begged, had kneeled.

But he had never stopping fighting, stubbornly, insistently, as
if he had some chance of winning. And somehow, he had actually
won. Why didn't he gloat? Why didn't he throw the victory in
the Emperor's face, even before Ken had managed to find the Crest
of Kindness?

Wait. Had he been the one to find the Crest of Kindness, lying
unnoticed in the sand? No... no, it had been given to him.
Motomiya had found it lying in the sand. The terrible blonde boy
had identified it. Then, the Crest had glowed and floated to his
hand. The other Digidestined must surely have known what this
meant. And yet, they hadn't stopped him from taking the Crest,
hadn't so much as tried. What did it all mean? What could it
mean?

"Ken?" Leafmon's voice broke into his thoughts. "Did you hear
me?"

Ken wondered how long he'd been quiet, if he'd scared his little
Digimon. "What? I'm sorry, I... I was remembering."

"I said that it was one of them who helped me save you. His name
was Davis... he was the leader, maybe, I think. He said he'd
help me save you if I took him to the base's engine room. He
made your black digimental shine gold when he touched it, and it
turned his Digimon friend into Magnamon."

"Davis," Ken repeated the name, attaching the name to the face of
the goggle-headed boy he remembered. They seemed to fit together
well enough, and it explained so much about the boy's strange
behavior. Even before he had any reason to believe that there
was anything good in the Emperor, he had been willing to try to
save him. Was this Davis foolish, or merely idealistic? Or
perhaps an opportunist, who simply wanted to know the way to the
engine room. But if so, then how could he have used the
Digimental - Ken's Digimental - and restored its true nature of
Kindness to it? And why had he been the one to find the tiny
Crest lying in the sand?

Leafmon continued speaking, rapidly, enthusiastically. "Maybe you
could talk to Davis? I think he'd be willing to give you a
chance, and he could convince the others to let you prove
yourself. You could be their friend, Ken. You could fight with
them and help them fix all the bad things."

"I don't want to fight any more," Ken sighed.

"Nobody wants to fight," Leafmon quivered his body in a vertical
way that resembled nodding. "But sometimes, you have to be strong
and do it anyway to help others."

Ken felt another smile creeping across his face. "I'd have to be
able to find him," he mused, though he knew that wouldn't be a
problem. It'd be easy enough to go to his soccer team's
webpage, and follow the links there to find Davis' team's page,
which would surely have some form of contact information listed,
or at least something he could use to track the boy down.
"But I suppose you're right... I owe it to them to try and become
a member of their team, if they'll have me. And this Davis seems
to be the most... approachable one. But I don't think he'll
be my friend... if he's their leader, they must all love and
respect him very much. He may not understand..." Ken bit his
lip, doubt clouding his features.

Leafmon did his best to nuzzle Ken's hand again. "Aw, Ken...
don't give up yet! You've got to try, at least. Besides, I
don't see how anyone could not like you the way you are now,
unless they just wanted to be mean!" Ken had to laugh at the
tiny creature's defensive, protective tone of voice. He sounded
like he was already willing to fight the whole world for his
human's sake, if need be.

Ken reached out with a long finger to gently rub the top of
Leafmon's head, right between his little black eyes. "Is there
anything that can make you Digimon stop being cheerful?"

Leafmon trembled with happiness, as much at hearing Ken's
laughter as the petting. "Nope! Not even when we get..." the
tiny Digimon suddenly paused, and let out an enormous yawn. "...
sleepy."

Ken stood up, shutting the window and lowering the venetian
blinds while continuing to cradle Leafmon in his spare hand.
"Then we'll go to bed now, Leafmon."

Leafmon's eyes remained half-open as Ken carried him across the
room, toward the bed. "And then we'll start making new friends
tomorrow?" he asked, hopefully.

"Yes. We'll see about making some new friends tomorrow."

Ken's voice was warm and comforting to Leafmon. Beautiful, just
like the Crest of Kindness when it glowed. "Yay," Leafmon
managed to mumble, before he finally allowed himself to drift
off to sleep.

After laying his Digimon friend down on the pillow, Ken began
climbing up the ladder to his bed. He laid his head down on the
pillow, careful not to disturb Leafmon, and drew the covers over
his body. Tired as he was, though, relaxing enough to find sleep
seemed difficult. His mind wouldn't stop rifling through its
memories of the past, now that it was growing able to extract
them. Most of the memories weren't good, even after all the
things he'd realized. He couldn't blame Leafmon for wanting him
to start making new ones as soon as possible.

But then his memories fell again to the Digidestined, and then to
the boy who was perhaps his only hope of complete redemption.
Davis. Ken could smile as he remembered his brash pride and
determination, how he'd sworn over and over again to defeat the
Digimon Emperor. To think that he and his friends had found a way
to do it. To think that he was ultimately so very glad that
they had.

As sleep finally claimed him, Ken could only think about how glad
he would be if Davis was proven right once again.

***