Digimon Fan Fiction ❯ One Step Forward, Two Steps Back ❯ Chapter Two: Operation: Here's Mud In Your Eye ( Chapter 2 )

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Herme: Hey there! Want a disclaimer? Read the Nonsensual Dialogue then, cuz I ain't saying it all again!

Tommy: Evil.

 

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One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Capítulo Dos: Operation: Here's Mud In Your Eye

 

“He who slings mud looses ground.”

—Unknown

 

Daisuke sighed and straightened his back as he placed the last paper inside its designated folder. While he expected that he'd be helping the Coach with some paperwork, he didn't think he'd be slaving about *this* much. Huge piles of papers containing information on anything from tournaments to bus transportation costs cluttered the tiny office and he had spent the entire period sorting them out. Throwing the folder back beside the others, he stretched back, finally finished. As he stretched, he looked at the clock. Five minutes until the bell rang. Five minutes until he could meet Ken. Five minutes.

 

Standing up, he shouldered his backpack. “Alright, Coach, I'm gonna go on back to class to check in with my teacher, okay?”

 

As he turned to leave, he heard his coach call back to him. Yes, he had feared the call, and somehow, deep down, he knew it was coming. He braced himself as the call fell like dead weight on his ears.

 

“Motomiya.”

 

Yup. You knew your life sucked when the sound of your own name became synonymous with a death knoll.

 

“Yeah, Coach?”

 

“Not so fast,” his coach continued, and Daisuke groaned as another large stack was placed before him. Throwing his backpack back onto the ground, Daisuke sat back at the desk. He looked at the clock again before starting.

 

Three minutes until the bell rang. Three minutes…oh hell…

 

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“Daisuke! Where have you been? I've been waiting in the cold for half an hour! I thought you said you'd be here before me!”

 

“I know, I'm sorry,” Daisuke said pitifully. “Stupid coach made me do tons of filing and just when I thought I was done, he came up with the biggest pile yet. I swear he held it back `till just that moment. Sadistic old man,” he added with a scathing look back at the school building.

 

“If you were going to take this long,” Ken continued, “I could've had enough time to go home, get my things, and meet you at your house.”

 

“I'm sorry, okay? Is this the whole `sleep-in-the-nude' issue? I said I'd lend you some—”

 

“No, it's not the issue,” Ken said. “The issue is that it's freezing—”

 

“It sure is!” Daisuke cut in. “Let's go. C'mon, I'll make it up to you with some great food.”

 

“Food doesn't cure everyone's problems like it does yours, Dai,” Ken muttered, nevertheless turning to leave in the direction of Daisuke's home.

 

Daisuke smiled at his fair-faced friend as they began to walk. “Well, you can't be that upset with me, if you're gonna use my nickname! Ken darling!”

 

“I think I'm just going to go home,” Ken said, halting mid-step and turning in the opposite direction.

 

Daisuke laughed and threw his arms around Ken's waist. “No, don't leave me! I don't wanna stay in my big, dark house all alone.”

 

“Grab your teddy bear or something!” Ken said as he struggled to free himself from Daisuke's grip.

 

“But you're so much warmer!”

 

They struggled; quite publicly as quite a few people were watching, some with amusement, others with mild interest, and the rest with shock. At long last, Daisuke relinquished his hold on the smaller boy when the latter conceded. Without speaking, Ken immediately turned and began walking back in the direction towards Daisuke's house. Daisuke grinned and followed.

 

They hadn't been walking for long, just barely halfway through the park in Daisuke's neighborhood, before the rain began. It started slowly, a drop here, a drop there. One always in your eye. Eventually, however, it evolved into a torrential downpour, and Ken shrieked as Daisuke landed heavily in the puddle beside him.

 

“Now I've got mud all over my pants!” Ken began, firing up Ye Olde Lecture Pro. “You know how I feel about my clothes: I don't like having them dirtied. And furthermore, I'm going have to get these dry-cleaned, and I don't—”

 

Daisuke quickly cut him off before he could get into Full Tirade Mode with another jump and a splattering of mud, successfully painting Ken's other leg brown. He laughed and began running.

 

“I'm—going—to—kill—you!”

 

Grinning, Daisuke turned to look over his shoulder to find Ken in hot pursuit. Not to mention quickly over taking him. Grin effectively wiped from his face, Daisuke shifted gears and sped off, spurred with adrenaline at the murderous look in Ken's eyes. Looking back again revealed no change in the distance between himself and Ken.

 

**Holy shit,** Daisuke thought, **it's like he never quit the team! He didn't lose his speed at all, that's for sure!**

 

Only three seconds more passed before Daisuke was tackled down into the soft and squishy grass. With a screech, Daisuke fell heavily onto his stomach, Ken right behind, or rather, on top. The momentum of the collision propelled them to slide across a few feet, aided with the mud acting as a sort of lubricant. Or actually, it propelled Daisuke's body, Ken just sat on top, riding him like a surfboard.

 

“Daisuke! I don't like my clothes dirty!”

 

Daisuke tried to force some air back into his lungs. “Hey, gerroffame! This isn't football!”

 

“I wouldn't have done that if you hadn't splashed me again, no, if you had been more considerate in the first place and had not splashed me at all. It was all I could do to keep my clothes at least *clean* if not *dry*.”

 

“Well, this isn't helping you stay clean!” Daisuke said as he struggled to turn around in the mud in his horizontal position between Ken's legs.

 

“I can't believe you haven't more consideration for your own appearance,” Ken continued as if there had been no interruption, “and think of your poor mother, slaving away all day—”

 

Ken's Full Tirade Mode: The Second Coming ground to halt as Operation: Here's Mud In Your Eye was put into action. Spluttering in shock, he allowed Daisuke to slither out from under him. Blind but not deaf, he could hear Daisuke's laughter somewhere to his left. Quickly sticking his hands into the soft ground beneath him, he scooped up a dollop of mud and hurled it somewhere in Daisuke's general vicinity. The abrupt stop of Daisuke's laughter and the shout that immediately followed gave Ken some clue that he had either hit him or had been close.

 

Wiping the mud from his eyes, Ken stood up to face off with Daisuke, grabbing another handful of mud on the way. The two of them stared at each other, Ken looking determined, hand ready, and Daisuke, grinning, also with a mud missile at hand. If Ken's first shot had hit its mark, it was impossible to tell because Daisuke's entire front was slathered in mud from the tackle.

 

“We're going to get sick,” Ken said, suddenly.

 

“Maybe,” Daisuke replied, unmoving.

 

“Do you care?”

 

“Nope. Do you?”

 

A pause, and then…“Yes,” and before anything more could be said, Ken ran forward and smashed his mud pie onto Daisuke's head. Daisuke howled and shoved his own into the back of Ken's head.

 

Daisuke stumbled backwards and Ken shuddered as he felt the thick, cold mud begin sliding down his back. Daisuke laughed from the ground as he watched Ken do his own rendition of the Funky Chicken. His laughter didn't last long, however, before Ken launched himself back towards Daisuke. Screaming for the hell of it, Daisuke grabbed Ken's wrists, but rain and mud made his grip nonexistent. His hands were useless and he could do nothing as Ken performed a good old-fashioned belly-flop onto him.

 

“Oof!” was all that Daisuke could say about that.

 

“Give up?” Ken asked.

 

“Hell no!” Daisuke choked out as he wrestled Ken over.

 

Like a couple of warthogs at the local watering hole, Ken and Daisuke rolled around in the mud until finally at a loss, Daisuke lay flat on the ground. He could tell that he was at least two inches sunk into the ground. He was soaked through and freezing, but Ken's weight, sitting firmly on top of him, was a welcome bit of warmth. Breathing hard, the two boys stared at each other.

 

“I've got you pinned,” Ken said breathlessly. “You only ever win if you sneak up on people, while I am good at full-frontal attacks. I've got your number, Motomiya. Give it up! Just—give—it—up!”

 

Daisuke laughed breathlessly. “If I wasn't starving, I would have definitely won. You may have won this time, Ichijouji, but next time…” He let the threat trail off. “There can only be one, highlander!”

 

Ken rolled his eyes. “Give?”

 

“Give,” the loser mumbled, begrudgingly.

 

Ken laughed. “C'mon, let's get the hell out of here.”

 

The pair of them stood up, wiping off the excess mud in vain. As they made to leave, strange bits of conversation cropped up between them.

 

“Is this yours?”

 

“How'd this rock get in there?”

 

“Where're our backpacks?”

 

“Is that my—?”

 

“—think I've got swimmer's ear or something.”

 

“Is that like Tennis Elbow?”

 

“When did you lose your shoe?”

 

“Ah, ha ha ha ha!”

 

At long last, the two of them made their way out of the park. They stood on the street corner, waiting patiently in the rain for the signal to change. They garnered curious looks from the numerous people who passed, but each stood as nonchalantly as possible, looking for all the world as if they were perfectly clean, it were a sunny day, and they were bored out of their minds.

 

Ken lost it, however, when Daisuke said in the sexiest voice he could muster, “How you doin'?” to the old lady unfortunate enough to make eye contact with Daisuke as she walked by and stared.

 

Just as the light changed, a last-minute car sped by. Of course, it didn't miss the large puddle gathered at the sewer drain.

 

Daisuke's and Ken's faces scrunched up marvelously as a huge wave of water doused them. Spitting out the water from his mouth, Ken wiped the muddy water from his eyes. Again his hearing sense prevailed as he listened to Daisuke shout a creative string of expletives, using every bit of his blaspheming knowledge to curse the driver of that red Honda into oblivion for the next two or three eternities.

 

“Daisuke…Daisuke! What are you doing? I mean, as if it matters now! We were already soaked, and we're muddy besides.”

 

“It's the principle of the thing, Ken!” Daisuke said exasperatedly as the two made their way across the street.

 

Ken smiled. “C'mon, let's go get some of that food you were talking about.”

 

Daisuke's face instantly lit up. “Yeah! That's what I'm talking about! C'mon! We got chips, and dip, and candy bars, and…”

 

His hand grabbed by Daisuke's, Ken allowed himself to be half-led, half-dragged the last stretch to Daisuke's house.

 

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A/N: Well, the mud scene was sure fun to write! I hope you enjoyed this chapter as much as I did. *Grins* If you're still tagging along, I hope to see you next chapter! Upcoming: Chapter 3: Angel & Devil As One.

 

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