Digimon Fan Fiction ❯ Pins and Needles ❯ Miyako ( Chapter 6 )

Sorry for the long wait, everyone! Christmas was semi-distracting. But I churned this thing out as quick as I possibly could, so here it is!

DISCLAIMER: You know the drill. Ain't mine, belongs to Toei Animation & Co., no profit, all rights reserved. This chapter expands very slightly on the Chosen Cadets, which are one of the things I've made up, but is very much in accordance with the end of Episode 50. I hope they're a good enough idea that other people want to use them at some point -- and if so, just give a nod in my general direction. >D

A/N: I know what the last chapter promised. Don't worry, you'll get your cheesecake in Part Seven. This one, however, is checking up on Miyako and the others back home. Sorry about that -- dratted plot thing that must be continually advanced! Holsmon's attack info is taken from the Japanese version, so if they're different from the dub...well, on my head be it! Sorry for any potential confusion you may be briefly caused over this small and relatively insignificant detail. ;)

"TEMPEST WING!"

Holsmon's cry blended with those of a hundred other digimon attacking at the same instant, but Miyako had no trouble picking his individual voice out of the throng. She pressed her face up against the plexiglas that separated all of the homo sapiens from their digimon counterparts and held her breath intently as he took out one target after another. He was doing well, but she thought she saw a weakness in the arch of his back, a hesitation as he lifted his head, that signaled his growing exhaustion. Tempest Wing may have been Holsmon's most powerful attack, but it involved throwing his body into a whirling aerial corkscrew and that kind of thing was tiring.

She dug her fingers into the plexiglas and felt the tempered plastic give very slightly. Sooner or later, she knew her digimon was going to collapse. The only question was when -- after the battle, or during it? Victory, or defeat? Either way, the lavender-haired girl thought it would come down to a difference of a few seconds. According to the lighted panel at the top of the plexiglas cage, there were only a couple of enemy targets left to hit.

At the last possible moment, Holsmon turned his attention from the battle to gaze at her pleadingly. He wanted her help. Miyako swallowed and glanced over at the technician's booth. She caught a glimpse of an adult with oversized headphones, paying more attention to the cigarette dangling from his lips than anything they were doing, and snorted in quiet disgust. The Tokyo Training Facility had rules to limit how much a child could help his or her digimon, but she had never liked standing around passively during battle. As a puny human girl, she might not have been able to do much against a herd of Monochromon, but she would definitely do what she could. So long as the technician kept ignoring them both...

Very quietly, Miyako tapped on the plexiglas to show that she knew what he wanted from her and signed for number two. Hopefully, Holsmon would know what she meant. Red Sun was his second most powerful attack, and while it might not have been quite as impressive as Tempest Wing -- just a blast of red energy from the eyes -- it was also a lot less tiring. Less tiring seemed more important right now.

He didn't respond immediately, and for all of a heartbeat she thought he hadn't understood, but then the Beast-type digimon threw his head back and snarled, "RED SUN!" in his rolling English. The words seemed to hang in the air for a few seconds, followed swiftly by that blinding red light, and another target bit the dust. Miyako cheered, then again and again until the field was completely cleared. She was jumping up and down by the end of it, and didn't even mind when the technician at their booth hardly batted an eye. Finally, Holsmon smiled at her as much as a bird could, devolved back to Hawkmon, and collapsed against the nearest plexiglas wall. Then, and only then, did the buzzer sound to announce the end of the match.

At that moment, Miyako would have liked to have gone to her digimon. Poor Hawkmon had been practicing for six solid hours already, and even though the fact that he hadn't simply passed out at the end of such a long battle meant that he was getting stronger, she still worried about him. But, of course, she couldn't do that because the stupid technician was flagging her down for a word. Probably wanted to say that Holsmon had let his guard down before the coast was really clear. Miyako pushed her glasses up on her nose with a contemptuous flick of one finger. She really disliked the way adults tried to talk about digimon when they'd never had one of their own. Besides, in a real fight, there wouldn't have been any magic buzzer to inform these kids with their digimon when the danger had passed -- so wouldn't they have to learn to make their own decisions about it sooner or later? There were classes to take in school nowadays, but even a good teacher was no patch on experience.

Halfway over to speak to him, the lavender-haired girl realized that she was about to bite the head off of a total stranger for something that ordinarily wouldn't have bothered her much. She may not have liked his type, but it didn't usually get to her this way. Miyako closed her eyes and forced a somewhat more pleasant expression onto her face before she went over to talk to him. She was frustrated, yes, but not because of he had done to her or to Hawkmon. She was frustrated because five long days had passed since Taichi and Yamato disappeared into the Digital World and they still hadn't heard back from Gennai. What she needed to do was focus on the positive things. Positive things like how Hawkmon had just completed a practice session that was three times longer than anything he'd done on their first day at the training facility. As for her, Miyako could now bring both of her digimentals up without breaking a sweat. She was starting to remember how to draw upon Love and Purity. They weren't things she had really dwelled on in peacetime.

"Is that you, Miyako-chan?"

Someone's fingers landed lightly on her shoulder, and the touch was hardly threatening, but Miyako twisted back and away before her mind had time to process the familiar voice and found herself looking up into Takenouchi Sora's startled crimson eyes. The older girl had her shining reddish hair up in an artistically-messy bun at the back of her head, so that loose pieces of it fell in around her face haphazardly. It was a look that had been very popular a few years ago but was rather out of style now. From what the Bearer of Purity had seen of Sora -- which, admittedly, was more this year than any other, since the redhead had taken it upon herself to show her around at Odaiba Senior High School -- this sort of thing was very typical.

"It's me," Miyako said cheerfully, hoping to take the edge of off her obvious paranoia. "I like your hair."

"Thank you. I had a few spare minutes this morning, so I thought I'd do something special with it."

There was a smile playing on Sora's lips that suggested she knew the compliment hadn't been entirely genuine, and Miyako was tempted to say that the hairstyle really did look good on her, fashionable or no, but thought better of it. They both turned to watch as another digimon sent a blast of what appeared to be blue fire in their direction, and Sora winced involuntarily before the attack hit the plexiglas barrier and fizzled. She opened her eyes and shook her head almost disbelievingly.

"You know, I still can't get used to the idea that glass is going to keep us safe from a stray fireball," the Keeper of Love murmured. "Isn't this sort of dangerous?"

Glass? the lavender-haired girl thought bemusedly. Not hardly. The tempered plastic was closer to plexiglas than actual glass, and even that term wasn't completely accurate. She should know -- she had been one of the people called in to work on its development. The material was still somewhat experimental, but the government had already phased it into the really big training facilities. Eventually, when its manufacturing costs were less astronomical, they all would be wearing slim designer suits of the stuff into their daily battles. Miyako wasn't completely sure she liked that. She felt removed enough from the conflict already.

"Maybe it is, in a way," she admitted slowly. "But...I don't know. Sometimes, I think we'd be better off in that room with them, learning how to watch our backs."

From the side of her eye, she saw Hawkmon climbing to his feet and went for her D-3. She ought to have him evolve to Shurimon now, she decided. He could've used the workout. For some reason that she could not fathom, Shurimon just didn't seem to be as strong as Holsmon. Maybe it was just that all of Hawkmon's other evolutions or even devolutions had wings, but the Mutant-type was always slightly awkward, and it had become more noticeable since his hiatus. Or was she simply looking at him more closely than she had in the past?

Sora had taken to staring at her, not aggressively or even curiously, but simply staring. After a few seconds, the redhead blinked and seemed confused. The expression didn't sit well at all on her wide-open tanned face. She was just one of those people who usually exuded an air of quiet wisdom, and wise women weren't supposed to be confused.

"I guess so," Sora said at last. "But wouldn't a lot of children get hurt if we did that?"

It was surprisingly hard not to smile or be condescending. Why did she feel like the elder girl suddenly, when Sora sometimes tutored her in history? "Better here than in the field, don't you think?"

"I guess so," the redhead said again. As she watched, Sora closed her eyes and drew a breath that didn't seem to want to come. "It's a little scary to think about...but maybe that's part of the problem." When she opened them this time, her eyes were harder than they had been. "We're coddling people we expect to be soldiers someday. Is it really that surprising that they've all been captured?"

Harsher than her own perspective. Miyako frowned; she was having a thought that she didn't particularly enjoy. "You tried to do that to us, didn't you?" she whispered.

When the Keeper of Love abruptly found something else to look at, Miyako realized she was right and swallowed hard.

"You did. You wanted to protect us."

"We wanted to make things easier for you," Sora protested, as though there were a difference. "Just a few explanations that we didn't get until later...things we had to learn the hard way...and you were only children." She smiled then, faint on her glossy lips and as sour as a lemon. "I guess we thought we could make the war into the game. Maybe it was silly or even futile -- but you have no idea, Miyako-chan, what it's like to see yourself when you were younger and really know for the first time how jaded you've become."

She had never heard Sora talk like this before. There was a darkness to her, a certain anger, and underneath all of that she seemed so sad. "Sora-san..." Miyako would have been careful, would have been gentle, but she couldn't think of a gentle way to ask a thing like this. "Do you ever wish the Digital World hadn't chosen you?"

The older girl blinked, and her smile tightened, hitching up at the corners like the lips of a puppet. "Of course not. I love Piyomon. I wouldn't want to change things so that I'd never met her or seen the Digital World or done all of the good that I've done. It's just..."

More blinking from her, but rapidly this time, like she might have been staving off tears.

"It's just...what?" Miyako asked in the softest, smallest voice she could manage. To herself, at least, she admitted that part of her was hoping Sora wouldn't hear the question.

But Sora heard. When she spoke, her voice was tired and somehow hollow and Miyako didn't feel older than her any longer. "Just that killing people changes you, Miyako-chan."

"Digimon aren't people," the lavender-haired girl protested without really thinking about it, and realized the moment the words were out of her mouth that she didn't mean them. Hawkmon might not have been a human being, but he wasn't an animal, either. He had thoughts and feelings and aspirations. Besides, he loved her. Maybe what he looked like didn't matter so much.

But when she let herself dwell on things like that, the world around her started to spin sickeningly. Digimon got reformatted, so maybe they didn't really die -- but did that make killing them okay? Miyako just wasn't sure. If every single person on the whole planet had believed in reincarnation with absolute conviction, would murdering someone become socially acceptable? Somehow, she didn't think so.

Something in the redhead's bearing shifted, relaxed a little bit with that unspoken admission. She smiled and still seemed unhappy, but not quite so pained. Her eyes wandered away, and this time Miyako wasn't sure what she was looking at. "It's necessary, sometimes. I'm not like Mimi-chan, and I won't pretend it isn't. But that doesn't mean I have to like it." She sighed. "Forgive us, Miyako-chan, if we tried to hard to keep you safe that you had trouble taking watching your backs."

Not for the first time, Miyako wondered if she were really the only one of them who didn't hate what they had done. She knew she wasn't the only Chosen Child period who enjoyed that adrenaline rush, the moment where you knew that you were going to be the one to live. Heck, Daisuke and even Takeru still talked about the really good fights sometimes, regaling her with their digimon's parts in them even though she'd been there at the time. How come Mimi and Hikari didn't do that, instead of going teary-eyed and solemn? And now Sora, the reputed former tomboy, was treating the whole Digital World experience like something awful and best forgotten. More than even her Jogress partner's reaction, that made Miyako feel guilty and abnormal.

She would have liked to have met Sora's gaze and told the truth -- that she understood the older girl's reasons, but still thought it had been stupid to try and protect them. But she couldn't, because Sora had just made a huge deal about trying to keep them clean and innocent, and Miyako was seriously worried now that it hadn't worked, or at least not on her. She felt sure that Shurimon hadn't been this much weaker than Holsmon before. Maybe the problem ran a little deeper than simple lack of practice.

"That's okay," she said. "We managed."

Gradually, the older girl seemed to come back from wherever she had been, whatever she'd been looking at. She studied Miyako for what felt like an awfully long time, and then nodded. "Yes, you did. I'm sorry."

Miyako wanted to ask her what she was sorry for, wanted not to know. She knew. "It's not your fault." She hesitated. "We're okay, though, aren't we?"

"You survived," Sora replied in a flat, unyielding sort of voice. "We all did. I think I'd like myself more if I hadn't, though -- if I still had nightmares or thought I wouldn't be able to do it again in a heartbeat." She stared at the floor and took a deep breath. "But it's hard to feel sympathy for anyone who hurts the people that I love, and these digimon keep doing that."

When the Sora lifted her head again, her eyes were clear crimson and they looked like blood. The lavender-haired girl realized that Sora meant love in a literal and distinctly not platonic sense. She was thinking of Taichi and Yamato. The expression on her face was just much too personal to have included any of the missing Cadets or even Ken. It was a private, intimate look, and Miyako felt embarrassed to have witnessed it. She shifted from one foot to the other awkwardly and wasn't sure where to look.

Everyone knew that Sora's relationship with those particular boys was sort of...complicated, for lack of a better word, but Mimi was the only one not directly involved who had much idea of the exact details. From what little the Keeper of Purity would say about her friend's love life, it seemed that Sora had liked both Taichi and Yamato and had made the mistake of asking Yamato out first. A year or so later, something had happened between the two of them that convinced the blond that he was...well...more comfortable with other boys. How this ruined Sora's chances with him was pretty obvious, but somehow or other it had messed up things with Taichi as well. Maybe he didn't want to date his best friend's ex, but Miyako had the sneaking suspicion that he was nervous dating her would turn him gay, too.

None of which had changed Sora's feelings for either of them in the slightest, apparently. She still loved them, loved them enough that their loss was like having a part of her ripped out and she obviously didn't know how to function without it. Staring at her, Miyako thought she'd never seen anything so utterly ridiculous. She couldn't imagine getting that attached to a boy, let alone one who didn't even like her back. At least it explained why Sora was being so morose today.

"We're going to save them, you know." Miyako wanted to be comforting, would have liked to at least make the attempt. She felt sorry for the older girl, if not exactly sympathetic.

Sora closed her eyes and then wiped them on her sleeve, being careful not to smudge the mascara. Something moist on her cheeks caught the light. She sniffled and laughed softly. "Are you just saying that to cheer me up, or have you come up with something new since yesterday?"

Even knowing it wouldn't stand up under scrutiny, Miyako was tempted to lie. "Well...not yet."

"Unless you count, 'Get stronger, take by surprise,'" Sora mused.

She still sounded withdrawn, but even that small joke was a definite improvement. Besides, it had been an unflattering but fairly accurate assessment of Daisuke's current strategy. Miyako grinned at her. "You thought of this place on your own, too, then? Where's Piyomon?"

"Over there." The redhead indicated one of the other plexiglas rooms, and Miyako saw BirDramon flapping her wings in a harsh, continuous motion as though she were struggling against a self-contained gale-force wind. Endurance training. "I know it's really for children, to help them learn how to take care of their new partners, but the training rooms are so extensive that I thought..." She blew a stray piece of red hair from her eyes. "But it's not as good as having the Digital World open. Garudamon is much too big for this setup. A national forest might be nice, but I don't think the park rangers would let a fire-breathing digimon into one knowingly, even if he promised to behave himself."

"Probably not," Miyako said agreeably.

Silence. They weren't strangers, but only friends can keep talking when they have exhausted all topics of conversation. Sora might have gone on awhile longer by asking whether Gennai had contacted them yet, but they both knew the Bearer of Purity would have said something already if he had. Seconds turned into minutes, and Miyako passed the time by admiring Sora's new gold earrings. They were the kind that dangled and looked a bit too feminine for the strong cheekbones in her face. It made Miyako wonder if Taichi hadn't told her she was too much like one of the guys for his tastes. She wasn't sure who to be angry at if he had -- Taichi for saying such a stupid thing, or Sora for listening to it.

When she looked back at the Keeper of Love, ready to put some of this into words, Sora was gazing at her in a funny, almost sad sort of way.

"I'm sorry," she announced unexpectedly. "I'm dumping all of this on you, not even thinking about how you must be feeling yourself."

Just then, all the lavender-haired girl really felt was confused. "Um...excuse me?"

"You know." Pursing her lips, Sora peered at her, and what she saw seemed to confirm her suspicions. "Because the enemy took Ken-kun."

When the meaning of that sunk in, Miyako felt her face growing hot and began to stammer. "Uh, no -- not really -- I mean, I used to have a crush on him, but we're just friends now. Honest!" For the truth, it didn't sound very convincing. "I don't like him that way!"

And she didn't. Which wasn't to say she didn't know where Sora might have gotten that idea -- Ken was awfully handsome, not to mention sweet. Shy, too, in an adorably hopeless sort of way. Plus, it didn't hurt that he was really smart. None of the boys she had dated so far could keep up with her when she started getting technical. Not to say that they were stupid, exactly, because they weren't -- but Ken, she wouldn't have had to explain anything to him. He might even have had suggestions for how she could improve her ideas or fix the occasional programming bug. She wouldn't have intimidated him just by being smart.

Abruptly, Miyako realized that she was staring off into space and that the heat in her cheeks had somehow conspired to get worse. She spared a mortified glance at Sora's face and blurted, "But really, he's just a good friend!"

"Uh-huh." The redhead shrugged, seemingly indifferent, but there was laughter in her eyes. She tugged her bookbag closer to her shoulder and turned back to BirDramon, frowning ever so slightly. "Well, it's almost lunchtime. We've been working all morning, so I think we're going to take a break now. See you later, okay?"

She might have offered to eat lunch with the two of them, if only to be polite, but Miyako was just as glad that she hadn't. Sora had given her plenty to think about already. Miyako shook her head to clear it and went to speak with the technician about a different setup in Hawkmon's room. Even looking right at him, though, she wasn't seeing him. She was seeing Ken, and that soft, uncertain smile of his.

Would it have been nice to date a boy like that?

End of Part Six.