Digimon Fan Fiction ❯ Reboot ❯ Fast Forward ( Chapter 5 )

Disclaimer: I do not own Digimon. Toei Animation does.

 

Fast Forward

 

Regaining memories is like drowning, Tai thinks. He is being bombarded by wave after wave of images, experiences, and emotions with no break in between and he is struggling to keep his head above the water, but there are far too many and he keeps being dragged under by a whirlpool of speeding flashes of recollection.

 

~*~

 

He thinks he will finally ask her out today. He's been waiting for a good opportunity to do so and a concert at Christmastime seems like the perfect set up for a date. He sees her standing outside by the back entrance and her cheeks and nose are flushed pink from the cold and the last rays of the setting sun are lighting her copper-brown hair a fiery red. He's so nervous he can barely get the words out of his mouth, not that when he does, they are particularly elegant anyway.

 

"So, um, Sora, are you going to the concert with anybody? Not that it matters to me. Just wondering."

 

"No, I want to be available in case Matt is free afterwards."

 

And just like that, his dream smashes into smithereens.

 

~*~

 

He never thought it is possible to both love and hate two people before.

 

He doesn't like suppressing his emotions. He's always worn them on his sleeve and hiding them seems so spineless, but he has to. He has to make sure no one suspects his true feelings on the matter, because all that will do is cause unnecessary pain.

 

So he plasters on a false smile and does his best to act like any other normal person whose newfound goal in life is to tease the heck out of their friends when they hear they are an item.

 

And he is not sure what hurts more, seeing them together or them not seeing the torment he is going through.

 

~*~

 

He's hanging by one hand on the cliff wall and she appears over Matt's shoulder, her arms wrapping around his friend's waist, her face riddled with fear and worry, but she is not looking at him, and Tai realizes she doesn't see him anymore, that she hasn't for a long while, and that maybe she never has at all.

 

Then he's falling, falling far away from her and does she see him now perhaps?

 

And he allows himself to be swallowed by merciful oblivion.

 

~*~

 

Finally, the whirlpool spits him out on dry land and Tai is shuddering, gasping like he has been suffocating, and he doesn't realize he is crying until Koromon wipes the tears trailing down his cheeks with a gentle brush of his stringy ears and calls his name hesitantly, "Tai?"

 

"Tai?" Koromon says again and he lifts his head to meet his digimon's concerned red eyes.

 

"Hi, Kari-Kari, Tai-Tai! My name's Koromon!"

 

And a large, roly-poly, pink talking head launches itself at his face.

 

No, that wasn't the same Koromon that is in front of him right now.

 

"Tai, what's the matter?" Koromon asks.

 

"I… let myself forget," Tai says breathlessly. "I didn't want to keep living a lie, but I was trapped. Tell them and cause them to suffer. Don't tell them and suffer myself. And I couldn't take it anymore. I felt so worthless, useless… alone. So when the darkness came, I didn't even fight it. I just wanted an escape from it all."

 

What you're doing is despicable!

 

Now those words make sense.

 

"I'm such a coward!" Tai cries, pounding one fist half-heartedly into the ground. "To run away from my own problems… and all I managed to do was hurt everyone anyway. These past few months… they've all been so worried... and I've been hiding behind a wall in my own mind."

 

He can remember now. Every time a forgotten memory had come close to breaking through to the surface, he had subconsciously repressed it on purpose because he had preferred the peaceful allure of obscurity to the sharp sting of reality.

 

"You must be regretting it," he says, head bowed, "to have chosen someone so weak as your partner."

 

"You're not weak, Tai!" Koromon declares affronted. "You're strong! There are just some things you can't face alone! You need the support of your friends! That's what having friends are all about! Friends help share each others burdens regardless of the pain that comes with it!"

 

A dry chuckle escapes Tai's lips. "Now, you're starting to sound like Matt."

 

Matt…

 

Sora…

 

It is like he is back in the real world with the rain still pouring down and the clouds have parted and have let a ray of sunshine break through, and it sheds its light upon him and he realizes with a jolt something he had not noticed before. More than being envious of their relationship, he had been afraid, so horribly, deathly afraid that he would be cast aside and forgotten… that his two best friends would no longer have anytime or space in their life for a third wheel like him.

 

"I got distracted," Tai whispers, amazed at this new revelation.

 

Koromon waits patiently for him to continue.

 

"Dreaming about Sora being my girlfriend," he says. "Getting jealous… acting so hard to cover up my true feelings…feeling sorry for myself. I forgot that… the most important thing…is to enjoy the time we spend together."

 

The past four months, he hadn't even realized it, wrapped up in his shield of a cocoon, but now it was an obvious glaring oversight. He had missed it so much—being with his friends, joking around, teasing, and talking nonsense. It must have been so much harder for them though—to be confronted by someone who in every shape and appearance was their friend and yet a complete stranger also. He, at least, had been spared the pain through his memory loss. And the amnesia had helped in a way, he supposed. He would never again take anything for granted because nothing lasts forever. Time and friendship are just too precious of things to waste over selfish or spiteful feelings.

 

A gentle breeze sweeps through the air, ruffling Tai's bangs and making his hair even more untidy than before and with it comes a sense of peace as he speaks his resolve with calm kind of clarity.

 

"I'm sorry I made you wait for so long, Koromon. I won't give in to my fears and lose myself like that again."

 

There is something burning within his chest. It feels like he has swallowed a molten lava rock and now it is branding his flesh and searing its way out from the inside, and strangely enough, it doesn't hurt at all, and when it finally does erupt from the very core of his being, he is momentarily blinded by a dazzling flash of orange light.

 

The brightness finally dims, not disappears—no, it is still there surrounding him in a glowing, golden aura—and the spots behind his eyes have retreated, Tai finds himself staring nose to nose with a green-eyed, orange dinosaur standing in the same place that Koromon had been seconds before.

 

"What's my name?" the dinosaur—looking like a miniature T-Rex—asks him.

 

"A-Agu—mon," Tai chokes out, then tears are blurring his vision and a lump is forming in his throat and he can't get any more words out.

 

But no more words are needed and boy and digimon are lost in an almost smothering embrace of arms and claws as they are reunited once again and the golden aura that lingers around them flares and pulses rhythmatically like that of a beating heart.

 

~*~

 

Ken doesn't need to be a genius to figure out where Kari has gone. She will be waiting there… waiting for the digimon to return to the scene of the ambush and it will return, he knows this, because unlike the others who are still puzzled why such an obviously strong digimon had attacked them out of nowhere then turned tail and fled when it could have easily finished them off, he had understood why.

 

This digimon—and it is a digimon if only in the barest form—feeds off of negative emotions. It had been drawn to their group that day due to volatile energy that was running high within their ranks. He had thought he had been the one responsible for it appearing at first. He seems to attract dark forces to him like moths to a flame and he could feel the foreboding, evil aura the digimon threw out that like it was searching for something, and still remembers the horrible, nauseous feeling that had come upon him when the digimon had briefly brushed his mind with the merest hint of a shadow from its writhing black coils.

 

Afterwards, in the calamity that follows, he thinks it may have been Tai that had pulled the digimon to them. His behavior even for one amnesic speaks volumes for an anguished soul. He can still vividly recall that short span of time after he had shed his Emperor persona and had wandered around in a sort of numbed daze—his own spell of amnesia brought on by him not being able to face the horror of what he had done: torture and enslavement of innocent digimon and causing Wormmon to be deleted…

 

Ken knows too well the allure of blocking out reality as an escape. That is what had made the Digital World so appealing to him when he had thought it was one big video game.

 

He hasn't shared his theory with anyone, not even Davis. What can he say? "Kari, I believe there is a distinct possibility your brother is carrying negative energy within himself, something which is never wise to do especially in the Digital World, and he may have ultimately caused that psychotic digimon to attack us and his own mental state to collapse." Kari is already distressed enough as it is. What good will it do anyway? And he has to admit, a part of him is ashamed for not speaking up earlier about his concerns. It is just that once having been accepted by the other Digidestined, he hadn't wanted to damage the fragile hand of extended friendship by voicing a half-formed hypothesis that may or may not be sound.

 

But now as he and Stingmon speed towards her, he wishes he had told her or someone. Because even if his theory is incorrect and it wasn't Tai that had drawn the digimon to them, it is still true that the digimon preys on the darkness one holds within themselves. It could have been anyone or all of them that had enticed it near enough to decide to make a feast out of their toxic emotions they tried so hard to hide.

 

Only now it will be worse. Kari is burdened down that her slip on the cliff almost cost her brother's life; Matt is afflicted similarly because he blames himself for not reaching Tai in time, everyone else is haunted by the realization that one of their number may never rejoin them plus their own personal, dark secrets and regrets, and the guilt hangs like a millstone around all their necks.

 

And Ken stumbles onto the reason the digimon had left them alone. Because it knew they would come back… with a deeper, more tainted set of emotions than before.

 

The feast has become a banquet.

 

~*~

 

It is a rather noisy procession—nine kids riding on their digimon and tromping through the forest like a herd of Mammothmon and making no efforts to cover up the steps or be quiet. They have no time to be cautious after all.

 

Matt broods silently from his seat on Garurumon's back as they crash through the underbrush. Four months of pent-up stress, guilt, and worry is finally merging all into one gigantic ball of irritation inside him. He is angry at himself for not reaching Tai in time. He is angry at Tai for not taking his hand and for having the nerve to forget about him and the rest of his friends, even his own sister. He is angry at the digimon who caused all this in the first place. He is angry at Sora for not realizing Tai liked her back when apparently she had felt the same way about him. He is angry because now that she does know Tai likes her—or did—she might consider returning his feelings. And he is angry at Kari for doing something so extremely reckless and stupid, she is only outshined by her brother back when he had forced Greymon to digivolve wrong into SkullGreymon.

 

The Kamiyas truly are a thorn in his side. It terrifies him to think that there is a chance someday that they might be his in-laws. He casts a glance at his brother riding on Pegasusmon flying above and takes in his frightened expression, his face made even paler by the shadow of his hat's rim, and feels a pang of sympathy for him. T.K. must really be worried.

 

"Hey, guys!" Izzy calls down from Kabuterimon's back. "There's nine of us in this group, Kari by herself and Ken trying to locate her first—that makes eleven altogether, right?"

 

"Yeah, so?" Davis says sourly, still a little put out that he had been the last to find out what everyone was doing, regardless of him being the "leader" of the younger kids.

 

"So, is my digivice glitching or does anyone else's show twelve dots too?" Izzy asks.

 

There is a flurry of movement as the Digidestined check their digivices and D-3s simultaneously and ponder on what the twelfth blinking dot signifies.

 

~*~

 

A warm reptilian snout is snuffling contently into his chest and blowing blasts of hot air through its nostrils, and a low, gravely thrumming is coming from within its throat in a dinosaur-rendition of purring, and Tai wonders in amazement how he ever could have forgotten his own digimon.

 

"Agumon," he says, rubbing the top of the smooth, orange head fondly. "You said earlier that you were waiting for me to wake you up; that you couldn't do it on your own until I was ready. What did you mean by that?"

 

"I was in Frozen State," Agumon explains. "It's sort of like when a computer freezes up. I needed you to restart my system, but you had lost yourself."

 

"Lost myself…" Tai muses. "You mean it was brought on because I couldn't remember—that I had lost all my memories?"

 

"No, I think that saved you from disappearing completely," Agumon states, lifting his head from Tai's lap to look his partner in the face. "You lost what makes you you out there on the cliff somehow. I don't know how it happened, but I felt it vanish—the bond we share with each other. It gave me quite the shock. I felt all my power drain after that. I started to de-digivolve and think I might have gone backwards into nothing, only something stopped the process. It must have been when you lost your memories."

 

Tai winces because he thinks he understands what had happened now. He had felt so betrayed and hurt when he had seen Sora reaching for Matt and fear had seized him by the ear and whispered that he was not good enough, would never be good enough … and he hadn't seen the point in fighting for something he had no chance of winning. In that instant, everything around him had ceased in their meaning to him.

 

His courage zapped to zero.

 

Izzy had told him about the time he had been ensnared in Vademon's dimension and how almost losing his knowledge had almost destroyed Tentomon. Their digimon shared a bond with their human partners. Their unique trait that had once empowered their Crests… if they were to lose it, they would lose their digimon as well, for their digimon had been created especially for them.

 

His sudden plunge from the cliff and into the bowels of forgetfulness must have inadvertently thrown up a barrier. For the first time since emerging from it, Tai is very thankful for his amnesia.

 

The sharp beeping of his digivice breaks him out of his ruminating and he stares down at it and at the red dots across its screen, which have multiplied. Reality crashes in on him on all sides as he recalls his sister's words to him just hours before, but now seems ages ago.

 

"Kari!" Tai exclaims, leaping to his feet. "Kari said she was going back here to make things better! I didn't understand what she meant then. You don't think—"

 

"Well, Tai, if it was Kari who had lost her memories, I think you would have done the same thing she has, right?" Agumon asserts the situation.

 

Tai isn't sure whether to feel pride or dismay at that statement. "I've been a bad influence on her," he curses grimly, before surveying his digivice again. "It looks like T.K. told the others though—that's one blessing."

 

"You're going there, right? So why are we still standing around here?" Agumon asks.

 

"Of course, I'm going there. I'm not going to abandon my sister," Tai declares even as he clenches his hands into fists to keep them from shaking more at the thought of facing the other Digidestined than the cliff itself.

 

He shouldn't be afraid anymore. He has made up his mind. He will take Matt and Sora's friendship and be satisfied with it, so why does his heart still ache?

 

"Because you need to talk to them and get things out in the open," Agumon says as if he can read his mind. "If you keep everything bottled up, you'll end up back where you started."

 

"Agumon…" Tai says and half-smiles. Of course Agumon knows what is really troubling him. He had been there the day Sora had turned him down.

 

"Just know that whatever happens, you're not alone, Tai," Agumon says, coming up and nudging him lightly in the side. "You forgot that last time."

 

"Alone," Tai murmurs, remembering his greatest weakness from his memory-less state and not understanding the reason for the fear then. "I forgot a lot of things, didn't I? And some of it wasn't the amnesia's fault either."

 

Lifting his head up, he viewed the sky, now painted a crimson-orange from the setting sun, the trees and grass appearing ablaze with fire. "I need them," Tai says quietly. "And they need me. I won't make them wait anymore."

 

It is like he has woken something slumbering deep inside him that now worms and writhes its way up from his stomach until it flares into a scorching wave across his chest and the golden aura that has been flickering in and out of existence around them, bursts into a bright, unwavering radiance and suddenly WarGreymon is standing before him, the light reflecting off his metal armor and his eyes shining with a fierce passion.

 

"Don't you think you'd get there quicker if you got a lift?" he inquires with an amused tone.

 

Laughter pours forth from Tai's throat, happy and free, and as clambers up his digimon's back, he lets his arms linger around WarGreymon's neck in a brief hug, glad to see him well and alright, living proof that his courage hasn't completely deserted him.

 

"Let's go," he says, his eyes shining with an intense zeal. "We've got a score to settle."

 

~*~

 

It doesn't take that long for the digimon to come. In fact, they could see it making its way towards them on the horizon—a small black dot growing steadily larger as it approaches, answering the unspoken summons. Gatomon wonders if it has been waiting for them, knowing they would return someday, or if it is drawn to Kari's presence of light like so many others before it.

 

She trembles half in anticipation for this confrontation to be over and half in trepidation because she remembers what had happened the first time it had attacked them.

 

It catches them unawares and off-guard on a day that is supposed to have been a vacation for their partners. Even the older kids and their digimon have joined their group and they are busy having fun, reveling in the rare treat to have everyone all together at once.

 

Perhaps it had been fore-planned. It is entirely too convenient what happens next.

 

It descends upon them from the above with the same kind of deadly precision a hawk engages when making a kill, swift and silent, and there is no warning to avoid the cascading sheet of red raindrops that obliterates everything it touches. The only reason they survived is because the digimon hadn't wanted to kill them off in one blow—it is toying with them.

 

They are on a stretch of beach by the ocean when the onslaught comes. It is not the same stretch of beach the children had traversed on their first visit to the Digital World. It is not the place where Shellmon had attacked them twice, nor where Scorpiomon and MetalSeadramon followed suit later in their journey. Still, in hind sight, they really should have thought twice about picnicking on any shoreline purely out of nostalgia's sake simply because of the bad case of déjà vu that seems to linger there.

 

They are hemmed in on all sides by pillars of what look like burning fire, but the flame is a sickly, greenish-yellow and produces an awful odor like rot and decay. The stench and smoke is choking them, they can't breathe, and they can't escape. The ocean is front of them and their backs are against the rock. The only way out is up…up the cliff wall.

 

The digimon digivolve but they can't score a solid hit on their enemy, who is enshrouded in swirling tendrils of purplish-black mist. There appears to be an outline of the digimon underlying beneath the dark mass, but it is so very faint it is hard to tell what its true form looks like. The air is heavy with an unwholesome atmosphere and their retaliation against their foe is sluggish, as if something invisible is sapping their full strength or they are being weighed down by some unseen element.

 

They try beseeching it, asking what it wants and to please leave them in peace, but there is no reply from it nor does it shout out the names of its attacks. It continues its tirade in relentless, calculating silence only broken once when it erupts into a fit of diabolical laughter when one of their partners fall off the cliff and the emotions of disbelief, guilt and terror are so thick, they can practically taste them…

 

Then the digimon is before them again, not from memory but physically present, looming large and menacing, and enswathed in a gaseous dark substance. Gatomon is reminded of humans' depictions of what a grim reaper looks like, all hooded and cloaked in a black robe, and feels an ominous chill go down her spine as she digivolves and tries to convince herself that she can't possibly be looking death in the eye because the digimon's face is not visible.

 

And on Kari's D-3, the name of their unknown foe finally reveals itself: Miasmamon.

 

To Be Continued…

 

A/N: Well, there you go. I had wanted to have the whole battle over and done with in this chapter, but I spent more time setting up the reason for why the digimon had attacked them in the first place because it seemed more important and I didn't want it to appear totally random. I hope you understand things a little better now.

 

I based Miasmamon off of the actual substance it is in real life. Miasma: (Greek, meaning "pollution")a toxic discharge, resembling fog, defilement, noxious atmosphere, a dangerous, foreboding, death-like influence. Basically, it is poisoned air, once believed to spread disease, however, over the years, miasma has also been identified with negative energy and emotion.

 

I like to think of Miasmamon as a kind of evolved form of the darkness we see in Season 01, you know: Matt in the cave, Sora in the pit. It stands to reason that if digimon are reflections of the real world based on human ideas and concepts (eg: Myotismon=vampire, Angemon/Angewomon=angels), that it is entirely possible for miasma to creep into the Digital World and slowly over time there, transform into a digimon.

 

So, next chapter we have the fight scene, everyone reunited (yay!), and Matt-Sora-Tai sort things out. Just letting you know ahead of time, if I wanted this to be a romance fic, it would be under the romance genre. It's not. Read into that however you will. In any case, I'll try and put in Sora's viewpoint so you get a clearer picture of what she's going through in her mind. I've been kind of skirting around that issue.

 

Alrighty, thank you for reading! You guys are awesome! Explaining emotions and the flow of thought is more stressful than it sounds. Do feel free to share your favorite parts and lines and if you have any questions, just ask and I will answer them (without giving away the ending I hope). Thanks again!