Digimon Fan Fiction ❯ Reboot ❯ Error ( Chapter 6 )

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

 

Error

 

Sora's stomach is twisting in horrible, cramping knots that have absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the lunch she ate earlier. Small shivers are racking throughout her body and it is not the wind from the high altitude that is hitting her from her perch on Birdramon's foot claw, which is to blame. She is glad she has some space up here to gather her thoughts. She should be more concerned about Kari and what they will all find when they catch up to her, but the only thing her mind appears to be able to focus on is Matt's words from before.

 

"Did you know… did you know that Tai liked you?"

 

Even now, it still seems hard to believe. Or is because she doesn't want to believe it? In a way, if it is true, it is infuriating. For her to have harbored a secret crush on her best friend for so many years, practically all her childhood, only to give up when she had forced herself to realize that a friend was all Tai would ever think of her as, and not wanting to spoil that friendship by asking something more from him... only to discover later, much too late, that he had apparently reciprocated her feelings is like a slap in the face. She had felt so liberated when she had decided to move on. There would no longer be any more awkward fights between them over some hairpin or other such nonsense. She wouldn't have to spend an hour or more agonizing over outfit to wear before heading over to his house only for Tai not to even notice. They could simply go back to being friends again without all the underlying tension she had thought she had been the one responsible for dragging between them. Now, with the knowledge that Tai had liked her back, she realizes most of it had been a severe case of Fifth-Grade Flirtation and both of them being too blind to see it.

 

The revelation is depressing and very sardonic considering the timing when Tai had chosen to express his feelings or tried to anyway.

 

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

 

Stupid Tai, she fumes inwardly when she finally comprehends that had been his way of indirectly asking her out.

 

By then, she had been developing new feelings towards Matt—feelings that were not entirely too unpleasant. She had begun seeing him in a new light. It had started so slowly she hadn't even been aware of it until one day she had stopped and examined the reason behind why she wanted to leap at Jun Motomiya, knock her to the ground and scratch her eyes out every time she bodily flung herself at Matt.

 

Matt, who had been there the day she had a row with Tai over why she had suddenly quit the soccer team. Matt, who didn't accuse her of being a traitor for picking up tennis and said she looked quite fetching in her skirt uniform. Matt, who seems to appreciate the fact that she is in fact, a girl. Matt, who is the polar opposite of Tai in every way with his fair complexion and quiet personality. And suddenly, Tai remaining merely her friend isn't quite as painful a thought as before.

 

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

 

She hadn't known. She hadn't known. She just hadn't wanted him to be waiting around hours in the cold for someone who wouldn't show. She had assumed he was asking her as friend anyways like he always had. And he hadn't protested at all.

 

"Oh, okay, that's great."

 

She had thought he had been relieved—that he hadn't really wanted to ask her anyway, that maybe he had plans with someone else. She hadn't suspected for one instant she may have hurt him deeply, not even in the weeks that followed. Tai had been a very good actor.

 

"Did you see his face that day on the cliff wall? You were right there behind me—did you see his face when you reached for me instead? I wasn't even the one in danger of falling."

 

Then she had really hurt him and this time the damage might be irreparable and not just to his emotions.

 

She feels sick, nauseous almost—frustration and guilt doing cartwheels inside her… then they arrive at the location their digivices indicate Kari to be and she gasps in fear at what she sees.

 

~*~

 

Kari knows she is being extremely reckless and that if the other Digidestined could see her now, she would get a sound rebuke from them all—and possibly a slap from Yolei. But they are not here, they know nothing of her vendetta against the digimon who had taken the brother she knew away from her and left an empty husk behind. She is on her own and she feels strangely released. There is an odd, slithering sensation in her belly and it feels slimy and cold… but the blood is rushing to head in anger as she sets her eyes upon the digimon that has brought about this misfortune.

 

She doesn't get angry easily. She may get upset or irritated like whenever Davis starts up his "Kari-is-my-girl" routine, but anger has to have a definite cause. She had been angry at Myotismon the first time she had come face-to-face with him—angry because he had been hurting innocent people to find her. She had thought his destruction was justice served. She has kept that mindset for every digimon they have no choice but to destroy. She has a peaceful nature. She prefers healing and helping digimon, not deleting them. She never thought she would see the day when she would look at any living creature with pure hatred and be consumed with the desire to annihilate it.

 

The slithering sensation has turned into a restless, agitated squirming like a nest of pit vipers are coiling in her stomach.

 

She stands perilously close to the edge of the cliff unabashedly unafraid and watches Angewomon notch a Celestial Arrow to her bow, aim it at the swirling misshapen, black mass—at this Miasmamon—and hopes its final moments are spent in sheer agony.

 

She wants to hear it emit something besides its maniacal laughter. She wants to hear it scream in pain—she wants it to suffer just as much as she has these past four months.

 

She wishes she is a digimon so that she could obliterate it herself—tear it apart, wipe away every particle of the dark mist from existence—to exact vengeance, not justice; to prove she isn't weak.

 

Angewomon's Celestial Arrow flies wildly off its mark as the angel digimon lets out an anguished shout as her body flickers in and out between color and a shade of faded grey like that of a badly tuned television.

 

The air seems to fairly hum with a poisonous energy as Miasmamon's size expands two-fold without warning as if drinking it all in and envelopes Angewomon in one writhing black tendril and begins to squeeze ruthlessly.

 

Kari's eyes widen in horror as she realizes far too late that giving in to the darkness of her heart has only empowered Miasmamon's strength and condemned her digimon, her digimon who thrived off of her light, to her doom. Angewomon's pained cries resound in her ears accusingly and she takes one small step forward as if she can reach out and undo her error…

 

And screams soundlessly as she plunges through empty space as the ground beneath her foot crumbles away.

 

~*~

 

Ken's heart leaps to his throat as he reaches the scene just in time to see Kari tumble off the cliff and it is as if someone has pressed a rewind button and it is Tai falling all over again.

 

No, not again. Not this time!

 

Stingmon dives towards her plummeting body in a gigantic burst of speed and manages to catch her in one outstretched hand. Her body makes a soft whump-ing sound as it impacts the insect digimon's upturned palm and Kari lays there in a daze unmoving. Stingmon retracts his arm back and cradles his new possession protectively against his chest, and Ken turns his attention towards the black mass that now resembles a floating blob of a jellyfish in the sky: Angewomon hopelessly entangled in its tentacles and ready to be devoured at any moment's notice.

 

But their adversary has a far more succulent meal in mind than some digimon's data.

 

It throbs once—this black mass his D-3 identifies as Miasmamon—throbs like someone has hit a gong and the sound is vibrating through the air and it bounces loudly off the inside of Ken's head, making his ears ring… and yet there is no noise only a heavy pressure on his skull as if something invisible is flattening it.

 

Unbidden, images of his past heinous crimes as Digimon Emperor flashed before his eyes, one in particular standing out the most: himself, whip in hand poised in the air, prepared to lash out at a small, green digimon fallen on the floor where he had kicked it.

 

"Worthless worm!" he snarls, his features twisted in a sadistic, cruel sneer of disgust as he brings the whip down upon the defenseless body…

 

Ken clutches at his head as if to claw out the memory with his bare hands and a tortured scream rips its way free from his throat.

 

He distantly hears Stingmon anxiously calling his name and tries to find his way back through his trail of nightmares to the sound of his digimon's voice.

 

And when he opens his eyes, he sees the ocean, reflecting not the splendor of the golden, late-afternoon setting sun, but the silver crest of foam riding pitch black waves…

 

Then Miasmamon looms in front of him and spreads out a cascading sheet of darkness that veils his senses and he knows no more.

 

~*~

 

It looks like an inkblot smeared across the sky, an ugly patch of black that someone has mistakenly painted with their brush across a portrait depicting the vivid colors of the sunset. Matt doesn't recall the digimon being nearly as large as before—it can't bode well for them, and fear comes in a feeling like being doused in freezing water as he catches sight of the victims ensnared in its wriggling coils: Kari and Ken, both appearing pale and unconscious, and Angewomon and Stingmon, struggling sluggishly and in vain to extricate their partners and themselves.

 

"KARI!!!" T.K. shouts and in the next instant, he and Pegasusmon have flung themselves heedlessly into a nosedive at their foe.

 

"T.K.! STOP!" Matt cries, but his brother ignores him.

 

"Equus Beam!" Pegasusmon's attack rings out and a blazing green light shoots out of the triangle on his forehead to slice through the black strands that hold their friends captive.

 

It doesn't seem to have any effect, not that Matt had thought it would, and the others remained trapped within the enemy's grip, limp and motionless, almost lifeless…

 

"Kari!" T.K. shouts again in a despairing moan, an expression of hopelessness and defeat displayed across his face for the entire world to see.

 

The dark mass pulses—pulses like a heart covered in a thick wad of oozing tar—and then inflates like a hot air balloon, and snaps out a black tendril at the pair. Pegasusmon bucks on purpose, causing T.K. to lose his seat on his back and free-fall through empty space, while he, himself is caught tight.

 

"Poision Ivy!" Palmon yells before Matt even has time to blink or start to panic and snags his brother out of the air with her vine attack, drawing him safely back on the top of the cliff to solid ground.

 

"T.K.!" Matt exclaims rushing over to him to make sure he is alright. "God, what were you thinking?! No, never mind that, what the hell is that thing?!"

 

He can't stand not knowing any longer. He wants some answers. He wants to know why it had attacked them before, why it had left, and why it is attacking them again, why their digimon's attacks do not faze it and how it is increasing its strength.

 

"Miasmamon," Cody reads from his D-3. "There's no other data on it except its name."

 

"There's no other information at all?" Matt demands before whirling on remaining digimon. "Don't you guys know anything about that monster?! A little help would be useful!"

 

"There is no need to get so snappy with us," Aquilamon squawks, his feathers fluffed up indignantly.

 

"That's right," Kabuterimon pipes up. "There are far too many digimon to keep track of out there and new ones come into existence every day!"

 

"Who cares if nothing is known about it!" Davis declares, his face full of righteous fury aimed directly at their adversary. "It almost killed Taichi-sempai and now its got Kari and Ken! I say let's all attack it together and blow it out of the sky!"

 

"We did that last time and it didn't work," Cody protests.

 

"We can't risk a full-out attack on it right now, anyway. We might end up accidentally hitting Kari or Ken!" Yolei snipes at him, worry for their comrades clouding up her mind.

 

"Oh, you have a better idea?" Davis retorts, simmering in anger at their helpless situation. "What's your plan? Surrender and hope it only eats half of us since its having our friends as appetizers right now?!"

 

"Stop it! We're not supposed to be fighting each other!" Mimi shrieks.

 

A dry, rustling sound is floating on the wind and it reminds Matt almost of leaves turning over on the ground, and then he realizes it is the black mass of a digimon laughing at them, laughing in a mocking, scornful manner and not even bothering to attack as if they are not worth the effort and Matt's blood boils madly.

 

"Gabumon, quick, digivolve into MetalGarurumon!" he commands.

 

"Matt, what are you doing? If you're thinking of cutting them loose, Pegasusmon just tried that and failed," Izzy says, stating the obvious. "I somehow doubt that it matters what level our digimon are at regarding Miasmamon. It appears to be a special case. We need to find its weakness first."

 

"I've got to do something!" Matt yells in frustration.

 

"Enough with the guilt-trip, Matt," Joe says frowning, pushing his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. "Acting rashly now isn't going help Kari and Ken any or change what happened before. It isn't your fault that Tai fell."

 

"YES, IT IS! IT IS!" Matt bursts out and his hands are tearing at his hair as a strangled sob escapes his lips and he gasps convulsively teetering on the verge of a panic attack.

 

"Matt, calm down!" Mimi admonishes. "Sora, would be you please reason with him? Sora?"

 

Sora stands a ways apart from the group staring absently at nothing. Slowly, she turns her head towards the direction her name was called as if it had barely registered through her drifting daydreams. Her eyes meet Matt's briefly: crimson-brown irises etched with confusion and indecision clashes with distraught, cool blue ones. It is like engaging in a staring contest and trying to peer into the other's mind.

 

Matt blinks and she is the first to turn her face aside.

 

Miasmamon is still laughing, but all of Matt's anger has vanished and he is left with a despondent sense of loss and his heart clenches in his chest as if an icy-cold claw has curled itself around it and raked dagger-like fingernails across.

 

T.K. has managed to haul himself to his feet and now totters unsteadily on wobbly knees and gazes glassy-eyed at Miasmamon stretched out across the skyline like a thick, woolen blanket, and utters in a wretched, broken tone, "Pegasusmon…Kari…"

 

The violet-blue hue of twilight and the approaching shadows of night seem to bend and twist towards Miasmamon in a kind of hypnotic magnetism as the sun sinks below the horizon in a circle of red fire, taking all its warmth with it as well as their hope.

 

~*~

 

I'm not weak, I'm not weak, I'm not weak!

 

She repeats this mantra in her head because it is the only thing keeping her sane. She isn't sure of where she is or who she is, or why she is even where she doesn't know she is. All she knows is that to recite that line is very important so she won't be consumed by the darkness all around her.

 

Such terrible, ominous darkness…

 

Only pierced by a bright golden light that casts its radiance upon her and with there is a faint voice calling a name.

 

"Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaari!"

 

Kari… isn't that her name?

 

"Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaari!"

 

That voice… it's so familiar. She thinks she knows it.

 

"KARI!!!"

 

And with jolt, she finds herself being pulled upwards into the light by some invisible tether on the other side.

 

She's being suspended in mid-air, held in a vice-like grip by swirling black mist and she feels incredibly nauseous as if she has eaten a week's worth of spoiled food. She vaguely remembers letting darkness creep into her heart, falling off the cliff and something catching her before succumbing to unconsciousness. What had woken her up?

 

"KARI!!!"

 

She blinks away the fuzziness crowding her senses and looks up… and someone is there, on the back of a digimon flying through the air encased in a suit of golden armor and a horned helmet. Someone with wildly bushy hair, which the wind is whipping through and sending careening out in all directions in an untidy mess.

 

A digimon with a horned helmet… a warrior dinosaur type: WarGreymon.

 

Wild, bushy hair… brown hair: T-Ta…

 

"TAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAIIIIIIIIIII!!!" Kari screams, the numbness fading from her mind and suddenly she is acutely aware of pain stinging in numerous places all over body, but that doesn't matter.

 

Nothing matters except the sight of her brother's face glowing with a knowledge that once had been lost and she had thought he would never recover.

 

He's back. Her brother is back. Not the stranger she has been living with for the past four months, but her brother who had taught her to ride a bike, who had thrown himself into a pigpen along with her when she had fallen in one time on a field trip, whom she had traveled with on so many adventures in the Digital World. He's back.

 

The heavy weight in her stomach disperses and with it the urge to slaughter the enemy. She feels drained and empty of something toxic. She doesn't want revenge anymore. She just wants to hold her brother as proof that he's really returned to her.

 

"Tai," she whispers, straining one hand out toward him.

 

And a shimmering pink light illuminates from her chest.

 

~*~

 

For a split second, Matt thinks that the sun has peeked back up over the horizon or that the dawn has come early. The sky is suddenly lit ablaze with an orange-red candor, but it is stemming from a figure, two figures approaching and the golden glow around them is so bright, he can't make out their features… then it spans out in a wide arc and reveals a spectacle he never thought he would see again that he almost disbelieves his own eyes.

 

But the symphony of beeping digivices at their arrival provides confirmation.

 

"Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaari!" Tai shouts in one long, drawn-out breath, both hands cupped around his mouth to empower his voice.

 

WarGreymon breezes overhead in a flurried buzz of wings, making a beeline straight for Miasmamon and Tai calls his sister's name again.

 

Kari stirs, as if waking from a dream or nightmare, wearily lifts her head… and color floods her pallid complexion as she spots him and shouts out his name in echoing response.

 

A glimmering pink light flares up in her chest abruptly, visible even through the enfolds of Miasmamon's dark coils, which shrinks inwardly as if burned and relinquishes its grasp upon its hapless prey and human and digimon fall earth-bound without warning.

 

WarGreymon catches Kari and Ken in his arms and he ascends upward for the top of the cliff, leaving Angewomon, Stingmon, and Pegasusmon to be his shield in his retreat. Landing on firm ground, he deposits his burdens gently on the surface of the plateau and Tai leaps off his partner's back to snatch his sister up in a crushing hug.

 

Kari flings her arms around her brother, returning the embrace equally as fiercely and she is weeping openly, her face pressed into the crook of his neck as tremors of relief and joy cause her body to shake uncontrollable.

 

"Don't leave me again," she says, her voice clogging in her throat.

 

"I won't, I promise," Tai assures her, stroking the back of her head as if she were a skittish colt. "I'm back. I'm back!"

 

Laughing, he spins them around in a circle until Kari's head is reeling dizzyingly, but she is laughing too and finds that it may be a strange sensation to find oneself both laughing a crying at the same time, but it is not wholly too unpleasant at all.

 

~*~

 

Kari's feet have barely touched ground when her brother finally puts her back down, when Tai is bombarded by the rest of the Digidestined.

 

"Taichi-sempaiiiiiii!" Davis shrieks, hurling himself at his role-model and would have succeeded in knocking them both over had it not been that Tai had been surrounded on all sides, so all that happens is to send him jarring backwards into everyone.

 

It's chaos, the good kind. Mimi's screeching in his ear, half-scolding, half-exuberant. Joe has his wrist in his hand and is glancing at his watch as he checks his pulse while giving him a lecture on the dangers of "dramatic entrances". Izzy's hounding him on whether or not he still retains any opinions formed when under his amnesic spell and if any of his viewpoints have changed thusly since gaining his memories back, and Tai can practically see the essay being written derived off his personal account. Yolei's gaping at him as she cradles an unconscious Ken's head in her lap, in a kind of awe like she has seen a ghost revived; Cody gives Tai a somber nod of acknowledgment, and T.K. gives one of pure gratitude as he clasps Kari's hand tightly in his own.

 

Tai inclines his head in return and looks around, because there seems that there ought to be more people than those who have greeted so far, but before he can get a proper survey on his surroundings, Izzy has rushed forward and gripped him hard by the elbows.

 

"Tai, quick, tell me!" he orders. "What's a short-circuit conductor?!"

 

"Uh…" Tai says, his mind drawing a blank and for an instant, he is afraid the amnesia has come back, and then he realizes he just must not know the answer. "Someone who… works part time on a train?" he finally throws out.

 

Izzy stares at him incredulously for so long, a nervous sweat breaks out across Tai's forehead and he wonders if he should have kept his mouth shut. Then, Izzy's lips split into a wide grin as he turns to the other Digidestined and exclaims excitedly, "His memory really is back! Tai never knew the answer to that question!"

 

Heat billows up in his face as Tai flushes an embarrassed shade of red and shouts irritated, "I'm right here, Izzy!"

 

A batch of giggles and snorts breaks out and Tai can't help but chuckle along with them… then he catches sight of the two people he had missed earlier.

 

Sora and Matt stand a few yards away as if afraid to come any nearer and gazing at him with tortured, sorrowful eyes. They stand apart from each other as well as if something foul has come between them and looking for all the world like two prisoners awaiting their sentence to be exiled to the ends of the earth.

 

Even if Tai had wanted to pretend like nothing is amiss, there is no point now. They know. Sometime in his amnesic period, they had pieced the puzzle together and now the finished picture is haunting them. He has to set things right.

 

They don't budge an inch as he approaches them, though their expressions have taken on the appearance of a frightened rabbit wanting very badly to bolt. The other Digidestined are quiet, as if sensing some long-time, painful issue is about to be resolved.

 

Sora and Matt flinch as he stops right in front of them as if they expect him to hit or yell at them. Tai feels a pang of compassion and a rush of affection for them both and enfolds them in a silent embrace. He hears their gasps of shock and feels their bodies stiffen initially, and then slowly the tension melts away and they relax into the mold, and tentative arms reach forth to encompass him in return. Tai feels a tell-tale wetness sliding down his cheeks and they have tears in their eyes as well. No words or shared, but it is an unspoken agreement they will sort out what needs to be later. They still have Miasmamon to deal with, but for right now at this moment, they are content: the three of them, consoling each other beneath the wet, wrinkled wings of friendship and forgiveness.

 

To Be Continued…

 

A/N: I tried to make this the last chapter, I really did. Except it kept going on and on like some darn Engerizer Bunny and oh, look, another bad metaphor to top all those I've forced you to ingest! Ahem, ah, I don't want to give too much information away this time since it will spoil the final installment. Hmm, so if you have any questions are or confused about anything, please review and ask me and I will answer to the best of my capability!

 

If you want to know, this chapter is called "Error" because well, look how many mistakes the Digidestined have made getting to this point and then the colossal ones they made here. Hopefully, they'll have learned their lesson and seen their faults by the next chapter or were all doomed.

 

So, I can't believe the battle took up the whole chapter, though most of it was describing emotions again. Miasamon still alive and kicking, they haven't figured out how to defeat him (though I hope I gave the audience enough clues), and at least I got everyone reunited, yay! Did I make anyone teary-eyed? *hopeful* I promise I will have an actual conversation between Matt-Sora-Tai next chapter somewhere. I just couldn't fit it in here. I mean, could you imagine? "Excuse us, Miasmamon, we're just gonna mosy over thar aways and try and untangle a twisted love triangle. Hold off your evil aura and villanious laugh for a couple of thousand nanosecs." XD

 

Yes, before anyone asks, I shamelessly stole that "what's a short-circuit conductor" line from Digimon the Movie. Izzy asks Tai that in there and that's exactly what he says too.^w^

 

Alright, I hope you enjoyed the fic so far! Feel free to share your favorite lines and scenes, your opinions, speculations, etc. Thank you for reading! See you next chapter!