Digimon Fan Fiction ❯ Remembering To Burn ❯ Chapter 3 ( Chapter 3 )

Disclaimer: I don't own Digimon. Toei does. Certain ideas in this fic inspired by the Empress of the Eclipse's "Entrapped"

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Remembering To Burn

Part 3

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The Digidestined had stared at Demi-Veemon and Wormmon for a long time before they recovered enough to start the inevitable barrage of questions. Eventually however things had calmed down enough for a reasonably intelligent conversation to resume.

"Assuming that this is true then it's likely there's a connection." Koushiro noted. "But I don't understand. Daisuke didn't even get his digivice until it came out from the Digimental of Courage when Taichi touched it."

"Well look at it this way. All of this happened while you were fighting Vamdemon in the real world and trying to find Hikari. If you were going back into that Convention Centre would you have wanted to have your digivice with you?" Demi-Veemon asked. "If it had been found…" The little digimon broke off with a shudder.

"Vamdemon would have thought he was Hikari, so to speak." Taichi finished for him. "Yes, I guess that does make sense. And he doesn't remember?"

"No, nothing. He wasn't supposed to. If he'd shown any knowledge of the Digital World it would have been just as bad. Now Ken was supposed to remember bits and pieces of the events and he had his digivice with him. The latter was apparently mainly because his older brother seemed to think that it was his even though he had no idea what it was and couldn't use it. Gennai thought that was funny for some reason. Neither was supposed to come back here until they were called again though and Ken obviously did."

"I thought you said their memories were wiped because they were traumatised." Yamato said

"No they said that." Wormmon pointed to Gatomon and Patamon. "But it's true in part neither of them was in particularly good shape after Ryo died and anyway they might have done something foolish like trying to help you guys without our help and managed to get themselves killed. Since Demi-Veemon and I were still in the Digital World."

"Look, I just want to find my sister." Taichi said. "And we know she was in Real World then. So if there is a connection why did they take her as well. If this is all connected what does it mean?"

"Well, if it is. Then there's something you should see in the Digital World." Wormmon said. "Something that may help put the pieces together."

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"A grave." Taichi stared at the simple tombstone. "How does this help us find my sister?"

"I assume that this is Ryo's grave?" Yamato asked.

"Yep. Ken and Daisuke buried him." Veemon gestured to a small pile of stones at the centre of the grave. "Look under those." Yamato did as he said and found a crest and tag in a small hollow under them. He picked it up and looked at it thoughtfully.

"I don't recognise this one." He said. "Is this Ryo's Crest?"

"I suspect so and would say that it's probably the Crest of Honour." Koushiro said without turning round.

"How do you know that?"

"I read the tombstone." He replied. "Look."

Yamato did. "Ryo Akiyama." He read aloud. "Child of Honour. Died defending both the Digital World and the lives of his friends." Underneath the inscription, initially hidden by a bunch of flowers, were Ken and Daisuke's names. He frowned. "This part of the desert is pretty uninhabited. Who looks after the grave?" He gestured towards the neatly maintained outline of the stones that marked the grave and the fresh flowers by the headstone.

"No one knows. It's just always been maintained." Demi-veemon told him. "It's fast becoming a piece of folklore."

"There's always fresh flowers as well." Patamon said. "I guess that's why I didn't see the names when I visited."

"So what happens to a crest when it's holder dies." Yamato asked, he was twirling the tag and crest thoughtfully.

"Nothing until someone else capable of holding it comes along, Until then it's just a pretty pendant." Said an unknown voice from behind them. They all turned round and found themselves face to face with a filmy, indistinct figure.

"A ghost!" Miyako yelled jumping backwards a few feet. The figure became more substantial until it seemed almost solid. It was a teenage boy. He looked down at his hands.

"Hey! Not bad I'm becoming better at this materialisation thing."

"I assume that you are Ryo Akiyama?" Iori asked in a surprisingly calm tone.

"Well I was, but as the bearer of the Digimental of Love so calmly pointed out, now I'm a ghost." He actually seemed to find this amusing. Then his eyes fell on Veemon and Wormmon and he frowned. "Daisuke, Ken and the girl are in very serious danger you know. I assume that's why you are here."

"Her name's Hikari!" Taichi snapped.

"She's the Child of Light?" The ghost looked even more alarmed. "This is far worse than I realised."

"Erm, how do you know all this?" Koushiro asked. "I would have thought that being dead would put you out of the loop."

"Apparently not when you're a Chosen Child or perhaps it was dying in the Digital World that did it. I'm not sure." He frowned thoughtfully. "Anyway I seem to have become linked to the Digital World somehow. I can even make myself a temporary body from data though I'm not very good at it yet. I have the concentrate to keep it. Anyway this link gives me a sense of what's happening in it. If it weren't for Ken deciding to flip out totally I'd know even more but I can't sense areas where he's put up those damn spires or areas under the control of the forces of evil in other ways."

"You can sense the Digital World?" Taichi asked hopefully. "Do you know where my sister is?"

"Not exactly." Ryo's figure swirled slightly for a moment. "She was in the caves under the area where she vanished but all three of them were taken prisoner and pretty quickly moved into one of the areas I can't sense. After that they could have gone anywhere. If you go to the cave you should be able to pick up their trail easily enough." The figure began to fade. "Damn! I'm losing cohesion already. One day I'll get the hang of this. Sorry, I have to go. " He faded totally but one last comment reached their ears. "When they were captured Necramon was there. Please, beware the power of the count…" the rest of what he was saying was lost.

"Oh no!" whispered Demi-Veemon. "Not them!"

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"Welcome to my humble abode." The strange girl was lounging casually in a throne-like chair when the three prisoners were dragged before her. "I'd say that I hope you enjoy your stay on our home but I think we all know that you won't."

"Who are you?" Ken asked. He couldn't help feeling he should already know the answer because when he'd first set eyes on her he'd felt a strange feeling of deja vu and an equally powerful sense of terrible wrongness about her presence in the Digital World. The girl just laughed mockingly.

"I'm your worst nightmare." She paused. "No that's not quite true. Ali is your worst nightmare and his," She gestured to Daisuke, "hasn't got back in yet but I am hers." She pointed to Hikari who had been pulled off her stretcher and forced to kneel with the other two. "But my name is Chiharu Maruyama." She looked at him and Daisuke. "Does that mean anything to you?"

"N-no." Hikari stammered. The Child of Light seemed to be in some distress beyond that caused by her injuries.

"I wasn't asking you. I know that YOU haven't heard of me." Chiharu replied in a tone that suggested the two boys should have. They looked at each other.

"I don't recall ever hearing that name before." Ken replied truthfully enough though he neglected to mention that even so it sounded familiar.

"Me neither." Daisuke said. "But when you said it I felt like someone had tipped a bucket of icy water over me." Ken blinked. He'd felt that as well.

"You did?" The girl Chiharu had identified as Ali said as Necromon de-digivolved to his rookie form and jumped into her lap. Ken looked over at her and the same feeling he'd had about Chiharu hit him twice as strongly. Not to mention the fact that her presence made him feel dizzy and nauseous. Apparently it must have showed on his face because she looked delighted even though he had the impression that the effect was mutual. "I think he almost recognised me." She picked up her digimon and climbed to her feet. "Allow me to show you to your accommodations so that you can mull over why I scare you shitless while we decide what's the most painful way to kill you."

That was it. Ken's frayed temper snapped momentarily. "Don't you know who I am?" He yelled at her. Ali's response was to burst in to peels of laughter.

"I know who you are better than you do, Ken." She told him in a cruel tone. "And quite part from the things that you've forgotten and I'm not going to tell you because it's more fun to let you remember for yourself you're the delusional idiot who thinks this is all a virtual reality game!" She was still laughing as she strode towards one of the exits and gestured to the guard digimon to bring the prisoners. When one of the digimon jostled Hikari's broken arm as he grabbed her and made her scream Ali's laughter became even louder.

They were dragged along a tunnel and tossed into an unpleasant cell. Ali grinned at them through the bars. "I most definitely hope you don't enjoy your stay. Actually I know you're going to hate it I've been waiting for this for so long. See you later." She vanished back the way they'd entered.

"Well at least they haven't chained us up." Hikari noted as she sat down on the floor of the cell and looked at her arm. "Can one of you give me a hand here? That damned Lakmon knocked the splint loose."

"Let me see." Daisuke said before Ken had time to speak. He untied the splint and reattached it deftly much to Ken's surprise.

"You weren't kidding about knowing First Aid were you?" He said softly.

"Of course not." Daisuke snapped. "Why would I?"

"Sorry, that didn't come out the way I intended it to." Ken sighed and sat down, resting his chin on his knees. He knew that he should be thinking about how to escape but he couldn't get what Ali had said to him out of his head. He wanted to believe that it wasn't True. That it had been intended to confuse him but with everything that had happened in the last day he wasn't sure that he could. No one else treated this like a game. He couldn't believe he hadn't seen it before. He bit his lip and sighed again as a single tear trickled down his face.

"Are you alright, Ichijouji-san?" Daisuke asked.

"I… no… I'm a damned idiot."

He saw Daisuke and Hikari look at each other. "Why?" Hikari asked neutrally.

"The girl. She's right. I did think this was a Virtual Reality game of some sort but it isn't is it. Now I think about it I remember your digimon were at the football match in the real world."

"It's real." Hikari confirmed. "Did you really think that it wasn't?"

"Yeah, if it were a game it would come with better instructions and there would be a cheat manual." Daisuke added.

"How can creatures made of data be real?" He asked plaintively. "I don't understand."

"How can creatures made of a handful of organic compounds be real?" Hikari asked in reply. It was an astute question and made Ken look at her in surprise. "It's not what you're made of it's the level of organisation that counts. After all our bodies in the digital world are made of data themselves but when I get back to the real world I'll still have this damned broken arm."

"I-I never looked at it that way. Then again until today I never realised that last bit either."

"I'm glad to hear it." She smiled at him.

"Huh?" Ken stared at her.

"It means that you weren't really trying to kill us."

"No, I just wanted to get you thrown out of the Digital World permanently but any of you could have been killed. And all those digimon. I did kill them!" He shuddered and began to sob. "Oh, God, I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. I should have realised. I'm so sorry." His hysterics came to an abrupt end when Daisuke muttered something about returning the favour and slapped him hard.

"We don't have time for you to have a guilt trip now. Save it until we get out of here."

"Yeah, the best thing you can do to make up for this is help us put it right." Hikari told him. Then looked at him thoughtfully. "Do you have a Digimental or Crest?" she asked. "You've got a digivice so you obviously must be a Chosen Child."

He shook his head. "It was my brother's digivice. I just took it after he died."

"Impossible." She told him bluntly. "No one else can use a person's digivice. It's yours."

He blinked at her. "Really?" Another memory shook loose. Wormmon telling him not to listen when the voice told him the digivice wasn't his… or something like that but he couldn't remember when it had happened. He frowned at her. "I know that I don't have any Digimentals what's a Crest?"

She considered for a moment. "They look a bit like pendants or key fobs. They have markings like on the Digimentals on them." She drew something in the dust on the floor. "This is my crest symbol. The Crest of Light."

He thought about it. "Yes." He said after a moment. "Yes! I do have something like that. I use it to power my base. It's a little purple thingamajig with a stylised flower bud on it."

"Hmm… I don't know what quality that one represents but it certainly sounds like a Crest." She about to continue when they were interrupted by gales of laughter from the occupant of the cell opposite. She glanced across. "What's so funny?"

"His Crest . . . purple . . . flower . . . bud . . . how . . . ironic . . ." The speaker managed to say between laughs as it came into view behind its own cell's bars. She looked like a black version of Salomon and she was still laughing.

"Why?" All three asked simultaneously. They had to wait for the Digimon to stop giggling. Once she had she looked at them.

"Because." The rookie form of Black Gatomon/Lady Devimon told them in a surprisingly quiet tone. "He's just described the Crest of Kindness perfectly."

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R&R, please