Digimon 1. Chapter 1

A late spring sun on its early decline spilled sunflower-colored light over the walls. Here and there were glints of scraps of tape from where posters had once been.

The breeze wafted in from the open window, but Sora had already taken the chimes down. When the wind passed, she was left with only the scents that said she had lived there once. Rice that was probably warm and fluffy when she made it, but was now just a vaguely stale, but homey scent in the background that refused to go away. Some lemon-scented cleaning product wafting from the bathroom and the kitchen. A deep, rooted scent of her skin and hair and the things she used on them that seemed to rise out of every spot that hadn't been covered by a piece of furniture. There was pink and blue fluff in the spots Piyomon liked to sit.

It was strange. She had only lived there a year. A miniscule timeframe compared to the years spent living elsewhere, but it still felt so much like leaving home.

It wasn't as though she had never moved before; it had happened once or twice in the past. The only difference was that her family had been there. There was a kind bustle about a family moving as she recalled it. The child had to help, but also be out of the way and not handle anything too heavy. There was a lot of directing, and making sure every box was placed in the appropriate room. And of course, her mother was insistent on handling the vases herself.

Her mother...

She had worn an expression Sora could never forget when she first moved away from home. It had been a little after she began college. Sora had modest work at a modest bookstore, and so she had chosen to live in a suitably modest apartment. It was an experience, to say the least. Her parents weren't exactly rich. They could not have managed to pamper Sora by paying for all of her living fees. Although, even if they could, they were frugal people by nature and probably never would have anyway. In fact, it had downright surprised her when her parents had offered her a rather substantial monthly allowance when they heard just where she was moving. It was true that Tokyo wasn't cheap, but they were already covering a fair portion of her university fees. Otsuma wasn't exactly super-expensive but it was still an unexpected sum. And that bittersweet look on her mother's face when she'd declined it was still so striking in Sora's mind.

Opening her eyes to the dazzling sunlight, Sora wondered if maybe she'd have a daughter someday. One whom she loved as her mother had loved her, and whom she'd someday have to make that expression to as she wavered between _I'm so proud of you_ and _I'm so scared to let you go_. The quintessential mom-face, she supposed. She had to have made a face like that at least once for Piyomon._  
_

Of course, this time was different. This time she would be moving in with someone else.

With Yamato.

She rolled onto her stomach, surprised at the butterflies that welled up inside of her. The decision had been made months ago, so her nervousness struck her as rather sudden.

Their relationship had survived high school well enough. He was still very much himself, in that he could get wrapped up in his failures and had some difficulty being traditionally affectionate. They had their rough patches where she would get mad at him for being broody all by himself, and he would get mad at her for pursuing and being stubborn. All couples were like that she supposed, but it was always so odd after the way all of them had grown over the summer of '99. They all battled problems, and maybe it just felt like there weren't supposed to be anymore big issues after all of that. But it was so obvious sometimes that he was still kind of... It seemed harsh to say damaged. Harsh and inaccurate. Wary might be a better match. Cautious? Was there a word for a person who seemed over-aware that things that no high school boy should have had on his mind?

Still, the good times far outnumbered those moments. She was happy, and he...well, he was the one who had even suggested they get a place together. 'For economic reasons', he had claimed with a needless insistence despite being red up to his ears.

So far as she knew, that was the best sign she could hope for. It could come down around both their ears, but they were digidestined. If there was one thing they knew, it was that dreams that went unchased never amounted to anything.

Of course, she hadn't been thinking about any of this so hard until... She sat up, and shook her head to try and clear it, but it was sitting on the table. The clip itself was a little rusty, and the flower ornament was unraveling, but it was unmistakable.

Taichi's hair clip. Given to her what felt like ages ago. A clumsy gift that she'd had a clumsy reaction to.

She felt her lips curling, and she couldn't help a snicker. It quickly escalated to a gut-deep laugh that bounced off the walls. Why on earth had she been so mad at him for giving her a hair clip? She remembered fidgeting with her hat and her hair the rest of that day, stubbornly refusing his calls even though Diaboromon had been wreaking havoc.

The door clicked open, and Piyomon poked her head in. When Sora had to take a moment to get herself together, she tilted her head. "Did something good happen, Sora?"

It wasn't about love. At least, she didn't feel so. Taichi had made it very clear to her that she was his dear friend. Sometimes she suspected that he meant 'dear friend' in the sense that Takeru meant 'dear friend' when he talked about Hikari. But for the most part he seemed genuinely okay with developments as they were, and all she could do was trust that. It was just funny. He had been such a big part of her world when she was a child. When she was a different girl. And more than any concerns over a love triangle, _that_ worried her.

The woman she was now definitely loved Yamato. The girl she had been once had many feelings about many things that Sora no longer understood.

Even after so many years, she occasionally wondered if she had not quietly sacrificed the stubborn soccer playing tomboy she used to be. Had she taken her mother's words too much to heart? Her university was women only. Had she ever suspected she might choose that kind of lifestyle for herself? Sometimes she still felt that child inside her. A stirring of energy and carelessness. She still kept a soccer ball, but it had lived undisturbed in a box long before she started packing things for the move. She couldn't remember the last time she'd touched it.

"Hey, Piyomon... I've changed, haven't I?"

"Of course you have." Setting the grocery bags down on the floor, she plopped down beside her partner. "You're all grown up, Sora."

"It doesn't really feel that way." She drew Piyomon into her lap, resting her chin on the bird digimon's head. "Sometimes I wonder if maybe I gave up being the girl I was when we met too easily. She had such clear dreams..."

"Isn't that normal for human children?"

"I guess..."

Piyomon tilted her head up with a bright smile. "I think you're just a little scared, Sora. After all, when you were just a little girl, before you knew soccer, you must've wanted to be something, and you don't seem worried about having left that behind."

Sora gave a soft, nostalgic laugh. "I was a daddy's girl. I wanted to be like him. Traveling and doing research... Then I discovered soccer and I wanted to do nothing but play that."

"And then you gave ikebana a chance and you were really good at it!"

"Yeah, but I never wanted to do it for a living. I like it, but I don't love it. That girl I used to be definitely loved soccer." She fell backward, staring at the empty ceiling and running her fingers over the pins holding her hair in place. "I just get worried sometimes when I notice the difference between me then and me now."

"All a part of growing up," the bird digimon said confidently. She reached for one of the bags, and pulled out a box of strawberry pocky—Sora's favorite. "Here, these always make you feel better."

Sora couldn't help but smile, and she quietly slipped a single stick into her lips. She let it tilt down, held in place by her upper lip in a fashion reminiscent to the way Yamato left cigarettes in his before he lit them. Perhaps that was how change happened. A little quirk picked up here or there until it was hard to say where they had all come from.

Piyomon seemed relieved. "I don't _really_ know what's normal for humans that are growing up. To me, Sora is Sora and nothing you've ever done has changed that." Her feathered brow furrowed a little. "Maybe if this really bothers you, you should talk to your mom. Maybe she felt like this once."

The pocky swayed skeptically in Sora's mouth. She couldn't really wrap her head around the idea of her mother being unsure of anything. Sora could only remember her as a woman who always seemed so dutiful and certain, and aware of the place she was expected to take as a woman living in Japan. It was that way of life that Sora always thought of as antiquated and silly as a child, particularly once she became a tomboy. As an adult, she was certainly more aware that such biases still existed—after all, the adults who must have caused her mother's outlook were still around. But it was hard to imagine her mother might have ever tried to fight the tide, particularly since that was just the kind of era her mother grew up in. It wouldn't have been strange to learn that she had been such a classic _yamato nadeshiko_ since her childhood.

Of course, Sora knew skepticism was a poor reason to avoid asking. She had a better reason. "I want to try and work it out on my own first. Even if I don't really know what my dream is anymore."

"But why? What if she ends up being able to give you really good advice?"

"Hmm... I just feel like I have to try and reach that answer on my own for a while. It may prolong the search, but you should always start this kind of search with some honest effort. At least I think so. I consider it part of being an adult."

Piyomon crossed her arms, hemming and hawing as she tried to make sense of it. Why not just ask right away? Why not ask tons and tons of people until she got a good answer? Sora couldn't be the only one feeling like that. Wasn't it best to just talk to others about it? In the end she gave up with a shrug, and began rifling through the grocery bags. "Humans are so strange..."

"We certainly are."

Sora joined her partner, and together they ate their last meal in the first apartment they had both called home.


	2. Chapter 2

Taichi was not sure he liked this sensation. He could feel the long-silent phone slicking with sweat against his ear, so he finally flipped it closed. But he found himself standing in the quiet of his room, chewing his lip as he often did when he was puzzling over something.

The conversation should have been pleasant, but for some reason it had grown uncomfortable. He had helped Yamato move before. He had helped Sora move before. Assisting as they moved in together did not seem strange to him, nor was it strange to him that he'd been turned away. They were a couple and this was a big step; it was natural they might choose to tackle this with only each other. He wished them all the happiness they could get their arms around, but...

But now he was locked out from parts of their life, and it stung him unexpectedly.

They had all drifted away from one another once, because life went on and having a digidestined child was not something their parents could base all of their decisions on. The real world was not like the digital world, where they could go wherever and do whatever. They went where their parents and obligations were, and it simply wasn't something that could be helped. Now most of them were reaching adulthood and had different obligations. Hikari and the rest of the second generation digidestined were all a year or so from graduating high school and then they would be out in the world too. They were all growing up.

Finally, he sighed and ruffled through his hair. His knees popped as he sprawled himself across the couch. He turned the television on, but he wasn't really watching. It quickly became background noise as he continued to nibble away at the inside of his lip.

Everything was changing. Everything _had_ to change. That was what progress was. It wasn't optional; it was life, and Taichi knew it. He knew he would even come to accept it, but at the moment he hated it. He wanted nothing but to go back in time to his favorite memory of the three of them. Two years ago in the middle of winter, at some tiny little club that was packed to the brim with screaming fans. He and Sora were at the front of them, cheering Yamato on at the top of their lungs, and singing in voices that were mercifully lost in the crowd. When the show was over, the both of them were welcomed backstage, as always. He couldn't remember all of what had happened anymore, but he remembered food and laughter and alcohol they almost got in trouble for having. And the snow. He remembered that part very clearly, even though he'd still been kind of drunk. It was some obscene hour of night. One or two in the morning, at the least, and they stupidly decided to sneak across the Rainbow Bridge even though the walkways had closed hours ago. They wanted to go visit Odaiba for old times' sake. As could be expected, they were dead tired from the effort of trying to remain out of sight by the time they made it the half mile to the other end. They sat right on the bank, drinking canned coffee to give themselves the boost they'd need to get home without passing out. While they were quietly chatting, it had started to snow.

Perhaps the reason Taichi remembered the event so well was because Sora had started crying. And it had spread through all three of them like some kind of weird emotional plague. Yamato had tried to hide it, but Sora was nearly sobbing. He didn't blame her. Hell, _he_ might've started crying first if she hadn't. The colored lights of the rainbow bridge were reflecting off the snow as it fell, and it was a fantastic thing to see from so close. The moment was over soon enough, and they immediately started laughing at each other in stuffy, teary voices. Maybe it was just the booze, but Taichi liked to think they'd experienced something he couldn't really put words to.

In hindsight, that was Yamato's last big performance. Rather than move forward with music, Yamato wanted to go to university. He stilled played his guitar when he was in certain moods, and Taichi had even spied him with his old harmonica once. (An event that had for some reason left Yamato deeply embarrassed, though Taichi never found out why.) He had always given them their space as a couple, but when he thought of how he'd like things to be, it always came back to that. Huddled up in the middle of the night, hoarse from singing and cheering and laughing, crying together out of vaguely drunken awe because of the snow that looked like falling flakes of color.

But maybe what made it so good was that it was so rare and so short-lived.

He snorted. That was Hikari's voice in his head, always there to say something sentimental and poetic while his own voice was left to get to the point: He didn't want to be the third wheel.

But the closer they got to each other, the more he would be.

Ah, well.

_...think these **things** should be allowed to just wander around unchecked?_

Oh, right. The television was on. He picked up the remote.

_They're not unchecked. They have partners. And the ones that don't are rogues that can't really be dealt with unless those kids fight them off. That's been seen time and time again._

He paused. He had intended to turn it off, but these conversations caught his attention lately.

_Oh, please! You've already made my point. They're partnered up with **children**. What will happen when some delinquent gets partnered up with his own personal monster? Or some spoiled kid doesn't get what he wants and throws a tantrum through his partner? We have enough of a problem with children without them having their own personal attack dogs._

_There haven't been any cases of children abusing their partnership that way._

_Not yet, but it's inevitable. You give enough people power, somebody is going to abuse it. What would the government do if they all grouped up and launched an attack? Japan in particular has seen just how bad things can get when these things go unchecked. Imagine if they were directed! They could do whatever they wanted with non-digidestined._

A grimace twisted the side of Taichi's mouth and he turned it off. It was going the way it always did. Spiraling down into Them vs. Us, making presumptions about the goals of digidestined as an entity. Treating them like a threat to national security, or sometimes even the world.

Taichi could not blame them.

There might be little bittersweet changes going on in his personal sphere, but there were massive changes occurring globally. More digidestined were coming into existence every day. Koushiro had already predicted there would be a time when almost everyone had digimon partners, and it was likely to happen well within their lifetime. But though this was happening, and everyone knew it was happening, there were no provisions in place for it. Schools did not formally teach children about the digital world or digimon, and there was no real resource for learning any of it. There were plenty of cases of children who knew nothing about the original digidestined or what they'd fought for. The global event of 2002 was well known, but the facts were muddled by the media of the many countries involved. It meant there existed a number of children who did not know why they had digimon or what they really were, and Taichi didn't have to know much to know that raised the chance for abuse astronomically. When it wasn't abuse, it would be failure to understand one another, which was possibly worse.

Hikari had been heartbroken when she came to visit him last. A young boy had been shunned by his peers because he had a digimon, and as a result he came to hate his partner. Taichi had refrained from expressing a still greater fear to her. A fear that a child would be bullied and the partner would instinctively act to protect them and end up seriously hurting someone. It was bound to happen. Repeatedly. And it was going to damage the understanding process every time.

The bottom line was that the worlds were coming together too quickly. They had to be protected from each other, because there wasn't yet a way to really create an understanding between the two about what was acceptable behavior. However, that created a stalemate. A vacuum of information where assumptions were allowed to grow into certainties and then into paranoia. He had to do something. This was going to get out of control.

"You're bleeding, Taichi."

The gravelly voice of his partner snapped him out of it. He _was_ bleeding. He had chewed too much. "So I am. Sorry."

Agumon scratched his tail absently. "It's your lip. Apologize to yourself, not to me." He ambled up onto the couch, bringing a box of tissues with him. "It's been a long time since I've seen you do that. Did the call with Yamato go that badly?"

"No, I was thinking about something else..." Taichi chided himself for the vague answer as he wiped his mouth. "About digimon and humans and how they're just getting thrown together so quickly. People don't know what to think or do, and there's a bunch of misinformation and propaganda starting to spread."

"What's that?"

"Erm... Basically it's when you inflate the bad parts of a person or group of people." He felt a scowl darken his face. "Until they don't even seem human..."

"We aren't."

"But I would never treat you like you weren't. I mean yeah I have to make sure you don't eat anything bad and other stuff that seem to place you in the position of a pet but... You have to do that stuff with babies too. You were always more like a kid than a pet. At least, when we met. You've learned a lot since then. You may not be shaped like a human, but that doesn't make me think of you as less deserving of being treated with humanity."

The reptile digimon crossed his arms to think. "So it's like... if someone only pointed out that BlackwarGreymon didn't come from a digi-egg and then convinced people we shouldn't treat him like other digimon because of it?"

"In a nutshell. I don't doubt at all that a young digimon would attack a person just out of not knowing any better. Kids do that all the time. But it's much more likely that a digimon will be treated like a vicious beast." Unconsciously, he started chewing again. "I wish there was something I could do to help us understand each other. Meaning humans and people in general. I wish all humans understood you and the way your world works the way I do."

The blunt side of a claw clipped him just under his chin. "You're chewing again. And I wish digimon could understand humans and their world too Taichi, but it's a lot to take. I still don't get it all the time."

"There's a lot of bureaucracy in the way. We're never going to understand it from where we are." He could see the puzzlement in his partners eyes, and he laughed a little. "Honestly I don't know to describe it myself. I've never taken much interest in how the government works, but now..." He gulped. He felt unexpectedly warm all of the sudden. He was a big dreamer, but this wasn't big. For him, this was huge. Colossal enough to be almost alien. Totally outside of the scope of where he thought he'd go in life.

"Taichi?"

"I can't just do nothing about this. Something is going to give sooner or later if nobody steps up and steers people through this. I'm going...to aim for an ambassadorial position. I..." He paused, remembering who he was talking to. "I'm going to represent digimon and the digital world."

Taichi didn't quite believe it even after he said it. It meant changing so many things. The UN came to mind. His English skills were mediocre at best. He'd been lackadaisical in highschool, and had bypassed university to work. He had to go to cram school and test into a good one now. He wouldn't be able to keep living alone. He'd need a roommate or two, or he would have to live at home. Would he even be able to find roommates who would be friendly with Agumon? It was a massive shift, and his worries were going to pile high. He had so many changes to make it was already stifling, and he was sure any minute he'd crack and laugh it off as a joke.

He didn't. In fact, he felt a lot like he had when he'd discovered how much he loved soccer. Elated and terrified and so eager his heart was racing.

"I don't think there's anyone more qualified to introduce us to the world than you. Even I know it must be a big task to get to that kind of position."

"I don't know how far I'll get... This is a lot of responsibility."

"Courage, Taichi! Don't give up so easily. I'll always be there to help you." Agumon spread a cheeky, toothy smile and curled his claws into a fist. "After all, how are you supposed to represent digimon without a digimon? Let's make it happen!"

Taichi gave a crooked smile, once again considering what he was getting into. He remembered a time when he'd been like any other kid. He had a dream, but not one that was world-changing. Then had come Koromon and his sudden accountability to the world and the other digidestined. He supposed that his need to do something now must have stemmed from accepting that one ridiculous responsibility long ago. But there was no crest or prophecy that would get them through this.

He might as well be dreaming of becoming the prime minister.

Then again, how were things supposed to change if nobody occasionally lapsed into insanity and dreamed way, way outside their comfort zone?

His uncertain smile grew into a fierce grin. "Come on then, partner. No time to laze around, we've got things to do."


End file.

Digimon, Drama, Friendship