[fanfic] Digimon Adventure 02: Guest Star

[higuchimon]

Title: Guest Star
Friendship: Mimi & Daisuke
Word Count: 2,254||Status: One-shot
Genre: Friendship||Rated: G
Challenge: Digimon Friendship Challenge 2: Digimon Adventure/02 Arc: round 2

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Daisuke fidgeted. He looked over at where Mimi was checking her hair and makeup one last time, and wished that she didn’t look quite so calm about everything. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

“Of course. Don’t you?” Mimi adjusted her hat and looked at Palmon. “Is everything ready?”

“I’ll go check!” The plant Digimon declared and headed out of the room. Daisuke watched her go, then looked at his friend, trying to decide how to answer that.

“Yeah, sure I do. It’s a good idea.” The fact still remained he was nervous about it. He wasn’t even sure of why. Perhaps it was the concept of a few million eyes staring at him, even if he couldn’t actually see them all. Knowing they were there was unnerving enough, in a way he’d never had to deal with before.

“Then what’s the problem?” Mimi set her hands on her hips and looked down at him. “You’re not scared, are you?”

Daisuke shook his head right away. “Of course not!” He wasn’t. There was a difference between being nervous and being scared. He wished that he had been scared. He knew how to deal with scared. Nervous was a bit more on the unusual side. “I’ve just never been on television before. Not like this.”

“Of course you’ve been on television before.” Mimi snorted, tossing her head a little. “We did that interview after we beat Vamdemon, remember? They all wanted to talk to us.”

He rubbed the back of his head and found a rueful grin on his lips. “That was a long time ago.” Could you classify nine years as a long time ago? He was going to. “And that was different anyway.”

Different. He’d been younger, and they’d been talking about something that had been sort of easy, in its own way, at least looking back on it. There had been lots of them to talk about everything, and the focus hadn’t been on just him. This situation was going to be somewhat different.

Mimi gave him a friendly smack on the shoulder. “We’re just going to be making ramen, Daisuke. You do it all the time.”

She was right about that. Maybe if he just sort of pretended that the camera wasn’t there. He hoped he could get it right the first time; Mimi’s show aired live, one of the few programs these days that did that. But it was one of the factors that made it so popular.

“Well, I usually make mine at home,” he protested anyway, more out of habit than anything else. Trudging around with his cart was a lot more interesting than being under hot lights all day anyway. He was out in the fresh air and he got to talk to a lot of people every day, some of whom even recognized him as being one of the Chosen Children. Or Chosen, which was becoming a more popular name for them, since they weren’t exactly children anymore.

Mimi just gave him a very firm look, one like he tended to give to Ken when Ken was being difficult over something. She said nothing at all. She didn’t even need to. That look was all that was necessary.

“All right, all right. I wasn’t going to back out or anything.” Daisuke couldn’t help but grin. The thought of it hadn’t even crossed his mind. He glanced down at V-mon; his partner usually helped him get everything done, and he looked forward to having him there now. That was probably what was going to help him get through this without too many issues.

“This will probably help you with your cart, too,” Mimi suggested. “The producer mentioned something about giving you a sign, ‘as seen on Mimi’s Masterpieces’, something you can put on your carts so people know you were here.”

Mimi’s cooking show was broadcast not only in the United States, but in a majority of countries all over the world. Being one of the Chosen made for a certain amount of publicity no matter what one did, which was probably one reason they were all doing so well.

“Thanks.” He meant that, no matter what it sounded like. He leaned back on the comfortable couch and stretched. He hadn’t gotten nearly as much sleep as he would have wanted to before all of this, but it hadn’t been for lack of trying. He was going to be on television. All of his friends would be watching. So would his family. Jun had probably penciled herself a note to call him and tease him about how the camera added ten pounds as soon as the show was over. Now that he thought about it, he probably should have left his cell phone at the apartment.

No, if he’d done that, Jun would have just hunted him down and made him regret it. It was probably best that he had it with him.

Cooking ramen. On Mimi’s show. Well, like she’d said, it was something he did pretty regularly. He’d even made up his mind what kind he was going to cook today. Everything was ready; all of the ingredients had been brought and he’d checked them out before they’d had to go through makeup and had been put in there to wait for everything on stage to be ready for them. It wasn’t that much different from what he did at home or when he was cooking up some fresh batches at his stand.

Except, of course, for the untold numbers of eyes on him. That wasn’t exactly usual. Which was what brought everything back around to the original problem: he was nervous about being watched.

“Don’t worry about it, Daisuke.” V-mon patted his leg and he grinned down at his partner. V-mon tended to know what he was thinking, since their minds ran in the same patterns. Mostly. “It’s not that bad to have a few billion people looking at you. It’s not like you can see them. Maybe you should imagine them in their underwear or something?”

That mental image was one that Daisuke could’ve done without. “Uh, I think I’ll pass.” He shook his head a little. There were several people that had passed his stand that he would prefer not to think about in their underwear.

Palmon poked her head into the room. “They’re ready!” There were two words Daisuke could’ve taken another ten minutes to hear. But he got up and started out anyway. The closer the ‘moment of truth’ came, the more eager he realized he was for it. The nervousness was fading away, replaced by excitement that he hadn’t felt in quite a long time. He was going to be on television! All of those people were going to be watching him! Which meant that he was going to have to be on his best behavior, or as close to that as he got, and do his very best. For the sake of ramen noodle carts everywhere!

Mimi bounced along, as cheerful as could be, which was nothing unusual at all, and turned to face the cameras with a pleasant smile and wave. Someone waved at Daisuke to stay off-screen for the moment. He thought it was a producer or a director or something like that. They all looked alike to him. But he and V-mon stayed out of sight while Mimi did her usual greeting to the viewers.

“Hey, everyone! Like I promised yesterday, there’s going to be a very special guest on today’s show.” Mimi leaned against the counter on the set, which was an authentic working kitchen, and eyed the camera as if she herself were actually looking at all of those people out there in the world. “Some of you probably know who he is, and you might’ve eaten his food before, or seen him on the streets, if you live in the right place. And today, we’re going to be making one of the dishes that’s been made famous throughout the world: ramen. Specifically, we’ll be making tonkatsu ramen, which has a pork base to it. Now, let’s everyone welcome Motomiya Daisuke, Chosen of Courage and Friendship, and his Digimon partner, V-mon!”

The same person who had held him back before now gestured for Daisuke to get on the stage. Not that Daisuke needed the cue from them. What Mimi had said was more than enough. He bounced on there, all of that nervousness now gone, and stood next to Mimi, looking at the camera. “Hey, out there! Nice to meet you all!” Okay, so he wasn’t technically meeting them. Daisuke didn’t care about technicalities.

“I’m sure they’re all happy to see you, Daisuke,” Mimi said. “Are you ready to get started on the tonkatsu ramen?”

“Sure am!” Daisuke turned towards V-mon as he spoke. “We’ve got everything that we need, right?”

“Right! It’s all over here!” V-mon led him over to where the various ingredients had been gathered. Daisuke glanced over the collection and grinned a little. Just like at home, though of a slightly higher quality. That was the difference between Mimi’s fancy show and his humble little business. But he was okay with that.

Mimi joined him, as did Palmon, and together the two of them started to work on putting the ramen dish together. Talking about ramen made him virtually forget the camera was even there. He could feel it, sort of, especially it wasn’t so much ‘a camera’ as it was ‘cameras’, making sure that the folks at home caught a glimpse of them in every possible angle.

While almost everything that they did was live, they had prepared a sample dish of ramen beforehand, since some of the cooking did take more than the time allowed to them. Daisuke took a taste; it was still warm, even though it had been made some hours earlier. Microwaves were wonderful inventions, after all, as were hot plates, to keep dishes hot.

“Tastes great!” He was fairly sure that everything that they’d done to the current batch of ramen would produce effectively the same results.

“You can make different adjustments in how much you want to cook, depending on how many you’ve got to feed,” Mimi told the camera, her warm eyes sparkling with confidence. “Use your best judgment, but don’t go crazy.”

“Yeah!” V-mon piped up, and the camera obligingly bent down to focus on him. “Cause if you go crazy, we’d have to stop you, and then we couldn’t be cooking this ramen anymore!”

Daisuke laughed; he’d been thinking something like that himself, but had tried not to say it out loud. “I think we can trust the people out there, V-mon,” he said. “There’s no one who is going to be going insane over ramen, is there?”

Well, they could hope so, anyway. Ramen was awesome, but it wasn’t that great, was it?

Finishing up the show didn’t take that much longer, and finally ‘cut’ was yelled and the cameras stopped rolling. Daisuke relaxed, realizing only then how much he wanted to get into a hot shower and not think about anything for a while. How could Mimi do this day after day after day? She must have had nerves of steel. I couldn’t do it. Running around with the cart was all the exertion that he wanted to put in most of the time, with the occasional necessary saving of the world.

“If there’s anything else that you need me to do, let me know,” Daisuke told Mimi, once he’d managed to get most of the makeup off and was as relaxed as he was going to get until he got home.

“See, I told you it wasn’t going to be that bad.” Mimi teased, acknowledging what he’d said with a quick nod at the same time. “Oh, and this is from all of us.” She held out a sign, one carved of cherry wood, with Mimi’s Masterpieces emblazoned on it in the same font that her usual show’s logo was made in. They really had made him a sign.

Daisuke took it, looking it over briefly, then showed it to V-mon, who held onto it for him. “Thanks. It was really a lot of fun.” He hoped that he’d managed to get it recorded. He’d tried to get it set up at home, but he hadn’t quite yet figured out all the ins and outs of doing so. Jun will probably have it if I don’t.

“Good to have both of you around.” Mimi replied. “Oh, and here.” She handed him half of the ramen that they had made. “Now you don’t have to cook tonight!”

He laughed; he’d all but forgotten about that. “Thanks. Hey, maybe next time a rampaging Digimon charges through town, we can cook for it and see if that’ll stop it any faster.”

“Couldn’t hurt to try!” Mimi’s entire expression warmed at the very thought. “Or we could drop in on Digitamamon’s and see if we can get some hints there.”

“Sounds like a plan to me.” Daisuke hadn’t eaten there in a while and he wondered what the menu had to offer. His phone rang and he sighed to himself, grinning. “I think that’s Jun now. I’ll see you later, Mimi.”

As Daisuke left, Palmon looked up at Mimi. “Another one of Mimi’s Masterpieces well done?” It was the traditional ending to one of her shows, spoken by them just a short while earlier. Mimi grinned back at her. It had been great having Daisuke there.

“Well done!”

The End