[fanfic] Digimon Adventure 02: Deal With It

[higuchimon]

Title: Deal With It
Character: Motomiya Daisuke
Word Count: 1,724||Status: One-shot
Genre: General||Rated: G
Challenge: One Character Boot Camp, prompt #45, afterwards; Diversity Writing Challenge, section E17, write a fic in first person without mentioning the name of the narrator.
Summary: After his second trip to the Digital World, and being kidnapped by the Digimon Kaiser, Daisuke had a few things he wanted to process.

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“Hey, are you all right?” Jun looked at me the moment I started past her room. Something must've been off, since she normally didn't ever notice I was home aside from telling me what chores I was supposed to do.

Though this time I guessed there was something wrong and it sort of seemed to show. I wasn't certain of how. This kind of thing hadn't ever happened to me before.

A lot of things had happened that hadn't happened before just in the last couple of days and I was still getting used to them.

“Huh?” I did what I could to sound confused. Because I kind of was. I didn't want her to asking too many questions, though. At least not ones that I couldn't answer. “What do you mean?”

I remembered right then that I had something small and blue and cute hiding in my school bag and if Jun saw that, then she'd really start asking questions. And those were ones I really had no idea of how to answer.

“What did you guys get up to at practice today?” She leaned in closer and I pulled back. I really didn't want her noticing some of those bruises that were hiding underneath my clothes.

Turned out going back and forth between dimensions didn't heal those things. Being a Chosen Child had a few perks, but that wasn't one of them. And getting thrown around by the Digimon Kaiser's slaves definitely provided a few bruises.

“Nothing all that much,” I told her, inching along as carefully as I could. “I just need a hot bath and I'll be fine.”

The look she gave made me wonder if she actually believed me. I thought I saw her eyes starting to go down toward my bag. No time to convince her of anything else.

“So, I'm going to go take one!” I headed off toward my room, making certain to close the door behind me.

“You know you take baths in the bathroom and not in your bedroom, right?” Jun called after me. I cracked the door a little.

“Yes, I'm aware of that.” Shut it again and leaned back against it. I really wanted that both; that wasn't a lie.

Chibimon wriggled his head out of the bag and looked up at me. “Who was that?” He sounded fascinated. “Does she have a Digimon partner too?”

Kind of a weird thought, Jun with a partner. But I shook my head. “That's my sister, Jun. She's not a Chosen Child.” Man, the idea of Jun as a child was one that I couldn't get my head around. I thought it would've been easier to imagine her with a partner. “You can't let her or my parents see you. They wouldn't understand.”

I kind of thought Mom would grab something and start throwing it at Chibimon. She did that a few years ago when all that weird stuff happened with that super fog bank.

Those were Digimon too, I thought. I never really got the whole information on that. Maybe now that I was in the cool Chosen Child club, the others would tell me. I made up my mind to ask one of them as soon as I could.

But first, I really wanted that bath.

“Chibimon, you stay in here while I'm getting cleaned up. Try not to make too much noise, okay?” I was going to have to figure out a way to make certain Jun never got curious enough to find out about him. That probably wouldn't be too hard. If it wasn't cute and usually in some kind of magazine, Jun wasn't inclined to pay that much attention to it in the first place.

“You got it!” He started to wander around the room, looking at everything. I left him to it. Bath, bath, bath, bath, that was what I wanted.

I brought my D-3 and D-Terminal with me into the bathroom and put them on the shelf where they wouldn't get wet. I didn't want them too far away from me. Not after I just got them back from the Kaiser maybe thirty minutes earlier.

That was why I really wanted that bath. Not only did I get pulled through who knew how many feet of dirt by monsters that probably hadn't bothered washing after they got one of those Rings on them, but the Kaiser had his hands inside my jacket. He had to have, since he had my stuff when I woke up.

I was pretty certain I was going to get a nightmare or two out of that anyway. The whole thing was the stuff of bad dreams. I tried not to think about it at first. I mean, I was just angry that he'd kidnapped me at all. But then it dawned on me that he'd gone putting his hands inside my jacket and taking things that belonged to me.

I decided that I was going to talk to one of the others, someone like Koushirou-san, and see if he could check my D-3 and D-Terminal. I thought I'd been out of it maybe half an hour or so, and I couldn't be sure of what the guy did to my stuff then. Maybe Koushirou-san could run some kind of anti-virus on it, just to be sure.

A full-body shudder shook me at another thought. What if the Kaiser found my e-mail address? I wasn't worried about spam. I was worried about him trying to e-mail me.

I didn't even know his e-mail address so I couldn't block him.

Though the more I thought about it, the more it would've been kind of fun to try to send him spam.

But first it was time for that bath. I wondered if Chibimon had ever had one. He could probably use one. Who knew how long he'd been sleeping under that Digimental. I knew I generally wanted a shower when I first woke up. I'd talk to him about it later.

I didn't want him to know how much I wanted to scrub up now. I wasn't sure if I could even begin to explain it to him. I didn't even want to tell it to people I thought I could explain it to.

Getting into the water felt absolutely wonderful. Didn't just get rid of the dirt, but I already felt cleaner. As annoying as being caught was, it wouldn't happen again. I wasn't going to let it happen. Sure, I didn't 'let' it happen now, but I hadn't had any idea that the Kaiser would try something like that in the first place. Now I knew that he was an annoying little creep who needed as many punches in the face as I could deliver to him.

And I would've started delivering this time if he hadn't kept me chained up. That was kind of creepy in and of itself. I mean, who did that? I guessed I should consider myself lucky that he didn't throw me in a dungeon somewhere and forget I existed.

I thought I wanted to make him regret that. No, I knew I wanted to make him regret it, and it was going to start with those punches in the face, and anywhere else I could get to.

Besides, what if next time he tried to do something like that to Hikari-chan? Her partner couldn't armor evolve. No way would I let him get away with that!

It probably wouldn't be that great if he tried it on Takeru, either. But I really didn't want him trying anything on Hikari-chan. At least Miyako and Iori have partners now.

I still hadn't asked how they found me. I wanted to get home more than anything once we were done there so I didn't bother. Maybe tomorrow.

Well, to be honest, at the time I didn't really care how they found me. All that mattered was that they found us before that Evil Ring got onto V-mon. Yeah, that one would probably pop up in my dreams too.

I really hoped that this kind of thing didn't happen a lot in the Digital World, because if it did, it might start cutting into my practice time, and that wouldn't be a good thing at all. We had a match coming up against Tamachi, which meant that I'd be going up against Ichijouji Ken.

I was going to beat him. I just had to. I couldn't even imagine what it would be like to not beat him. No one else had ever done that.

Yeah, well, no one else could lift the Digimental of Courage, and I did that too. So it's not like I didn't have any experience doing things no one else did.

I wondered what Ken would be like as a Chosen Child. He'd probably be too busy to do it, with everything else he's already got boiling. But I bet he'd be good at it. If he were on our side, we'd finish off the Digimon Kaiser in a week at the most.

The thought of fighting alongside of Ken, saving the world with him, that was a really good thought. Thinking about it was a lot more interesting than thinking about the Kaiser. Just about anything was more interesting than thinking about the Kaiser.

As much as I wanted to, I couldn't stay in the bath forever. Jun would start banging on the door sooner or later. She took very long baths and liked it best when everyone else was done before her, so she didn't have to wait for us to be done.

Besides, I needed to show Chibimon around my room, make certain that he hadn't done something that would let Jun or my parents know that there was an extra guest, and score something to eat. Probably enough for two. Not to mention come up with a reason to eat in my room, or at least smuggle some of it back in there.

Man, this whole Chosen Child thing came with a lot no one told me anything about before. But I could handle it. There wasn't anything that I couldn't handle. The Digimon Kaiser could throw his best or his worst and I'd take it and throw it all right back at him.

After I got something to eat and some sleep.

The End