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taleroftells · 7 months ago

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Faded Fics #2

Taking a step away from Digimon, here's a fanfic I started writing for the Ducktales reboot. From time to time, I like to re-write movies or episodes of TV shows that didn't live up to the hype, although this is the one I wrote more than a summary. It's a re-write of "The Duck Knight Returns." Enjoy!

The Duck Knight Divergence

Scrooge McDuck adjusted the papers on his desk. It looked like casting for his latest project was complete, and filming was due to start on schedule, although he made a mental note to ask that director fellow if the villain had a mustache to twirl...

There was a knock at the door, then Ducksworth stuck his ghostly head through the still-closed entry.

"Dinner is served, Mr. McDuck. I suggest you hurry before the children eat it all."

"Those aren't children, they're eating machines!" Scrooge put the papers down. "I dinna' suppose I can put them on a diet?"

Ducksworth raised a ghostly eyebrow.

"Very unlikely, sir."

"Curse me kilts..." Scrooge levered himself to his feet. "I'll finish this later."

In another timeline, the two would have been distracted at this point by a disaster involving Scrooge's nephew, Mrs. Beakley's fine china, and a very stubborn can of chicken soup, however in this timeline Mrs. Beakley was able to stop Donald before things could get out of hand. Now curious, Ducksworth floated over to the paper.

"What are you working on, sir?"

"A movie, based off some old TV show. I wouldna' have bothered, but the rights were about t'expire."

Ducksworth's eyes narrowed at the words on top of the page.

"Isn't this the show your new chauffeur watches?"

Scrooge paused in the middle of opening the door.

"I dinnae know...it could be."

"Perhaps you should ask him to get involved, sir?" Ducksworth suggested pointedly. "If he knows the series half as well as he talks about it, he could make an excellent consultant. And he'll do it for free."

Scrroge paused, the lack of desire to deal with that ditzy driver-turned-pilot warring with the word free.

"I'll think about it," he said.

***

Drake Mallard watched as the climax of Darkwing Duck episode 38 "Clyde's Dale-usion" played, before turning off the bootlegged DVD. It was time to go.

He paused to look at himself in the mirrow, grinning as he did so. He was going to be Darkwing Duck. He would get his face on those lunchboxes, just like Jim Starling!

The first scene they were filming was supposed to be what the director called "The contemplation of the eternal flame of the soul." Or rather what the scriptwriters sarcastically referred to as "The contemplation of all the money we're going to lose" and "Angsty, angsty, angstiness" when Alastair Boorswan's back was turned. Boorswan wasn't too popular among the rest of the production people, but he'd recieved an Omar award for "The Beautiful Soul" a year or two ago, and he'd apparently been one of those few directors who were willing to take on such an obscure old series. Drake frankly had bad feelings about the movie, especially when they'd given him the script. Still, it was his first starring role, and what better way to get his big break than playing the character who'd inspired him so much?

Drake tweaked that classic Darkwing hat. He still had no idea why he'd been chosen, but he wasn't about to look a gift role in the mouth.

Exiting the trailer, Drake could see a knot of people over by the day's set. Almost normal, but Drake recognized some of the movie's screenwriters and editing people among them, the folks who he didn't normally see by the set. The small, but increasing, crowd was watching two people arguing heatedly over something.

What's going on? Drake wondered.

He could see the figure of Alistair Boorswan as one of the arguers. He didn't know the other one, some tall redheaded guy with a bomber jacket. Drake did, however, recognize one of the onlookers as Scrooge McDuck, the world's richest duck who owned the studio.

"...And that script is not Darkwing Duck," the redhead was saying. "It's too dark. D.W. would never scare anyone like that, not deliberately at least."

"That's because it's 'Darkwing Duck'," Boorswan retorted. "It's not called 'Cheesywing Duck'."

"Have you ever even seen the show?"

Boorswan froze. "Uh..."

"Can you even name one episode?"

The silence, disturbed only by soft mutters from the direction of the writers, was deafening.

"Look, Mr. Boorswan," the newcomer said in a less harsh but no less passionate voice. "You're a great director, I'm sure. But, I think the movie will be better if it were truer to the original."

"Who would want to watch a comedy?" Boorswan protested. "Nobody wants a superhero comedy."

"Actually, Guardians of the Universe did pretty well," Drake said. "Wasn't that a superhero comedy?"

Every head in the group turned to face him. The newcomer looked a bit woozy for a moment before getting a good look at him.

"Oh, wow...wait, you're not Jim Starling!"

"I'm not exactly a camel, either," Drake replied using a line from the Darkwing episode he'd been watching. He didn't expect anyone to get the reference, nobody did, but to his immense delight the guy laughed.

"You a fan?"

"Only the president of the Darkwing Duck fan club. I'm Drake Mallard."

"Launchpad McQuack, I'm the new consultant. Where's Jim Starling?"

"They never asked him to come," Drake admitted. "I don't think anyone's even told him about the movie."

Launchpad blinked, then he turned to Boorswan.

"You didn't even tell Starling? Without Jim Starling, there is no Darkwing Duck!"

"We don't need Starling," Boorswan snapped. "That old has-been's done!"

"Not anymore. We're bringing him in..."

"He won't be playing Darkwing, will he?" Drake asked nervously. "I mean, I was already hired to play him..."

"Don't worry, we can work around that. But there's going to be a lot of changes around here..."

"You can't do this to me!" Boorswan protested, this time to McDuck. "I'm an accomplished, awarded director. This fanboy knows nothing about directing. Why should I take orders from him?"

"Sorry, Alistair," McDuck said. "I told ye right from the start that my only requirement is that the villain has a nice moustache to twirl. Besides, he's offered t'do the consultation for free. You're the one who's costing most of the budget."

"That's because I'm an accomplished director..."

"Yes, and you're still the director. You just get to direct his way now."

"Starting with the script," Launchpad added. "Who wrote that, anyway?"

The three screenwriters looked at each other.

"That was us, but..."

"Have you seen Darkwing Duck?"

"Uh...no."

"I rest my case," Launchpad said. "Now, this is going to be a bit tricky. We need a new script ASAP, but I have to agree on it before anything is finalized. Now we'd better get cracking. Uh...anyone got a VCR on them?"

"What?" The writer who had spoken earlier asked. "What are we doing?"

"We're going to watch Darkwing Duck!"

"I've got a few episodes burned on DVD in my trailer," Drake offered. "And if you guys need any help re-writing the script, I took a screenwriting course in college and I know the series."

"Great!" Launchpad exclaimed. "Let's go!"

It took them a couple of days working overtime to whip out a new script to make the movie into a pass-the-torch movie to link Starling's Darkwing with Drake, with a greater emphasis on comedy. That didn't mean the old script was completely gone, some elements of the old script were kept in. The full script was cheesy, slapsticky, and in Drake's eyes perfect. Granted, he'd done more than his share of writing the script since he knew the show better than anyone except for Launchpad.

[Summary of in-universe film: The film would star Drake as Dick Greylag, an average guy who was currently working as a plumber. While repairing pipes at the house of Brant Reid, a reclusive billionaire, Greylag would discover that Reid was in fact Darkwing Duck, a vigilante who had mysteriously disappeared ten years before. Reid would not react too kindly to the discovery and chase Greylag out, but not before revealing the reason for his retirement: someone had found out his secret identity(?).

Meanwhile, Darkwing's old nemesis Megavolt would be in prison. He would somehow get his hands on an old film projector and manage to bring the characters on screen into the real world, lead by an old-time villain with a very twirly mustache. They would escape using the characters' abilities. At first, Megavolt would command the fictional characters, but they would quickly decide they didn't need to take orders from him, and would keep him captive with the intent of bringing more movie characters to life. More specifically those huge cheesy movie monsters from series like Duckzilla.

The only thing their little plan would fail to take into account was the hapless Dick Greylag, who would stumble into their hideout while fixing toilets. Captured by them, Greylag would escape and then try to convince Reid to help him. Reid would refuse, since he would be paranoid about his secret identity and believe Greylag's story to be just a ruse to lure him out of hiding. Greylag would decide Reid was just being a jerk. In the end, he would "borrow" Reid's old costume and go out to confront the movie characters.

During a complicated slapsticky fight sequence, it would be revealed that Greylag knew martial arts and could take care of himself. He would still be outnumbered, however, and quickly captured again. The movie characters would then enact their plan to bring the cheesy movie monsters out, and they would trash the city. Just when things would be at their worst, Reid would turn up in an older Darkwing costume. He and Greylag would save the day by putting the film used to transport everyone out of the movies into rewind, sucking them all back in.

With the situation now resolved, Reid would realize that Greylag had a lot of potential, and plan to make him the new Darkwing. Meanwhile, Megavolt would slip away, and free the rest of the old villains in order to set things up for the sequel.]

#fanfiction #ducktales 2017 #darkwing duck

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taleroftells · 7 months ago

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Of Fanfiction and Fickle Muses

I'm still trying to figure out Tumblr, but this is going to be a place where I put my ideas for fanfiction that either never took off or fizzled out.

So, here's the fic that I got the furthest (several chapters) in before my muse moved on. It's a draft, there are placeholder bits for things I didn't figure out, and there are probably formatting errors from the copy and paste. Otherwise, enjoy what I have.

Vaguely Familiar

"Digimon will go to the human world...and destroy it!"

-Bokomon, Digimon Frontier episode 48

Chapter 1

The ruined city sticking out of the fog looked like a set of withered leaves trying in vain to reach the sun. What had its name been again? It didn't matter; all the humans who lived there had fled or been killed, caught in the crossfire between the Olympus Twelve and the Royal Knights.

I shook my head. Why had they started fighting again? The reason they fought now was long forgotten, and could have been over any slight or snub. The reason the various factions of the Digital World had fallen apart, however, was widely known: Ever since Lucemon's reign had been ended when he'd been Scanned by the Legendary Warriors, multiple wars had been ongoing. Without the threat of Lucemon to unite them all again, the Digimon had split into factions depending on who they believed was fit to rule the world in his place. Then someone had found a way to the human world, the remnants of an army trying to re-group from their latest defeat, and the humans had become involved. More factions had come to Earth to take advantage of the humans, and a mere six months after the first portals had opened, the earth, like the Digital World, was just another battleground. The humans mere pawns in an ongoing game for conquest.

And the humans paid the price for it, as surely as Digimon did. Worse, because humans could not be reborn like we were, not that rebirth was much of an advantage anymore. I had been one of the luckier ones, having been reborn before the Village of Beginnings had become a warzone.

Of course, overlooking the ruined city did nothing for me. If I had lips, they would have been pressed in a frown. What was I doing there, anyway? The broken buildings nagged at me, a feeling, a fleeting memory, similar to what the humans called deja vu. Had I been there before, in a previous life? No, that wasn't possible; the city-Tokyo, that was what its name had been, had only been destroyed two weeks ago, and I had been alive in this life long enough to Evolve to my adult form. Perhaps the feeling came from another ruined city in the Digital World. Well, memories would not help me find the energy to keep myself going. I needed to find energy, and soon. Darkness, or rather dark energy, was what I "ate," as I had no mouth in this form. The nearest supply of it would no doubt be found closer to the battlefield. I had no wish to go there, but at this rate I didn't have a choice.

I turned to go, before something caught my senses: Dark energy pulsing somewhere in the ruined city, but, where was it coming from? I'd been under the impression that all the local Digimon had been conscripted by one side or another, and was now fighting in the war. A deserter, perhaps? That was the most likely scenario, but speculating about what was there would not fill my empty stomach. I bounded down the ridge that overlooked the city and into the ruins. As I got closer to the source of the dark energy, I realized that it was bigger than I had initially thought, big enough to satisfy me without its owner even noticing. In fact...

I raised my hand and concentrated, willing the darkness to come to me. The energy instantly obeyed, swirling around my hand as I absorbed it, replenishing me. I released the darkness when I was "full," but where had it come from? What could be living there that gave off so much dark energy? A powerful Ultimate-level Digimon, no doubt, but what was it doing there? Was it unwilling to participate in the war? Or maybe the Digimon was looking for something there, something even bigger?

I traced the source through the abandoned streets, past crushed cars and charred human corpses, eventually ending up at an abandoned, but mostly intact, building. It wasn't until I entered that I realized that the building had been a library once. Scattered books and knocked-over shelves lay everywhere, except a battered doorway, which was cleared out with books carefully piled next to it. Someone was here, and that someone was the one who was giving off so much dark energy.

But, was it friendly? I summoned my staff just in case, and stepped through the doorway, expecting a powerful Digimon. What I saw however was a stout, pointed stick pointed at my midriff. At its other end was only a human. I looked around the room, trying vainly to find that Digimon who was giving off all the darkness, only to realize that there was no Digimon.

It was all coming from the human before me.

How was this possible? In all my travels on Earth, the few humans I had come into contact with hadn't given enough energy to fill my fist, let alone a colossal river of power like I was seeing. It had to be a trick, a Digimon in disguise for some reason. Yet, as I shifted my gaze back down to the human, I didn't see any telltale signs of illusion or deceit. Looking closer, I noticed that as far as I could tell, he was male. He was also much shorter than the humans I had seen, and I realized that he must have been their equivalent of a Child level. A young one, then. Blue eyes blazed angrily out of a face pinched by hunger, something that I had seen often on human faces. A mop of black hair that didn't quite reach his shoulders, a body that trembled from anger and fear. A face that was pale and slicked with sweat, eyes that were more than slightly glassy. I didn't know much about humans, but I realized that the boy wasn't just afraid or angry, he was feverish as well.

The boy also seemed to be off-balance; he wasn't putting his weight on one foot. I looked down at his feet, taking in the awkwardly-placed bandages crusted by dried blood, the way that the stick he still pointed at me was the right size that he could use it as a walking stick. Was that why he hadn't fled the city? Because he couldn't flee? I'd have thought that the humans had more compassion than to leave an injured boy to die. It was clear to me that he wouldn't last much longer on his own. The injury on his foot had likely become infected, and without intervention would quickly kill him. I was surprised that the boy was still moving, let alone standing. Had he found a way to tap into the dark energy he was somehow producing? No. If he had, then he would have been able to use it to heal himself. Darkness was well-known for its ability to heal.

What should I do? As tempting as it was to simply leave him, my conscience reminded me that he would die. I did not care for the humans, but I had no wish to waste a life like this. Besides, there was the mystery of all the dark energy around him.

"Go away!" The child's voice was raspy, no doubt from his fever. I sighed and dispelled my staff.

"I won't hurt you, I'm going to help." I took a step closer, but he still stubbornly pointed the stick at me.

"I said go away!"

I tried to sound as pleasant as I possibly could. "You need help, I can heal you."

"Just leave me alone!"

I rolled my eyes in exasperation. What was this human thinking, to turn down help like this when his life was on the line? Further, he showed no signs of changing his mind, leaving me with no choice. I simply rushed him, pinning him to the ground before he could do more than blink. I ignored his outraged shriek, and barely felt his stick hitting my back through my armor. He might as well have been hitting me with leaves.

The boy didn't stop struggling as I reached out to take the bandage off his foot. I mentally snorted; at least he was still fighting, even if this was the one time he shouldn't have been. Under the bandage, I could see the mangled, bloody, infection-riddled foot. It looked as if it had been crushed under something. Healing it would have been a somewhat draining task for me normally, but I had a metaphorical fountain of darkness struggling beneath me. I tapped into that dark energy, concentrating on re-directing it into the foot to shut off all the nerves and stop the pain. The boy instantly ceased his struggles in surprise, giving me the opening I needed to feed more energy into his foot, kill off the infection and rebuild the crushed bones.

When I released the energy, the boy's foot was whole, and his eyes were clear. And he was still glaring at me, furiously.

"Get off me!" He snapped. I sighed as I complied. Typical human grattitude.

"The foot is going to be a bit tender for the next day or so," I told him. "You should find another shoe, if that's possible."

He didn't answer me right away, running a hand over his newly intact foot.

"Why did you do that? You Digimon never cared for any of us before."

"Because nobody else seems to care about you now," I said. "You would have died from the infection if I hadn't intervened."

And because the boy was giving out such an incredible amount of darkness, but I decided not to tell him about that.

"I can escort you as far as the nearest human refugee camp," I continued. "It's a better place for you than here."

He gingerly pulled himself to his feet with the stick, his blue eyes no longer blazing with fury.

"I need-I um, didn't thank you for saving me. And I'm sorry for getting angry with you."

"Apology accepted. You had good reason."

The boy's eyes widened, then he tentatively offered his hand to me.

"My name's Kouichi, Kouichi Kimura."

I reached down to firmly grasp the offered hand.

"I'm Lowemon."

Chapter 2

As much as I wanted to leave the ruined city and the distant battlezone behind, it simply wasn't possible to do so quickly. My new acquaintance's foot wasn't quite up to long-distance walking yet, and he only had one shoe. Additionally the boy couldn't absorb Dark energy like I could, he had to eat physical food. The worst part was that he point-blank refused to sit down in his library and let me do the scavenging for him.

"You're not doing yourself any favors," I said pointedly as he gingerly limped along behind me using the walking stick for support.

"I know."

"So, why are you still following me? Are you afraid something will come after you?"

"No."

"Then why do you do it?"

There was silence. I turned to see him slump against his stick, a pained expression on his face.

"I don't want to talk about it."

I realized that the boy had likely been through entirely too much over the past two weeks. Perhaps the boy...Kouichi, I reminded myself, had latched onto me as the closest thing he had to his family, or perhaps it was because I was his rescuer, and associated me with safety. Most likely it was loneliness; the city had been abandoned by most, if not all, who survived, and he would have had a hard time finding food with that injured foot, let alone someone who cared for him.

"Then I won't." I walked over to him. "But, if we're going to get anything done today, we can't be moving at this pace."

I wrapped an arm around him, pulling him up to my back. He gasped, but at least didn't struggle this time.

"Hold on," I said. "This could be a bit rough."

I felt the thin arms grab my neck and took off, bounding through the ruined streets.

"Do you have any idea where there's a shoe store?" I asked as I went.

"None on this block-" the boy said, then gasped again as I landed. "There was a store in the plaza two blocks west from here."

"Good." I turned in the appropriate direction and after a minute or two saw the plaza in question. Ruined, demolished, and partially burnt, like all the buildings in the city, but there was a chance that something had survived.

I gently put the boy down outside the plaza.

"Could you get in there?" He asked me in a skeptical voice.

"Most likely. I'm big enough that I can get through." I suited word to action, walking to the shoe shop's door. A large chunk of the wall had fallen in front of it, but I had no trouble lifting it out of the way.

"What size shoe do you wear?" I asked pointedly.

Ten minutes later, the boy...Kouichi, I reminded myself again, had a black sneaker on each foot. He still tried to keep off the one that had been injured, but it was an improvement. I also talked him into sitting outside the store while I looked for some food for him. The next store over in the plaza, a supermarket, produced similar dividends, although it took me a while of scrounging to find something that hadn't been looted or ruined. In the end, I found some vending machines in the back of the store, in what was probably a place for employees to congregate. I broke the glass and pulled out as many packets of food and drink as I could hold. Then it back to where the boy rested, walking stick by his side.

"Here." I dropped the packets of food into his lap. His eyes lit up and he instantly tore into one of the packages, getting crumbs everywhere.

"Slow down," I grumbled as I sat across from him. "You'll choke at this rate."

Kouichi made a face, but he took the time to chew and swallow the next bite.

"'M r'ly h'ngry," he said between bites. I didn't blame him. I suspected if the boy took off his shirt I would be able to see the ribs. So him being hungry was only too understandable.

"Here, wash it down with some of this." I picked up one of the cans from where it had fallen and handed it to him. The boy looked up at me in surprise for a moment before looking at the label and making a face.

"Coffee," he muttered under his breath. "I never understood why people liked this stuff."

Before I could reply, he opened the can and took a long swig.

"But at least I know it won't kill me," he finished.

"Once you've finished with that one, we should find shelter," I said. "This place is too open."

Kouichi's eyes widened and he hurriedly gathered the remaining packets of food while simultaneously trying to finish the bun he was trying to eat. This time he did choke, but gulped it down before it got bad.

"Here." I irritably gave him a hand in grabbing the food. "It's not that open."

"Well, I'm sorry if I'm scared, but I don't want to go through this again!" The boy snapped, his eyes flashing with temper and fear. "You have no idea how bad it was!"

"Yes, I'm sorry. I should have known better." I held up a finger. "But, we're still finding shelter. And not in the city."

It was a bit awkward to carry both Kouichi and all the food. In the end, I simply made an improvised sack out of a cloth banner from the supermarket and wedged everything into it. Then it was a bit easier to hop and run my way out of the city and into some suburban neighborhood, where the houses were occasionally intact, scorched but abandoned. Then I gently placed Kouichi down outside of the door to one of those houses.

"I think the door is locked. We'd need to find a..." Kouichi's eyes widened as he realized what I was about to do.

"Oh."

I didn't even bother breaking the door down, just twisted the knob hard enough to break it. Kouichi flinched a bit, most likely at the breach of privacy, but he didn't say anything. I leaned against the wall and watched bemusedly as he pulled out several more packets of food, limped over to a nearby couch and settled down to eat. For a while, the only sounds I heard from him were chewing, drinking and gulping. Finally, he slowed down a bit.

"What happens now?" He asked. "You said you'd bring me to a refugee camp, right?"

"I did."

Kouichi paused.

"But, are you sure it's safe? I heard all kinds of horror stories..." He broke off a bit. "...Before...before everything."

"You're safer in a camp than you were before. Besides, you'll have a better chance of finding if you have surviving family in the camps."

"I know," he looked down. "But, I want to stay with you."

What was this? I narrowed my eyes skeptically.

"Mom and Grandma both..." Kouichi shuddered and took a deep breath. "They died. I don't even know my father's name, let alone if he's still alive. I don't think anyone in the camps could help me find him. Besides, you're the only one who's cared for me since the city was destroyed, and I...I want to stay with you."

I hestiated. The fact was that even for a Digimon, life was harsh. None of the various factions I had met took refusal to join them very well, and several of them had prices on my head. It would be harder to keep Kouichi safe while fighting them. On the other hand, now that I was thinking about it, leaving Kouichi in a camp didn't seem like such a good idea. He was still giving off all that dark energy, and if some other Digimon who absorbed dark energy like I did came along, Kouichi could be in even worse trouble. An unwanted image came to my mind, of Kouichi chained to some powerful Digimon's throne, wasting away while it absorbed his energy.

"If you wish it, you can stay with me," I said finally. "It won't be a walk in the park, and I can't guarantee that either of us will survive, but I will try and keep you safe."

Kouichi's eyes lit up and a shy smile crept onto his face.

"Thanks, Lowemon," he said simply. And yawned.

"Are you tired?" It wasn't even dark yet.

"Well, I couldn't sleep too well in the city. My foot wouldn't stop hurting, and I was scared that something would get me." He yawned again, even bigger than the first time, and stretched out on the couch. "Now I'm not alone, and I'm full for the first time in two weeks, and I think the...the adrenaline rush from meeting you has run out, and..."

"Enough," I sighed. "Get some sleep, Kouichi."

The only response was a drowsy mumble, and the sound of his breathing slowing down as the boy quickly drifted off into sleep. I sighed and scrubbed at my face. What had I gotten myself into? I had no experience with a young human. Yet, I couldn't just leave him. Especially since he was giving off all that energy...why was he giving off all that Dark energy? Why was a human giving enough energy to fill an Ultimate-level Digimon? I sighed and held out a hand, summoning a little of that energy for a quick "meal." Draining it didn't seem to bother Kouichi much; he didn't even seem to be aware of all the energy swirling around him. What would happen to him if something drained all of it? If that was even possible. There was a lot of Dark energy in that boy. No, it didn't matter, I wasn't taking any chances.

Especially not with a child like Kouichi.

...

The next day started out hazy, as the summer heat turned the countryside into something resembling a sauna. By the time Kouichi had stirred himself into wakefulness the next morning, I had already ranged around the house, collecting things that would be useful on the journey: A backpack, blankets, the food from the kitchen which had not spoiled.

"Good morning, Kouichi," I said as the boy finally sat up. He had slept later than I thought he would, most likely still tired from all the things that had happened the previous night

"'Morning," the boy croaked, rubbing at his eyes. Then he paused, eyes widening as he no doubt realized where he was and who he was with before those eyes sank gently to the floor

"What time is it?" He asked.

"Almost noon. I searched the house while you slept and picked up some more food."

He glanced dubiously the boxes and bags I had placed on the floor. "And you didn't cook it."

"How do I make a stove work without electricity?" I asked to cover the fact that I didn't know much about human food.

"Oh yeah."

There was an awkward pause before Kouichi fingered one of the boxes.

"I've had worse, I'll manage."

"Hmm." This seemed to be the appropriate time to ask the boy what had been on my mind since I'd met him.

"Kouichi, have you noticed anything...different about yourself?"

"What do you mean?"

"It's hard to describe, but I don't eat human food. I absorb dark energy instead, something that is normally given off by Digimon, but you have...a lot of it."

The blue eyes narrowed, but he didn't say anything.

"In fact, you're giving off more dark energy than most Digimon I've met," I continued. "You're the first human I've seen that does. I was wondering how this happened."

"Is that how you found me?"

I paused, completely taken aback by the question before deciding to go for honesty.

"Yes. I sensed the dark energy surrounding you. I was going to keep my promise to bring you to a camp, but this might not be the best idea. I'm afraid that something...less benevolent than myself would find you there and use you as an everlasting lunch. I completely understand if you don't want to be near me anymore..."

"I want to stay with you!"

The intensity of the boy's voice surprised me into silence. Kouichi got to his feet and looked up at me, eyes blazing with determination.

"Lowemon, you're the first one I've met since...since the city was destroyed that's cared for me. You healed my foot and you got me new shoes and gave me food. I don't care if you eat energy or blood, I want to stay with you."

I cleared my throat awkwardly, stifling my disgust at the thought of eating that red liquid the humans called "blood."

"Okay, then you're coming with me. But, that doesn't answer my question. Do you know how you acquired all that energy? Was there something strange that happened to you recently?"

Kouichi pursed his lips thoughtfully. "The only thing out of the ordinary was about [Time Period] before the city was destroyed. I had just come home from school, and was starting to do homework, when I felt this hideous headache. It literally came out of nowhere. I think I staggered into my futon and fell asleep, or maybe fainted, I don't remember. It was a really bad headache. When I woke up, Mom said I slept for about a day, then I felt completely normal."

"You don't feel anything out of the ordinary when I do this?" I asked, summoning a sliver of the boy's dark energy into my hand and absorbing it. He stared blankly for a moment before shaking his head.

"I'm guessing you just ate something? No, I didn't feel anything. I didn't see anything, either."

"Hmm, at least I'm not harming you when I eat."

I sat down on the couch while the boy looked through the food on the floor, splitting them up into two groups presumably based on their edibility.

"Okay," Kouichi remarked upon finishing. "I can eat these..."

He was interrupted by his stomach gurgling.

"You probably should," I said wryly.

"I wish I had an oven and some milk and eggs," he muttered under his breath as he dug into a box of crackers. "That cake mix probably won't be very good with just water."

I could only shrug helplessly. I hadn't eaten any food since I'd been in my Child form, and that had been a very long time ago. I had vague memories of chewing, gulping, and tasting, but couldn't remember much of what it had been like.

"So, where are you going after this?" Kouichi asked around a mouthful of crackers and canned coffee.

"I don't know."

"Eh?"

"I'm a wanderer by nature. I've been all over the Digital World, and I've only been on your world for just under [time period]. I was skirting through the Olympus Twelve's territory and thought I'd go see the lands to the south of here when I came across you."

"What about the other group, the Royal Knights?"

"The Knights? I'd prefer to avoid them if possible. I've had some unfortunate encounters with them."

Kouichi's eyes shone with curiosity, but he didn't ask, choosing instead, to gulp down more crackers.

Two hours later, we walked down what had likely been a highway. Kouichi now had a backpack full of food and a warm blanket, and I had reluctantly found another backpack for myself since all the food and blankets I had scrounged had been too much for one backpack. It was annoying, but easier for me to carry it than it was for Kouichi. The boy now walked at my side, and if he was slower than I was used to, well, at least he had the excuse of being smaller. He leaned slightly on the branch turned walking stick as he went, no doubt a hold-over from his recently healed foot.

"How's your foot doing?" I asked.

"A little sore..."

"Do you want me to carry you?"

"I think I'm good for now."

I could think of nothing more to say to that, and settled for grunting a response.

"Hey, Lowemon?"

"Yes?"

"What's it like in the Digital World? I mean, we didn't get much from the news before...the city was destroyed. Just a lot of the Royal Knights talking about how evil the other Digimon were."

"I'm not surprised," I responded. "The Royal Knights are a bit obsessed with the idea of 'us' and 'them.' If you don't agree with them, then you're the enemy."

"Why did you disagree with them?"

"They're convinced that the darkness is evil. I'm a dark Digimon."

"Oh."

Kouichi was silent for a few minutes.

"How many different groups are there? I know about the Royal Knights, the O...Oly..." He struggled with the foreign word.

"Olympus Twelve."

"Yeah. And there's others, right?"

"Many others, but as far as I know those two are the only ones in Japan. I believe the three Great Angels have set up in a place called Canada, [etc]."

The boy's eyes widened. "And all these groups are fighting each other?"

"To an extent. There are a lot of shifting alliances, and betrayals. Some are holdovers from the other great wars we had."

"Other wars?" Kouichi's eyes now shone with curiosity. I sighed and decided to start at the beginning.

"Long ago, just after the Digital World formed, there was a rift between the humanoid Digimon and bestial Digimon. It was supposedly a similar situation to what we have today, many factions and alliances competing for power, but all loosely aligned by being humanlike or beastlike. The situation eventually descended into a full-blown war. Then one day during a horrific battle, a light shone down from the sky. An angel Digimon called Lucemon floated down from the heavens, and he made peace."

I glanced down at Kouichi, who looked like he was already caught up in the story. Well, it made sense for him to like stories. I had met him at a library, after all.

"The peace didn't last long, however. Lucemon became corrupted by his own power, and became a petty tyrant. There was another war, this time to stop Lucemon. Many valiant Digimon lost their lives in this war, but it gave the attackers a chance. Then when it seemed that things were hopeless, ten Digimon, each the most powerful of their element, were able to stop Lucemon and Scanned his data."

"Scanned?"

"It's like what you humans call 'killing,'" I told him. "Except when a Digimon is Scanned, he becomes an egg and floats off to the Village of Beginnings to be reborn."

"Like reincarnation, you mean? They said something about that in the news reports."

"It's a little like reincarnation. Now these ten Digimon were called the Legendary Warriors, because they had done what was thought to be impossible. But after they Scanned Lucemon, they all disappeared."

"What happened to them?"

"I don't know. The rumors say that they were Scanned in the wars that followed. Or that they gave up in frustration because nobody wanted to listen to them anymore. Once the threat of Lucemon was out of the way, the various groups fell apart since there was nothing left to keep them united. The wars broke out again, and then..."

"Spread to Earth, I know." Kouichi's voice held deep sorrow, no doubt for the loved ones he'd lost. I was sympathetic for the boy.

"I was hatched long after the wars began. I don't remember 'peace' the way you do, but I have seen villages of Digimon living in harmony in the far corners of the world. If I could find you a similar place, where nobody would notice your dark energy..."

"You'd stay there with me?"

I paused. I had been going to say somethng along the lines of "You wouldn't have to worry about being attacked again." But if he was so dead-set on staying with me then that was out of the question. Ever since I hatched, I was a wanderer. I had been through most of the Digital World and had been eager to see what lay beyond the portals in the human one. I couldn't stay in one place for longer than a few days before I grew restless. What did the desires of one human child matter to me?

"I can't make any guarantees," I finally said. "I'm a wanderer, I have been since I hatched. But if I find a place that I don't feel like leaving after a while, then I suppose I'd settle down."

Blue eyes gazed up at me for a moment.

"Thanks, Lowemon."

...

"Hey, um Lowemon? My feet are beginning to get a bit sore, and I'm getting hungry. Do you think we could stop for a while?"

I glanced down at the boy at my side. We had been walking for a long time, which probably wasn't doing Kouichi's foot any good. Sure enough, he was limping a little. I kept forgetting that he was only a human child and couldn't walk nearly as far as I could, and there was also the matter of his recently-healed foot to consider. Well, the sun was on its way to setting, and the road was clear enough that I would likely notice any attackers.

"All right. We can sit over there."

There weren't any cars on the road, as anyone who'd had a car had long since used it to flee to safer places. There was however a grassy ditch on each side of the road, and it made an adequate, if not completely safe, place to rest a while. Kouichi shuffled onto the grass and pulled off his shoes with a sigh of relief. I knelt down beside him and gently inspected the healed foot. It looked a little puffy, and just to be cautious, I tapped into the fountain of energy around him and used that to soothe out the soreness.

"You didn't have..." Kouichi paused, then sighed. "Thanks."

"Don't worry about it." I absorbed a bit more of the energy for myself and sat down next to him. The boy pulled his backpack off and pulled out some food before looking up at me.

"We're probably going to need someone on watch tonight. Do you want to do it in shifts?"

"Don't worry about it. As long as I have energy, I don't need sleep. I can keep watch through the night."

"I wish I'd met you earlier, you really would have helped a lot when..." Kouichi faltered, his eyes going distant with regrets.

"We can't change the past," I said. "We can only pick ourselves up from it."

"I know, but..." Now tears were welling up from his eyes before getting scrubbed by a grimy sleeve. "No, never mind. I was lucky to survive."

"How did you survive?" I asked since he seemed to be in the mood to talk about what he'd gone through.

"I was at the library. Not the one I was at when I met you, a different one. I was standing next to two bookshelves and when the attack began I was flung between them and they fell leaning in against each other, so it protected me. But, I wasn't fully protected. A large hunk of concrete hit my foot and I passed out. By the time I woke up, it was all over and Mom...Mom and Grandma..."

"I understand." The boy was clearly going through a lot, and it probably wasn't wise to press him anymore. "They meant a lot to you."

"The world." Kouichi wiped his eyes again and leaned back against me as he opened a pastry packet. "What happened to your family?"

"Digimon don't have families, not in the same way humans do. We all start as eggs in the Village of Beginnings, then are sent to places with similar Digimon. They become family, of a sort, and raise us."

"So you're all adopted?"

"You could say that. It's a little different though. We aren't raised by 'parents' as much as by the whole community. It's like having twenty parents and siblings, or twenty uncles and aunts and cousins."

"Twenty? That's how big your family was?"

"A bit bigger, but it was about that number."

"I wish my family was that big."

I tactfully didn't tell him that my family hadn't been a particularly happy one, nor that we had been bitterly divided between supporting different factions until that family had completely fallen apart even before I had left them. Kouichi didn't need to know that. I eyed the boy as he bit into the pastry. His 'family,' for all intents and purposes, had consisted of himself, his mother, and the grandmother. An abysmally small family by the standards of the Digital World, but clearly a loving one, and now they were gone. He'd been by himself for two weeks or so before I'd met him. No wonder then that he desired a big family.

How did I get here? I wondered hours later. In the space of twenty-four human hours I'd gone from solitary wanderer to some kind of strange parental figure. To make my situation even more awkward, my newly acquired charge had somehow gone from leaning against me to falling asleep against me, and then had moved on to being sprawled in my lap, like those little cats I'd seen in my travels. However while it had started as a peaceful sleep, Kouichi had quickly devolved into a kind of twitchy, whimpering kind of sleep. Probably a nightmare. Given all he'd gone through, I couldn't fault him for having bad dreams, but the noises were a bit annoying. Come to think of it, weren't nightmares bad for human health? If nothing else, the boy would likely have trouble sleeping afterwards...

I pressed my hand against Kouichi's back and sent some healing darkness through him, shunting him beyond dreams and into a deeper sleep. The twitching body in my lap suddenly relaxed and was still, his breath slowing down and the whimpering trailing off to a soft sigh. I leaned back with a relieved sigh of my own, and many second thoughts.

Two days ago, I wouldn't have paid much attention to the humans beyond knowing they were there. I wasn't very good at interacting with other Digimon, either. I was been solitary, aloof, searching for...something. A nebulous something which I couldn't possibly articulate to any others, so I didn't. As far as anyone else knew, I was just a wanderer. So why was I here like this? Why did I want him to live so much? What was it about the boy that drew me to him? Not just to heal him, but to bring him along with me? Not the darkness which even now swirled lazily around him like a ripple. If I'd wanted dark energy, I wouldn't have even left the Digital World. Was it just because I didn't want to see him killed by some Digimon or a human? That could easily be chalked up to parental instinct...

Was it just parental instinct? Somehow it felt like there was something else that made me want to be with Kouichi, not just to protect him. Something...something...

I shook my head. Or maybe it was just parental instinct. It didn't matter.

The question could at least wait until tomorrow.

#fanfiction #digimon frontier

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