Chapter Text
Lightly stunned, Char lay on the riverbank staring up at the sky. It was blue, like the sky of Earth. Huh. Shouldn’t a digital world have a different sort of sky? Like pixels. The trees framing the gap of the heavens had a pixelated appearance at least.
There was a flapping noise drawing closer and then Patamon appeared in her field of vision; except now he was the indigo of a deep night sky. “Char, are you okay?”
“Why are you blue now, Patamon?”
The digimon frowned angrily at her - that didn’t jibe at all with her initial impression of him as easygoing and friendly. “I’m not Patamon!” he snarled. “I’m Tsukaimon! I’m much stronger!”
“Tsukaimon?”
“Yes! I digivolved from Tokomon!”
Tokomon? This gruff creature had - digivolved? - from her friend Tokomon? And what the hell did “digivolve” mean?
But before she could vocalize these thoughts, cries of despair caught her attention. She sat up. The soil of the bank had been torn up during the fight, thrown into wide sprays and with deep furrows crisscrossing one another. In the midst of the destruction, Takeru and Hikari had knelt, cradling their unconscious partners, wailing for them to wake.
Though still unscrambling her scrambled brains, the shrill tones put energy into her limbs. She was a young girl and a younger sibling, but the distress of children still struck something deep in her mind, a sleeping instinct waiting to bloom one day. It stirred like a sleepwalker, directing her to protect and comfort.
She stumbled over. “Are you okay?”
Hikari looked up at her, eyes filled with tears. “They won’t wake up, Char-san! What’s wrong with them?!”
Char knelt to look. Patamon and Gatomon lay still, as if sleeping, though their faces were contorted in faint pain. There was no trace of the shadows on them anymore. She reached out and rested her fingertips on their sides - there was a flash of heat, like a static shock. Had their shadows moved a bit just now? But she forgot all about that when they stirred and their eyes fluttered open.
Takeru and Hikari were overjoyed but their digimon didn’t rouse completely. Too weak to move, they could only barely speak. It rang loud warning bells in Char’s mind. What was wrong with them?
A soft weight landed on her shoulder, gripping her shirt to stay put. A navy blue wing entered her peripheral vision. “Their energy has been drained from them,” Tsukaimon declared. His voice was rough, unlike Tokomon’s high piping. “They need rest and food.”
He made her jump by giving the side of her head a shove with his body. “We’ll go foraging. The jungle has plenty of food to find.”
She took the cue and stood, but then hesitated. The kids had no protection without their digimon - should she reallyl leave them? What if Fugamon returned?
Hikari seemed to understand her pause. She smiled encouragingly up at her. “We should be all right if you don’t go too far,” she said.
“All right,” Char said reluctantly. “But if anything comes along, you both run for it. I’ll find you.”
Tsukaimon took off, leading the way among the trees. Char followed, feeling unsure of herself. She had plenty of knowledge about scrounging in urban settings, but the wilderness was one large unknown to her. Especially this wilderness. What sort of food could grow in a digital jungle?
“Over here!” the bat-like digimon ordered.
She looked up to where he was hovering, and saw an enormous bunch of bananas hanging beneath the fanned leaves of a tree. They were the size and shape of normal bananas at least, but were a vibrant orange color instead of green or yellow. It seemed that was an answer to her question.
“What are they?” she asked to be sure.
“Power Bananas,” he answered. “They grow in bunches so we can get a lot of meals from them.”
“They’re not poisonous, right?”
“Pfft, of course not! Why would I point out something poisonous?”
“I don’t know. But they look different than the bananas I’m used to.”
“Well, they’re fine as long as they’re picked from the tree. Ones on the ground are rotten, so don’t eat them.”
“Good to know.” Char pondered the problem of picking the fruit. “Can you get them?”
“Of course!”
Despite his confidence however, Tsukaimon struggled to pick the bunch due to the thick stem. He pulled it to and fro but it remained stubbornly stuck to the trunk. He even attempted to gnaw through the stem out of frustration with little result.
Char covered her smile with one hand until she could get her expression under control. “Let me give it a try.”
Not that her options were much better than his. The trunk grew at a slight angle but it was still mostly vertical with no branches on the way up. The bark was rough so it might help her grip better in exchange for a little pain. It wasn’t the easiest challenge for someone with zero tree-climbing experience, but she had to do it.
With that determination and more than a few scrapes to her arms and hands, she managed to reach the fruit bundle. But just as she grabbed to pull it loose, her grip on the tree slipped. She overbalanced sideways and tumbled with a yelp, landing prone on the loamy dirt. At least she had a bunch of bananas plop into her lap as consolation for the bruises.
The rest of their foraging went more smoothly. Tsukaimon was able to pull smaller bunches of bananas loose from trees with no issue and they were able to locate food within Char’s reach as well. Small, shockingly blue mushrooms growing in odd geometric patches on the forest floor were pointed out to her as “Bit Mushrooms”. She was doubtful anything that color could be safe to eat but her digimon was insistent. They also found lush grass which looked perfectly normal but released a strong minty smell when Char walked through it. Tsukaimon declared it to be “Graphic Grass” and warned her that while it smelled great and was healthy, it was nauseatingly bitter eaten raw.
In all, they wound up bringing a small feast back to the riverbank. Takeru and Hikari had moved themselves and their digimon to the edge of the jungle where undergrowth concealed them better and there was less mud. Encouragingly, Gatomon and Patamon were more alert now too.
Char portioned out the food, passing on the warning about the grass, and watched to see if the digimon would actually eat the blue mushrooms. To her amazement, they did without hesitation.
As predicted, the two digimon visibly perked up as they ate. Likewise the two kids were clearly relieved by the shift, picking up some of their partners’ enthusiasm for the food.
“What happened to you both?” Hikari asked. “I was so afraid that the darkness was going to eat you!”
“It almost did,” Gatomon said grimly. “It felt like being frozen in ice. And then all my strength was drained away.”
“It was hard to breathe too,” said Patamon. “I thought I’d be crushed.”
They continued on for a bit but Char had stopped listening. Their descriptions didn’t make any sense: the shadows had been hot not cold. And she hadn’t felt any pressure - maybe light brushing but not crushing. She nibbled on a mushroom (shocked to find it had a light citrus flavor) as she thought over the events. One thing was certain: she absolutely should not let on that the shadows hadn’t hurt her. That would make the others wonder why and raise suspicion in their minds that she’d been responsible for it. Char knew she wasn’t, but couldn’t prove it. And she couldn’t afford their doubt now - they had been through something like this before and survived. If she wanted to make it back home she stood a better chance by staying with them.
Movement in the corner of her eye got her attention. Tsukaimon was looking at her sidelong from half-closed eyes while he casually bit into a banana - too casually. Their gazes met, his asking a question. She shook her head fractionally. He gave a nod in return, diguising it as another bite.
When they were inevitably asked for their experiences, both gave noncommital answers, repeating some of the words used by Patamon and Gatomon. It seemed to work - the converstation moved on as the two recovered. Char nudged it along by blandly observing the lengthening shadows and her own weariness. Tsukaimon followed her lead and the kids agreed.
Her partner led the way to a shallow cave where he said they would be safe for the night. It wasn’t much, hardly bigger than a camping tent, but it was dry and out of any potential weather (and the sight of monsters). A screen of leafy vines reduced the sign of the entrance to a bare shadow, promising security.
Twilight hit in a flash and the group hurried to gather tree fronds for bedding. They heaped the leaves up and the younger members tumbled into them with hardly a yawn before falling asleep. Char took the spot nearest the cave’s mouth, facing out to watch and listen before she would allow herself to sleep.
It made her skin crawl. With the kids awake she could distract herself from the unnerving silence of nature, but alone in the dark she couldn’t escape the lack of civilization. More than once she rubbed her ears, trying to ease the pain of nothingness.
There was a soft sound and a dark form sat beside her. “Whatcha thinking?”
“I was thinking that we could keep better night watch with more people.”
“Mm.”
“I was also thinking,” she said in a lower tone and only after making sure the rest were sleeping, “that the description of the shadows didn’t match what I experienced.”
She saw Tsukaimon nod from the corner of her eye. “Yeah. I felt some constriction, but my energy wasn’t drained. Just the opposite.”
“That’s why you…” She groped for the word he’d used.
“Digivolved, yes.”
“What is that?”
“When digimon build up enough strength and energy we can use it to change forms. It usually takes a very long time because it’s difficult to do. But with a partner, we can share their energy as a shortcut.”
“So you shared my energy to change shape?”
“Yeah. But I wonder…”
Char looked at him fully, worried by his words. “What?”
“You weren’t controling the shadows, right?”
“Absolutely not!”
“Then I wonder why I was able to evolve with the energy they took from the other two.”
Char didn’t answer. The question was much more frightening than the dangerous world outside.