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Chapter 12 - It's Not That We Don't Like You, It's Just That

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During the little pow-wow with the other chosen kids, Skyler had explained what happened. It wasn't pretty. A bunch of Digimon had noticed that the CIA spooks were trying to cross over the barrier between worlds. They had seen the writing on the wall. Humans and Digimon would eventually be partnered together, and the ghosts wanted in on the deal. Madelyn could have told everyone else that. Why did they need Skyler to say it?

The crew was fraying at the seams, and she was at the epicenter of it. It had started when they had been noticed by the spooks. It was like everyone got more stressed. The agents were all creepers, doing things like sitting in cars outside your house, up to even leaving a tracker on the cars. The bug had found it, so it proved it wasn't completely useless.

The worst part about the whole thing was just how awful they had been at their own job! Her parents had even noticed the creepy black car with the guys in suits sitting there.

Madelyn had been shocked when her parents mentioned the creepy dudes sitting outside the house one weekend! They hadn't even mentioned the fact that Madelyn had been running around with a digimon all day or where the extra food was going! The agents had been that bad at their own jobs.

It disgusted her.

In the room, Skyler had opened up, and finally begun to wrap up his story. "I'm sorry," he had said, there, in the room. He was looking in the direction of Madelyn, but not directly in her eyes. "Tsumemon is always all-in on anything I want to do, and doesn't exactly have a filter. I didn't know we'd take things as far as we did." He'd regained his composure but still chose to sit on the floor of the castle while he'd told his story.

"Well, now you know!" Patamon said, always brimming with positivity, floating off her, sensing Madelyn's own response to the admission. Then Patamon turned to Tsumemon, who cowered in Skyler's arms. "You need to be more careful! Being Evil doesn't mean you have to hurt other people! You need to at least protect Skyler from the other digimon that want to hurt him!"

Tsumemon didn't respond, instead a small blob of tentacles all quivering in anxiety. "Don't worry," Skyler said to Patamon. "We'll work on it, won't we?

Patamon harrumphed away, used its wings to float back and sit Madelyn's head. She smiled, glad her and her little bread loaf were still on the same wavelength for the most part.

"And no more taking people's digivices!" Brad said.

Madelyn shrugged. "Sure thing, boss," she mocked. Her classmate was the one of the group that knew what he needed to do. He only ever figured things out long after she had, and well, Brad was just bad at big-picture stuff.

Tsumemon was all-in on whatever Skyler did. Even if it was at the behest of some form of mind-control or possession—it wasn't very bright. Skyler apologized, and for once in her life, there was a small amount of catharsis.

Madelyn and the boys had tried to warn Skyler about making deals with the ghost digimon. Unfortunately, that went about as well as trying to warn them that Agent Sanders was not a good guy.

The number of times Madelyn had to watch people be stupid had only increased her feeling of frustration at the world.

The ghosts had come to Skyler, apparently. His partner being a Tsumemon that evolved into a Keramon, it was pure hindsight why the ghosts had been attracted to him, though Madelyn knew a few ghosts had floated around Mia for a while. How else had she known where Skyler was or even how to defect?

"It's all right, Skyler," Alex had said. Of course the nerd was the one to comfort him first. "You got us into this world, didn't you? You were the first one to figure out how to cross the digital barrier!"

It took all of her will to keep a neutral face. Patamon moving around on her shoulder definitely helped quite a lot.

The rest just.

They just didn't Get It.

You don't just cause all these problems and hurt so many people and then go back to normal! She'd predicted where both Mia and Skyler had been going. And yet these losers had the gall to get mad at her for trying to prevent the damage!

Skyler and Alex took a… hug?

She wanted to hop in there, take command, tell them to spare the pleasantries. Tsumemon was still avoiding her sight.

Good.

When things calmed down, Skyler let out a few choking sobs as he hugged Tsumemon, everyone turned to her, expectantly.

"What?" No, seriously. They had all been pushing back on her ideas for the last few weeks and now they wanted her to step up? She was smelly, hadn't gotten a proper shower in about as long, and they had to use toilets dug out of fake dirt, and then they argued with Madelyn about what the plans were, then did them anyway.

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Maybe these kids really shouldn't have digimon.

The thought niggled back at her mind. It was Patamon's stalwart friendliness in those dull moments that kept her sane. From following each one of those

"I was expecting you to butt in with how we're burning daylight and aren't doing everything we need to—" Alex made motions with his hands "—Stop The Coming Evil. You know, that's your entire deal isn't it? Righteous fury or whatever?"

Madelyn rolled her eyes. It was planning that she was best at. She wasn't vindictive. Just opinionated. What was the saying? Strong opinions loosely held? When they managed to prove her wrong, she'd change her mind.

She smirked.

"Well, I'm glad you recognize me as the group leader." That elicited varying degrees of groans.

"Patamon and I called it three times now. Y'all didn't believe me. Not." It was a subtle flick, but she flicked her hand to enunciate the point.

"My." flick

"Problem." flick

"Yeah, yeah, spare us," Brad said. Leomon was resting against a wall, keeping to himself. Each Digimon seemed on edge. Patamon's fur was raised, Leomon gave him awkward looks. Tentomon—well it was hard to read the bug-freak at the best of times.

She saw problems and tried to prevent them.

They got mad when she did that.

"I still don't see the problem in thinking people are good people!" Alex said. Madelyn didn't roll her eyes outwardly at the nerd and his bug.

"Yeah, it's always good to see the best in others!" Tentomon said. She could feel Patamon shifting uncomfortably on her shoulder. She pulled him down from his perch and into her arms.

Yeah, okay. Hold the moral high-ground why don'tcha. They didn't get it. If you can see an oncoming train, it's important to make sure others were off the track!

"Yeah, and we all ended up getting shafted when we gave Agent Sanders the benefit of the doubt. Now here we are, stranded in another world, my sister's going more insane every minute, and a new evil person just leaves with her and Meikitmon!"

That got the nerd to close his mouth.

During the argument, the only digimon that had seemed relaxed was Tsumemon. Madelyn was pretty sure that thing didn't even know all the fucking trouble it caused. The kind of creature that didn't learn anything until they were traumatized into absorbing it into their brain.

It was the perfect Digimon for Skyler, she decided.

She wanted to shove it in their face that she had been right this whole time. But no, she knew where that argument would go, and it wasn't pretty, even for her. People that endlessly gave others the benefit of the doubt had an important role in society.

So when no one piped up to challenge her, she just shrugged. She already had good guesses about what was going to happen next, so despite the groans…

"Yeah, I don't think this whole 'team' thing is working out," she said, saying what everyone else was thinking.

It was, of course, Brad who interrupted her.

"I'm not leaving the world until we get Mia back!" Brad said.

Boys.

"Hold on," she said, holding up a finger. "Let me explain." Any time they thought they knew what they were saying and what they needed to do, they'd jump in. She had learned to hold her expressions when they did that, but she was so, so tired of people babying her little sister.

Holding it in was a herculean effort.

But she was Madelyn.

She did it on a daily basis.

"Look, I know you don't like me, but she's still my little sister. She's eight. She's not that mysterious or that complicated. The whole reason she ran away is because she was mad at me. And Patamon"

Mad's tone was clinical, but the smile still managed to creep in. "And because I'm her older sister, you need to believe me. She folds the moment anything actually requires her to do anything."

They weren't going to let Madelyn go though. "It would be much nicer if you stopped bad-mouthing Mia. She's put in as much effort as any one of us," Alex said, sticking his neck out for her sister. Really just went to show just how detached from reality he was.

"Does everyone else feel that way?" she challenged. "I'll take the looks on your faces as 'yes'." Well, it wouldn't matter anyway, they needed to cover more ground, and sitting around the remains of the castle and together wouldn't help with that.

Mia wasn't a sore spot, Madelyn just expected more from her little sister than everyone else. Whatever. If they wanted to make worse decisions by not believing her, that wasn't her problem.

Yet.

"Well, seeing you all are happy enough without me," she said, causing the boys to wince a bit—the effect of the verbal barbs were wearing off. She'd need to change strategy if she wanted to be able to keep pressure on them when they were going to do something incredibly stupid in the future—"we really do need to split up. Someone needs to wait here in case Madelyn and that new digimon come back."

"Makes sense," Brad said, all the other boys basically nodded along. Skyler was the only one who felt guilty enough to try and stay, but… ew, no.

That wasn't how they were supposed to respond, damn it!

They were supposed to be caught between a sense of honor and letting a girl do the right thing. But no, not even a second of hesitation. Outwardly, she had chuckled at their behavior.

So that was how Madelyn found herself walking around the remains of the black castle, just herself and Patamon with each other to their thoughts. It really was eerie. It felt like a place that shouldn't have existed, even from within the Digital World. She stepped over various knocked-over suits of armor.

She was old enough to notice guys getting stupid around her, but even that apparently had limits!

"Patamon?"

She asked, trying to fill the air as they waited.

"Maddie?" he said, floating around her.

"It should have been purified when we defeated Tsumemon and the last of the ghosts shouldn't it?" She came to a doorway to a rather lush, yet untouched room in the castle. A giant purple drape covering what looked like a huge mirror, the mirror itself shimmering like a wave in a soundless, motionless wind.

"Don't look into the mirror!" Patamon said, rushing to cover it from sight. She wasn't dumb like Alex or Skyler, so she trusted his judgement.

Finally, she had a moment to herself. The boys had been caught between their sense of honor and not wanting to be around her. Madelyn wasn't dumb.

"I know you're trying hard, Maddie!" And, it was true. She had been trying oh, so very hard. She was a Chosen Kid. She needed to show everyone that they could save the world. She wanted it.

For her, that meant noticing problems and doing things to stop them before they happened. But there was just a little… something about the mirror that seemed to know a bit more than it should.

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