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Chapter 15 - That Beam Reminds Me of the Void of My Soul
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Sleep didn't come for me, I wasn't quite sure why. Both Mia and Meicoomon were fast asleep. Leaning on a pillow, hanging under a blanket I took from the second bed, I kept my head and ear near the door, just in case a housekeeper tried to enter the room for any reason.
Being in that era before mobile phones, let alone cameras were a universal thing was really messing with me. I'd spent a bunch of time worrying about what if someone posted a picture of us on the internet and then I realized that this was before digital cameras were any good.
If a person took a picture, unless it was a polaroid it would be a solid day before the film would be developed, and potentially a bit longer before they could really leak our location. The images would be low-resolution and only on small or niche sites.
The only risk was if someone or a police officer saw us and reported us, and even then what were Japan's police force's response times?
Gratefully, those lines of thought were each interrupted by "no, not literally every person you meet will have a camera and microphone that's always listening twenty-four seven".
An hour or so of sitting by the door, listening to the gentle hum of the building's central climate, it was safe to assume that either Hypnos couldn't track us or couldn't do anything at our distance.
How would I get home?
Getting to Texas, just so I could be one hundred percent sure, would be annoying but probably doable? Going back to the digital world and coming back out to some random US city shouldn't be impossible, but it was a lot of risk.
Flying would be more reliable.
Hitching a ride on a plane bound for the DFW international airport. Sitting on a cargo ship would be the worst-case. Ships sucked. I didn't have three weeks or however long it would take for a ship to hit the continental US.
"Potentially-apocalyptic mental meltdown hurtling over the horizon? Being with mother nature in the middle of the ocean will help make sure casualties will be minimized!"
At some point sitting by the door sliding between potentially-delirious visions and letting the events of the day coalesce, things crystallized enough that I nodded off. I knew this, the building was awfully quiet, an unnatural stillness had hit the air. Various new visions and glimpses had popped in, but it wasn't the same as if I had been in the cloud clock world place. Time Zone, came to me. More random erratica floated in like a VCR on super fast-forward, only the occasional audio filtering in, as if my mind was unable to stop thinking about the implications of what if you're stuck here.
Live. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die a lot.
Dead. Die. Death. Each vision was slightly different, but never enough to paint a pretty complete picture. Each dream like I'd recursed. A million different short, sometimes blisteringly-short lives snapping back into one and hitting me. Always rewinding.
What if you were functionally immortal but there was still no way out?
You didn't have to die to be functionally dead, either.
What if you really were facing a shitshow menagerie of beings with enough individual power to sever continents out of their resting place? In more than one vision, I was flattered. Most of them were too incoherent and half-baked thoughts to take seriously.
God, a nice chocolate chip cookie would hit the spot.
Mia turned over, as if restless. She and Meicoomon would occasionally twitch, as if they were fighting something in their dreams.
I looked at the clock. It was Seven pm. She'd been asleep for nine hours. If I was right, she would probably sleep for three more. Meicoomon lay there peacefully. If she had the tendencies of a cat then the heat from the eight year old was probably magnetic.
Have you heard the news that you're dead?
Stand up.
No one ever had much nice to say.
Go to the mirror.
They didn't like you much anyway.
I look at my face. The glowing laughing jester faces on the bandanna floated across. My eyes narrowed as I checked my expression a bit more. It genuinely looked like I was about to burst into that kind of eternally mocking laughter.
No thanks, fuckers, I'd just like to go.
That damn, dark little voice. And yet the way it spoke, it was mocking. Mocking her, mocking everyone around her.
Because it was true. It was all so stupid.
So fake.
Such bullshit.
This whole thing was still so stupid.
I shook my head, getting a grip as in the dark of the hotel room my glow had shifted to a red instead of a passive grey. That flour was moldy and starting to get real gross.
Normally, not being able to sleep much while not having anything to do but think for about eight hours would be a bad night. Luckily, being a mom, taking a break at any damn moment even if you couldn't entirely fall asleep were key survival strats.
And sometimes, even when you were sleeping, kids wouldn't let you. Then you jolt, awakening to a child's screaming and crying from nightmares. That was also normalized and I knew what to do.
Which is, while I was still staring at myself in the mirror of the bathroom, a crash and a scream caused me to rush out the bathroom with keyblade in hand. Nope, Mia was shot straight up, looking at the pocketwatch in her hand and Meicoomon was standing up, a lamp broken on the floor next to her.
Mia threw it on the floor, then started to sob. She reached for Meicoomon and grabbed the poor kitten, practically strangling her, then started crying into the cat's fur.
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My amazing, excellent, top-tier mom-stincts were: just let her be. My not-mom-stincts were: figure out what the hell she's crying about and see if you can help her. Give her comfort. She was strong, and she had Meicoomon as her partner, so she didn't really need me, so I just pretended not to notice her outburst until she calmed down.
"Why?" She sobbed.
Oh. She was going to need m—
"Why is she always like that?!?"
Guess it's about her sister—She looked at me—me?
"What's wrong?" I asked. But she didn't elaborate.
"You don't know!" She spat.
"That's why I'm asking, sweet'ums" I said, tone dry.
"Ugh! You don't know!" She said again, pointing at me.
"Mia, is okay! We'll find out what to do!" Mei said, going in for the hug and rubbing her head against her partner human, trying to console the eight year old that had suddenly started talking nonsense.
I… decided to let them be and let Mei do her thing and help Mia cry it out, which was weird to watch as she pried Meicoomon, the fickle emotions of an eight year old had her crying even as she bounced around the room.
"We tried! We tried so many times, Mei! Nothing works!" She glanced at the clock, her face turned blue, and dashed into the sink to brush her teeth.
"I know!" Mei said.
I was impressed. You didn't need to put makeup on, especially if you were despairing, if what was in was despair, but it never hurt to have good-smelling breath.
Did digimon breath smell? I contemplated lifting up my bandanna and huffing into it to check my breath but then I realized I breathed exclusively through my nose. Because my teeth were somehow sealed away like that one scene in The Matrix when Keanu was asking for his phone call from Agent Smith.
"You lost the backpack, too!" she accused, halfway between tears and the other half trying to dump information. She paused, taking a moment to brush her teeth some more and then kept talking mouth full. "Sche FBI loscher's got Schkyler's backpack now becauzhee nullrenamom—" she paused. Then, spat out the toothpaste, and corrected herself "—mon forgot it!"
Oh, shoot. She was right.
Neat. I'd completely forgotten about the backpack.
"So, wha—" I started slowly, but Mia, for some reason, was simply just not having it.
"They're coming! —" She glanced at the fucking clock "—They're here! We need to GO!" Mei piped up. Mia grabbed her digivice and immediately evolved Meicoomon into Meicrackmon, looking at me with that wild grin and sharp, sharp teeth.
God, this was a dream riddled with great, great things.
Mia opened the door of the hotel room out into the hallway. That caused me to pause. "We're not going back out through—" I started, before Meicrackmon grabbed my hand and threw me out into the hallway.
"Nope! Bust into the room across from us!" Meicrackmon said, once I recovered. It took me a split second to realize what she was saying. We were just going to—then a glimpse of light and I kicked the door on the handle, busting the frame and causing it to swing open.
Just go with the flow, I thought, being best not to think too hard about things.
"Go in the room! Keep going!" They shouted. There wasn't a single window in the room! What kind of shitty hotel was this? There was, however, a connected door. I kicked that door, it banged even harder, and there was a second door. I kicked that one too!
We burst into the room, Mia in Meicrackmon's arms, jumped into the hallways we'd just passed through, right as a black bream simply appeared, punching a hole through the building, leaving the hallway open.
"They can track us!" I said.
"Yeahp," Mia said. "But not very good."
"Because we're not close to the Hypnos HQ?" I asked.
"The FBI loser" Mia said, voice in a low whisper "I think he has a different way of tracking digimon, he always shows up wherever we are, no matter what. Then said kids shouldn't have digimon and we need to go back to the way things were before."
I reached out and grabbed my keyblade.
"So I will kill him next time I see him," I said.
She paled a bit.
Broken pipes began to sprayed out, the upper-floor's fire sprinklers all turned on and it rained down from above.
"We stay here," Meicrackmon said.
"Why?" I asked.
"Because we don't have the stopwatch any more." She said, as if that explained anything.
"Wait, that stopwatch? You were using it to rewind time?" I asked.
"Oh this time you notice," Mia said, frustrated with antics that I wasn't even aware of.
"You aren't making any sense," I told her. There was another crush of the building, and the distinct sound of things falling over and the building groaning under its own weight. Meicrackmon had slowly shut the door, so we could talk for a minute more.
She smiled and stood up. "Ready? Do us a favor and try not to die this time."
She just stood there, and the floor fell out from under her in a perfect circle.
God, she's so cool.
I summoned my keyblade. Well, if I didn't want to die… I would probably have to start tapping some living souls.
~~~
"Damn cowards!" Agent Sanders huffed, grinning in smug victory. He was, of course, a few buildings down, sitting in a heavily armored and reinforced, requisitioned JSDF vehicle.
When he'd found the backpack, which was only a few hours after the horrible hypnos heads finally heard about his superior, if heady, ideals. Unfortunately, the losers at the top still had to hold onto their high horse or else nothing would happen. Of course, this didn't mean that he, Agent Sanders, would happily sit by and do nothing.
And that backpack was just the ticket he needed. It took a phone call back to home base, but eventually a nerd was in and they'd made contact with a powerful digimon on the other side. A representative for a country that called itself "Yggdrasil". Well they used the words "server" but clearly they weren't from the same digital world, so Sanders called them a country.
Negotiations with the representative were quick and to the point. He was an enforcer, looking for the fox lady he'd met. Supposedly she was an escaped convict, and the barrier impeded the digimon's pursuit of justice. Yamato's machinations, as much as Sanders was loathe to admit it, had put them in a position for getting a good deal.
So, with that, metaphorical hands were shook, and a one-time pass was allowed for this digimon to cross through the barrier. Agent Sanders, truly an extension of American ingenuity, knew efficiency and this meant they could get things done, unlike the local bureaucracy.
Yamato, he'd taken to calling the coward, for not getting his own name right. Yamato had, of course, objected. Luckily, there wasn't much to object to when the digimon was already in your facility after the power had been cut, now was there?
Yes, they would remove digimon from the kids and protect the world, meanwhile, the top brass eventually hoped that this would lead to future … positive echonomocial exchange programs between the parties. Sanders didn't care about that. What he cared about was achieving his objective, like a good agent.
The best of agents. He smiled, looking at the bag. He'd be looking at a promotion when this was all over. The brass would all agree that he was due for bigger things.
"Let's go," he said, tapping the side of the door. His driver, a fellow with similar, exquisite tastes in eyewear, turned the car on. He'd left it up to Yamato to evacuate the hotel building as quietly and silently as they could.
A capture of the girl and her cat digimon, in return for catching a quarry that the creature claimed would prove troublesome if they festered for far too long.
Fine by him, fine by him.