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wreaths of pine and flame 1
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wreaths of pine and flame - Digimon partners come back. People do not. Imagine Aguero’s surprise when Bam does.
Chapter 1
Digimon can come back. It’s the fact of the Digital World. Digimon come back when they die. They may not remember you, they may not know your name, but their hearts are with you and they grow back stronger than ever.
Aguero has always thought it would never be the same for humans.
He’d seen people die. He’d killed people before. His first kill was at ten, the same as every other Khun. He knew that when a human dissolved here that they didn’t return.
So he was very cautious when it came to people. He would have been anyway, he was taught that way. Don’t trust anyone. Don’t get attached to anyone. Simply make alliances and move through life. Your digimon partner is all you have. That kind of thing.
It wasn’t so bad. It meant that he followed his own rules and no one else’s. He’d learned his lesson the one time he’d made that mistake.
Then he’d met Bam.
Bam was shy, curious, eager, and kind, among other things. It was almost like her, but not entirely the same. More like a much younger child, not cut down by the selection to be chosen to represent the Khun family.
He just wanted to find his friend. Ambitions, dreams, things beyond that, were irrelevant. Aguero could respect it.
At least until the friend killed him.
It was recorded as an accident, but Aguero had been hacking since he could move his fingers. It had not been an accident.
She had pushed Bam into the digital sea, where nothing returned, where everything was eaten. He had reached out his hand and been left behind.
He had told one person, who inevitably let the dominoes fall without telling anyone the truth. Who else would understand the magnitude of it? Who else would see the cruelty in it? He would have admired it, if it had only not been Bam.
They’d been real chosen children then. They were nearly adults now. Years may pass differently than in the digital world, but it’s still time. They were still growing up, so to speak.
Seven years later, out of nowhere Khun met Bam again.
Someone was attacking Chosen Children.
Not often, and not quickly. Some were left alive, bleeding. Some of their digimon shielded them until help came. But they were being attacked and dying. Enough to concern the beasts.
Every dying child was left with a symbol of eyes made from their blood or painted on the wall. It was the symbol of FUG.
Rachel was the most recent victim. She survived, but her legs were mutilated beyond what the digital world could repair on its own. And her partner had been reduced to an egg.
And now to cap off the whole weirdness of the incident, she wanted to see him, when they hadn’t spoken in three years.
Khun was starting to think his life was cursed. Legitimately.
It was a well-known fact that the two of them genuinely disliked each other and had since before that day. Aguero liked to think any successful team efforts with her had been because of him and not her, and she resented him for it, so it had to be true.
Still, if she had information he could use, well, he had to take it. They could come after him or his next and that just wasn’t going to be a thing.
He arrived after class (why did he have to go to college now, he could have gone at ten when he skipped regular school) to the general hospital in the area, only to be met with a familiar redhead who should have been from the Blitz family. He was just as annoying.
“Sup, gator?” he greeted.
He got a noise of rage for his efforts. “Keh! Stupid blue turtle, you know my name.”
“Hey you never use mine, it’s fair.” Khun folded his jacket over an arm. “Why are you here anyway?”
Rak grinned, his sharp teeth too wide for a man that was six feet tall. “I heard the yellow turtle can’t walk.”
“You sadist.” Not that Khun disagreed, mind you, it was a satisfying thought but still. “Is that all?”
“Hardly. I want to know what did it so I can hunt them myself.”
“Funny.” Khun found himself smiling. “I was thinking the exact same thing. Maybe we’ll be paired together.”
“Be grateful that I’ll allow you to join me.”
“Yes yes.” Of course Khun was the one talking to the nurse and finding her room, but it was important to let Rak feel relevant or he ate your entire supply of bananas. Or the chocolate specifically made for Digimon. This was what happened when you were biomerged with your digimon for over twenty-four hours.
They reached the room with Rak grumbling under his breath about the stench of hospitals.
Two people occupied the single room, Rachel herself glaring at the sheets underneath her legs and the mysterious idol, Yura Ha who had fallen for her charms. In the past seven years, the only teammate that ever stuck with Rachel long enough was the blue-haired young woman herself for some unknown reason.
Kudamon, resting quietly on Khun’s shoulders as he always did, hissed quietly. Khun pressed a finger to his head. “Hush you noodle.”
“Rude,” said the fox.
Rachel glowered at the sight of him. “Come to gloat?”
“I can leave,” Khun said from the doorway. ‘If you want to deal with the stupid gator by yourself go ahead.’ He dodged Rak’s attempt to bite off his arm because well, he always did that. He was satisfied to find Rachel blanch at the thought. “He’s very persistent when he wants something.”
“You would know,” Rachel muttered, but ushered them in anyway. She hadn’t changed much in the past three years. A longer ponytail, a few more freckles, some scars on her hands. The egg on her table in a digimon incubator. Those were probably the most noticeable things. “Come in and shut the door. This is private. No one can know what I’m about to tell you guys.”
Rak and Khun shared a glance, but did it anyway. Yura scowled at them from Rachel’s other side, met with only Khun’s raised eyebrows. He could never tell if Yura hated him because Rachel hated him, or she hated him because their digimon were so diametrically opposed to one another.
“Satellite, visible mode,” Rachel ordered once they’d sat down. Her satellite formed above her head, the three fake moons revolving around the single larger orb. Hooray for metaphors. “Playback data from three solar cycles previous.”
The room dimmed as she spoke. Her satellite glitched and wavered and she grimaced. “Bastard did it on purpose.”
“Someone managed to hit your satellite?” Khun failed to keep the surprise out of his voice this time. Rachel was one of the most conniving people he’d ever met, and he only managed to throw her around intellectually because he was smarter than her.
“Yeah.” She winced. ‘Yura and I were with Michael, Apple, and a new kid.’ Khun pretended hearing two of those names didn’t make him want to break someone’s skull. Traitorous bastards. “We were doing a search on File in case of more fallen digimental shards before we went back up the tower. We were an hour away from the Village of Beginnings when we got hit. Apple died immediately.”
“Apple?” Khun’s mouth dried immediately. “But she’s —”
“She was the best shielder I’ve worked with,” Rachel said grimly, nodding her head. “She didn’t even have time to warn us and her tankmon died. It was…” She shuddered and Khun had known her long enough to know which shudders were her being a snot and which were out of fear. “It was so fast…”
Yura squeezed her hand. Khun considered vomiting.
Rachel swallowed. “I started recording after that and —” She waved her free hand and the video started to play.
For a moment it was just dust and wood chips, debris scattered below the lens view. Then a lone figure, long hair floating gently in the wind, appeared. The satellite was always at a user’s eye level. What they saw was what Rachel saw.
Long brown hair, a black jacket, and black pants decorated with red eyes.
FUG, Khun realized numbly. The image scooted back, Rachel trying to escape. But there was a soft noise of claws unsheathing and out of the corner of his eyes, he saw Rachel touch the back of her neck, like they were still there.
The person in front of her spoke softly. “Is she on the list, Ryun?” Khun jolted, nostalgia making his stomach churn.
“Yes,” agreed another voice, further back, and Khun winced, stopping Rak from charging the hologram. “Rachel of the Red Light District, youngest of three and yet oldest of three.”
“…I see.”
“Who are you?” Past-Rachel’s voice croaked. “What do you want with me?”
The second didn’t come any closer to the camera, which was a shame. It would have helped. They said simply. “We are FUG and for the sake of our god’s dreams, Miss Rachel. you’ll need to be made of an example of.”
“You’re, You’re going to kill me?” she asked and there was a little cry of protest.
“Over my dead body,” shrieked her partner, flying in front of her without hesitation.
The first looked at their opponent dispassionately. Then they lifted a hand. Khun watched Rachel look away, eyes closed. “As you wish,” they said softly. A glow of blue light wrapped around their fingers, dark as a starless night. Khun’s eyes went wide.
Then they fired and twin screams lit up the video.
But Khun wasn’t focused on that. He was staring at the face that appeared from the burst of light and heat, casting their long bangs out of their face for a moment.
Amber-gold eyes. An empty expression. Blood scattered over his cheeks. A familiar white line running down the entire left side of his face, jagged and crooked from a tournament.
“Bam,” said the recorded Rachel, voice cracking.
The recorded Bam bowed his head simply, and raised his hand. “It’s been a while, Rachel,” he said, still looking at them, at her, like she wasn’t really there. “I wish we could have met in better circumstances but…” His hand crackled with the twisting binary, wrapping smoothly in his hands. “Goodbye.”
The video went to static as Rachel screamed on screen.
“When I came to,” Rachel said, as the room lit up again, and Yura had stopped shaking. ‘Yura was unconscious, Michael and the new kid were dead too, and my legs were… I couldn’t feel anything.’ She squeezed one. “It’s hard now but… he left me this way on purpose.”
She looked at them. “The name they left behind for me was Jue Viole Grace, but I know.” Her fingers curled tight, almost making Yura wince. ‘I know it was Bam. He’s back. I don’t know how, but he is. And if I’m not safe,’ Her eyes flickered. “Neither are you.”