Digimon Adventure Tri: Echo

12) Data and Apex

Sora was really starting to get tired of crowded van rides. 

After the group reunited with the younger members of their team who had been dealing with the most recent Digimon attack, the Chosen Children had once again been split up. The other government agents in the area were able to easily distribute the Digimon partners that hadn't been at the scene at the time. Sora learned that Tailmon had only been able to pick up Patamon on the way to the middle school since the other Digimon hadn't answered her frantic pounding on the door before she was forced to move in the direction of the attackers. 

Sora had been happy to see Piyomon again, but her mind was a mess of constantly whirring questions that she couldn't quite phrase no matter how hard she tried. Her tongue felt too large for her mouth, and it felt as if the world was passing by in a blur that she had no way of understanding. She was left cramped in one of the two vans that was driving away from the middle school alongside Taichi, Yamato, Mimi, Koushiro, Jou, and Meiko. Miyako had been offered the chance to ride with them, but she wound up swapping places with Jou to spend more time with the younger team that she knew better. Sora understood her decision completely, believing that Miyako would want to hear all of the details about the recent attack as soon as possible. Given how inquisitive Miyako was, that was par for the course. 

Sora liked to think of herself as a patient person. She believed that she knew how to not let the pressure of the world get to her, and she was able to keep herself calm against the tempest of the world around her. However, today in particular was testing her patience by grating against her nerves and leaving her wondering what in the world was happening. She had learned from Taichi that Daigo seemed to be involved with the Digimon attacks somehow, but she didn't know how he factored in given how complex the mystery as a whole was. Sora wasn't entirely sure if it was the best idea to place her trust in him, but it wasn't as if she had been given much of a choice in the matter. 

Daigo had been insistent on saying that Sora and Yamato had to come with him to go elsewhere. Daigo hadn't offered many details, simply saying that the world needed the Chosen Children as soon as possible. Sora's stomach had dropped into her feet when she realized that Daigo knew about who they were, but she didn't have the chance to ask him how he had gotten his hands on such sensitive information before he had dragged them away from the school. He claimed to have handled it, and Sora prayed that he knew what he was doing. She didn't think that she was going to be able to take it if she had to deal with any other outside sources of stress on top of everything else. 

Sora was holding Piyomon on her lap as she stared down at the ground in front of her feet. The back of the van was shaped in a square, and three of the four sides of the van's back region held cushions and seatbelts to keep the Chosen Children in place. The final side showed off Daigo as he sat in the driver's seat. He seemed all too used to driving such large, bulky vehicles, and Sora was left wondering just how much there was that she didn't know about the mysterious teacher who seemed to be involved with so much. 

By the time that the van had come to a stop, Sora had solved effectively none of her problems. Her head was pounding, and she couldn't tell if it was from the constant stress or the general messiness that came with her mind's speeding processes. She yearned to return home, to go somewhere less intense than this, but she doubted that her wishes would be granted for quite some time. She was clearly needed for some outside task that she had yet to understand, and while Sora hated that this was the case, there was nothing she could do about it. 

The back doors of the van were hurled open soon afterwards, and Daigo stood at the entrance. His eyes were notably tired, even more so than Sora would have expected from him. She had seen him a few times in the hallway without the ability to match a name to a face, and Sora couldn't help her curiosity about what precisely was going on in his head. It was clear as could be that it was more than what she would have thought initially.