Digimon Adventure Tri: Echo

15) Integrity and Adversity

When Takeru, Yamato, and Ken started to walk back to the rest of the group with their partners, it was clear as could be that something was wrong. Koushiro held his laptop tightly against his chest, and there was a heavy frown against his features. The air somehow seemed to be made of lead, and tension fell upon all of them like it was a curse intending to sap all of the life from the area. 

"What happened?" Daisuke asked, and Koushiro hated the way that the younger boy's voice shook with a note of fear. Daisuke was normally so shameless and confident in his own actions, and seeing him this way was beyond unsettling. It seemed that everyone else had managed to pick up on the fact that the others had found something disturbing. 

Pegasmon was walking alongside Takeru, and when Koushiro looked closer, he could see that the blonde boy was holding something that was draped off the side of Pegasmon's back. "What's that?" Iori questioned before Koushiro had the chance to inquire about it. 

Takeru quickly pulled the fabric away from Pegasmon, and Koushiro was met with the tattered remnants of a strange cloth. His eyes narrowed, and he recognized that the color, black, matched the description of the previous attackers responsible for the Digimon invasion. Koushiro yearned to ask what was going on, but he couldn't seem to force himself to speak no matter how hard he tried. It was as if there was a block between his wishes and what his body wanted him to do. 

"I don't think that you would look this down if the enemy had simply managed to escape," Miyako commented with a nervous chuckle, her voice oddly heavy with her poorly-hidden anxiety. She was holding Poromon tightly to her chest, and Koushiro noticed that the bird Digimon was becoming squished against her torso. It wasn't until after Poromon let out a yelp of surprise that Miyako stopped squeezing him quite so tightly, and she gave him a nervous yet apologetic look. Poromon returned her gaze briefly before turning his attention back to the newcomers. 

Ken and Takeru shared a long glance before Yamato was invited to their confused exchange of gazes. Somehow, that only made Koushiro feel worse, and the silence suddenly seemed much more suffocating than it once had been. Koushiro wasn't aware of his stomach flipping until after the sensation had already taken place, and the ground seemed to shift beneath his feet. He knew deep down that he was grounded, but his mind and body continued to play foul tricks on him regardless. 

"We found the one who brought the Digimon here," Yamato finally forced himself to say, though he was hesitant to meet the gazes of any of the people in the area. "We met him, as a matter of fact, and... Let's just say that you aren't going to like what you hear. This fabric is all that we have left now though."

"He got away when we were shocked at the truth," Ken explained, and if there was even a shred of levity remaining in the air, it disappeared with that comment. Ken let out a heavy sigh, his eyes falling shut. All of a sudden, he seemed so much older than he had any right to, and when his eyelids fluttered open once again, there was an aged weariness that shouldn't have been there at all. Beneath that, betrayal could be seen, and it stung like a slap to the face would have. 

"The one behind the hood..." Takeru began, his words trailing off a short while afterwards. He looked down at the ground, shaking his head to himself. "The one who was hiding under the hood all this time was..."

~~~~~

School was, to put it simply, exhausting. 

Taichi had been going through the day on nothing but pure autopilot, unable to trust himself to take control of the day for himself. Everything seemed to hurt like a stab to the stomach, and his eyes were dry from a lack of sleep the previous night. He knew that there was nothing he could do to make this feel any better.