Mon in the Mirror: Redux

Chapter Three: “The Cookie Crumbles”

Written by Notorious, Revised by agz

 

The Ziti pasta was surprisingly delicious considering its inexpensive price, and Keyana was enjoying her soup, which she had crumbled a fair amount of crackers into. Soon Takato had calmed down and they began talking again, this time about politics.

 

"Greene'll probably win the election," Takato was saying. "His father was president two terms ago after all, and the rest of the candidates are nobodies."

 

"Nah," Keyana dissented taking a sip of her water. "They'll end up keeping Starr in office. Too many people like him."

 

"What people?"

 

"People with money and pull, that's who," Keyana said smirking. "It’s not a complete popularity contest these days with presidential elections, it's about who you know and how much money you're willing to pass along."

 

Takato shrugged, unable to find a counterargument. The United States government had become a bit more corrupt over the years, but nothing serious. Things still got done when they needed doing, and that's all that mattered in his mind. At this time, yet another sunglass-wearing waiter came up beside their table, clutching something in his hand. He looked like he was Filipino, and had fairly large lips and unruly hair.

 

"Ma'am? Sir?" he said. "The chef would like to thank you for attending his restaurant tonight with these fortune cookies."

 

It made sense. Even though it was an Italian restaurant, it sounded like reasonable gimmick to hand out fortune cookies at Fortunado's.

 

"Thank you," Keyana said, grabbing the cookie from the waiter's left hand, which looked curiously burnt. "Tell the chef he's welcome."

 

Takato, who was reminded briefly of Asia by the gifts, broke his in half and took a look.

 

It read:

 

[ You will find old adventure in new friends. [

 

Takato smiled at this message and was reminded of his childhood friends from when he was ten years old: Henry, Rika, Jeri, all of them. At this remembrance, Takato suddenly felt two overwhelming feelings. The first was a sad feeling, remembering that they had all lost touch with each other over the years; he wondered what they were doing now. The second feeling was that he was forgetting something very obvious, and he felt stupid for not remembering what he had forgotten.

 

Keyana had cracked open her fortune cookie unceremoniously, didn't even bother eating it, but went right for the fortune. For some reason, the waiter hadn't left yet, and Takato saw them both reading the message with unthawed concentration. Then Keyana's lips became very thin as she crumbled up the paper and placed it in the empty ashtray.

 

"Tell the chef," she sighed. "That I'm grateful."

 

Takato scratched his head as the waiter nodded and left. Keyana looked fairly depressed, and Takato was about to comfort her when--

 

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!

 

Takato jumped, but Keyana didn't even twitch at the loud sound. She checked her watch, and spent more time examining it than the average person, as if it was telling her something other than the time. She suddenly stood up.

 

"I have to go," she said straightening up. "Sorry to dine and dash, but something important has come up at the office. I have to get there right away."

 

"B-but," Takato stammered. It had been a long time since he had had sex, and this was the closest he had been in months. Most women were repelled by his financial problems, but Keyana had seem genuine, and kinky at that. "I thought that-"

 

"Look," she interjected, sounding very definitive. "If I have time, I'll swing by your apartment later on--"

 

"Keyana," Takato said grabbing her by the arm. "I can walk you to your office building, I don't care how far and boring it is--"

 

"I have to go NOW," she said pulling away from him with amazing strength. Takato hung his head somberly, and Keyana, seeing this, bent over and gave him the sweetest kiss on his forehead. "I promise we'll hang out later. It's just...business calls."

 

And then, giving Takato one more desperate glance, she swiftly merged into the crowd of incoming guests, and then Takato could no longer see her. His head snapped up as he saw one of the most peculiar and scary scenes in his life. Nearly half of the restaurant occupants, all of them wearing sunglasses, got up from their seats in machinelike unison, and began marching out in the same fashion Keyana had. Takato instinctively shot a look at the table where the brown-haired girl had been seated and saw that her table had cleared out as well leaving her there looking equally nervous and surprised by the sudden rush to get out.

 

"What in the hell is going on?" Takato thought to himself. His long dormant instincts from his childhood ventures came back to life, and they all shouted: danger. "Something isn't right ..."

 

Everyone in the restaurant murmured in surprise as the restaurant began to empty out like a jug of water, and the waiters with the blank nametags were all together in a circle talking in hushed voices. For the first time they had an expression on their face: worry. Then they all began making their way out thought the crowd tearing off their sunglasses and all wearing watches identical to Keyana's.

 

"She's with them!" Takato deduced suddenly. "They must have all been communicating in code...and if my intuitions are right, Keyana's in danger!"

 

Well aware of the fact that these men who had been occupying half of the restaurant could be armed and dangerous and gone were the days where he had a digivice and Guilmon to help him, he flung himself up from the table, dropped some money on the table, and began to make his way to the exit.

 

"Takato, wait!" came the voice of the brown-haired stranger. "Wait for me!"

 

"No time for her," he decided. "How many Takato's can there be in New York City..."

 

Aware that the answer was probably very minuscule, Takato broke through the crowd and out of the door. Before he could start running in the direction of a sun-glassed man he saw sprinting around the corner, someone grabbed his arm, and Takato turned around to see the brown-haired girl gripping his arm.

 

"Hey!" he cried. "I don't know who you are but I-"

 

“Agent Katou," she said flashing a badge. "Japanese Secret Service."

 

Takato's jaw dropped as he suddenly remembered why he felt so stupid at dinner.

 

"Jeri?" he said, looking her over as she smiled and put away her badge. "Wow! You look great! How have you been?"

 

Jeri smiled more lavishly than ever, but cleared her throat moments later putting her hand on her old friend's shoulder.

 

"No time, Takato," she said, putting on a straight face. "We have to--"

 

BOOM!

 

Suddenly the street was blanketed with fervent screaming and running people. Jeri took out some futuristic-looking gadget with weird symbols and pictographs on the screen. She folded it up and put it back.

 

"Wild one," she said, putting on a pair of sunglasses and grabbing Takato's arm. "Come on, let's go!"

 

Takato started to protest and state that his date had been chased by some fifty-odd men in the opposite direction, but was carried across the street and down several alleys, whereupon they found themselves in Times Square. Now, Takato loved watching the neon lights on all of the skyscrapers, and the cars passing by this place, but never had he seen what looked like a disfigured man with giant devil wings and a tail flying around in a trench coat firing what looked like translucent energy to the screaming New Yorkers below.

 

"Is that ..." Takato asked, looking at Jeri, who was looking at her gadget again. "Some kind of Digital Monster? In the real world again?"

 

"Yes," she said, examining the screen of her device, blocking out the sounds of screaming and chaos before her. "And no. Firstly, this is a hybrid of matter and data, and secondly, it's not from our Digital World, it's from a parallel one."

 

Takato seemed shocked by this information.

 

"Wait," he said. "There's more than one Digital World? How come I didn't know about this?"

 

"Because," Jeri said simply. "The government didn't want you to know."

 

Apparently this was a sufficient answer. Jeri then pulled out the familiar shape of her old D-Power Digivice and held it in her free hand. She pointed it upward where the monster was still flying around, howling at the top of his lungs.

 

"HOME!" it roared. "I WANT TO GO BACK HOME!"

 

"I'm working on, it bud," Jeri said nonchalantly, not tearing her eyes from her machines. "Just give me a second..."

 

Takato wondered what she was doing, but didn't feel it was the best time to ask. He saw that the black-winged beast was soaring closer and closer to where they stood, and saw the destruction it had caused already. The entire south side of Times Square was a pile of ruins.

 

"Got it!" Jeri said excitedly, apparently not worried about the approaching monster. "Saidenmon, a virus type Digimon. Its attack is the Saiden-Starr, and he has the ability to absorb and magnify energy to make his attacks stronger."

 

Takato looked around and gulped.

 

"Jeri," he said, tugging on her sleeve. "This is Times Square. If that thing can absorb energy such as electricity, we're in trouble. Look at all the lights, cars, and building around here. It'll turn this entire city into a crater."

 

Sure enough, lights were flickering off, cars were stopping, and the hybrid began roaring more and more fervently as more electronics turned off. Takato deduced that if he got much closer to where they stood, Jeri's device would suffer the same fate. He wished that he had Guilmon at his side or at least his D-Power on his wrist. He felt useless, and didn't know exactly how Jeri planned to defeat a Digimon that strong with some pocket-sized computers.

 

"Jeri..." Takato said starting to panic. The hybrid was almost upon them. "That thing is going to absorb whatever that thing you're holding runs on, and your D-Power too! Do something!"

 

"Keep your panties on Takato," Jeri said, as if he were a bother. For some reason she wasn't worried. "Locking on to the data stream...rendering..."

 

The flat futuristic looking computer she had taken out first was beeping, and she put her D-Power back into the pocket of he blouse. Takato now began to sweat and was white-faced with fear. The monster was only a few seconds away from being overhead.

 

"Rendering stream," Jeri said dully, as if she did this everyday. "Beginning molecular-data conversion in five, four, three, two, one--"

 

And just as Saidenmon outstretched his hand as if reaching for Jeri's computer, he suddenly vanished. Before Takato had time to take in what he had just seen, Jeri pulled him back into the alley, shoving her computer into her skirt pocket.

 

"Come on!" she urged Takato as they made their way back towards Fortunado's. "Your little date needs help."

 

Takato ran after her, bewildered at the events of this evening. He had so many questions he feared he'd never have enough time in his life to ask them all.

 

"W-what the hell was that thing?" he demanded as they continued sprinting. "Not the D-Power, but the other one that you used to...err...zap that Saidenmon fellow."

 

"PJA," she said as they ran across a street. "Pocket Juggernaut Apparatus. I sent him back to his dimension a tenth of a second before he left in the first place. He won't remember a thing."

 

"Interdimensional and Chronological protocols?" Takato panted as they passed Fortunado's. "Upgrades?"

 

"Henry wouldn't consider it worthy of his name if it weren't prodigious," she said as the neared the corner.

 

Takato raised his eyebrows.

 

"Henry designed it?" Takato said, feeling a bit worthless. Jeri had become a secret service agent, Henry had become a brilliant scientist like his father, and here he was, unemployed with a few hundred dollars to his name. "Became some kind of inventor, did he?"

 

"Err..." Jeri said, as if it was much more complicated than that but she didn't want to take the time to explain. "You could say that. That Saidenmon creature was odd. I'm not sure if he had a dimensional or chronological displacement. He could have come from this world's Digital World, but from the past."

 

Takato and Jeri stopped at another corner, slowing to a swift walk due to exertion.

 

"I thought the gateway between worlds was closed when we beat the D-Reaper as kids," he said, scratching his head. "And yet we've got Digimon biomerging from the past? That wasn't even possible when the gateway was open. Sounds like somebody--"

 

"--fucked up?" Jeri interjected, surprising Takato with her obscene language. "Well, someone did. Intel tells us that someone's really screwed up the walls that separate realities, parallel and otherwise. Somebody really fucked up things, and I was sent to America undercover to learn more. Did you see the blonde guy I was seated with?"

 

"Yeah...spooky individual. He looked at me and it was like he was trying to pull out my soul through my mouth."

 

Jeri gave him a nervous glance.

 

"He saw you?" she said with a concerned voice. "...never mind, it's not important now. His name is Jordan Burgess, and we believe that he's the one trying to rip apart the barriers between dimensions."

 

"Jordan Burgess?" Takato asked. "Sounds--"

 

"Familiar?" Jeri interrupted. "That's because he's the CEO and founder of Technowerx, the third largest computer manufacturer on the planet. He went missing sometime while experimenting with new sound output devices...er...speakers...in Silicon Valley last April. Two months ago in September he reappeared all of a sudden, unscathed and with tons of new ideas for his company. Suddenly Technowerx became numero uno in everything, and at the same time Wild Ones began appearing. That's too convenient."

 

"So what does your 'Intel' say the deal is?" he asked, and Jeri gave him an ephemeral glance.

 

"We believe that he's some kind of Digimon," she stated flatly. "That the real Jordan Burgess is still lost or dead and this Digimon took his place with some kind of doppelganger ability. The guys in that restaurant with sunglasses are Digimon too."

 

"The waiters are Digimon!?" Takato gasped. "Then does that mean my da--I mean, Keyana, is a Digimon too?"

 

Jeri shook her head.

 

"The waiters weren't with them," she said. "It was a third party that also has some inkling of the situation."

 

Now Takato was as confused as ever.

 

"What third party?" he asked, hungry for more facts.

 

"An American group," she sighed. "The National Security Agency."