Reunion: Part One (The Long and Winding Road)
(Author’s Note: Well, I noticed that recently a bunch of people are doing fanfics based around songs—or something like that. I just thought I’d try my hand at it. This story isn’t really formed around a song, though. I just was listening to the Beatles’s ‘The Long and Winding Road’, and I started thinking, and well, this was the result. Oh, and I KNOW they might be out of character, but they are supposed to be older, as in MUCH older, so I figure their personalities might have changed a bit.)
"What do you mean the shipment didn’t come through?" shouted Taichi. He put his feet back down from where they had been resting up on his large mahogany desk next to the little placard that said ‘Taichi Kamiya, CEO of Digital Media, Inc.’ and glared at the phone as if he could see the person on the other end of the line. "I’ve been contacted by at least SIX other companies who want in, and you tell me the shipment of CDs didn’t come through yet? Someone’s gonna pay for this."
Someone squawked unintelligibly through the phone. "I don’t care what time it is in," he checked through the large pile of papers stacked on his desk until he found the information he was looking for. "Berlin! Get those CDs, and get them NOW!" He slammed the phone down—well, as well as one can slam a cell-phone down—and turned to the state-of-the-art laptop on his desk. "It’s SO hard to find good help these days." He muttered.
Taichi logged on to the company network. He clicked to display his stocks, and his face metamorphosed from a scowl to a grin. "Down thirty dollars a share? This is just great! No, this is better than great! This is perfect!" A few clicks later, he leaned back in his chair. He had just bought enough shares of the MasterMedia—the greatest threat so far to the Digital Media, Inc. monopoly—to purchase the entire upstart corporation. Finally, something was going right today.
His intercom bleeped. Taichi tapped it in response. "Yes, Susan?" he queried.
"Mr. Kamiya, there is mail here for you." His secretary responded.
Taichi’s brow furrowed. "Mail?" Why would anyone send mail directly to his office, and not his personal address? "Bring it in."
"Yes, Mr. Kamiya." The double beep signifying the end to the conversation sounded, and moments later, the door to his office opened. Susan, his secretary, stepped in, holding a large envelope. "Here it is, sir." She placed the folder on his desk.
Taichi looked up at Susan. "This made it past the security scanners, right?" As the CEO of a large corporate empire, he had plenty of people who held a grudge against him, and it didn’t hurt to be too careful. She nodded. "Well, then, that’ll be all. Oh, and Susan?" he said as she turned to leave. "Can you get me something from the cafeteria? Here’s some money, see if you can’t get me a sandwich or something." Taichi handed her a few bills.
Once Susan was gone, Taichi opened the envelope. Inside was a fancy invitation. He read it. "Well, I’ll be darned."
The bridge of the USS Jacksonville, SSN-794, shone with a deep scarlet as the submarine slunk under the ocean at a speed of 30 knots. "Down to 350." Captain Jyou Kido ordered.
"350, aye."
As he felt the deck tilt slightly downwards, Jyou, for no reason at all, felt himself thinking about the past. Much to his dismay, his family had moved from Japan to Washington, D.C. when Joe was 16. Though he protested that he hated water, Jyou eventually went to study at the U.S. Naval Academy, and soon found himself eating his words. He became a Captain in the United States Navy, and was given command of this brand-new submarine. A smirk slowly crept onto his face. If only the other Digidestined could see him now. Jyou, the so-called ‘coward’ of the group was now serving in the U.S. National Armed Forces.
Of course, thinking about the Digidestined also brought thoughts of Gomamon to his mind, and his smile faded. The human members of the group had suddenly, without warning, one day been plucked from the Digital World and tossed back into their own reality. Their Digimon partners had stayed behind. Jyou often wondered what would have happened if they had stayed in the Digital World, or if the Digimon had come with them.
"Reaching depth 350 now, sir." His helm officer reported.
"Hold at this depth. Set course for Norfolk." He could almost feel the crew releasing sighs of relief that they would finally have some shore leave again, after being at sea for four weeks—and that was one of the shorter patrols Joe had captained in his time in the Navy!
"Sir, we have an incoming transmission for you." Lt. Jarol at Communications addressed him.
He walked over to the screen, and read the text appearing. Slowly, he started to smile.
Sora Takenouchi opened the door to her hotel room. Dejected, she limped into the room and flopped down on her bed. She winced and sat up again, looking at her bandaged foot. This wasn’t fair.
Here she was, a professional soccer player, who had played for Japan in the World Cup four years ago, selected to play again in a month, and she trips down the stairs in the lobby of her hotel. Oh well, she supposed it could have been worse. Her fit physique had kept her from doing something much worse than spraining her ankle. She could have broken her leg, or some other sort of career-ending injury.
As she started to massage her injured foot, the doorbell rang. Sora got up and walked over. She opened the door to find a small boy in a bellboy’s uniform, with an envelope tucked under his arm. "Yes?" she asked.
"Miss..." the boy looked at the envelope he was carrying. "Takenouchi?"
"That’s me." Sora nodded.
He handed her the envelope. "I have a letter for you, Miss Takenouchi. The Main Desk sent it up, since you hurt your ankle."
She took the letter and examined it. "Thank you, and tell the Desk thanks for the courtesy." She gave the boy an ample tip, and then closed the door once again. She lay down on her bed and started to read the letter.
Koushiro Izumi picked up a mug of coffee. He put the tepid liquid back down, however, and frowned at his computer screen. Why did this inferior piece of junk have to break down now? He had to prepare a lecture for his class tomorrow! He was a physics professor at Oxford, for crying out loud! And, although he didn’t say this out loud—he preferred modesty to most other things—he thought he was the most likely candidate for the Lucasian Chair when Dr. Stephen Hawking left the position.
Grumbling, he set to work fixing the problem. Sometime in the middle of his work, the doorbell to his house rang, and the sound of someone dropping several letters off was heard. A few hours had passed before he realized this. "Mail’s here." Reluctantly, he pried himself away from the computer. Koushiro also picked up his coffee mug, which had lost more liquid to evaporation than to his drinking from it, intending to refill it with something warmer than ice cold coffee.
He bent down and read through his mail. Junk, junk, junk, more junk, but what was this? Curious as always, Koushiro examined the fancy envelope more closely. Finally, he admitted he was stumped—not an easy thing to do. He went to his computer table and retrieved a letter opener. He took out the letter and read it slowly. Koushiro smiled. "Prodigious." He said, for the first time in a long while.
Mimi Tachikawa looked at the large cosmetics kit in front of her. "No," she decided after a long time. "There are too many frosted blues and not enough regular blues in the eyeshadow section. And what about that facial cream?" To prove her point, she dipped a finger into the liquid and held it up for her assistant to see. "It is FAR too granular!"
"Yes, ma’am. We’ll get right on it, ma’am." Her assistant packed the makeup kit away and exited the room in a hurry.
Mimi looked at her watch. "Ugh, only 3: 35? I have three more people coming in! They had better have better products to show me; I can’t waste my time rejecting things!"
There was a knock on her door. "Come on in!" she said, preparing herself for another long, tedious reviewing session. However, when the door opened, it was her assistant again. "What is it this time?" she asked, a bit more harshly than she intended.
"Ms. Tachikawa, you have a letter outside."
"A letter? For me? Hmm...who could it be?" she wondered. Her assistant walked over and handed it to her. "Thank you." She read the letter and a dreamy look appeared on her face. She hugged the letter to her chest happily.
Takeru Takaishi blinked slowly as he awoke from his sleep. As he became fully conscious, he smiled and kissed his beautiful wife—who was still in slumberland—on the cheek. He and Hikari were the only two Digidestined who had stayed together. Oh sure, they all kept in touch, and once in a while they got together, but the ties between all of them were weakening gradually.
The most recent time they had all gotten together was six months ago, when Hikari finally announced she was pregnant. Takeru remembered it like it was yesterday. Everyone had had a great time at the following dinner party, but something was definitely missing. He couldn’t put his finger on it, though. It was as if since they had gotten out of the Digital World and away from their Digimon friends, they had just drifted apart.
Takeru suddenly remembered why he had woken up. He turned to the telephone on their bedside table as it rang again, and picked it up. "Takaishi residence." He said, careful not to wake Hikari. She had enough to worry about already. "Oh, hi Taichi!" he said. "I was just thinking about you guys." He listened as Taichi spoke. "Yeah, she’s here. I’m sorry, though, she’s asleep. I’ll tell her you called." As the voice on the other end jabbered on, Takeru grew incredulous. "What? When is this? Sure, I’d love to come!" he wrote things down on a piece of paper. "I’ll talk to her about it when she wakes up. G’Night, Taichi." He hung up the phone, and turned back to his lovely wife, Hikari.
Yamato Ishida walked out of the Emergency Room, tired. Slowly, he removed his bloodstained latex gloves. For some reason, tonight had seemed more hectic than other nights he had worked the late shift. There was the stage magician whose luck with juggling knives had run out tonight; the kid who got an inch-long splinter under his thumbnail, the jogger who had fallen and broken a leg; and too many others to keep track of.
He sat down, exhausted. He didn’t know how long he had before the next emergency case, but he figured he should make the most of his break. "Jun," he called to his good friend and fellow surgeon. "Can you get me a cup of coffee?"
"Sure thing, Yamato." As Dr. Jun Sonate returned with a steaming hot cup of coffee, he looked at Yamato with concern. "Gee, you really don’t look that good, Yamato. Are you feeling all right?"
Yamato yawned. "Yeah, I’m fine. Just tired, I guess."
"Oh, okay. Oh, by the way, Yamato. You got some mail." He handed the envelope to Yamato, who opened it and took out the letter inside.
He smiled as he read it out loud. "Dear Mr. Ishida, We cordially invite you to join us on May 8th for a reunion with your high school classmates. Please respond by April 25th."
Yamato Ishida put the letter down. It looked like the group would be together once again.
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