[tri OOM] Trains!

“Is it all going to become just a memory? All of it? And sooner or later, would I forget it, as well?”

“You won’t forget. You wouldn’t forget.”


A bicycle bell rings. Wheels on tarmac. The sound of it crashing to the ground.


“I won’t let you through. I will never let you through.”

“Is this what you want? Is this how you want to say goodbye?”

“Now, open your eyes!”

“Thank you, my old friends.”


Wheels on tarmac again. A bicycle bell ringing. The sound of something metal hitting the ground.


“If we keep waiting for ‘some day,’ we’ll have grown old before we know it.”

“I don’t have a whistle to wake you, but I want you to know you’re not alone. I’ll be here with you. I’ll be here with you.”

“And thanks. To all of you. For not letting us get killed by giant spider monsters.”

“Hold on tight, so I don’t run away.”


That damn bicycle bell. Wheels scratching. Metal hitting the ground. Bell. Wheels. Ground. Bell. Wheels. Ground. Bell. Wheels. Ground. Bell. Wheels …


Yamato’s eyes snap open.

He’s in a bed, with something shaking and rumbling underneath him, and he feels awful. Like someone clubbed him about the head with a brick, and then decided to batter his legs with it for good measure. It’s too hot, and he’s sticky, and he’s not sure where any of his clothes are.

But he’s alive.

“Yamato!”

Gabumon is on him in a second, and on instinct, Yamato finds himself reaching out for their link, and then feeling the familiar pang of disappointment when he realises it’s not there. Guilt follows disappointment in a heartbeat, strong enough that he’s pretty sure Gabumon sees it on his face.

He hears a groan as, from an armchair in the corner of the room (corner of the carriage, he realises -- he’s on a train, decorated like a chic, 1920s luxury express), Takeru blinks awake as well, and stares at him blearily.

“Hey, buddy,” Yamato says, raking his fingers through Gabumon’s fur, before glancing over at Takeru. His brother just scowls. “Hey, kid. Guess you saved me, huh?”

“Guess so. I got dropped out in the desert, but Gabumon and I found each other,” Takeru says, lifting one shoulder in a terse shrug. “He can make ice from thin air, so I had a supply of water, and eventually we found Trailmon here.”

He gestures at the carriage around them, and Yamato has to furrow his brow in confusion for a second. There were definitely no Trailmon in the Server Desert the last time they were here. There weren’t even any tracks.

“What about the others?” Yamato asks, sitting up. It hurts more than he would like.

“You’re really going to worry about the others right now?” Takeru very nearly snaps. “You nearly died. You’ve been drifting in and out of consciousness for three days, and we almost lost you a couple of times. We didn’t know at first if the antibiotics were working on your arm, so we thought we might have to remove it; you were running the kind of fever that would kill most people, in the middle of a desert, while dehydrated, heat sick, and starved. You should be dead.”

“Takeru,” Yamato says, letting his voice drop into its command tone. Even with his throat dry and his voice more of a croak, he sees Takeru’s back straighten on instinct. “What about the others?”

Takeru’s scowl deepens. “We found Mimi. She’s fine. Tentomon and Patamon joined not long after, and they’re fine too.”

“Good. Six of us are on another continent altogether, one of us is on File Island, so that leaves two more people in the area,” Yamato says. “There any clothes I can wear?”

“You’re really just going to get up and start working like nothing happened?” Takeru asks.

“Nothing did happen. I was sick, and now I’m not sick,” Yamato says, and his head gives a sharp pang of pain to remind him that that’s not strictly true. “Clothes, kid. And I need everyone to mark out where they landed on a map.”

Takeru doesn’t look happy about it at all, but he opens a chest and pulls out a baggy green t-shirt, a pair of loose pants, and a brown coat that looks like it was made to be warm at night and breathable during the day.

“Here.”

“Thanks. Get started on marking that map with Mimi, Gabumon and I will be through soon.”

Takeru opens his mouth, as if he wants to say something, then shuts it again, leaving the carriage and shutting the door behind him.

“I think he’s mad at you,” Gabumon says, just a touch wryly.

“He’ll get over it. All of you did good work finding each other. Thanks for saving my life, too,” Yamato says, maneuvering Gabumon off him and pulling himself out of bed, slowly. His legs resist him every step of the way, stubbornly refusing to work, but through sheer force of willpower, he forces them to hold his weight as he gets changed.

Showering isn’t any more enjoyable, but he can at least lean against the wall as he does that, although approximately none of his body seems grateful for that.

There aren’t any mirrors, but he maneuvers himself in front of a window to get a look at himself. He has, predictably, a week’s worth of stubble growth, and his hair has grown to the point where it’s falling over his eyes and curling about the nape of his neck. More than that, though, he just looks ill. Pale, with red around his eyes and dry lips.

He touches his arm gingerly. The wound there isn’t infected anymore, at least, and it’s healing fast. A few more days, and it’ll just be a scar.

“I look like a mess. Not much that can be done about the hair except tie it back, for now, but, er, if there’s a razor around ...”

Gabumon chuckles a little. “I think Trailmon has one somewhere.”


---


He finds Takeru, Mimi, Patamon, and Tentomon near the front of the Trailmon. Mimi hugs him immediately, with enough force that it nearly knocks him off his feet.

“You look awful,” she says, as she pulls away.

“Thanks.”

“We’ve marked the map,” Takeru says. Yamato flashes him a smile, reaching over to ruffle his hair, and is happy enough to see that he doesn’t move away or glare at him, just smiling and shutting his eyes.

“Good. First things first, thank you, all of you, for not letting me die in the desert. I’m in all of your debts. Second thing,” he opens the distortion-tracking program on his wrist computer, leaning over the map. “If I landed here, Takeru here, Gabumon here, Mimi here, and Tentomon here, then that leaves two more people, both of whom landed in this northeastern quadrant.”

“Even on Trailmon, that’s a week’s journey,” Takeru says, shaking his head.

“But if whoever it was found water, they could hold out until then!” Mimi says. “We just need to hope they found something.”

“If I can just butt in,” a voice, accented in what Yamato thinks is a Texan accent, echoes around them. Trailmon himself, he presumes, the train Digimon currently giving them a ride. “They would’ve landed barely half a day’s walk from Railroad Town.”

“Railroad Town?” Yamato asks, cocking his head. There definitely wasn’t any town by that name when they had last come through the Server Desert.

“Biggest town in the area. Trade hub and all,” Trailmon says. “I can take you there, if you want.”

To demonstrate, Takeru taps a finger on the map, indicating a valley that sits right on the boundary between the Server Desert and the Great Lake Area, halfway between one and the other. Yamato can’t help but frown: There was definitely nothing like that there before the Reboot.

“Please do. If they went anywhere, it must have been there,” Yamato says. “So let’s go find them.”


---


The Trailmon is pretty luxurious, but it’s still a train, and it’s still more cramped than Yamato would like. Over the next five days, as he gets his strength back, he finds a space in one of the cargo carriages where he can work out, a small open area near the back where he can watch the desert go by, and somewhere he can play his harmonica.

Having Trailmon occasionally comment on any of those things is odd, but he gets used to it. The mon seems genuinely interested in helping them, at least as far as Railroad Town.

He can tell the others are getting antsy as well. With nothing to distract him, Takeru slips back into dark moods, and Mimi seems less talkative than usual. Gabumon is as cheerful as ever, but Yamato can tell he’s being watchful, clearly shaken by Yamato nearly dying twice in less than a week.

He’s in the middle of working out when Mimi finds him, throwing him a massive grin as he struggles his way through the who-knows-he-hasn’t-been-countingth pull-up. He rolls his eyes, letting go and dropping to the floor.

“Don’t stop on my account!” Mimi chirps.

Yamato grabs a cloth from one of the boxes, wiping his face. “Did you have news or are you just here to watch me exercise?”

“Not that I ever object to you, Taichi, or Sora getting sweaty,” Mimi says, giving an exaggerated bat of her eyelashes. “But I did actually come here to give you some news. Trailmon says we’ll be stopping at an oasis to refill our water tanks, then heading straight on to Railroad Town.”

“That’s fine. Takeru and I will take patrols, alongside Patamon and Gabumon, make sure nobody gets too close,” Yamato says. “You and Tentomon stay with Trailmon. Any more information on this Railroad Town?”

“Some kind of trade hub, right on the border of the Great Lake Area. You can see Castle Vamdemon from it, I hear,” Mimi says. “Lightly fortified, fiercely independent, so I guess Etemon and Vamdemon might have destroyed it at some point, and it took a Reboot to bring it back?”

“And in spitting distance of where one of Daisuke’s team is being kept,” Yamato mutters. “Our Mystery Man isn’t going to like that.”

Mimi pauses, for a moment, then: “When we get there, and we find whoever else landed in this part of the world, what do we do? Do we go and find the people who landed way over to the west, or do we go after whichever member of Daisuke’s team is being held in the Great Lake Area?”

Yamato cracks a quick smile. “I’ll try and get in touch with Taichi over the network once we’re in town, but unless he tells us otherwise, I think we have to make a run at rescuing our first prisoner,” he says. “The longer we delay, the more room we give the Mystery Man to make moves against us. He already has an overwhelming advantage.”

“Right. Three Dark Masters, at least five other Ultimates, a handful of Perfects, and an Adult,” Mimi says, frowning. “I don’t know if we’d be able to win against that even if we had our powers.”

Yamato’s brow furrows a little. This -- this is a point where he should be saying something encouraging, but that was always more Taichi’s area of expertise. Keeping morale up, keeping everyone focused, overriding fear with sheer charisma -- those are all things he was good at, and Yamato never had been.

But Taichi’s not here. Maybe he’s in Railroad Town. Maybe he’s over on that western continent. Maybe he’s on File Island. But he’s not in this train carriage, at least.

“We can’t win in a direct fight with him. And we don’t have any powers, so we can’t even try,” he says, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. “But there’s more than one way to win a war. If he has more pieces on the board, then we play it smart and find a way to pick them off one by one. We cheat, if we have to. Trust me, we’ll figure something out.”

“... That’s a lot less pessimistic than I’m used to from you,” Mimi notes, with a grin. “Thanks, Yamato.”

For a few moments, Yamato’s not sure what to say, so he just ducks his head a little and rubs the back of his neck.

Mimi waits for a few seconds, then reaches into her jacket, pulling out a small video camera and holding it up. “Now, if we can just get a few minutes of footage of you doing pull-ups again …”

“Where … where did you get that?”

“Trailmon had it. I’m making a documentary. Take your shirt off while you’re at it.”

“Get out.”

“We’ve got to appeal to our core demographic, Yam-Yam! They demand fanservi -- …”

“Get out!”