A Fading Hope Chapter 10

A Fading Hope: Chapter 10: Leader's Duty

Song- Angel of Darkness (see Chapter seven, it's the same song, just a different section)

Story-
So yeah, I had FUN with this. Serious fun. It was hard, one of the hardest chapters for me, but there you go.
first- things I have changed from Canon:
Digivolutions- specifically what is needed for the digimon to become Ultimates and Megas. In Canon, the kids gave up their crest powers. I call bs on that because Gatomon was able to become the Ultimate Angewomon twice before this was brought up(episode seven and episode thirteen) and the whole mess with Skullgreymon/ MetalGreymon and possibly more.
So my version is this- they didn't give up all their crest powers. Some, sure, and now it's really, hard to digivolve past champion- it just takes a lot of energy, and since most of their foes have been easy to take down at this point, they haven't needed to digivolve much. The Armors and Champions have worked fine.

Also, as brought up in episodes 53 and 54, the crests are not individual- that is, the Crest of Courage is not just Tai's courage, but everyone's, the Crest of Friendship is not just Matt's friendship, but everyone's friendship with everyone else. So it makes sense that the more Digidestined in the area- and the more courage they felt, the stronger Agumon's digivolution would be, at least to me. So that's my explanation.

Now that that's taken care of, onward.

Oh, holy duck with a typewriter, the battle.
It started as 300 words. It grew to a full third of the chapter. It took me hours, literally. I just sat at my computer and typed and deleted and typed and edited and Gatomon said she wanted to do flips and it was just a mess.I was trying to capture the chaos of battle- not that I've ever been in one, but I drew on watching things like Narnia and LotR and Avatar the Last Airbender and intense games of Capture the Flag. Seriously, Capture the flag. I was the queen of that game in school.
So I wrote with just commas and oh, the poor commas and semi colons, I've abused you so, but I wanted to capture that breathless pacing, that turn around and there's another attack and oh no, look out no time to breathe feeling.
I wanted the danger to be real, because it is, it always has been. This isn't pokemon, where the Digimon attack Digimon. They go after the kids, always have. I've grown a lot since my first battle scene, in that mary sue, awful, terrible fic that I wrote back when I was young and stupid, "Dark Serenity" please don't go and read that. Someday I'll fix it, read it then. there was one battle scene and it was terrible. I feel like I've grown so much, but still.
I hope you let me know how I did. I think it came out pretty well,which is a new feeling for me. I'm so used to thinking I suck at battles. I still do, but this one was ok.

Moving on. Them finding Sora's crutch was a cat on the lap line- that is, a line that came to me while I stared at a mostly finished chapter but couldn't take a break from the computer because my cat was siting on my lap. so I started to zone out and think and the image just... poofed into reality. I thought it added drama. What say you?


Lastly, the ending.
I had two possible endings for this chapter. the first would have cut off a bit sooner, ending with T.K. saying " It's Matt" and leaving you all in hopeful terror about what was to come- was he awake? was he ok? was he dying?
But the cat was on my lap so I decided to keep going, because it just felt... too open. It wasn't an ending, not even a cliffhanger ending, not really. so I continued and got to the last line of the chapter and thought, yes. this is it.
so that's how you got that awful ending. blame the cat. always blame the cat.
hedgi