Chapter One
It was another glorious day in the digi-world. Well, glorious only in the sense that everyone was still alive. Matt sighed deeply as he walked, shoving his hands deep into the pockets of his dark jeans. They, the digidestined, had been hiking constantly throughout the tangled mess of the digital world forest. Tai was being a slave driver, pushing them on relentlessly, determined to shove them all to the brink of collapse, just to get a few more miles out of them. It made Matt wonder for the billionth time just why Tai had been made the leader.
"Are we there yet?" Mimi whined softly, dragging herself along at the end of their slow moving procession. Her face was pale, and her hat dangled down her back. Matt could see how tired she was, but Tai either didn't notice, or didn't care. Matt would've bet on the last possibility
"Yeah, my leaves are wilting." Palmon sympathized with her partner.
"Where exactly is 'there', Mimi?" Joe put back, in an equally suffering voice. He wiped his arm across his damp brow. Gomamon glared up at his pessimistic human partner. 'At least you have feet.' the seal-like digimon muttered under his breath.
Matt had had enough of this, Tai was totally abusing his leadership. Everyone was complaining about being tired and hurting, not just Mimi and Joe like usual. "Tai," he hollered up to the front of the line. "We're stopping. Now." Matt told him, halting in his tracks, glaring hatefully at the other boy's back.
Tai whipped around, staring Matt down."Whadda ya mean, 'we're stopping'? There's still hours of light left!" He pointed up at the sky, waving erratically. Matt could be such an idiot sometimes. No one else had tried to demand that they stop. Why was Matt always challenging his authority?
"We're too tired to go any further. We need to make camp and find food BEFORE it's too dark to see. I guess you wouldn't think of something like that since you're always in the dark, Tai." Tai could be so dense sometimes. ~Correction,~ Matt thought. ~All the time.~
"We have to keep going, we can't stop now!" Tai yelled back, shaking his fists in the air like a challenge, closing in on Matt. ~He thinks he knows everything!~ "We'll never beat all the evil digimon if we keep stopping. We don't even know how many are out there!"
"Then why are we running around if we don't know what's out there yet?" Matt asked, ginning smugly. Tai had walked right into that one.
"I do know what's out there! There's a whole bunch of stuff that WE have to stop. We have what Gennai told us, about Cronosmon, and other evil digimon!"
"Uh...Actually Tai," Izzy interrupted hesitantly. "Gennai said he was unsure about this Cronosmon. He said it maybe sounded more like a rumour. An all powerful digimon? It doesn't seem likely, or else why wouldn't it have tried to conquer the entire Digiworld yet?" Izzy sat down onto the grass, opening up his computer. "My analyzer doesn't say anything about a digimon named Cronosmon, and we haven't come across any proof of it yet."
Tai ground his teeth. "That doesn't matter. We'll run into something eventually, and we'll never beat them if Matt doesn't start acting like a part of the team!"
"Tai, calm down!" Agumon asked his partner, tugging on him with one clawed hand. Tai pushed the little dinosaur back, still facing Matt.
"You are so selfish!" Matt threw his hands up in disgust. "You don't care that the rest of us are tired and hungry, you just want to continue your grim little death march! You wouldn't care if we all dropped dead behind you, probably of EXHAUSTION!! You don't deserve to lead if you can't keep your priorities straight. You're just so irresponsible!" Matt hollered, ready and willing to fight Tai back.
Tai snapped. He had finally had enough of dealing with Matt's moods. Ever since they got to the digiworld all Matt did was yell and complain and second-guess every move Tai made. That was it, he couldn't take any more. "I am so sick of you Matt! I wish you would just leave me alone. All you do is complain about how I lead the digidestined. I wish you were never one of us. The digidestined don't need you!" Tai screamed at the top of his lungs. Once he had stopped, he stood shocked. ~Wow,~ he thought, ~I really said it. Maybe now Matt will just finally give me a break.~
Matt was standing there absolutely still, he felt in a way almost as though he had been struck. Everybody's eyes were on him, silently watching him, unable to speak. No one was even able to say something reassuring. It confirmed his worst fears, he was distanced from them, he didn't really belong with them. He never had, and Tai finally said it. A quiet voice had whispered it in his mind all along, and he had thought it might be right. He had truly only stayed because of TK and Gabumon. Now though, it had been said, it was out in the open. There was nothing left to do.
Matt struck a relaxed pose, shrugging. "Fine Tai, if that's what you want." Matt reached under his shirt and pulled out his crest, throwing it to the ground. A moment later his digivice joined it on the grass. " I quit." He declared simply, crossing his arms. Matt looked around once, then turned and strode off through the forest in the opposite direction.
"Matt! Wait!" Gabumon called after the retreating boy. He chased after Matt, but was pushed away. Matt had quit, and that meant everything. Even Gabumon. Matt half-wanted the little blue wolf to come with him, but that had been part of being digidestined.
Wrapped deeply in his thoughts, Matt walked off silently through blue trees as the sounds of the other kids slowly faded. He quit.
