12Show me your brave heart.
The words had echoed in his head since he parted from the faraway world. Taichi wasn't sure where he had heard them, but he knew he recognized his partner's voice eternally in the back of his mind. With each step he took, the words resounded, and he knew without asking that they were meant for him.
They had been children walking into the flames of war. Uncertainty lingered in words left unspoken, but nothing needed to be said for the others to understand. Destiny had called for them, and being youthful and innocent, they were weak to its whispers.
Courage called for him too.
His pen still crossed pages when he lost the will to focus in the world that he belonged to. It sketched out the sun he knew so well, the one that had carved itself into his soul the moment he stepped into unfamiliarity. Bravery was what had shaped him when universes collapsed and life turned to little more than ash on the wind.
Perhaps that was what drew Taichi back again and again to these words. He had been the first to drown in the fires, to feel the heat clawing at his skin as a thousand voices never to speak again cried for him even in death. He beckoned for his companions to follow him into hell, to rescue those who had done so much for them, and he never once looked back. Courage had crafted him from clay using fire as its tool.
He was created from the flames of war, and he couldn't return to the way he had once been.
An echo of his past had gone to summer camp, but he could not recognize that face in photos anymore. The pull of data and gears and heartache had him traveling away from home, facing monsters as he fought for his life. He was eleven years old, and he fought bitterly against everything that attempted to smother the flickering fire that lived in his chest.
The smaller version of himself existed no longer. It had shattered somewhere along the way, though he didn't know quite when it had happened. Perhaps it was when his partner, the one who had bound his heart to Taichi's within seconds of their meeting, first changed into a dinosaur with a roar that would come to push off death time and time again. Perhaps it was when skulls and corruption attempted to drag them both into hell for straying too far from the destiny they were born to fulfill. Perhaps it was the time he realized what his brave heart meant and worlds played tug-of-war for his attention.
He returned to Odaiba changed. He had seen the precursors of combat before ever reaching his teen years, a trend that would continue for the rest of that summer, the summer of war, strife, death, and heartache, but also of life, rebirth, beauty, and heart. He felt the other world pulling for him, crying for his courage, and he listened. His hand released from trembling digits as the sky prayed for him to return, and he did. He gave up the glorious return he had spent so long praying for when courage whispered into his ear, because what could he do but listen to destiny? It had called, and he allowed it to take him.
Everything fell apart when he was gone, but he managed to pull it back together. Was it sheer force of will? Perhaps his determination was responsible. Taichi reunited his found family, and he knew that he was home, even if they were no longer in the universe he had grown up in.
Show me your brave heart.
Bravery remained as he walked into fire as a mere soldier ready to act under the demands of balance. He saw pain, but underneath it all, orange glimmered, and a sun became the core of his soul. The culmination of everything he was inscribed itself over his chest, and it fueled him when death chased him with its talons outstretched.
Courage was all that drove him forwards when the world tried to kill his flame. No power would ever extinguish his illumination. He wouldn't let that happen. Too many had suffered for him to back down, so he fought. Desperation became his close companion, and he left behind the person he had once been for a new self.
The newest iteration held the sky itself to his chest as he braved fire and grief to rescue those in strife. The new Taichi carved the dawn when darkness was on the horizon and demanded that the light triumph. He was a child marching into war, but he didn't mind so long as it would keep those he held dear safe.
Show me your brave heart.
Years of adventures caused this newly-birthed creation to evolve further. Again and again, a world of data called to him, and he answered each and every time. The manifestation of his Courage had disappeared, but it remained inside his soul, and that would never be broken so long as he drew breath. Flames molded a child of eleven years old into a soldier, a leader, that would rescue the downtrodden no matter how dreary the outcome appeared.
Show me your brave heart.
Perhaps his partner had whispered those fated words as a trolley car disappeared into the sunshine, the daybreak they had forged with their own hands. Maybe that was why he could never forget the rhythm of those syllables on his lips, why he whispered them under his breath as he walked the city he had brought salvation, why he let them define him as the years went by.
He was Taichi Yagami, the boy who carved daybreak using his Courage as a tool after braving fire. He had been whispered to by destiny, and he had answered its pleas gladly. His heart had been made brave by the turmoil of war, and he wouldn't have it any other way.
Flowery prose time!
I've been wanting to do something nice and experimental like this for a while. It's a departure from what I normally do, but I love it. I'm going to be doing one of these for each of the twelve children from Adventure and Zero Two in the next twelve days leading up to the Adventure reboot, so expect daily updates until it's done! Until next time, I hope you enjoyed!
-Digital
