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A Strange (and Annoying) Gift [Solo]
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Post by Maria Wellington on Oct 30, 2018 1:29:05 GMT
Dinner was quiet that night. Of course, Maria had grown used to that. Her parents were usually too busy working to have dinner with their only daughter, leaving Maria to sit at the big table alone, picking at her food (thankfully, they still ate actual American food in the house) while Annabelle and Geoffrey stood off to the side, picking up used plates and refilling Maria’s water without even being asked. It was like clockwork, only instead of ticking, it was silverware clinking against fine china and glasses tapping against the table.
Tonight should have been different, though. Tonight, both of her parents were actually home, sharing a meal with their daughter for the first time in who knew how long. But it wasn’t different. It was still too quiet; her mom and dad both looked like they were zoning out as they ate. Part of Maria wanted to say something, break the awkward silence and make everything go back to normal. The rest of her didn’t think her parents deserved to be talked to.
Three weeks hadn’t been enough time for Maria to stop being upset over the move to Japan. It hadn’t been fair. One day, she’d been at her home in America, where she belonged, enjoying life, going to school and hanging out with her friends, actually being in a familiar environment… and then the next day, her family had packed up and shipped off to Japan, leaving Maria in a strange new world, separated from her friends by an entire ocean and separated from her new classmates and, heck, everyone around her by an entirely new language that she still didn’t get. Okay, maybe it was more fair to say that she didn’t want to get the new language. Why did she have to learn Japanese? That’s what translators were for. Besides, she wouldn’t even be worrying about Japanese if her parents had just stayed in America like they should have.
Stupid. It was all stupid, but there wasn’t any point in saying that out loud. She’d just hear the same lectures again—assuming her parents even cared enough to give her one.
She almost didn’t notice her dad speak up: “So, Maria. How’s school been?”
“Fine,” was Maria’s automatic answer, said without looking up from her plate. No one replied at first. Maria thought that was the end of it, but then her mother spoke up:
“You know, if you’re having trouble, we can always hire you a tutor. I know it must be hard adjusting to your new school and all, but you’re a smart girl—I know you’ll do wonderfully once you set your mind to it.”
“I don’t need a tutor.”
More silence, this time broken by her father clearing his throat. “Maria, there’s no need to be embarrassed if you’re not doing well. You just need some time to get used to things. Is Japanese still giving you trouble?”
“It’s fine.”
Maria would have been fine if this silence had stayed—she was starting to prefer it to this terrible conversation—but she knew it wouldn’t. She could just feel her parents digging for something to say. And with a sigh, her mom was the one who pulled something up:
“Maria, please talk to us. You know you can.”
“It’s hard to talk when you’re never home anymore.” The words came out without Maria bidding them to, but the heck with it. It needed to be said.
“Oh, sweetheart… I know it’s hard now, but before you know it, everything will be back to normal, and this place will feel just like home.”
“No it won’t!” Maria slammed her fork onto the table; that word—“home”—made something in her snap. “This stupid place will never be my home! None of my friends are here, I can’t understand what anyone is saying, I hate going to school here—!”
“Maria, please, calm down,” her dad said. She knew she should have calmed down. She was too good to be raising her voice like this, like some little brat, but she couldn’t stop herself. She’d never been this upset about anything in her entire life, and—
“I wouldn’t have to calm down if you hadn’t made me move here!”
She stood, knocking her chair back with the backs of her legs, and spun around, taking long, quick steps toward the stairs.
“Maria—!” her dad called after her, but she didn’t stop. She didn’t want to hear anything he had to say. |
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Post by Maria Wellington on Oct 30, 2018 1:31:09 GMT
Maria lay on her side, staring at the darkened screen of her phone. It was 2:00 in the morning back home, so of course, no one would answer her if she texted or messaged or even called them. For a moment, she thought of opening Facebook to see if there was anything new, but even if there was, she didn’t want to see pictures and statuses of her friends having fun while she moped on her bed.
There was a knock on the door. Maria frowned and stayed still. She really didn’t want to talk to either of her parents right now, not after she’d stormed out like that. Maybe if she pretended to be asleep, they’d go away.
Another knock. Maria’s frown deepened, but the voice on the other side of the door made her relax. “Miss Maria?” Annabelle said. “May I come in?”
“Just a second.” Maria set her phone on her nightstand and got up to unlock the door. She cracked it open to see her maid on the other side, holding a small box. “Are Mom and Dad up here?”
“No, Miss; they’re still downstairs.”
“Good.” Honestly, Maria was torn between being glad not to see them and being upset they hadn’t come to check on her, but she opened the door regardless. “What’s that?” she asked, looking at the box.
“This came for you while you were out today,” Annabelle said. “I apologize for not giving it to you sooner.”
“From where? I didn’t order anything.”
“One of your relatives back in America, it seems.”
The address, much to Maria’s relieved surprise, was written in English. “Who’s Stan?”
“Your mother’s older brother. From what I understand, they’ve been… estranged for some time.”
“Then why is he sending me something?”
“Perhaps he’s trying to reconnect. Would you like me to open it?”
“Hmm… Proceed.”
Annabelle had come prepared with a pair of scissors that she used to cut open the tape on the package. With that done, she passed it to Maria. “Do you require anything else, Miss?” she asked.
Maria thought for a moment. She considered telling Annabelle not to let her parents up here, but admittedly, there was still a part of her that hoped they’d at least knock on her door, even if only so she could tell them to go away. “No. That will be all.”
Annabelle bowed her head and backed out of the door. Before she closed it, though, she added with a soft smile, “You need only call if you need me, Miss Maria.”
Maria could have said something. Maybe even thanked her. She and Geoffrey seemed to be the only ones who cared right now, after all. But instead, Maria just nodded, prompting Annabelle to shut the door behind her.
Maria stared down at the box for a few solid seconds before lifting the flaps. Inside, resting on top of those inflated plastic bags, was some sort of device that reminded Maria of an old cell phone. It was white with a small black antenna sticking out of the top, pink grips on each side, a small screen in the middle with up and down arrow-shaped buttons to its right, a small orange button below it, and a large white button in the bottom center.
“What is this?” Maria murmured, lifting it out of the box to look it over, revealing only a clip on the back. She frowned and pressed the big white button. The device let out a beep, and then the screen lit up, showing… some sort of pixelated round thing with lightning bolts on it? It was bouncing up in down in some sort of rhythm, making a “beep-boop” sound every time it did. Maria pressed the down arrow, and… what the heck? Were those supposed to be words? They didn’t look Japanese—not that Maria was great with Japanese writing, but still. Pressing it again revealed more gibberish until she’d cycled back to the first screen.
With more questions than answers, Maria pulled the packing out of the box, hoping to find an instruction manual or something tucked underneath it. Nothing. No instructions, no notes, no indication of what the heck this thing was. Her eyebrows scrunched together in frustration. Some “reconnection” gift this was.
And it was still beeping!
Frustrated, she pressed the big white button again, which, fortunately, turned the device back off, dropped said device back into the box, and set the box on her nightstand. Annabelle could come clean it up later. Right now, Maria needed a nice, long bath. |
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Post by Maria Wellington on Nov 28, 2018 2:14:21 GMT
When Maria got back to her room, the box was gone, but the weird device was sitting on her nightstand… and it was beeping again. She paced over to it with an annoyed huff and turned it off again. Had Annabelle…? No, she wouldn’t have left something so annoying on when Maria had deliberately turned it off… and when it was so annoying. She didn’t get why Annabelle hadn’t thrown it out with the box, though. Probably because it was a gift, and it was rude to throw away gifts or whatever.
She lay on top of her covers and looked at her phone. No new messages. Disappointing but not surprising. She was about to set it down when her eyes fell on the strange device again. Maybe something online could tell her what it was…
Or not. Again, Maria found herself scrunching her eyebrows in frustration. She’d tried every way she could think of to describe it, and nothing had come up in her search results! It would have been so much easier if the thing had been labeled with a name, but no, she’d been stuck with vague terms like “device that looks like old cellphone with screen that keeps turning itself on and beeping,” which it had at least three times during her search. Nothing that had popped up had looked anything like what she was dealing with, so she closed out of her internet browser and threw her arm over her eyes with a sigh.
Beep boop, beep boop, beep—
“Oh, come on!”
Maria crept down the stairs the next morning, keeping her ears open for any sign of her mom and dad. There was no one in the living room, but she heard—and smelled, a moment later—someone cooking breakfast in the kitchen. She peered in to find Annabelle standing over the stove with no one else in sight. Well, fine. That meant she didn’t have to waste her morning arguing.
“Good morning, Miss Maria.” Annabelle turned from her task with a smile.
“Where’s Mom and Dad?” Ugh, why did that have to be the first question out of Maria’s mouth?
“They said they had errands to run and would be back this evening.”
Maria found herself frowning. “Oh.”
“Eggs and toast, Miss?”
“Sure.”
Maria settled into her usual place at the table and waited for Annabelle to bring her plate. She was a few bites into her avocado toast and eggs when:
Beep boop, beep boop, beep boop.
She dropped her fork in shock; it clattered on her plate as she scrambled for the device hooked to her pocket to turn it off.
Wait… when had she hooked it to her pocket?
“Are you enjoying your gift, Miss Maria?” Annabelle asked.
“I… It keeps beeping.” She decided to focus on that aspect instead of her apparent forgetfulness. “Do you know what it is? I didn’t find anything online.”
“Hmm…” Annabelle tapped her chin. “I believe… Ah, yes! I saw one in a shop in Akihabara.”
“Ah-kee-uh… What’s that?”
“I suppose you could say it’s a rather… unique shopping district with a focus on video games, anime, and the like. Some people call it Akiba for short.”
Maria looked at the device in her hand again. Well, if anywhere in Japan sounded like it’d know about something like this—not that Maria knew of many places in Japan, anyway—it would be this Akiba place.
“I believe I remember where the store that sold it is,” Annabelle continued. “I would be more than happy to take you there. Perhaps the shop owner could answer your questions.”
“Doesn’t the shop owner have a website?” Maria grumbled.
“Unfortunately, I don’t recall seeing a website. We would have to ask him ourselves.”
Maria groaned and rolled her eyes. “Fine. Not like I have anything better to do today. But after this, you’re taking me shopping in a real store.”
“Of course, Miss Maria,” Annabelle said with a curtsy. |
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Post by Maria Wellington on Apr 10, 2019 3:44:12 GMT
Maria didn’t think she’d ever stop hating Japan’s public transportation system. Why did everyone in the whole city have to cram themselves underground and bunch together on a train to get anywhere? Back home, Maria would just get in one of her family’s fancy cars and let Annabelle or Geoffrey drive her where she wanted to go, but nooooo, Tokyo just had to be too big and too crowded for that, so she was stuck with the stupid subway. And to make things worse, she had to hold Annabelle’s hand like a child so they wouldn’t get separated in the swarm of people. It was ridiculous, and in hindsight, Maria wasn’t sure why she’d agreed to go. She could have just sent Annabelle to this shop to ask about the weird device and called it a day. Maybe she really was just bored.
She was surprised to see that most of the directional signs had English translations on them. Not that they helped—she couldn’t remember the names of any of that platforms or trains or destinations that Annabelle had rattled off before they’d left. No, no, that didn’t matter, she told herself. Annabelle knew where to go; she could take care of everything. That was her job. Still, she couldn’t help but notice that they had to push through fewer and fewer people as they walked.
Finally, with the din of the station a mere murmur behind them, they arrived at… what seemed to be an abandoned platform with a locked terminal. “Are you sure you know where we’re going?” Maria asked.
“Forgive me, Miss Maria.” Annabelle let go of her hand so she could turn and bow Japanese-style. “Perhaps I misread the directions. Please give me a moment to double-check.”
“Fine.” Maria crossed her arms and leaned against the wall for a moment before realizing what she was doing and standing up straight again, dusting off her skirt. For one, leaning against the wall wasn’t refined in the least, for two, she had no idea who or what had been on those dirty subway walls. The last thing she needed right now was some kind of weird infection or fungus or whatever grew in subway stations.
Bee-dee-da-deep, bee-dee-da-deep, bee-dee-da-deep!
For a moment, Maria thought it was Annabelle’s phone making all that noise, but when Annabelle turned to her, Maria’s eyes widened in horror. She yanked her purse open and rifled through its contents, and just as she’d suspected, the weird device was on and beeping louder than ever as the screen flashed between the round thing and an exclamation mark.
“Oh my God, how do I turn this thing off?!” Maria pressed every button on the device over and over again, glancing around to make sure nobody was watching. God, if someone who knew who she was saw this debacle—not that anyone in Japan seemed to know who she was, which she still didn’t get…
“Miss Maria, look.”
Maria looked up, expecting (and hoping, more than anything) that Annabelle had a solution, but instead, she was looking at the deactivated terminal… or at least, it had been deactivated. Now, the little screen was on… and it was showing a picture of the device Maria had.
“Wha—? Is this some kind of joke?” But the confusion bubbling over her anger meant there wasn’t as much oomph behind her question as she’d intended. “Annabelle, what is going on?”
“I think…” Annabelle hesitated, staring at the ticket machine. “I think it wants you to scan the device.”
“That doesn’t even make sense. It’s just a toy.” Maria looked down at the device again. “Right?” she added, almost to herself. But even then, she found herself moving forward, not looking up until she got to the ticket scanner. She looked back at Annabelle, who looked just as confused as Maria felt.
“It… can’t hurt to try, I suppose,” Annabelle said.
Maria sighed. “Fine. But just to get this thing to shut up.” With that, she held the device over the scanner, just like she did with her rail pass card. Much to Maria’s relief, it stopped its loud, constant beeping. Both screens showed synchronized jumping ellipses, and a few moments later, with fortunately short beeps, both showed large checkmarks. Then, the ticket gate opened, causing Maria’s eyes to widen.
“It… It worked,” Maria murmured. “What is this thing?” She looked down at the device to see the screen now displayed a blinking arrow that pointed forward. At least it wasn’t beeping.
She felt Annabelle over her shoulder, probably looking down at the screen, as well. “It seems to want us to go through the gate.”
“In there?” Maria looked toward the dark platform beyond the gate. There was no doubt it was supposed to be abandoned, but… something felt off. Like someone had been here recently. But who would come to a creepy platform like this?
… Someone with a device like hers, maybe?
Common sense told her to turn back and forget any of this had happened. For all she knew, she’d walk onto the platform and get kidnapped by the Japanese mafia and held for ransom. She was valuable, after all. But something else, something she couldn’t describe, seemed to be pulling her forward. She tightened her grip on the device and took a deep breath through her nose.
“Fine,” she said. “But if there’s anything creepy, we’re turning around and going home.”
“I’ll be right by your side, Miss Maria,” Annabelle said.
Maria nodded and stared down the darkness before her. Now that she’d said she’d do it, she couldn’t be scared. So with her head held high, she stepped forward, Annabelle falling into place by her side after they’d cleared the gate. They both paused and turned around when they heard the gate shut behind them. That was totally normal. Ticket gates were supposed to close after you’d walked through them. But this one still gave her the creeps. She turned back around with a curt, “Let’s go,” and started walking again.
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Post by Maria Wellington on Nov 20, 2019 0:30:24 GMT
Maria had been on her fair share of train platforms since arriving in Japan, but never had she been on one so dark and empty. She squared her shoulders to push down the shiver slinking up her spine and looked back at the device so she’d have something else to focus on. The arrow was still pointing forward. Well, at least they were going the right way… wherever that was.
It didn’t take them much time to reach the end of the platform, where the only things surrounding them were walls, the tracks, and the way back. The device was now pointing toward said tracks, making Maria purse her lips in a displeased frown.
“There is no… Surely, this isn’t telling us to go on the tracks,” Maria said.
“It does seem rather dangerous to do that, yes…” Annabelle said, leaning out for a better look.
“So what now?” Maria asked. “We came all this way for nothing?”
Annabelle scrunched her brow and held her fist against her chin thoughtfully. “There is one other possibility…”
“Which is?”
Before Annabelle could answer, a familiar sound echoed in the distance: the sound of a train horn. Maria whipped her head toward the sound, jaw dropping. No way. There was no way a train was coming to this creepy abandoned platform. But, sure enough, a pair of yellow headlights crawled along the walls of the tunnel, and a few seconds later, the strangest train Maria had seen came into view. It was green with a strip of white along the bottom, and the front looked like some sort of face with yellow eyes and an underbite with tiny teeth. She stared in bewildered silence as it slowed to a stop, and one of its doors opened right in front of her. For some reason, she looked down at her device again. Yep, it was still pointing forward, as if beckoning her to get on.
“Where is this even supposed to take us?” Maria asked. No answer. She turned, expecting to see Annabelle with a thoughtful expression on her face, but she wasn’t there. “Annabelle?” Maria asked, looking around. There was no sign of her. Had she… gotten on the train? “Annabelle!” she called as she stepped on. “Annabelle, this is ridiculous! We’re turning around and going home right—”
There was a hissing sound behind her, and when she turned around, she saw that the doors had closed.
“… Now?” She stumbled as the train started to move. “Hey, hey! Wait!” She ran to the doors and tried to pry them open, but they wouldn’t budge. “Let me off! Annabelle!” She pressed against the window, looking for her maid on the platform, but there wasn’t a soul in sight. She turned back around and looked frantically around the car, but it, too, was empty.
“Oh my God,” she mumbled, leaning back against the door. “I’m stuck on a weird train going who-knows-where. Alone.” Wait, no… She couldn’t be alone. Someone had to be driving this train, right? She looked toward the front of the train. Empty. She looked the other way. Empty. This train had only had one car, right? So where was the driver? “Hello?”
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Post by Maria Wellington on Nov 20, 2019 0:30:47 GMT
“Huh?” There was a yawn that made Maria stiffen up. “Oh, hey. Must’ve dozed off.”
Maria looked around for the source of the sound. It seemed like it had come from the front of the train, but there wasn’t anything of note there. Was there a speaker somewhere she couldn’t see?
“Who’s there?” was the question Maria chose to ask.
“Who, me? I’m Trailmon Raccoon Dog,” the voice replied, reminding Maria of a kindly grandpa.
“‘Trailmon Raccoon Dog’? What kind of name is that?”
“Well, it’s mine, of course.”
Maria’s eye twitched.
“What about yours, young lady?”
For a moment, Maria was caught off-guard; she hadn’t exactly expected the conductor or whoever was talking to her to ask for her name. “Maria Wellington,” she managed to say without stammering with surprise. Then, feeling a boost of confidence, she stood up straight, one foot tucked behind her heel, flipped her hair, and continued, “Heiress to the Wellington Electronics fortune.”
“Maria Wellington…” The voice seemed to mull over her name; for a moment, Maria hoped he’d actually find it familiar, but he just said, “Yep, that sounds like a good name. Hehe, but what do I know? Human names always sound so different.”
… Yeah, she had to have misheard the phrase “human names.”
“Where is this train going?” she asked, pushing that out of her mind.
“Trailmon Terminal, o’ course.”
“And that is?”
“Well, it’s—” He stopped, and Maria was briefly worried that he didn’t even know. “Say, you’ve never been to the Digital World, have you?”
“Please tell me that’s another name for Akiba.”
“Ah-kee-what?”
Maria groaned and flopped back against the train doors, her bravado deflated.
“Anywho, if you got on that platform, that means you must have a Digivice or the like.”
As if on cue, the device in Maria’s hand let out an excited beep. Too tired to complain about it again, she just sighed and asked, “This pink thing?”
“So yours is pink, eh? I wonder what kind of partner you’ll have… Maybe Biyomon or Lopmon… Maybe Salamon…”
“Ugh, would you start speaking English?! You’re not making… any…” Maria trailed off, eyes widening. “Wait a second… You’re speaking English!”
“English?”
“Yeah? You know, English? The language you’re speaking?” Sheesh, what was wrong with this guy?
“Oh!” And for some reason, he laughed. “Naw, us Digimon just have a way of understandin’ you humans. It’s not really a ‘language’ like you’d call it. More like a—”
If he said anything after that, Maria didn’t hear it: Her vision flickered red and green, as if she were looking at a glitched screen, and static burst in her ears. She gasped and stumbled back into the door, groping for something to hold onto. “What the—?!”
“Whoops, sorry about that, sweetheart,” the voice said. “First time crossing over tends to be a bit rough. Just hold onto somethin’, and you’ll be fine.”
“Crossing over wh…?” The final syllable dropped, stretched but incomplete, from her slack jaw as she looked out the window. It was like they were going through a blue tunnel outlined by thin white lines, and… were those numbers she saw whizzing by? As if entranced, she climbed up into a seat and sat on her knees to get a better look out the window. After a few seconds, during which she tried to keep up with what seemed to be data flying past her, there was another buzz of static, another flash of colors; Maria closed her eyes, gripping the back of the seat with one hand and her head with the other. Her body felt… different, somehow, almost like she was covered in static electricity. Only when that electricity seemed to roll off of her as the sound of static faded did she dare open her eyes.
She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting to see out the window, but it definitely hadn’t been rolling grasslands.
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Post by Maria Wellington on Nov 20, 2019 0:31:28 GMT
Maria watched, mouth partially open, as the train she was on glided across tracks set atop lush, grassy plains. Where was she? Just a few minutes ago, she’d been in a Tokyo train station. There was no way a train could have gotten out of the city and to somewhere like this as fast as it had, so what was going on?
Maybe she’d fallen asleep; that would explain the weird colors and sounds and how she’d gotten here so fast. Yeah, that had to be it. There was no way she’d actually seen that blue tunnel with numbers flying past. It must have just been some crazy dream.
“We’ll be at Trailmon Terminal shortly,” the familiar old man voice said. Maria still wasn’t sure where his voice was coming from.
“Did you say ‘Trailmon’?” she asked.
“Yes, ma’am, I did.”
“I thought you said your name was Trailmon Something-Or-Other. And what’s with all these ‘mon’ names? Where are we?”
“Well, I told you we were headed to the Digital World, didn’t I?”
Digital World… Yeah, he had said something about that, hadn’t he? And the tunnel with the numbers… the flickering colors… the sound of static…
Oh, there was no way.
“What is the Digital World?” she asked, watching the train approach a terminal next to what looked like a gigantic walled-off city.
“Well, it’s exactly what it sounds like,” the voice said. “I’ve heard other humans call it a ‘parallel world’ like yours, only everything’s digital. Might be best if you take a look around, see it for yourself.”
“What?” Her voice rose as the gravity of her current situation began to press on her. “No, turn around and take me back. I am not wandering around some weird ‘Digital World’ by myself.”
“Sorry, sweetheart, but this is my last stop. I won’t be taking anyone back until my next shift.”
“Then how do I–?!”
Bee-dee-da-deep, bee-dee-da-deep, bee-dee-da-deep!
Maria fumbled with the device still in her hands as it began that obnoxious beeping again. “Oh, what now?!” she shouted.
The voice laughed in a lighthearted way that still managed to infuriate Maria. “Your partner must be real excited to meet you,” he said. “You should take the next Trailmon to the Village of Beginnings. They’ll help you out there.”
Maria instinctively grabbed onto one of the train’s interior poles as it began to come to a stop at a terminal outside of the walled-off city. The doors opened with that familiar hiss, leaving Maria to stare at her strange new destination.
“Last stop for this line,” the voice said in a firmer tone than before. “I can’t take you any farther, hun.”
Maria made a frustrated little noise in her throat but stepped off the train, anyway, arms crossed. Even she knew there wouldn’t be a point in arguing—trains only went in one direction, so it wasn’t like it could just flip around on the tracks and take her home. She’d just catch the next train home and forget all about this trip.
“Good luck, Maria Wellington!”
Maria jolted in her skin as she heard that voice again, sounding just as close as it had before. She turned around to look at the front of the train, only to see its headlights looking at her and the front curled up into a smile. Before Maria could even think of something to say in response to this, it rolled away, its face falling neutral again. She stared after it, mouth agape.
And just when she thought things couldn’t get any weirder.
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