aiko's otter den

The Thrush's Song - The song that symbolized freedom amongst all else… his freedom, their freedom, and the bonds that bound them together in their slavery to one another, and to their destinies. After all, if you think about it, they were Chosen, and they’re not allowed to forget it. It’s time to begin pursuing that to its final dance. A tri AU.

---

A

There was a time before the Seven or the Eighth, before the Twelve and the Infinite. In the past, the Earth was covered in monsters. In this time, heroes roamed, alive or dead. Legends were real or imagined into being. Meanwhile, humans floated away into ash.

The Eight would only vaguely know of the fallen Tower of Babel. It was nothing more than a story, really. Fate, Wallace, could have told them it was much more than that. It was the source of language, the beginning of a lack of understanding from human to human. He was not an actively religious person, but the legend for some reason, had always struck cold terror in his heart, at least after his Digimon came around.

Humans were once turned into ash? Yes, yes, a long time ago. Spontaneous combustion maybe? No, not quite. Once, long ago, there was a disease, born from the babbling of confused, human hearts. They were called Noise.

They did not appear often, usually in awful places that had lost all hope of communicating. But people saw very little, and thus they went unnoticed.

When the Digital World was born, the Noise vanished from the earth, to be forgotten. But they were never really let go of. They always continued to exist.

Before the Eight and the Twelve and the Infinite, there was the Five. They should have been the only, but there was one. The First. The Dreamer. The original Miracle Maker. He remembers and he left his legacy against the Noise upon everything.

The Alpha carries the memories of that beginning, just as the Omega carries the hope of the true, complete end.

So it goes, when Alphamon takes a step into the human world, past and present ripple, as Omegamon carries the future on its back.

They clash, battling what is and what has been and what will be. But they are unstable as children are. They have been shaken by the reality of what Digimon can really do, of what the warped kin of monsters can do. They are not united.

Well, that can’t be helped, Alphamon supposes. They are only a symbol, in the end.

They also cannot see the slinking curdled color of the virus that once had been. Not that they had ever been able to fight it anyway. It had sunk its claws in a long time ago. They look about at the fallen monsters, looking for the one. The Carrier. The awakener. It is sleeping now, but surely, if they are fast enough, they can make it. They have chased it this far. Surely this will be enough.

But no, these children will not allow it. The survivors are looking at him. They know, and yet they will not allow it either. Well.

They suppose it is not their place to decide if the world should end and how, only to mitigate the damage of the inevitable foolishness that would arise.

So perhaps, arousing suspicion, confirming it was enough. Human and Digimon were separated. It was only a matter of time, was it not?

They hoped this would be all that was needed. It was likely that it would not be.

B-1

He doesn’t remember the fight. Taichi doesn’t remember and maybe he should but he doesn’t and why doesn’t he—

Yamato shouldn’t really remember either except a part of him does. It looks at Takeru and remembers the blood on the ground and the ashes that rise up into the dust. He sees the red earring posts in his own ears in the mirror and feels ready to vomit and he doesn’t vomit even though that’s all he wants to do.

He just has to look back and think of Alphamon. Alpha. One. Progenitor. He and Taichi are Omega. United. End.

But they are not united anymore and whose fault is that?

(Both of theirs, if he’s honest.)

He’s going too far. He has to look back. He needs to remember. The problem is that he doesn’t want to.

---

It starts rather peacefully. It is just high school, just another day passing like all the others. The Digimon are nowhere to be found again, likely at home. Their juniors were almost all just as gone. Takeru and Hikari won’t talk about it, not that either of them had ever been all that forthright. Yamato has no idea exactly what happened, only that luck saved his little brother’s life.

It won’t last a second time, so whether they show it or not, they are on alert. Even though they have no Digimon, even though their Digivices haven’t beeped in months. They are alert. Old habits die hard.

So when things finally start, a thrill runs up Yamato’s spine. Not of joy, no one wanted to see their hometown crushed, right? It’s a thrill of fear, a thrill of concern, a thrill of relief.

Wouldn’t you miss the world that had patched you up and the friends that had healed you?

---

At the time, it had been an ordinary day. Go to school, go with the band, go home, rinse, repeat, bore your brains out. His brother hadn’t replied to his last phone call, but sometimes that would happen. He would just be absorbed in his studies or out with a friend. (He hoped it was a friend anyway, a girlfriend would drive their mom up the wall, he has too many). Even so, it had been just so long.

So that worries him, and he goes to visit.

Lo and behold, Takeru is fine. Better than, even.

By that evening, no one was fine. The Digimon are back. Kuwagamon are flying.

They are old Adults, old enemies they can probably fight in their sleep. They might as well have, because at the very least, he was tired at the end. He was very tired. Takeru leans on him, and he feels for a wet spot on his shirt that isn’t there anymore. It hasn’t been there in years

---

In between the chaos, because hell sometimes cooled down, Yamato is convinced to get his ears pierced. All the rockstars do it, his band mates said (though of course they aren’t doing it). Somehow, they convince Sora, and that just means he has to do it. He picks red posts; they remind him of Gabumon’s eyes. Yet, something about them feels unsteady. His head feels heavier when he wears them.

But protocol says he can’t take them off so he doesn’t. The openings will close if he does.

---

He didn’t understand right then, what was going on in Taichi’s mind. He couldn’t. All of that destruction, wasn’t that just a reason to keep going? They had to stop it from continuing, didn’t they?

Saying so got such a lost and angry look from Taichi, his retort burning into his mind anyway.

Tell that to the people that are left. Tell that to the people in the beds.

But they told the Digimon that. They told them all of the time, didn’t they?

No, we just left.

No, it’s different. Digimon — mostly — could be revived. Could reincarnate, start anew.

Humans couldn’t, can’t. It is just that simple.

Yamato scratches furiously into his essay, remembering his father and the divorce and being five. He remembers hearing his father drink his coffee and saying with guilt that the whole thing is anything but simple.

A rebellious part of him wants to believe that even now that it is nothing but hot air. They had chosen this, they had chosen themselves.

Did that mean they had chosen to accept the consequences too?

B-2

He and his mother call each other once a week. It is a tradition after that fateful summer, one he had started after his own guilt had gotten too big.

Yamato doesn’t think Takeru calls their father half as much, or that he even can. Dad has to work hard, just like their mother. It iss a curse of being promoted, he supposes. Not that he likes it any. His mother told him, presumably, what stories she told Takeru about work, harmless things, worrying things. Sometimes a part of him hoped she told him more, a secret set of words that stated him as the big brother.

He doesn’t ask though. He is old enough now not to call anymore.

So he tunes his guitar and waits for the weekly call. His sandwich is sitting half-eaten on his bedside table, Gabumon has command of the bed and is happily devouring his latest spicy concoction. Who would have thought that his partner would honestly like spicy food? It was a mystery for the ages. He strummed the strings and paused, watching them vibrate. Pausing.

Hesitation.

Taichi’s hesitation. What was it? What did he see that Yamato didn’t, in that black knight? What was it that paralyzed his best friend with fear and made him for a moment, regret? Because he knows it had to be regret there, for being able to stand idly by while their friends were being called simply monsters. Or was it idle?

He already knows the right thing to do so why isn’t he doing it?

Adulthood is a strange and nasty thing sometimes.

He pauses for another bite of food and his cell buzzes, Yamato picks it up and swallows. “Hello?”

“Yamato?”

His mother. Right on time. Something… doesn’t seem right. Her voice is shaking and tired, like she hasn’t slept since the last time he had talked. “Mom.” He sets his guitar down. “What’s going on? Rough day at work?”

She chuckles. “It’s always a rough day at work, Yamato, even if it goes well.” He laughs himself and almost feels the tension ease out of his back. Almost. The hair still sticks up on the back of his neck. “Is Takeru at your house today?”

“No? Unless he snuck in when I wasn’t looking. Why?” That urge comes crawling from the pit of his stomach, the desire to hold Takeru close to his chest until he is smothered and safe. He swallows and the feeling was painful.

“He called after class and said he was going to be a little late.” His mother’s voice doesn’t wobble unless she was shouting. Sure, it wavers, but it doesn’t sound like this, so close to simply giving out. “But, well, It’s after dark. I assumed he had just gone to check on you for a little while or ask for some homework help.”

“He knows better than that,” Yamato blurts before he can stop himself. “I’m horrible with my own homework.” That isn’t strictly true, but explaining the concepts without enough time to go over it himself was asking for a headache and him shouting at himself that ended up shouting at others. Sometimes he worries about his own self-awareness.

Besides, he needs his mother to laugh. He needs her to ease up if only to calm his own panic.

She does laugh but the sound is more hollow than it should have been and only makes his hands tremble and almost drop the plastic device. “I should know better. Well, maybe he got caught up at Yagami-kun’s house. I’ll call them when we’re done.”

“Yeah, you should,” he agrees, barely hearing his own voice. He looks over at Gabumon, who has his big red eyes trained on the phone, full of worry. Where Takeru went, nowadays, Patamon went also. So he is naturally worried. They were as much brothers as the human brothers. Yamato tried to smile and failed. For some reason, his ears tingle. Sora had said earrings should stop bothering you after the first couple of days. And yet these continue to itch. “Tell you what, mom, I’ll give him a call and make sure he gets back okay. You go ahead and get ready for bed and everything. If it’s too late by the time he’s done, he can just stay here, all right?”

He can see his mother nodding in his head. “Be careful, all right, Yamato? I don’t need both of you to get into all of that trouble.”

Yamato tries to laugh it off again and fails. He isn’t Taichi, and even Taichi had gone wrong on that. He says his goodbyes and hopped to his feet. The dread in his stomach is heavier than an elevator shaft, matched only by the weight about his ears.

“Gabumon?”

His partner is there, nosing his hand and quick on his feet. “I’ll be careful,” he promised. He would stick to the shadows. They would not have another incident. At least, he hopes they won’t.

Damn it why did humans have to make Digimon feel afraid?

He stops thinking about it, stops thinking about anything that isn’t Takeru. His little brother, with all the girls liking his winning smile, all of the friends who see blonde hair and think things they shouldn’t, things Takeru scolded them for while looking undeniably happy. Takeru, who is now brave enough to talk to girls at all that aren’t Hikari.

Takeru, who he knows still cries in his sleep sometimes.

Be safe, little brother, be safe or so help me, world.

B-3

He doesn’t look where he is going. It is so bright it isn’t even worth it. He is going to find his brother via sheer force of will. Behind him, Gabumon has his cell phone, calling friends, calling Taichi and there is a consistent, worried response of —

— “Takeru’s not around either?”—

(Hikari doesn’t respond at all.)

And it almost makes him stop dead, almost makes him stop and shout because he is still working on that anger management thing, still working on expressing healthily not internalizing with a heart attack on the way. He only shuts his eyes and just keeps looking.

Then Gabumon makes a deathly broken growling sound and Yamato opens his eyes to a puddle. Or at least the edge of a puddle. Looking down revealed water. Just water. Not blood.

No, he realizes as Gabumon goes running past, quick, big steps like they are stepping over a crime scene, not blood yet. That is further. That is far ahead with the blurred lump against an alley wall. It looks funnily charred

He can suddenly hear, hear so many noises and a ringing like a triangle instrument playing on repeat. The lump is a person. It could have been a drunkard. Perhaps two.

It isn’t. It doesn’t move as he steps closer. Something shifts. A scratching on the ground. Yamato turns—

Red claws reach for his eyes.

A rush of brown hair and cat claws and the red death traps are shoved aside, like nothing, by small, petite fingers. Yagami Hikari turnsto him, blood decorating white and pink fabric and with Tailmon at her heels. “Yamato-san,” she gasps, forcing air into her lungs. “What-What are you doing here?”

“What are you doing?” he repeats. It is all he could say with the shock in his chest. He had no idea how he could even hear her.

Hikari doesn’t answer immediately. Tailmon leaps, face bloody, and lands behind Gabumon. Both Digimon havetheir fangs bared towards something in the dark, a leaping something that somehow manages to stay out of the light of the lamp posts just enough that the red is the only thing he could constantly catch. Hikari is following it with her eyes. She raises a hand and for the first time he notices it is awash with white, streetpost light. She bites her lip and fires. The energy bursts out and connects. The attack lights up the monster. It is… a cat? A very large, very angry orange cat. Tailmon lunges with her paws balled into fists and ends up smacked into a wall.

The monster hisses, leaps, and is gone.

The only thing left is the sound of soft whimpers and a slowing drip-drip. Yamato turns around, looking for an attacker from every side. Too little, too late

Hikari, however, pays him no attention. She runs back to the blur he had seen before instead and Yamato turns to follow, at a loss. He doesn’t know why he did; he needs to keep looking for Takeru. Yet he can’t stop walking, because he had already found him.

Takeru is slumped over, three bloody gashes into his school uniform and skin, further even, if he dares to look. Beneath him lays a simple blob of gel and an unconscious girl with black hair.

“Yamato-san,” Hikari says, before he can even scream. She isn’t looking at him, but at the earrings he wears. “Help me please. We can fix this.”

B-4

Magic had saved Takeru.

Hikari’s voice repeated that in his ears. When he went past the middle school every day for a week, he would look and see him, chatting with his classmates, walking his bike with Hikari. There were no scars, Patamon was a constant presence in Koushiro’s cyberspace. He was giggling with his friends like nothing had happened after Alphamon, Alphamon who had been chasing something they had missed like it was nobody’s business. And whoever it was, they had escaped by the skin of their teeth.

Yamato didn’t care too much. His stomach churned all of the time.

Magic had saved Takeru.

Magic, or emotions. According to Hikari, they might as well have been the same thing.

According to Hikari, the world was a lot more simple and complicated than anyone took them. But wasn’t that just the way real life ran?

---

She had her hands, wet and red, pressed to Takeru’s back. She had her eyes shut and the pink light wrapped around her again, like it was easy. It was familiar, somehow. He couldn’t put words to why, but it was like the time they had seen themselves, small and trapped into watching two monsters fight for their lives, the creation of their choice made real.

“Help me, Yamato-san,” she repeated. The urgency cracked this time, full of exhaustion, bitter, tired, exhaustion. “I can’t do this without you.”

He’s emotionally frozen, emotionally in shock, she was asking too much. But his body knew what to do and moved over, kneeling. He looked at her. Yamato stared at the posts in his ears. She gestured with her elbows and he replaced her hands with his. What good would this do?

Her small palms closed over his ears. She was saying something, but he couldn’t hear it. What he could feel was… something. Something indeterminable, something wild and loud.

Howling. A wolf was howling somewhere in the distance.

Ice like the many mugs for tea, crystal and shining with the light of the world. He felt something, a rush, a dam opening and flooding out made of hailstones and a lack of forgiveness. He lunged at the power and it hurt. His Digivice sparked on his belt with Gabumon and for a moment, MetalGarurumon flickered to existence, outshining the buildings in blue for a few moments.

Then the rush of energy faded and the wounds were closing. The blue light centered around him and sparkled away, leaving him with new clothes and missing earrings.

Takeru, however, was breathing. The girl was breathing. The blood lingered on the concrete.

Hikari smiled in relief. “I knew you could do it.”

Do what?

---

Supposedly, as far as Takeru was aware, he had not been hurt in the slightest. He had been helping with Hikari (did that mean he knew?) and was heading home along the way. Hikari had said it was best for it to stay that way for the time being. He would be upset for Yamato to know what he had done. Like it was something incredible and good and yet full of consequences and evil.

His hands shook in class as he tried to put it out of his mind. His ears were no longer ringing.

He had taken Takeru home, and Patamon had chattered the whole time, apologizing and asking things Yamato couldn’t answer. Gabumon had eventually shushed him, at least until Takeru had woken up on his couch. Then he had lied as well as he possibly could.

The transformation had barely lasted long enough to get in the door. It hadn’t given him super strength or magical powers. Just healing hands. The irony was almost rageworthy.

Hikari had shaken her head and said, not yet, but disappeared with the dark-haired girl before providing any answers. He couldn’t help but wish for the time when the world had had the answers and not the girl who was surrounded in it.

B-5

Yamato’s hands shook in class. He barely managed to answer the questions the teachers asked, barely remembered to pass in his homework.

They shook like he had gone along with his band mates to put something in his veins. Crack? Was that what it was called? He didn’t really look into this stuff. Now he really never wanted to.

He turned the blur of events over in his mind. Hikari and Tailmon fighting a cat. A monster cat. What was likely a Digimon. It had killed Takeru. He had brought him back, somehow.

Did Taichi know?

Was this where their juniors had gone? Where were they?

---

’Unlock that which you locked away. Pull it from the darkness into yourself.”

The message sat in his own email inbox, only not deleted because he had already tried to and it had just come right back. Everyone had it.

Takeru was worried about him, how he always looked away from him. He couldn’t say it now. How could he say he had seen him bled out on the ground? How well would that go over? How could he say he had saved him?

In the past, Taichi would have told him to just say it. Now they weren’t speaking to each other, and really, wasn’t this proving him right? That fighting, that acting, was more necessary than thinking on and on a bout the lives that wouldn’t come back? Didn’t they have to stop this?

If he kept looking at Takeru, he would hesitate.

---

if Hikari were further away from her tether and had more experience, she would have blurted the whole truth as she knew it to Yamato-san and been done with it. If she were less tired and more understanding she would have told him this was the necessary thing, the best way to fight.

But she had been so tired. Attacking that Digimon still took too much energy. Giving Yamato power and bringing back Takeru, it had just been too much in one day.

Takeru had to be careful. He wasn’t the phoenix here.

She set Mochizuki Meiko on her bed. The girl was no worse for the wear, if exhausted. Hikari stood back, preparing to hurry through the open window before her energy wore away. Tailmon checked the locks, moved to shut the screen door behind them. Meiko’s voice, frail and wan, rasped from the bed.

“Still no good.”

Resigned. Months and months of resignation. Hikari knew she didn’t know the half of it. She knew the third of it, the part with her friends, with Alphamon. With Ken. Or what looked like Ken.

Takeru showed no effects from the attack. But he would. She knew it. She was sure of it. She feared for it. But maybe it would be enough to wake up Yamato-san’s powers with, push her brother on the right track. Push them all forward. Including herself. Maybe it would give them the powers they needed to fight against the threat, whatever it truly was.

If such powerful Digimon were involved, like Alphamon, then it had to be awful.

“It will be,” Hikari said to Meiko.

No response. Meiko-chan had likely fallen asleep again. Hikari turned and jumped the balcony, holding Tailmon tight in her arms. It would be so much easier to evolve her partner, but she couldn’t. This was the countermeasure left in her D-3. It would be so much easier to involve her friends and explain the reality.

But it was just her still. Her and Yamato-san. And Takeru, when he healed. And the others, once they were saved and healed. Once they were brought back.

Once everyone could be together, they could figure out what to do with the cat, the wild animal that had once been a digimon.

Hikari made it to a darkened street before her body glowed pink and she returned to her school uniform, white pin slipping itself into her bangs. Tailmon jumped into a nearby ATM. Her near-silent disappearance was signaled with a soft good-night.

Hikari’s shoulders sagged and she looked around for where she had hidden her bookbag. She began the trek toward him, towards a bed. She looked forward to sleeping.

She did not look forward to dreaming.

G

It always started the same for her. She would be looking at the sky. Sometimes it would be blood-red, other nights it would be pitch black but for the light of small Digivices, the remnants of the power of stars. If stars had emotions, that was her idea.

Hikari always was against a tree, slumped there. Her arms and legs were pinned by pain. She did not try to move anything other than her head and even that was a journey. She couldn’t even see Takeru like this. He was sometimes trying to get up. Others he was buried under tree roots and Tokomon. Pain was there loud and clear.

Ahead of them, in the distance her eyes said really wasn’t as bad, were the other four. Their friends. The second generation.

They were falling.

Iori’s small hands were surrounded by the remains of a bokken. Miyako’s glasses twisted and shattered. Daisuke’s precious gift from her brother, cracked in the middle.

Four Digivices with shattered screens.

The Digimon were somewhere she couldn’t see, or perhaps dead even. The only Digimon standing was the black knight. The only Digimon standing had a storm dancing its tune.

And every time, every time, he was always looking at her. It was with without accusation and malice, but it was always an expression directed towards her.

The Digimental does not defend.

The words were whispered in the wind, echoing in the space between brain and ears.

The Digimental does not defend, only dilutes. The Crests have slept too long.

A crushing feeling, four bodies crumpled in what was left of the grass. And then her, and perhaps Takeru too, dropped in the middle school computer lab with her old pin in her fingers and Takeru clutching his cell phone.

(She had heard stories of Digivices appearing from cell phones in other places.)

Hikari always woke up with her pin in her hand, even if it was left on the bathroom sink, even if she didn’t dream. The little red gem in it glittered to the unseen stars.

Tonight was no different. She woke up and uncurled her left hand. There it was again. Like a reminder. A warning.

She would have laughed if her parents and brother weren’t asleep in the next room. If she felt like laughing. Constant vigilance or something right? What did the world know? It had thrown her into a world full of that. It was a world that she loved very much, but it was a world of paranoia just the same. Tailmon definitely had that correct at the very least.

Hikari waited for her heartbeat to slow and listened to the filtering sounds of Agumon and Taichi snoring in the next room. Eventually, she drifted off to sleep again, and let the night go forgotten until tomorrow. Or perhaps even later.

Unfortunately, this time she dreamed of a prophecy.

D-1

Yamato wakes up every night freezing cold. Sometimes the shower works, other times steam falls off of his skin and he feels like he’s back in the frozen tundra of File Island and collapsed in the snow. His body is sluggish and he can’t hold the guitar for half as long as he used to be able to. It’s a problem for the band, but the Digital World is more important. It just is.

He can’t take his earrings out either. Not even due to the holes anymore, the posts just burn at the touch of his fingers. He’s not sure what that means, and he hasn’t seen Hikari to ask.

Who he has seen is a transfer student, a quiet, dark-haired girl with glasses who sometimes looks at him for too long. Or at Taichi. Over a few days of observation, he’s realized it was Taichi and he doesn’t quite like it as much as he should. He feels as though he should say something, but=

They had fought over Alphamon, fought over fighting and he doesn’t want to listen when his inability killed Takeru—

(Yes, but he’s back you know? Stop fussing.)

Not good enough, not even close to good enough. They’re separated but he promised his mother and his father that when Takeru was around he would do right by him and he definitely had to so—

“Ow!” He clapped his hands over his ears, dropping his chopsticks. Tan hands caught them and Taichi set them back on the table in silence. They were at least getting better at the civil part, well, in public anyway. It would look weird if they didn’t hang out or anything and worry their families more than usual. Yamato nodded in thanks and took them back. They continued to eat in quiet for a while, until Taichi said,

“Hikari has those gems in her pin.”

Yamato slurped a noodle and wiped his face. “What?”

Taichi scratched his head. “I saw it when she was coming out of the shower the other day. I didn’t think anything of it until I saw you wearing them. They the latest trend, or something?”

Yamato frowns again, deeper this time. He doesn’t know Hikari well, she’s a Chosen Child, but in the end, she’s Taichi’s little sister and Takeru’s good friend, so he doesn’t know anything and he probably shouldn’t to begin with. Unless he needs to. It’s striking him that he needs to. Crap.

Still, even he knows that Hikari does not talk about her problems or her sadness or what she sees. He doesn’t know why, all he knows from Takeru is that she does that and it’s problematic on so many levels. It also sounds a lot like him, but he’s going to ignore that fact for a few minutes.

“They… no, I don’t think so.” Well that wasn’t helpful. Taichi’s raised eyebrow all the way into his hairline tells him that. Yamato struggles to elaborate, struggles to articulate. “I’ll be honest… I don’t know what they are. What I do know is…”

He explains it all, slowly, every detail he can remember (contrary to popular belief, trauma does fuzz the details) and watches Taichi’s eyes grow wider and wider and then narrow again, possibly with anger. They are in agreement on that. What have their siblings been doing?

Taichi doesn’t speak for a long time. He wants to shake him for his indecision, even though he knows in the end that he’s having the same problem and he probably shouldn’t.

Then he hears the whispers as his phone begins to buzz.

Digimon. All over the news again. All over the eyes of everyone. Some people are just curious. Taichi’s eyes flick over pictures of Osaka, cities aflame, monsters screaming. If Imperialdramon was around, they could have gotten rid of them, made them less of a threat.

That would involve Daisuke and Ichijouji, and that would only make people more afraid. On some level he understands.

The rest of him just wants to jump the table and start smashing people in the face.

Taichi? He looks tired.

“We just have to do what we can,” he says, picking at his sandwich. “Hikari is, Takeru is. We have to, but… what can we do?”

The easiest answer is ‘fight’. Yamato, remembering Takeru’s blood in the asphalt, feels a pit in his stomach. The easiest answer isn’t always right.

He is relieved to see Taichi staring down the whisperers though. Who knew that he could be intimidating?

D-2

He finds her. He finally finds that dark haired girl. She fidgets behind Mimi all of the time, dragged around by the endless go-getter attitude that will definitely get her into trouble again. Their attitudes always get them into trouble. (Where is Jou, anyway) At least, being a Chosen Child has always seemed to get them into those sorts of issues. Being a Chosen Child determines that their emotional imbalance affects the world.

They should have been warned about puberty.

He catches the girl. She sees him and squeaks, ducking away with something clutched tight in her hand. He doesn’t have to guess. He knows what it means to hold onto something small for dear life.

He wishes Gabumon were here to get in the way. Regardless, he manages to rope Sora into helping, on the pretense that he thought she was flirting with Takeru.

(Close, it’s close, he saved her life and-)

“W-What do you want?” Her voice quakes, and he feels the tense coil of his intensines unwind before he can stop it. Now he feels a little foolish, but a part of him, probably the part that was woken up on that night, was not going to stop. Sora’s watching him.

“Why were you attacked that night?” Why was Takeru killed? He doesn’t say this but he wants to. He doesn’t really have to. Her eyes have gone wide possibly with recognition.

Sora’s intake of breath is more of anger than astonishment. Lovely for her down-to-earth behavior now. He could smell an interrogation in the air. He will get it later though, he knows it.

The girl watches him, fear draining into soul deep, bone heavy exhaustion. “It… it’s hard to explain.” She wrings her hands, an old woman gesture he hasn’t even seen his own mother do.

“Try.” It’s a request, and he realizes too late that it’s come out like a command. Yamato softens his expression and it’s hard because everything in hi, has been rough and jagged by his own making. “Please,” he adds, to make it easier.

The girl nibbles on her lip. She sighs. “My… My digimon is trying to… to integrate me into a crusade. She wants to destroy the human race.”

Well, that was along the lines of what he could believe, but he certain wasn’t expecting that.

D-3

Hikari closes her eyes and remembers.

Every night. Between the glowing of the gems and the screaming pain in her bones, she can remember. The others falling, Takeru stumbling. Alphamon, the savior of right and wrong, looking at her with such heavy eyes. Raising his -their— heavy hand and crashing power into her chest.

Red gems raised over her eyes.

I am the Alpha.

I am Alpha.

I am.

You are.

In the beginning, there was darkness. Then the almighty said, ‘let there be light.’

Was it not the same for you?

She needs to stop thinking about it.

Hikari opens her eyes and clutches her chest. Sweat taints her neck and shirt, eyes wide. Tailmon sleeps on beside her. She’s the weight of a beanbag chair, but she still has sharp claws. Hence why Hikari makes her take the gloves off. Tailmon would never forgive herself if she lost an eye.

Not that the magic wouldn’t grow it back.

Light is the progenitor. Light is everything.

Light was the source of Courage. Light was the source of all.

In that fight, in that moment with Alphamon, she had seen so much, felt so much. It was like being eight years old again and looking Mugendramon in the eye sockets and being aware of the universe and feeling all of its instants in one inhale.

And that was when she had gotten the gems, gained the warning.

Look for the end of your spiral. Watch for her.

She had. She had found her and all of the power in her. She had been too late.

That was what woke her up at night, more than the unmoving bodies of her friends, more than the slow twisting of Takeru’s wrists. The feeling of her equal, her near better only in sheer untapped malice, taking victory with ease, even now…

She looked at the invisible lines on her hands. Then, she laid back.

And now Yamato-san had that same power. She wonders if it means much more than it should.

The others would probably get them. All that mattered was when and where.

No, that didn’t exactly matter either. She was the origin. In the end, it would be all down to her.

Hikari isn’t sure how she feels about that.

She sighs softly and lays her head back down, pin curled in one fist. She vaguely notices that Taichi has stopped snoring, but it isn’t that important now. She needs to be rested for tomorrow.

She thinks so. Then there’s a loud cracking thud from their balcony. Tailmon snarls awake.

Hikari doesn’t think. She rolls out of bed, transforming in a wash of pink, and lunges.

Meicrackmon meets her with a shrieking giggle.

Next to her is a boy with a familiar visor.

Hikari sighs gently, painfully. “Ichijouji-kun.”

If it’s not him, then it’s his doppelganger.

She hears the beat of torn up wings and tenses up. This… will be difficult, especially now that her big brother is awake.

There is so much that she needs to tell people, needs to say. But she can’t. Her gems bind her to silence.

D-4

Yamato wakes from his first good sleep in weeks to Gabumon fiddling with his front door. He knows because he can hear the lock failing to open. This is why Digimon need thumbs. Yamato sits up, looks at the animal’s bloodshot eyes. It’s only then that he hears the frantic knocking at the door. He rolls out of bed with a grumble. For some reason he grabs his Digivice and the earrings.

Taichi falls in, literally. Blood almost drenches the front of his shirt. Koromon’s ear feelers were limp on his head. Yamato barely manages to help Taichi to a chair, getting his dad’s first aid kit (he stubbornly denies that his dad ever bought that for him.) and hurries over, Gabumon shuts the door. Taichi is in a daze but the slam makes him snap to and he struggles. Yamato glares.

“You should be at the hospital,” he says, “removing the shirt. The gashes are long but shallow, and he makes an absent gesture to Gabumon to use the phone. Taichi coughs and shakes his head.

“Can’t,” he manages, snatching the towel and pressing it to the cuts. Yamato scowls but keeps quiet because he’s going to continue. “They got Hikari. If I go, they’ll finish the job. Only one of them, two of us.”

“Got?” His stomach fills with lead. Hikari had been avoiding him, Takeru too. Was this linked to that? “By what? How is she?”

“Bad,” Taichi manages, coughing again. It looks red. His tan skin looks very red. “Emergency room and everything. She was covering Mom and Dad… they could have killed u—” He stops and starts coughing again.

Yamato hears the plastic click of the receiver. He just has to keep Taichi here, get him to press the wounds, to stop that coughing. It’ll all be fine. “Who,” he says, moving Taichi.

Taichi makes to answer, and coughs. It takes him a minute to realize it’s not a cough. It’s a name.

Ken.

He hears a rush of wind and the red posts in his hands tremble and bounce in his palm. He grimaces and sees a glimpse of tattered purple wings and the windows tingle and then shatter as though punctured with bullets.

He turns to see the flattened roof of a building, sinking down into the earth. There’s probably screaming, but he can’t hear it. He sees Imperialdramon, cannon squared at them all. The posts are freezing cold and suddenly he feels something ease out of him. The tension in his stomach simmers out and somehow, the rapid world of nonsense around them became softer and like a gentle breeze. He opens his eyes.

Yamato, somehow, can feel Taichi’s wild heartbeat, burning hot. Sun Courage. The Moon is Friendship. The gentle cool of the ice, the water, is friendship. Metal and ice.

He remembers Hikari’s voice, frantic and sweet. He can do this. He can save them.

“Cut through sound, Mithril.”

O

There is no sky anywhere.

To Mochizuki Meiko, the Digital World has either been the sky or never had one. There was no in between. Now the worlds are stuck in each other’s sky. There is no in between.

It’s all her fault.

The first time she had gone to the Digital World, it had been after meeting her Meimei. A sweet, somewhat timid cat, she ate anything in front of her and used the litter box. Her parents were so busy, it had worked out just fine. Even Himekawa-san was—

She shook her head, making herself stare resolutely up at the ‘sky’ once more.. It was best not to think of Himekawa-san or Daigo-san anymore. They were… already—

Dead? Gone? She wasn’t sure what had happened. All she remembered was red… then white. It had coalesced into pink, become a light the brightest in the sky. That was when she had met Hikari-san.

Things had not gotten better from there.

A cracked black Digivice sits in her pocket, the screen as blue as old error screens. It’s been blue since Meimei left. How odd. It should probably be red.

She shakes her head, fingers tremble as they hold her glasses. Her red glasses, tainted with the gems. If she just threw them away, she could get a new pair, never be found again. Meimei wouldn’t smell her without the gems.

But she couldn’t throw them away. Not even a few hours of near-blindness would be enough to throw away everything of Meimei. If only she knew why.

She stares up and up and up at the ‘sky’. If she reaches out, she thinks she can touch a mountain range. But she can’t, really. No one can. Not without being able to fly.

She watches a dark shape jet across sky, streaking purple and red as it flew. Imperialdramon Infection. The spread was increasing.

She touches her glasses and they warm on her face. She reaches out again to the mountain. This time, something forms in front of her hand. At first, it is nothing more than a blue orb. Then white tendrils spread out where its bottom might be, spreading like tree branches and braiding them together, folding over themselves in an effort to become one, until it is like a tree. Then, it drops, leaving her fumbling to catch it. The second it touches her fingers, the warmth becomes ice cold. Yet, it’s quite comforting.

“Mochizuki Meiko?”

She turns. It’s that blond teenager from before, Takeru-kun’s brother, she thinks she remembers from their stories.

“H-Hello,” she begins, stepping back before she can stop herself. She curls the strange object into her arms before she can stop herself.

He almost smiles. Almost. It seems to be as hard for him as it is for her. “Relax,” he says. Then she notices the boy behind her the other one. She pauses in confusion. Yagami Taichi.

“I-I’m really sorry about—” Her throat catches and brown and blue eyes narrow. Sorry about what? Sorry their friends are gone? Sorry Takeru died and lived again? Sorry Hikari was now fighting for her life? Sorry because she had taken in Meimei?

Or sorry because she wasn’t doing anything about it?

All of those seemed apt, in the end.

They look at each other, warring silently, eyes speaking better than mouths. She pauses, takes note of their faces. She’s on a roof, she isn’t in a state where she can jump and survive, but maybe that would be better. Maybe Meimei would stop running loose, stop being hurt and hurting others. What happened to a Digimon partner when a human died?

She wasn’t sure if she wanted to know. Not even out of fear for her own death but because dying wouldn’t tell her.

“You…” Hikari-san’s brother struggles with words. “Do you know what’s going on? With any of this?”

Meiko fidgets. She struggles to remember what Hikari and Takeru had said when they had met, what she had heard. She tightens her grip on the strange, cold object in her arms. She remembers a giant gray dragon chasing her, whirling, whining noise at her heels, red light taking strands of orange and cream fur, and a croaking voice right in her ear. She swallows.

“Have you ever heard of the Analogman?”