Disclaimer: I don't make any out of writing this. Digimon belongs to Toei and Bandai, not to me.

Notes: This chapter was beta read by Stained in Negativity, and I'm very grateful to her; even though her stories aren't exactly my thing, they aren't bad either, so count this as a rec.

To Forgive and Forget

Chapter 1: Return

High above the still waters, a dark silhouette soared through the air on mismatched wings, practically invisible against the clouded night sky.

It didn't know who it was, or why it had come into being. It didn't even know where this journey would lead it.

But as it flew ever closer to the clouds, fuelled by instinct and distant memory, it knew one thing - it was looking for someone. Someone, who - in another time, in another place - had done something unforgivable. Something which deserved retribution.

And it was angry. Very angry.

In the sky, a watery sun shone feebly onto the graveyard. A slight breeze ruffled the darkened, bare branches of the trees. Piles of clean, white snow were littering the ground.

A lone young boy was making his way through the slush, his thick blue coat wrapped tightly around him, a plastic carrier bag grasped tightly in one hand. He walked on past the assorted graves, giving only cursory glances to each headstone he passed.

"Iori!" a raspy voice called from behind him. "Wait up, wait up!"

Iori looked over his shoulder, and noticed that the yellow armadillo-like Digimon had stopped walking. He laughed. "Come on, Armadimon, the snow isn't that bad!"

Armadimon snorted. "Easy for you to say, Iori, with your warm coat and your warm vest and your... uh..." He shook his head. "Point is, couldn't you have picked a day to visit when it wasn't so cold?"

"If you want to take a little rest, that's okay," Iori told him. "I'll only be a minute. Here, look after this -"

The bag landed on the ground with a wet thump.

"H-Hey! Iori! Don't leave me behind!"

Armadimon watched his partner's retreating back, and sighed. Eventually, he pulled himself to his feet, took one of the handles in his mouth and followed the footsteps Iori had left in the snow.

Compared to the other surrounding gravestones, this particular one was still relatively shiny and new-looking. Carefully, almost reverentially, Iori reached out a gloved hand and brushed away some of the snow covering it. He bowed his head.

"...Father," he whispered, staring at the ground.

It wasn't often that Iori visited this grave. This was only the fourth time he'd set foot in the graveyard all year, and even that was more often than usual - normally, months could go by between visits. Iori always found it surprising, given how infrequent his trips were, how he nearly always found himself short of things to tell his father.

"I'm... doing well," he said out loud. "Same goes for mother, and grandpa. I hope you're all right too... wherever you are."

He clenched his fists and carried on.

"School? I don't think I'm doing badly... I'm in the fourth grade now. About a month ago, we took a test, and I came out with one of the top ten marks in the grade." I hope you're proud of me, he added silently.

Somewhere on the edge of Iori's hearing, a faint sound of footsteps crunching through the snow was getting steadily closer. He ignored them.

"The Digital World? I know, it's been nearly a year. We're still busy cleaning things up. The boundaries of the Digital World are still pretty unstable, but we're getting there. Of course, without your friend Mr. Oikawa, we would be even further behind." Iori smiled ruefully to himself. "Then again, without Mr. Oikawa, there probably wouldn't be anything to clean up in the first place."

He heard Armadimon's voice from some distance away. "Iori! Hey, Iori! What'd you ditch me for?"

Iori looked up. "Just a moment, all right?" he called back, and turned back to the gravestone. "I have to go now," he said, his voice barely above a whisper. "Mother asked me to run some errands for her earlier... I only came here because we were going home, and it wasn't out of the way. And of course, none of us know when the next violent Digimon is going to slip between the worlds. But..." He bowed his head again. "I'll visit you again. I promise."

Walking away, he nearly tripped over Armadimon, who was huddled on the ground beside his shopping.

"Aah!"

The Digimon blinked. "Done already, Iori?"

"Yeah, I think so." Iori picked up the carrier bag again. "Come on, let's go home."

As the two of them were nearing their apartment complex, Iori almost walked into a familiar purple-haired girl running round the corner.

"H-Hey... Miyako!" Iori took a step back. "Where are you going?"

"Iori?" Miyako adjusted her glasses, and stared for a moment. Her face broke into a wide smile. "Bingo! I was looking for you, Iori! I just went up to your apartment, and they told me you were -"

"Yeah, I took Armadimon out shopping." He held up the bag of groceries, grinning apologetically. "Sorry, Miyako, but my mother insisted that I go somewhere else for a change."

Miyako snorted. "Your mother insisted, did she? And what about us? What about our business, our livelihood, eh, Iori? Oh, the next time I see your mother, she is going to get a roasting! Aren't we supposed to be your -"

Iori waved his free hand in the air, cutting Miyako off for the second time. "That aside, what did you want me for?"

"Ah... right, right." Miyako sighed. "You see, we're -"

"Another Digimon that's broken into here, right?" interrupted Armadimon, from the pavement.

Miyako stamped her foot impatiently. "Be quiet and let me talk!" she snapped.

Iori caught Armadimon's eye, and they both giggled.

The older Chosen sighed, calming down. "Okay, okay, so where was I? Yeah, it's a Digimon. Koushirou sent an e-mail to everyone's D-Terminals this morning. Actually, they're all at his place right now - he figured that yours ran out of batteries or something, so they just sent me down to fetch you."

Iori felt a slight pang of guilt. His D-Terminal... he knew he should have had it on him. After all, who knew when the next emergency might suddenly crop up? But with his increasingly busy schedule, coupled with the fact that Digimon emergences were steadily growing less frequent as time went on, he'd started leaving it at home out of habit. It hadn't run out of batteries at all - in fact, it was probably sitting on his desk with one unread message right now.

He reached into his pocket. Yes, at least he'd brought his D3. He wouldn't be entirely useless. He nodded. "Let's go then, Miyako."

"But, Iori," Armadimon protested, "what are you gonna do with all that shopping?"

Iori shrugged. "I guess I'll just have to drop it off later."

In the Izumi apartment, Miyako pushed at the door of Koushirou's room only to find that it refused to budge.

"What are you playing at now? It's me! I've got Iori! Let us in!"

"What's the password?" a slightly muffled voice came from inside.

Miyako glared at the door. "What do you mean, password? I don't remember a password!"

"She's right, Daisuke," said a higher-pitched voice uncertainly. "I don't remember us having one either..."

"Shut up! Miyako doesn't know that!" they heard Daisuke hiss.

"I can hear you two, you know!" Miyako snapped angrily. She kicked the door inwards, and this time it did open - there was a dull thud from the other side of the door, followed by the sound of both Daisuke and Chibimon cursing.

Iori walked into the bedroom, Armadimon following close behind. The others were already there. He bowed stiffly, trying not to show off his bag of groceries. "I'm so sorry for being late. I was... busy. Running errands." At least that's partly true, he assured himself.

Koushirou nodded, from his chair in front of the computer. "Don't worry about it, Iori. But we'd better not waste any more time..."

He turned to the others. "All right, let's recap what we know so far, so Iori knows what's going on. It's back. Tentomon says that it's been sighted in various parts of the Digital World. We've got evidence that it's already broken through - we don't know exactly where it is right now, but it's somewhere in Japan, and going from the accounts we've gathered it'll be here in a day or two. No news of it damaging any buildings yet like last time, but it's still not a good idea to let it fly around in the real world doing whatever it wants to. It might turn up in Odaiba pretty soon, and all of us will have to be ready..."

Iori coughed. "I'm... sorry if I missed something," he said, as politely as he could manage, "but... which Digimon would this be?"

Koushirou looked at him blankly for a second, until realisation dawned. "Oh, so you didn't receive the mail after all?"

"I'm sorry," Iori said again.

"Well, in that case..." Koushirou turned back to his computer, and quickly typed something in. He stood up and moved away from it so that Iori could see. "Look at this picture."

On the screen was a fuzzy, low-quality photograph of what appeared to be a normal park, complete with flowers, trees and picnic benches. But up in the sky, a large and imposing figure cast a shadow over the grass...

Four arms. Four wings. Garurumon's legs. Kabuterimon's head.

Iori stepped back in surprise. "Chimeramon! But... how? And why here?"

He stared at Ken, who was sitting on Koushirou's bed with Minomon in his arms. For the first time, Iori noticed that he was looking uncharacteristically tired.

"I know what you're going to say," he said quietly before Iori could open his mouth again. Was his voice shaking, or was it just Iori's imagination? "I don't know how. I thought he was dead for good... just like everyone else did..."

Iori looked at his feet. Inwardly, he chided himself for automatically assuming it was Ken's fault. He's been through a lot! You can't still blame him, more than a year later. Leave him alone for once...

Takeru spoke up, Patamon perched on the top of his hat. "Something you haven't told us yet, though, Koushirou - how did Chimeramon come back? All of us were watching when it got deleted."

"By me!" Chibimon piped up proudly from the carpet. Daisuke scowled at him and tried to cover his partner's mouth with one hand.

Koushirou ignored them, suddenly looking thoughtful. "I'm not sure," he said eventually. "At first I thought it had something to do with the fact that all Digimon are reconfigured after dying..."

Ken and Takeru glanced at their respective partners.

"But that doesn't explain how Chimeramon managed to evolve back up to its Perfect-level in such a small amount of time," Koushirou continued. There was a faraway look in his eyes. "Without a human partner, evolution is supposed to be really difficult for Digimon. Never mind Perfect, even reaching Adult-level naturally should take at least a few years..."

Tailmon, at Hikari's feet, nodded in agreement.

"And we also have to consider that -"

"Does it matter, Koushirou?" Daisuke interrupted loudly. He pulled himself to his feet. "Listen to you, telling us all not to waste time, and then waffling about some stupid theory for hours... It's not important! What's important is that there's this mad Digimon on the loose, and we're going to make sure things don't go the way it wants them to!"

"I don't know, Daisuke," said Hikari uncertainly. "Most of us had a pretty tough time against him before."

Daisuke waved the comment aside. "Yeah, maybe we did - but that was then, when we only had our armour Digimon to back us up. We can match Chimeramon for power now! We've all got perfect-types of our own; we can outnumber it three to one! I mean, it only took me and Ken to beat Armagemon back in March - well, maybe Taichi and the others helped us out a bit... But my point is, he was way tougher than any stupid flying jigsaw!" He caught Ken's eye. "No offense or anything."

Ken said nothing.

"So we're going to meet this guy head-on, and we will wipe him out again! With any luck, he'll see us and run home crying!" Daisuke punched the air. "Everybody's with me, right?"

"Right!" the others chorused.

Only Ken didn't seem to be enthusiastic. Iori looked at him, concerned.

I wonder what's on his mind...