Author's Note:

Hi everyone, and welcome to my first fanfic. Now, despite really enjoying Digimon, I will have to confess that I haven't seen as much of it as I should have- I recently re-watched the first four seasons and read V-Tamer 01, but I haven't seen anything that aired afterwards. In order to make up for that, I used the wiki a ton while preparing for this. While looking up information, I did come across some plot points from Data Squad that are very similar to what I want to do, and obviously some of my plot points have been found in just about any continuation of Adventure other people have written. I do not intend to steal anybody's ideas, but I will apologize in advance to anyone who thinks I stole their plots.

Now that I have explained some potential issues with the plot, I'll go a bit into the background of my story. First, I will be mixing some of the dub names and the original names within my story, only based on my personal preference with the names and which ones I am most comfortable with, so I'll apologize for any confusion that will arise because of that. Second, I will be basing my chronology mostly on the Japanese timeline, with Adventure taking place in 1999, the movie Our War Game taking place in early 2000 a few months before the DigiDestined give up their crests, the events of 02 taking place in 2002, and Revenge of Diaboromon taking place in early 2003. I will also be including events from the CD dramas, especially "Armor Evolution to the Unknown", which occur sometime after the end of the show. I know the third movie, Hurricane Landing, is not canon, but I will be acting as if it happened in between episodes 21 and 22- Ken is no longer evil but is not a member of the team, and Davis, Yolei and Cody haven't reached champion form yet- this is the best place I could think to fit it in. This story will take place about five and a half years after 02, starting in July of the year 2008. Since I can't find any of the DigiDestined's birthdays, I'm going to assume the official ages given are the ages all the characters had in July of the years given, which means the ages are as follows in this story:

Jyou "Joe" Kido: 21

Taichi "Tai" Kamiya: 20

Yamato "Matt" Ishida: 20

Sora Takenouchi: 20

Mimi Tachikawa: 19

Koushiro "Izzy" Izumi: 19

Miyako "Yolei" Inoue: 18

Takeru "TK" Takaishi: 17

Hikari "Kari" Kamiya: 17

Daisuke "Davis" Motomiya: 17

Ken Ichijouji: 17

Iori "Cody" Hida: 15

I know Adventure 02 stopped with trying to get mainly plausible Anglicized nicknames for the DigiDestined, but I'm going to say the dub names are just nicknames for everybody just to be consistent. I will also be using the dub last name for Tai and Kari because, to me, Taichi Yagami refers to the V-Tamer 01 version. I am also going to assume that all the DigiDestined are among the younger members of their grades, so with a brief search on the Japanese school system, Joe is in his fourth year of college, and everyone else follows with the years they are behind him, meaning TK, Kari, Davis, and Ken are in their final year of high school and Cody is in his first year, since in Japan high school lasts for three years instead of the four here in America. I will be trying to make this as close to canon as possible for a fanfic, so the epilogue that we saw set in 2027, or at least my interpretation of that epilogue, is still going to happen. How we get to that epilogue is completely up to me, however, so you can expect a bumpy ride before we get to that mainly idyllic ending. And since this Author's note wasn't ridiculously long enough yet, I'd just like to quickly thank my friend Meghan for being my beta reader and helping me fix a few mistakes. Now, I hope you enjoy the story!

Mathemagician

Disclaimer: I do not own Digimon in any of its forms.

The first thing she was aware of was the feeling of the sand lying beneath her. Puzzled at this, she pushed herself upright and opened her eyes to examine her surroundings. What met her was not the bright sandy beach where she had been hoping to spend most of her summer vacation, but instead a dismal gray expanse that met an ocean that had no hint of blue. Though she hadn't seen this place in years, she knew instantly where she was: the Dark Ocean. Before she could wonder about how she had ended up here, she noticed the vast multitude of shadowy creatures rising out of the ocean and coming towards her. Quickly looking around for a means to escape, she realized she was not alone, as she saw three other familiar figures stirring in the sand behind her.

"TK? Yolei? Ken? Are you alright?"

The three others sat up, but before they could respond, she was answered by a deep, booming voice from the direction of the ocean.

"I'm glad to see your light still makes you care so much for others, Kari. However, a queen really shouldn't distract herself with such worthless creatures. I guess I'll just have to remove them! Forbidden Trident!"

Kari looked to see a giant blue creature that was composed almost entirely of tentacles. However, most of them were chained together in a grotesque facsimile of human limbs, and a pair of red demonic wings extended from his back. His head looked much like an octopus, but his mouth was lined with sharp fangs and a necklace of black pearls hung on his neck. However, the main thing Kari noticed was the giant trident held in the creature's single tentacle that served as his right arm. The creature hurled the trident towards the beach, but to Kari's horror, it was aimed directly at the others. She ran towards her three friends, but this only served to allow the trident to hit all four of them…

Suddenly, four separate teenagers bolted upright in their beds.

As soon as Kari had calmed down from her nightmare, she noticed a large pair of blue eyes staring at her from the foot of her bed. However, she only panicked for a brief second before she realized the eyes belonged to the white, catlike form of her partner Gatomon. Her friend was looking at her with concern clearly visible on her face.

"Are you okay, Kari?"

"I'm fine Gatomon. I just had a nightmare- it wasn't anything to worry about. I'm probably just really stressed from the end of the term and the last of my college applications. I'll be fine."

"Are you sure? I'm pretty sure you don't start flickering because you're stressed. That hasn't happened since you went to the Dark Ocean six years ago. I know you hate to have other people worry about you so much, but you have to tell us if there is a major issue so we can try to help!"

Kari paled slightly at her words- if she really had been flickering, than had her dream been more than just a dream? She had thought the creatures of the Dark Ocean had given up on making her their queen. They hadn't done anything since that first meeting, but now they seemed to be attacking- no, she couldn't afford to think like that. That train of thought would just lead her into panic, and she had promised herself a long time ago that she wouldn't always sit around panicking and waiting for someone to come and save her. Besides, even if the Dark Ocean really was after her again, she would have the dreams for a few weeks before she actually got pulled into that world, just like last time. One night didn't really mean anything, and getting upset about the attack would only make it easier for the darkness to get a hold of her. So, the logical thing from her point of view was merely to view the experience as a simple nightmare.

"I don't know. You might have imagined me flickering, and even if the Dark Ocean is getting stronger, it will be much more difficult for it to take me. I'm not going to just sit by and let the darkness scare me like a little kid anymore. It was only one dream, and I'm not going to ruin our plans for the upcoming reunion just so people can start worrying like crazy over me again."

Gatomon sighed, but had to admit her partner had a point. The flickering she had seen had been so faint and over so quickly that she may have just imagined it. Also, even though Kari was now a very independent teenager, people still tended to fuss over her like she was a helpless newborn kitten whenever there was a potential threat. Knowing how much she resented this treatment, Gatomon decided to let the issue slide- for now. Besides, telling the other DigiDestined would ruin the important reunion planned for the upcoming weekend.

Despite saving the world together and remaining close friends, the DigiDestined had had a much harder time staying as a close group as they grew older. Ken had always gone to a different school than the others, but with all of the DigiDestined older than Kari going off to college for different subjects it was too hard for them all to do more than the occasional online chat. Thus, they tried to make sure all twelve of them would leave one week in their summer break open so they could all get together. This also served as a way for all the Digimon to meet with their partners again. While the younger kids still lived with their Digimon at home, the older kids hadn't been allowed to keep their best friends with them when they moved off to college. While the world as a whole was slowly getting more accustomed to Digimon coming to the real world, many people refused to see them as unique individuals and merely considered them dangerous pets. This view was only reinforced by the popular Virtual Pet videogame released back in 2004, which, though being based on Digimon, revolved strictly around raising the creatures to battle. Thus, every university had taken to banning Digimon from its campus, and the DigiDestined thought it would be better to follow this rule rather than expose their friends to the dangers of an intolerant society. Of course, they were working on getting people to accept Digimon through various awareness groups and student organizations on campus, but social change requires time, and they weren't going to hurt their cause by becoming radical extremists with their protests. The Digimon understood this and returned to the Digital World, but they still enjoyed every chance they got to be with their partners. While all the gates between the worlds had been opened in the fight with MaloMyotismon, allowing anybody with a Digivice the ability to travel between worlds instead of needing a D3 to open the gate first, the rigors of university life had only allowed brief reunions between the partners. Thus the week long reunion in the summer was the favorite time of year for all the Digimon and their partners. It wouldn't be good to ruin that experience by making everyone worry about Kari because she had one nightmare.

"Ok Kari, I guess you are right. I won't tell anybody else about this. However, if this keeps happening and you don't tell anybody, I will tell Tai, Davis, and TK personally. And you know how they would react to finding out you're in danger. Davis may not be desperately in love with you anymore, and Tai may live in Kyoto now, but you know they would have WarGreymon and ExVeemon over here in minutes if you were in danger. And as your best friend, TK would have MagnaAngemon hovering over you so much that people would view you as the weird girl with the two guardian angels following you everywhere. So, if anything fishy keeps happening, promise me you'll talk with the others about it."

"Fine Gatomon, I promise I'll tell the others in the unlikely event that the Dark Ocean decides to call me. Now go back to sleep. We have a big day of preparations tomorrow before everyone shows up this weekend."

Despite Gatomon's worries, none of the DigiDestined had any more nightmares the next few nights. Their days passed in a blur right up until the reunion that weekend, when all the older kids finally managed to find the time between their classes and after school jobs. However, even after all of their schedules cleared up, there was an unforeseen issue that arose: even though all the Digital gates were supposed to remain open, the DigiDestined kept failing to access a gate. It took Izzy 10 hours of work to find a gate that led to the top of Infinity Mountain. Since this was not exactly the ideal meeting place for a reunion, with the cold temperatures, uneven landscape, and bad memories for the first seven DigiDestined, the reunion started with Pegasusmon and Nefertimon flying all the arrivals down the mountain to the original meeting place, which was the island that held the trolley car during the original adventure in the Digital World. All of the Digimon except Veemon, Wormmon, and Armadillomon had already gathered there, so while TK and Kari continued to ferry the humans down, all the partners got a chance to reconnect. Then, there was another delay as the group sent out a search party to find Michael's Betamon- Michael had been dating Mimi for two months, but with his father having to move from set to set for his newest movie, they hadn't had as much time together as they would have liked, so Mimi invited him along. Finally, the group was all reunited and could relax, except for Izzy who immediately started working on his laptop in order to contact Gennai about the portal situation.

Michael was the first to break the comfortable silence that came over the group.

"Thanks for letting me come along to this reunion, even though I'm not really part of your group. I've heard about all of you from Mimi, but I've only really briefly met Davis, Ken, Yolei, Cody, Kari, and TK, and that was six years ago. How about you all tell me about yourselves? In case you don't know me, I'm Michael. I live in New York, and I'm trying to become an actor like my dad, so I'm taking a bunch of performing arts classes whenever we aren't moving from set to set. My partner's Betamon, who'll probably say hi to all of you as soon as he stops chatting with the Seadramon he saw in the lake. How about all of you?"

Sora was the first to respond. "It's nice to finally meet you Michael. My name's Sora. I'm sure Mimi told you a lot about me, but I'm going to the University of Kyoto. I honestly wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do for a career, but since my dad teaches there I could get a bunch of financial aid and figure it out as I went along. It was also a good chance for me to reconnect with my dad, since I didn't really get to see him very often growing up. Recently, I've been helping Matt out with the wardrobe for his band and found I really enjoyed it, so I'm thinking about going into fashion design after I graduate at the end of next year. Plus, I found this was a good way to generate some positive publicity for Digimon by having my partner Biyomon help out. If people see that Digimon can be just as artistic as humans, they'll probably stop viewing them as dangerous monsters. That's pretty much all I've been up to lately."

Matt was the next to introduce himself. "Well, since Sora already mentioned me, I guess I can go next. We actually met for like two minutes six years ago, but just in case you don't remember me my name is Matt. I'm also in my third year of studying in Kyoto, since I wanted to go to the same school as Sora. I'm still working as the lead singer for The Teenage Wolves, but we haven't really had any hit songs since 'Turn Around', so I know I'm not going to make it in the music business. Don't get me wrong, I love making music, but I just don't think I'd be able to make a living off of it. However, I think it's a pretty good way to give Digimon a better reputation. WereGarurumon even became our official mascot. With him showing up to autograph sessions and Biyomon helping with our wardrobes, the band is really helping people see they can get along with Digimon. Other than that, I've been studying astronomy. I hadn't ever really thought about what I wanted to study, but I thought it was really cool to see space when we were flying around the world on Imperialdramon, so I thought I might try to be an astronaut. That's pretty much my life right now. Why don't you introduce yourself next, Tai?"

"Sure, why not? I'm Tai, the last of the group studying at Kyoto. I got a partial scholarship there for soccer, plus I didn't have to worry about finding a roommate since I could just live with my best friend the whole time. That plan kinda backfired with how messy he is, but—"

"Hey," Matt interrupted, "you're even messier than I am, so stop nitpicking."

"As far as I can tell, I'm still the one who cleans the most. I swear you plan your dates with Sora to perfectly match up with whenever someone is coming over to visit so I get stuck with the mess. I'm supposed to be the leader here. Isn't part of that being able to delegate tasks?"

"Well, Mr. Fearless Leader, why don't you just continue introducing yourself?"

Tai looked like he was about to continue the argument, but he was interrupted in the form of Kari's elbow jabbing into his ribs.

"Come on Tai," Kari chided, "you keep saying you want to be an ambassador to the Digital World, but how would any government take you seriously if you keep being so immature? And Michael, I'm sorry about this. Tai and Matt seem to think the best way to keep a healthy friendship is to always argue or fight whenever there isn't something serious they need to do."

"Oh, it isn't really a problem," Michael responded. "I'm trying to be an actor. I see people with much stranger relationships every day."

Tai couldn't help but chuckle at this before he continued. "Still, I should apologize. My sister's right, I need to work on my first impressions if I'll ever make it as a diplomat. Anyway, I'm three years into a political science major at Kyoto, and I've been spending some of my weekends with Agumon here in the Digital World learning how the government here differs from ours. I eventually want to get the Digital World the same status as any country on Earth, but until that happens I've been focusing on leading a student group designed to spread awareness about Digimon. That's pretty much all I do these days. Not quite as exciting as saving the world was, but it's still all for a good cause." After saying this, he grinned and added, "Now, since Kari was nice enough to elbow me in the ribs, I think she should be the next one to tell you what she's been up to."

Kari just rolled her eyes. "Well, there really isn't that much to talk about. I'm in my last year of high school, so I've basically been waiting to hear back from all the universities I applied to. I really want to be an elementary school teacher, so I applied to a bunch of schools with a good education program. I'm also hoping that some of the universities will change their stance on Digimon before I enroll, because I'd just feel so strange to be separated from Gatomon again. Other than my classes and applications, I've been keeping busy working as a photographer for the school paper and helping TK edit all of his stories. Like Tai said, we haven't had too many exciting things happen to us since the last time we saw you. The older kids probably have more interesting stories than most of us, with all their work in college."

Since Kari appeared to be finished, Joe decided to take his turn. "Well, I really don't know if I would call my life 'interesting', but I guess I can introduce myself next. I'm Joe, and I'm in my last year of undergraduate work at the University of Tokyo before I go into medical school. I've wanted to be a doctor for a long time, and now that the Digital World is open all the time I figured I could help treat any wounded Digimon. I guess I had the idea ever since I treated an Ogremon when we fought the Dark Masters, but this place could really use a doctor and I thought I would be perfect for the job. Of course, since Digimon have so many physiological differences from humans, I've had to work towards a veterinary degree as well, with a bunch of computer classes thrown in since understanding how data behaves is as important as understanding human biology is for a regular doctor. With all the work I've been doing, just about everyone in my classes is thinking I'm allergic to socialization. I barely have any time to even talk with Gomamon."

"Well, you can't really blame them," TK interrupted. "Didn't you always say you were allergic to just about everything our first time in the Digital World? Plus, now that I think about it, every single time something has come up, you've always been doing some form of schoolwork. You missed both fights with Diaboromon because of tests, remember?"

"I can't help it that I wanted to succeed in life," Joe snapped back. "Besides, I believe I always came through when you needed me. I don't recall you complaining I was unreliable when I saved you from drowning and got us back into Odaiba when Myotismon was attacking."

Seeing that Joe hadn't taken his joke well, TK was quick to apologize. "I'm sorry Joe. I didn't mean to insult you. I was just trying to say it was ironic that other people were using talking about you being allergic to something instead of just you. I guess I've been working too hard on my story and kinda confused you with what you were like back when we first arrived here."

Seeing how he had overreacted, Joe quickly felt the need to apologize as well. "Yeah, I'm sorry I snapped at you too. I haven't really been getting that much sleep with all the work I've had to do, so I guess I'm just a bit more irritable than usual. Why don't you introduce yourself next?"

Glad that there were no hard feelings, the blond decided to continue with the introductions. "Okay. Well, I'm in my senior year at Odaiba high school, along with Kari and Davis. I'm the captain of the school basketball team, but I spend most of my time working on my creative writing. Since my mom is a journalist, she has some connections in the publishing world, so I've been working on getting a manuscript written about our first adventure in the Digital World. I thought the best way to get people to see our point of view on Digimon would be to show them exactly how we had that view in the first place. I still don't understand why people would be scared of someone like Patamon, so I wanted to show how great of friends they can be to people. If they can be the only company for a group of kids and the kids grow up better because of it, why would people want to stop that? Of course, nobody wants to read a day by day account of a few months, so I've been cutting out certain things. I really owe Kari a lot for her being my test audience and helping me to improve my writing."

"Oh, so are you two still dating then?" Michael felt the need to ask.

This simple question resulted in TK and Kari both blushing and shouting "WHAT?" in perfect unison, much to the enjoyment of the other DigiDestined. The only exceptions were Izzy, who seemed to be lost in his computer, and Cody, who managed to restrain himself out of respect for the feelings of his two friends.

"Well," Michael explained, "Remember the first time I met you? After Gorillamon attacked, you were awfully quick to fly off into the woods together, and even though you said you were looking for Digitamamon he showed up like ten seconds after you left. We weren't exactly quiet in that fight, but you still didn't show up for a while. So, I just thought you two were trying to turn it into a date. Plus, Mimi just keeps gushing about how you two make the cutest couple, so I figured I was right."

This last comment only brought a unified "MIMI!" from TK and Kari, a small giggle and an "Oops?" from Mimi that showed she really wasn't sorry about her comments, and more laughter from the group, including a snort from Cody that showed he was struggling to contain himself. Luckily, or unluckily, for the two victims, Davis decided to come to their rescue, in his own way.

"Don't feel bad about your assumption, Michael- everyone in the school thinks they are dating too. Of course, they are just best friends who spend just about every waking moment together, go to movies, restaurants, and concerts with each other, and spend more time together than Ken and Yolei or Matt and Sora combined. And I can speak from experience when I say that TK can eventually drive off anybody who would want to date Kari, and she can do the same for any girls who would want to date him. Not that they actually try to intimidate people, but everybody knows that they would spend more time with each other than their significant others anyway." Seeing as his help was only serving to further embarrass his friends, Davis decided to try a different approach and change the subject. "But enough about them. Why don't I catch you up next? I'm the star player on the Odaiba soccer team, and my skills have helped us get the regional tournament the past two years. We may have lost both times, but we managed to take Tamachi to overtime despite them having Ken on their team! If you don't know how impressive that is, he set the record for most goals in a season back in 2002 and nobody's come close to his mark since then. Other than my awesomeness on the field and the fact that I am actually putting effort into my schoolwork now, I spend most of my time working on my noodle recipes with Veemon. I'm getting close to the point where I can actually start up my own cart and finally get on my way to fulfilling my childhood dream. I actually made a bunch of the food for this reunion, so you'll get to taste my handiwork. Well, since that's about all I've been up to, how about I let my best friend and eternal soccer rival introduce himself next? You saw him in Miami when we flew in on Imperialdramon, but I don't think you had time to introduce yourselves."

Ken obviously wasn't comfortable with how Davis introduced him, but he decided to listen to him and he started to introduce himself. "Well, I don't know if I really deserve all of Davis's praise, but my name is Ken. I'm in my senior year at Tamachi high school, and like Davis said, I'm the captain of the soccer team. Don't put so much stock in that record he mentioned though. I definitely don't deserve it, since I had an unfair advantage. Back when I was nine, I took my first trip to the Digital World. My memories of that trip are still a bit fuzzy, but I helped fight against an evil Digimon named Millenniummon. During that fight, he released a bunch of things called Dark Spores, one of which implanted itself in my neck. This spore caused me to become much smarter and more athletic, so I became famous as some sort of child prodigy. However, the Dark Spore also drew out my inner darkness, and I eventually lost myself and became the Digimon Emperor. It took Wormmon sacrificing himself to stop me in order for me to finally see the error of my ways, and thanks to Davis, Yolei, Cody, TK, and Kari, I managed to fix everything I had done wrong and redeem myself. Now, I want to use the horrible things I did as motivation to stop other people from getting in so deep with the same mistakes I made, so I'm going to attend the police academy next year and eventually try to be a detective. If I had to be stopped before I could start fixing my life, I want to work towards stopping other people from going too far down the wrong path so they can save themselves. Plus, as much as I don't like it, I do have a little experience with how a self-viewed criminal mastermind thinks, so I would probably be a good detective. Other than that, I've been enjoying spending my time with Yolei. How about she introduces herself to you next?"

Bristling with her usual excitement, Yolei immediately started to re-introduce herself to Michael. "Okay honey. Like Ken says, we spend most of our time together. We've been dating for just over a year, and he is just the most amazing boyfriend ever." Ken quickly blushed and tried to appear smaller, his shy personality still not quite used to Yolei's outspoken praise of him. "But since I can't make a career out of being a great girlfriend, I've been taking some computer classes along with my introductory courses at the local university. I'm still working at my parent's convenience store, and it has gotten a lot less awkward now that I'm not the only DigiDestined in the family- my two older sisters both have partners now, and what's great is I can finally give them advice instead of the other way around! They all look to me as a role model instead of as their crazy younger sibling. It's sorta nice this way. I can't believe I ever wanted to be an only child. But I guess you don't really know about that incident. When we fought MaloMyotismon, he did this thing to us where we started to see a world of things we desired and-"

"I'm sorry to interrupt Yolei," Cody, the youngest yet in many ways most mature member of the group, stated, "but if we don't hurry and try to finish the introductions, we won't be able to eat the food before it starts going bad. He doesn't need to know all the details of all of our fights right now. We shouldn't get distracted from our chance to have fun by constantly going over our pasts, no matter how important. My grandfather always says those who forget the past are fools, but those who forget the present and future are worse than fools."

"Well, I don't know if we don't ever want to talk about our past for this whole week, but I guess you are right about the food. Though I'm not really sure if your DNA Digivolving partner would be happy to hear you de-emphasize the past, especially since he's planning on making a living off of his past experience. But I guess we should move on with the introductions. Wait, that's right. I guess I didn't really introduce myself. Sure, I probably know you better than anybody here except Mimi, but we may as well just have everybody do introductions. I'm Yolei, and my partner is Hawkmon. Now, since Cody was the one to say we need to move on with introductions, why doesn't he go next?"

Cody sighed before speaking. "That isn't exactly what I meant. I was just saying we have to focus on the present and future as much as the past. Anyway, it is a pleasure to meet you again, Michael. In case you don't remember, my name is Iori Hida, but you can call me Cody. I'm the youngest of this group, so I just started my first year of high school and don't have as many obligations as the others. I do volunteer a bit at the community center helping teach beginner kendo lessons, but it doesn't take up very much time in a week. I spend most of my free time with my grandfather, either practicing kendo or just listening to his advice. He's sort of accepted Armadillomon as a second grandson, so we do a lot of things as a family. I'm also friends with a lot of the children who got infected with Dark Spores back when MaloMyotismon was possessing Oikawa, so even when the next group graduates, I won't be the only DigiDestined at school. Even though I just started high school, I already have an idea of what I want to do when I'm an adult. I think I'd want to be a lawyer. I used to think that the world was divided into good people and bad people, but my experience with Oikawa and Ken showed me it isn't that simple. So, I'd like to go into legal studies so I can help the people stuck in the gray area between good and evil. Well, I guess Izzy is the only one who hasn't introduced himself, so how about he goes next?"

If Izzy noticed his name had been mentioned, he didn't show it. The only sign that he was still conscious was the constant tapping of his computer keys and occasional mutterings under his breath, with the approximately ten dark mutterings for every "Prodigious". Cody looked like he was about to repeat his question, but Mimi quickly got his attention by stealing his laptop.

Izzy finally seemed to notice the presence of the others, but his emotional response was far from positive. "Hey, give that back! I was just about to figure out how to send a message to Gennai and see if he knows what's going on with the gate! For some reason, all communications are being blocked. It's like there's some sort of firewall that's has me locked out of the world."

Mimi didn't let his outburst faze her. "Well, I'll give you your computer back if you promise to introduce yourself to Michael. I'll even buy you some time by introducing myself. So, what will it be?"

Knowing it would be quicker and easier to go along with Mimi rather than argue with her, Izzy relented. "Okay, fine. I promise I'll introduce myself after you do. Now, can I please have my laptop back?"

"Of course. Here you go!" Mimi said brightly as she handed back the laptop. While Izzy immediately got back to work, she cheerfully introduced herself to the group, despite the fact that everybody knew her. "Hi everyone, my name is Mimi. I've been dating Michael for a couple of months, but we haven't had too much time together, which is why I invited him along for this reunion. I'm in my second year of studying at a culinary academy in New York. At first I thought I'd go into fashion design- I mean, come on, I have such a great fashion sense and would totally love making a living that way- but I found cooking just feels much more natural to me. Plus, Palmon is actually really talented in the kitchen, and she feels more comfortable cooking than modeling. So, we've been doing just that! I even prepared some of my newest dishes for us to try out this week. Obviously, I don't have them with me, but I thought we could just quick open up a gate and grab them from my fridge. Speaking of the gates, Izzy, I hope you've figured out how to talk to Gennai, because it's time for you to introduce yourself."

"Prodigious! I got the message to go through! Now I just need to wait for his response and- why is everybody staring at me?" Remembering that he would most likely lose his laptop if he didn't honor his previous agreement, Izzy quickly continued "Oh, that's right, it's time for me to introduce myself. Sorry about the wait Michael, but my name is Izzy, and you've probably already realized I'm a bit obsessed with computers. I've been working with them since I was six, so I became an expert with technology. Right now, I'm studying at the Tokyo University of Technology, and I'm doing a research project on the Digital World. Since it is directly related to my research, my professor is more lenient with me bringing a Digimon to the lab, so I get to spend more time with Tentomon. He's excited to study how the human world studies things, but not nearly as excited as I am to study the Digital World. It was pretty much a dream come true for me as a 10 year old, and now I can make a living out of studying it. That's about all there is to know about me. So, now that introductions are done, what are we planning on—?"

Izzy's question was interrupted by a beeping from his computer that signaled he had received a message. He quickly read the message, but it only lead to more questions than answers.

"This doesn't make any sense. Why would Gennai demand that we leave the Digital World immediately? Even if something dangerous managed to get past Oikawa's protection, we released the crests so the Sovereigns could help defend the world. If something was too dangerous for them to handle, wouldn't they have called us in to help like they did the last two times they were sealed?"

Even though Izzy had known these were rhetorical questions at the moment, he was unfortunate enough to receive an answer from an evil sounding voice behind them.

"Perhaps because they know that I am here to destroy you!"

Author's Note: Yes, I get that this chapter was probably really boring, but I needed a way to show what all the DigiDestined are doing after five and a half years. They've all been keeping in touch so it's not like they would need to do these introductions if only the main cast was present, so I used Michael just to make that happen. Don't worry, he will have a bigger role than Mr. Exposition in the future. Anyway, I hope the intro and overly cliché ominous voice at the end are enough to keep you interested until the next chapter. I'm hoping to get that posted later tonight, since I have the story entirely written and just need to reformat it. Thank you for reading, and feel free to leave a review or message me with any questions or comments!