A/N: I started this story months ago; around the same time I started my other Digimon fic (Discord in the Garden Tonight). However, life has been rather insane and I only stumbled upon this when cleaning up my computer and I fell in love with it again. I'm still working on Discord in the Garden Tonight, but sporadically. Really, I'll be working on both of these stories rather sporadically. I'm sorry, readers, but that's life. However, the more reviews I get, the more incentive I'll have to write down my ideas so you'll see the stories updated more rapidly. Oh, and just so you know, I have the epilogue of this story written already so if you want to read it, review review review!!

Now that that is all said and done… I am looking for a beta reader so if anyone is willing, just contact me.

Hope you enjoy the story! Reviews are loved! Let me know if you have any comments, rants, questions, or just want to tell me that you like the story. And personally, I really don't care; they're all fine with me.

Disclaimer: I do not own Digimon. I do own Kouji though, so if anyone who tells you otherwise let me know so that I can sue him or her.

Ash filled the still air and small fires flared between and atop of the rubble. It seemed as if life had been eradicated from the area until a bit of the rubble moved and a dust covered person sat up and coughed as brown eyes roamed over the destruction. The mouth of the creature opened once again and shapes were formed but no words came out, only noises. Nothing in the area moved. The eyes closed slowly and when they reopened they were filled with tears. The creature stood up and her form revealed her to be a female human, although the color of her hair and clothes were covered in so much ash that it was impossible to discern the colors. A gray hand reached into the folds of her pants and pulled out a D-tector, the rust and orange color clearly standing out against the gray atmosphere. She pressed a button and a glittering shadow appeared on the floor behind her but she seemed not to notice. "How could this happen here?" the girl wondered aloud, her voice filled with dread.

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Kouji Minamoto woke up from his sleep; his breathing ragged as he looked around and realized he was still in his own bed, in his own house. What the hell was that? He wondered as he looked at his alarm clock and frowned; he was up a half hour earlier than he had planned! Great… I'll fall asleep by the end of the first day of year ten. Oh well… I'm up so I may as well do something…

Two hours later

The dark-haired boy slammed his locker shut and nearly jumped from surprise when he found someone standing behind the door of it. "Takuya!" he growled in frustration. "Can't you approach someone like a normal person?"

"Normal? Takuya? We are talking about the same guy, right?" a blond girl strode over to them, for once in her life without her signature hat on her head. "Hey Kouji. Had a good summer?"

"I resent that Zoë," the brunette said as he crossed his arms. "Aren't you going to ask how my summer was?" Zoe replied to this question caustically, causing Takuya to get on edge and before Kouji even had a chance to step away, they were jumping down one another's throat. Kouji sighed as he started to walk down the hall with the two of them closely behind and could only be glad that J.P wasn't there to start bickering with Takuya as well. They're so immature, he thought sadly. He glanced over his shoulder and was about to tell them to grow up when someone bumped into him.

"Sorry," a curt voice said but the speaker didn't stop. Kouji turned around and looked at the girl who was walking down the hall. She was wearing a gray baseball cap with a medium length blonde pigtail coming out of it, a black sweatshirt, a pair of jeans, and a pair of dark red Converse. The last the only color of the entirety of her outfit.

"Who was that?" Zoë asked as she and Takuya also turned around to look at the girl.

Kouji merely shrugged and said, "She must be new. Come on, let's get to class." The last he said as the bell rang and as he walked, he couldn't help but think that there was something about the girl that bothered him. He didn't say anything, however, and instead just walked as he listened to Takuya complain about classes. I wonder if she's in any of my classes, Kouji couldn't help but thinking as he ignored the goggle-wearing brunette and the foreign blond.

And the girl did happen to be in some of his classes, in fact most of his classes throughout the day did Kouji see the girl sitting in the back of the room, sitting there, taking notes and hardly ever looking up from her notebook. As he had looked back at her, he couldn't help but notice that she had a little quirk. On six of her fingers she wore sparkling rings, some of them plain silver with design and some of them with jewels or stones. The only other decoration that she wore was a silver necklace, but only the chain was visible and whatever decoration was hanging off of it was hidden beneath the white shirt that stuck out of her black sweatshirt.

Until the last class of the day, until his English class in fact, did Kouji not learn the name of the girl. He was in a different class than Takuya, because the latter could hardly speak English and was in the lower class, but Zoë was in his class and she couldn't help but notice Kouji looking over at the new blond girl.

"You're the New Yorker! Oh I am so happy that there's finally a true English speaker in one of my classes!" Tsukino-sensei said, in English, as she clasped her hands in excitement. "It is a pleasure to meet you, Nadia Silber! Note everyone, for those of you who forgot over the summer, that in English speaking countries, the family name comes after one's first name!"

"Pleasure," Nadia responded in Japanese without even glancing up from her notebook, as if the blank page was much more interesting than speaking to her teacher. Tsukino-sensei frowned and asked, "Do you speak Japanese fluently?" A question to which the girl nodded but said nothing else in response, causing the Sensei to frown but continue on to the day's lesson as she assigned for the class to write an essay on what they did over the summer.

Nadia Silber? Maybe that's what's up with all of the rings, Kouji thought, thinking about the play on words, as he started to write down his essay of what he did over the summer, starting with how he visited his mother and brother who had moved to another city due to his mother's new job and continuing from there.

"What are you doing tonight?" Zoë asked Kouji and Takuya as she walked outside with them at the end of the day.

Takuya shrugged and said, "playing video games with Shinya. Watch television. You know, the usual. Let's do something!"

"Don't you ever do anything useful?" Kouji asked with a sigh. "And I can't do anything; we're having dinner with our new neighbor's tonight and I promised my father that I would be there. I gotta go. I'll see you all tomorrow." And with that, Kouji hurriedly walked down the street, heading towards his part of town, as did several other students who lived near him. It wasn't until he turned onto his own street did he realize that someone was following him. He turned around quickly and managed to startle the person behind him, causing her to stop short and fall down.

"Nadia?" Kouji said, shocked as he looked down at the girl and offered her a hand, which she graciously took.

"Thanks but if you don't mind me asking, how do you know my name?" she asked as she stood up tall, just a bit shorter than Kouji, and wiped a bit of dirt off of her jeans.

"I'm in some of your classes at school," Kouji explained. "I'm Kouji Minamoto. I live there," he said as he pointed towards one of the houses on the street. As Nadia turned to look towards which house he was pointing at, Kouji caught a glimpse of her brown eyes, devoid of any emotion, and he felt a chill run down her back.

"Oh cool," Nadia said as she continued to walk, although her tone of voice hinted that she thought otherwise, as did Kouji. "I just moved into the house next door to yours."

Kouji looked at her once again with surprise. "Your family is the one that mine is eating dinner with tonight?" he asked, trying to keep the tone of surprise out of his voice as he looked at her. What was it about her that had caused him to look at her so much that day? Looking at her, he could see that she was rather pretty, but there were other pretty girls in his class at school. And then he looked at her eyes once again and an image flashed in his mind of those eyes filled with tears. The girl from my dream? Is Nadia that girl? Why did I dream of her if it is?

Nadia nodded, "yeah, my Aunt Sora and I moved in two days ago so that I would be able to start school along with everybody else instead of having to be a transfer." She swiped at the brim of her baseball cap, as if wiping off dirt, and it covered her eyes a bit more with a shadow. "Well, I have to go help Sora prepare for dinner, or something. But I guess if it is your family, I'll see you later." And without another word, the blonde walked up the path towards her house, opened the door and walked through the threshold.

"Hey Nadia," a male blond sitting on one of the kitchen counter stools said as Nadia walked past him and she muttered something in greeting. He frowned and looked at his girlfriend who was standing at the stove mixing something and gave her a questioning look to which her only response was a sigh. The two heard Nadia barrel up the staircase and the door to her room open and then slam shut and the brunette sighed and looked over her shoulder in the direction the girl had just passed. The twenty-something year old had no idea what she was supposed to do with a girl like her niece. Especially after the events of the past summer…

Four weeks earlier

Ring! Ring!

"Matt! Stop playing your guitar, I have to answer the phone," the brunette said as her boyfriend strummed his guitar on her couch. He smiled at her and played a few more chords but then put it down and smiled at her like an innocent little child, causing her to laugh at his antics as she took the phone out of its cradle and said, "Hello? Um yes, this is she." Matt frowned as she switched from Japanese to English. She must be speaking to her niece in America, he thought. It's so nice that her friend's family invited her to live with them so she wouldn't have to move to Japan after the accident so many years ago.

"Yes, I understand. I'll catch the first flight. Thank you for calling, Inspector Davenport," and Sora hung up her phone and looked at Matt with eyes filled with sorrow. She reached for her boyfriend's hand for support and sat down on the couch, in shock. She spoke, switching back to Japanese, "there was… A fire. Nadia was the only survivor."

Matt's eyes opened wide as he looked at her, "oh my god… You're going there then?"

Sora shook her head, "well, I am initially. But I'm going to ask Nadia to come here. I don't think it'd be a good idea for her to stay there any longer and I don't think I could live in New York-"

"Yeah, you'd suffer an overload of Mimi," Matt said, which caused an appalled look to appear on Sora's face. "Yeah… Not the time for humor. I don't handle crises very well… You want me to book you a ticket while you pack?" Sora only nodded.

Present

"You're doing all you can, Sor," Matt said as he saw a look of sullenness appear in Sora's eyes. "And look at it this way, if she were acting perfectly normal wouldn't something be wrong?" He paused for a moment and lowered his voice, "Sora, she was there when her friends died and she was the only survivor. It was a complete anomaly to the police that she was hardly hurt but she wasn't and that is the fact. At least not physically hurt." Sora turned a knob and stepped away from the stove and walked over towards Matt, who reached out and put his hands on her shoulders. "Remember, we're in this, and everything else, together." In other words, the ring was all but on her finger. "We saved the Digital World. I think we can handle a troubled teenager get through a rough patch."

"Oh Matt…" Sora said softly. "She used to be so happy. You know she refuses to pick up her sketchpad? I found the bag filled with all of her supplies at the curb this morning, waiting to be picked up by the garbage men. She used to eat, sleep, and breath art and now it's like the creativity has left her. When Ryo told me that he wanted me to become her legal guardian if anything happened to him, he made me promise that I would help her art become known in the world."

"You're not breaking that promise, Sor. It's her choice at this point. She's almost an adult."

"I know…" the brunette said softly and then removed herself from the blonde's grip and returned to cooking. "I hope she doesn't mind that I hung up one of her paintings…"

Two hours later

"It was so kind of you to invite us over for dinner, Miss Takenouchi," Mrs. Minamoto said as she, her husband, and Kouji sat down on the couch in the living area of Sora's small house.

"It's my pleasure," Sora said as she sat down beside Matt on a smaller couch opposite them. "After all, I don't think you've actually moved in until you have some guests over and break in the kitchen." The group laughed at her joke and Sora promptly asked what grade Kouji was in and started a conversation rolling about work and school. Kouji noted that Nadia was nowhere to be found. As he wasn't really part of the conversation, he let his mind wander and his eyes fell upon a drawing in the room. Ophanimon?? It was true. The picture across the room depicted the Celestial Guardian of life, Lady Ophanimon in all her glory.

Sora caught Kouji looking at the picture and she smiled, although something about the smile hinted at sadness. "Amazing isn't it? Nadia is extremely gifted artistically. That's one of her paintings."

Nadia painted that? Kouji was flabbergasted. The girl who wore hardly any color and dressed, well, like she cared nothing for clothes or color or anything, was an artist? And how the hell does she know what Ophanimon looks like? "It's very nice," Kouji's father said. "She is quite gifted. Is she in a university studying?"

Sora shook her head, "hardly. She's only fifteen; she lives here, with me, but I think she left before you all came over." So much for her 'I'll see you later', Kouji thought. But then he heard Sora's words in his mind once again. She wasn't sure whether or not Nadia had left? Isn't she her guardian?

"I'm pretty sure that she's in some of my classes at school," Kouji said.

"Oh! How… Nice," Sora said, although Kouji looking at her realized that she wasn't sure whether he thought so or not. Not if he had met her. Not how she was at that moment.

Just then, the front door flew upon to reveal the object of discussion as she walked, stormed actually, towards the staircase. She didn't look any different than she had during the day, save for a black strap crossing from one shoulder to another with a black bag resting on her hip. She was about to walk up the stair when her brown eyes landed on the painting and they narrowed. "Take that down," she demanded sharply and then continued to make her way upstairs.

"That was Nadia," Sora said, a hint of defeat on her voice as she turned her eyes to look at the painting upon the wall. Would it be best to take it down or wait until she took it down herself? She'd probably try and burn it… "Shall we eat?" And with that, they all moved to the table to eat.

A half hour later, the blond stormed downstairs once again. She said nothing but paused and glanced at the painting and seemed to ponder there for a moment, as if she wanted to say something. And then loud music started to blare from the staircase, causing her to turn around suddenly, a look of bafflement filling her features. "Nadia, go and turn that off! Turn it down at least!" her aunt said. But Nadia just stood in her place.

"Come on, Sor. It's good music at least," Matt said. "Although, I think that's louder than we play even at concerts."

"You're one of the Teen Wolves?" Kouji questioned as he recognized the music. Matt nodded in response to the question, causing Kouji to laugh slightly at something, an inside joke perhaps.

And then they all heard a crash.

"Oh shit! I knew I hadn't turned my computer on!" Nadia said as she looked out the window and saw something out it that startled her. Kouji saw it too; a digimon. No… A digimon in the human world? Bokamon said that when digimon entered this world, it would lead to its destruction!

The two adults in the room looked at the digimon fearfully, but everyone else there had a look of confusion upon their faces. Kouji didn't break his gaze from the window until he heard something fall to the floor and he realized that it was his stepmother. He saw his father attend to her and Matt and Sora looking at one another.

"Call the others now," Matt said and before Sora could respond he was rustling through a kitchen drawer and pulled out something, which he promptly slid into his pocket. Kouji reached into his own pocket and felt his cell phone. Ignoring what everyone else was doing, he sent text messages to Takuya, Zoe, J.P., and Tommy. Everyone, there's a digimon near my house. SOS!

He contemplated sending a message to Kouichi, but he knew that his brother wouldn't be able to help; he was too far away now that he had moved. Kouji slipped his phone back in his pocket, wishing that it would change into a D-Tector. He really wished that he could change into Beowulfmon. At the very least he wished he could become Lobomon. This was so frustrating to be weak when there was a digimon around. But then he realized that just because he couldn't become a digimon didn't mean that he couldn't fight, or at least try to. He still had the Sprit of Light, right? It was inside of him, even if he didn't have the armor.

Deciding that he would at least distract the digimon from doing any harm, or at least he would try to, Kouji looked around the room, making sure that his father and stepmother were gone; they were. Sora and her boyfriend were both talking on their phones; their faces depicting worry. Probably calling the police about a wild animal. If only they knew. And as for Nadia… Where was she? He heard a door slam and a gust of wind rustled the scarf in his hair. She hadn't… One glance out the window proved to Kouji that Nadia indeed had run outside. Sighing, he raced out the door and down the street after her, heading both in her direction and in the digimon's.

Why in the world was she heading right towards it? Kouji didn't understand her motives as the digimon led the two of them into a park. When Kouji was still lagging behind a bit, he watched as the digimon stopped and turned to face Nadia. And started to talk to her, which was strange enough. But the strangest part was that Nadia replied calmly and coolly before reaching into the black bag that hung at her waist. To pull out a bow and arrow. Kouji didn't move an inch further upon seeing that, but he did try to hear the rest of their conversation.

"You think that your little stick will harm me, Huntress?" the digimon, who Kouji realized looked a bit like a diminutive Grumblemon even with the same voice, taunted Nadia. "I'm made of data! Not skin and bones like you!"

Nadia said nothing for a moment, just placed the arrow in her bow and pulled back on the string. "When will you Grottomon learn? There is always more than meets the eye with a Myth Spirit," she reached into her pocket and pulled out a phone. No… To Kouji's shock, it was a D-Tector! A rust and orange colored one! She ran it over the arrow and it seemed as if it started to turn into data, with streams of numbers running over the arrow. She placed the D-Tector in her pocket and aimed the bow at the Grottomon. Releasing the string, the arrow flew straight into his head and he erupted into data-dust. The blond didn't move for a moment, just stood there and then started to silently place the bow and arrow back into her bag. And then she heard something behind her. She turned around, reaching for the bow once more.

"It's just me," Kouji said, raising his hands, trying to stop her from killing him as well. A flicker of worry passed over Nadia's face. How much had he seen? As if reading her thoughts, Kouji said, "you know, you can't just allow Digimon into the real world." His words caused the girl to gape.

"What do you know about Digimon?" she demanded, brushing a lock of her hair out of her brown eyes. But before Kouji could respond, her phone started to ring. She reached for the D-Tector again and answered it. "Yes, Aunt Sora, I'm fine. Don't worry; I'll be back soon. I just went for a walk with Kouji. Uh huh… Yup." And then she hung up. "You know what, it doesn't matter," she responded after a moment. "Come on, we have to go back."

Without saying another word, Nadia started to walk back to the street upon which the two lived with their respective families, causing Kouji to wonder what the hell had just happened. His cell phone started to beep and he realized that the rest of the gang had responded. He sent them a mass text: I ran into someone who I think has a spirit. The Digimon's gone but I'll keep you posted.

Until next time,

Sin