25 YEARS: A DIGIDESTINED PROPHECY

It had been raining for several hours now, and as he trudged down the sidewalk, Tai Kamiya was visibly upset. "Why couldn't we have the meeting at my place?" he muttered crossly.

At his side, Tai's younger sister Kari smiled. "Well, it was TK's idea, after all," she pointed out lightly.

"TK has a hat!" Tai yelled, fists shaking. "TK doesn't have to worry about getting his hair all messed up in the rain!"

"I agree," Agumon said from under his voluminous raincoat. "Tai, your hair is messed up enough to begin with. We wouldn't want it to get even more messed up than it already is. It could seriously anger the laws of gravity."

"Aargh!" Tai clenched a fist and proceeded with banging his forehead against it repeatedly.

Kari giggled. "Agumon, have you been reading my science textbook again?"

Gatomon wrinkled her nose disdainfully. "For once, I'm siding with Tai," she told Kari, looking irritably up at the torrent of raindrops that fell around her. "I hate rain. Especially the cats-and-dogs kind. For that matter, why do they call it cats-and-dogs? Why not just cats? Aren't cats by themselves good enough?"

"Finally!" Tai whooped, spotting TK's apartment less than a block away. "Hurry up, you guys! We're almost there!" In his joy, Tai overlooked a large puddle only several feet ahead of him.

Gatomon spat out a mouthful of water as Tai went down with a loud splash. "Next time, watch where you're falling!" she snapped, shivering.

"So what's this all about, TK?" Matt asked as the various DigiDestined assembled themselves around the room.

His younger brother's head jerked up from the sheaf of notebook paper he was holding. "It's about defending our rights as the original characters of the Digimon TV series!" he proclaimed fervently. "It's about protecting our legacy for all future generations of viewers! It's about…"

"Shh!" Patamon hissed, holding a paw to his mouth. "Not everybody's here yet, TK. You can't say anything until everyone's here, remember?"

"Oh, that's right."

"Sorry we're late!" Kari called from the doorway. She was followed into the room by Agumon and Gatomon, the latter of which was shaking rain droplets from her fur and spluttering angrily in between sneezes.

"Where's Tai?" TK asked, looking up briefly from his notebook paper.

Kari shrugged. "Bathroom. He has to, um, fix his hair."

"Now that'll take hours," Matt said, rolling his eyes. "Just start already, TK."

"Right." Clearing his throat, TK laid the blank pile of notebook paper importantly on the floor in front of him. Whipping out a ballpoint pen from behind his ear, he positioned it millimeters above the paper. "As you all know," he began at last, "Season Two of Digimon will be over in less than a week."

"Rub it in, why don't you?" Ken scowled. "And they didn't even bother to change the theme song when I stopped being the Digimon Emperor!"

"I thought the cape looked very dashing on you, Ken," Wormmon said comfortingly. "Even though it also looked very heavy."

Ken sighed wearily, staring up at the ceiling as if pleading to some invisible force high above. "Somebody please tell me why they had me spend entire episodes repenting for my sins as the Digimon Emperor, and yet they kept the theme song that shows me as the bad-guy! What does that tell you about my worth in their eyes?"

"You don't have any?" Davis tried hesitantly.

Ken moaned and fell backwards.

"Uh, Davis," DemiVeemon said. "I don't think that was one of those questions you're supposed to answer."

"Guys!" Patamon interrupted in exasperation. "We're supposed to be listening to TK!"

"Sorry," they replied in unison.

Sighing, TK continued. "As the original characters of Digimon Season One and Two, it's our duty to make sure that our legacy is continued throughout Season Three and beyond! That's why I've called you here today. To write an outline for Digimon Season Three, the way we want it!" He posed dramatically, pen raised into the air.

Silence followed.

"Writing?" Joe said skeptically. "You mean that thing with the words? Well, no sir, I'm not a writer, I'm a toiling medical student! Which reminds me, I should be studying for my finals right now, not sitting here trying to write stories." He spat the word out like it was a synonym for hairy hamster plague.

"Can it have spaceships?" Davis cried eagerly. "And ray guns with little blaster thingies that go 'POW POW BANG!'? I've always wanted one of those!"

"I'll do costumes!" Mimi volunteered, adjusting her wide-brimmed hat and patting her newly-dyed hot pink hair into place. "Really, all the things the scriptwriters have you people wear, it's, like, so totally démodé."

As the room broke out into a cacophony of shouting, whining, and Davis's occasional sound effect, Kari stood up and went over to TK. "I think it's a great idea," she said earnestly. "Let's get started." Turning around, she yelled in a surprisingly loud voice, "Did you hear that! TK wants to start NOW!"

The room fell silent once again and Kari smiled. "That's much better. Carry on, TK."

"Well, I was thinking we could continue the story of the original DigiDestined in Season Three," TK explained. "But only this time, we could fast forward, say, 25 years into the future."

Davis's face fell. "But by then we'll be way too old to do a kids' TV show!" he protested.

"Not us, gogglehead," Yolei snapped. "TK means our descendants, don't you, TK?"

"If I don't get to have a blaster, it's no fun," Davis sulked. DemiVeemon patted him on the back consolingly.

Matt smirked from his position at the other end of the room. "I know you, little bro. You only want to do a show on our kids because you've got a…"

"Shut up, Matt!" TK yelled, breaking his brother off. Regaining his composure, he readjusted his hat, then his stack of paper. "I'll need ideas, of course. Wait, I have to write them all down!" he cried as the entire room burst into noise.

"BE QUIET!" Kari shouted. Everyone froze. Kari smiled to herself. "Now, one at a time, please," she instructed calmly. "Raise your hand and wait until TK calls on you."

"Wow, you really have a knack for all this," Gatomon whispered to Kari as the other DigiDestined began to obey.

Her partner smiled knowingly once more. "It comes in handy, don't you think?"

"I don't see the point in all this," Joe informed them doubtfully. "And exactly how long is all this going to take? Studying doesn't do itself, you know!"

"Affirmative," Izzy called, looking up from his laptop. "Besides, I calculate a 1 in 1000000000000000000000 chance that the scriptwriters will even use our scenarios. That is because…"

"Ahhhh! Be quiet!" TK screamed, throwing the pen in Izzy's direction. "You're ruining our morale!"

"My self-confidence is sinking," Patamon agreed, ears drooping.

"My laptop!" Izzy screeched as TK's pen hit the screen. "My precious Pineapple laptop! You put a dent in my poor little laptop!"

"Come on, Izzy," Joe said, picking up his bag and starting out the door. "I don't know about the rest of you, but I, for one, don't want to end up some jobless bum on the street, shamed for life after failing my high school final. Oh well, see you all around later."

"Joe, you're such a party pooper!" Gomamon cried, scampering after his partner. "I was planning on having some fun today, not sitting around and figuring out where my appledex is.

"Gomamon, how many times do I have to tell you? It's appendix! There's no such thing as an appledex."

Gomamon made a face. "What's wrong with appledex? It sure sounds a lot tastier. Like caramel appledex. Or sour green appledex lollipops."

Joe slapped a hand to his forehead. "I'll never be a doctor," he moaned. "Because Gomamon will eat all my patients. I'll be charged with manslaughter, thrown in prison, and die at an overly young age."

"From a burst appledex," Gomamon teased.

"I'm leaving, too," Izzy sniffed, cradling his laptop gingerly in his arms. "I think I will go someplace where my prodigious talents are appreciated, and my laptop is not abused. Catch you guys later!"

"I appreciate your prodigious talents, Izzy," Tentomon offered quickly. "Er, does that count when you spend all night using the Internet and won't let me play solitaire. Because I most definitely do not appreciate that."

"Tentomon!"

Both boys and their partners exited the room, causing TK to shrug, mainly unperturbed. "Well, we all knew what those two would end up doing 25 years from now anyway," he pointed out. "Joe would be a doctor…"

"If he doesn't fail his final, thanks to you!" an angry voice shouted from up the hall.

"…and Izzy would work with computer stuff."

"Computer stuff! Computer stuff!" Izzy roared, sticking his head back through the door and shaking a fist. "Is that all it is to you! Computer stuff? I'll have you know…"

Tentomon grabbed him quickly with a pincer and dragged the enraged Izzy out the door and down the hall. "Come along now, Izzy," he said. "You don't want to be late for your appointment."

TK shrugged, dismissing the thought as Izzy's shouts faded away down the hall. "Well, any more ideas?" he posed.

Yolei's wildly flailing arm was picked next. "Can I marry Ken? Can I? Can I? Please, TK! You're my best friend!"

Ken, who had just recovered from his earlier tirade, broke out into a nervous sweat. "Hold on a second," he started, but TK had already penned down Yolei's idea.

"Good, good. Any thing you'd like to add to that, Yolei?"

"We'll have three kids!" Yolei announced loudly. "And I'm naming the youngest Kenny Junior!"

Hearing this, Ken slunk lower into his seat.

"I'll be a housewife!" Yolei was saying now. "Ken can have the big, important job, right Ken?"

"I think that's a waste of perfectly good talent, Yolei," Cody said, speaking up for the first time. "You know so much about fixing computers and stuff like that."

"COMPUTER STUFF LIKE THAT!!!" Izzy yelled from outside the window. "Has no one any respect?!"

"True," Yolei replied smugly to Cody's comment. "But I have a mortal fear of careers. No, I think it's best for me to stay at home and take care of the children. Don't you agree, Ken?"

"Uh," was all he could manage.

Davis clapped him one on the back, which nearly sent him sprawling onto his face. "You could start your own house-cleaning agency!" he suggested.
"You sure have more than enough experience!"

Rubbing his back, Ken nodded wearily. "I am rather good at housecleaning," he admitted resignedly.

"I'll help wash windows!" Wormmon offered. "As Stingmon, of course."

"Housecleaning agency, got that." TK wrote it all down, then called on the next DigiDestined.

"I'd like to be a soccer player," Sora said earnestly. "I'm going to the Olympics, no, the World Cup! No, make that the Olympics and the World Cup!"

"What's soccer, Sora?" Biyomon asked.

Sora sighed, but managed a tired smile. "I think we've talked about this several times before," she said gently. "Soccer is where you have a ball and you try to kick It into the opposing team's net."

"Like a fishing net?" Biyomon said. "Or a butterfly net?"

"No, not that kind of net," Sora corrected. "A different kind of net."

"But doesn't the ball get angry?" Biyomon asked, eyes wide.

Sora laughed. "Why would the ball get angry?"

"I don't think kicking it is going to make it very happy," Biyomon told her matter-of-factly. "I think soccer's a mean game! Mean, mean, mean!"

"Then I'll be a tennis player," Sora offered quickly. "All you do in tennis is hit the…uh oh. Biyomon, it's not like that!" she cried, trying to console her Digimon.

"You're a mean person, Sora!" Biyomon wailed, wiping her teary eyes with one wing. "Mean, mean, mean!"

"Will somebody please turn that thing off!" Matt snapped as Biyomon went into a hysterical crying fit. "Look, Biyomon, if Sora being an athlete is really going to make you so upset, then she can be a…a…." He groped for words.

Several replies came at once.

"Ice cream truck driver!" Gabumon called.

"Rubber band maker!" Palmon suggested.

"Stamp licker!" was Agumon's proposal.

"Fashion designer," TK declared, scrawling it down.

"How in the world did you get fashion designer from soccer player?" Sora demanded, drawing herself to her full height. "There's no way I'm being a fashion designer! I'm the tomboy of the group, remember! What would I be doing as a fashion designer?"

"Hey!" Mimi shouted, standing up and towering over TK as well. "I wanted to be the fashion designer!"

TK cowered in his spot on the floor. "It was the first thing that came to my mind!" he defended weakly.

"WELL, THEN COME UP WITH SOMETHING ELSE!" both girls roared in his face. Meekly, TK crossed out what he had just written. "Sora is a soccer player that doesn't kick things," he read out loud. "Mimi is a fashion designer."

"Actually," Mimi said, winding a bit of her hair around one finger. "I've changed my mind. Fashion designers get absolutely no screen time. I want my own TV show."

"Oh, can it be a science fiction thing?" Davis yelled out eagerly. "With blasters and ray guns? I'll do sound effects! Listen to this…" He was off on another series of BOOMs and POWs.

"Quiet!" Kari yelled, and Davis fell silent immediately. "Thank you, Davis," she said, flashing him her sweetest smile. "Go on, Mimi. What will your TV show be about?"

"How about watching grass grow?" Palmon suggested. "I've always enjoyed doing that."

"Food," Gabumon stated firmly. "The only thing worth watching on TV is food."

"Mimi will have her very own food show, uh…cooking show," TK wrote. "That's good; how about the rest of you guys? Hey, what about you, Cody? You haven't said anything. Come on, what would you like to be?"

The youngest DigiDestined shifted uncomfortably in his seat. "Well, I haven't really thought about what I'd like to be when I grow up," he admitted. "There are just so many things out there."

"Ah, just pick one!" Upamon said, bouncing up and down energetically on Cody's lap. "Pick one, pick one, pick one!"

"Why don't you come back to me later?" Cody suggested. Watching Upamon bounce up and down nonstop was giving him neck cramps.

"Okay, Cody," Kari tried. "How would you feel about, um, running a Laundromat?"

"Okay, I guess," he mumbled, rubbing the back of his neck.

TK chuckled to himself. "Cody, running a Laundromat?" he snorted. "Cody can't even keep his plate clean, everyone knows that!"

"Hey, TK!" Kari said angrily. "Are you insulting Cody for not liking tomatoes?"

He stopped in mid-snort. "No, of course not," he said meekly. "Okay, so Cody's running a Laundromat. Got that. I'm writing it down right now, see?" Wilting under Kari's dagger-embedded stare, he quickly did so.

"Laundromat, Laundromat, Laundromat!" Upamon chanted, still bouncing. "What's a Laundromat, Cody? Cody? Cody?"

"I'll explain it to you later," Cody said. "Now can you please stop jumping like that?"

"Who do we have left?" Kari said, scanning the room. "Davis, you don't have a role yet. What do you say?"

Davis's eyes lit up. "Can I have a blaster?" he begged.

"No, giving Davis a blaster is a very bad idea," DemiVeemon objected. Kari had to agree, so she tried again. "Maybe you should be a surgeon, Davis."

DemiVeemon shook his head. "Giving Davis anything sharp is also a very bad idea."

"He can pump gasoline at the gas station!"

"Giving Davis access to highly flammable substances is a bad idea, too."

Kari ran a hand through her hair in frustration. "Well, then what do you suggest?" she challenged.

"Noodles," DemiVeemon said proudly. "It's impossible for Davis to permanently maim anybody with noodles."

"Well, actually," Gabumon interjected. "There was that one time in the restaurant where I accidentally…"

But Davis clearly wasn't hearing him. "That's a great idea!" he cried, getting all starry-eyed. "I love noodles! I could eat noodles all day and night!"

"You can't make any money by eating noodles," DemiVeemon pointed out.

"You sure about that?" Davis asked, face falling.

"Pretty sure," DemiVeemon confirmed. "It's really too bad." Both Digimon and partner heaved forth a heavy sigh and slunk to the floor.

"Well," Kari started hesitantly. "Maybe you could, like, sell noodles?"

"Would we get to eat any?" Davis asked.

"Um, it's a possibility."

Jumping to their feet, both Davis and DemiVeemon slapped each other an exuberant high-five. "Alright!" they shouted joyfully. "We'll be the best noodle sellers in the country!"

From his spot at the edge of the room, Matt was chuckling not quite so inaudibly. "Had enough fun and games, little brother?" he drawled at TK. "My band rehearsing in an hour, and I really should help set up." He heaved forth a loud yawn, and not bothering to cover it with his hand, got up and sauntered to the door.

TK's face turned an angry red. "If you're not here, Matt, you won't have any say in what we write about you!" he yelled after his older brother.

"Big deal," Matt called back. "Do your worst, bro, and I'll catch on TV. If it ever comes out on TV," he added sneeringly to himself, disappearing down the hallway.

"Wait for me, Matt!" Gabumon cried, scrambling after his partner.

"That does it!" TK scowled, taking up his pen and scribbling furiously. "Matt was kicked out of his band only several years after the end of Season Two. He became an astronaut instead, but during a mission to the moon, got off course and landed on Mars. There he spent the rest of his miserable life, eating red dust and unable to return home ever again. Take that, big brother. Ahahahaha! Gwahahahaha!"

"TK, cut it out!" Patamon squealed as his partner began to laugh maniacally. "You're scaring me."

Ken folded his arms. "You're doing it all wrong, anyways," he stated coldly. "You need to have more "HAHAHAHA!" Like this…"AHAHAHAHA! GWAHAHAHAHAHAHA……..!" Throwing up his arms, the former Digimon Emperor laughed a maniacal laugh to rival all maniacal laughs.

"Wow, you sure you want to clean houses?" Davis said, clearly impressed. "You and I could go into the sound effects industry and make it big."

"Giving Davis any control over the media is a bad, bad idea!" DemiVeemon shrieked in exasperation. "Just stick with the noodles!"

"Before Matt was blasted into outer orbit," TK was scribbling furiously, "he married Sora Tackenouchi, who divorced him 'cause he was such a jerk. Their two children grew up never knowing their delinquent father, except on Christmas, when he would send them uninspired presents such as Kleenex and new underwear."

"Hey!" Sora yelled, bolting to her feet. "Don't I get any say in this at all?"

"But Sora, aren't you and Matt friends?" Biyomon asked her partner innocently.

Sora's face flushed an angry red and she lunged for TK's wildly scribbling pen. "Now, TK," she said between clenched teeth, trying to wrench the pen out of his hand. "Please don't use me in your twisted scheme to embarrass your brother on TV. Use…"

Biyomon was clearly enjoying herself by now. "Sora has the Crest of Love!" she sang out, dancing around Sora and waving her wings around. "Crest of Love! Crest of Love!"

"Biyomon," Sora said, gritting her teeth. "Please don't make me…"

A shadow fell across the open door. Holding a hair-dryer turned to full power in one hand and a bottle of hair gel in the other, Tai stepped into the room. "Hey guys!" he called. "What's up?"

TK broke out of his violent outburst long enough to pale. "Uh, Tai," he said, pointing at the hair gel bottle. "That doesn't happen to be the hair gel Matt uses when he comes over, by any chance?"

"Would that be a problem?" Tai asked, still busy fixing his hair.

"Uh huh," everyone said in perfect unison.

Kari giggled and took the pen from TK. "Big brother, I really think we need to do something about that hair of yours," she said. "What do you think, Gatomon?"

Kari's partner looked up from the chess game she was playing with Agumon. "He'll never get a respectable job, otherwise," she purred, blue eyes glimmering.

"What are you doing!" Tai cried as Kari began to write.

"Oh, Tai, it's for your own good," Kari smiled. "Look, see I even made you and Agumon diplomats. Isn't that a nice, respectable job?"

Snatching the paper from Kari's hands, Tai stared on in horror. "You…you CUT MY HAIR?!" Screaming in agony, Tai ran out of the room. He crashed into the hall wall and went down, shattering the bottle of hair gel on the floor.

TK slapped a hand to his forehead. "Matt's gonna kill me!"

Kari walked up and unplugged Tai's hair dyer. "Just to save electricity, you know," she said with a wink.

Gatomon shook her head and went back to her chess game. "Checkmate," she purred to a befuddled Agumon. "Really, Kari, you should know there's no way Tai would ever willingly participate in a show that involves the permanent cough 'disfiguration' of his hair."

"Who said anything about Tai actually getting his hair cut?" Kari smiled sinisterly. "I have the perfect role in mind for my big brother; he can be an adorable little kiddie with hair heavier than his head. He'll finally know how I felt having to play the eighth DigiDestined child!"

Gatomon looked up at Kari in surprise. "But I thought you liked being the eighth child," she said, trying to conceal her hurt. "And having me as your partner."

"Of course I like you, Gatomon," Kari said, withdrawing temporarily out of her evil outburst as she patted Gatomon on the head. "But being stuck into a season when it was already half over? Just because Tai caught that cold and made me sick so I couldn't show up for the first screen test? This calls for serious revenge." Writing away, Kari chuckled lightly to herself as the rest of the DigiDestined looked out uneasily.

"I knew Kari was bottling up too much inside," Yolei muttered to herself. "That Dark Ocean was way too much for her. She's finally cracked."

"First, I'll have more of those rainbow-colored butterflies," Kari was mumbling to herself. "Everyone absolutely hates those rainbow-colored butterflies."

"That's not true," Patamon said indignantly. "I think rainbow-colored butterflies are very delicious."

"QUIET!" The force of Kari's shout sent Patamon scuttling backwards to hide behind TK's hat. "Next, all the annoying male characters who I personally do not like will get themselves cloned."

"If you don't like them, then why are you cloning them?" Gatomon asked curiously.

"So they can play themselves as small children, of course!" Kari chuckled evilly. "Just imagine them, trying to squeeze into tiny little kiddie suits! This will be fun, I tell you! Fun for me, not for you!"

"Kari," Davis and TK said tentatively, peering over her shoulder. "Do those annoying male characters who you personally do not like by any chance include…"

"NOW THEY DO!" Kari cackled. Both boys stumbled backwards, looking sheepish. "Oh, let's see what else," she said, looking down at what she had just written. "Of course. In the future, Digimon and humans live together in harmony. Everybody has their own Digimon partner and accepts the Digital World for the wonderful and wild place it will always be." She sighed dreamily, closing her eyes.

"Kari? Are you okay?" Gatomon said worriedly, prodding her partner anxiously.

Kari's eyes fluttered open and she stared up at Gatomon confusedly. "What just happened, Gatomon?" she asked drowsily. "I had the weirdest feeling, and it almost felt…satisfying in some twisted way. I'm sorry if anyone got hurt because of me…I'm sorry for everything…" Her head fell back again; she was fast asleep.

Yolei scowled, putting her hands on her hips. "Oh fine, make Kari the goody-two shoes, even when she isn't in the TV show!" she snapped, rolling her eyes. "She can't even have fits of evil without apologizing for them! That means I have to have enough selfishness for both of us!"

"I think you've been managing quite well," DemiVeemon said, ducking as Yolei threw a chair in his direction.

"Quickly now, before Kari wakes up!" TK panted, yanking the paper and pen out of Kari's hand and starting to write. "25 years from now, Kari Kamiya will be a…a…"

"Teacher," Cody finished for him. "That's what she told that one girl during the last big battle, at any rate."

"That was just to encourage the other kids," Yolei protested. "TK, make Kari a drug dealer or a gang member. I'm sure she'd like that a lot better."

"Ah! Too many ideas! Cannot compute…!" TK tore at his hair in frustration, dropping the pen and paper to the ground. Cody picked it up quickly and finished the outline.

"Kari will be a teacher," he wrote rapidly. "Not a drug dealer or a gang member, just so we get that clear. And TK will be a…writer, because it was his idea to write this outline in the first place. There, all done! Who wants to come with me to drop this off?"

Davis, TK, Kari, Yolei, and their respective partners slowly made their way down the aisle, stepping around various Digimon, scenery, and Gennai (who was walking around with his eyes closed again and banging into random objects). Ken was at home, helping his mother clean house. Cody had also left, in order not to be late for his daily session of kendo practice.

"Watch it, losers!" a brown-haired girl yelled as she ran by, clutching a pack of Digimon cards. She was followed closely by a dark-haired boy in an orange vest, who was holding a little girl by the hand.

"Henwy, I wanna go home!" the girl sobbed, clutching at the older boy's hand. "I wanna go home and play with Ter-wiermon!"

"Shh, Susie," the older boy said comfortingly. "Terriermon's audition isn't until tomorrow."

TK stepped forward, holding the outline in one hand. "Excuse me," he said to the boy in the orange vest. "What's this about auditions?"

"Auditions for Digimon Season Three, Digimon Tamers," the boy replied. "Now if you'll excuse me, I need to take my sister to the washroom."

TK was left with his mouth hanging open, unable to move or speak. As was the case, he was nearly plowed into the wall as a large red dinosaur ran past.

"No more badda-boom! I don't like badda-boom! Where's Takato-mon!" the dinosaur cried plaintively, crushing TK's toes as he barreled in the other direction.

"What…is…all…this?" TK could only stare. He tried to speak, but his mouth didn't seem to be producing any sound, save for a high-frequency whine.

"I don't like to say I told you so, but, I told you so," a familiar voice said smugly from the side.

All the Season Two DigiDestined spun around and gaped. "Izzy? What are you doing here?"

The older boy smirked, typing away on his laptop. "I tried to tell you, but you just didn't listen. The producers of Digimon have already come up with their own script for something called Digimon Tamers, and it has nothing to do with any of us."

"What!" TK cried, finding his voice at last. "Why, that's impossible! And you, Izzy, you're helping them, aren't you!" He pointed an accusing finger at the older DigiDestined. "How could you betray your own season!" he cried.

Izzy shrugged. "Hey, as long as I stay on their good side, maybe I'll get a bit part," he answered nonchalantly. "I hear they have some really prodigious stuff planned: a huge computer system for tracking down Digimon, reformatted Digivices, oh I just can't wait to get my hands on it all!"

"Who said anythin' 'bout waitin'?" a purple, bandanna-clad Digimon yelled, sliding past on a luggage cart. "Better think fast, pineapple-head! Badda-boom!"

"No!" Izzy screamed as the Digimon's fireball landed inches away from his computer. "Keep away from my precious Pineapple laptop! Keep away, I say!"

Eyes flashing, the purple Digimon chased Izzy out the door, throwing fireballs and shrieking "Badda-boom!" as he went.

"Now that's one character I want to work with," Davis declared, wide-eyed. "It's too bad, really, about us not getting to be in any new Digimon episodes."

"Ah, just who I was looking for!"

All the DigiDestined jerked their heads up in time to see their esteemed Director racing towards them, a script in one hand and a pen in the other. "Have you heard the news?" he asked them enthusiastically. "About Digimon Tamers?"

"Sir," TK said boldly, stepping forward. "We really must object. See, we put together an outline for what we think Season Three should be about."

The Director took TK's offering and flipped through it nonchalantly. "Say, this has got some real potential," he said, and TK's face brightened.

"Ken gone into a detective agency?" the Director read to himself, only glancing over TK's scrawling handwriting. "That's brilliant, son, simply brilliant! And Cody's a lawyer! Wonderful! No one will expect that!"

TK opened his mouth to correct the Director, but shut it again quickly. If the big boss liked the version of the outline he thought he was getting, Cody and Ken could live with their slightly altered career patterns, no problem.

"But we'll have to fix this part about Sora being an athlete," the Director mused, crossing it out with a deft stroke of his pen. "Trust me, it'll make Biyomon upset. Sora should do something safe…like being a fashion designer."

TK almost opened his mouth again, but thought better of it. Sora could live with being a fashion designer. It didn't mean that she would actually be a fashion designer once she grew up, or that she'd help Matt beat him up first chance she got. All for the good of the team, right? If this was what it took to get to be in Season Three, well, then there was really no choice.

"I think that's an excellent idea," TK heard himself saying.

"We'll stick it all into the last five minutes of the last Season Two episode," the Director replied. "Nice job, TS."

"But…but, but…"TK heard himself stuttering. "But Mr. Director, sir, what about us? I mean, we were hoping that we'd be in Season Three!"

"Oh, that reminds me," the Director said, turning to Kari. "Kari, I just thought of a very special role for you. You're going to be the elementary school teacher in Season Three!"

"Oh, why thank you," Kari said demurely. "That sounds like fun. Why me, though?"

The Director scratched the back of his head sheepishly. "Well, mostly because you're the only one who hasn't turned it down flat," he admitted. "No one really looks forward to working with a bunch of rowdy fifth graders, but I'm sure you can handle it.

"Go and get 'em, Kari!" Gatomon yelled. "Show those mewing little kittens who's boss! If there's anyone who can take on this job, it's definitely my partner!"

The Director nodded, writing Kari's name down on his script. "Yolei…"

"Yes?" the other girl said, snapping to attention.

"Your knowledge of computer, er, stuff…"

"FOR THE LAST TIME!" came a distant scream. "IT IS NOT JUST COMPUTER STUFF!!!"

"…would come in handy," the Director went on. "How would you like to play a stylish young computer expert in Season Three?"

"You bet!" Yolei cried. "Are there any guys?"

The Director snuck a backwards look at a sandy-haired man with a permanent scowl on his face who was flicking a cigarette lighter back and forth with his finger. "No one your type, I'm sure," the Director replied. "And, Davis, we've been looking for a new announcer."

"I'd help you look, too," Davis offered sincerely, "but I'm not sure what an announcer looks like."

The Director chuckled and clapped Davis on the back. "Funny kid," he laughed. "Just what we need. A fresh, young voice to announce the beginnings and ends for our episodes. You're in, Davis!"

"Cool!" Davis cried, pumping a fist into the air. "I'm in! Did you hear that, DemiVeemon? I'm so totally in!"

"In where?" DemiVeemon asked.

Davis's face fell. "Now that's a good question," he said musingly.

One by one, each of the DigiDestined walked up to join the Director. Folding his arms, TK looked on angrily as his former friends each received copies of the Digimon Tamers script and started exclaiming over it excitedly.

A hand fell upon his shoulder, and TK looked up, startled. "We could use you, too, TC," the Director said earnestly. "You did a fine job writing up that outline; how would you like to work behind the scenes for a change, writing episode outlines for Digimon Tamers?"

"Do it, TK, do it!" Patamon agreed.

Something in TK shifted, and he managed a small smile. He'd never be on the TV screen again, except for reruns. But this was better than nothing.

One week later, Matt was lazily flipping through some channels with the remote when the last five minutes from the last episode of a certain cartoon caught his eye.

"Let's make a promise to be Pokémon masters someday," Ash was telling Richie.

"Right," Richie replied. "Pokémon masters, both of us!"

Matt wiped a tear from his eye as the two boys clasped hands. It was all so very touching.

The phone rang, jolting him back to reality. Putting the TV on mute, he picked up the phone and uttered a brief "Hello?"

It was Sora, and from the sound of her voice, was apparently not too happy. "Your little brother is so going down!" she snarled at him, before slamming down the phone. Matt shrugged as the line went dead.

TK couldn't really do anything that would make Sora this angry. Unless…

Quickly, he picked up the remote and switched to a different channel. And watched the last five minutes from the last episode of a certain other cartoon.

The very ground shook with his response. "TAKERU TAKAISHI! I'LL GET YOU FOR THIS!"

I'm still in denial over the end of Digimon Season Two (no more Gatomon!). If you liked the outcomes that the end of Season Two set forth, please do not take this story seriously. Not that anybody would take it seriously in the first place.

9/15/2002- Story reformatted.