Disclaimer: I do not own Digimon, or any of the digimon that will be appearing in here. I do, however, own the human characters.

A/N: This is a bit of an AU from the cannon, but bear with me. Some of the things such as the exaggerated lapse of time are going to be ignored for dramatic purposes. Also note that this is the first chapter of the first story of a series. I'll just let you know that this is using Digimon Adventure as a guide for the first story. The next will be Digimon Adventure 02 and so forth. No, I'm not using cannon characters.

The world outside was scary. There were scary men, scary women, scary animals and even scary trees. Any sane person who didn't want to get hurt wouldn't go outside into this extremely scary world. After all, if a person were to take even one step, he or she could somehow die an untimely, painful death. A car could come and run into whoever was standing there. A wild animal could jump out of the trees! Someone could show up with a gun. Guns were the worst.

Regardless, a boy stood outside staring at the rain that was falling down in sheets. His pathetic clothing, just an old Mariner's jersey with "Ichiro" printed on the back and a pair of shorts covered him completely. That wasn't good enough, for the rain had already forced it to stick fast to his pale skin. Small ripples of blue and green bunched up under the force of the water and made ugly wrinkles on what would have been, in dry weather, a perfectly ironed out shirt. His khaki shorts were in much the same state, but had turned from khaki to a dark brown some twenty minutes ago at least. There was a necklace hanging from his throat with the name "Kevin" etched into it, presumably his own name.

Kevin wasn't near old enough to be standing out in the rain in that manner. He was perhaps eight years old, maybe nine, but it was hard for anybody to tell. His grey eyes were almost completely dead looking, and if there had been a sparkle of life there at all it had been smothered by the harsh reality of life itself. A few strands of ash blonde hair stuck out of the pile that was smothered to the top of his normally smoothed out head. Due to the rain, however, it seemed like the boy had a coil of rope wrapped around in a large mess on his head.

There was not a sound to be heard, except for the falling of the rain and a little boy's breathing. With each inhale, Kevin would grab a gulp of fresh air, but with each exhale a rush of mist would slowly expel into the air. When he was younger, he used to grab at the strange white cloud that he had created out of nowhere, but now he was too old for that, Madison had said. Madison was always right with her words of wisdom.

Kevin was slowly brought out of his thoughts with what felt to him like a couple of thundering footsteps. They were, however, just a couple of joggers running past like crazy lunatics. Or maybe they were people coming to wait at the bus stop too. Or maybe they were people looking for Madison. There were still a lot of people who wanted to look for Madison even though the police had given up on finding her.

"Kevin Illanda! There you are! Your parents have been worried sick about you," one of the joggers cried out through the rain. The boy could distinctly pick out her voice as female.

"Why are you standing out here? You'll catch cold or something," came the next voice, which was immediately marked male.

The man and the woman waited a moment for Kevin's response, thinking that the boy was going to give them the information they requested immediately. Instead, he turned his head to the side in an act of defiance, refusing to allow anyone to get into the depths of his mind. The man and woman could only stare, puzzled, before looking around at where they were in an attempt to gather what was going on. It was becoming clear, at least, that the boy wasn't going to give them what they wanted.

"Why aren't you talking?" the woman asked, but still there was no answer.

Kevin kept his head down and his eyes averted from the ones around him. He knew who they were, but it wasn't like he wanted to speak with them. They were some old family friends, people who had known him before Madison left. Their puzzled looks were understandable, but at the same time they were complete idiots if they thought he was going to magically start speaking at their arrival. He hadn't spoken a single word since Madison left, and most people could figure out that he wasn't intending to speak again. Most people except for the man and woman standing in front of him, it seemed.

"Hey, Judy. Yeah I found him. He's just sitting here by the bus stop and he won't talk to us," he heard the woman say into her cell phone while blasts of steam rushed past him. "Well, yes I know he hasn't talked since Madison was murdered but…what? Am I not supposed to say that? Oh come on, Judy. Kevin's eight years old, he has a right to know what happened."

Kevin just ignored the woman speaking after a while. It wasn't as if he hadn't heard everything before. There were many different stories about what had happened that day, and nobody had gotten a clear answer except for him. Some said that Madison had been abducted by a man in a van who had then in turn raped and murdered her. Others said she had been wandering around by the riverbed and drowned because the rain had been too heavy and she had lost her footing. Still others believed that she had perhaps fallen prey to plain teenage idiocy.

Young Kevin, however, did not understand any of this. He did not know what the word "rape" meant or really grasped "murder." Water killing someone didn't seem to make any sense whatsoever, and Kevin knew for a fact that Madison didn't hang out around teenagers. It couldn't have been any of those things anyway, for there was a truth that nobody had speculated. There was a truth that only Kevin himself knew.

The man was speaking some words to the woman, or perhaps to his young counterpart, but Kevin paid it no mind. Instead, he was feeling himself slowly falling into a memory. He could already see everything vividly painted into his mind, like the old picture of the wagon in his mother's bedroom. It was all so clear, so crisp, and there was nothing that could possibly bring him out of it…not until he was satisfied.

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Madison groaned as she pulled the hoodie up over her head. The black hood stuck to her head, but she quickly brushed it aside and tugged at the bottom that was raised above her waistline. When she was satisfied, she ran over to the window without tripping, since her shoes still a couple of untied snakes, and pressed her face up close to the smooth, cool glass.

She wasn't all that old, but with the way Madison sat pressed against the window she seemed much younger. At ten-years-old, she was spunky and energetic and could sometimes seem as if she was five, but at the same time she could seem wise beyond her years as if she were sixteen. Most people who immediately met her weren't exactly sure how to handle her, but for those who did know her it was a rather easy thing to deal with. Madison was just Madison, and one had to adjust to her moods.

A long ponytail of chocolate brown hair swished back and forth as the young girl turned her head to look at her little brother standing there beside her bed with a curious look on his face. A sigh escaped her as she jumped up, stumbled, and then placed a hand to her shoulder to adjust the straps on her training bra that she probably wouldn't need for another few years. Her brother only looked at her with mild amusement.

"If only you were a girl, Kevin. Then you would understand things," Madison tried to explain as worked at the strap to keep it on her scrawny shoulders. It was clear to anyone that she was definitely not ready for it yet.

"I guess…Madison I'm bored. What're we doing?" Kevin whined at his sister, who only waved her hand to him in a brief dismissal.

"We're going to do something really cool. We're going to go to the park! Mom said we could go today," the older girl explained as she reached down to tie the shoes that had been neglected the entire time.

With that said, as if it were going to answer every single question in anybody's mind, Madison reached out her hand to the little boy in front of her. He took it, confused, and followed her to wherever she was intending to go. It didn't make much sense, but he would let her lead him around if she wanted. She was, after all, his sister and he couldn't just ignore her with this. If she wanted to go to the park, then they would go to the park. Enough said, in his opinion.

Outside the world was calm and not entirely hostile. Everybody was standing around or playing with a soccer ball or an imaginary game. Since it was spring, just about every single person in the world was out enjoying its fresh air, even if the sky was still rather overcast. It never changed in Balldin; that was just how things were. As long as the rain had stopped, then it was okay for anyone to go around and play despite it being quite an overcast day.

Madison, being the elder of the two and the leader of the little team they had formed, led her younger brother through the many houses that littered the sidewalk. It was just their normal neighborhood, nothing to really freak out about. The park, however, wasn't in the residential area of town. It was too noisy and disruptive to have a bunch of kids running around screaming their heads off. So, of course, they had to do what everybody in Balldin did to get somewhere that was not in the neighborhood: take the bus.

The bus stop was about four blocks away from the Illanda household, and it was a trip that the two youngsters took all the time. Before, they had always been escorted by their parents, but since Madison had turned ten she was given the responsibility of taking care of her younger brother when they went out to the park. She had, at first, taken the responsibility to be an amazing coming of age ritual, but she soon found it to be a tedious chore that she rarely wanted to do. After all, there were the times where Kevin wanted to go and she didn't, and the times where she wanted to go and Kevin didn't. They often had to compromise, and if there was one thing Madison hated it was compromise.

The bus stop was, of course, just a normal bus stop stationed on a block. There was a large sign with the name of the company etched across it in big, blue letters, but other than that there was nothing fancy to stop and stare at. The only thing to do was sit back, relax, and wait for the bus to drive its gas-powered engine over to the lonely stop. After that, they just had to wait for the bus to arrive at the park and they could go have their fun. It wasn't like it would be that long once the bus got to their stop, for the next stop was the park, and everybody knew that kids only got on the bus so they could go to the park. Plus, the bus driver was a kind enough man to know who was a regular and who needed to get off where. He wouldn't dare let any of the kids get lost around the city; he was too decent to do something like that.

"Madison I'm booooooooored," whined Kevin, but he only got a blank stare from his sister before he groaned and sat back, refusing to have a fit in front of her like she was expecting. He didn't like her having that satisfaction.

For a few more minutes, the two sat in relative silence with only Kevin clicking his heels against the cement ground a few times. Madison seemed completely lost in her own little world, and by the time the bus pulled up beside them, Kevin had to tug and punch at Madison to get her to start moving again and realize that her long awaited ride had appeared before her. Though she was slightly embarrassed, she covered it quickly and walked over to the bus as fast as she could.

Once on the bus, it took only a few moments to arrive the park, and Madison and Kevin both bounced off to run around in the green grasses. It was everything a young child would possibly want in an outdoor playground: a jungle gym, slides, swings, and just a huge grassy area to use the imagination to stretch reality into what one actually wanted it to be. Everybody went to the park, and everybody enjoyed every minute of it. Well, at least the kids did at least. After the age of eleven, the park just didn't seem as fun anymore, and people stopped attending.

Kevin realized that next year, Madison would soon be at the age where she no longer wanted to go to the park. She would be like Kelly Jameson and want to go to the mall to go look at boys instead of play Spiderman in the dirt. He wasn't sure how exactly one made that transition, but all he knew was that Madison would soon follow in Kelly's footsteps, and he would have just another grown-up who reluctantly took him to the park to watch him awkwardly play with people he didn't even know. He didn't want that! He just wanted a buddy to play with, what Madison had always been!

"I wanna show you somethin' I saw yesterday," Madison said as she ran over to the far side of the grassy area. Kevin, feeling rather dumb, did the only thing he could think to do and followed.

Once there, Kevin just watched Madison digging around in the dirt to find something. The sleeves of her hoodie were rolled up to her elbows, and the dirt ground itself into the knees of her jeans, which their mother would soon decide to nag about. She would give her the lecture on how it was not "fitting for a young lady to be getting her clothes dirty like a boy!" Of course, every time Madison was fed that lecture, she just shrugged it off and went out to dirty her clothes once more. Nothing their mother said ever fazed the girl for too long.

"See, I found somethin' yesterday, but it was all hot and stuff," Madison tried to explain as she dug around. "It was all…glowy and stuff. It fell from the sky and just landed there, so I freaked out and put some dirt over it. I hope it's cooled off now."

The young girl continued to dig through the dirt frantically, as if trying to find what she had desperately been hoping to grab the entire time. Kevin, however, was starting to think this was all just one big joke and decided that he would be better off just walking away and leaving Madison to her little game. If she wanted to go hunt for some imaginary treasure, then she could by all means do that. He, on the other hand, was going to go have some fun if he had been forced to go to the park. Just because Madison was going a little crazy didn't mean that he had to join in.

"KEVIN! KEVIN LOOK!"

Just as Kevin was about to walk away from the whole insane project, Madison jumped up and started screaming her head off. He turned, confused, to see a small bubble of some sort just floating in midair next to his sister. Confused, he walked over to her to try and touch it, but his hand was deflected by the bubble around the small device, and he could only stare at the thing encased within.

The device was perhaps twenty centimeters in diameter at the most, with four smooth sides and four grooves in between those sides. There was a strange script written in a circular pattern on the outside of a small LCD screen with black lining and more script that Kevin could not read. There was one, circular button on the left side of the screen, and two oval buttons. One of the buttons was right on top of another, and they were both positioned to the right of the screen. The screen was black, without any sort of display, and he could not for the life of him discern what exactly it was going to do.

It seemed almost intelligent at first, trying to decide who it was there for. The floating bubble with the device slowly made its way between Madison and Kevin in its decision process, slowly eliminating one or the other for its purposes. In the end, however, it floated above Kevin's outstretched hands and plopped straight into his palms. Surprised from the choice, he almost screamed for Madison to go get help before he realized what exactly it was.

The device was smooth and cool to the touch, unlike what he had originally thought it would be. He tossed it a few times in mid-air, but it did nothing. Aside from the cool bubble trick, he didn't see how it was really anything special at all. It was just some lame little piece of metal that his sister had probably gotten from one of her friends to trick him with. She would then proceed to laugh at him for being so stupid and gullible, and he would not hear the end of it until he could finally pull some prank on her to make her realize that she was just as gullible as he, and then finally shut up about the whole entire thing. That, however, was going to take some work.

"You win, Madison," Kevin sighed as he looked up from the device.

To his surprise, Madison was not there at all. Confused, Kevin pocketed the device and turned his head from side to side. She must have run off, must have left him there, but why? Had he done something wrong by taking the little device from her? It had all be a joke though! She hadn't really cared that he was playing with the little device that she was intending to trick him with, was she? Maybe it wasn't a trick, though; maybe she had actually wanted to play with it…

"Madison!" the little boy screamed, but she was nowhere to be found. He shouted her name again and there was nothing. All that he received was an echo in return. An eerily cold echo. An echo of his sister's name, but never his sister's voice.

Had it really been his fault?

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Kevin was shook out of his silent revere by his mother who had proceeded to smother him in hugs and kisses because she was so worried about him. She had to comment on how he was soaked to the bone and how she didn't like him standing out there waiting to catch pneumonia, but he ignored it all, only nodding or shaking his head to her yes and no questions but never actually speaking. Yes, he would shower. Yes, he would get dressed into something warmer. No he wasn't hurt. No, he had not seen Madison or her kidnapper. No, he didn't hate her.

Finally, when the questioning was all over and he was freed to go change himself and shower, Kevin could only think about how awful it was to be forced home again. He had been waiting silently for his sister so she wouldn't be mad at him. Now that she knew he had returned to their mother and father, she would only understand that he was just a wuss and he couldn't last out on anything. Maybe she was waiting for him to stay out all night, but he couldn't do that. It was raining too hard, and their mother wouldn't dare let him out of her sight at that point in time.

When he arrived in his room, the boy jerked the Mariner's jersey off of his head, allowing his little torso to glisten with moisture accumulated from the rain. He yawned and ran a hand through his messy hair before walking over to his bed. Maybe his mother had instructed him to shower, but he didn't feel like doing so at that moment. Instead, he felt like sitting on his bed trying to think of a way to bring Madison back. That seemed like a much better plan than sitting around doing nothing.

The room was utter silence, and Kevin didn't seem to mind it one bit. He didn't need to talk or make noise, because that was what Madison hated most. She hated that he was such a crybaby, that he could only talk and whine and cry around her. So he wouldn't talk and he wouldn't cry. It didn't matter if his room was boring or not, and it didn't matter if he wanted to say something to make his mother and father stop asking him questions or not. All that mattered was that he would get Madison to come back to him soon if he was just quiet, if he sacrificed enough.

In the silence, a lone beeping noise could be heard. Confused, Kevin looked around the room without bothering to sit up, but could see nothing that would be making such a noise. He didn't have any electronics on, and it wasn't like the T.V. could suddenly come to life and start beeping at him. That made absolutely no sense, but the more he thought about it the more he realized that almost nothing had been making sense since Madison left.

The beeping slowly subsided and a sharp processing noise took its place. It sounded as if there was a computer in his room, but he knew that certainly wasn't true. He didn't have anything of the sort anywhere in his room, and so he didn't exactly know where it could be coming from. In fact, aside from the T.V. and the few game consoles he possessed, the only other thing that could be possibly making the sound would be the device he had found when Madison disappeared…

Suddenly, it dawned on Kevin that perhaps the device was making the noise that he was hearing. Slowly he reached into his pocket to draw out the smooth metal device that he had carried with him since the day he had found it. When Madison returned, he had to give it back to her after all. If she didn't get it back, she might go away again, and so he kept it with him the entire time. Naturally, that made it incredibly easy to see whether it really was making the noise or not.

The moment Kevin's hand touched the device he could feel its vibrations running through it and into his hand. For some reason, he felt compelled to grasp it even more, as if the fact that it was finally doing something odd wasn't, well, odd in itself. Maybe it was because he was a curious boy, or maybe it was because he had already seen enough in his life, but he went along with the entire thing. He refused to freak out and call his parents, or desperately toss it out the window. No, instead he figured investigating it wouldn't be so bad. Investigating what was making the strange noise almost seemed like the best thing to do at the time.

When the device was pulled from the boy's pocket, a brilliant golden color was shining from the screen. Kevin quickly shielded his eyes in a vain attempt to block out what was coming toward him, but it only grew stronger to penetrate the barrier he had created. The tighter he squeezed his arm around his eyes, the brighter it became. It was almost as if the device was trying to force him into a state of blindness. That couldn't be, though, for it was an inanimate object incapable of sentiment thought…why would it be trying to force him into that state?

It was still too bright to look out, but Kevin kept holding onto the device. It was getting warmer now, gradually turning into what he had originally thought it would feel like. No longer was he holding the boring, smooth device but a burning hot blinding device! It wasn't tame, and it definitely wasn't something that his sister would have wanted to trick him with if she had known its destructive power. Now, however, he was stuck with it. He was stuck in its blinding light and there was no way out of it.

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When sight finally returned to Kevin's eyes, he was face-down in darkness. There was nothing around that he could make out, but he wondered if perhaps it had anything to do with the bright flash of light he had just experienced. Naturally he wouldn't be able to see in the dark instantly, but then again he also didn't know how much time had passed. He was just more confused than anything. His whole body was trying to adjust to whatever had happened, but it wasn't doing very well.

In the darkness, Kevin could hear footsteps approaching him. They didn't seem all that threatening, but more like a cautious tread. Still, natural instinct caused his muscles to tense and his entire body to become rigid. He was going to either fight or flee, but he couldn't exactly choose which one. The darkness would make it hard to do both, and he only had one option. Perhaps his foe also had darkness against him…

"Takashi? Where are you?" a lost voice called, the voice of a young boy who needed help.

Kevin remained quiet, however. It could have been a ploy of some kind to lure him out and kill him. Whatever was calling about in the strange darkness was not something he was sure he wanted to trust. Besides, if that thing was looking for Takashi, it could look for him away from Kevin. After all, the last time Kevin checked he was not known as Takashi, or any other foreign name at that. He was just Kevin, and he was going to remain Kevin for the rest of his life!

The voice became a body, and that body emerged from the darkness into Kevin's little hole of equal darkness. Light flared up around the body, and it was incredibly hard for the young boy to make out. From what he could tell, it was a human boy just like him except…he had strange markings. The light illuminated a happy, smiling face with strange purple markings all down his left side. Golden bangs came close to covering his bright blue eyes, but they seemed to be flipped up in an angelic manner.

However, none of that was really all that strange, not even the markings. After all, Kevin figured it could have been some strange boy who wanted to dress up for Halloween early like some usually did. There was just one thing, one very definite thing that made Kevin think twice about labeling the boy just another boy. It didn't even have to do with the way he had a toga-like cloth strung around him or large, golden bangles hanging off of his arms and legs. No, none of that mattered much to Kevin.

The one thing that made Kevin look twice at the other boy were four sets of wings sprouting from his back and one from his head. Altogether, there were ten wings all sprouting from either his back or his head in varying sizes. The ones on the boy's head and the bottom of his back were considerably small compared to the wings attached to the middle of his back. Those wings, Kevin assumed, could be used for flying off somewhere if he wanted.

"Takeshi!" the other boy cried as he ran over to Kevin and extended a hand.

Kevin, not realizing that he was still completely tensed up, automatically thrust out his fist to punch at the other boy, or whatever he was. The boy, however, just laughed and placed his hands upon the fist that had made contact with the soft, human-like flesh of his stomach. He didn't even seem to care that Kevin had attached him, but was merely focused on opening the hand that had been thrust at him. Somehow, that seemed to be the only and best thing on his mind.

"Ah yes, Takeshi," the boy said as he revealed the device that had been gripped tightly in Kevin's fist. Now, it was merely laying flat on his palm, undisturbed.

The other boy's eyes gleamed with a curiosity that almost frightened Kevin. He didn't understand any of this at all, especially not who this boy was. How did he know about the device? How come the punch did absolutely nothing to him? Kevin just didn't understand any of this, and he had a feeling things were going to get even worse. With the way the other boy was staring at him, with that determined curiosity in his eyes, he knew that it wasn't going to be easy to get away.

"I'm glad I finally found you, Takeshi. I am pleased to introduce myself as your partner, Lucemon."

Kevin merely stared at the boy after the introduction and couldn't help but wonder just what he had gotten himself into.