A.N.: This story is part of my Trinacriform series, and is a companion to Metanoia and Renascent. The three can be read in any order, but if you're fond of mysteries I recommend starting with Metanoia, because reading that one second will give away a lot of what's going on.


equanimity - noun: a calm mental state, especially after a shock or disappointment or in a difficult situation


I can't really explain how I knew, but I did. The moment Nefertimon and I arrived, and found a few Pyokomon being harried by a Gazimon under the control of a dark ring, I felt a shiver down my back. Something bad was happening, or was going to happen. Maybe it already had.

It was the work of a moment to free the Gazimon from the dark ring. One digimon? Just one, a child-level all on its own, and with no real memory of getting there once freed. All the Pyokomon knew was that they had been scooped up by an Airdramon and dropped here, just an hour or so before, and the Gazimon had already been there waiting for them.

It was all wrong, but it didn't make any sense. Not until Miyako's message arrived, anyway, telling us that she had found only a solitary Gazimon at her distress call, and thought it a little strange.

Trap.

The word arrived in my head and stuck there, nagging and worrying at me. But, still, it didn't make any sense. If it was a trap, who or what was the trap for?

I didn't want to think about the prickling in my back as we flew to our meeting point. I had to, though. After all, we'd separated. Each of us had gone to a different place, and… and that was the trap. We'd been split up. Divided. Whatever it was, Miyako and I had probably gotten the decoys. That or something big was waiting for us at our meeting point.

Miyako and I were the first back. That much wasn't a surprise - our partners could fly, so we moved a lot faster. Sure enough, it was Iori who arrived after us, running up with Armadimon in tow from the closest distress call. Daisuke brought up the rear - he'd taken one of the further points because Lighdramon could cover ground almost as fast as we could.

"This doesn't feel right," Iori said. "We got there, but there was only a Gazimon… we freed him, but he can't have been the one to send a signal, because he had a dark ring."

Miyako stared at him. "He wasn't even guarding anyone?"

"Man, this reeks," Daisuke said, looking around. "And where's Takeru got to? I don't like standing around like this. Feels like Ichijouji's planning something."

I bit the inside of my lip, trying to keep calm. There had to be a reason he hadn't come back, didn't there? He'd taken the furthest call of all of us, reasoning that Lighdramon ought to have some energy left in reserve to help the rest of us if we needed it. It was the same reason that I'd taken Nefertimon in the opposite direction. Our partners are stronger than the others - older. They can put up with more. Pegasmon should have been able to fly out there, help, and fly back. They should have come back by now. The more I thought about it, the more uneasy I felt.

"Maybe we should send a message or something?" Miyako said at last. We'd been standing around long enough that none of us were comfortable any more. "I mean, maybe he got…got held up and forgot to let us know?"

I didn't want to do it. I knew we had to, but sending that message, asking him to let us know what was going on… of course there was a chance he'd message back and everything would be fine. But I knew he wouldn't. I knew that the moment we asked him to contact us, it was going to set us down a path where nothing was okay any more. All the while we were waiting, I could deny it. I wanted to carry on denying it.

"Do it," Daisuke said, reaching for his own D-Terminal. Everyone sent a message - mine was the last. Mostly because I already knew how pointless it was.

::Takeru, please tell us where you are:: I sent eventually, trying to ignore the knot in my stomach.

The message came back to all of us simultaneously.

::Your friend will not be returning all the while my demands are unmet. Surrender your digivices and digimon, and concede defeat to the Digimon Kaiser::

I don't remember falling. One minute I was stood upright, holding my D-Terminal in my hand, and the next I was on the ground, with Miyako and Daisuke both fussing around me as though I were some kind of invalid. Iori stood not far behind them, his face ashen.

"I'm alright," I said quickly, as they helped me to my feet. "I'm alright." The words came out automatically, but I was pretty sure even Daisuke could tell I didn't mean them. Of course I wasn't alright. None of us were.

"What do we do now?" Miyako said, her voice high and panicky. "We have to rescue him!"

I looked at my D3, feeling like a robot. It was some kind of nightmare. A bad dream, digging up worse memories.

"His D3 isn't showing up," I said. There were three dots around mine on the map, but Takeru's was nowhere in sight. I couldn't remember the last time any of us had been that far apart. "He must be too far away."

"So we go to the last place he was and try again there," Daisuke said. "Ichijouji can't have taken him far."

I didn't have the heart to tell them it was pointless. I think I wanted to be wrong. For it to be a trick of the same sort the self-styled Digimon Kaiser had played before - except that all those times, he'd stuck to a place we could still see on our D3s. If Takeru's had vanished, he'd been taken a long, long way away. And we'd sat waiting for over half an hour. We'd probably missed our only chance to find out where that place was.

We went anyway, of course. We'd been in such a rush to attend those distress calls that it really wasn't all that late. It was easy to find the place, too. You could tell by the carnage.

"What happened?" Miyako said, staring in horror.

I clung to Nefertimon as Daisuke walked around, kicking at rubble and cursing. Iori just stood there, his face as drawn as I had ever seen it.

"This was where they were all waiting," I said hollowly. "Ichijouji split us up because he knew we're stronger together."

"And Takeru didn't call for help," Iori said, scowling. "Which means he didn't know he was outnumbered until it was too late. An ambush."

"Seems like they fought back pretty hard though," Miyako said, looking at the devastation.

There was a building nearby, but it was impossible to tell what it had been. All that was left were piles of stone. The ruins of a dark tower were heaped beside it. It was wrong, all wrong. There was just too much destruction for a fight against one person. And, if the dark tower had been destroyed, surely the enslaved digimon should have been freed?

"Ichijouji wasn't taking chances," I said dully. "He… he can't have known for certain that Takeru would be the one, or that he'd be alone. There were probably a lot of digimon waiting here."

I could feel a lump building in my throat as I spoke. I didn't want it to be true. It couldn't be true. Not Takeru. After everything we'd been through in the digital world it seemed impossible that something - someone - could take him away. How could he be gone?

"Must've had spirals, too," Daisuke said, picking up a scrap of metal. "I mean, the tower's down, right?"

"No," Iori snapped, making us all turn and stare at him. "There's another, look! Behind those trees."

It wasn't easy to see. No doubt that had been the intention. Alone, Takeru hadn't stood a chance.

"We never should have split up," I said, sinking to my knees. I could feel the tears starting, and screwed my eyes tightly shut to hold them back. It didn't work.


It didn't sink in properly until we were stood at the gate. We'd knocked down every tower we could see on our way back - mostly as a distraction. As though, somehow, by lingering in the digital world, everything would miraculously turn out okay. As though Takeru were just running a bit late.

But at the gate, there was no avoiding the issue. He wasn't there. He wasn't returning with us. We had to go back without him, and…and try to explain things.

"We're sure there's nothing else we can do?" Miyako said, looking around anxiously. "I mean…he…surely Ichijouji didn't really mean all that about Takeru, right?"

"Well, do you see him popping up anywhere?" Daisuke said. "I mean, that's a lot of effort to go to, blowing up a building and smashing up everything around it, just to let him go. Ichijouji's not the type to do that."

"There's nothing we can do, Miyako," I said, trying to swallow the lump in my throat. "We…we need to go back and ask for help. Just the four of us like this…it's no good. But the others…Taichi will know what to do. Or maybe Koushiro can find a way to track where he is. We have to face it. This is…it's more than we can manage."

Daisuke frowned. "Wait, you're saying we're not good enough to handle this? We've done pretty well with everything else Ichijouji's thrown at us!"

Iori cleared his throat. "But Taichi and the others have been through something a bit like this before," he said. "Remember what they told us? They were separated and had to find each other. Takeru is counting on us. We can't ignore advice if it might help rescue him sooner."

"And I guess if Ichijouji does let Takeru go, he can get back by himself," Miyako said. Her face brightened. "And if we leave the computer on overnight he'll have a gate to use. I'll disable the screensaver to make sure he can access it."

I smiled weakly. They didn't get it. How could they? We'd all been popping in to the digital world for a couple of hours after school, and longer stretches only at the weekends. We'd always known that we could leave at any time, thanks to the gates. I had a feeling Miyako expected Takeru to message us around dinner time and let us know he was back.

Much as I wanted him to, I knew it wouldn't happen. Ichijouji hadn't even cared about his own family when he'd moved to the digital world permanently. Why should he care about anyone else now? It was all I could do to keep my face level as we let the gate pull us back to the real world. I didn't want to think about what awaited us there.

What were we going to tell everyone?


Being back at school made it a lot more real for the others. I could tell by the awkward looks on their faces as Miyako fiddled with the computer, and the silence as we walked down the corridor. We stopped outside.

"So, what now?" Daisuke asked. "I mean, how long do we give it? He's…he's gotta come back soon, right?"

Iori shook his head. "We have to let someone know what happened."

"But who?" Miyako asked. "Who do we tell?"

I checked the time on my D-Terminal. "Mrs Takaishi probably won't be home from work for a little while yet. So we…we should start with the others."

Deep in my gut I knew I was being selfish. I wanted an excuse to see Taichi. I wanted to feel like it was the eight of us again, and that Taichi was going to put things right. I didn't want it to be my job. I didn't want to be the one who had to break the news. I didn't want to admit that we'd left someone behind. It felt like a failure. It was a failure. We'd never left anyone behind before, and now we had, and it was Takeru, the person who had promised to do everything in his power to protect me from Piedmon at the age of eight. He'd done it, too, and in return I'd abandoned him. I felt like the most horrible person in the world.

To make things worse, the others just nodded. They were looking at me to tell them what to do, as though I knew something they didn't. As though I was the calm and collected one, when all I wanted to do was break down and cry.

I fished around for my phone, and sent Taichi an email, knowing he'd take it more seriously that way. My fingers felt numb as I tapped out the words, and asked him where Yamato was. Iori frowned, and said we should tell them in person, but I didn't—couldn't—send the message without warning them we had bad news. He replied almost straight away, telling us to head to the park, and that he'd meet us there with the others.

The others were Sora and Koushiro. They were sat on a bench together, Sora fiddling with a sports bag while Koushiro flicked through a textbook. Yamato was nowhere in sight.

"He had band practice," Taichi said in answer to my silent question, getting to his feet as we approached. "He'll be here in a minute. What's going…wait. Where's Takeru?"

I heard Sora gasp and I froze up, shaking my head and trying not to cry. I knew I would cry as soon as I said it, and I had to hold things together until Yamato got there. Iori was right. He shouldn't be the last to know. He should have been the first person to know, but we'd already messed that up. I should have called him straight away. Coward, I thought. Coward, coward, coward.

Taichi knew by the looks on our faces. I could tell. Besides, how could he fail to guess? There we were, four of us, and I'd asked specifically for Yamato to come along. I hung my head as he walked over and squeezed my shoulder. I knew it was meant to be reassuring—a substitute hug at a moment when hugs didn't seem right—but it just made me feel even worse. Why did I deserve comfort more than anyone else?

The hand let go, and Taichi called out over my head. To Yamato. I made myself turn and face him, despite the fact I didn't want any of it to be real.

Yamato's expression was suspicious at first, then increasingly wary as he looked us over.

"Did…did Takeru go home?" he asked uncertainly. "Taichi called and said this was important. What's going on?"

"I…we…" The words were there, dancing in my mind, but I couldn't get them out.

Iori cleared his throat. "We have bad news," he said, voice leaden but steady. "Ichijouji's holding Takeru hostage."

Yamato didn't say anything at first. His face didn't change its expression much, except to develop a sudden closed-off look. He shook his head slowly.

"Am I…am I hearing this right?" he said, voice strained. "Holding him hostage? Why? For what?"

Wordlessly, I held out my D-Terminal for him to take. Taichi took it from Yamato's hand when it started to shake, and read the message as well.

"We looked," I said. "But he was out of range of our D3s. There was a distress call, and we…we split up. It was a trap."

"He put up a heck of a fi-oof!"

I turned in time to see Miyako elbow Daisuke and cut him off mid-sentence. She glowered at him, and hissed: "Shut up!"

"The computer is still on at our school," Iori said. "If…we made sure to leave a gate open so he could leave if he was able to."

Yamato's knuckles were white.

"This is going too far," he said through gritted teeth. "I'm gonna-"

"You're gonna stay right here," Taichi said. "Because if we knew where Ichijouji was, we wouldn't have a problem in the first place. We'd rush him and break Takeru out, no sweat. And as soon as we track down that damn base of his, that's exactly what we will do, okay?"

"We're not going back now?" Daisuke asked.

"No," Taichi said shortly, not taking his eyes off Yamato. "There's no sense charging in without a plan, right? We've had to bide our time before, and Takeru knows that as much as anyone. He can hang in there until we find him."

Yamato looked away from Taichi for just a second: to stare at me. I ducked my head, sure of what he had to be thinking. It was easy for Taichi to talk about waiting when I was stood right there. If it had been the other way round…

But it wasn't. I was safe, and Takeru was missing, and none of us had any idea where he could possibly be. I felt guilty by association. Guilty for coming back; guilty for letting the others do most of the talking; guilty for not speaking up about that gut feeling that something was wrong sooner. If I'd sent a message from the start, would we have made it in time to help?

I didn't know. But stewing on might-have-beens wasn't going to help when what I did know was that one of my closest friends had vanished without trace, and I'd stood by and done nothing. The guilt cut deeply, and lodged there in my heart and mind.

It was going to be my close companion for a very long time indeed.


A.N.: It's here: the third and final leg of Trinacriform! And in keeping with the series, I've switched PoV once more. I don't often write in First Person, so this is going to be another challenge for me. It's all good fun though, and I'm looking forward to telling what is, essentially, the "meanwhile in reality" part of the whole story.

I actually started writing this chapter while stalling on Renascent, so the first half of it has been kicking around my harddrive for a while now. I really hadn't planned to start another fic just yet (even if Trinacriform is sort of all one expanded story), but it's been hogging brain space which I had intended to give to Hope's Fire and Metanoia, so you can probably expect it to update with comparative regularity over the next few weeks. Of course, the next few weeks are also the summer holidays, and I'm a single parent. So please bear with me as my writing time will be somewhat more limited!