Well hello again everyone. Judging from the number of reviews I got for the prologue, it seems like everyone is interested in this story! Hopefully the next couple of chapters don't bore you too much. This is the start of the story after all, and it's going to be some set up, so there is going to be lack of action, at first. Not to worry, the epic fights that everyone is looking forward to are coming, just not right away. Ok, enough from me, on to the chapter!

Disclaimer: I do not own digimon! Seriously, do you think 02 would have ended so badly if I owned digimon?

Part 1: The Tamers

Chapter 1: Distress

Tai Kamiya leaned against the wall of the small apartment that had been his home for the last several months, doing his best not to laugh out loud at the other person in the room.

Tai was a tall, brown haired man of twenty-one years, who was wearing goggles. He had a large device on his wrist, and deck of cards on his belt.

"You know, if it's too much trouble Izzy…" Tai started to say to the other person in the room, Izzy Izumi.

"No, I'm going to get this thing working right." Izzy replied from where he was stretched out under the desk that held Tai's computer. Izzy was a year younger than Tai, slightly shorter, and had red hair that was far shorter and less wild than Tai's hair. He was the resident computer expert of the digidestined, which was the main reason he was over at Tai's right now.

Tai hadn't interacted much with any of the digidestined who were once his closest friends. He was trying to avoid reconnecting with them in any way, after an incident during the battle with Belphemon, a horrible digimon that had been a member of the evil Demon Lords. Tai had tried to protect one group of digidestined, which included his sister Kari, and Sora, who was both Tai's oldest friend and first love, which had almost allowed Belphemon to kill several other digidestined. If it hadn't been for the timely arrival of help, several of the digidestined, including Izzy, would have been killed.

After the battle Tai had decided that he couldn't deal with risking any of the digidestined's lives by showing favoritism to any of them. So he'd made the decision to distance himself from them. He'd hated doing it, especially since he'd been literally incapable of opening up to anyone before returning to the digidestined, and they had just started to break through that wall.

Tai had been trapped outside of his own dimension for three years, and his experiences there had really shaken him up. His entire personality had shifted to a more serious one, one that didn't need any friends but his digimon partner, Agumon. This shift was caused by the betrayal of three people who'd gained Tai's trust, and in every way become his best friends.

So when he'd come back to his own dimension, he'd done his best to avoid the other digidestined, and not reconnect with them. Several of them had caused their own problems with Tai before he was trapped, so he hadn't been sure if reconnecting with them was the best thing to do. Unfortunately for Tai's plans, the digidestined, and the Demon Lords who attacked them, didn't really give him the option of avoiding the others, or even avoiding the reconnection with them that he had tried to avoid.

He'd found it surprisingly easy to regain all of the friendships he'd assumed he'd lost, at least until the battle with Belphemon. After that he'd tried to avoid the digidestined as much as possible, to try and keep himself from rebuilding those friendships that could cause him to show favoritism.

"Come on you piece of crap…" Tai looked over at Izzy as the younger man cursed the equipment that he was working on. Tai didn't blame him for being frustrated with the equipment in the least, since it was from a different dimension.

It had been designed by one of the friends Tai had made in another dimension, Thomas H. Norstein, a genius who could give Ken a run for his money. The equipment was supposed to detect anything which tried to cross the boundary between the dimensions, which could prove invaluable to finding out when the Demon Lords would attack next.

"AH HA!" Izzy finally exclaimed a minute later, pulling himself out from under the desk. As he did, the monitor on his desk came to life.

"Izzy, you're a genius!" Tai exclaimed as he held out a hand to help him to his feet. Izzy smiled as he stood up.

"I haven't heard anyone say that for a while." He said, and Tai smiled back at him. That was one change he wasn't going to let go. When he'd first returned to his own dimension, he hadn't smiled, ever, since he hadn't a single reason to. Tai was determined never to let that happen again.

"What, no one's been around to tell you you're a genius?" Tai asked as he walked past Izzy to check on the Dimensional Detector.

"Well, no, but no one's said it like that, not for years." Izzy replied, and Tai quickly understood. His friends had thought him dead when he was transported into another dimension, and no one would have used his particular way of congratulating Izzy, since it would remind them of him.

"I see." Tai replied, and was about to say more when there was a loud shout from the other room.

"No way! You cheated!"

"Nope, not in the least."

"You've never been able to beat me at video games Agumon!"

"That was three years ago Tentomon, not now." Agumon replied, still shouting.

Tai looked up to Izzy, who just shook his head. While Tai had his reasons for wanting to avoid spending time with the digidestined, Agumon didn't share them. He respected them, but that didn't mean he liked them or planned to follow them. He'd been reconnecting with all of his old friends as much as he could, usually over the internet. On the rare occasion that one of the digidestined actually came over to their apartment, Agumon was overjoyed, to say the least.

Right now he and Tentomon were busy playing video games in the other room, and arguing.

"You'd think those two had only spent a week apart." Izzy said as he shook his head.

"You'd think." Tai agreed, just before the monitor that had just activated started flashing. Tai caught the flashing out of the corner of his eye, and turned quickly, scanning the monitor to see what was going on.

"What is it?" Izzy asked, noticing almost as fast as Tai. Tai didn't answer right away, instead typing away at the keyboard to actually figure out what was going on. After several seconds he found what it was, and breathed a sigh of relief. It wasn't a digimon transiting the dimensions, just a message.

Tai quickly had the message pulled up on the screen, and the relief vanished as he read the message.

"Tai, what's going on?" Izzy asked, and Tai turned towards him, and then gestured towards the message. Izzy read it quickly, and then turned to him. "Was that one of your friends?"

"Yea," Tai replied, remembering the Tamers, and all they had done for him. "He is."

Takato is asking for help…I've got to help him… Tai thought to himself, looking at the images that had been transmitted along with the distress call, because that's what the message was, but things weren't quite that simple. But I've got to protect the digidestined…I can't just abandon them here, but I can't just ignore Takato either…

Tai slammed a fist into the desk he was sitting at, startling Izzy, who backed up a step. Despite the fact that he'd interacted with Tai on a semi regular basis recently, he still did things that he didn't expect, and that scared Izzy a little.

"Izzy, I need you to send a message to the others, get them all to come here." Tai said, not looking back at the red haired man. "We all need to talk."

~Elsewhere~

"I still think that we probably could have gone to someone else's apartment, for once." Kari Kamiya, the younger sister of Tai, said as she walked into her apartment. Kari was an eighteen year old girl of average height with short brown hair. She was followed by T.K. Takashi, a blond haired eighteen year old boy who was wearing a white fisherman's hat, and Davis Motomiya, a maroon haired eighteen year old wearing a pair of goggles on his head. Davis and T.K. were both wearing backpack so they could work on the homework assigned them by Odaiba High School. The three of them had just returned from getting a late lunch.

"Yea, but…" Davis replied looking over at T.K. for a second. "Your apartment is a lot better, and no one is usually here."

Kari turned her full attention to Davis as he said this, and sighed, because he was absolutely correct. The Kamiya's original apartment had been destroyed months before during a digimon battle, and the apartment they were living in now was actually more like a penthouse than anything else. The place was huge, easily several times the size of the Kamiya's old apartment, and it even had a small pool on its balcony.

"I guess…" Kari replied, and Davis's face split into a grin. He didn't win a lot of arguments, so when he did he usually had a bit of gloating that he needed to get out of his system. "…but that doesn't mean we can't go somewhere else on occasion!"

"Yea, well shouldn't we go to the best apartment?" Davis asked, looking at her.

"Well don't you think that maybe I don't like having my apartment filled with boy all the time?" Kari replied, looking at the two of them. "Plus, you always leave this place a mess Davis."

"She has a point there." A voice spoke from the sofa interrupting Davis before he could reply. The three digidestined turned towards the sofa, obviously surprised that someone else was in there with them.

"Sora!" Kari exclaimed before running to the sofa and enveloping the older woman in a hug.

Sora Takenouchi was a twenty-one year old college student and digidestined who just happened to usually live the Kamiya family.

Davis and T.K. followed Kari over towards the sofa, smiling at seeing their friend.

"What are you doing back so early?" Kari asked Sora after she had finished hugging her. "I thought you weren't getting back until the weekend."

"Well, I finished up all of my assignments that were due this week, so I decided I'd just come back early." Sora replied, smiling at all three of the younger digidestined. Sora attended Kyoto University where her father worked and her mother now lived, but she would often take her breaks from school in Odaiba. Her parents didn't mind, since they knew that all of the digidestined, most of whom lived in Odaiba, were like family to one another.

"Well that's great!" Kari exclaimed, and then glanced back at the two boys standing behind her. "You can help me make sure these two don't make a mess."

"Hey!" Davis and T.K. said in unison.

"Davis is the one who makes the mess." T.K. said indignantly, not wanting to be lumped in with his maroon haired best friend.

"What do you mean I'm the one who makes the mess?" Davis asked, looking over at the hat wearing blond.

"Exactly what I said." T.K replied, just before Davis reached for him. T.K. took off, heading across the apartment to stay out of Davis's reach. Davis followed after him, yelling. T.K. used everything in the apartment to his advantage, jumping over some furniture and pushing other furniture into Davis's path, hoping to slow him down since he was faster than T.K.

At this Kari stood up from where she'd been sitting, and started yelling at both of them, which did absolutely nothing to stop the two of them. Sora just remained on the sofa and did her best to conceal her laughter from Kari. She'd forgotten just how Davis and T.K. would interact with each other.

She watched the three high schoolers chase around the apartment, messing all of the relatively orderly furniture up and scattering it across the room. After a few minutes however the doorbell rang, and Sora got up to go answer it. She figured that the other three wouldn't be able to stop long enough to answer it at this point.

She headed for the door before remembering that this was indeed a penthouse, which meant that whoever rang the doorbell needed to buzzed up to their floor, not let in the door. She turned to the intercom not far from the "door" and pressed the button.

"Kamiya residence, Sora speaking." She said, wondering if the person on the other end was one of Kari's friends or a digidestined.

"Sora? What are you doing back here already?" A voice that Sora quickly recognized asked.

"Hi Ken," Sora replied, smiling that it was one of the digidestined. "I got done with classes earlier than expected so I came back early."

"Oh, good for you." Ken Ichijouji replied from the other side of the intercom. "Listen, is Davis up there?"

"Yea, I can buzz you in so you can see him." Sora replied, hitting the button to allow this to happen. A minute or two later the door opened to reveal Ken, a tall blue haired boy dressed in the green blazer, blue tie, and dark grey pants of the Odaiba High School uniform, and Cody Hida, a short brown haired boy also dressed in the Odaiba High School uniform.

"Hi guys!" Sora said as she saw the two of them.

"Hey Sora." They replied together, and then Ken took the lead. "Where's Davis?"

Before Sora could answer there was a crash from the other room, and Ken shook his head.

"Never mind." He said, and the three of them went back into the living room to see what had happened. Inside T.K. and Kari were tangled up in one of the blankets draped over the largest sofa, while Davis was jumping around gleefully in front of them. The crashed seemed to have been Kari and T.K. hitting the sofa.

The other three digidestined looked at them, and just shook their heads. It took Davis and the others several seconds to notice Ken and Cody standing with Sora, but when he did his face kept its grin.

"Hey! Ken, Cody! What's up?" He asked, looking over at them finally. "Why are you still in uniform?"

"Because we just came from the school Davis." Ken replied with a sigh. The goggle wearing teen was one of his closest friends, but sometimes he wished he'd not forget things. "We had soccer practice today, which you missed, again."

Davis's face went from a laughing one to completely blank.

"No way, coach said we didn't have practice today…" Davis said, looking between Ken and Cody, who was a manager for the team. "…Man, why does this always happen to me?"

At that T.K. and Kari laughed, while Ken and Cody both smiled.

"Don't worry too much Davis," Ken said, stepping forward and patting Davis's shoulder. "Coach said he wouldn't be throwing you off the team this time, just that you have to go in Monday early to make it up."

"Ugh…" Davis sighed, falling backwards onto the sofa. "That's the fourth time this month."

"Well, if you stopped missing the practices then you wouldn't have to go in early." Ken replied. He'd been going to Odaiba high school for the last year and a half, after his parents had moved them to Odaiba, and played on the soccer team with Davis.

Davis didn't even bother to reply to Ken's statement as T.K. and Kari fixed the sofa they'd crashed into and took a seat on it. Just as they finished a loud alarm came from Davis's pocket, startling everyone in the room.

"Ops, forgot to turn that down…" Davis said as all the eyes in the room turned towards him. He quickly pulled out his D-Terminal from his pocket to turn the message buzzer off. As he was doing so, Kari jumped in surprise, reaching into her pocket to pull out her vibrating D-Terminal. One by one each of the digidestined's D-Terminal went off, and all of them pulled them out.

Each D-Terminal contained the same message from Izzy, and soon all of the digidestined were look at one another. This meeting could only mean that trouble was coming.

~Chapter End~

Well, there you go. Not as exciting as the prologue, but the story is moving. Until next week!

Review Replies:

Dark Anbu Knight: Thanks! It's good to be back, and thanks!

Sunwraith: Yep, a whole boat load of trouble. And you'll have to wait a little while longer to find that out, but it'll be good, I promise. And expect, and I'll try to supply!

TheOmegaMan: Indeed. Shit has to hit the fan, otherwise things wouldn't be nearly interesting enough! Probably Jeri…lol. I will…and yea, really hard when some jerk gets you hooked on a new show that takes away all your writing time…not that I'm really complaining…

Japboix1: Thanks! Hope you continue to enjoy!

mastergamer14: Thanks! And probably not any of the characters, it's designed for Adventure, Tamers, and Data Squad, but certainly some of the digimon may appear.

Ezio Uchiha: hahaha, oh believe me, shit will be hitting the fan everywhere, not just one dimension. That would be too…tame. And still a few more chapters, sad to say, but it will be epic when it happens. And yea, I love using Diaboromon as the minions for some reason…oh well.

Phantomgirl96: I put you into shock? NICE! And yea, I'm hoping it does. It's certainly more ambitious…

PrincessOfDestiny14: Thanks!

TheOtherGuy4544: Hahaha! Win for me!

TaioraWarrior: Well I'm glad that you're interested, I'll try to keep it that way.