Disclaimer: I do not own Digimon.

Hello all of my readers out there. I know it took me a while to get another chapter up, but I am busily working away on the story. I have about half of it written out on paper and just need to type it up. Anywho, thank you to TogetherAgain for giving me my first review. You are such a sweet reader and reviewer who has been tremendously kind to all of my Digimon works on .


By the time I woke up the apartment was empty once more. Dad had left some dishes in the sink, but there was still no sign of my birth certificate. I had hoped he was dead wrong about my mother having the document. The few times I had seen my mom since the divorce was when I stopped by her apartment to pick up Takeru. Our relationship had never been perfect, even before the divorce, but after the ink on the paperwork dried it seemed like our relationship was practically demolished.

We never clicked I guess you could say. Granted my first solid memories of family life were around the time Takeru had been born. Mom had been so happy when he was born, but every time she had looked at me I had somehow gotten in trouble. I don't blame TK for taking mom's time and attention, I just felt a little left out some times. As if I wasn't a good enough son in her eyes. The last thing I could do now was barge into mom's apartment and demand documents. I'm sure that would do wonders for our relationship.

There still was a chance dad had a copy of my birth certificate somewhere in the apartment. Of course, his display last night made me reluctant to believe I could convince the old man to search for anything related to my birth. Dad had never been the calmest person on the planet, but the situation last night was ridiculous. All I wanted was a simple piece of paper. Could he have been upset because my teacher called and told him about my bad grades? Either way, it still didn't seem like appropriate behavior for the situation. You don't become that nervous if someone else is failing.

Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted something vibrating on the kitchen counter. I picked up the pager and glanced at the number flashing across its green screen. Dad never left his beeper, cell, or laptop at home. Those things were attached to his hip twenty four seven. The number on the screen was a pretty familiar one but it was out of place on dad's pager. Why would mom be trying to reach him? That could explain his nervous attitude last night.

I pocketed the beeper and grabbed a jacket before rushing out of the apartment and down the stairs. The sidewalks were crowded with Saturday shoppers trying to rush from store to store. Large groups of teens blocked the street corners forcing my simple trip across town to take substantially longer than normal. By the time I reached the lobby of dad's building the enormous clock on the wall read twenty after twelve. Knowing my father, he was probably locked in a meeting with some shareholder.

"Can I help you?" A deep voice broke my concentration.

"Huh?" Above me rose a tall ape like man who resembled a young King Kong. His gut protruded over his utility belt, forcing the buttons on his shirt to work harder then any button should to contain the mass of flesh.

"This is a private building. We do not allow children to run amok in this place."

Children? Run amok? I looked around the empty lobby as if an army of these so called children would come running out of their hiding places. Certainly he didn't mean me. No one had called me a child in years, and I highly doubted that walking into a building and quietly looking at a clock was running amok.

"I'm here to see my father."

"Really?" His brow dipped downward as he continued the ridiculous attempt at guarding the building.

"Yes. My father is Ishida Hiroaki. He left his pager at home and I came here to give it back to him."

"No one uses a pager these days."

I had to give that one to Santa guard. Dad had never been a technologically advanced man. I pulled the device out of my pocket and showed him the inscription on the bottom. "My dad does."

"Haven't seen one of these in ages…"

"Yeah, well I have to get upstairs."

"Wait," He put a hand on my shoulder before I could escape arms' length. "Son or no son, this is a busy building and it will not tolerate any monkey shines."

Although I was not sure what the heck a monkeyshine was, I nodded my head to get away from the man. My feet stumbled up the first few steps slowly, but soon I was out of his sight and racing at a much faster pace. Dad had mentioned that his station was trying to cut back on some finances, but I had no idea they would be willing to cut back this far. The place deserved at least a decent guard.

My feet squeaked to a stop as I reached dad's floor. Multiple rows of cubicles faced me as I tried to work my way to his office on the back wall. When I was a child, I had believed that everyone's parents worked on weekends. The idea that each child in the world was left alone on Saturday mornings to fix their own breakfast and do what they wanted for the rest of the weekend seemed like common sense. It wasn't until I became brave enough to adventure outside the apartment that I realized I was in the minority. Every corner of that park had been covered in parents and children playing games. Sora and Tai had asked me before if I missed having those special moments with my father as a kid. In all honesty, I wasn't sure if I would change it if given the chance. Being left alone for such long periods of time had forced me to grow up quicker then most kids. I knew that I would be able to take care of myself no matter what happened, an important skill when you knew you would soon be out on your own.

Closer to my dad's door, I picked up on his voice talking to what I assumed was someone on the phone since I couldn't hear the other person's responses. "He needs to know… No I didn't say anything."

Well, that was odd.

"I told you I didn't say anything." His voice deepened as the conversation pushed onward.

I crept forward, breaking multiple moral codes, and pressed my ear against the slightly ajar door. Between dad's moment of panic last night and the strangest work call I had heard in my life, my brain made the decision that sneaking just once would be okay.

"We can't k-"

"What's this?!"

A large hand gripped my shoulder and sent my body into an awkward jerk. The door flew open when my knee slammed into the wood. Inside the room my dad quickly hung up the phone and rounded the side of his desk. Surprisingly, he didn't look to upset. Instead the man looked somewhat tired and haggard. I followed his glance to the guard who was smiling ear to ear for catching a perp. Santa guard jerked me into a standing position by the scruff of my shirt and waited for some kind of congratulations.

"I caught this boy eavesdropping on your private affairs."

"I just wanted to give you the pager." I dug the black box out of my pocket and handed it to dad.

"This is my son," As the words escaped dad's mouth, the grip on my shirt disappeared and I stepped away from the guard. "Thank you for the pager Yamato. Would you like some money for a ride back to the apartment?"

Why was dad suddenly giving me the brush off? Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the lights on dad's phone blinking to signal multiple calls incoming. Maybe the strange tone of his voice actually was due to a heavy workload. Still, dad had been swamped at work before and never acted as crazy as he did last night.

"No, that's all right. You should be finished soon right? Aren't weekends just half days after the budget cuts? We could get a late lunch."

The brow on his face slid down into a look that almost resembled disappointment. "I still have a lot of work to do Yamato. It is going to be a late night today and tomorrow. You go ahead and enjoy your weekend."

Before I knew what was happening, dad stuffed some money into my hands and ushered me out of the office. Once he was out of sight, the guard gave me a small push towards the stairwell. To deter any looking back he kept on nudging me all the way to the first floor. By the time we made it to the lobby I was thoroughly pissed off. Apparently I wasn't wanted in the building or in my dad's sight.

XXX

When Monday lunchtime rolled around I had little to show for a full weekend of research. There hadn't been any photo albums in the entire apartment. After searching every nook, cranny, and odd book with paper stuffed between the pages I was ready to declare that no photos of me before the age of ten existed. Honestly it wasn't to surprising that evidence of my younger life was hard to find. Each time I had mentioned our past life dad would get this mopey look on his face. When I was older, I began to realize that talking about his ex-wife was pretty depressing for him. The only full family photo I knew of was hidden in dad's wallet. Once he and I had struck out on our own there had been little time for pictures. I think there were about one or two images of dad and me after the divorce.

On Sunday I had become so desperate for results that I spent money on one of those genealogy websites. Of course with only a few names to work with I wasn't that successful. Who knew that so many people shared my parents' names? Any hit the website had generated was printed out and stacked with a million other sheets of paper for further examination.

Taichi found me knee deep in results in the library around the halfway point of lunch period. At first I could see a sarcastic smirk break out on his tanned face, but when he stared into my tired eyes the boy pulled it back and offered me a simple smile. "Whoa, have you slept at all this week?"

"Huh?" I barely registered his question as my hands shifted through random pieces of paper. "What was that Tai?"

He sat down beside me and stared at the mound of papers, "Is this all for that project?"

"My parents have a surprisingly small online persona. I pulled every Natsuko Takaishi, Natsuko Ishida, and Hiroaki Ishida on the website."

Taichi grabbed a handful of papers and shifted through them, "Some of these people are in America."

"You're digging from the discard pile."

"Oh," He dropped all but one paper and leaned the chair back so that only the rear legs were touching the ground. "You must really want to impress Ito. I just asked my mom and dad one question and they gave me an entire lecture over our family tree."

"I have to do good on this project."

The paper in his hand was being folded and shaped to resemble a plane. "They made me sit there for over an hour and a half listening to stories about great-great-great-whoever. It was horrendous, but I survived. Why don't you try asking your parents? They will probably give you a lot shorter of a speech."

"All my dad said was that my mom had my birth certificate."

"And she said…"

"I didn't ask her."

There was no secrecy around the fact my relationship with my mother was strained at best. After my first year of friendship with Tai, the brunette had wormed the story of my life out of my normally tightly closed lips. To be honest, part of my brain still hated the fact I had cracked that night so long ago.

The whole incident was still crystal clear in my memory (an impressive feat when you consider the amount of alcohol involved). On that night Taichi had stopped by the apartment to drop off a book I had leant him. Unfortunately, he had discovered my door was unlocked and found me in a drunken stupor at the kitchen table.

I had found a bottle of my dad's liquor in the back of one of the cabinets, and decided in my self-appointed maturity that I could handle the muddy-brown liquid. After a few shots the strange warmth it offered my chest trickled down to my feet. Giving my entire body a strangely unguarded and somewhat vulnerable feeling. Which fueled, a move I will forever regret, convincing Tai to try a sip. He barely got it down and pushed the bottle out of my reach before I could take another. And like most cases involving these kinds of vices, the liquor unlocked a part of my mind that wasn't ready to be shared with anyone.

Taichi had sat quietly beside me as my entire life story tumbled out of my mouth in semi-comprehensible slurs. My parents' divorce, fears over Takeru, my strained relationship with my mother all came tumbling out with a light rum smell attached. And lastly the reason for my choice to venture into the adult world of drinking; everyone had forgotten that it was my 14th birthday.

The rest of the night had been somewhat clouded by the alcohol. I had reached for the bottle and knocked it to the ground due to a lapse in judgment, motor skills, and other things. Glass shards littered the ground below our feet and a few tears escaped my closed eyes as the world became just a little to painful to handle at that moment. Although he never said a word, Tai had jumped into action by wrapping his arms around my slumped form. If someone were to ask me how long we stayed in the embrace, I wouldn't be able to remember. All I knew was that Tai held me and broke our moment sometime later to clean the glass off the floor. After which, he took me to his house for dinner and a sleep over. I don't think he ever told his parents that it was my birthday, but it didn't matter. Just being at Tai's house and spending time with a family that actually loved one another was one of my best birthdays of all time.

"What if we went together?" Tai edged the wings of his plane then threw it into the sky. "We can take Kari and Takeru with us."

"I don't know…" On the left side of the room, I could see the librarian giving us a few dirty looks for being disruptive in her building.

"This is for a school project Yamato. How can she refuse?"

XXX

Deep in the back, and forefront of my mind, I knew this was a bad idea. We could have at least called ahead to warn my mother that a group of kids were going to descend on her apartment. Takeru was thrilled to have our small group together for a movie night. The fates seemed to be in my favor though, because mom was running late that particular day. According to her text to TK I had an hour or so left of sanity before the crap hit the fan.

"What should we watch?" TK and Kari tossed their shoes off quickly then darted to the stand of DVDs next to the living room television.

"Romance."

"No way." Tai busted Kari's bubble and bounded over to junior high kids. I doubted he would beat his sister's movie pick, but that didn't mean he wouldn't try. "I'm not going to spend an afternoon watching some gooey movie."

Instead of joining the battle for our future movie, I took my time in the entry way. With great care, probably far to much, I untied each of my shoes in turn then pulled on a pair of guest slippers. Even with mom out of the apartment a strange tension hung in the air. There was a high chance I was overacting, but it wasn't like my fears were totally unfounded.

Mom had never been abusive during our years together. I always had clean clothes, healthy food, and a nice amount of toys. But she had always made the room feel so awkward and stressful with one stare. Eventually the feeling of uneasiness just became associated with the thought of my mom. That was one of the many reasons I had pushed for her to take Takeru instead of me.

"Stop being a slowpoke." Tai grabbed my hand and pulled me into the midst of the movie war.

Somehow the various nations had come together to settle on an old romantic comedy. According to TK it had enough action sequences and kisses to please both sides. Hikari sat next to TK on the left side of the couch, their eyes already glued to the screen. Tai plopped down beside Takeru and propped his feet on the coffee table. He patted the last remaining spot in a silent effort to cajole me into relaxing on the couch. Little did he realize what an impossible mission he was undertaking.

"I'm going to get some water."

"Can you grab a soda for Kari and I?" TK piped up as I edged out of the living room.

"Sure." This was not the time to look a busy-hand task in the face.

As I reached the solitude of the kitchen I let out the long breath I hadn't realized was waiting in my lungs. The water from the sink was ice cold and helped to calm my flushed face. After wiping the water off with a paper towel I stared at my reflection in the microwave door. What was I doing? Letting myself get so worked up about a talk with my middle-aged mother was idiotic. But there was the strange display from my father, the one parent who was normally level headed. If he acted like that mom was bound to freak out.

"You okay in there?" Takeru called from the other room.

"Fine." I grabbed two soda cans from the fridge and rushed out of the room.

"Yamato?"

The sound of my mother's voice sent a shock down my spine. Every ounce of grace I ever possessed, or hoped to posses in the future, exited my body sending the soda cans to the floor. She eyed me as I scrambled to find something to mop up one of the busted cans. The paper towels did little to sop up the large spill, but they gave me an excuse not to stare at the woman in front of me.

"Hello Takaishi-san." Hikari, TK, and a drug by his sister Taichi joined our little pow-wow in front of the kitchen. TK bent down and grabbed the soda cans and soggy paper towels from the floor. Before rising, he gave me a smile in what I figured was a non-verbal attempt to convince me to speak to mom.

"I didn't know you were all coming over. I would have cleaned the house up."

"Oh, it's no prob-"

Kari elbowed Tai in the side and stepped in front of him, "What Tai means, is your home is beautiful."

Mom blinked in surprise then regained her composure, "Thank you, dear."

"You know mom," TK came back from the kitchen after throwing away the trash. He placed a hand on my shoulder and offered mom a look that only came out when he wanted something badly. "I was going to show Kari and Tai something in my room. Why don't you talk with Yama? I think he had something to tell you."

Before I could fully understand what was going on, my friends were gone and I was left to face my mother. I could see from the deep bags under her eyes that mom was exhausted. The woman before me had aged since our last run in a few months ago. Her normally youthful skin housed deep wrinkles around her thin lips and blue eyes. In her blonde hair were sporadic streaks of white, probably created by Takeru's adventurous side. I must have stared at her to long because she cleared her throat awkwardly and walked past me to the living room.

"What did you need to talk to me about Yamato?"

"Well," As I followed her into the room I could feel my drive waning. Where had my bout of confidence gone? "I have a school assignment."

"You came across town to tell me you had homework?" She raised a quizzical eyebrow and sat down on the couch.

Damn it. Why did this woman turn me into a guilty five-year-old? I was almost seventeen! I shouldn't be terrified of my own mother. Taking a deep breath, I forced myself to act my age instead of my shoe size.

"I need to research my family for history class and wanted to see my birth certificate. Dad said you had it and my baby stuff."

An unfortunately familiar look of surprise filtered across her face. Like my father before her, the woman looked around the room as if she expected someone else to come in and answer the question for her. What kind of freaky family gets this upset about birth certificates? Everyone had one didn't they?

"Mom?" She snapped back to the real world and darted past me. I followed her to the kitchen and waited till she took a sip from her water bottle before continuing. "I don't get it. Why are you and dad so nervous about my birth certificate? I have one right?"

"Of course you do!" She snapped so quickly I had to take a step back. She must have sensed my apprehension because she attempted to turn her tone into a less agitated sound. "Yamato, this week has been very stressful. I would have appreciated a heads up before you came over demanding I halt everything and search my dresser for your papers. You are going to be a senior soon, isn't it about time you learned how to do your own research?"

Demand? The word didn't come close to computing in my brain. Apparently my meek question had not made it through my mother's brain correctly. No court in the world would have called me pushy or demanding. Why couldn't she just help me out for once?

"I tried searching online, but I had little to go on."

"I'll try and find it when I can, but there are some other things I have to do first." Her fingers gripped the water bottle so tightly her knuckles began to turn white.

"Mom," She kept her eyes on the water bottle, but I had a feeling she was listening closely to what I was saying. "If you are busy… I could look through your drawer and try to find the papers. I need the information as soon as possible and since you have so much on your plate it would be one less thing for you to do."

"No."

"What?"

She walked past me a few feet then turned on her heel and stared into my eyes. Although I couldn't place the emotions floating around in her eyes, I was pretty certain that they weren't good. "You will not go through my personal belongings. My room is private and I expect you to respect the rules of my house."

"Because I am just a visitor?" I don't know how my thoughts slipped from my brain and forced their way out of my lips, but I wasn't about to take anything back.

"Yamato." She said sternly as I marched to the front door. "Come back here…"

Her second attempt at calling me back into the apartment was in a softer tone. Not that it mattered much. By that point, any words she said would have fallen on deaf ears. The main focus was storming out of the building before my frustration got the best of me and the walls gained some new decorations.

XXX

"I'm her son! But she treats me like some kind of… of stranger!"

As the feelings of anger and betrayal grew in my gut I kicked a tree lining my shore side hiding spot. Pieces of bark flew from the trunk but that did nothing to squelch the anger rushing through my veins. Higher up on the trunk my fists began to pound the old wood as hard as they could. Drops of blood began to appear on the tops of my knuckles, but I continued to beat the tree until exhaustion overtook my body.

"It would probably be stupid to ask if you're okay…"

My body collapsed on the grass without sparing a glance to source of the voice.

"You know mom does love you." Takeru walked down the slight incline and perched beside me on the grass. He ignored the scoff sound I offered him and pulled his knees up to his chest. I turned my head to the side and watched Takeru stare out at the water silently. "She talks about you in her sleep. I heard her call your name out when I walked past her room the other night."

"Could have been a scream of fear. Strangers aren't known for being trustworthy after all."

His brow furrowed in displeasure and his blue eyes left the calm waters to stare into my soul, "You are my brother and her son. You are no stranger, Yamato. You are family."

"How did you find me?" No point in arguing with TK when that righteous-save-the-world look came over his face.

"We used to come here all the time. Remember? Ice cream cones, that ugly kite, and an afternoon nap on the grass." The stress on his face dissipated a little and he reclined back onto the grass. "I thought memory loss didn't start until middle age. You're getting old bro."

I gave him a soft elbow jab in the ribs, "Aren't you clever. What happened to Tai and Kari?"

"After you ran out, we all went after you. Tai wanted to lead the search party but I convinced him to let me handle this. I bet they made it home by now."

"You should head back too," I sat up and brushed some dirt off of my pants.

"Come with me. You need someone to bandage your knuckles."

Out of experience of spending time with TK, I knew he was probably giving me a hard to resist look by this point. If there was one flaw in our relationship it was the fact Takeru had an unfair advantage in quilting me into things. Ever since he was an infant I had felt that strange older sibling desire to protect and care for my baby brother.

"I'll walk you home, but then I'm heading to dad's place." For some reason, the forces aligned in my favor and TK offered no rebuttal to my deal.


So this will probably sound idiotic since I am already behind on so many stories, but I am contemplating another one. The story idea just seems like so much fun. I must hold myself back from pushing out so many at a time lol. Anyway, hope this chapter was okay. Thanks for reading and reviewing!