I'm sorry for disappearing for two years despite saying I wouldn't. There are personal reasons, but this story is also difficult to write - it was envisioned as a one-shot but I wanted to stretch myself, and maybe bit off more than I could chew.

Thank you so much for your patience. Hope it's worth the wait.

If not, I'll keep trying! The heart of the story will be established in the first five chapters so important for me to get them right.

Two

Waking Dreams

There

From his cross-legged position on Sora's bedroom floor, Takeru listened to the rising voices in the living room. Yamato and Koushiro had turned up within an hour of his message, despite such short notice. Mimi, who lived in America and hence in a different time zone, promised to get in touch the next day. Taichi couldn't be reached at all, although that was typical as of late.

In any case, Taichi and Mimi weren't missing much. Even he, who had helped organize the meeting, excused himself partway saying that he wanted to check on the stranger. Nobody called him out on the absurdity of the excuse.

Takeru ran a finger across the familiar bump on his cheek and sighed. He was tired. Tired of hashing together the next plan in an endless sequence of plans. Tired of the digital and the physical world. Tired of the constant battles followed by the inevitable disappointment. They had been fighting for the past eight years and victory, a poorly defined concept from the beginning, was still nowhere in sight. More and more children were succumbing and for all they knew, there was no cure, no hope of reversing the effects.

Worst of all, Takeru could tell that his older brother was starting to crack under the strain of leadership. Yamato was not born to be a leader, nor was he an effective one. Someone so introverted and cautious should have been the dark, brooding lead singer of a rock band, wooing teenage girls while singing sweet nothings. Instead, his older brother was constantly figuring out what to do next, telling everyone what they should do, and then second-guessing everything before starting from scratch. If it hadn't been for Sora and Koushiro, and occasionally Taichi when he wasn't in one of his funks, the group would have fallen to pieces long ago. Even now they weren't far from disintegration.

Takeru would be lying not to admit that part of him was almost looking forward to this. A resolution, even one of the worst kind, was better than none.

He got up and walked to the window, leaning his forehead against the cool panes. The rain had finally stopped, giving way to another starless night. He missed Patamon, who now spent most of his time in the Digital World with the other Digimon. For a while, especially during the elementary school years, the children had tried weaving their partners into their regular lives by pretending they were stuffed toys or exotic pets. It had made sense then too. They hadn't started communicating through D-Terminals, so it was much more convenient to keep their Digimon close by in the event of attacks. As attacks became more frequent, monsters in general became recognized as something to be feared. At the same time, more and more of the other children began appearing, with their infected partners. The Chosen Children were being actively hunted, so keeping their Digimon around became a liability. Revealing their Chosen status not only endangered themselves, but also their families and friends.

There had been one particularly close call two years ago. Two dark Digimon had attacked a carnival at the high school attended by the older children, attracted by the scent of the Chosen Children's Digimon, which sent over fifty students to the emergency room, some with lasting disabilities. Takeru's friends had escaped mostly unharmed through sheer luck and well-timed perfect evolutions from Piyomon and Gabumon.

Eventually, Yamato came up with the proposal that their partners should stay in the Digital World, on call only. Their Digimon allies still had strongholds, and nighttime was generally safer there.

Takeru had not been a fan of the idea. "That's what a coward would do!" he had argued. "You're putting us on the defensive. Are we just going to keep hiding?"

"Confrontation is not the solution," was the retort. "We need to come up with a plan before we do anything!"

Plan. He hated that word. They never had plans.

He bit his tongue, however, before he could say something that might shatter the last of his brother's fragile ego, hoping that someone else could speak up in support. He'd seen the same frustration on Taichi and Sora's faces when he scanned the room. Taichi, especially, looked as if he were fighting the urge to talk. However, neither spoke up. Sora was too prudent to contradict their leader and Taichi was too indifferent.

That was the last time Takeru actively participated in a meeting. It just wasn't worth getting invested anymore.

There was a movement from the bed. Immediately alert, Takeru turned to find the girl awake. When she noticed his presence, she gave him a small smile.

"Takeru?"

Even though it shouldn't surprise him that she knew his name, he was still unsettled. Especially because she had spoken it with such familiarity.

He didn't answer.

The girl turned back to face the ceiling. "No, you're not him."

He figured she was still somewhat delirious. He asked, not really expecting a response, "Who are you?"

The girl closed her eyes again. He thought she had fallen asleep again until she said, softly but very clearly, "Hikari Yagami."

Here

Sora raised a hand to shield her eyes against the early morning sun as the portal to the Digital World faded. She had almost forgotten how bright and colorful the Digital World was, after a few months of not visiting. Between school, tennis tournaments, and a long-distance relationship, there wasn't much time leftover to cross dimensions, nor was there much need. Piyomon lived with her full-time, alternating between Sora's school and her mother's flower shop.

Timeliness had never been a strong suit of the Chosen Children. As Sora came upon the forest clearing, she noted with some amusement that as usual, she was one of the first ones. Koushiro was staring intently at the screen of his laptop, and Yamato gave her a casual wave when he spotted her. She waved back and took a seat beside him.

"Any bets on how long it would take for everyone to get here?" he said.

Never a morning person, he was fighting back yawns. Sora shook her head and slipped her hand into his. "We would both lose," she said. "Were there…any updates?"

Yamato's smile disappeared and he shook his head. Last night, the Chosen Children had received two messages from Koushiro in quick succession on their D-Terminals. The first was a poem, apparently composed by Gennai, which meant that it didn't make sense. The second was cryptic in a different way. Takeru confirmed my suspicions about Hikari. We need to meet tomorrow before class. Digital World, 7.00 am. Don't bring your Digimon.

She glanced over at Koushiro, hoping he might offer some insights, but he was immersed in what appeared to be strings of binary numbers and did not answer. He probably hadn't even noticed her arrival.

Yamato followed her line of sight. "I don't think he even realizes I'm here. But if you think about the two messages –"

Before he could finish his thought, he was distracted by the sight of his younger brother, making his way towards them without his school uniform jacket. Takeru looked upset. Yamato released Sora's hand to feel his forehead as he took a seat across from them.

"You feeling okay? Why aren't you wearing your jacket? You didn't get sick from the rain last night, did you?"

"No, I'm fine," Takeru said.

The older brother frowned and Sora wondered if he had caught the inflection in Takeru's response. Where was Hikari? They were usually inseparable.

Despite a nagging worry in the back of her mind, Sora felt a familiar warmth as the other Chosen Children started to arrive, some alone and some in pairs. It was so rare nowadays for everyone to be together outside the annual reunions and the bigger holiday events. She didn't worry about the children growing apart – they had survived too much together for that – but there had been a special camaraderie during their adventure days that was difficult to recapture in peaceful times.

After greeting Iori and Miyako, who then joined Takeru and Daisuke on the grass, Sora caught up with Mimi to hear about her latest recipes. Nearby, Jyou and Ken quietly discussed a biology paper that was in the news. Yamato was lying on his back, staring thoughtfully at the sky. Nobody talked about the purpose of Koushiro's meeting or the meaning of his messages; experience had taught everyone to leave the explaining to him.

Hikari remained conspicuously missing.

Taichi was the last to show up, hair unkempt and jacket haphazard. He did not seem apologetic though. He stood in front of Koushiro, clearing his throat, until he finally tore his eyes away from the screen. The young man seemed a bit surprised to see everyone assembled around him. Though he might be one of the youngest teaching assistant at his school, his childhood shyness and awkwardness never completely disappeared.

"Hello, thank you for coming on such short notice. I hope you all had a chance to read the poem I sent last night."

There was a murmur of agreement, but Sora noted with some amusement that Daisuke and Taichi were trying to surreptitiously glance at their D-Terminals.

"It's one of Gennai's riddles, isn't it?" Mimi said. "What does it mean?"

"Yes, and no. It is Gennai's riddle, but it's not our Gennai's riddle."

As usual, Koushiro had a knack for dropping bombshells. Taichi glanced up from his D-Terminal. "There is more than one Gennai?"

"Have any of you heard of the concept of 'parallel universes?'"

"Sure, in science fiction movies and theoretical physics papers." Miyako, an aspiring engineer, was frowning. "Those couldn't really exist…could they?"

"Ten years ago, we wouldn't have imagined that corporeal digital worlds existed, but here we are."

The group fell silent as they digested Koushiro's words. It was Taichi who spoke again. "Can you explain now what this has to do with Hikari's disappearance?"

Sora inhaled sharply. The only person unfazed by the revelation, other than Taichi and Koushiro, was Takeru, who was currently paying intense attention to the pineapple icon of Koushiro's laptop.

"Let me back up a bit." Jyou and Mimi tugged Taichi, one on either side, to a seated position. "The theory of parallel universes state that there are many universes in addition to our own. Remember when we stormed Vandemon's castle eight years ago? We were looking for the gateway back to the real world and we were able to do so with the correct arrangement of cards. But we also ran the risk of ending up somewhere else entirely had Taichi put them down incorrectly. A universe unlike our own." Koushiro turned now to Ken. "And do you remember that when you first came to the Digital World, you had a friend named Ryo, even though he seemed to have come from a different dimension entirely and you never saw him again?"

Taichi and Ken both looked startled. They clearly remembered the experiences, but had not interpreted them as extraordinary even for the Digital World.

"Of course, universes are parallel for a reason: the law of parallelism states that they aren't supposed to ever meet. But Gennai – our Gennai that is – believes they are getting desperate."

"Hikari said that they were calling her."

"Hang on. Who's they?"

"Yes, this poem is their call for help as well." Koushiro read it aloud, repeating the verse, to borrow the true bearer of Light. "They are our equivalents in this alternate universe. The Chosen Children. And they need Hikari. As a result, their Gennai must've somehow established a portal to our universe and asked Hikari to come."

"So Hikari is…gone?" Mimi's uneasiness was mirrored on everyone's faces. Sora found Yamato's hand and gripped it tightly. When you put it like that…

"That's right, she's gone from our universe. For the time being."

"Do we know where she went?" Daisuke demanded. "What does this other place look like?"

Koushiro shook his head. "I couldn't establish contact with the other universe, nor with the other Gennai, so I currently have no idea where exactly she went or what that universe looks like. It might look exactly like ours, it might look completely different." He paused. "However, my guess is that it is far more dangerous, if the Chosen Children there are willing to breach parallelism to take Hikari."

Far more dangerous.

To match the darkness in a final fight.

"We can go help her, can't we? We just need to figure out how to establish the portal to the other universe ourselves." Miyako looked nervous but determined. Sora remembered that she had saved Hikari from the Dark Ocean before.

Taichi managed to shake off Jyou and Mimi. "Exactly. Koushiro, how can we go there too? That Gennai can't expect Hikari to save the world alone."

"Wait," Yamato said, before Koushiro could answer. "There's a more pressing question, Taichi. What are you going to tell your parents? They must already be worried if she didn't come home last night. What are you going to tell the high school? Takeru and Miyako might be able to cover for Hikari today, but that won't work if we don't find her by tomorrow."

Taichi clapped his hand to his forehead and swore under his breath. "That's right," he said. "What am I going to tell Mom and Dad? Last night when they asked I had to say she was visiting me…"

"That excuse might work for the weekend. Is that enough time?" Jyou sounded doubtful.

"You could say that Hikari is visiting me," Mimi suggested. "I'm far away so she'll need a longer visit."

Yamato shook his head. "It's the middle of the school term. You can't just take a trip across the country out of the blue."

"A school trip?" Miyako said. "Some teachers take their classes on week-long trips."

They considered this idea, but Jyou shot it down. "She will still need her parents' permission. Besides, I don't think taking trips is the most believable excuse in the long term."

"We could –" Ken began, but Miyako interrupted before he could finish.

"Nothing that would involve the police, Ken. Detectives work differently in real life."

"Right," Taichi said with a groan. "Next someone will be telling me to just tell my parents the truth."

"Actually," said Iori, and all eyes turned to the youngest Chosen Child, "I think that is the best alternative, Taichi. Our parents know about the Digital World, we should give them more credit. They will be very worried, but they've seen us go through worse…and come back safely."

Taichi clenched his fists, accepting the younger boy's wisdom. "All right, I'll call Mom and Dad right after this. I'll…think of some way to explain all of this." He sighed. "I can't – I can't tell them Hikari's gone without reassuring that we can find her though. How will we find her?"

Left unspoken, it has to be possible, right?

"There…might be a way," Koushiro said. "Back to what we were saying about Vandemon's castle, Taichi, and the cards…"

There

Takeru burst out of the bedroom, pale as if he'd seen a ghost. Yamato, who had been in the middle of talking, immediately stood up and grabbed his brother's shoulders.

"What is it? Are you okay? Are you sick?"

Takeru wriggled away impatiently, eyes flitting between Sora and Koushiro. "Taichi. We need to talk to Taichi."

Sora rose to join them, concerned and a little bemused. "I've already sent another message to Taichi," she said, eyebrows knitting together. "Still couldn't reach him. What's going on?"

The younger boy bit his lip and came to a decision. "Do any of you know a Hikari Yagami?"

There was no response at first from the room. Yamato looked torn between confusion and relief. Jyou looked as if he wanted the meeting to be over so he could return to his textbooks. Koushiro's face was closed, but his expression tended to be unreadable. Sora herself felt a faint tugging of memory, but the touch was too light.

"Are you sure you heard the name correctly?"

Sora threw Yamato a frown. She knew he felt responsible for saying something whenever the group fell silent for too long, but he rarely came up with anything that actually moved along the conversation. Questioning his brother's memory was not productive, especially given how infrequently Takeru spoke nowadays in group settings.

Takeru sounded testy. "Maybe I misheard Hikari, but she definitely said Yagami. Do you think…she knows Taichi?"

This time, it was Koushiro who broke the uncomfortable silence. "Taichi had a little sister…I think her name might've been Hikari."

Sora froze. Of course. The little girl who was always tagging along Taichi to all of their soccer practices, who cheered at every soccer game, the little girl with the whistle around her neck. She had worshipped the ground that her brother walked on and Taichi had basked in her admiration, even though he'd always pretended to be embarrassed. One day, however, the little girl stopped coming to the practices and the games. Sora hadn't been very close to Taichi then, had barely known his family beyond surface introductions, so she didn't ask. By the time the two of them became best friends, the missing little sister had long disappeared from her mind.

"I never knew Taichi has a little sister," Jyou said. "We've never met her."

"Had," Koushiro corrected. "She died over ten years ago."

Once the implications of his revelation sank in, Yamato seized Takeru's shoulders again, protectively pulling his younger brother closer. "Are you telling us that we – we found a ghost?"

"Let's not jump to conclusions," Sora said. "She seems human enough to me. Besides, if Taichi's little sister died over ten years ago, she couldn't possibly have been high school aged. Ghosts don't…age." Her voice trailed off and she felt ridiculous, trying to combine common sense and ghosts in the same sentence.

Takeru didn't notice. "She was also wearing my jacket, big brother. You know, the one that Mom embroidered."

"And she somehow knew my name, even though I didn't even meet Taichi until summer camp."

"She could also just be one of the infected children." That was Sora's pet theory from the very beginning. "Pretend to be a long lost relation with a fake name, learn our names and faces so it seems like she knows us, maybe she's seen Takeru's jacket so she could copy the embroidery…"

"Hikari. Light." While the others argued, Koushiro had pulled up something on his laptop that he was frowning at. "I wonder if there's a connection."

They crowded around his laptop curiously. "What are you looking at?"

It was the message that Gennai had sent them a few months ago, with the fortune cookie message and the poem. Sora, like the rest of them, had dismissed the message as yet another one of his unsolvable riddles.

"I don't remember Taichi's sister's name, but if Takeru is right, Hikari also means light. And that comes up a few times in Gennai's message. For the light go directly to the source. To borrow the true bearer of Light. And remember, there was one crest that we never found. The Crest of Light." Koushiro looked up to make sure that they understood his next words perfectly. "It belonged to the eighth Chosen Child."

Sora suddenly felt cold dread creeping through her. For some reason, the possibility that the girl in her bedroom was the eighth chosen was far more disturbing than the girl being a ghost or one of the dark spore children.

"We need answers," Yamato said. He had released his younger brother and looked tired, drained. "Let's try to get hold of Taichi again."

"There's another thing we could do." Everyone turned to Takeru. "We could talk to her."

Hikari had tensed when the bedroom door opened. Even in her groggy state she had overheard bits and pieces of the conversations outside, enough to know that there were strangers and they did not trust her. She felt her shoulders relaxing when Sora and Koushiro entered, before she reminded herself that they were not the Sora and Koushiro she knew. Traveling to different dimensions had long ceased to faze her, but traveling somewhere that was so eerily close to her own world was disorienting. She couldn't explain how she knew that she didn't belong here, but she knew that this was not home.

Koushiro lingered by the door, hand still on the doorknob and stance uncomfortable. Sora approached the bed slowly under Hikari's wary gaze. As she came closer, the girl wondered if she had traveled to a different universe as well as forward in time. This Sora looked older, or perhaps that was the illusion created by the bags under her eyes and the thinness of her lips.

She fought an automatic flinch when the older girl pressed the back of her hand to her forehead.

"Still a bit feverish, but you seem better." She sounded like Sora, her voice clear and soothing. Even the touch felt familiar. "Jyou is warming up some medicine for you. How are you feeling?"

"Better." Her head still felt like lead, but the pillow underneath felt soft and comfortable. "Thank you."

"Do you think you could talk to us for a bit?" She added, when Hikari hesitated, "We want to help you, but we also have a lot of questions."

Because the words seemed sincere, she nodded. Sora gestured for Koushiro to join. Both of them pulled up chairs to sit by the bed. She studied Koushiro curiously, although he was carefully avoiding her eyes. He looked the same, although perhaps his hair was more peppered with gray than the friend she remembered.

"I'm guessing you already know our names." Sora didn't wait for a response. "Can you tell us yours?"

"Hikari Yagami." She noticed the change in Sora and Koushiro's expressions but she was too tired to speculate why.

"Do you remember how you got here?"

"I was…at the high school." It was raining very hard. Takeru had given her his jacket. She was trying to finish her physics assignment early for once. "Then I – I ran outside." Voices. Her brother calling her. She couldn't tell them that because that sounded crazy even to her own ears. "And then I woke up here."

"Takeru did find you at the high school. You had collapsed on campus." Sora gestured around. "We brought you here. This is my apartment."

Hikari thought about the boy who left the room so abruptly. He hadn't recognized her, had seemed scared by her, so she wondered why he had chosen to help her. "Thank you."

"Is this yours?" Sora was holding out her Digivice.

"Yes."

"Are you a Chosen Child?"

"Yes."

"Do you have a Digimon?"

"Yes."

"Have you been to the Digital World?"

"Yes."

Sora and Koushiro were taking turns asking questions now, yes or no questions about places in the Digital World – do you know where File Island is? – and different Digimon and other people who visited or lived there – do you know who Gennai is? Do you know infected children? These were basic, simple questions, and she was grateful that she could give quick, short answers without thinking too much. There was still a heavy fog in her head. In addition, Sora and Koushiro also seemed to visibly relax with every answer, and no longer looked at her with a mixture of curiosity and apprehension.

"Does…light mean anything to you?"

Hikari blinked. Koushiro looked serious. For the first time since she awakened, she suddenly wondered whether there was a Hikari in this world.

"That's my crest," she said.

Sora audibly exhaled. "So you are –"

She never finished. There were shouts outside. Then the door slammed open with such force that the ceiling light rattled, startling the three of them. With some effort, Hikari turned to get a better look at what was going on. She gasped.

It was Taichi. He was rambling.

"Sora, I didn't get your message until just now, but Yamato was just telling me –"

His eyes fell to the bed and then met Hikari's, and the girl involuntarily shuddered. Whereas the brother she knew was joyous and full of life, if sometimes too impulsive, this Taichi Yagami had a face that was drawn downwards, as if the muscles there had never lifted in laughter. His eyes were a dull brown and even his crazy hair seemed subdued, defeated. He reminded her of a man she had once seen on television, a man who had lost his family in an earthquake. She had never been able to forget the despair on the man's face, the tears in his voice as he described his young children, lost forever.

"Hikari," he breathed.

Big brother, she began to say, except this wasn't her big brother. So she kept silent.

He came closer, shaking off Yamato, who had grabbed his shoulder. Sora murmured something in warning but he did not seem to hear.

"You've grown." He spoke with wonder. He reached out to touch her hair, as if to reassure himself that she was really there. "Do you remember me?"

Once again, Hikari wondered what had happened to her counterpart to cause such a reaction. She had a sinking feeling about the fate of this Taichi's Hikari. Neither yes nor no sufficed as an answer; she certainly remembered her own brother, but he wasn't…. She gave a small nod.

Taichi straightened and seemed to realize, for the first time, the strangeness of the moment. "But – how –" He turned to Sora and Koushiro, and then at Yamato behind him. "What did I miss?"

Koushiro took his arm and gently led him away from the bed, towards Yamato and the door. "Let's catch you up outside. Hikari needs rest."

Sora followed with a quiet, "Jyou will be here soon with your medicine."

Hikari slumped back onto the pillow, feeling exhausted. Before she fell back into an uneasy sleep, she glanced at the small calendar on Sora's bedside table.

June 6, 2007. Somehow, just hours earlier she had been doing her physics homework, and now she had ended up in a world where Hikari Yagami – she was sure – did not exist.

Yamato had to turn away when Koushiro led Taichi out of the room. It was that look on Taichi's face, so dazed and helpless. He thought back to the first time they had met at camp. Part of him had been drawn to Taichi's brashness, his courage, but part of him also felt that what defined Taichi the most was an unspeakable sorrow.

Sora shut the bedroom door behind her gently. Then she went to the kitchen to exchange a few words with Jyou. In the meantime, Koushiro quietly caught them up on their conversation with the girl inside.

"She is definitely a Chosen Child," Koushiro concluded. "She has a Digivice, a Digimon partner, and knows the Digital World perhaps even better than we do. And because she has the Crest of Light, I want to say…she's the eighth Chosen Child."

To Yamato, the futile search for the eighth child felt like lifetimes ago. He didn't feel excited that they might have finally found her. "Do we know why she's here?"

"I have a theory, which is a bit out there, but…" Koushiro glanced up as Sora and Jyou joined them. "Do you remember the gate in Vandemon's castle?"

Yamato sat, thoughtful, as Koushiro explained his theory about the existence of parallel universes, that there was at least one universe out there where the eighth child existed, and she had now come over – likely with some help from Gennai – to help them. It sounded completely crazy, something out of the movies, but then again the Digital World was not really a place known for logic and consistency.

Koushiro faced Taichi. "There's one thing I need to know to be certain. Taichi, do you mind if we…learn more about your sister?"

"Hikari was three years younger than me," Taichi said. "We shared the same room since she was a baby so we were very close growing up. She was always a bit sick. I always think she caught something the night when Parrotmon and Greymon fought. Something was always a bit – well, anyway."

His eyes were boring into Sora's paint-chipped wall. "When she was five, she came down with a fever, so she stayed home from school. My parents asked me to watch her after school. It didn't seem serious. She was sitting up and watching TV and everything, so I took her to play soccer in the park. She got…pneumonia and collapsed. The ambulance had to take her away. My parents were at the hospital for three days, but…they…the doctors I mean…couldn't…"

Taichi spoke in disjointed sentences, as if he had never shared the story before. Perhaps he hadn't. Yamato closed his eyes briefly. If something had happened to Takeru under his watch – if he had been the reason –

"That was the last time I saw her. On one of those rolling stretchers being pushed inside the emergency room. They didn't let me see her after she…and then we just never mentioned her again. Took down her pictures, put away her things, just…nothing left." He ran his hand across his eyes quickly. "I don't think my mom has ever forgiven me for…well…"

As Taichi's voice trailed off, Sora reached over to pat his arm. She said nothing, and Yamato doubted that even she could find the right words.

"I guess…that explains why we never found the eighth child," Koushiro said softly, as if a final puzzle piece had fallen into place. "Why Vandemon couldn't either, even though he's still searching…"

They had now all accepted, though unacknowledged explicitly, that the girl was the long-dead Hikari Yagami and she was the eighth child.

"But maybe now that she's here, if Gennai sent her here…" Jyou was pulling up his old messages. "She could help us win the fight, that's what he's always said about the eighth child."

He turned, eyes imploring, to Yamato.

Yamato thought once that he would enjoy being the leader. That lasted for a total of two days before he decided he would much prefer playing harmonica in a corner. By then it was too late. Nobody else wanted to assume leadership in face of the unknown. Even though – let's face it – he was a terrible leader. He never made the right calls the way Sora could, and never had the right insights the way Koushiro easily could. He also didn't execute well; Taichi had saved his butt multiple times after battle plans gone awry. The worst of all, he wasn't good at keeping the group together. Mimi was already distancing herself, with college as an excuse, and Jyou was not far behind. The only credit he could give to himself was that he somehow kept going. To where, nobody knew.

He should be happy that they found the missing chosen, the secret weapon against Vandemon. But he thought about the plans he would have to make, the battles that they couldn't now avoid, and he wanted to scream at the unfairness. As if the burden on his shoulders had not already been too heavy.

"I don't know that we should listen to Gennai anymore and let him lead us around like fools." Yamato's head jerked in shock towards his brother. The red scar on his cheek always stood out when Takeru was angry. "And the eighth chosen is a child, just like us. Why would anything change?"

"It's been a long day," Sora cut in, "and I think we all need some rest. How about let's regroup tomorrow? Yamato, just let us know when. Mimi will be able to join then too. Takeru, I can give you a ride home."

Yamato gave her a grateful look.

"That sounds good to me," Jyou said, yawning. "I need to get back to Dokkyo. Sora, Hik-Hikari should be fine for tonight. I'll check back in tomorrow morning to see if she still needs to go to the hospital."

Koushiro started setting up Digital Gates on his laptop. "Give me a few and I'll get you guys going."

Yamato wasn't sure if Taichi was going to say anything, but he stood up too. "Yeah, I should get going too. I'll – let me know when you want us tomorrow."

He looked uncertainly between Yamato and Sora.

Takeru alone said nothing. He remained on Sora's couch, jaw set, and Yamato knew that he would voice out against anything they decide on tomorrow.

With a twinge of pain, he thought about the little boy who had been so enchanted with the Digital World, who used to reassure him that everything was possible if they fought together and tried hard enough. At some point, the enchantment ended. His gratitude and admiration for Gennai transformed into distrust and dislike; his excitement to fight alongside the other kids turned into dread. Every new place was just another battlefield, every new friend was just another potential casualty. And now the little boy with the bright eyes was a stranger who almost wanted to lose.

It was unfortunate and ironic, Yamato thought, that Takeru's crest was Hope.

tbc