Chapter 2

Awakening to the Faces of Angels

It's been a few minutes since the night sky had gone quiet again. The only proof that anything had happened on this dark little street was the memories in Kari and Gatomon's minds and the boy who now lay unconscious on the crumpled roof of the blue car.

Kari was currently taking a moment to process all that had just transpired when her partner's voice snapped her out of her thoughts.

"Kari shouldn't we do something?"

"What!" Kari jumped in surprise. "Yes we should call an ambulance he looks hurt."

With that Kari reached into her pocket and pulled out a cell phone only to find that it had stopped working. She then reached for her D-terminal, flipped open the screen, to find that it too was no longer functioning. Starting to see a connection she ran to the end of the block and picked up the emergency call box phone and began pushing buttons. But the phone remained silent.

"This can't be a coincidence. All the electronic devices must have been damaged by that pulse thing." Gatomon concluded, as she and Kari headed back to the boy.

"Your right." Kari sighed.

"We should try a phone that's further away from here." Gatomon replied.

"…" No response from Kari.

"Are you alright?" Gatomon asked with an inquisitive tone.

Suddenly a thought popped up into the front of Kari's mind. If she called the police for help and they found that boy in the center of the disturbance they would think he was involved. The police would never believe that he had fallen out of some spinning vortex in the sky and crashed down upon the car's roof. They might arrest him or even worse, label him a terrorist. And after all he was a Chosen child; what if he needed their help. The help of the digidestine.

"We can't call for help Gatomon. Do you know what the cops would think if they saw all this?" Kari said with a worried voice.

"You've got a point; this would look bad wouldn't it." Gatomon answered.

"We've got to be the ones to help him. It's our duty if he's a fellow digidestine." The child of light said with an upbeat tone.

"Okay, so what do we do?"

"Can you armor digivolve and carry the two of us home as quickly as possible?"

"That seems doable. Especially at this time of night, when people are unlikely to see me." The digital cat agreed.

A bright flash of light from Gatomon's armored evolution lit up the dark street once again and once more it became dark again as the light was replaced by the armored digimon, Nefertimon.

"Okay now help me get him off the car and onto your back." Kari said as she tried to lift Takuya up off of the cars roof.

After a few minutes of pulling, lifting, and shifting, Takuya was on Nefertimons back resting in Kari's arms.

As Nefertimon took off into the night sky Kari tightened her grip on the boy, pulling him as close to her as possible so he wouldn't fall off. This action in turn had a strange affect on her. She began to get warmer and the whirling of the wind and the beating of her partners wings became quieter. This was the feeling of complete contentment.

"Kari… Kari… KARI!"

"What! What is it Gatomon?" Kari asked as she was suddenly shaken out of her own little world.

"Were almost there. I'll land on the roof." The winged digimon stated moments before she set her feet down on the roof of the apartment building.

Using all her strength and an assist from Nefertimons wings Kari managed to get Takuya down onto the rooftop gently. She then put her arms under Takuya's arms and pulled him towards the rooftop stairs entrance.

"Kari are you alright you face is kind of red?" Gatomon asked as she finished de-digivolving.

Kari just stared at her feline companion for a moment before answering. "I'm fine… I'm just a little tired…" She said uneasily.

She wasn't lying, she was tired. But that wasn't the only reason she was like this, she just didn't know why she felt this way. This feeling was new and kind of complicated.

Kari finally got him leaning up against the sidewall of the roof entrance before she turned back to her partner.

"Gatomon take care of him while I get my brother to help carry him down to the apartment." Kari called out to her partner before she started descending the stairs.

Gatomon quietly strolled up to the unconscious boy and began looking him over. He didn't remind her of anyone they met while touring the world four years ago to return all the wild digimon to the digital world. She also noticed that he had a strange but familiar feel to him; it was something she couldn't quite identify.

As she continued to look him over his eyes open slightly and looked at her with a hazy kind of realization before muttering "Lady Ofanimon" and passing out once more.

"Lady Ofanimon? Was he talking to me?" Gatomon wondered as questions began to fill her head.

"Agumon if you watch too much television your brain will rot." Came a voice from the Kamiya kid's bedroom.

"That's funny coming from you Tai." The little orange dinosaur shot back at the bedroom door.

"Yeah, I should know shouldn't I?" Tai laughed from the other room.

"Why don't you take a break from studying and join me. It's a pretty good movie." Agumon asked.

"That sounds good. Anyways I'm starving." Tai said as he opened the door and walked to the kitchen to grab the last two slices of pizza out of the refrigerator, before sitting down on the couch next to his partner.

"It's kind of strange to see you actually studying." Agumon remarked during one of the many commercials.

"When this semester's over it'll be time for college entrance exams. I can't just count on a soccer scholarship to get me into the school I want." Tai stated with a hint of depression in his voice.

"Wow, that's so grown up of you Tai." The digital dino laughed.

"Thanks Agumon." The boy commented sarcastically.

A few seconds later the sound of a key turning the lock on the front door could be heard and then the door flew open as Kari burst inside.

"TAI where are you?" Kari called out.

"Right here. What's got you so excited?" Tai said bending his head backward to look at the girl.

"I need your help! Come on!" The girl said before she rushed out of the apartment again.

"Okay…!" He answered, jumping up from the couch and following his little sister out the door.

Tai exited the apartment and just in time to see Kari turn up the stair that lead to the roof. He quickly ran after her starting to get worried about what could possible throw his little sister into this kind of state.

After a few flights he finally reached the top and opened the door Kari had just passed through a second ago. When he stepped out he was under the starry sky only broken by the flashing light of random passing plane. Tai begins to scan the roof for the sister he was chasing moments ago before he turns to the side when he hears her calling for him.

Walking around to the side of the rooftop entrance he finally sees the cause of Kari's worried state. It's an unconscious boy about a year older than Kari covered in bruises and little cuts lying against the wall, with Kari and Gatomon checking on him.

"Kari who is this? What happened to him? Why is he here?" Tai said in surprise as he knelt down to get a better look at the boy.

"I don't know who he is. What happened is very complicated. And because he needs our help." Kari answered while she watched her brother check the boy over.

"I get that, but why did you bring him here instead of a hospital?" Tai asked expecting there to be a good reason.

Kari begins to tell Tai all about the incident with the vortex, the boy falling from the sky, all the electronic equipment in the area shorting out, and her decision to bring him home with her instead of calling the authorities.

The last thing she shares with him is the device she picked up off of the ground after the boy had dropped it. From out of her backpack she pulls the red and black digivice and hands it to her brother to look at.

Taking the device in his hand Tai begins to examine it, taking note of the different shape and buttons but what really caught his eye was what appeared to be an infrared scanner at the top of the device.

"It's a digivice." He concluded. "A new model. I wonder what it does."

"We don't know but he was holding onto it when he fell." Gatomon added eyeing the new digivice.

"Well one thing's for sure Izzy's going to love this." Tai laughed as he handed Kari back the digivice and she promptly returned it to her backpack.

"We should get him inside." Kari said motioning for her brother to pick the boy up.

"Once we get him inside we should call Joe and have him treat our guest." Gatomon mentioned as she climbed up on Kari's shoulder.

"Good idea." Tai remarked. He positioned the boy on his back and began carrying him down the stairs back to the apartment.

Kari followed close behind making sure her brother didn't drop the boy and opening the doors for him.

They finally reached the apartment they called home and set the boy down on the bottom bunk of the bunk beds. Tai then removed the boy's jacket and handed it to Kari, who hung it on the desk chair and then left the room to get a wet wash cloth. When Kari was returning to the room with the cloth in her hand she passed her brother on his way to call Joe on the house phone in the living room. Kari sat down on the bed next to the boy and began to use the washcloth to clean up the sweat, dirt, and blood on his face and arms.

As Kari washed his arms she took note of how strong they seemed and how well defined they were. In the back of her mind she though he must have worked out a lot. Soon she reached the cross-shaped scar on his left shoulder and traced it with her small fingers, feeling a pang of pain when she considered how much it must have hurt when he got it. Kari was taking the most amount of time to clean his face. She sat there staring into his closed eyes and looking at all the features of his face. Taking note of a few stray hairs Kari gently brushed the dark brown bangs out of the way so that they no longer covering sections of his face.

"Kari… Kari…"

"KARI!" Agumon yelled after not being able to get the girls attention.

"I'm sorry Agumon. What is it?" Kari said as she looked up from Takuya's face.

"Tai says that Joe will be here in about fifteen minutes." Agumon relayed the information. "And Tai wants to hear more about what happened."

"Thank you Agumon. I'm done here so I'll go talk to Tai now." Kari breathed before putting her hand down on the bed to push herself up.

Suddenly she felt a hand grip her wrist before she was able to get up. She turned her head quickly and looked down at the boy. His eyes were open and he was using his right hand to hold hers. As she looked into his eyes she noticed they were a dull brown, a sign that he was barely conscious. Immediately she was over top of him hoping to ask some questions before he slipped into a state of unconsciousness once again.

"Who are you? Why did you fall from the sky? What's your name? Are you a digidestine?" Kari fired off a random selection of questions hoping he could answer; or even understand her for that matter. These were things she just had to know.

Instead of answers all she got was a few words.

Takuya, who was so out of it he couldn't even remember who he was, let alone who or what this girl was, now moved out of pure instinct. He reached his left hand up and gently placed it against her check, it was so warm and soft, and said the only words he could remember at that moment.

"…Beautiful Star…" Takuya spoke in a whisper before things once again fell dark. His hand slipped off of her cheek, brushing against her silky light brown hair and landing on the mattress next to Kari's thigh.

"Kari what happened?" Gatomon asked entering the room after hearing Kari's line of questions.

"He kind of woke up for a second then fell back asleep." Kari replied looking down at the hand that had once been at her face.

"What did he say? Did you find anything out?" Gatomon inquired.

"Nothing about who he is." Kari answered. "But it felt important to me." Kari whispered the last part so that no one would hear. Then she pushed herself up off of the bed and walked out of the room to answer all of Tai's questions.

"Is Kari okay? Her face seemed kind of red." Agumon asked his fellow digimon.

"She's fine. Just tired I think…" Gatomon said with a hint of uncertainty in her voice.

To be continued…