Author's Note

Altrighty, next chapter is done. Not much to say, so...

Disclaimer: I don't own any of the Digimon Season, nor do I own their characters. The teachers are all OC, as are some random students, and the plot is mine.

Arc 1: Frontier Arc

World 3: Frontier Human/Digital World

Date: Saturday, December 01, 2012

Enjoy everyone.

Intertwined

x-over all seasons. It is chaos. As such, it longs for control...its own form of order: complete control over all life. But it overlooked one thing, like the rest. The unpredictability of human emotions, and the fact that there are some who make the impossible possible.

Genres: Adventure, Friendship

Rating: T

Chapter 2 – Keep the Past Before the Present

He opened his eyes, wincing at the pain that racked his skull, pushing it down and taking in the familiar, dark landscape, stretching on without end like the void it represented. He shivered, almost involuntarily, though he thought he should have been adept at dealing with darkness after his numerous accounts of exposure.

But despite how many times he relived his past, he still to some extent, could not let go of it. Despite that it had already past.

It was, or rather, had been a very small extent though; it had been years since he had imagined himself here. He had thought he was finally over it, finally overcome the negativity that had plagued him and the enduring guilt.

He turned, catching sight of a familiar wrinkled face. As he had before, he stretched his hands towards her.

'Grandma...' was all he was able to say before she turned and vanished into the shadows.

He felt another presence behind him, but didn't turn as he had always previously. Instead, he looked at his hands. He was always a mindless puppet of his past, forced to carry out the actions he had then, never given the chance to change them.

A moment passed, and he had yet to turn. Something was building; he could sense it, but he, at that moment, was more concerned with his past to worry about it.

He had paused; he had known what would happen and he had delayed it. Was it then possible to change it altogether?

Logically speaking, one could not change the past. But they always had a way of defying logic.

He didn't move, though the small, rational part of his mind was telling him to turn, to not risk changing the past and suffering through the consequences. The rest of him, the overwhelming majority, was however, greatly protesting to the action.

Somehow or other, the small little voice at the back of his head one against the overwhelming majority, something that majority was obviously not pleased about, considering the effort it took for him to turn to meet the vision of his father,

'Papa...'

Pain exploded in his head suddenly, his past vanishing as fast as it had descended upon him. Through the haze, he could feel two beings opposing, one silently screaming at the lost, while the other remained the ever strong pillar of support, reminding him not to give in...

His eyes flew open. Wildly, his eyes darted around the infirmary cubicle he was resting in, taking in the plain white decor before his mind was able to convince his body that there was no danger.

Kouichi sat up, blinking away the insistent shadows from his vision, as he pondered over the deviance from his normal recollections. It was as if the past had been in his hands, to change...but would that have not then started a chain reaction?

Could he have rewritten the present by simply choosing elsewise.

Obviously, he could have.

And now that he was aware of that, it scared him.

'You know, you worry too much,' Takuya sighed once history, immediately following fourth period English, had finished.

Kouji, his mind almost fully occupied by his brother, suddenly stopped in the middle of the corridor they were advancing through, causing Takuya, who was following behind, to stumble into his back before regaining his bearings.

'Ow,' he mumbled half-heartedly. 'A little warning next time?'

'You don't sound good either,' Kouji said bluntly, turning fully. 'And you're an easier nut to crack than Ni-san, so spill it.'

'Spill what?' Takuya asked, backing up.

'You can start by explaining why you were having a staring contest with the projection in IT.'

'Um...well I...err,' spluttered Takuya, before something hit him. 'Hey, wait a sec. Why weren't you paying attention?'

'Because I was distracted,' Kouji shot back, without thinking. Immediately, he mentally face-palmed his head. No way Takuya was going to let that slip.

'Distracted?' he asked. 'With what?'

The younger twin turned his head. 'Nothing...just thought I saw...something.'

He turned back after feeling the brunette's gaze bore holes into his skull. 'Okay? What gives?'

Takuya didn't answer, instead seizing the other's wrist and dragging him to the infirmary.

'Takuya...' Kouji growled, as he was pulled along the relatively empty hallway.

'Did you get any weird feelings this morning?' he asked, ignoring the bandana-boy's annoyed attitude that normally arose with his over protectiveness, despite Kouichi being the older twin. And despite the bandana was now tied to his butoku training sword.

'Weird feelings? Like?'

'The past. Stuff that have already happened.'

Kouji gave the goggle-headed leader an odd look, despite the goggles were locked safely away. 'Um, yeah...but why does that matter?'

'Tomoki came over this morning, to visit Shinya, and he said the same thing. Plus, I felt that too. And then in IT, I could have sworn that I saw Lucemon's digi-code on the screen.'

By now, they were at the infirmary, so Takuya was mercifully spared Kouji's shocked response in favour of the elder twin, who jumped at the sound the door opening.

'Wha..?' he gasped. 'Kouji? Takuya?'

'Course buddy,' Takuya said, grinning, albeit a bit forcefully due to the gravity of their previous conversation. 'You look like you've seen a ghost,' he quipped as afterthought. Then the smile suddenly slid off his face. 'You haven't, have you?'

'Not really...' he mumbled. 'Just...a memory.'

Kouji opened his mouth, but was cut off by Takuya. 'Which one?'

As Kouichi gave him a confused, and sightly uneasy look, Kouji hissed: 'Why does that matter?' in his ear.

'Doesn't this classify as weird?' Takuya hissed back. 'I've just got a bad feeling.'

'Then shouldn't we call the others as well?'

'No credit.'

A pause. 'You really are a goggle-head, you know that?'

'Of course,' he replied good-naturedly. 'Can't get rid of that about me.' He looked at the younger twin, brown eyes widening slightly.

'All right,' he relented. 'I'll call them.'

He left to do so, leaving Takuya to reiterate the question he had asked.

'Okay,' Kouji said, once they were all gathered, and stories exchanged. 'So let me get this straight. Somehow, all of us were up at midnight, remembering the part of the past we wanted to change the most, yet Kouichi was the only one affected with the disrupted sleep. Then, we get to school, Takuya catches a glimpse of Lucemon's digi-code, which I think I might have seen as well, then Kouichi gets sick enough to be sent to the sickbay, where he falls asleep and almost winds up changing his past. Correct?'

'Sounds about right,' said Junpei, seated in one of the plastic chairs.

'Not exactly,' Kouichi said softly, hiding his eyes. 'I hesitated, who knows what kind of consequences that would have had.'

'But didn't you say you only hesitated for a couple of minutes at most?' Izumi asked. 'Your father's image was still there after you turned; nothing changed.'

'We can't be sure of that,' he argued.

'Regardless,' Takuya intervened, in serious leader mode as the situation warranted. 'Something's going on.'

They were silent for a moment, trying to process the exchange of ideas, before Tomoki suddenly thought of something.

'Guys, how can we be sure that Kouichi didn't just dream about changing his past. I mean, he was asleep. No offense Kouichi.' He added that last bit hastily, while Kouichi waved off the concern.

'That is a valid point,' he said in his usual quiet voice. 'But I'm afraid that's not the case.' He then reached up to brush his hair aside, revealing a red, sticky spot which had been covered by his bangs, ignoring the shocked expressions he was met with.

'That's where I hit my head when I fell before,' he said, tracing the cut with a forefinger, wiping some of the blood away. Beneath it, they could see the red line, fitted perfectly over the scar remaining from his near death years ago. 'That time, I fell, but I don't remember falling. There's a gap between my running down the stairs and what...happened in the Dark Area.' He paused, taking a deep breath. 'It felt the same again, but I was here the whole time.'

'That's...impossible,' Tomoki said slowly.

'Not quite,' Kouji said, a thought occurring to him. 'Think about it. If Kouichi had waited too long, Duskmon would not have been born. And if he was not, our adventures in the Digital World would have been altered for one, the spirits of darkness would have always been corrupted, and not to mention that Kouichi might not even be alive today!'

'Hold up!' Izumi cried. 'You're saying it was deliberate.'

'That is more than likely,' Takuya reminded her. 'While the whole waking up at midnight could be written off as a coincidence, the rest can't. Something's up.'

'Unfortunately,' Junpei sighed. 'We're no closer to figuring out what. Nor what we're going to do about it. We don't even know how big a threat it is.'

'It's a pretty big threat,' Kouji growled. 'A tiny change in the past could rewrite the whole future. Wars could be started, or stopped. The entire world could be rewritten...or destroyed completely.'

There was silence after those words.

'You know,' Takuya mumbled, slightly irritably. 'Times like this make me wish we still had access to the Digital World.'

'Don't jinx us!' the other five cried.

'Fine, fine. Let's just enjoy our weekend and worry about this when we've got something more to go on with. Not like we can figure anything out.'

'True,' Kouji agreed. 'Who knows, it might just be nothing after all. Except...'

'What?'

'Kouichi!' He yelled suddenly, causing the said boy to jump. 'Get that wound cleaned up!'

'You know,' Kouichi mumbled, going over to the nurse's office on the other side of the room. 'You worry too much.'

'Damn right I do. But only when it comes to you.'

The resulting laughter managed to somewhat ease the tension.

Below the deepest cavities of the Digital World, something stirred once more. Something seeking...to manipulate, to change...to destroy.

The test had failed. But it had showed it a way to succeed. As incapable of free will as it was, it was compelled to follow the force it was driven by. It was chaos; as such, it longed to control. And the lust for that control drove it, formed it from a shapeless, nameless mass, into something concrete, absolute...chaotic.

Chaos was rising once more.