"Remind me why you left him behind again?" Thomas called over the wind thundering past our ears. Now, my guess is you want a bit of backstory, seeing as before now I had never mentioned anybody named Thomas, not had I ever given a reason for the wind to get in the way of my hearing. You probably don't appreciate that I played the pronoun game with you either. Lucky for you, you caught me in a generous mood. I apologize for tossing all that on you without explanation and will now rectify my mistake.

The group, Jimena, Josh, Bradley, Armadillomon, Shoutmon, Gabumon, and I, took a couple days in the digital world as a sort of vacation or holiday. Renamon went off and did, I dunno, Renamon stuff. It wasn't just vacation for the heck of it, mind you. A lot was actually for my sake, admittedly, my mental health. I had just been through hell in terms of the strain on how much stimulation I could handle. The only thing keeping me focused during the breakout was, well, my intense focus on my task. But when the task was complete all that leftover energy and intensity lingered for hours more, which triggered one of my episodes of hyper stimulation that autism can cause.

Think of it kind of like an anxiety attack. I feel like a prisoner of my own senseless thoughts when it happens, and it usually leaves me curled up in a ball and bawling my eyes out. It's not pretty to watch, but that part is actually not so bad for me. That's a conscious choice I would make, not an involuntary response, and it was the fastest way to get through the episode. "Fast" is a relative term, though. After that shit, I needed the whole rest of the day to just cry it out and even fell asleep in the act.

After that I needed a second day to let it sink in that life as I knew it was more or less over. I needed more than that, actually, but that was all we could afford to waste. No waterworks on day two, but I've definitely had better days. There was a human and Digimon flanking me the whole day, and unlike an episode, their company was welcome then. The Digimon was usually Gabumon or Armadillomon. Shoutmon excluded himself, and that was fine by me. I didn't think emotional stuff was his forte. The human was almost always Jimena for the same reason.

Nobody ever did get around to telling her Armadillomon didn't know her. How ironic that she felt bad for me.

I would have like more than a day and a half, but life isn't so nice like that. I'm shocked it was as nice as it was. A course of action had to be taken. It was generally agreed upon even by me that if I was stuck in the digital world I may as well have made myself useful. Heh, déjà vú. Except now we had knew knowledge: somehow or another, I had the ability to make Digimon digivolve without a digivice. Any Digimon, it seemed, because I had by then done it four times with three different Digimon. So, new focus was on making that happen at will rather than by accident. That's why I spent the remaining hours of the afternoon trying to make a Digimon digivolve.

It didn't work.

And that brings us to day three. By then even I thought sitting around and doing nothing was extremely boring. There's a reason I summarized it instead of going through every detail. It was boring. But things got less so on day three. We may have been chasing the same old pipe dream, but we wanted me to learn to cause digivolution... And that meant talking to Gallantmon.

The good news is we had an idea of where he could be hanging out. Armadillomon pointed out he was part of some legendary group, the Royal Knights, and they have their own palace and everything. Yes, it sounds silly. I did say it was a legend. The digidestined were supposed to be just legend, too, but we know better about that, don't we?

Apparently Brad and Josh were friends with someone who was friends with a Royal Knight, but that person didn't know where he was. We narrowed it down to two areas to search, but if we split up both groups would have been way too small for comfort. So, the guys called in a few of their acquaintances that were already in the digital world since the firewall wasn't letting a com signal through to the real world right then.

I was right about the digidestined being globalized. Besides Jimena and Armadillomon, I was accompanied by the Pakistani boy Aman and Thomas, a dark-skinned Canadian. And that's the story of how I ended up standing on the Talon of a Hawkmon, searching the skies for a Royal Knight.

"I didn't know how to make him devolve," was my answer to Thomas' question, "It wasn't like I could bring him home! Besides, the main idea was just to get him back to the digital world, and we succeeded!"

"And that worked out real well, didn't it?" Thomas sarcastically shot back. Sounds like we were talking about Veemon, doesn't it? Well, that's because we were. Veemon had the ability to digivolve into a Royal Knight, apparently. Two of them if I understood right. The guy who knew the Royal Knight I mentioned before? It was me.

I guess I was kind of friends with a celebrity. Cool, right?

Riding on Hawkmon's talon was hardly ideal for me, but at least I got to stand. Still, at least it beat riding with Aman; his partner was something called Kunemon. She was some sort of larva, so I was hoping her digivolution would be some kind of butterfly or something not disgusting. But nope, it was the the bee digimon, Flymon. Soon as I saw it I knew who I would rather have ridden with.

"That's around where we last were. Maybe we could land there?" I pointed to the tree. Yes, you know which tree. Just to sate her curiosity I asked Thomas if we could make a flyover to find out what Renamon kept rambling about. "No good! Hawkmon can't fly that high! He's too heavy for that thinner air to support him!" Thomas then pat our taxi's leg. "No offense, big guy!"

Well damn, I had to get up there somehow! Oh, well. Finding my missing friend was a bit more important momentarily, but damn, she knew more than she let on, and my curiosity wouldn't let it go.

I slipped a little when we hit a little low-altitude turbulence, so I hugged Hawkmon's leg. Unfortunately the rifle slung over my back began to slip because of it and fell down to my ankles, flowing freely in the breeze and bound only by the strap. Phew, that could have been bad. Very carefully I bent one of my legs, reached back with one arm, and managed to reset the strap's position. Even over the wind I could hear Thomas visibly grumble. "I don't like that you kept that thing!"

"What choice do I have? Until I can trigger digivolution at will, this thing is all I have to defend myself!"

"Well, I like it," Aman's voice snickered over the digivice. He was flying too far away for shouting, but I forgot we had been on speaker. "It makes you look like one of those American action heroes," he joked. "You're a regular G.I. Joe!" Good thing Aman spoke English, or we would have had a huge problem. I could speak Spanish, but Urdu? Yeah, right.

"Hey, man, even if Veemon's around here, how do you expect to see him from this far up?" Thomas asked me.

Thing is, I didn't spend day two sitting around and doing nothing. I was becoming a bit more familiar with my rifle friend. Nobody had targets just lying around, so I shot at trees. I'm not gonna lie, it was fun. Way more fun than shooting at people. It didn't really improve my aim, though. Something good came out of it, though; I became more familiar with the weapon. In particular, what would help me right then was figuring out how to adjust the scope.

Once I had gotten it zoomed and focused, I used the rifle scope to survey the ground. I kept my finger off the trigger, though. No matter how unsteady my hands were under the circumstances, I still didn't want to take any remote risk of shooting something I didn't want to shoot! "Hey, Hawkmon, try and keep steady!" I requested to keep the image from being so damn shaky. Slowing down and steadying out didn't help much, but at least I could make sense of what I saw.

I

There wasn't much to do while searching in silence, and Thomas didn't seem to go for that. That's probably why he asked me, "So why's your government experimenting on Digimon?"

"How the hell should I know?" I got a bit defensive. "All I know is what I saw. Monochromon, I have no idea how he digivolved, but he was fighting like some rabid animal. Every enemy Digimon I know has been, actually." I shook my head at the thought. "I dunno, man, maybe the USA wants to weaponize Digimon!"

"It wouldn't surprise me," Aman remarked, "This coming from the country that first created and used the atomic bomb? Only makes sense."

"Hey, leave history out of it and stick to evidence, Aman," I scolded him, "Unless you'd like me to bring up how I'd have countless death penalties if I lived in your country."

I looked across and saw him shrug. "Fine. I guess we can't all be perfect like Canada."

"Oh, please, have you been to Ontario?" Thomas cracked, "I can only describe it as the world's biggest ghetto! And don't get me started on those snobby French people!" I feel kind of bad for laughing, but I did. It was a tense time. Any and all humor would have been welcome, really.

"The missing link just seems to be why some of those Digimon are ending up in the digital world!" I continued, "I find it hard to believe Uncle Sam is sending them back intentionally if he's trying to weaponize them. There's gotta be something more going on!"

"Maybe they escaped," Josh suggested over the digivice. "You did, remember?"

"Even if they escaped custody, how would they return to the digital world?" I reminded him, "The only way we did it is because we had digivices. I can only see those Digimon reaching the digital world if they were sent there intentionally!" Oh, lightbulb in the brain. "Maybe the government is sending them back because that feral, out-of-control state isn't what they want to happen, and they can't control that kind of power!"

"But how can they access the digital world in the first place?" That voice was Leone's, from some country called Croatia. That's okay, I had never heard of it before either.

Josh interjected, "We did. It's not crazy to think someone else could find out how."

"Wouldn't that mean there's a digidestined working for the American government?" Oh, shit. Aman's far-fetched idea didn't seem so far-fetched after two seconds of consideration.

"That wouldn't shock me," I conceded, "I know few countries' peoples are as patriotic - and susceptible to suggestion - as mine."

"Hey!" Josh cried indignantly over the digivice.

"See?" I reiterated with a slight chuckle.

Maybe you're wondering why Josh, Brad, Jimena, and Leone weren't with me. Well, they were searching possible location number two, the area surrounding the Gotsumon village because that's where I first met Veemon. Man, now that I actually needed him I felt kind of stupid for leaving him behind. But how could I have known what the future held for me? That's my defense, I guess, my excuse.

My heart stopped. There, coming my way over the horizon! No way, how could that have been? He was supposed to be dead! Exveemon shot that digimon with that laser attack, but somehow or another there was Kuwagamon rushing right for us! I guess all that stuff I had been hearing about digimon death not being permanent was right, but that was the first example I saw. If I had time for actual thought, I would have wondered how exactly that process of rebirth worked. What Kuwagamon was doing in the area wasn't hard to figure out; I guess it was his tree at the end of the day, after all.

"Guys, that digimon's hostile!" I shouted out as I pointed at it. Crap, was Kuwagamon back for a rematch? I was back on its territory, after all, and I couldn't imagine he would be real happy happy to see me back there. "Get set for a fight!"

"Think you can handle it alone?" Brad asked us over the comms.

"It's two champions against one," Aman observed, "I almost feel guilty about how easily we will win. Almost." Hawkmon's flight pattern changed to speed up significantly, which forced me to hug his talon tighter. Shit, I was afraid he'd outright collide with the bug. Flymon, unfotunately, didn't have the speed of Hawkmon, but something she made quite a point to mention was her superior maneuverability, so it was probably better that she lagged back anyway to strike more calculably.

As Kuwagamon was just a couple seconds from colliding with us I yelled out, "Here it comes! Gear up!" Hawkmon cawed the way hawks do, and my whole party readied for a tussle. Kuwagamon didn't deviate from its path but flew right at us as predicted. What wasn't predicted was that the beetle digimon would fly right between the two ariel digimon and past them like he didn't even see us, but that was exactly what he did. "...or, not. You know, gear up if you feel like it. If not, no big deal. It's all good either way."

Thomas just scoffed and announced, "False alarm crew! Bugboy won't be bothering us, it seems. Probably just passing by like we are."

"Yeah, but what the hell?" I asked. Now that the fight mentality was passing, all the questions I wanted to ask before could be since I was clear in thought. "Last time I saw that guy he spared no effort in killing me. Now he flies right by? I'd be offended if I wasn't so relieved, but where did his homicidal tendencies go?"

"You said you defeated him before, didn't you?" Thomas queried.

"If 'defeated' is a synonym for 'sat by and watched and cowered while I hid behind the digimon that did all the work,' then yeah, I defeated the living shit out of him." Silence. "Oh, come on! That was funny! Laugh!"

"I promise to laugh as soon as you say something funny," Aman needlessly interjected.

Thomas went on, "Nobody ever explained digimon 'death' to you, did they? You know what a digiegg is?"

"Not exactly. I know that the digiegg of courage is usually needed for something called armor digivolution because I kinda accidentally triggered it with Veemon once."

"Not the same thing," Thomas clarified, "They're just kinda called digieggs because they look like them. But the real things are exactly what the sound like, the eggs digimon hatch from. There's a place in the digital world where they're all kept and safeguarded, the Nursery. The difference between a human and digimon is that since they're made of data, they can't die unless their data is either permanently deleted or corrupted beyond repair." I saw him eye my rifle there. "Like with one of those things."

"Okay, that's great. So what happens after one 'dies?' Its data wasn't deleted or corrupted, I guess."

"Not in Kuwagamon's case. So the digital world noticed the sudden disappearance of a date piece that was supposed to be there, but it had a backup saved, so it kind of restored the last known saved file of Kuwagamon, the egg. Eventually the egg hatched as a baby digimon, and the circle of life continued from there."

"So... it's not like when a mommy digimon and a daddy digimon love each other very much-"

"No."

"Could your compulsive wisecracking be linked to an obsessive desire to be accepted by your peers for fear of rejection, or is it some sort of dark sadness and depression for which you feel you have to compensate?" Aman asked over the digivice.

"...You know what? Shut up."

Back to silent searching. Man, was it boring! I was even glad to hear that the other guys were making progress just because it gave us something to talk about. Leone announced, "We just talked to some of the Gotsumon. They think Veemon may have travelled to north to fight the Frigimon that has apparently been making trouble like Meramon was."

I sighed in exasperation. "Are you shitting me right now? What, does this guy just look for digimon to fight? That's the only way I can imagine him being around both Meramon and this Frigimon!"

"I would not know. You knew him better than any of us, after all."

"I knew him for like three days," I reminded Leone, "And a couple of those were digital world days, so I don't know if they count. So, what happens now? We head to the far north?"

"If you're friend is as reckless as the Gotsumon implied, it sounds like a sensible place to try."

"Reckless? Sounds like a natural Royal Knight to me. Riding into battle to protect the innocent and all that good knight stuff."

"Well dying in a lost battle is not quite so noble."

"Leone's got a point," Josh chimed in, "If Veemon's going around picking fights, it's only a matter of time until he loses if he hasn't already. Especially if you haven't been around to make him digivolve. Maybe we shouldn't all go north."

Thomas asked, "You think we'd be better off visiting the Nursery?" My heart sank hearing that. Oh, man, I never even considered that he may have been killed. But if he was, at least he'd be right back...

"Let's do it," I decided, "It maximizes our chances of finding him. That's the most important thing right now."

"How are we supposed to get in there?" Aman wondered aloud, "It's the Nursery, where Digimon are reborn. That's like sacred ground. You think they'd just let anyone poke around?"

"We'll cross that bridge when we get to it," I insisted, "I'm getting tired of wandering around, so let's maximize our chances and minimize our time."

"You eager to see your friend again?" Josh called me out. It gave me some pause, too. "You know if he's at the nursery, he won't remember-"

"Don't remind me," I cut him off. I didn't want to hear it spoken aloud. "We're doing it. Head north, guys. Thomas, Aman? Where's the Nursery?"