Episode 36: A Piece of Her Past

Wild was exhausted. She had spent the entirety of the night staring at her computer screen and almost constantly typing. She had been trying to infiltrate the birth records for their area for hours, finding it harder than she had thought. The last time she had something like this, she had been inexperienced and was nearly arrested – but this time, she was doing everything she possibly could to cover her tracks.

Everything.

Just doing that had taken about four hours. She had to make sure that no one could identify the computer that she was using to do this – not to mention any other device that was connected to this house. It would have been easier just to use someone else's WiFi signal to do this, but she didn't want anyone else getting into trouble over it. As easy it was to pin it on someone else by using their IP address instead, she knew that the people who worked for any government were intelligent enough to be able to figure out who really did it.

She didn't think that birth records would be this hard to track down, but she supposed that they were private information and something that hospitals kept from prying eyes – like her's. She had searched every hospital in the area, systematically breaking into their information networks and sorting through every piece of data that started with the letter L.

It occurred to Wild while she was doing this that Loaño might not even be her real name. If that was the case, then this task would be all but impossible – unless the Boss knew what her real name had been. Loaño didn't know anything about her time in the Human World, which Wild figured to be a small amount of time compared to the time she spent in the Digital World. Because of the differences in time, logically Loaño had spent more time in that world with its laws, and it wasn't surprising that she would forget about the Human World.

Who the hell would name their child Loaño, anyway? Wild thought tiredly. What the hell does it even mean? It seemed to be some perverted form of Italian, and it was terribly hard to pronounce, especially with her Japanese accent. Loaño herself had no problem with it, of course – which led Wild to believe that it was her real name – but everyone else was stumbling and fumbling over it. Hence the reason why they were using Meg's nickname, Lo. It marked one of the only times where Meg's laziness was actually useful.

Except Oha. Oha seemed to know exactly how to pronounce Loaño's name from the get-go. Why that was, Wild didn't know. Her mother had been acting strangely since she had brought Loaño and the digimon into the house – Oha had been more reclusive than before, quieter and more thoughtful.

Of course, it was hard for Wild to notice such things when she was busy trying to make sure that the digimon didn't cause any problems. They had been here for about a week, and while they were keeping out of sight, they seemed to be getting stir-crazy. Koromon especially wanted to go out and explore the world. With Wild busy researching different methods of illegally rifling through other people's personal information, it had been up to Nikolai and Yukio to keep them sane.

Warugamon didn't seem to care either way, content with acting like a dog. He slept at the foot of Loaño's borrowed bed and followed her around loyally, except when Loaño had to leave the house. Warugamon seemed used to having to hide himself, while the other digimon – Calumon included – were restless.

Loaño herself seemed to be adjusting, though slowly. She seemed reluctant to accept certain realities of the Human World, after living in the Digital World for so long. Wild got the sense that Loaño was very, very uncomfortable here, no matter how hard she tried to fit in and keep herself hidden. She didn't often leave the house and when she did, she was always accompanied by digimon and the Digidestined. While it didn't seem like Loaño minded that, Wild could swear that she was homesick.

For what home, though, Wild couldn't tell.

All the more reason for me to figure this out as quickly and as thoroughly as possible, she thought. I'm sure that once Loaño finds something – or someone – to connect with in this world, she'll be feeling a lot better about being here. A surname… a family member… anything…

She looked away from the computer for a moment to glance at her bed. It took a moment for her eyes to adjust, and even after they had accustomed themselves to the gloom, she was seeing spots out of the corner of her eyes. She looked at Koromon, sleeping soundly on her bed, tucked in neatly. Wild tugged at her ascot and then yawned, wishing to join him. Her limbs were aching with exhaustion and if her wrists could talk she figured they would be swearing at her.

But she turned back to the computer. She didn't want to go to sleep without anything found. It would be like a failure. She didn't like failures.

She kept going for another two hours, trying to keep her typing as quiet as possible. She went through another five hospitals without success until she finally came upon the only hospital in her area – a small one, without a lot of advanced equipment, but well-equipped enough to deliver children in. If one had to get chemotherapy or something like that, however, they would have to go to Tokyo.

With a yawn, she surfed through their birth records. There was a surprising amount – the town was well-populated with people, especially University students, so that was no surprise – though not many parents elected to give their children a name beginning with the letter L.

Wild sorted through the handful of names. It was sorted surname first, of course, so she had to look through the list a few dozen times to find the first name that she was looking for. When another yawn made her eyes blurry, she decided that enough was enough, and that she would look through it one more time (with clean eyes) before resigning for the night. Or morning. Or whatever time it was.

She studied each name carefully until, finally, she found something. Something important.

Something interesting.

Loaño… she thought. Was born in this town? She blamed herself and her fatigue for missing the name before. She clicked on the name and the record popped up – a digital copy of her birth certificate, along with several other random facts about her birth, including all the shots she had been given and the typical footprint and fingerprint copies.

Wild scanned the certificate once more before hitting Ctrl and P on her keyboard. Her printer hummed to life and quietly began spitting out five pages worth of information. Most of it was a jumble of HTML and random stuff that usually appears when one prints directly from something like that, but Wild had a clean, legible copy of the birth certificate and several other bits of information.

She turned on the desk lamp that sat on her desk, beside her monitor, to a low light setting. The light was dim enough so that it wouldn't wake Koromon or hurt Wild's eyes, but it was bright enough that she could make out a few key details on the printed certificate. Doctor's handwriting was always hard to read, but after a moment she could make out all the details.

"Bingo," she whispered to herself. "We have a lead."

"Ishida?" Nikolai repeated. "Her last name is Ishida?"

Wild nodded.

"Why does that sound familiar?" Yukio wondered quietly. "Loaño Ishida… damn. It's not really ringing any bells."

"Well, it had better start," Wild proclaimed, "because it took me nearly all night to get that and get off without getting caught. You guys can take it from here."

"How are we supposed to do that?" Nikolai wondered. "You know how many people have the last name Ishida?"

Wild shrugged and then said, "It's not my problem. You want to help with this project, then you can do this. I'm exhausted and, frankly, what I did was more work than this will be."

"I'm sure we can do it," Yukio mused. "With a little digging."

"I don't exactly have time to do digging," Nikolai reminded them. "I have that project – you know, the one that if I don't do, I don't graduate? I want to help – I really do – but Izanami's been riding my ass about getting shit done for it." He had just barely gotten enough work done to pass her scrutinizing eye – and now he had more work to do before next week!

"Oh, quit complaining," Meg groaned. Then, with a knowing smirk, she said, "You'll find a way to help, trust me."

"And what about you?" Yukio wondered, an eyebrow raised. "Are you helping?"

"Me, work?" Meg's eyes widened, and she went on, aghast, "You would have me work…? You're all so evil!"

"Meg doesn't need to do anything," Wild offered, rolling her eyes. "She's involved, but this isn't her problem. I don't want her getting into trouble over this."

Meg smirked and then said with a sigh, "You know me so well, Tatsu-chan."

Lazy bum, Nikolai thought flatly. He pushed it away. He had so far seen no evidence about Meg that proved that she would be contrary to her nature and, judging by the way that Wild dealt with her, Nikolai figured that the evidence wouldn't be coming anytime soon.

Finally, he asked, "Well, what do we say to her?" Loaño was outside, in the Namekura's backyard, playing with the little digimon. Warugamon was stubborn about it, but Wild convinced him to go outside. Oha was outside, too, checking up on her healing garden. The three Digidestined (along with Meg, who refused to go outside anyway) were all alone in Wild's house. "Do we just go up to her and say, Hey, we found your birth certificate?"

"As dumb as that sounds, that's probably the best option," Wild agreed tiredly. "How else would you reveal something like that? She needs to know something. We have to give her a reason to stay here with us."

"Yeah," Yukio agreed. "Anyone can tell that Hime-chan isn't comfortable here."

"Well, of course she isn't," Meg complained. "And I don't think she's going to be too pleased about you guys trying to shove this world into her face. If she doesn't like it here, she doesn't like it here."

"This proves that she has family, though," Nikolai reminded her, tapping the certificate. "Parents, grandparents – maybe real brothers or sisters! Not that Lucemon isn't a real brother to her or anything, but it's something to think about." He frowned, and then added, "But Meg's right – we can't force her to stay. The only reason she's still here is because we're all waiting on the Boss."

"Yeah, and how long do you think that's going to take?" Wild wondered. "It's been a week in our time. In theirs… it's been months. Whatever he's doing, he needs time to do it."

"Kimeramon did kind of incinerate half the Forest Zone," Nikolai recalled, frowning. "Not to mention put a shit ton of digimon out of house and home."

"That, and he ended up making half of them Digieggs," Yukio agreed, sighing.

"Who knows what Crisis is doing there," Wild mused with a disgruntled frown. "Maybe the Boss is trying to look for a way to stop it?"

"We're questioning a digimon who obviously hasn't told us the entire truth," Yukio informed them. "It's like trying to question an enigma. We won't get anywhere. We simply don't know enough of what that thing is or what happened when it got out before."

"So… do we go right on ahead and just flat-out tell her?" Nikolai wondered.

"Not we," Wild complained, looking groggier by the second. "One of you two do it. I need to sleep for the next week." Nikolai threw her a look, and she added, "Not because I'm lazy or I don't care – that's Meg – but because I'm tired. I rooted up all this information in the first place. Besides… I'm no good at delivering news to people."

"You aren't?"

"She tends to be blunt," Meg offered, defending her friend. "She made someone cry once."

"Call me ignorant or what-have-you," Wild went on, yawning, "but I'm just not that good with people. Being sociable isn't part of my repertoire… which is very common for people with my talents. In my own defense, though, Meg is way worse."

"How so?" Yukio asked, an eyebrow raised curiously. He glanced at Meg, noted her expression, and then grunted, "I see." Looking at Nikolai, he offered, "So… looks like it's between you and me, Wheatley."

It ended up being Nikolai.

Of course it ends up being me, he thought, sighing. He knew somewhere deep down that the moment the question was posed that all eyes would turn to him. It would take someone denser than iridium to not see that one coming.

Why do they insist on picking on me? He wondered. It wasn't as if he knew the Princess at any extreme length – if anyone would fit that bill, it would be Wild. The two girls had lived together for a week and they'd known each other longer than the other Digidestined. Wild, for whatever reason, decided to use her tiredness and fatigue as a crutch – something that Nikolai did not expect her to do.

With a grunt, he realized that Wild's newly-developed trait must have come from Meg. Since Meg was technically Wild's only friend prior to her meeting the Digidestined, then it stood to reason that something had rubbed off onto her.

It was nice outside – cool in the shade and warm in the sun, but not too warm. The young digimon were playing about in Oha's garden, watched over by Warugamon. Yokomon was hiding amongst Oha's flowers, daring Tsunomon and Koromon to find her. Tsunomon wasn't terribly interested in the game, but Koromon seemed to be having fun, bouncing here and there and gently touching flowers with his ears to feel for Yokomon. Warugamon looked content, but rather bored. Calumon was floating about Oha, helping her tend the garden.

Nikolai found Loaño sitting on the swing again. She seemed to like it there, and it looked comfortable. Documents in hand, he crossed over to her using the path through the flowers, picking his way carefully. It was quiet beneath the huge leaves and fading blossoms of the tree, and there were pink petals that fell at the touch of a breeze. It reminded him of the Flower Festival in the Forest Haven, though they didn't get to see much of it before it got interrupted by Aws and his puppets.

"Hey," Loaño offered, noticing him. She looked up at him with a thin smile on her face. "How's school going?"

"Fine," Nikolai said tersely. "My partner's a hardass. I've got another load of work due Friday."

He twisted the papers between his hands awkwardly, wondering if he should just turn back. Would it be better for her to live in ignorance of all of this, or not? He blinked once, and then found himself looking into her eyes. Those strange, silver eyes.

She needed to know.

"Hey, Lo…" he began.

"Yes?" she asked, naturally curious. Her eyes flickered to the papers in his hands, and she asked, "What're those for? Your project?"

Nikolai bit his lip and then offered, "Not quite. You see…"

It took some time to explain it to her. At first she hadn't believed him at all – she had thought he was joking. But then he showed her the papers – the certificate, the fingerprints, everything that Wild had managed to get from the place of her birth – and the look in her eyes showed that there wouldn't be anything he needed to do to convince her that it was all real.

"My name is… Ishida…" she murmured, looking at the papers with wide eyes. They were full of emotion, ones that Nikolai couldn't easily identify. She didn't appear to be sad, but yet… it was there, behind it all.

Nikolai adjusted himself on the ground. He had sat down to make the explaining easier, and now a root seemed to have found its way into his tailbone. He wrung his hands together and then said, "Your name is Loaño Ishida. You're sixteen years old."

"Sixteen…" she echoed. "Only sixteen…?"

"Well, I'm not sure how old you were when you got to the Digital World…" Nikolai said, "I know time is different between our worlds. Did you keep track of how old you were in the Digital World? Did you have a birthday?"

"I did, but it wasn't every year like it is here on Earth," Loaño replied. "It was just… once every few thousand years."

"Every few thousand?!" Nikolai gasped, feeling his eye twitch. "Just… Just how old are you in the Digital World…?"

Loaño's cheeks went red, and she held the papers close to her. She insisted, "You… you really don't want to know that…"

"I kind of do, now that you've mentioned it," Nikolai said, laughing. He ran a hand through his hair and got onto his knees. He positioned himself in front of her and insisted, "Come on, tell me!"

"No," she replied.

"You're only making me more curious!"

"Come on, Nikki – I… it's embarrassing!"

Nikolai wagged a finger in her face and then said playfully, "You tell me or I'll swing you so hard that you'll wrap around that branch."

Loaño frowned. She seemed to be torn between daring him to try and giving in. Obviously the latter was the option that she took, because she sighed, saying, "Fine; I'll tell you. But no laughing, promise?"

"Promise," Nikolai swore.

Loaño took a deep breath and then said, "I am eighty-six thousand, four-hundred and six years old."

Nikolai wasn't sure what he had been expecting her to say. His mouth went dry, and he thought, Over eighty-six thousand years old?! Holy mother of shit! before he fell onto his back.

He could have sworn that he had blacked out for a moment, because when his eyes regained focus he found that Loaño was knelt beside him, staring him in the face with a bemused expression. It was sort of like how they had initially met – except she wasn't sitting on him this time.

"You OK?" she asked.

"Uh… yeah," Nikolai replied breathlessly. "What happened?"

"You kind of fell down," Loaño said sheepishly. "Was that my fault?"

"I have no idea," Nikolai answered. He sat up and shook himself, trying to get back into reality.

Loaño reached over and began pulling leaves and petals out of his tangled hair. "Jeez. I knew that it was rude to ask a woman how old she was in the Human World; but I didn't think it was that rude. I'm sorry."

"Not your fault – I insisted," Nikolai breathed. "But eight-six thousand years? By God, that's a long time, Lo…"

Loaño shrugged and then said, "Didn't feel all that long to me. I was used to the way time worked there. But now that I'm here, I'm the one confused. I'm doing my best to get used to it, but there are still times when I think I should be asleep, or eating dinner, or just stuff like that. It's hard to explain."

Nikolai agreed with her on that. Changing time zones was one thing, but the Digital World's time and the Human World's time were completely different from one another. Wild had figured out how to make a clock that would calculate the time difference as best as she could, but even she admitted that it wasn't totally complete. Nikolai had never doubted that Loaño had felt lost here – but now he knew it for certain.

"And, anyway…" she went on, holding the papers close to her chest. "What does all of this even mean?"

"It means that we can find your family," Nikolai answered gently. "We can find out a lot now that we have all of this."

"Does it say the names of my parents on here?" Loaño wondered, looking at the birth certificate. "I'm looking, but… this person's handwriting is a little odd."

"Doctors tend to have messy handwriting," Nikolai told her. "People say it comes from stress. But here are their names." He pointed to the section of the certificate that noted her parent's names.

Loaño narrowed her eyes to read. It took her a moment, but finally she said, "K-Kuro and… Molly? Is that right?"

"Yeah," Nikolai nodded. "I don't think your mother was from here. Molly isn't exactly a common name here." Neither is Loaño, but that's a whole other mess.

"Do you think that… maybe… we could find them?" Loaño wondered.

"We'll be looking, don't worry," Nikolai promised. "Not just for them, either – but for any other family you might have."

Loaño gave him a smile. "You… you promise?" she asked.

Nikolai nodded. "I promise," he said, holding his hand out to her.

Her eyes grew misty, and instead of shaking his hand, she threw her arms around his shoulders and held him tightly, tighter than he imagined that she could. Nikolai felt his face grow warm – not as warm as in the tower in the Digital World, but warm enough – and he found himself smiling.

"Thank you," she expressed, the gratitude deep in her voice. "Thank you so much. For everything."

Nikolai put a hand on the small of her back and said as she pulled away from him, looking embarrassed, "No problem. Lo, we're your friends. We'll do anything to make sure that you're happy."

"My friends…" Loaño murmured, looking at him. "You're my friend?"

Nikolai found himself nodding. He placed his other hand on her cheek, and suddenly he realized that his body was moving of its own accord. His head was screaming at him to pull away from her, but it was falling on deaf ears. His heart was beating so hard that it deafened all sound but her voice, and all he could seem to feel was the softness of her skin and the warmth that was spreading all over his body. He was shocked that he was even breathing at the moment.

And then suddenly… it was broken – shattered, like glass.

He found himself nodding as he pulled away from her, all his limbs more than reluctant. He didn't look her in the eye – he didn't want to see her expression. His mouth was too dry to speak, and he had no idea what he would say if he opened his mouth – he just had the feeling that now was not the time.

Instead, he coughed and stood up. He gathered himself up and then reached down to tousle her hair, messing it up more than it already was. He grunted, "Don't tell me that the big, tough Princess is going to get all sappy on me, now!"

Loaño squirmed away from him and stood up, fuming, the papers crinkled in her hands, growling, "Oh, you'll regret that, Nikolai! I am not going sappy!"

"Could have fooled me!"

"Get over here and let me show you just how sappy I can be!"

Nikolai was laughing, and she was fuming. Maybe it's better this way, something inside of him said.

Maybe it's better that she doesn't know.

Warugamon flicked his ears, looking over at Loaño and Nikolai. He was resisting the urge to leap over there and rip the boy to shreds. He dug his claws into the ground and let a low growl rumble from his stomach.

"Let them be," Oha said lightly.

Warugamon flicked an ear at her and looked over at her. She was much, much older than he recalled her being. The years had not treated her kindly at all. Though, considering what had happened all those years ago, Warugamon decided that he would be shocked if she were any different. After all, the years hadn't been kind to him, either. They weren't kind to anyone.

"Can you… hear them?" Oha asked.

Warugamon nodded.

"What are they… saying?"

"Things," Warugamon replied tersely, flicking his tail.

"I see."

Warugamon blinked at her, and then asked, "Do ya keep in contac' wit' Yosuya?"

Oha nodded. "Occasionally," she replied. "We meet… once in a while."

"I might be needin' ta speak wit' 'er soon," Warugamon told her, sighing. "As much's I don' wan' to." He looked over at Loaño and Nikolai, noting that the two were chasing one another around the great sakura tree like two fighting siblings. Or two play-fighting…

No, Warugamon didn't want to think of that.

I'm too ol' fer this shit, he decided. I canna bear ta watch 'er grow up in 'is place.

"I can… put you two in… contact," Oha promised. "Whenever you… wish."

"Tha's good ta know," Warugamon grunted. He flicked his tail again and then commented, growling, "They've liv'd in ignorance fer too long."