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The Four Seasons

Fourth Arc/Symphony of Thirteen

Calm Before the Next Season…Sort of…

"…And that should be it," said Arc22 as he checked off the names of each character as they took their seats in the Arc and compared it with the passenger manifest. "We have all the characters from the first and second seasons of the show; family, friends, partners, enemies (both deleted or not)… everyone. All we have to do now is look for the piece of D-Leter that showed up here and then we'll be set to move on to the third season."

Goldcat glanced away from the author, Digital-Dragon-Master as she proceeded to lick her thumb and clean the OC Kaio Griffen's face (a treatment that the character vehemently protested against).

"Where do you think that the D-Leter code could be?" Asked Goldcat to Arc22, formerly known as the Lord of Fantasy. "And how do we find it?"

"Difficult to ascertain," said Arc22 as he walked up to a staircase and began to ascend them, heading up towards the Arc's main bridge. "We'll have to do a complete and total scan of this season. Usually the D-Leter data would manifest as something that's out of place, something that would replace an integral part of the story, much like what happened with Biyomon when she digivolved to Saberdramon. However there was so much about this season that had gone off course that there's no telling where it could have wound up. The OOCness of Yolie especially disturbs me…"

"No kidding," said Goldcat, trying to hold back a dry chuckle. "I have to admit I was more than a little bit surprised to hear about that. I'm curious, is there any chance that the OC's digivices could have erased the D-Leter data when the Canon Characters were exposed to them?"

"That's assuming of course that the data was even in them in the first place, and as I recall we still found the algorithm in Biyomon who had been exposed to an OC digivice, so that negates that theory. Of course we haven't fully analyzed all of the characters so far so it's possible that it is in one of them, albeit probably a little more buried."

Goldcat looked over her shoulder as they entered the Arc's control room.

"Do you think that it could be the subbed version's Gatomon?"

Arc22 raised an eyebrow.

"Can you conjure up a reason as to why that would be the case?" He asked, his tone sounding rather insulting. Goldcat glared at the author and crossed her arms.

"I was just thinking…Isn't Gatomon's original, Japanese name supposed to be Tailmon?"

Arc22 blinked, for the first time baffled.

"Is it?"

Goldcat rolled her eyes.

"I can't believe that you were voted as the most knowledgeable digimon author on this site after a certain digimon encyclopedia was taken down three years ago. And you call yourself a fan of digimon…"

"Hey! Don't patronize me! I had complete evolution charts, not to mention I wrote Treaties on a Digidestined, which covered the entire canonical history of the digimon show from season one and two, and included philosophical discussions on the characters, crests, pairings, the nature of the Dark Ocean, and theories on unresolved Plot holes that still plague that show in much the same way as the problem with our Ozone! Not to mention that it's the only story that I wrote that wasn't deleted when my account was taken down…"

Goldcat just looked at Arc22 impassively.

"And yet, you didn't even know that Tailmon was Gatomon's Japanese name."

Arc22 scowled.

"I don't pay attention to the Japanese stuff. I'm an American. What do you expect? Besides, I much rather prefer the translated stuff."

"Philistine."

Arc22 winced but said nothing. Given his most recent history, the term did describe him quite well. Turning to a nearby control panel, Arc22 began typing busily away, proceeding to conduct a complete system's diagnostic before running an interior Character check just to be sure that his once former partner in fanfiction writing was right in her theory. It sounded a little off base to him though. After all, some authors did prefer using certain terms and names even when they were writing with one translation or the other. One author, as he recalled, used Davis's and Daisuke's names interchangeably even in mid-chapter, though why he did that was beyond anyone.

I remember what The House of the Archangel had to say about that, thought Arc22 ruefully as he continued to feed information into the computer. A tense silence seemed to fall between the author and authoress as they stood there, waiting as the computer processed the data that Arc22 fed into it. After a few moments, Goldcat began to speak.

"Mark…" she began, only to be interrupted by the arrival of Digital-Dragon-Master.

"All right. What've you got? Are we ready to leave yet?"

Arc22 shook his head.

"Not yet. Goldcat here has some wild theory that the subbed Gatomon might be carrying some of D-Leter's data due to a name change. Apparently Gatomon's real name is Tailmon. Can you believe that?"

Digi-Dragon rolled her eyes, eerily imitating Goldcat's motion.

"And you call yourself a fan of digimon?" She derided the once former author giving the boy a strange feeling of déjà vu. "Weren't you the one who…"

"Don't even bother Digi-Dragon," snickered Goldcat. "I already got after him about that. Besides, we're wasting time talking about it…"

Plus I don't think that we want the characters to know that they've been rescued by someone who tried to take control of them three weeks ago, thought the authoress as she glanced down at the stairwell.

"Sure," grumbled Digi-Dragon. "Take all the fun out of it. Anyway, what progress have you made so far?"

"Just started scanning the characters," Arc22 said as he stepped back and activated a computer screen that showed a series of lines that arched up and down like a heart monitor. "These lines here represent each and every individual character that we have here so far. I've started off with Gatomon…or rather Tailmon," Arc22 glared at the two girls before going back to his lectrure. "Due to her name change. Rather surprised that none of the other characters have picked up on themselves, but whatever. Now the areas of the line that goes straight are the basic elements of the characters personalities as they first appeared in the show, while the areas that have alternate directions represent changes that were made as the show developed them, good and bad changes depending on the accentuation of the line."

Arc22 pointed at a minor, downward spike in an orange line. "This line here for example, represents the Kamiya/Yagami character's experience with digivolving Greymon to SkullGreymon. But that's a part of their canon personality. What we're looking for is something else. An alteration in the original canon code since the character Awakened and was incorporated into a story. I've set the current character data against the original information that was gathered at the end of the seasons. Depending on the skill of the author it's either going to be highly noticeable or extremely subtle, though I think a name change is going to be pretty easy to pick up on."

Suddenly one of the lines on the screen inexplicably dipped downward before snapping back to their original position, for some reason making all three authors think that the line had just hiccupped.

"What... was that?" Demanded Digi-Dragon, obviously not at all happy with what she just saw. Arc22 hit a command on the council and frowned for a moment.

"It was just character distortion. Don't worry. It's pretty common with characters when they've just been involved in a story. They should adjust soon enough as they return to normal…aha! Here we go…"

Arc22 busily typed at the council for a few seconds before standing back and studying the incoming information.

"Well?" Asked Digi-Dragon as she folded her arms. "Aren't you going to tell us what's going on?"

"It looks like Goldcat was on the money," said Arc22 finally. "Tailmon's name change was a direct result of a collision with D-Leter's data during the uploading process."

"And if we remove it?" Asked Goldcat.

Arc22 shrugged.

"I imagine that she should be fine, seeing as how it's just a small amount of data. Nothing major. She'll probably have amnesia for a while unless her character falls back to her default personality until we get back to the Fanfic Domain…" Arc22 scowled as he thought about that. "We may have to use a character infusion from the dubbed Gatomon until then. As I recall, Tailmon's default personality was as a servant of Myotismon. That wouldn't be cool…"

"Do it," said Digi-Dragon as she turned and began to march back downstairs. "Goldcat, follow me. We're going to have a talk with Gatomon. The last thing I want is a character going nuts just because they're so IC that they forgot about their true reality. After that, get ready to move this tub out of here. I want to get us to the Tamer's season as quickly as possible."

"Got it," said Arc22 looking over at his computer screen. Goldcat looked at her companion for a moment before following Digi-Dragon downstairs, leaving the former author alone on the bridge. For a few seconds silence reigned as Arc22 thought things over.

"Considering the kind of things that go on in the third season, I don't blame her for wanting to move quickly."

A pause.

"Especially if what my analysis of the currently running scripts means anything…"

Arc22 once more began typing on the council, feeling greatly troubled.


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