February 15, 2008 Vancouver, Canada
~BREAKING NEWS ON CTV VANCOUVER~
"A terrible fire completely destroyed the local Forest Community Church last night while most people were asleep. Authorities are still investigating the cause of the fire and are looking at all possible leads. However, it seems that many people have already concluded that the fire was caused by the same orange monster that allegedly burn down Alexander Worthington Academy last-"
Eric Klein huffed in frustration as he turned off the television, but he knew the media was right. Eric had not yet gone to the crime site, but the police reports that he had received so far told him that this latest incident had "GeoGreymon" written all over it.
As expected, the police had found no traces of anyone being in the vicinity last night. Touma Norstein was diligently hiding his and his friends' footsteps from the authorities, now that he, Masaru Daimon, Bill Worthington and Phoebe Yang were being hunted down by DATS.
Eric seethed as he remembered the scene in the local community center last evening, before this latest accident. The faculty members and teachers of Worthington Academy had organized a meeting of all the students and their parents to discuss their fates for the rest of the school year. He and Satsuma had infiltrated the meeting as well, and heard everything from their hiding place backstage. During the meeting, James Worthington, a descendant of the school's founder and Bill Worthington's father, had made a passionate plea to the audience on his son's whereabouts. By the time he finished, half of the people in audience were in tears.
However, for Eric, the audience's reaction was nothing compared to what he and Satsuma witnessed backstage. At the sound of her son's name, Deanna Worthington had broken down completely. The school's vice-principal and a few of the teachers had been unable to calm her down. By the time a paramedic finally decided to administer medication to calm her down, Eric was beyond angry.
"How could Worthington be so selfish?!" the man muttered angrily. "His parents just lost their daughter, but instead of doing the responsible thing he chose to act recklessly and disappear with Daimon and Norstein! At this rate, he will kill his mother as well!" There was a knock at the door. "Come in!" he barked.
Satsuma Rentarou entered the room, shutting the door behind him. Kudamon was nowhere in sight. "You seemed troubled," the man said, taking a seat on the couch.
Eric snorted as he put his glasses back on. "How thoughtful of you to point out the obvious," he commented sarcastically. "Especially since our latest nightmare is the doing of your former subordinates. When are you going to do something about them?"
"I have ordered Yoshino to track down her wayward teammates," Satsuma replied. "After all, she knows them the best."
"I still think that you were too quick to trust Fujieda's words," Eric frowned. "I do not believe that she is being completely truthful when it comes to her position in DATS. She obviously still cares for her teammates, and is too emotional, just like-"
Satsuma sighed as Klein suddenly became quiet. He knew what Klein had just been about to say, before he stopped himself. "Eric, we both know that the emotions of young people are powerful forces, regardless of whether Digimon are involved or not. We cannot control how children and teenagers will act when they are being led by their hearts, especially when it comes to the people and things they love and care about."
"I know that!" Eric said angrily, turning away from his guest. "I saw this power with my own eyes too many times already, not only with Ryan, but also with McCoy and Yang…"
Satsuma crossed his arms. "I re-read the report we have on that incident with those girls," he remarked. "I also took a look at Touma's reports on Phoebe Yang, especially in light of recent battles. Eric, I have a feeling that that girl is really…"
Eric turned around in his seat and stared at Satsuma. "You don't mean…?"
The younger man nodded. "I haven't met her yet, but based on the evidence that we have so far, it seems to be so," he said quietly.
Eric sighed deeply and closed his eyes. "How troublesome…" he muttered. "But I should have known earlier. Besides her powers, Phoebe Yang can't help but attract the supernatural…" Eric sat up in his seat. "Do you think her biological family know about this? Satsuma? What's wrong?" The man suddenly noticed that his guest had stiffened at the mention of the word 'family'.
It was Satsuma's turn to sigh deeply. "Phil called me earlier. It seems that Silvia has failed."
Eric inhaled sharply. This was bad news indeed. "Is she-?"
"No," Satsuma said quietly. "But both her informants failed to save the boy and the Digimon from them."
"Damn," Eric swore. "Just when we thought we were getting the upper hand on them…"
Satsuma suddenly stood up. "Silvia will remain to keep an eye on them for a bit longer. We can only hope that another opportunity will arise for us to make a move." The man turned to leave the room. "Yoshino and I will head to last night's scene later today and take a closer at the site. Perhaps Touma and Masaru left some clues behind."
Eric nodded in reply as Satsuma left the room without another word. The man sighed again as he took off his glasses and put them on the table. "Feelings, huh?" he muttered to himself, dwelling on Satsuma's words from earlier, and his own memories:
"We cannot control how they will act when led by their hearts…"
"Alice!" Even now, Eric could recall the horror he felt as he watched Phoebe Yang jump into the bottomless hole after her friend without any hesitation whatsoever…
"Botamon!" a boy screamed. He tried to run towards the shaking black slime Digimon, but his father's hand held him back. "Botamon!"
The black slime became a DarkTyrannomon, obsessed with only destruction. The boy continued to scream Botamon's name, but the creature paid him no heed. It stampeded towards the boy and his father…
"Centalmon!"
Later, the father pretended to not hear his son's soul-crushing screams as the latter cradled the orange and white DigiEgg in his small hands…
Eric slammed his hands down on the desk and stood up. Walking over to the window, he stared at the sheets of rain pouring down the panes of glass. Even though it was not yet noon, it was almost as dark as night outside.
"it was raining hard that day as well …" the man said absentmindedly. "…Ryan…"
"Turn left at the next intersection," the robotic voice of the GPS deadpanned.
Yoshino turned on her signal light. "Have you found anything, Lalamon?"
From the back seat of the van, Lalamon looked up from the computer screen. "I found new information about Digimon evolution in the DATS database from one of the organization's senior leaders. Apparently, a few years ago, he and a team from the American branch were able to capture a Digimon that had just evolved beyond the Adult level in our world, and did research on its data."
"A Perfect level Digimon, huh?" Yoshino muttered as she kept her eyes on the road. "So Satsuma taichou and the others already knew about the existence of these stronger Digimon, yet they didn't bother to tell us," she sighed. She was so tired. "We're lucky we didn't encounter any before Phelesmon and Lady Devimon..."
"There might be a reason for that," Lalamon spoke up. Yoshino glanced at her partner in the rearview mirror. "It says here that the researchers discovered a complicated set of data in their captive Digimon, not unlike the data that DATS had observed from lower-level Digimon that realized in our world. They concluded that this data only exists in Digimon that were raised in the Digital World, and not to those that were born and raised in the human world."
Yoshino stopped at a red light. "Does that mean… you and the others are not able to evolve past the Adult level?" she asked anxiously.
Lalamon shook her head sadly. "It would seem so…"
The silence that followed in the van was only broken by the car behind them honking its horn. Yoshino realized then that the light had turned to green.
"However, because of this information, DATS was able to create a firewall that prevented Perfect-level Digimon and above from realizing in the real world," Lalamon added as Yoshino drove. "That would explain why we haven't seen any of these more powerful Digimon in the real world until NOOOWWW!" Lalamon screamed as Yoshino suddenly slammed on the brakes.
"But Satsuma-taichou and Professor Klein's partners are able to evolve to their Perfect forms," Yoshino realized. "So that means that there is a way for you and the others to evolve beyond Adult!" The woman whirled around in her seat and stared at Lalamon. "I have a feeling that Phoebe Yang's strange powers, and Masaru's supernatural strength, has something to do with it."
"Why-?" Lalamon began.
"I remember now, that time when we battled Snimon, Masaru's hair was glowing," Yoshino continued quickly. "And when Le fired at Yang and the others, I think… I saw that boy's hair flashing ever so briefly…"
"You mean Andy Hamasaki?" Lalamon frowned. "His blue hair is very mysterious, especially since he insists that he didn't dye it. It isn't a colour that appears in the natural world. Also, after that battle with Lady Devimon, it looks like there is more to him than his strange hair."
Yoshino nodded. "Masaru's hair is not as prominent, but it is more orange than brown. Lalamon, can you do more digging into Hamasaki's family? Especially his mother's side of the family, which is Japanese?"
"Yoshino, what are you thinking?" Lalamon asked as Yoshino started driving again.
"I can't be sure yet…" the woman said slowly. "But I think Masaru and Hamasaki might have a connection that they don't know about."
Lucy Tran was just sitting down to eat lunch when there was a knock at the door. The girl frowned as she walked quickly to the door, wondering who it was. Visitors usually buzzed up from the lobby, and since she and her mother lived in the penthouse suite, the neighbours rarely bothered them.
She reached the front door and opened it.
There was no one there.
Lucy looked down. A brown envelope laid in the center of the red welcome mat. Kneeling down to pick it up, Lucy saw that that someone had typed her name on the front of the envelope.
"Who was it?" Fan Beemon asked Lucy as she returned to the kitchen.
"No one, but they left this," Lucy answered as she took her seat at the kitchen counter and opened the envelope, ignoring the steaming bowl of pho in front of her. She pulled out a black pen and a piece of paper.
Fan Beemon swallowed a mouthful of noodles. "A letter?"
Lucy nodded as she read the letter's contents aloud to her partner:
Lucy,
Use this special pen to update me daily on M. and T. When you are done, put it underneath the mat at your front door. I will retrieve it.
The letter was intentionally typed and unsigned to hide the sender's identity, but Lucy knew who had sent it.
"So it's starting, huh?" she said quietly, thinking back to several nights ago…
Lucy's hands trembled as her mind processed the information that she was hearing from the other side of the door. This man in sunglasses was Touma's supervisor? Touma and Masaru had betrayed DATS? They had taken Bill and Phoebe as hostages? All four of them were going to be hunted down?
The girl shook her head in disbelief. She had sneaked back into the professor' house to grab the pair of gloves that she had left behind the other day. As fate would have it, the gloves were on the table right across from the room where the professor, the man in sunglasses, and Yoshino Fujieda were currently discussing Touma and Masaru's fates.
Lucy grabbed the edge of the table to steady herself. 'This can't be happening…' she thought, closing her eyes.
Fan Beemon's large green eyes looked back at her.
Lucy opened her eyes. She had to get out of here before they caught her eavesdropping. Lucy had no doubt that the professor and the man in sunglasses would force her and Fan Beemon to help in capturing Touma and Masaru. She had to protect Fan Beemon from being forced to fight against his friends!
The girl turned around and exited the house in the same way she came in, which was through the opened window in the living room. From there, the girl quietly proceeded to the back of the house, where there was a partially concealed opening in the wall of hedges surrounding the property.
Lucy was just about to pull back the vines covering the hole in the hedges when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out.
'Move, move!' Her brain screamed at her, but her feet were frozen to the ground.
"It's me."
She recognized that voice. Lucy turned around and looked into the face of one Yoshino Fujieda. The look in the woman's reddish-brown eyes was firm, yet weary. "You heard?" she asked quietly.
Lucy nodded meekly. "Don't make me fight Touma and Masaru," she blurted out before she could stop herself.
To Lucy's surprise, the Japanese woman smiled at her reply. "I see," she said quietly. "Then Lucy, I have a favour…"
Back in the present, Lucy put down the letter. Yoshino Fujieda's favour had been for her and Fan Beemon to locate Touma and the others' whereabouts, and to let them know that their former teammate would be on their side always. She would continue to stay in DATS and change it from within, while helping her former teammates as much as she could, in the hopes that they would be reunited one day soon.
"Lucy, your noodles are getting soggy!" Fan Beemon's voice broke Lucy out of her thoughts. With a sigh, Lucy began eating her lunch.
It had been luck that she and Fan Beemon had been able to locate Touma, Bill, Phoebe and Masaru last night. Lucy was in the same Physics class with Touma and Steven Victor, and knew that they were working closely together in getting ready for an upcoming physics competition. Steven was probably the only person that Touma knew in the school who also didn't know about the Digimon and DATS...at least until now. If Touma and the others were trying to hide from DATS, Steven was an obvious first choice, since DATS did not know about his connection to Touma and Masaru.
As a result, Lucy had headed over to Steven's house after the school meeting last evening to investigate further, only to get lost in the woods nearby. Before she could panic, the lights and explosions from a church nearby alerted her to a Digimon battle. She and Waspmon arrived just in time to help Touma and the others finish off Neo Devimon.
GeoGreymon's attack had knocked everyone out. When Lucy came too, she and the others were on a nearby beach. In the distance, she could see smoke drifting upwards from the remains of Forest Community Church.
No one could recall how they got from the church to the beach.
Touma and Masaru were initially surprised when Lucy told them about their female teammate's message, but they quickly understood. Touma had replied to the message by asking Yoshino to look into a phenomenon called "Holy Light," something that Lucy suspected was closely linked to Phoebe, Masaru's glowing hair, and the sudden temporary increase in GeoGreymon and Ginryumon's powers.
Lucy looked up and saw Fan Beemon gulping down the rest of the soup's broth. "This was delicious Lucy!" the Digimon squealed. "You should make it more often!"
The girl couldn't help but smile as she stood up and walked over to the fridge. "Do you have room for dessert?" she asked, taking out a tray of freshly-made fruit tarts.
"Yay! Fruit tarts! My favourite!" Fan Beemon jumped up and down in his seat in excitement.
As Fan Beemon continued eating, Lucy pulled out a notepad and began to write her reply 'letter' to Yoshino with the new pen. The purple ink faded away as Lucy wrote, confirming Lucy's suspicions that it was one of DATS' inventions. When she was done, Lucy put her letter back in the brown envelope and slipped it underneath the welcome mat outside the door.
Less than five minutes later, when Lucy went downstairs to take down the garbage, the envelope was gone. In its place was a twig of the first pink cherry blossoms of spring.
The grey van pulled to a stop at the bottom of the hill leading up to the charred ruins of Forest Community Church. The darkened trees and structures stood out against the tiny pink and white cherry blossom trees.
Yoshino was quiet as she followed Satsuma-taichou up the hill towards the church site. Kudamon was in his usual position, pretending to be a scarf around the man's neck.
'Perfect Evolution…' Yoshino thought, recalling Qilinmon and Sagittarimon's appearances on the battlefield from several days ago. Unlike Sagittarimon, Qilinmon had managed to hold onto his Perfect form and even defeated Lady Devimon, whom Yoshino was now certain was also a Perfect level Digimon, with ease. 'What is the secret to that higher form of evolution? The woman thought.
The captain suddenly stopped. The two of them had arrived at the church site. For the first time, Yoshino noticed that they were not the only ones there.
A dark-skinned man in black clothes was looking at the remains of a stained-glass window. Now, he slowly turned and approached them. To Yoshino's surprise, the man stopped in front of her superior.
Satsuma-taichou nodded at the man. "You must be John Holland, the pastor of this church," he spoke first. "I am Rentarou Satsuma, and this is Yoshino Fujieda. We are from DATS HQ in Japan. Eric Klein told me that you are also Andy Hamasaki's uncle."
Yoshino stared at the two men, and then at the religious figure. This man was Andy's uncle and more importantly, he knew about DATS?!
"How is Phillip?" the man finally spoke. "I haven't heard from him much since…that day."
"He is well," the taichou said gently. "He regrets what happened, and only wishes to somehow fix everything."
The pastor sighed. "Don't we all do?" He looked back towards the ruins of his church. "But in the end, we are merely humans – we all fall short before our Lord, again and again. I failed to shepherd my flock, and now three young lives will never be the same."
"Three?" Yoshino blurted out, getting the men's attention. "Who else?"
"Before this all started, Katherine and Simon Price were also regular members of my congregation," Pastor John replied. "Along with my nephew, I watched the three of them grow up. But now…. Katherine is gone, Simon is blind, and Andy… Andy has lost his way. My prayers seem to have been in vain," the man said wearily. Yoshino could see now that the man was probably no more than fifty years old, but worry and stress had made him look at least twenty years older.
"I'm sorry to be the one to tell you this, but we believe that Simon Price was attacked by a Digimon that was really his sister," the taichou finally said.
"What?" the pastor turned around in surprise. "Katherine turned into a Digimon?"
"Yes, a Lady Devimon attacked him. Lady Devimon is a Fallen Angel Digimon."
"Katherine… Fallen Angel…" Pastor John muttered. "That's not possible. She was the kindest girl I've ever met, with a heart like gold. You would never have guessed that she was abandoned by her birth mother. She befriended Andy when no one else would, and she continued to love her brother even when he was led astray. For her to physically attack them and maim one of them, I just…"
"She remembers Andy," Yoshino said quietly. "I saw. Something is wrong. We can save her." John Holland gave her a sharp look, but Yoshino did not flinch. "We can save her," she repeated. In response, the man sighed deeply.
"John Holland, please leave it to us," Kudamon spoke up, startling the man. It seemed that he hadn't notice the Digimon until now. "I engaged Lady Devimon in our last battle. There is still good inside her. Yoshino is correct – something must have happened to make her become like this. We will find out the truth, together – DATS, you, and especially Andy Hamasaki. I'm sure you and your brother must have realized it by now, but that boy is not your ordinary boy."
"Andy…" the pastor shook his head sadly. "I never met Yasuho, but Phil always said that she lived up to her name of being gentle and kind, regardless of the opinions of her family and the villagers. She was powerful, but she was also the embodiment of Hope." John Holland turned to Yoshino and for the first time, gave her a small smile. "I can only pray that I will see this Hope just once in my lifetime."
Yoshino nodded. "You will," she whispered as Satsuma-taichou and Kudamon looked on. "We all will."
Amy Howard and Roscoe Alkaev emerged from the chapel after the pastor, and then the two members of DATS, finally departed from the area. The roof and door of the small stone building were gone, but the structure was more or less the only thing still standing from the fire. It was nothing short of a miracle.
Amy wrung her hands nervously she watched the grey van drive away. "Andy… they were talking about Andy, right?" she asked anxiously, turning to Roscoe with large frightened eyes. "Are they going to make him fight Katherine again?!"
"That's why Andy joined DATS… because his father is part of the organization," Roscoe said slowly. Everything made sense now. He turned to Amy. "We have to stop Andy from fighting Katherine and the Digimon. If we don't, he will hurt more than his shoulder next time!" he said angrily. "We can't let him fight anymore!"
"But how are we going to make him listen to us?!" Amy cried. "If it is about Katherine or his father, he won't listen to anyone! I know! Let's get Touma to talk to him, he'll know-"
"No!" Roscoe snapped. Amy's large eyes opened even wider, but Roscoe was too angry now to feel sorry for frightening her. "He is on a mission now – who knows when he will be back? Also, he is DATS to the core – he won't hesitate to make Andy fight if he thinks that he is the best chance to defeat the Digimon!"
"But-!"
"No 'buts'! We will talk to Andy ourselves and make him understand that it is for his own good. He… He needs to move on, from both Katherine and his father," Roscoe said quietly. "He needs to let go."
"Roscoe…" Amy said sadly. Then she nodded. "I get it. But still, getting Andy to listen will be hard…"
Roscoe turned to leave. "Let's go," he said quietly. "We will make him trust us," he vowed. "I said it before, didn't I? Even though we are all part of DATS, we can't trust anyone. But you, me, Andy, Lucy and Christina – we have to trust each other, because we only have each other now."
Amy understood. Without a word, she followed Roscoe down the hill and towards their destiny.
