A/N: LOTS OF ANNOUNCEMENTS. Okay, mostly one but I wanted to make sure you paused. Sorry for the delay! So I've gone back and rewritten some things in earlier chapters. It's most prevalent in the first couple but I wanted to work on the characters a bit more and add more explanation to some magic related things. There is also something new in the last chapter that will become a bigger deal in the story later. I hope it adds a bit to the story. I added POV markers so you know who is talking. I also found an editing extension for my browser so there should be fewer mistakes because I went back and YIKES I'm sorry. Thank you to everyone who's read so far. I've been unemployed for the entirety of covid and this is one of the few things I enjoy doing right now so knowing that people are reading really brightens me up. If you go back you'll see either "edited for grammar" which is just a clean-up of the chapter or "edited for grammar and content" which means I added things you'll want to know.

Disclaimer: I do not own Digimon

Chapter 9: Delicate

Kari

As I woke up and my eyes started adjusting to the light I felt a slight panic in my chest, unsure of the room I was in, until the last few days came rushing back. Ceiling fright, we'd named it in college, when you wake up in a room that wasn't yours after a night out. It was like I was waking from a hangover and was trying to place my memories in the right order. I rubbed my eyes and raked a hand through my hair, regardless of anything else right now I desperately needed a shower.

I grabbed some fresh clothes and quietly crept out of my room and into the bathroom. It was still fairly early, just past seven, and knowing Tai and TK they would be asleep for at least another hour or two. Izzy's sleep patterns were less predictable. I put down the toilet seat and set my clothes on top. As I pushed back the shower curtain I saw a variety of bottles, mostly men's body wash, shampoo, and conditioner, but thankfully I saw that there were brand new bottles clearly meant for me. They must have grabbed them at the store last night. I turned the shower on and let it heat up discarding my dirty clothes, and then stepped into the steaming water.

I scrubbed shampoo into my hair, and then untangled it with too much conditioner but was happy to be able to easily run my hands through it after waking up with it reminiscent of a bird's nest. I poured body wash onto a brand new pink loofa and rubbed my skin until it felt raw. I turned up the heat and let the water rap against my back, a reminder that this was real, pain could always do that. I wanted to be rid of the past few days. I wished the water would scorch it away and wash me clean. I wanted the reminder of it off of my body but knew the bruises I had were still fading away. I let tears well up and fall, silently crying and letting them mix with the water. I dropped the loofa and curled myself into a ball on the shower floor, feeling weak and small and frightened. I wanted to be brave, strong, capable, but what had I done since running except almost get another friend killed. What other harm would I cause? I thought about gathering my things and leaving, running through the forest and away where no one could find me, but it was too late now and I knew if I ran off the guys would come looking for me. As the water began to run cold I pulled myself together, resigned not to cry anymore. Not until all of this was over.

I hated to cry. I hated to let myself fall apart in any real way. There was something in me that felt a little bit broken when it came to crying. As a child I'd wanted to be seen as strong. I never wanted to seem more afraid than I was. TK had been the opposite. He was never afraid to show his emotions, he seemed to feel everything, and I envied it. There was none of this masculinity masking that most teenage boys do. If he needed to cry he just did it and if he got angry he was fierce and when he was happy it was infectious. Of course, he could bottle things up like anyone else, but it wasn't the same way I felt like I did. When my brother almost died at one point I just shut down, it's like I ceased to feel anything at all, so maybe I needed all these tears now, maybe I was crying for years of suppressed emotion. Maybe once this was all over I needed to scream and wail and let it all go, but for now, I needed to worry about defeating Kato.

I got out and dried off as quickly as I could, reminding myself that this was the only bathroom and not wanting to be occupying it for longer than I needed to. I did stop though and wipe off the mirror, staring at my sad reflection. My lip was starting to close up but my eye had probably reached the peak of bruising, dark and angry making the white of my eye stand out harshly. My side was starting to feel better at least. I dressed in a pair of baggy high-waisted dark grey jeans and pulled on a dark green cropped tank top. Giving myself one last look in the mirror knowing this was as presentable as I was going to get. I left the bathroom and dropped my clothes on the floor until I could ask TK about a washing machine.

I heard some rummaging in the kitchen and peeked out to see Izzy, grateful, and humored that he was the person I was most comfortable around right now. I headed out to join him for breakfast.

He brightened up when he saw me, thankfully ignoring my bruised face, and pulled out Nadia's notebook. "I have one of the pages decoded."

"How'd you figure it out?" Excitement rose in me, I almost skipped over to him I was so happy. There had to be something in her book that could help us, something that could help keep us safe.

"She used a simple A1Z26 cipher, for this passage. Unfortunately, she doesn't use the same anywhere else. I had been trying to decode another passage when I got frustrated and skipped some pages. It was then that I found the numbers and I knew right away what it was." He faded off as he looked up and saw the clueless look on my face.

"I have no idea what an a1whatever you called it is."

"Sorry. Yes, so it's a cipher that uses the number that corresponds to the American alphabet. So A would equal one, b would be two, all the way to z at twenty-six."

"Well, that's not terribly difficult. You said the others are different."

"Unfortunately yes, there are lots of symbols and sometimes I think she might be writing in more than one language so what would break the code in one, doesn't work for another."

"She wanted this one figured out."

"I think so yes," he placed the book in front of me and I read her words in his quick and messy handwriting.

"Out of the mud will come the brightest flower

Lifted by the wind and ignited by flame

together balanced and bathed in holy light

or cast apart in a devil's endless fight"

"It sounds like a prophecy," I said, letting my fingers trace over the words.

"I agree." He sat down and ran a hand over his face, I looked at him then and saw soft purple circles under his eyes, he must have been up all night working on this. "But why would she have written a prophecy and where did it come from?" He asked.

My stomach churned a bit. I'd explained Clair senses but left out what we could do relating to them, magic I could show them, there was a physical change in the world around us but hearing voices or seeing the future or past was another story. If he was going to help, if any of them were, they needed to know everything.

"She could see things," I mumbled, trying to find the right words.

"What do you mean?"

I started pacing a bit. "Nadia would have dreams of things that hadn't happened yet. When she was young she wrote it off as Deja vu, but the dreams got more specific as time went on and she knew that she was seeing the future. She could touch you and know things from your past, hear voices, certain smells could set her off. I don't know how to explain it in a way that it won't sound crazy." I stopped pacing and collapsed into a chair.

"Kari your body used to get taken over by disembodied voices from the digital world. I'm not really sure what you could say that would sound crazy at this point. The more I know the more helpful I can be."

His frankness made a laugh escape my lips. "I thought you'd be the hardest to convince."

"I'm skeptical of everything," he tutted, "but I also know that there is so much in this world that we still don't understand. I'd like to understand as much of it as I can. If I refuse to acknowledge the possibility of what you're telling me then what would be the point in learning more about it?"

I felt myself get a bit choked up, I reached out and grabbed onto his arms, "I'm glad you're here Izzy. I'm glad you three stayed close. We'd truly be lost without you." The words tumbled out of my mouth and I saw a blush creep onto his face.

"I-uh-thank you."

I pulled back, "So a prophecy?" I moved the notebook back in front of me and quickly changed the subject so we could move back to the mystery in front of us and away from emotions I knew he didn't like to navigate.

I sat on the dock, thinking about the passage, trying to put it together in my head. Nadia hated to talk about the future and her visions. She'd said that the future wasn't written in stone and could always be changed, so why dwell on it. I'd always been glad that clairvoyance hadn't shown up for me, I was tortured enough by the past, I didn't need the future sneaking up and adding any spice.

I heard cautious footsteps on the wood and I knew it was Tai before he sat down next to me. I couldn't see the future but I could get a sense of those around me, his movements were distinctly his own. Reluctant but sturdy, and the energy around him was always crackling like a flame. I tried not to be tense but my hands gripped onto the wooden edge.

"I'm sorry about last night." He sounded as tired as Izzy looked and it made my heart hurt. As upset as I'd been in the moment, I hated to make him feel bad, especially when I knew how hard that decision had to be for him to make.

"I overreacted." I shook my head, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry that this is even happening and that you have to deal with it."

"Hey, stop this." He grabbed my arms gently, turning me towards him. "This thinking is what always hurts us. This idea that somehow what's happening is your fault. You're a target, not the archer."

"I'm sick of it!" I felt so much all at once. Anger. Shame. Fear. I closed my eyes tight and tried to calm my breathing.

"Is that you?" His voice was full of wonder. I opened my eyes and I saw a mist forming around us from the lake.

"Damnit, see! I can't even control the magic I have. If my emotions are a mess around water then there is no telling what happens, one time we even think I might have caused it to rain! Rain Tai! What the hell am I suppose to do with that? I'm still learning control." I tried to tamper the fog that was forming, steading my breath and my focus, pushing it towards the middle of the lake and willing it to dissipate.

He let out a heavy sigh, "Do you remember when you got lost that day with grandma and grandpa?"

I looked back towards him, confused, I never remember being lost as a child with them. We didn't talk about our grandparents much. They were stoic and could be harsh. It wasn't that we didn't love them it just wasn't particularly warm and fuzzy when we were with them.

"What are you talking about?" I asked.

"You were so little, maybe three. We went to a park with them and I had been playing with other kids at the playground while you were in the sandbox. You were always good at keeping yourself company. Daydreaming and playing pretend. At some point, they started calling your name and I turned and saw you were gone, they were frantic, grabbed me off the playground, and held my arm so tight I thought it might bruise. There was a wooded area near the playground so we went towards it, calling for you. This was before cell phones so it's not like they could call mom and dad or the police. So they went looking." He paused, glancing up towards the mist that was almost gone now. It looked almost like it was meant to be there, hovering over a valley in the early morning.

"We found you a few minutes later playing in a stream, you were laughing, splashing your hand in and out of the water. When we got closer though we saw that when you put your hand in the water it moved around you, as if you had some sort of forcefield around you so it couldn't touch you. They picked you up and swept you away from the water, looking so scared, and then you cried until you fell asleep in your car seat. They told me I needed to watch out for you, and when I tried to ask about the water they said to never talk about it. I always thought they just didn't want mom and dad to know you'd gone missing. When you showed us the mist the other day I knew it was real, because I knew then that something was different, I just didn't know how to explain it."

"You've always known?" I tried to process this new information. I didn't know if I was exactly surprised or annoyed that he'd never told me but then again he was a child and how would I have taken hearing that I could manipulate water. We had so much responsibility as children, we were saving worlds, plural! Still, we were kids, with imaginations and ideas we didn't know what to do with. I wondered about how much we'd missed when it might have come to magic. Were there other signs that we chalked up to the digital world when the answer was so much more complicated than that?

"I didn't know what I knew Kari, you've always been different, sensitive, looking at things as a toddler it seemed like no one else could see." He ruffled my hair a bit, "I just thought it was kid stuff."

"And now?" I asked wearily.

"And now you're stronger than me and I don't know how to protect you."

"I'm not stronger than anyone," I said in a huff.

"Kari," he sighed, leaning back onto his hands and looking up towards the sky like it held all the answers we might need. "Your fatal flaw is your perceived weakness. It's always held you back and maybe that's my fault for being too overbearing, for asking TK to watch out for you and protect you when I couldn't be there. You've always been capable of standing on your own two feet and I'm sorry if I didn't encourage that in you enough."

I felt my words catch in my throat. It felt like a compliment and criticism all at once. I had always relied on him too much though, TK even called me on it right before the first time I'd been swept into the ocean.

"How do you do it?" I asked, letting my head fall against his shoulder and creating the most contact we'd had since I'd been home.

"Do what?"

"Be a leader?"

He put his arm around me and gave me a short squeeze, "I'll tell you my biggest secret." He paused for dramatic effect. "I rarely had any idea how to be a leader and everyone else made me better. I just took things as they came and tried to be in the moment. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it was a mess. All you can do is the best you can in each situation."

I let it sink in, knowing my brother, and knowing it was probably true. He wasn't exactly a planner, but he did have a way of bringing out the best in others which in turn brought out the best in him. I still felt uneasy though.

"I'm scared," I said.

"You should be," He looked down at me in amusement, "If you weren't scared you wouldn't be fighting for anything that mattered. We're with you, in any way we can be, I promise." He stood up and reached down to help me up. He pulled me into a tight hug once I was standing and I gripped him fiercely. "I believe in you." He said before releasing me.

Maybe I needed to hear it, but he was right, if I was going to beat this I was going to need to start believing it for myself. I couldn't only fight against Kato thinking one of us wasn't going to make it out. I needed more drive than that. I needed to fight for my friends, for my family, and for anyone else he might harm along the way. I couldn't let him take anything else from the world.

TK

I dragged the old heavy bag out of the shed. This one had been out here for years, our grandparents got it for us when Matt was about twelve so he had something to take his teen angst out on. He wasn't really the athletic type though. While he could throw a punch it was more like one at a time and few and far between. He was much happier to hide away and play music. His lack of attention was my gain for a while but I'd tried putting it up when I was setting my gym up but it ripped at the top and I'd had to get a new one. I did my best to prop it up against an old tree stump. I heard the leaves crunch behind me and turned around to see Kari and Tai walking towards me, they looked more at ease, and it seemed like they'd talked through some things. It settled me, it was hard to see them so at odds.

"What are you doing?" Kari looked between me and the sword on the ground.

"Testing my grandfather's Katana to see if it's actually useful."

"His Katana?" Kari asked, her eyes growing in size as she took a slight step back from the blade.

"I started practicing with Cody's grandfather a few years ago," I nodded towards Tai, "We figured it couldn't hurt if I was actually able to use it."

Kari looked skeptical but if she had reservations she kept them to herself.

Tai reached for it and was about to roughly un-sheath it, "No!" I shouted and he stopped abruptly.

"Sorry, it's an antique I just want to be careful."

"No, sorry, overzealous over here. I don't even know how to use it," he chuckled handing it to me.

I wrapped one hand around the handle, feeling the worn, wrapped leather, in my hands. It felt almost warm, I thought it must have been sitting in the sun for too long. I placed my other hand on the wooden sheath, letting my fingers run across the ridges from the carving. I slowly pulled the blade out, surprised to find that it at least appeared to be in impeccable condition. Kari held out her hand for the sheath and I gave it to her without looking away from the blade. It was lighter than I expected, the weight felt good in my hands, right, like it was made for me. There were no markings or signs of wear or warping, for a blade so old it didn't make any sense, part of me thought it might come out in pieces. Now it was just a matter of seeing if it was sharp anymore, I imagined it was pretty dull so didn't get my hopes up. I stood in front of the heavy bag and slowly swiped towards it to make sure I had the height right. I didn't want to get the blade caught in the wood of the stump. I took a breath raised the katana and sliced it through the air towards the bag at an angle. I felt nothing, no impact, and looked back towards the bag in confusion because I was way too close to have missed. I put my hand on top of the bag and it felt to the side, a clean cut had gone through and through, so sharp I hadn't even noticed it.

"Holy hell, TK I thought you said that thing was an antique?" Tai moved towards the bag, looking at the slice in amazement.

"I-It is," I held it tighter in my hands, confused how a blade that was easily as old as the 1940's was able to cut the way this one did.

Tai and I turned back towards Kari whose focus was on the sheath in her hands, as she mumbled words we couldn't understand. Her eyes looked glazed over like she was somewhere else, we moved towards her both saying her name but she didn't move. It wasn't until Tai placed a hand on her shoulder that she jolted out of her daze, the sheath falling from her hands towards the ground, as she stepped back away from it.

"Are you okay?" Tai asked as she blinked a few times and stared back and forth between the two of us. She was suddenly uneasy on her feet, Tai rushed towards her as her eyes rolled to the back of her head and she fainted into his arms. He placed one arm under her knees and the other around her back and lifted her up.

He moved his head down towards her face, "She's breathing," he said.

"What the hell happened," I moved towards them and placed my hand against her forehead. "She's hot," I said, surprised at how feverish she felt.

"I'm going to take her inside to lay down, maybe all the stress is just catching up, she's been through hell the past few days."

I watched them walk away, confused, and left with a sinking feeling in my stomach. I reached down for the sheath and let the katana slide back inside of it, when the handle hit though I had a vision of flames, so quick and strange that I stumbled back for a moment. Just as quickly as it came it was gone. I looked down at the carved flames on the sheath, and then back at the empty space that Kari had been standing in wondering if somehow it was connected. Nothing felt like a coincidence anymore, but I'd have to wait for her to wake up to find out.

Well friends, Until next time. I promise I won't go re-editing chapters this time. Chapter 10 is almost finished so it should just be a week or two to edit. As always please review and let me know what you think!