AUTHOR'S NOTES:

Merry Christmas! To all those who are celebrating, I wish you a magical Christmas day. To those who don't celebrate Christmas, I'm sending you some festive cheer in the hopes that it will keep you smiling through to the end of what has been a crazy year.

I hope you have a great day wherever you are, and however and whatever you celebrate, and I hope you enjoy today's update.

STORMS

"What's that noise?"

"It's raining."

"Oh."

The conversation lapsed in to silence. Taichi tucked a hand behind his head and leant back until he was lying along the polished bamboo slats of the engawa. A bead of sweat rolled down the side of his forehead, slipping underneath the phone, and he grimaced. Despite the thundering rain on the eaves overhead, it was uncomfortably hot, and the high bushes around his aunt's small rear garden left no entry for a breeze, leaving the sticky July air hanging stagnant. Taichi ran a sweaty hand through his hair.

"You'd like it," he said. "Reckon it'll turn in to a thundershower later, right around the time oba will ask me to close the storm shutters."

"She doesn't have them closed yet?" Sora asked. He snorted.

"I offered, but she doesn't think it's going to get that bad. You know she doesn't trust the weatherman." She had a point; the weather reports in Odawara were dubious at best, especially during typhoon season, and they were wrong more often than not.

"Silly scaremongering," his aunt would scoff at her ancient television set whenever the news warned of an incoming storm. "And even if they are right, this house was built by your uncle's great-great-grandfather, back when they built things to last. This house stood through Ma-on in 2004; it'll stand through this summer shower."

"How's your mother doing?" Taichi pressed his lips together and rolled his head to the side to look through the sliding glass door which had been left open in the hopes of drawing in some kind of breeze. His aunt had lowered the screen that separated the tea room from the living room, but it was thin enough that Taichi could see the tremble in his mother's shadow as she lifted a cup of tea to her lips.

"She's better," he murmured. "She took all her meds today."

"That's great!" Sora breathed. "Taichi-"

"Any sign of her?"

The line was too quiet for too long. His insides churned at what it could have meant.

"We… We haven't been able to go to the Digital World as much as we wanted to," Sora answered at last. "We managed a short trip on Thursday, but then the lab was booked out on Friday and we haven't been able to get in to the school all weekend. We're going to try again tomorrow after school, but Miyako thinks there might be some sort of after school event going on. We might not be able to get back in until Tuesday."

A rush of water thundered along the drain and splashed against the stone step that ran under the engawa and Taichi stifled a sigh that was equal parts relief and frustration. Every time Sora called he waited with baited breath for the news he desired and dreaded more than anything in the world.

Because if they found her, then what? He was miles away in Odawara, unable to mention his sister or the Digital World for fear of sending his father in to a rage or pushing his mother back in to her despair after five gruelling days of watching her crawl out of it. And there was no chance of him sneaking away to the Digital World. Even if his model of digivice could open a gate, his aunt didn't have a computer. The nearest one that he knew of was in the local library, and it sat in direct sight of the librarian who monitored the screen like a hawk to make sure it couldn't be used for anything inappropriate. He gnawed the inside of his cheek.

"It's all right," Taichi murmured. Sora hummed softly and he knew that she knew he was lying (though he couldn't be sure of who he was lying to). He pinched the bridge of his nose with a sigh. "I wish we didn't have to go through the computer lab to go to… to get there."

"Koushiro's already working on it." Taichi smiled; of course he was. "It's difficult because he hasn't had much time to analyse the gate. Last time we went through he stayed behind to try and gather more data for analysis."

"What about his map?"

"It's slow, but he is making progress. I haven't seen him work this hard on anything since…" There was a delicate note of hope in her voice and Taichi unclenched his jaw.

"Yeah…" he murmured. He heard his father's voice rise within the house and he propped himself up on his elbow. His father was pacing the kitchen, one hand pressing his phone to his ear while the other raked through his hair. Taichi grimaced.

"When are you coming back?"

"Not sure," he muttered. "Dad was trying to get a few more days off work, but I don't think it's going so well." His father slumped heavily against the kitchen counter and rubbed at the back of his neck. Taichi sighed and turned his attention back to the rain. "Anything exciting happening back in Odaiba?"

"Not much… Oh! Did Daisuke tell you about Tamachi?"

"About the soccer match? I heard." Once Daisuke had realised that Taichi wasn't checking his e-mails (of which he had apparently sent six in the same evening, and two more the morning after), he'd called Taichi's cell phone and spent the better part of twenty minutes babbling excitedly about the fixture. "I'm surprised it's an after-school match."

"It's only a friendly," Sora replied. "Do you reckon you'll make it back in time?"

"I hope so, or I don't think Daisuke would ever forgive me. It's Thursday, right?"

"Yes, Thursday at four."

"Which means the team will need extra practice." He sighed and ran a hand over his face. "Y'know Tamachi is just using us for a warm-up before the pre-tournament fixtures begin."

"…I wasn't going to say it."

"Remember how badly they thrashed Saitama last year?"

"I remember it was all you could talk about for two weeks." Taichi chuckled, though it quickly withered in to a heavy sigh.

"They're going to wipe the floor with us," he muttered. Sora was quiet for a long while before she spoke again.

"It'll be a good experience for them?"

"It'll be an experience," he agreed with a smile, though it quickly faded as he heard his father's exasperated voice again. He sat up, lowering the phone a little as he watched his father drop his head in to his hands. Taichi frowned. "I've gotta go. I'll speak to you tomorrow?"

"I'll call you after school," she said. A pause and then: "It'll be all right, Taichi. I know it will." Taichi made a non-commital hum and he heard Sora chuckle in response. "I'll speak to you tomorrow. I love you."

"Love you too," he murmured before slipping the phone back in to his pocket. He stood and stretched, working the kinks from his spine and rolling the aches from his neck before heading back inside. He slipped quietly in to the kitchen and headed for the fridge, pulling out a pitcher of iced water.

"It's too late for me to make it back for tomorrow," his father was murmuring, his voice defeated. A sigh and then: "I could make it back in by Tuesday. Yes, I… I understand. Yes." Another pause. "I'll see you then." He ended the call with a sigh and Taichi put the water back in the fridge.

"No extra holidays, then," Taichi murmured. His father huffed a little and straightened, slipping the phone back in to his pocket.

"No," he sighed. "They want me back sooner."

"I gathered. Tuesday?"

"They'd've had me in today if they could." He ran a hand over his face to wipe away the frown, though it left deep wrinkles across his forehead. His eyes flicked towards the lounge and he straightened as Taichi's aunt came bustling in to the kitchen.

"Well?" she demanded in an urgent hiss. His father shook his head.

"We'll be heading back to Tokyo tomorrow." Taichi lifted his head.

"What time?" he blurted. His father fixed him with a strange look, and Taichi hoped he hadn't sounded too enthusiastic.

"Probably after lunch," his father answered. "It'll give me enough time to get you and your mother home before I head back to Okegawa." His aunt scoffed.

"You should have fought harder for your wife and your son," she hissed, her voice laced with accusation. His father's eyes narrowed dangerously.

"I don't have a choice," he answered curtly. "My boss-"

"Your boss. Your job. Pah! If your job doesn't support you, you should find another one."

"You wouldn't understand-"

"I understand family," she countered. "Money isn't everything-"

"You would say that," his father seethed. "Your husband left you quite a legacy when he died. Not all of us are so fortunate." Kikuro's lips curled back in a snarl.

"I would give up every bit of it to have him back," she spat.

"You never have to worry about keeping a roof over your head or food in your cupboards-"

Kikuro slapped him. The strike wasn't particularly hard, but it was enough that his father was struck dumb. For a moment nobody moved; the cold glass in Taichi's hand seared his fingers as his father straightened, his lips pressed together in a thin line. He sidled silently out of the kitchen, skirting around Kikuro who planted her hands on her hips and glared at his back.

"Where are you going?"

"Out." He passed by the tea room without a glance, slipping easily in to his shoes.

"Susumu-"

"Don't wait up for me."

The door slid close behind him. Kikuro sighed and shook her head.

"That man," she hissed. "He doesn't understand… not like you and I do. Your sister was taken from you, while I watch mine slip further and further away from me every time I see her." She turned sharply on her heel and rifled through a cupboard. She ripped open a packet of biscuits and tipped them carelessly on to a plate. "Here, Taichi, take these to your mother, and then go and close the storm shutters for me." Her hand trembled as she held the plate out behind her, not meeting Taichi's gaze, and he gulped the last of his water before taking the plate. He raised the screen in the lounge, letting the last rays of sunlight from the tearoom window filter in to the lounge.

His mother was kneeling next to the sunken teapot heater in the floor. Her eyes were fixed on the golden clouds outside while her hands were clasped around an empty teacup.

"Do you want some more tea?" His offer was met with silence and he stifled a sigh as he knelt back beside her. He thought of telling her of their imminent return to Tokyo but quickly set the thought aside; it wouldn't be good news to her, and there was no point undoing how far she'd come before he had to. His father would tell her – probably in the morning, given that he was unlikely to return before they all went to bed.

It was a ninety-minute drive from Odawara to Odaiba, which meant that if they left just after lunch then they could be home in time for Taichi to meet the others after school. If he timed it right then he could slip out when his father went to return the rental car, and then his father would be already on his way to Okegawa by the time Taichi got back. He could say he was going to soccer practice, but then he would have to change in to his soccer kit and pack his bag or his father would get suspicious. Or – better idea – he could tell his father that he was going to track down his teachers and pick up the classwork he'd missed whilst they'd been out of town. He had a pair of black joggers in his suitcase that looked almost like school pants when paired with his green blazer and tie, which were hanging beside his bed. As for a shirt… All of his at home were dirty on account of his father surprising him with the sudden roadtrip, but he was sure the convenience store next to Starbucks had a small selection of emergency office-wear. If he packed up his belongings tonight, he could offer to grab his dad a coffee in the morning and pick one up on the way.

"Do you remember the last time we were here?" His mother's voice was delicate and fragile, like fine glass, and Taichi blinked at the sound. Her eyes remained fixed out of the window while her skeletal fingers clutched tightly at the plate of biscuits. "You were so young… I doubt you'd remember. Hikari was almost born here. Did you know that? She gave us such a scare. Your father rushed us back to Tokyo. You slept through it all, and when you woke up you were a big brother."

Taichi couldn't say that he remembered the trip, beyond a vague sense of familiarity when they'd arrived at his aunt's house, but the memory of Hikari being placed in his arms was one of the first things he could remember. His mother sniffled.

"We never got to bring her back to Odawara," she whispered. The plate trembled and the biscuits shivered closer to the edge. Taichi reached out, taking it from her hands and setting it aside.

"We'll bring her," he promised, careful to keep his voice low. "I'm going to find her, and when we do we'll all come to Odawara together. I promise."

His mother turned to him then, and there was a sparkle of life behind her eyes that Taichi hadn't seen in far too long. Slowly she curled her fingers around his hands – they were wiry and cold, but her grip was like iron as her eyes bored in to his.

"I know you will."

Koushiro rocked back in his chair and rubbed the bridge of his nose. The headache that had started at the back of his neck had spread to his temples and was starting to wage war on his eyes. He might not have been able to make out some of the finer code scrolling across his screen, but he did not miss the glaring red ERROR that sat flashing in the centre.

"What am I missing?" he muttered. He didn't receive an answer.

He drained the last of his oolong tea and tossed the empty bottle on top of a pile of others before switching over to his e-mails. He opened a new message to Gennai by sheer force of habit, and his fingers hovered over the keys as he caught himself in the act.

Since the gates had re-opened Koushiro had sent nearly a dozen e-mails and received nothing in return. That alone was new; when he'd last tried to e-mail Gennai, the messages had bounced back undelivered. Now it seemed that they were being received but were being left unanswered. Gennai had always helped them in the past, albeit in roundabout ways, so why wouldn't he help them now? It led Koushiro to surmise that either Gennai had abandoned them, or the messages were being intercepted. Whatever the reason, it meant that Gennai was no longer a viable point of contact, and Koushiro closed the empty e-mail with a sigh.

"Another late night?"

Koushiro twisted in his chair to find his mother leaning against the doorframe, bundled up her dressing gown with a tired smile on her face. He sat up a little taller in his chair with a frown.

"What are you doing up?" he asked. She laughed quietly and stepped inside.

"I should be asking you the same thing," she said. She perched on the side of his bed and handed him a bottle of water which he accepted with a grateful nod. She eyed the mountain of empty tea bottles beside his desk. "All that caffeine isn't good for you."

"Tea is healthy," he countered.

"Not in those quantities." He ducked his head and took a mouthful of water, and she gave a fond sigh. "I know you want to help your friends, Koushiro, but you can't help anyone if you run yourself into the ground."

"I know I'm close to something, I can feel it, I just… I don't know what. I feel like I'm missing something, and it won't tell me what it is." A hand reached out and gently squeezed his shoulder.

"I don't think it's going to talk to you."

"You'd be surprised," he said with a dry laugh. His mother smiled a little.

"Maybe you'd be more productive if you let yourself rest every once in a while," she suggested, smoothing the creases from his duvet. "We didn't buy you this bed as a decoration, you know."

"I know…" he murmured. "It's just… four years of feeling powerless and now I finally feel like I should be able to do something but I can't. I've gotten this far and now it won't let me get any further, and I don't know why."

"Progress is progress, no matter how small. You're too hard on yourself, Koushiro."

"Funny… A friend told me the same thing."

"Maybe this friend of yours is even smarter than you." Koushiro glanced at her and arched his eyebrow and she stood, leaning over to kiss him on the forehead. "Promise me you'll get some sleep tonight. You have school in the morning."

"I know." She fixed him with a knowing look and he ducked his head. "Just let me finish this and then I'll go to bed, I promise." She pursed her lips and smoothed his hair before bidding him goodnight, slipping silently back in to the hall and closing the door behind her.

She wasn't wrong, of course; he did function better when he was firing on all cylinders, but there was something about the sprawling code before him that left him unable to switch off and walk away. Something was wrong, but it was impossible put his finger on what. Whilst he didn't claim to know everything about the Digital World, what he did know aligned perfectly with what he could see. All the pieces were falling where he expected them to, but the puzzle was far from complete. He rocked back on his chair and rubbed at his eyes until he saw stars in an attempt to reboot his brain-

Wait.

Reboot.

His eyes flew open as he rocked forwards again, closing his e-mails and dismissing the error message to peer at the code behind; lines of binary mixed with kana and the symbols of the Digital World. What if the code was right, but the world was wrong? Most of the knowledge and data that he'd gathered was from their first adventure, but the Digital World has reformatted itself since then. He's assumed that it had simply restored itself to its factory settings much like a computer or a hard drive, but that assumption completely disregarded the Digital World's autonomy and apparent sentience. So what if…

What if the Digital World had evolved?

He pulled up the data he'd gathered on his laptop and set it beside his monitor. He'd attempted to parse the data several times already, but all of a sudden it was like he was looking at it for the first time. Characters he'd assumed to be leftover fragments and anomalies were suddenly starting to make a strange sort of sense; he couldn't understand them yet, but once he saw how they repeated – the same way, over and over, in the same conditions – he wondered how he hadn't seen it before.

He slumped in his chair, raking his hands through his hair. The breakthrough was enormously satisfying, but the implications were decidedly less so. He would have to recode all of his programs from scratch, but there would be no point starting that project until he had figured out the Digital World's new language. It didn't seem to have changed all that much, given that he had easily mistaken it for the language he knew despite having hit several dead-ends, but he had no way of knowing just how significant the changes were without hours of investigation.

He pushed up his sleeves and readied his fingers over his keyboard before pausing. It was too much work to accomplish in one night (he was good, but even he wasn't that good). With a heavy sigh he admitted defeat. It was hardly conducive to success to run himself to exhaustion, especially when he was so far from the finish line. He reluctantly reached forwards to turn off his desktop monitor while his other hand closed the lid of his laptop. Sleep now; crack the secrets of the Digital World later. He peeled himself out of his chair and stretched, rolling his neck before tip-toeing to the bathroom. The door to his parents' room was ajar, and the dim light of a bedside lamp sliced through the darkness of the hallway. Koushiro winced as he heard low murmurs from within, and he quickly hurried inside to prepare for bed.

The door was closed when he returned to his room.

He changed in to his pyjamas in the dark and slowly shimmied under the bed covers. His brain was still abuzz with thoughts and theories, but they were quickly silence by sleep's strong embrace, and he quickly drifted into a heavy, dreamless sleep.

Sometime later the darkness was broken by a flicker from Koushiro's screen as it lit up. Koushiro rolled over in his sleep, burying his face in to his pillow as his computer whirred to life. Streams of numbers and symbols rained across the screen; a trickle that quickly became a downpour. All too soon the data on the screen became a storm of information that rattled around the computer, pouring through the systems and flooding the hardware. Each element of the computer had been carefully curated to give Koushiro maximum resources in order to run even the most demanding of simulations, but they could not keep up with this. The fans whirred, unable to keep up as the errant data continued its attack, and the temperature soared.

Koushiro's digivice flared. The Crest of Knowledge flashed across the screen as a beam of purple light lanced out towards the monitor, piercing the eye of the data storm and sending light pouring through the system. Piece by piece it took back control of the hardware – purging the dark data first from the motherboard and then the graphics card before launching an attack on the CPU where the darkness was attempting to overload the computer's processing power. The digivice flared and the light wrapped itself around the processor, bleeding in to the silicone and flushing out the darkness. It escaped along the chassis, slipping out of an air vent and darting across the floor like a shadow before slipping out of the open window.

When Izumi Yoshie came to check on him, attracted by the light that danced across the hallway from the small gap beneath her son's door, she found Koushiro fast asleep in his bed in a dark and empty room. There was a chill in the air that made her pull her dressing gown tighter around her neck, and her eyes drifted to the window. She tip-toed across the room to pull it closed and left a gentle kiss on her son's cheek before slipping back out in to the hall, closing the door silently behind her.