Takeru sat at his computer in his apartment in Osaka, typing furiously. It was almost finished, the final words in his year-long cathartic odyssey were just moments away, and whole hours ahead of his generously extended deadline as well!

'And then I watched as she turned away from me and flew off in the arms of her angelic partner. There was a flash of light as they passed through the gateway and she was gone from me forever.'

The final sentence was there, he could send it on to Satomi now if he wanted, but since there was no way she would agree to produce it, he decided to read through it one last time to make sure it was perfect.

He had agonised over the chapters with Hikari the most while writing it, but reading them back now, there was no doubt in his mind that the thoughts he had written for her were the ones she herself had had. It was the only way he could make sense of her actions, and it pained him to know that if he had realised how she had been feeling at those crucial moments, she might not have felt compelled to go down that path at the end.

In his darker moments, he wondered whether it would have made a difference if, instead of trying to convince her to let him go with her to save the digital world, he had tried to convince her to stay in the human world with him and leave the digital world in chaos.

But even in his wildest dreams, she would never have agreed. And if she had, well, he would not love her quite as much.

Anyway, it was all over now and finally he felt like he was ready to at least try to move on. Jou and Iori had, but their jobs and study were more conducive to the healing process, and neither of them had lost quite as much as he had. The only major change in Iori's life was that now, instead of doing his law degree with the aim of becoming a lawyer, he was setting himself up to go to the police academy after he graduated. He was going to become a detective, not only to follow the dreams of his late father, but to ensure that the policework was done right, and killers such as Taichi would not be let out on technicalities – regardless of whether they are possessed by evil demons or not.

Jou was living his dream of helping people and making sure every one of his patients left him healthier than when they met. Even though he was not a surgeon, he was still saving lives in his own way, always urging people to not only consider their own feelings when undergoing treatment, but their loved ones as well.

The task Takeru himself had been left by his departing angel had turned out to be much easier than she had made it out to be. A lot of people made up their own explanations after the offshore earthquake. Gas leaks causing mass hallucinations was a popular theory for why a demon was fighting a pairing of a pink dragon and a purple Power Ranger, and later an armour-clad arch-angel; especially with all of the fuss over the nuclear spill up the coast. The murders of Koushiro and Daisuke were forgotten in the aftermath, with only Yamato's still in the public consciousness. With the thousands lost all along the eastern shores in the quake and ensuing tsunami, it was simple to say that Hikari, Ken and Taichi were among their number. The damage to Tokyo itself may have been minimal in relative terms, but it had been enough to make the detectives believe that the man who had apparently killed Yamato in a jealous rage could have perished without a trace.

As Takeru's day job proved, the most believable lies were the ones closest to the truth.

And this one did not even need to be told. The police concocted the story without much fanfare, keen to avoid inviting suggestions of negligence in regards to their release of Taichi just hours prior to Yamato's death. In the process, they were more than happy to close the book on all three cases.

It was a story that both Takeru's parents respective companies parroted expertly, dressing it up so devoid of any juiciness that the public just accepted it and moved on.

As for Hikari's wish that her brother was kept out of it, everything had been tied up so neatly already, that any insistence by Takeru to the contrary would have raised more suspicion than anyone would have wanted.

Only the families were told the true story, and the burden of convincing those not at the Yagami's when it had all come to a head had fallen to him. Telling two people that the son they themselves could have never had on their own, the son they had only received through deep tragedy, had been stabbed in the back by a demon masquerading as his closest friend, was surprisingly easier than what he had had to reveal to Ken's parents. Not only did he have to break the news that Ken had gone on to the digital world, but that they had lost their potential grandchildren as well. It was one thing to outlive one son, and quite another to outlive both and know that the sliver of hope their line would progress had been snuffed as well.

They had tried to contact the Inoues for some mutual grieving, but even that was not possible. Their shop had been damaged in the earthquake and they had sold it all – the shop, and the few apartments they owned above it – even before Takeru could tell Miyako what had happened to everyone, let alone the Ichijouji family's attempts at finding closure.

No one had seen or heard from Miyako since.

At least Sora had had the decency to tell everyone she was closing the door on them. Takeru understood that she would not want to see him since he knew he would remind her of his brother, and she had never had much to do with Iori anyway. He had been sure she would keep in touch with Jou, at least, but even he got the same message that she was blocking their numbers and moving on.

She had been easier to keep track of than Miyako though, and this was simply because the press and the public had picked up a morbid obsession with her after Yamato's death. Her clothing line had received a huge bump in sales, and she had expanded her range and refined her styles. Now she catered not only for teenage to mid-twenties women, but the older demographics as well. She had even started marketing some of her more boyish designs to men and even that risk had paid off.

The fact that she had become somewhat of a recluse over the past year had only added to the mystique around her brand. The image of this poor woman who had once been so sought after that her ex-lover had killed her rock-star boyfriend over her and was now holed up somewhere, alone and heartbroken, designing her trendy outfits as a way to deal with her pain, was not one Takeru thought Sora would have ever purposely wanted to promote.

But that was before Yamato died, and before Hello Birdy made it big.

He longed to talk to Hikari about his concerns over Sora's wellbeing, to just see her face and hear her voice tell him that he was worrying too much. He wanted her to hold him and tell him how she loved how concerned he was over nothing, and how he would make someone very happy one day.

His daydreaming was interrupted by the ping of a message on his phone and he sighed, resigned to his lot.

But his mood changed when he saw the text's author. He felt his heart in his throat as he opened the text, the possibilities of what lay inside too stimulating to ignore.

I'm back. I've got something for you…

His phone pinged again and a photo appeared below the text.

If he was not already completely thrilled by the first message, the second certainly got him there.

He quickly sent off his story to Satomi, not giving a crap about the consequences, and hurried downstairs to his car. As he went he made sure to save the image of the girl with the brown side-bangs and hair-clipped fringe for posterity. Not simply because of who she was and the adorably demure button-up collared blouse she was wearing, but because of the need in her eyes and the breast clutched tantalisingly in her hand.


When he arrived at the apartment he could scarcely contain his eagerness. It was as if ten thousand head of cattle were jostling against the inside of his chest cavity, sensing that in a few moments it would be opening and they were preparing themselves for stampede ahead.

He felt them rail against the gates as his eyes caught sight of her sitting on the corner of the bed. Her skirt tight around her thighs. Her knees together and pointing away on an angle. She was bathed in golden rays beaming down from the window at her back that bounced off her just so, surrounding her in a brilliantly bright, almost otherworldly glow.

She looked at him nervously from the shadows inside her perfect halo, waiting for him to make the first move

"What are you doing here?" he heard himself ask, not able to think consciously in her presence after so long.

"I've beaten the remaining Demon Lords and rebuilt the digital world… where else was I going to go?"

She half-smiled, and he felt more than just the cattle grow restless. Removing his coat and hanging it up next to the trench coat on the rack in the entranceway, he began to approach her. For the moment, he feigned confusion.

"But what about the barriers between the worlds? Aren't you worried about the two worlds colliding?"

"I need you Takeru," she replied without a hint of reservation, as he reached her on the bed, "I feel it the same as I feel the urge to breathe, and once that urge possessed me I knew I would risk anything to see you again," she reached out brushed his cheek with her knuckles, "to touch you again," she continued as her hand travelled down towards his crotch, "to feel the true extent of you for the first time…" She smiled at what she found.

[ed: Scene removed due to explicit content - basically the two of them start getting it on, and in the final throes, the illusion that the woman is Hikari is snapped out of Takeru's head by the cigarettes on the side table, and the fact that the woman is calling out his brother's name - it was like a 2k word sex scene]


Takeru sat on the edge of the bed admiring the quality of the wig in his hands. She really had outdone herself. The follicles moved with the ease of real hair and the cut, colour and styling was indistinguishable from Hikari's own. Had he not felt the artificiality of it with his own hands he might have even believed it had been procured from her very head.

Jun emerged from the bathroom with her towel wrapped around her and sat on the bed beside him, snatching up the wig and covering up her shaven head as she did so.

"It's really good isn't it?" she said proudly, pulling a few half-hearted faces in the process. Seeing her like that in just a towel made Takeru think back to almost exactly a year previous when the real Hikari had emerged from her shower similarly covered from breast to thigh, with her hair jutting out at all awkward angles. At the time her hair had reminded him of Jun's existence for the first time in years. Until then Daisuke's sister had just not been a part of his conscious thoughts, but suddenly, he had begun wondering how she was taking the loss of her brother. He had had no way of knowing that he too would soon be in the same situation or where their fates would eventually lead. "I spent hours in the wig shop picking out the one with the right shade and proper part, and then I took it to a hairdresser with some pictures of how she styled it, and you'll never believe–"

"Your text said you had something for me?" he interrupted, feeling he was owed a little selfishness.

"Oh," she said, offence visible on her face for just a moment as she removed the wig, "I do, but you could ask a little nicer, couldn't you?"

"How was your trip to Tokyo?" he asked, making sure to use the intimate form of 'you' this time, "Did you find anything interesting?"

"A couple of things…" she said teasingly, as she went over and retrieved her phone from the pocket of her trench-coat. "Where do I start…?"

"With how the 'Wolves paid off their cancelled tour debts…?" he suggested, trying to keep her on track.

"Typical Ishida-Takaishi," she said in a pantomime huff, sitting back down next to him, "always more concerned with her interests than mine…"

"So I was right; you found proof that it was her?"

"Yeah, but even better, I've got the only photo of her taken in the last twelve months,"

She passed the phone over to him.

His first thought was that it could not have been Sora Takenouchi in the picture, but the longer he looked the easier it was to see past the much longer, stark white hair and the strange business jacket which faded from navy to maroon partway down its length, and recognise the face of the girl he had known. She had adorned herself with garish gold-framed rose-tinted sunglasses, a matching necklace and several tacky rings on her black-nailed fingers, but despite all that there was now no doubt in Takeru's mind that this was Sora. He just was not so sure how to take it.

Jun had begun filling him in on the details of how she had managed to trace the money and get a face to face with the now famous recluse but Takeru was not listening all that intently. He had thought that Sora would be the only person with enough money to bail the Teenage Wolves out of their debt, but he had assumed her motives would have simply been to keep them together so that Yamato's music would live on. But now he began to wonder why she had not gone public with it. An announcement like that, that the ex-girlfriend of the dead lead singer was supporting their return to the scene would be huge for both brands' publicity. Maybe she wanted to do it under the radar so that people did not just think it was a publicity stunt or that she was somehow profiting from Yamato's death.

He could feel his mind beginning to spiral once more down the rabbit hole of suspicion and paranoia. He tried to focus on what Jun was saying, to pull out of his train of thought. She seemed to be saying something about how she had bought a wig to disguise herself when she went to spy on Sora and how that had then given her the idea to dress up like Hikari.

"Oh and that reminds me of what I was going to say earlier. As I was leaving the hairdresser's I walked through Shiba Park to get to the station and I bumped into a friend from senior high–"

She was interrupted by the sounds of a nonsensical French pop-song blaring out of Takeru's pocket. He groaned and handed her back her phone whilst taking out his own.

"Can you send that to me while I'm taking this?" he asked Jun, knowing she knew he had to take the call, before answering it with the traditional greeting, just like he always did.

"Hi Takeru, it's Satomi here…"

"I know," he checked his watch as he stepped outside, "You read that quick,"

"Oh, I'm not quite finished yet, I've only really gone through the prequel movie that you set in 2005 and look… I really liked it. I thought the villain was really well fleshed out. This girl whose mother died from that vampire from season one, now living an idyllic but lonely life jet-setting around Japan with her high-flying, yet emotionally absent father, tries to resurrect the thing that killed her mother and bend it to her will, along with any other digital monsters that get in her way – I really felt like I connected with her, you know?"

"Uh, yeah?"

"But why…? Did you really have to make her jump off the building at the end, with Ken just inches away from grasping her hand and saving her?"

'Well yes,' he thought, 'that's how it happened…'

"It represents a tonal shift for the show," he said, "The time jump from there to the series was another six years, and these kids… they aren't kids anymore and they are dealing with much heavier issues – in particular the idea that they can't save everyone and that even heroes aren't safe from death… Character-wise for Meiko, she's obsessed with this back and white idea that the digimon are the cause of all the trouble that has gone on, and she views the kids with partners as abominations, when her plan fails to even rid the world of the chosen ones, she no longer wants to live in a world where digimon and humans work together because it conflicts with that narrative she's been telling herself for six years, that the bad monsters killed her mother and they need to pay – I'm not changing it,"

There was silence on the other end of the line.

"Satomi?" he prompted.

"I get that last year a lot of things happened to your friends and family… friends and family that I know you have based the characters in this story on… but you know that I can't produce a show like the one that you are describing and… it's gotten to the stage where I feel like you're doing this deliberately…"

"Doing what?"

"Tanking the show! First you pitch this ridiculous notion of a reboot with different characters – which was a definite non-starter – and then, when we give you the extra time to work out a plot and all your extra baggage that you're carrying around… Then you turn in this! It's not even storyboarded like I asked!"

"That's not the way I…" But it was no use, the impulsive young woman who could not help but put him on a pedestal in the middle of the cold and featureless room of her heart, was audibly piercing through the professional veneer she had built over the last year.

"And then you write this character, this Meiko Mochizuki, who you basically describe as looking exactly like me, who goes through some awful, awful shit and you refuse to even consider redeeming her!"

Personally, Takeru thought the Second Kaiser had looked more like Miyako, but telling Satomi that was not an option, and in this state nothing was changing her mind.

"Look, if you are going to complain about how you're portrayed in my writing, you should at least have the courtesy to read the parts you're in first,"

There was silence on the end of the line for a moment before the middle manager version came back on the line. Calm. Professional. Intrigued.

"Fine, I'll read the rest of what you sent. But just so you know, from what you've said so far, it's likely that we're going to implement Plan-B,"

"Plan-B?" repeated Takeru.

"It's more of a Plan-A-Point-Five,"

"That doesn't make sense,"

"Neither does throwing out your target audience with the unsullied bathwater."

And with that, she hung up.

Back inside, Jun was dressed and watching the news. A young woman – Takeru guessed she was around Jun's age – was in some distress.

"This is what I was trying to tell you," Jun said excitedly, pointing at the screen, "After I got the wig styled, I ran into a friend of mine in Shiba park and I hung out with her and her little nephews – they're adorable, almost a year old – Oh yeah! You know, Miyako's kids? – and we were walking past the school when I saw the hairdresser," she gestured at the screen again, even though by now the image had changed, and Takeru was too distracted to look, "running through the park towards the school. Frantic. And as she passed I asked what was wrong and she said, her son had gone missing from the school on the other side of the park? Like, what are the chances of that happening?"

"Wait, what do you mean by 'Miyako's kids'?"


Earlier that day.

Little Toru Higashino was running.

He just wanted to get away.

The kids at school were stupid, because they thought he was stupid for believing in aliens and never letting go of his Astro Boy.

They didn't understand. His Astro Boy was special.

Last year he had convinced his Mama to buy him a Devilman action figure when he saw it in the toy store. Devilman didn't look a lot like Winged Alien-Man, but it looked more like him than Astro Boy with hair combs tied to his back. Now that he had a stand in for Winged Alien-Man, he could make Astro Boy look more like Super Astronaut Man.

He made the tinfoil hat and the red cape that was really more like a scarf, and stole a permanent purple marker to colour him in.

When Toru was done his Astro Boy was the coolest thing he had ever seen.

The kids at school didn't like his Astro Boy. They thought it was stupid.

Today he had been trying to get someone else to play the fight scene with him, but no-one had wanted to. They had teased him instead.

"They're real. I saw them," he had said to try to make them stop, but it just made them tease him more, so he ran away, and that's what he was doing now.

He was on a mission. Get to Mama.

First step. Run past the library and across the street to the car park.

Easy.

Next, go over another street and towards the park with the temples and the forest.

Toru knew his Mama worked on the other side of the forest part of the park, so all he had to do was get to the other side, and she could look after him there. Like she did before she made him start going to boring school.

The problem was that there were three temples and they always confused him.

But despite what the kids at school said, Toru was not stupid, Toru was smart.

He knew he needed to make sure Tokyo Tower was on his right before he went into the little forest. There were no thoughts of calling it Space Explorer Two today. This was a secret spy mission. No astronauts or aliens today.

But as soon as he made it to the forest part of the park, he lost sight of the Tower and the windy paths started to confuse him. The trees were also very pretty and every now and then he would find himself stopping and looking at the blossoms that were just coming out.

As he made it further in, he noticed that some of the trees had funny purple leaves. A bit further in and the trees started to get a bit scary, grey and arching over him like bony hands.

He knew what to do. Put Tokyo Tower on the right and keep going straight. Then he would find the road.

But where was the tower?

The trees were thin enough to see through, but wherever he looked, all he saw was sky.

Be smart Toru. Prove those kids from school wrong.

He turned back the way he had come in, but he could not see the trees with the funny purple leaves now either. It was just scary bone trees.

It was quiet too. He could not hear any cars or the bustle of daytime Tokyo either.

Something was wrong.

"Mama…" he called out, nervously.

He clutched Astro Boy in his hands. He had to be brave.

There was a rustle of leaves and the sound of a snapping twig behind him.

He looked and saw some sort of Armoured Bug Man walking towards him, looking mean and very not nice.

Toru bolted in the other direction.

Running away was a type of brave.

He looked behind him, but he could not make out where the Armoured Bug Man was, and then–

He ran into something soft and fell to the ground.

The something soft said "Oh," and Toru looked up at it.

It looked like a girl. The type of girl Mama would not let into her hair salon.

She had a small white shirt that did not cover her tummy and a raggedy black leather skirt with a black leather belt. She was also wearing a big red jacket on her shoulders, and a black crown on her head which looked a bit like a flower.

"Hey," she said sweetly, with a light-up smile, "What's your name?"

Toru had thought a second ago that she was wearing sunglasses, but now he saw that the big black shiny things on her face were actually her eyes. What he had thought was her hair was actually vines, and what he had taken to be purple lining of her jacket were actually like wings from a flying ant but bigger.

"No? Maybe if I try…" she continued talking but Toru didn't understand. It was like she was talking in an alien language. Maybe he was on another planet.

Flower Punk Girl crouched down as far as she could so that her head was only just above him, studying him like he was the alien.

"Hmm, I guess you could be Chinese or Korean, but I can't speak… and you do look Japanese…? Maybe you're just not a talker, huh?" the Flower Punk Girl said, "It must be a bit scary for you, being here on your own, talking to a funny looking girl like me…" she looked around and asked a question more to herself than at him, "How did you get here anyway?"

For an alien she sure knew a lot about Earth.

"Oh, I know!" she said with a start, "Do you like yo-yos?"

She stood back up and pulled a spiky green biscuit-looking thing out of thin air. It did look a lot like a yo-yo, but instead of a string it had a vine wrapped around it – kind of like the stuff growing out the back of her head.

She spun it a couple of times in front of his face and his eyes followed it up and down.

"Now," she said, getting into position like a baseball pitcher, "watch this,"

She aimed at a nearby tree and let fly with the yo-yo at incredible speed, hitting the tree with a crash and then pulling the disc part straight back into her hand with a tiny flick of the wrist. By the time the yo-yo was back, the top half of the tree had slid down on an angle and fallen onto the ground.

Flower Punk Girl struck a pose. "Pretty cool, huh?"

He smiled and nodded. She was pretty cool.

"So you do know Japanese!" she exclaimed, but before Toru could say anything, he heard an annoyed voice from behind him.

"I've checked my half of the sector and can't find any trace of the anomaly…"

Toru spun around and saw the Armoured Bug Man standing right over him. From this angle he was all creepy insect legs, ballooning black trousers and lots of spiky drill things.

A second later, Toru was hiding behind Flower Punk Girl, arms wrapped around a leg and one side of his face buried in the outside of her thigh.

"Oh Bee-Ess, you're scaring him! And just when I was getting somewhere, too,"

It was not just the spiky drills that made Toru scared of the Armoured Bug Man, his insect legs were the colour of blood and so was his creepy insect face and his long wavy antennae, and he had a mane of evil-looking bright purple hair.

"Is that a…?" asked the Bug Man.

"Uh huh," replied the Flower Girl.

The Bug Man cocked his head to get a better look a Toru, who crept further behind his protector.

"You know what this means, don't you?"

"Urgh, it might not mean anything, he could just be lost…"

"We need to take him back to base, it's not safe out–"

Toru clutched the leg tighter, making his protector interrupt.

"I think you–" she said pointedly to the scary Bug Guy, placing a calming hand on Toru's head, "should fly away to this base or whatever, Bee-Ess, and we might go for a walk to go see my friend the angel," she started talking to Toru now, "Okay little guy, does that sound good? No more scary Bee-Ess–" she interrupted herself with a little giggle, "–and you and I can have a proper chat on our walk,"

The Armoured Bug Man flew off in a huff and Toru finally let go of the Flower Punk Girl's leg.

"How about we start again," she said, crouching down to his level once more, "I'm BanchoLillymon,"

Toru thought for a moment.

"I'm Toru, but I'm not supposed to talk to stranger-people,"

"Smart boy!" said Bancholilemon…? Buncholilleamon? Toru was going to stick to calling her Flower Punk Girl, "But the problem is Toru, that you've stumbled into a whole other world and if you don't talk to someone, you might never speak again,"

This was tough. He had promised Mama he would not talk to people he did not know. But he also figured that the Flower Punk Girl was not a person so he was probably okay to talk to her. She also saved him from the Armoured Bug Man.

But then again, in his head he did keep calling her Flower Punk Girl, and girls were people, so maybe he should not be talking to her.

"I'll talk to the angel," he decided, "can we go to the angel now?"

The Flower Girl smiled again and held out her hand, "Sure thing, little buddy,"

They started walking through the forest of spindly trees together, and Toru did his best not to talk to Flower Punk Girl. Mama always said that not talking to strangers was to stop them trying to take you away, but he was going with this strange Flower Punk Girl now, so maybe that was not a great rule. Maybe a better rule might be to not listen to strangers. Then you would not get taken away with promises of meeting angels. But he trusted her, so he kept walking, holding tight to her hand.

He trusted Mama too and that's why he decided he would not talk to her anymore. Twice was too much already.

Flower Punk Girl spotted the action figure in his hand and asked if she could look at it.

He showed it to her and she said that she thought it was super cool.

One more sentence couldn't hurt could it? He had already spoken twice…

"It's okay," she said sweetly, handing the figure back to him, "I won't ask you any questions, so you don't have to speak, and you can keep being be a good little boy who does what he is supposed to, okay?"

That was a question, but he nodded anyway.

"I don't know if you will believe this but I think I kind of met someone who could look like that last year – well, part of me did anyway,"

She went on to tell him all about how part of her had been one of the scariest beings in all of existence, a jaw-droppingly gorgeous woman with a can-do attitude. And how that super-cute girl – she really liked talking herself up, Toru noticed – had run into her friend, who was part of the angel they were going to see, and her friend ended up saving 'Justimon' which seemed to be her name for Super Astronaut Man, and one half of him turned out to be her friend's boyfriend.

For part of the story Toru thought that she was making things up to get him to like her, but the bit about Justimon being made up of a human and a little alien was exactly like what he had seen, and he had not told her about that, so that made him believe all the other crazy things.

She stopped her story at the point where the part of her that was a straight-up hottie had decided to leave the rest of her friends behind, and go up into the hole in the sky with her friend that saved Justimon and defeated Winged Alien Man. She stopped there, because that was the point where she and Toru came upon a big glowy bubble of light.

The bubble was really big, bigger than Shiba Park even, but maybe not as big as Tokyo. It was hard to tell just how big because the forest of spindly trees seemed to get thicker closer to the light

The bubble of light heaved in and out like it was breathing, the border rushing closer to them and then slinking back away a few metres. Each time the bubble pushed outward, it seemed to get a little bit closer, and each time it came close Toru tried to look through the slightly see-through film of light to see what was on the other side, but it was too bright.

"Are you ready to go through?"

He nodded and took hold of her hand again.

They stepped through the curtain of light and found themselves amongst a grove of trees with beautiful green leaves and big metal-looking trunks. Even though they were inside the bubble of light, the trees were so thick that they were mostly cloaked in darkness. But there were some gaps in the canopy and the little shafts of light that poked through gave the forest on this side of the barrier a magical shimmery quality that was much more inviting than the scary spindly tree forest outside.

The Flower Punk Girl must have seen the look of amazement on Toru's face.

"This is all because of the angel Ophanimon," she said, "when we got here it was all like that outside, but ever since we defeated Lilithmon, the evil Demon Lord that ruled this world with a velvet fist, she's been working to make it back to like it was when we first met the other halves of ourselves here,"

They kept walking deeper and deeper into the forest, and Flower Punk Girl kept telling Toru the story of how she, the two halves of the angel and her other friend BanchoStingmon (along with some others) had infiltrated the demon's nasty gang, how some of them had been caught and the rescues they had had to make.

It was all very thrilling even though he could tell she was leaving out some bits, and before Toru knew it, they had reached a giant clearing with a massive beam of light in the middle. Filling the clearing were these things that looked like round stones about half his height, all set out in circle patterns centred on the beam of light.

As Flower Punk Girl approached the beam of light, he hung back and took a closer look at one of the big round things and found that it was more like a big round basket, like for a baby, except that it had a colourful egg in it that was as big as his head.

Flower Punk Girl said something to the beam of light and it switched off, revealing a huge blonde-haired girl angel decked out in armour that was the colour of jade gemstones. She had a wicked-cool golden spear in her right hand, neat almost-metal wings sticking out of her back, and on her head she had a helmet made of the same material as her armour that covered her eyes and had a sort of orange ponytail sticking out of it. Like his new friend the Flower Punk Girl, the Jade Armoured Angel also had a bare tummy which seemed very strange considering all the armour she was wearing.

Maybe it was an alien thing.

Flower Punk Girl was having to explain herself for disrupting the Angel's meditation, but Toru was distracted by the egg, which seemed to be wobbling inside its crib.

With a little 'Pop!' the egg was replaced by a fuzzy little ball of darkness with two bright yellow eyes.

"Bubbu?" it blurted, a little worriedly, "Bu– bubbuw…"

Toru started to get a little worried himself. He did not want his first impression with the Angel to be that he made a ball of fuzz cry. He showed Super Astronaut Man to the ball of fuzz and started making trumpet noises with his mouth as he made his figure fly around in front of it.

"Bubbu Ba-bubu! Bubbu Ba-buuu…" it babbled along in response, its eyes shining.

That was better. Toru gave it his biggest smile.

Suddenly a voice rang out from just behind him.

"Toru Higashino," it boomed, "have you been talking to strangers?"

He spun around and the Angel was right there!

"Uh, n-no," he hid his figure behind his back, embarrassed, "only aliens, no strange people," he thought for a moment about what he was doing right now, "A-are you an alien?"

There was a quick flash of dim light, and the imposing Jade Armoured Angel was replaced by its two halves, a white cat the size of Toru with big blue eyes, green stripy gloves and little purple bits on the end of its ears, and a woman who said, like what she had done just then was no big deal, "it's okay, I come in peace,"

"Hikari!" he exclaimed, suddenly unapprehensive about who he was talking to. She gave him a smile, but not like the smiles he usually got from her at the salon, this one was not quite so energetic. "Since when have you been an angel?"

Hikari's face puffed up in an obviously fake huff, "Are you trying to say that I wasn't an angel last time I saw you?"

Toru was saved from having to explain himself, or fake making her feel better, by a long wail from the crib.

The cat and the Flower Punk Girl shared a look of surprise.

"I didn't do anything," Toru quickly explained, "I just looked in and the egg hatched, and I tried to keep it happy, but then I started talking to you and, and, and…"

"That's okay," said Hikari, instantly calming Toru down with her words, and instantly calming the ball of fluff down with her actions, as she reached into the basket and pulled it out, "This little guy is Botamon,"

"Ba-buu," it said in agreement.

"Oh, and this is my better half, Gatomon," she said, as the cat Hikari was motioning to leapt onto the top of the basket and peered into the vacated crib. Toru followed its gaze and saw a small lump of metal in the vague shape of a fat plus sign.

"Hikari," the cat said, not paying Toru even a little bit of attention, "come and look at this,"

"Huh?" she said, as she joined Toru and Gatomon, peering into the basket – and then, when she saw the lump of metal, said "Oh," like she was disappointed.

"What?" said Flower Punk Girl, "What's in there?"

Toru realised that the four of them were blocking Flower Punk Girl's view of the thing that Botamon had been sitting on when it hatched and had probably been the reason the fluffball had started to cry.

So Toru quickly picked up the metal thing and held it out for her to see.

Only, as soon as he did so a burst of light shot out from the object and Botamon started to glow.

Startled, Toru dropped the object as he stumbled backwards and tripped onto the ground with a thud. Both the flash of light and the glow from the ball of fluff disappeared as quickly as they had arrived.

"W–what was…" he started to say before he noticed everyone staring at him, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to do that,"

Hikari was the first to break out of her shock. She put Botamon on the ground and went over to pick up what Toru had dropped.

"That's okay," she said as she then helped him up from the ground and dusted him off, "We weren't worried about you,"

She knelt down and got as close to eye level with him as she could, gently affixing the metal thing to the strap of his backpack. He felt like he was being given a medal.

"There's lots of things we're going to need to tell you, Toru, and I know you're not going to like all of it. But right now, I want you to know that I am sorry that you've been caught up in all this. I don't know what Destiny is about to throw at us, but whatever it might be I know you are the bravest, fairest and most awesome-est little boy for the job,"

Toru blushed.

"Now," she said, looking pointedly at the fist clenching his action figure, "let's play some Astronauts and Aliens,"


Eventually, after what felt like an eternity of make-believe, the child tired.

Hikari led him away to a cave just outside Priory Village – her cave – and told him to rest.

His partner, a newly evolved Wanyamon, curled up next to him on the silken bag of hay she called a mattress.

Exhausted, the little boy yawned a thankyou to her for playing with him.

"Makes not seeing Mama for a while not feel so bad,"

And then he was asleep.

"Perceptive kid," she remarked to her Gato as she left the boy and his partner to their dreams.

Long stretches of the last year had been spent inside each other's heads as Ophanimon. Gatomon knew what Hikari was not saying.

"I'll protect him," her Gato told her softly, "don't keep the others waiting,"

As Hikari made her way along the edge of the escarpment that housed her modest new home, the insectoid figure that had sent Toru scurrying behind BanchoLillymon for protection, buzzed down from the night sky to walk beside her.

"Evening BanchoStingmon…"

"Lady Hikari of the Holy Fusion, saviour of –"

"Look Bee-Ess," she scolded with a roll of her eyes, "I know I've told you this before, but if you insist on using these unnecessary titles you should save them for the official gatherings, not times like this when we're alone,"

"Sorry Hikari, it's just been quite a while since I've seen you separated like this,"

There was a lot of truth to this statement. By her own hazy calculations it had been a couple of months since she last split from her divine evolution – by far the longest period they had spent merged. But even so, it had not passed her notice that when she and her Gato were apart, BanchoStingmon tended to avoid them.

"It's not easy for us either," she said, almost without realising it, "every time we split I have to remember what it's like to be me again, what it's like to not be her, and try to forget how cold my other half's tactical mind can be," she paused, conscious of who she was speaking to, "Sorry, I know you'd love the option, but sometimes I think it would just be simpler if we couldn't go back to our separate identities, and then Gato and I could move forward as one and not have to constantly re-learn what it's like to be ourselves, or Ophanimon for that matter,"

"At least the sight of you doesn't send young children running," BanchoStingmon replied.

She put her arm around her insectoid guardian, "Toru will come around sooner than you think," she soothed with sincerity, "You two will be thick as thieves by the end of the week,"

She let her arm fall as they reached their destination, an opening in the rock that led to a much larger cavern than her new home. A cavern in which a table of sorts had been fashioned out of the rock, with room to fit twelve Digimon, and a couple of humans if required, around its edge.

"Before we go in," she said, all business now, "is the appearance of the kid the only matter up for discussion?"

"No my lady, the scouting efforts of Agumon and the others have once again found no trace of Barbamon in this world. Biyomon and Patamon would like to put forward that we should stop searching for the Demon Lord and focus our attention on rebuilding. Veemon and Eucalyptus will likely object, and in light of BanchoLillymon and I's discovery, I am likely to take their side,"

Hikari thought on BanchoStingmon's words. Until today she had been sympathetic to the calls from certain corners to accept victory and take the disappearance of the Lord of Greed to mean that it was no longer a threat. But the mere existence of Toru and his newly discovered partner had changed all that.

It was Destiny chiding her for only doing half the job.

"I had hoped that what we had done over the past year had ended things for good, BanchoStingmon," she sighed, "I was beginning to think that once Gatomon and I restored the world to its former glory, we'd all be able to kick back and enjoy ourselves for a change,"

She took a step inside the cave, unsure if she was ready to face her friends and tell them the troubling news, muttering a final dejected aside to her trusted advisor as she entered.

"But I guess nothing ever really ends, does it ?"