- Dagomon's Gift -

Kari flexed her claws thoughtfully. Quagsire's personal training had given her the chance to go to Alpha 45 again to get herself a Dark typed claw attack, and she was determined to use that knowledge to develop a version that used the massive amount of Light energy she had. So far that wasn't going too well, her human form couldn't use energy as easily as her digimon form, and her BackGatomon shape did not easily interact with that energy as easily as her natural one.

"Joe is sure they've fixed the problems with trying that stuff, right?" Tai asked her. "Because Mimi just asked me a complicated chemistry question yesterday and I had to get Izzy to help her instead, and I'm not sure I want to know what other problems this can cause."

"I'm trying to mess with that 'Light energy' I was apparently born with," Kari complained as she once again failed to draw more that a short lived shimmer of that power. "So it is the one thing that shouldn't do anything new to me."

"At least tell me you aren't going to be trying it out in the digimon world until you have it down," Tai pleaded a bit tiredly. "I'm already worried enough by Quagsire's reports." So far they had only ran one actual undersea attack, on an Upload base just offshore that wasn't being used for much but still worked as a test of their new forms. It had gone well overall, but the difference in fighting underwater was big enough that everyone was glad they had time to train first.

"She is a bit of a worry wart," Gatomon noted. "Out of all the DSS people she seems the most concerned with how things should be instead of how they are."

"Including how she doesn't like being included in 'people' very much," Kari added with a giggle. "I think how we turn into digimon personally offends her."

"I think I like her then," her brother dryly replied. "Please, be careful," he added softly. "I don't even want to bring up all the close calls that 'light energy' only seems to have made worse, but I can't help but worry about those happening again."

"Did you consider that I might be trying to use the stuff so it could make up for all of that?" Kari said darkly as she tried to grasp it again. "Because I know that it got me into some big messes, and it should be getting me out of more." The thoughts and actions were probably a bit too Dark for such a power, but knowing it had been there the whole time was not entirely comfortable. "I don't like that my brand new Darkness comes easily when my Light only seems to work for other creatures."

"I might be able to help with that," Wizardmon cut in. "Quite a bit of my own training works on altering energies. I should have time to help even while I work on that new project Giratina gave me."

"Are we sure that project is safe?" Agumon asked now that the conversation had opened up a bit. "Because I know he said that Ghosts in his world travel between worlds all the time, but I'm not sure if it is really the same thing."

"If he can we need it," Tai said, earning a now familiar glare from their older sister. "Izzy thinks he can replace any of the teleportation gear in case we're cut off from the pokemon world, but another option to get to places will help a lot." He then sighed loudly. "But I want us all to be careful. I'm in charge, which means when I let you guys do something it is my fault when that something goes wrong."


School was strange anymore, Kari thought absently as she walked towards the building. The teachers knew about the digimon world's problem and they were even helping out, but there was a concern in their eyes now that worried her. It always came down to the same core issue, the adults that knew about it wanted to help, but there really wasn't any way for them to do anything. Her brothers and the other older Digidestined were trying to find something, but so far the most that it seemed the adults could do was cover for them.

As she passed along the river she thought about how she was actually a little worried that some of them might think becoming monsters would somehow help. Cody's mother had her own goals in mind with that, but everyone else's parents had their own lives to deal with, and couldn't just take time out to join in their training. Even if they could Sneasel was only mostly catching up with being able to sort of help, it was still going too slowly for any of them to think the pokemon going into a serious battle was safe, and he was raised as a monster with plenty of time to train.

Then she felt a familiar tugging sensation, the same kind that she associated with a direct teleportation system having trouble getting a lock on her. The feeling was unfortunately common in the digimon world, where Upload's blocks prevented most of those methods from working well, but she had never experienced it in the human world before. She quickly braced herself and attempted a rough method to disrupt such locks that Shawn had suggested they learn.

"Kari?" T.K. asked from behind her.

"Did you feel that?" she asked quickly as she set her hand on the two pokeballs she was now wearing on a belt. "The lock attempt?"

"No," he replied darkly and quickly got out his D-Terminal. "I'll send out an alert."

She nodded at that, and was on edge the rest of the day. Justifiably, as she was hit two more times before school was out, and each was stronger than the last. There was also a streak of Darkness to the link that was odd. It didn't feel entirely bad, but the way it rippled her Light probably would be much worse if she didn't already have some Darkness of her own. In fact there were a few disruptions over the past couple of days that might have been far weaker attempts that would have been unpleasant without it.

"Is it still happening?" Davis asked quietly near the end of the day. "Izzy says he can't track whatever it is," the field team leader said. "DSS hasn't gotten back to us yet, so it s probably some new problem."

"Last one was a while ago, but I'm fairly sure this has been going on for days," she warned him. "It is getting stronger, so we might need to start planning how to get me back from wherever this is going."

"Wasn't Wizardmon working on something like that?" Davis suggested. "I'll see if we can get Giratina to help. Keep safe."

"Make sure T.K. has something to do," Kari added as they moved to leave. "You know how protective he is." The Digidestined of Hope had been all but hovering over her during the day, and she was fairly sure that he was only elsewhere at the moment because he had already left to prepare things with her brother.

"Who do you think I was going to send after Giratina?" the young leader joked. "That, that should work, right?" he then asked nervously.


"Izzy, please tell me we have figured out who is trying to kidnap my sister," Tai demanded as soon as he arrived in their base from school. The only reason he had not skipped out was that he personally couldn't do anything about this kind of problem.

"I'm fairly sure that the excuse my teacher used to get me here this morning doesn't make any sense," the Digidestined of Knowledge complained instead of answering. "Am I getting any new recruits? Because at this point I'm considering getting DSS to put up a job posting in their world just so we have some staff around during the day, so that we don't have to miss even more school."

"Izzy," Tai growled, although not quite as literally as was now possible for, in his opinion, too much of his team.

"We can't track whoever is making the attempts, and this place doesn't have the right gear for me to track her if she goes to a world we haven't been before. Which means any world that we can't track the attempts from, so at least we know that we will need help to find her," the genius replied bluntly and motioned for Tai to follow him towards the expanded control setup they had for their own teleporters. "DSS is aware, and last I heard T.K. is heading over to be on hand in case she's taken today."

"So we're going to lose track of my sister when somebody kidnaps her?" the leader of their group harshly questioned.

"DSS says that pokeballs should stick with her from what we do know about it, so she'll have Gatomon and Wizardmon," Izzy clarified. "They also should be able to locate her, but they are a lot 'farther' from here so that might take longer than if I had the equipment and people to help."

"'And people'? What would you need help with?" Tai questioned, still harsh but with a bit more thoughtful of a tone.

"Extra eyes mostly. I could probably make do with some of the refugee digimon, but digimon have odd ideas about how to focus on a task. They are either too focused or nowhere near enough," Izzy explained. "I could probably get Matt's band to do it if you give into his silly request too."

"Please don't bring things like that up, I've already messed up enough by saying things for all of us today," Tai sighed as he deflated and leaned against the nearby computer system.


Next to her Gatomon glared at the empty beach in the dark and dismal world they had just landed in roughly. "Kari, please tell me you still have all of our other stuff," the cat monster complained.

Kari grumbled about losing her backpack, and tried to place the feeling she got from the world around the three of them. She had been nearly home at the time, and hoped that Davis had grabbed her stuff for her since he was there just in case of this exact problem. "I have the emergency supplies, including the two Artificial Reliabilities just in case we ended up in the water, but our D-Terminal isn't with us," she added to her sister's complaints. "Good news is that we're already next to an ocean of darkness." It felt massive, a great sea of Dark similar to her own tiny puddle, and that made her Light all the more concerning. It wasn't just a puddle or pool of Light, even calling it a pond would be too small, she had at least a lake of Light energy to contrast the Dark ocean around them.

"Dagomon's 'ocean of darkness'," Wizardmon specified nervously. "Kari, I'm not sure it is the best idea for me to leave the two of you here alone."

"Too bad. You can get out, which means you can lead someone else back, right?" Gatomon asked, and Kari was sure that the digimon was also in part using that as an excuse to get him out of danger.

"Giratina could definitely follow me, and I know enough about this world to get home from here," the Dark/Ghost pokemon admitted. "But-"

"Wizardmon," Kari cut him off. "Can Gazimon find us quickly?" The DSS digimon had known about 'Dagomon' before, so it was possible he might be better off staying with the two of them.

"He knows of Dagomon, but I'm not sure he knows how to get to the Dark Ocean," Wizardmon replied unhappily. "Alright, I'll try and head there. You two better stay safe while I'm gone though." He then proceeded to sort of fade out of sight, and Kari really hoped that his practice was further along than her own.

"So, do we swim with the fishes or break into the buildings?" Gatomon asked when it was clear he was gone.

"Do you know anything about where Dagomon would be?" Kari asked in response to figure out what way they didn't want to go. "I'm not sure we want to meet him."

"I didn't really hear much about the guy. Myotismon only complained that Dagomon didn't help with anything, and got mad about a couple of times that this guy made things worse for the bastard," her sister replied and moved to make good on the suggestion to break into the nearby houses.

After a moment of consideration Kari used her grey pendent to turn into a BlackGatomon to match. "Maybe we should have waited to send Wizardmon off until he explained what he knew then," she joked and joined the other digimon in jumping the tall fence. "Oh. They aren't actually houses are they?"

"Nope," Gatomon sighed at the solid blocks of material that had walls of wood built up around them in the shape of houses. "Honestly, this looks like it was deliberately faked," the white cat said thoughtfully. "Which is a long way to go to trap a Digidestined."

"I don't think this is a trap for a Digidestined," Kari mentioned. The massive amount of Dark in the world actually made even her basic senses towards Light and Dark find a contrast that caused everything to stand out clearly. Gatomon was a good sized pool of Light, but otherwise there were only specks of it as far as she could sense. Specks that seemed to be held in deep pockets of Darkness. "I think he was after my Light."

Gatomon tensed at that statement. "Do you really have that much?" the other digimon asked, and Kari wondered if her earlier thoughts would make sense to her sister. "I mean, I know it is enough to get me to Ultimate, but so much that this Dagomon would come after you?"

"Gatomon, I'm pretty sure I could easily destroy this entire fake town if I could just manage to get my Light to do what I want," she said after a moment, and considered how the Dark energies seemed to seep through everything here. Then she froze at her own statement. "Oh. I wonder if that's what Shawn felt when he came to my world."

"He can control his energy," Gatomon said, but she also looked at the area more cautiously. "And that would mean this doesn't make sense. Dagomon already rules this place, why would he want someone who could destroy his stuff?"


Wizardmon rushed through the space between worlds. Giratina said that it looked different depending on who or what you were, and quite obviously had not explained what it looked like to the Legendary pokemon himself. For Wizardmon it was just a massive void filled with grey mist, and the worlds were surrounded by a variety of barriers.

The pokemon world had a large black wall that greatly resembled Giratina's wing/claws, the digimon world had a red polygonal shell that clearly was Upload's barriers, and the human world had simple stone that he was still inspecting to identify. The Dark Ocean by contrast had nearly nothing, just a thin skin of water that clearly would let anyone in easily. It was actually rather frightening to see given what horrors could come to a person from ending up in Dagomon's world.

He really did not want to leave the girls there, but they were right that there wasn't anyone else who could go for help, or any guarantee that someone else could find them. He didn't think that they would be in mortal danger, but there were too many ways that they could be changed by the trip. Given his current existence he felt that he had some idea how bad that could get, as coming back from the dead changed him in ways that could be overlooked, but still had great impact.

His ability to try and find the misty paths he could use to slip between worlds was one of those skills. While the scattered Ghost pokemon he could already spot did hint that he was getting close to the world he could find the easiest, there was the downside that other Ghosts tended to like to explore to find places that weren't as prepared for their capabilities.

"Hey there, you're an odd one," a fat mummy-like creature said as he tried to spot the pokemon world. "Like a Mismagius with legs. Are you rushing because you're headed anywhere in particular, or just to run?"

"My trainer got taken to another world, and I'm trying to go for help," the former digimon explained quickly, and the half joking attitude of the other Ghost vanished.

"You don't know where you're coming from?" the mummy monster questioned sharply. "Time might work against you then. Who are you trying to find?"

Wizardmon did not like the implications, but at the same time who he was after should help. "I have been training with Giratina himself on how to do this," he told the other pokemon, who floated back at that declaration.

"There you are," the massive Legendary Ghost/Dragon said suddenly from next to them, as if simply speaking his name had called him. "I've been looking for you for at least an hour now."


Kari was less sure about what exactly was happening with each moment. The two of them had just found an out of place cave in the wall of a cliff, and what it felt like was a large pocket of that same Darkness that was guarding the specks of Light she could sense. Big enough for her to squeeze inside, but not nearly large enough to actually contain her Light entirely. Despite that she suspected it was made to do just that by someone who underestimated how much she had.

"Kari, this is a trap in the trap," Gatomon hissed at her as they followed the cavern towards the first sounds other than waves they had heard.

"No, this is the real trap," she corrected her sister quietly. "I don't think that Dagomon was the one who brought us here anymore." She then deliberately stopped explaining as they spotted the creatures that littered the cave.

"Help us," the fish-like monsters, monsters that Kari was quite sure were not digimon, said feebly. Which was in contrast to the solid ease their Dark energy betrayed to her.

What followed was a stream of what were clearly lies about how they had been captured by the Digimon Emperor, but ones she knew would look true if things were just a bit different. The dual-banded Dark Rings on the monsters looked like the Emperor's work, but those specific Rings were rare even if they were stronger, and the Emperor did not just use them on everyone. The subtler lies were about their 'master' Dagomon and her own Light, and those she could only tell because of her own experiments with Darkness.

"Let's get out of this cave," she suggested after they explained their take on things, while she could see that Gatomon was one wrong move away from attacking the monsters.

"We cannot," the one that was speaking the most told her as it held up the fake Dark Ring. "These prevent us from reaching our master."

Kari did not want to collapse the tunnel on them by breaking the Darkness that was still clearly trying in vain to contain her, but she also wanted to make clear to these monsters that she wasn't actually fooled. So, she tried the thing she had been working on for a while, only instead of going for pure Light she drew what she could alongside her Darkness to her claws. The result was a pale grey series of slashes that trivially cut through the band on the monster's arm, and in doing so disrupted his form.

The now much larger creature of shifting Dark material stumbled back, and then all of the others joined him in outright fleeing from her deeper into the tunnel. The sound outside was more important, as the deep Dark rumble that echoed across what felt like the entire world had clearly sensed what she had just done. The pair of cat digimon quickly exited the cave to determine what the noise was, and found a towering monster that was hard to describe. It was mostly human shaped with massive bat wings, but its face was covered in a mass of shifting tentacles, and the whole body was made out of the same shifting darkness that appeared to include geometry that didn't quite work right.

Another roar echoed out as they came into view, but this one came across like the creature was speaking, just in a way that was not normal words. "Light and Dark at once?" it seemed to ask with what felt like massive interest. "Familiar Dark but unremembered creature."

"Dagomon?" Kari asked aloud, and ignored her sister's angry glare. "Ruler of this world?"

"Correct, Sea of Light," Dagomon responded with another deep rumble. "There are strands of my Darkness in your sea," he noted with that same interest and leaned in a bit closer. Only far enough to come to the edge of her Light, and now that he pointed it out she could see what he meant. Her Dark energy had collected into strands running through her Light.

"Kari, what the hell are you doing?" Gatomon hissed quietly.

"Trying talking to see if that keeps him occupied," she hissed back at the other digimon.

"He's talking?" the white cat asked with surprise, and Kari suddenly worried about why her sister apparently couldn't understand Dagomon. "Alright, then try and keep him talking."

"Where did Dark get?" the world's owner rumbled in question, although it wasn't entirely clear what he was asking. His 'voice' was still rather unusual, and now clearly not a language she should have known. "Remember human child given that Dark, you not human." He looked over to the water's edge for a moment.

Kari considered her options for a moment. "I am normally a human, but I was turned into a digimon before," she cautiously admitted, and used the pendent to become human again. "I evolved with a Digivice that had some of your Dark in it to get mine."

"Gave self Darkness?" Dagomon chirped more than rumbled as he eagerly turned back towards her, and that seemed to be an excited and happy sound. "Light/Dark contrast powerful. Sea of Light can use, felt her do."

Kari nodded, although apparently he was now too distracted by that idea for her to try and interrogate him about the Digimon Emperor. "I am working on using both," she hedged. "My digimon form uses the Dark energy easily, but I'm having some difficulty with the Light," she added before fully considering what she had heard about her conversation partner.

"See issue," Dagomon chirped helpfully and moved a limb closer. "Is block between forms. Dark some separate from Light by block. Can break easy!" Then a sharp pain shot through her body, and she felt her form switch.

Then Kari switched it back again with a hint of embarrassment at not keeping them stable, and then frowned at the sensation. It was almost like being able to change between digimon and human was unusual, and that did not make sense to her. She tried to remember the last time she had done so to compare, but with increasing worry she realized that she could instead remember having had a clear distinction between her forms. "What did you just do?" she asked Dagomon sharply.

"Broke the block," he said again. "Block between human and digimon." Kari considered how that sounded fine, but she was fairly sure from her memories that he had also just done something to her mind.

"Kari, what exactly is going on?" Gatomon asked with a bit of fright.

"I accidentally asked him for help with my Light," she whispered. "He-" She paused to consider how to word this. "made it so I can transform myself."

"I really wish that wasn't a sensible enough problem for our group that I had to wonder what part you're keeping from me," Gatomon said. "Make sure not to convince him to do it to me."

"Does help?" Dagomon inquired, and with great reluctance Kari decided to try and continue her Light experimentation with this monster in order to keep him from doing anything else to them.


T.K. paced nervously, which made some rather loud sounds due to his armored hooves. "Just a moment longer," Giratina noted. "I wish to ensure that I can forge an easy path back for us as well as one there."

"T.K., calm down," Patamon, or rather the other Pegasusmon said to him. "Kari is tough enough to handle a bit longer, and she still has Gatomon with her."

"You also do not want to deal with the side effects of me taking you there improperly," the ghostly god told him. "From what Gazimon has told me of this 'Dagomon' he is much like a Legendary with their own world, which means that I can in fact directly compare the risks of following me improperly to the threat Kari is now facing. I suspect you want to meet her again while still being able to call yourself unquestionably alive, instead of becoming a Ghost type yourself."

T.K. stopped firmly with that warning. "She's at risk of something that bad?" he asked faintly.

"Gatomon is at risk," Wizardmon harshly replied. "Kari has already had some of Dagomon's Dark power, so she already has that problem."

"That doesn't necessarily work that way," Giratina cautioned them. "There is a reason I'm training you too. I'm not saying we don't need to hurry, just that we need to do things properly." The air in front of the Legendary rippled into a shadow suspended in mid air. "Stay close to me, and do not enter the world until I have opened the barrier. Regardless of how fragile it is," he specified strongly.

T.K. nodded at that and moved fairly close, and flexed his wings in anticipation. His brother/partner moved to the pokemon's other side, and Wizardmon fell in behind them. "Alright then. Kari, here we come," he said as the four of them moved towards the portal.


There was now a large crater instead of the fake village, and Kari kept her face neutral despite Dagomon's joyful laughter. While the inhabitants of the pokemon world might have found getting strong enough to cause such a thing funny, the laugh of the ruler of the Dark Ocean was one that reveled in the destruction caused as much as the power used. Kari really hoped that help would be here soon, preferably before the not-digimon started looking for live targets for their experiments.

She now had a great handle on how to tap into her Light, and she was fairly sure that was directly because the monster had broken a part of her. Great enough that her earlier worry about being able to compare to Shawn's worries of their world was proven true. The Light did not like Darkness, and shredded everything in this world unless mixed carefully. With careful mixing things got stronger, but they also were changed in ways she was worried they would move to working out next now that pure destruction had been determined.

"Kari, how do we stop this before he just happens to have you destroy his entire world?" Gatomon hissed sensibly.

Kari simply glared at her sister to be quiet, as she didn't even want to hint at the worse options out loud in case that made Dagomon realize they existed. So she was extremely glad to see a shadow form in mid air above the path just outside of the town, and then a bit worried when she spotted T.K. and Patamon alongside Wizardmon and Giratina in their Pegasusmon forms.

"More visitors-" Dagomon started to rumble, and then cut off as he spotted the Legendary pokemon. "Another great one?" he asked, and Kari suddenly had the horrible feeling that she was being included in that category alongside the two rulers of entire worlds.

"We are here to return Sea of Light to her world," Giratina rumbled back, and Kari realized that she might have just been hearing her name in that not-quite-language. At least, she hoped that was the case.

"Ah, good yes," the ruler of the Dark Ocean replied. "I cannot make gates. Little ones can, but do not understand how. Have tried to learn, but does not make sense." From Giratina's reaction Kari could easily see she wasn't the only one relieved by that statement, and it felt good to have someone else around who actually knew what the not-digimon was saying.

Kari wasted no time in jumping to T.K.'s equine back, and she could see Gatomon do much the same with Patamon's. "Get us out of here," she hissed quietly at him and hoped that the ruler of this world did not hear her.

"Return anytime, Sea of Light," Dagomon 'said' cheerfully as they quickly moved to leave through the still open hole in reality, and Kari did not intend to take him up on that offer.


Tai hoped he was ready for whatever had happened. The DSS Troubleshooter Lab was the easiest place for Giratina to get his sister home, so they had rushed all the way to another world just to make sure she was alright. His parents were understandably upset with the whole situation, but the fact that they also seemed to have been prepared for something like this shook him more than anything. Admittedly they had dealt with this exact problem before, albeit with a bit more context last time, but he still wasn't sure what to think about the fact they had plans on what to do when one of their family was kidnapped to another world.

"They're almost back," Jack said calmly. The owl monster could apparently use his own Ghost powers to track the progress of the Legendary pokemon, and as a result was giving them information on how it was going. "Given how little time they were in the 'Dark Ocean' I think it was a quick extraction."

There wasn't really time for a response, as a shadow opened in the air and two pegasi flew out rapidly, soon followed by a wizard and a god. Tai was able to spot the two cats located on the winged horses just before the black one leaped at him. Kari had returned to human form by the time she was hugging him, but figuring out how she did that so quickly and smoothly was secondary to the fact that his sister was shaking in his arms.

"Tai," she said, and then paused clearly unsure of what to say. "Dagomon made it so I'm not human anymore." She said, and the way she sounded a bit unsure about if she had been human before scared him, but he tried not to let it show. "I'm kind of both. I'm not sure how to put it," she continued growing more uncertain as she spoke, but calming slightly. "I don't think the same anymore, and I can just sort of change myself."

"She's been alright, but Dagomon was scary," Gatomon noted as she got down off of one of the Pegasusmon. "Mostly because he really seemed to want to help too much. To the point of destroying his own landscape to help Kari work out her abilities."

Tai looked at his two sisters quickly, and then said what he really needed to. "Is it really a big deal that you don't need the pendant to be a BlackGatomon anymore? Because you kind of were already doing that a lot," he joked, and got a smile out of Kari. "We'll figure this out, and as long as Dagomon isn't going to kidnap you to 'help' again I think it will be fine." He quickly looked back towards their parents, and found both of them nodding as they moved closer.

"Ha, he wasn't even the one who did it," Gatomon responded unhappily. "He had some rebels or something that wanted to use Kari against him."

"So, should we try and have a digimon day where we're all monsters?" their mother asked as she arrived at the group's edge. "Because if our kids are all doing it I suspect we should try too," she added to their dad, and Tai could only cringe at the idea.

"I don't really want to have a tail again," he grumbled, and was glad to hear a surprised laugh from his little sister. "But if it is a family thing I guess I can put up with it." It hadn't really been that bad, but for the sake of the joke he had to say it.