Kindred Pairs
by milesprower06
As soon as the elevator doors opened, Yamaki rushed forward towards the massive spherical hub that served as the Hypnos server cluster that kept watch on network activity. He went over to his workstation and grabbed his earpiece, putting it in and returning him to the loop of floor-wide communications.
"I'm here, Riley. Repeat, did you say eight?" He asked as he then turned to head up the two flights of steel steps up to the inside of the main dome, where threats that approached this side of the border between worlds could be tracked, and if necessary, dealt with.
"Confirmed, sir. Eight unique signatures. Five here in West Shinjuku. The other three are in Shibuya, Hongo, and we caught the eighth all the way over in Fukuoka."
"Shall I deploy countermeasures, sir?" Tally Onodera asked, typing away at her keypad as Yamki came to the top of the stairs. He quickly looked across the grid at the eight blinking signals across the domed screen.
"Negative. Tally, cross-reference all eight of those locations with the records of our 'extended personnel' files." Yamaki told her. A few moments passed, and eight transparent yellow squares appeared on the grid; almost all of them nearly on top of the bio-emerging signatures.
"Locations cross-referenced, sir. Matches on... All eight. It has to be them."
Kazu buried his face in his pillow as he attempted to block out the incessant beeping of his alarm clock. Unable to block it out, he raised his left arm up and out from the bed, and slammed it down on his alarm clock's snooze button. When that didn't stop it, he raised his hand on it and brought it down again, this time knocking the bedside clock off of the nightstand. When that still didn't stop the noise, it finally brought his head off of the pillow, being awakened enough to realize that the beeping hadn't moved down to the floor along with the clock.
'This is what I get for staying up until four in the morning playing Digimon World 3...' He internally groaned to himself.
When his vision cleared enough to see the shining light coming out of his D-Arc, from behind where the clock had been, his hazy brain finally put two and two together. Now he was up, getting to his hands and knees on his mattress and prepared to bolt off the bed... Were it not for his socks not having enough friction, only getting him halfway there as his front half slumped down to the carpet. Eh crawled quickly to get his legs off of his bed, and was on his feet at least, scrambling to his night stand and picking up his brown-ringed D-Arc. He pressed the left button, and the holographic compass came up. He realized it wasn't really necessary, because he saw the beam of light shoot out of the middle of his backyard,. Quickly throwing on pants and a shirt, he sprinted out of his bedroom and shot down the hallway to the kitchen, where the sliding glass door to the backyard was. He unlatched it, and slid it open, stepping out onto the brick patio, just in time to see the beam of light explode outward into a bright, foggy mist, making it look like time in his backyard had rewound from 11 AM to early morning.
He stepped forward into the self-illuminating fog, now considering getting himself a pair of tinted goggles as he brought his hands up to shield his eyes that had not quite adjusted to being outside yet, never mind the added light from the digital field.
"Guardromon?" Kazu asked, taking several more steps into the fog.
"Kazu?" The all-too-familiar voice replied.
"Guardromon, is it really you?"
Finally, through the slowly parting fog, came a silhouette somewhat smaller than he was anticipating.
"In a manner of speaking."
It wasn't the champion level he had grown accustomed to, but the voice was the same. Instead of the hulking dark red robot that had him by a few inches, it was a smaller, silver robot that stood about half his height. His head somewhat resembled that of a beetle, with beady red eyes. He had four arms and two legs. The legs and upper arms were virtually identical in their claw-like appearance, and the middle arms and shoulder pads looked like they would be perfectly at home in an electrical socket.
Kazu brought his digivice up and pressed the right button, activiating the analyzer.
"Kokuwamon. Rookie level..." Was as far as he got, before he ran forward, closing the rest of the distance, and slid down to his knees, nearly tackling him in a hug.
"Welcome back, buddy! Guess I don't need any of Kenta's cards after all."
Kokuwamon returned the embrace, albeit carefully, due to his mechanical nature.
"Oh, now I can show you my room. Come on!" The boy excitedly said as he turned and ran back inside, the last of the fog dissipating quickly. His mechanical rookie followed, and nearly lost his balanace as Kazu twisted on the balls of his socks, doing an about face as he entered the hallway, and went back into the kitchen, picking up the cordless phone, rapidly punching in a long-memorized phone number.
"Come on, pick up pick up pick up pick up pick up!"
Kenta headed down the sidewalk at what could only be considered a mad dash.
"Of all the times to go on a booster pack run!" He said to himself, his pink-ringed digivice beeping as it swung wildly from his belt loop. He shoved open the main gate to his apartment, and bolted up the exterior stone steps to the second floor. His keys were in one hand and digivice in the other as he got to his front door, unlocking it and stepping inside. He looked down at his digivice, confirming that the compass was pointing to his room.
"Kenta? Is that you? Kazu's been trying to get a hold of you, I told him you were out getting cards!" He barely heard his mom call from the living room as he rushed to his bedroom. He grabbed the doorknob, turned it, and it looked like a fog machine had been set up in there.
"MarineAngemon?" He asked, stepping inside, peering into the waist-high mist.
His eyes began to water as he saw the small silhouette float through the fog, before the pink head of the familiar Mega-level pixie popped through the fog, looking up at him with his dark green eyes.
"Kenta!" He exclaimed in that high-pitched, adorable voice.
Quivering, the boy dropped down to his knees, immersing himself up to his chest in the slowly dissipating fog, reaching out to his partner. With a couple flaps of his wings, MarineAngemon flew towards his partner into his outstretched hands. As he brought him in close, and the pixie nuzzled his chin, the emotions churning inside bubbled over, and he began crying. MarineAngemon saw this, and took a breath.
"Po!" He called, a blue transluscent heart-shaped bubble floating up and hitting Kenta in the nose before popping. When this didn't stop the waterworks, the pixie tilted his head quizzically.
"Kenta no happy?" He asked.
Kenta let out a short laugh through his tears.
"No, buddy. I'm very happy right now."
A/N: Well, after a week of near-daily chapter updates, clearly I've slowed down dramatically. I knew this wasn't going to be an ending I was going to push out as quickly as I did the rest of the story, as well as other commitments and ideas popping up at the same time. So this is the first part of it, with more to come later. As always, thanks for reading!
-milesprower06