Chapter 109: Time is Ticking Part 1

Hello there. I hope you're all well and that things are getting better where you are.

Many thanks to Sakura0410 and Gadget30thAnniversery for your reviews of the previous chapter. I really appreciate the feedback on the battle and how Tai's return to action went. It's also good to know that you liked it :D

Kari placed her clothes on the washing pile before she grabbed her lacy underwear off the bed, stepped into them and pulled them up. She and TK had just showered and were now getting ready to go to sleep after getting back from their patrols earlier. The couple were having an early night because they had a busy day ahead of them tomorrow. Both of them had to meet with Gennai in the morning to get some Piddomon to join their ranks for the coming battle against Dragomon.

Thankfully, their patrol had gone much more smoothly than Tai and Davis' patrol in Chiba had earlier. Kari and her team had taken out several groups successfully and had gotten plenty of readings on Dragomon's location. They'd managed to keep their distance from the powerful group roaming Tokyo too, which led to the Digidestined being certain that it was definitely Metalseadramon who had been chasing down Tai and Davis' team.

A sigh escaped Kari's lips as she picked up her loose-fitting nightshirt before she looked down at her baby bump. It was definitely noticeable and starting to grow quite quickly. The light energy being emitted by her daughter was getting stronger too, and Kari knew that her baby was getting bigger and bigger every day. The young mother-to-be slipped her arms into her shirt and pulled it down over her chest, over the bump in her belly and finally over her hips.

Kari made her way over to her bed and slid under the covers with TK. Her eyes glanced downwards once more and she knew that it was only a matter of time until she had to stop going out on patrols. She'd not said anything yet but she doubted that she'd still be ok to keep going on missions with the others soon. Kari guessed that it might only be a matter of weeks or a month before she had to stop and prioritise her baby's safety.

TK gently placed his hand on her baby bump, making her blink before she glanced over at him. He gave her a smile as he carefully ran his hand over where their daughter was growing inside Kari. "She's starting to get big, and so are you too, Little One."

Kari scoffed and playfully clipped him on the back of his head before she laughed with him. "I hope that she doesn't end up as cheeky as her father."

The couple laughed again before closing the distance between them and shutting their eyes. Kari licked her lips in anticipation before parting them and closing the final gap. She pressed her lips up against her husband's and held them there for a few moments. The lovers slowly pulled back before opening their mouths a little wider and pushing forwards for more. They continued the kiss for a minute or so before finally pulling back.

Kari reopened her eyes and gazed into the sapphire pair looking back at her. Her lips turned upwards as she shifted closer to her husband so that they could settle down for the night. TK slipped his arm around her as they started sliding under the covers to go to sleep.

"Little One?" Patamon's voice made them stop and glance in his and Gatomon's direction. "Is that your daughter's name?"

Kari blinked several times as she stared at the orange and cream guinea pig, trying to process what he'd just said. She glanced at TK to make sure that he'd heard the same thing as she had. Laughter erupted from the couple and Kari couldn't control it. She couldn't believe that Patamon had mistaken what TK had said for their daughter's actual name.

"What?" The rookie Digimon asked as he glanced at Gatomon with a confused expression etched across his face. "That's what TK just called her, right?"

"I did call her that," TK chuckled as he rubbed his forehead. "It's not her name though. I just called her that because we haven't given her a name yet."

Kari managed to rein in her laughter for a moment. "It's kind of like a nickname."

"Human names are strange." Gatomon shrugged before she looked over at her partner from her and Patamon's bed. "It's so much easier with Digimon. We don't need to come up with new names each time a baby Digimon is born."

"That would be easy in that sense," TK mused as he chuckled again. "However, it's really difficult to single out a particular Guardromon amongst hundreds of them, for example. That's why having unique names is really helpful to humans."

"So, what have you decided to call your baby then?" Patamon asked as he scratched his head. "If Little One is a nickname, what's her real name going to be?"

Kari and TK glanced at each other once again. They'd not actually discussed the topic because everything that had been going on had kept the couple rather busy. Kari hadn't put too much thought into it if she was being honest. She kind of just thought that they'd probably wait until closer towards the time, but that moment was getting closer with every day. The young woman realised that they should probably start picking out names soon so that they were ready for when she did have their daughter.

"Well," TK began to give his partner an answer. "She'll have my surname, so she'll be a Takaishi, like me and Kari. Like I've explained to you before, family names get passed down like that in most cases. Although, there are some exceptions, like with me and my dad because my parents got divorced. As for her given name though, I haven't put much thought into it, to be honest."

"Me neither." Kari rubbed the back of her head. "I've not had much chance to think about it with everything going on."

"I guess that we should start coming up with names soon, huh?" TK smiled as he reached across and rubbed his wife's baby bump once again. "We've got a while before she arrives, but we should come up with a name that we both like soon so that we're not scrambling for a name closer to when she's born."

Kari nodded and smiled back as she placed her hand over his. "Yeah, definitely. I'll have a think about names and I'll let you know what I come up with."

TK gave her a nod back. "I will too. I'm sure we'll come up with a good name over the next few months that we both like."

"How about Takerumon?" Patamon asked before he placed his paw to his chin. "Although, your daughter is a girl, so maybe her name should be Hikarimon."

Kari burst out into laughter once more, and she could hear her husband chuckling along with her. Even Gatomon seemed to find that rather funny as she put her paw on Patamon's head and gave him a pat. It made sense though that their Digimon didn't really understand how human babies were named because, after all, the whole process that led to new Digimon being born and how they were named was completely different.

"Rejected," Gatomon chuckled. "Even I can tell you that those are bad names."

"Aww. I thought it was a good one," Patamon sighed. "How about Hikaru then? That mixes both of their names and I've heard someone call someone else that before."

"That's not a bad suggestion and it's a name that can be given to a girl." TK rubbed his chin. "It can also be a boy's name too."

Kari giggled. "It's not exactly the most original or imaginative name though, merging our names like that."

"It would follow on from your name though because your name and Hikaru have similar meanings." Her husband gave her a wink. "It's not as bad as you think."

"This is why we're going to have to think about it." She gave him another playful clip across the back of his head. "Let's not just use the first name that comes to mind."

"I know." TK nodded again as his smile grew. "I just like the way it ties into your name. After all, you have a beautiful name and I'd like our daughter to have a similarly beautiful name too."

"And on that note, it's time for us to sleep before you start coming up with other variations on my name for our daughter to have," Kari sighed as she rolled her eyes and slipped under the covers. She reached over and flicked her light out before snuggling up to her husband. "Goodnight."

Tai glanced around the living area of the Digidestineds' dorms and at those in the room with him. He was sitting on the sofa with Noriko next to him and their arms were around one another. Sora and Matt were hugging on the other sofa whilst Keiko was sitting on Davis' lap on one of the chairs. Cody and Hiroshi had a chair each and neither seemed to be doing much either. Their Digimon were with them as well, watching the TV as it provided the only sound in the room. They'd decided to come here after their dinner that followed their debriefing and patrols earlier.

This wasn't what Tai had been hoping for when he had returned to action. He'd hoped that his first battle back would have lifted the Digidestineds' spirits and helped drive them on further. However, the exact opposite had happened after the Megaseadramon and Seadramon had messed up their ambush on the coastline. They'd slowed them down sufficiently to make it possible for Metalseadramon to intercept them if they'd stayed any longer than they had.

Going back out on patrols had made a few things abundantly clear to Tai. The first was that not much had really changed since he last went on a patrol. Despite all of their best efforts, Dragomon and Metalseadramon were still occupying Tokyo and the surrounding areas. Both demonic monsters were still a major threat to the rest of Japan and the whole world, and Tai guessed that it might only be a matter of time before they would try to conquer more land. They were, after all, evil monsters who wanted to control everything that they set their eyes on.

The second thing that was very clear to Tai was that Metalseadramon was beginning to turn the tables on them again. Their ambushes had been going very well until recently, but now things weren't going so smoothly. Metalseadramon discovering some way of finding them through their barriers was a serious issue and it meant that his presence alone could cause all kinds of problems. Today had been the first time that the Chosen had been forced to leave an ambush early, which didn't sit well with Tai.

Both of those points combined had led to the final thing running through the young man's mind. They both suggested that it might be best to put their plans to reclaim Tokyo into place sooner rather than later. Tai felt like it would only be a matter of time until Metalseadramon or Dragomon did something that would change the tide in their favour and put the Digidestined on the back foot.

"This is too quiet," Davis sighed, breaking the silence as he stretched before slipping his arms back around Keiko. "Everyone needs to cheer up."

Cody looked up from his D-Terminal. "What do you mean, Davis?"

"Everyone's heads are down and we're all quiet," the younger of the goggle-heads pointed out. "It's very clear that certain people here are feeling down about what happened earlier."

Tai shared a glanced with Noriko and he guessed that his girlfriend was probably having similar thoughts to his about the earlier battle. He also could tell that she realised that Davis was right and that they were rather down at that moment. The young man ran his hand through his hair before scratching the back of his head.

He felt Noriko shuffling next to him and he noticed that her hand was on the back of her head too. A smile spread across Tai's lips as he realised that his girlfriend had mirrored his actions and that it was probably unintentional. She, like him, was probably thinking of some way of trying to get the groups' morale back up now that Davis had pointed it out.

"He has a point," Sora sighed as she glanced down. "Everyone was so quiet during the debriefing earlier."

"Right." Davis nodded. "Ok, things didn't go well today and we had that near miss with Metalseadramon too. However, we still managed to get several ambushes done and got plenty of readings on where Dragomon is. Also, those of you who were part of the other team didn't have any problems at all. When we look at it this way, the glass is still nearly full."

Matt chuckled. "You do have a good point. Everything went well for us and you still managed to get things done even if you did have to return to base earlier than you would have liked."

"Yeah, you're right Davis." Tai nodded as he glanced over at his friend. "We did manage to still do a lot of good work today despite what happened. We'll still be able to go out on patrols tomorrow and do the same again."

Tai paused for a moment to take a deep breath as he thought about whether he should say more and bring up what he'd been thinking about. "There are just a few things that became clear while I was out on that patrol though.

Davis' eyebrows rose. "Like what?"

"The ambushes are good but they're only making small dents in Dragomon's forces. He's still got a huge number of Deep Ones and evil Digimon here, which will take us ages to defeat doing ambushes alone," Tai sighed and scratched his head once more. "Plus, Metalseadramon is becoming more and more of a problem again. He can find us now and I think that it might only be a matter of time before he creates even more issues for us."

"On top of that, we don't know what Dragomon is planning," Noriko added as she glanced at her boyfriend. "They might decide to try and takeover more of Japan. That would really put us on the backfoot and give us all kinds of problems."

Tai gave her a nod. "Right. It would really put us on the backfoot and probably spread us too thin to be able to stop them at the moment."

"What about the Digimon that are willing to help us?" Hiroshi asked as he glanced over at their leader. "They would be willing to help us out, right?"

"Yeah, they would," the wild-haired teen nodded again. "However, we would have to get them organised very quickly and I'm not sure that we would be able to do that in time. Dragomon and Metalseadramon would probably have taken a huge part of Japan and killed hundreds of thousands of people, or maybe millions, before we could get our Digimon friends into suitable positions."

"Then we take the fight to them before they can do something like that," Davis stated matter-of-factly as he clenched his fist. "Let's speed up our plans to kick them out of Tokyo."

"Do we have enough Digimon helping us to do that yet?" Sora asked as she glanced between the two goggle-heads. "I know we have a lot but Gennai is still trying to get more support for us."

Tai stroked his chin for a moment. "We might have enough to fight back against Dragomon and his army. However, the more help we get, the easier it will be. We still might be outnumbered regardless of how many Digimon that we can get to help us out."

"It's a tough decision," Matt sighed as he leaned back on the sofa. "If we do this too quickly, things might not go as planned or we might not have enough Digimon to push back Dragomon's army. However, if we leave things too long, it could make it much more difficult for us, especially if Metalseadramon or Dragomon put whatever plans they might have into action. Either way, we can't take any risks because we all know what Metalseadramon is like."

Tai sighed as he glanced around at his friends. "It definitely is. It's something I'm thinking over though. One thing I'm certain of is that I definitely want to get things into place sooner rather than later. Thankfully, Kari and TK are going to try and get more Digimon to help us over the coming days, so that might make this decision a lot easier."

He ran his hand through his hair again as he stared at the floor. Tai had a tough choice to make and he knew that it was probably one that he was going to have to make soon. At least he had the support of all of the Digidestined and their Digimon, and they'd help him make the right choice. He was sure of that.

Kari took in a deep breath, enjoying the fresh Digital World air as she did so. She stretched before glancing to her left at TK. Her husband gave her a smile before he took her hand in his and they, along with Patamon and Gatomon, made their way along the path towards where they were going to meet Gennai.

A gust of wind made Kari shiver a little and she was glad that she'd brought her coat with her. They were high up in a mountain range, which was where the Piddomon lived that Gennai was wanting them to meet. Despite the chill from the altitude, it was still a nice day and the sun was out, making Kari glad that she wasn't in the base this morning.

TK gave her hand a gentle squeeze. "Are you ok?"

"Yeah." She gave him a nod. "It's just a bit cold up here."

Kari felt her husband release her hand before he stepped closer to her. TK slipped his arm around her waist and pulled her body against his. She returned the embrace as they slowly made their way up the rock path towards where Gennai planned to meet them.

This was the start of what could potentially be a long day for the couple because, if they were back in time, they would be leading their group on patrols around Tokyo. Even if they weren't back, Tai and Davis would be heading over to Chiba and performing their ambushes like normal. Kari hoped that nothing bad would happen to them and that their day would turn out better than yesterday had been for her friends.

"Hopefully this will be fairly quick," Gatomon spoke up as she walked out in front of the others. "The Piddomon that I've spoken to before have always been helpful. They're very respectful of other holy Digimon."

Patamon nodded. "Yeah. I remember them being friendly and I got along with them last time I spoke with some. It was a different group of Piddomon though in a different part of the Digiworld."

"I'm sure that these Piddomon will be just as welcoming," Kari replied and she also hoped that her words would be true. Having other angel Digimon on their side would make things a lot easier and they would be particularly effective against the Deep Ones, just like Angewomon and Magnaangemon were.

The group continued along the path, taking in the views as they made their way up the mountainside. After what Kari guessed was around five or so minutes, they turned a corner on the route and a familiar white-robed figure came into view with a Mekanorimon next to him. Standing to Gennai's other side was an angel Digimon that looked very similar to Angemon but with a few distinct differences.

Kari's eyes scanned over the Piddomon, picking out all of the more obvious differences between him and Angemon. The first very noticeable difference was that Piddomon only had two wings compared to Angemon's six, and the young woman knew that this was probably due to his rank within angel Digimon. The more wings an angel Digimon had, the higher its rank was, which meant that the eight wings of both Angewomon and Magnaangemon put them much further up the hierarchy compared to this Piddomon.

Another major difference that Kari spotted was that the Piddomon had pinkie-purple robes instead of Angemon's blue ones. The Piddomon also had a plain grey helmet and his staff was different too. There were a few other differences as well, but they weren't particular big ones.

"Hi Gennai," Kari called out to their friend as she waved at him. "How are you?"

"Hello my friends." He waved back. "I'm fine. How about you guys?"

The brunette teen replied with a smile. "We're good, thanks."

"I'm glad to hear it," Gennai replied before he gestured to the Digimon standing next to him. "This is Piddomon and he's one of the guards who will be accompanying us as we go and speak to his leader."

The Piddomon got down on one knee and bowed before them. "It is an honour to meet you, Chosen of Light and Chosen of Hope."

Kari, TK and their Digimon returned the bow before Kari replied for them as she lifted her head. "Thank you. It's good to meet you too."

"I can sense that Gennai was telling the truth about you both having a child," Piddomon added as he stood back up and smiled. "I see the prophecies are coming true and my leader will be most please to receive this news."

"It's definitely true." TK smiled as he and Kari both placed their hands over where their daughter was inside Kari. "We're going to have a baby girl in five months time. However, we first have to fight Dragomon and Metalseadramon, and we need your and your friends' help with that."

"Indeed. Gennai has also explained this to me." Piddomon took to the air and gestured up to the part of the mountain that was surrounded by a cloud. "Come this way and I will take you to our leader. Do you need someone to fly you up there?"

Kari shook her head. "No, we can fly up there ourselves. Right, Gatomon?"

"Yep," the feline Digimon gave her a nod as Kari unclipped her digivice and pointed it in her direction. "Gatomon digivolve to Angewomon!"

"Patamon digivolve to Angemon!"

Both angels emerged from the light of digivolution and picked up their partners. Gennai climbed into his Mekanorimon and took to the air too. Piddomon led the way as they flew up into the clouds and Kari, once again, hoped that this would go smoothly. After all, it had been a positive start so far.

Having Patamon and Gatomon digivolve to Angemon and Angewomon was kind of a show of power at the end there, so to say. Kari guessed that the Piddomon know of the different ranks there are in angel Digimon, so she thought that having their Digimon digivolve to those forms might help them out. It would be better than them armour digivolving, like they could have.

The first scene of this chapter was a lot of fun to write and I hope it was a lot of fun to read too. I always enjoy writing scenes like that, and Patamon was perfect for it because of the way he misunderstood what TK was saying.

I guess that this paragraph is a spoiler for the Digimon Adventure reboot, so skip it if you're some episodes behind. I'm kind of curious though what everyone thinks to Patamon and Gatomon reaching those mega forms in that battle. Personally, I like it and I've always been a fan of Gatomon and Patamon having two mega forms instead of just the one, especially so in Gatomon's case. It shows that they're special and different from the others.

As normal, please can you let me know your thoughts on these things and the chapter as a whole by posting a review? :D

Stay well and stay safe :D