Author's Note: Each chapter will focus on one of the Chosen as he/she deals with the situation. Because of that, the days/timeline kind of jumps around a bit. I'll post an updated timeline at the beginning of each chapter.

Day 1: Taichi is paralyzed following a battle in the Digital World. Jyou brings him to the hospital and has to explain to him his condition. Hikari and Sora arrive and Jyou takes them to see Taichi. Hikari faints and is brought to another waiting room. Sora almost faints and has to leave the room for air. When Yamato arrives, he sees Sora waiting outside Taichi's hospital room and they both enter. Hikari recovers and enters Taichi's room but breaks down. Takeru arrives sometime later and sees Hikari crying into Sora's shoulder. He tries to comfort her but then she leaves to talk with her parents in Taichi's room. She finds out Taichi is paralyzed.

Between Day 1 and 2: Hikari calls the Chosen and tells them that Taichi is paralyzed and will never walk again. On the first day home from the hospital, she overhears Taichi struggling to use the bath.

Day 2: Mimi visits Taichi and finds him depressed and angry. She decides to throw a picnic to cheer him up. Sora goes to the Yagami's apartment later and hides as Taichi leaves in his wheelchair. She feels guilty and goes up to the apartment to wait for him. She and Hikari chat and Taichi comes back with groceries. He won't let them help him and Sora notices how distant he is to Hikari. As she leaves, Taichi follows, saying that he needs to go to the electronics store. Sora tells him to stop being so cold and he, almost reluctantly, apologizes.

Day 3: Hikari sees Taichi using the exercise equipment their father bought for him. She tries to help him with breakfast, but he refuses. At the picnic, Taichi's still distant. He gets angry when the rest of the Chosen start talking about their future plans. Yamato calls Taichi a baby. Taichi leaves and Jyou explains why Yamato's insult was so offensive. Sora makes Yamato chase after Taichi to apologize. Hikari and Takeru chase after them. Hikari catches up to Taichi and he yells at her, saying that she's treating him like a baby too. Mimi doesn't understand why her picnic failed and Jyou told her that Taichi just needs to remember that his friends care for him.

Day 4: Mimi delivers a present of her homemade pork buns for Taichi, along with a note telling him that she's there for him. Taichi responds later via text to thank her. Yamato continues to try and apologize to Taichi, but Taichi doesn't answer any of his texts. Sora goes to talk to Taichi in person. She gets him to agree to talk to Yamato and then sees Taichi has thrown away his university brochures. He thinks his life is over and Sora argues, getting him to maybe go into politics. Takeru comes over and meets Taichi as he's getting the mail. Takeru gives Taichi some words of wisdom about not giving up hope before asking about Hikari. Taichi doesn't know where she is and Takeru notes that Taichi doesn't seem to care.

Day 5: Yamato finally gets through to Taichi and gets him to agree to a meeting at a local basketball court. Takeru talks to Hikari and they agree to hang out after school. As he waits to cross the street in front of the apartment, he sees the Yagami siblings leave without saying anything to each other. He starts to wonder about the tension between them. At the court, Yamato tries to convince Taichi that he can still do what he wants with his life. Taichi agrees to go into politics and, after some tough love from Yamato, starts to think about joining a physically disabled basketball team.

Day 6: Yamato calls Takeru early that morning and tells him about the game he had with Taichi the previous night. Takeru talks to Hikari at school later that day and she hints she didn't know. Takeru starts to suspect something is going on between the two of them. Hikari starts to convince herself that Taichi's distant because she's not able to help him as the other Chosen.

Between Days 6 and 7: Taichi joins a physically disabled basketball team and invites the Chosen to watch. He did not tell Hikari.

Day 7: Sora finds out that Taichi didn't tell Hikari about the game. She forces the two of them to talk to each other. Hikari apologizes for not being able to help Taichi and Taichi breaks down. He confesses that he pushed her away because of how awkward and humiliated he felt. The two make up.

Fragments

Chapter 7 of 8

Koshiro

Day 1

Koshiro had been up for most of the previous night working on one of his freelance projects and crashed early that evening. He missed Jyou's phone call but called the other boy right away the next morning when he listened to his voicemail. "We're going to meet up at the usual place. Hikari's going to give us an update."

Mimi, Takeru, Yamato, and Sora were already at their usual spot beneath the bridge. "I was stuck at a club meeting until late," Mimi explained. She glanced at Sora and Yamato. "I got Jyou's voicemail, but what happened to Taichi?"

"He was hurt really bad," Yamato said, "But we all left before we got any updates."

"Maybe it's not as bad as we think," Takeru suggested with a smile, "I mean, this is Taichi we're talking about."

"Yeah," Sora frowned, "I just hope everything's okay."

Jyou and Hikari arrived a moment later. Judging from the girl's face, everything was not okay.

"Taichi's paralyzed from the waist down. He's probably never going to walk again."

Mimi gasped and Koshiro felt the ground give way beneath him. He was frozen while Sora and Takeru rushed to Hikari's side as she broke down in tears.

Koshiro spent the rest of the afternoon reading online medical encyclopedias and articles. "Paraplegia after a severe injury is most likely the result of extensive damage to the spinal cord."

He already knew that. He rolled the scroll wheel on his mouse and continued reading from a lower point in the article. "...unlike other cells in the body, adult nerve cells in the spinal cord rarely repair themselves. The reasons why aren't entirely known, but treatments to encourage regeneration are on the horizon."

Koshiro scanned the rest of the article. A team of neurosurgeons in Germany was testing a treatment using electricity to 'jump start' the damaged nerves, while researchers in the United States were trying a process similar to cloning nerve cells from the person. Everything else was in the planning stages, but even if something was successful, it might be decades before it's common practice. He still printed out a list of clinical trials Taichi might want to try.

Koshiro sighed and rubbed his eyes. There had to be something he could do, something he could try. He tapped his finger on his desk before he loaded the simulation of the Digital World on his computer.

Day 2

Koshiro walked to school that morning, his mind full of medical theories and digital equations. He was only just aware of Mimi running up beside him. "Morning, Koshiro! I was just at Taichi and Hikari's."

"Oh, yeah?" he asked. His mind raced with numbers and programming language and so was only aware that Mimi had said something.

She shrugged. "Yeah, I've got too much to do later, but listen, I just had a great idea! I'm going to throw him a picnic."

"Oh, yeah, good," he muttered, "That's great…"

Mimi frowned at him and then licked her lips. "It's so hot right now. I think I'm gonna strip out of my clothes and walk naked."

Koshiro nodded. "Good for yo-" He blinked and twirled to face her. "What?"

She smirked. "Yeah, I figured that'd get your attention. What's with you?"

He rubbed his eyes. "Sorry. I've been thinking about Taichi a lot."

"Yeah, me too," she admitted, "Which is why we need to have this picnic. It'll be a great way to remind Taichi how much we all care about him."

"Yeah, I guess," he said. He figured Taichi would appreciate solutions more.

"You should go see him," Mimi urged, "Maybe after school."

Koshiro needed to go; Taichi was his friend. He suddenly thought of the two of them as ten-year-olds running through the Digital World. That brought the swirling mess of medical and digital equations to his mind again.

He'd go see Taichi when he had good news.

Day 3

Koshiro jumped to his feet as Taichi rolled himself down the hill in the park. Yamato and Sora followed after. Hikari gave a quick goodbye and ran after them with Takeru following.

He debated whether he should chase after them, but realized he didn't know what to say. He turned to regard Mimi, who was watching the others run after Taichi. She turned back to the food spread out on the picnic blankets. "I don't get it. This was supposed to make him feel better."

"It's not always that easy," Jyou said, "I think Taichi always held a lot more inside than we thought. He can't just be okay with everything all at once."

Mimi pouted a little. "Yeah...yeah, I guess. I just wanted to help. Isn't there anything he can do to get better?"

"There are always new treatments being developed, new drugs on the market, new surgeries, things like that but…" He shook his head, "But no, he'll never be better."

Koshiro hissed slightly. He grabbed his bookbag and thanked Mimi before heading home.

He could fix this. He needed to fix this.

Once he got home, he ran back to the mess of wires and circuit boards on his desk. It was close to midnight when he finally returned the soldering iron to the stand before moving in closer to inspect his work. The black wire was securely attached to the circuit board. He allowed himself a slight smile of satisfaction before he turned to his computer monitor. He typed, adding to the line of code on the screen before hitting enter. The CPU hummed and a smaller window appeared on the screen. The progress bar slowly started to move to the right.

He leaned back in his desk chair and rubbed the fatigue out of his eyes. Almost done. Should he call Taichi and tell him? He frowned. Or should he call to apologize?

It was his fault that Taichi lost it at the picnic. He should have seen how agitated Taichi was when everyone started talking about their career plans, should have known how it would make Taichi feel to start talking about the Digital World.

Maybe he would have known if he bothered to talk to him, but when Koshiro saw Taichi in that wheelchair, being pushed up the hill by Hikari, his blood just froze. He saw, again, his friend as an energetic child rather than the person he was now.

The computer chimed and the line of text and numbers on the monitor flashed green. Koshiro's slight smile grew into a grin. The code was accepted, now to make certain it worked.

He slid the circuit board into the long, rectangular plastic case. He placed his left hand beneath the middle of the bottom and moved it slowly up his arm to his shoulder. New lines of letters and numbers appeared on the monitor. Koshiro laughed aloud. "Success!"

Now it was time to see Taichi. His friend would be so excited.

Day 5

His friend was not.

"Why bother? Nothing's gonna help me."

Koshiro bit back his disappointment and watched Taichi start to wheel himself back to his room.

"It might help," Koshiro argued, "Don't you want to at least try?"

Taichi spun his chair back around "I've had doctors telling me since the accident there was nothing they could do and that I need to accept this. Sora and Takeru were both here earlier trying to tell me to basically just get over it and now you're trying to tell me that's a cure."

"Well, maybe. I mean, we're part of the Digital World as much as we are part of Earth, so we're not, well, normal."

Taichi hesitated and then threw up his arms. "Fine. Just get it over with."

Koshiro attached the scanner to his laptop and held it close to Taichi's body, running it down from the top of his head to his feet. He checked the monitor; lines of green text appeared against the black background. He typed a set of commands and then nodded. "Okay, got it."

There were two sets of green numbers and letters on the screen. Koshiro pointed to the set on the left. "This is you as you appear in the Digital World. It's a digitized version of yourself presented in data. It's stored on your digivice." He pointed to the right. "This is the data I just scanned." He scrolled down until reaching a set of numbers and letters in red. "This is the damaged part of your data."

Taichi blinked. "You mean that's my injury?"

Koshiro nodded. "Yes. I'm hoping that I can take the good part of your earlier data and replace the bad with it."

"And then what?"

"I'm hoping your digivice will load that data and…" Unsure of how to say it, he just trailed off. "You know."

Taichi stared at the monitor. Koshiro was not, as he admitted to himself, particularly good at reading people; yet, he noticed the flicker in Taichi's eyes. He turned to Koshiro, his mouth starting to open. "I…"

The front door of the apartment opened and Hikari walked inside. She froze when she saw them. Koshiro noticed that Taichi tensed slightly. "Oh, hi, Koshiro."

He glanced at Taichi and then at Hikari. "Hi, Hikari. I was just showing Taichi…"

"Nothing," Taichi interrupted.

Hikari flinched slightly. Taichi turned his chair around again. "I guessed we're done, right?" He wheeled himself into his room and closed the door.

Hikari turned back to Koshiro and smiled. "Um, are you going to stay for a while, Koshiro?"

He glanced at the closed door to Taichi's room. "Um, no, I guess not."

Day 6

Koshiro bent over to grab his sneakers, a wave of fatigue rushing to his head. He caught himself against the shoe locker and it was with great effort that he pushed himself back upright. He exchanged his sneakers for his school shoes, opting to drop the latter onto the floor to slide his feet inside. He stumbled down the hall, trying to remember the way to his homeroom. Not only was his exhaustion clogging his mind but also the source of that exhaustion.

He tried to remember the lines of code in his mind, trying to see where the error was. He had spent all night working on it, and most of the morning until his mother told him to get to school. He ran the program five times, making changes where necessary, but the program crashed each time. Did he need to start over? Wipe everything and start from scratch? He would have thrown his bag onto his desk if he had the energy.

He tried to focus on his teacher's lesson, tried to write down the notes he needed for the upcoming exam, but his eyelids would not obey his command to stay open. What was worse was that, when they did close, lines of computer code floated around his mind.

It was not until third period that the excess of coffee he guzzled down before school finally took effect. He leaped down the stairs two steps at a time and rushed onto the schoolyard during lunch break. He dropped beneath the three and pulled his laptop from his bag, resting it against his bent knees. "You're not gonna be on that thing during lunch are you?"

He looked up to see Mimi standing over him. Yamato and Sora were already starting to set up their lunch on the ground. "I need to keep working on this," he explained, "I had a breakthrough during class."

"When you were supposed to be taking notes?" Mimi asked, kneeling down next to him, "The history exam is in a few days."

"It's for Taichi."

She blinked and Sora peaked over Mimi's shoulders. "What?"

He nodded with caffeine-fueled speed. "It's sort of like what happened to the Digimon during Yggdrasil's reboot. I scanned Taichi's data and was trying to reboot it to an earlier point."

He gave them the same explanation as he gave Taichi. Their faces were a mix of emotions.

Mimi's eyes grew wide. "Do you think it'll work?" She blinked. "Wait, you scanned his data?"

Koshiro nodded. "Yeah. I went over there the other day."

Sora smiled and gestured to Yamato. "Well, Yamato had a productive meeting with Taichi last night, didn't you?"

He blinked with half a rice ball in his mouth. "What? Oh yeah, I think I got Taichi to agree to join a physically disabled sports team and he's going to go into politics."

Koshiro cocked his head to the side. "Politics?"

"Sora's idea."

The redhead nodded. "Yeah. I think it'll be a good career path for Taichi." She lowered her voice, "To help him get over not being a star athlete."

Koshiro glanced at the program on his laptop. "Well, if this works-"

Sora cut him off. "But Koshiro, do you think it's a good idea to get his hopes up?"

Koshiro protested. "It'll work. I just need to keep working on it." He paused, "Um, have you noticed any tension between Taichi and Hikari?"

"Yeah," Yamato said, "Takeru was telling me about it this morning. Hikari had no idea that we were meeting last night or that Taichi was interested in political science."

Sora hugged her legs. "I would have thought this situation would bring the two of them closer, but it looks like the opposite happened."

"We need to talk to them," Mimi said.

"Would that work?" Yamato said, "Hikari tends to bottle everything up inside and Taichi's, well…"

"As closed off as you are sometimes," Sora said. "I'm going to invite Hikari shopping this weekend and try to get her to open up a little."

Koshiro turned back to the numbers and letters on his monitor. He'll fix this, he'll fix everything.

Day 8

Koshiro had been surprised by Taichi's response to his text message. Sure. Come on over, but he was almost floored when he saw Taichi and Hikari in the living room playing Mario Party. He was in time to see Princess Peach push Mario off of a circular stone pillar.

"Hey," Taichi said.

Hikari waved. "Oh, hi, Koshiro."

"H-hi," he said. "Is this a good time?"

Taichi shrugged. "I'm getting tired of Hikari beating me."

"You're just letting me win," she protested.

Taichi snorted. "Yeah, I wish." He maneuvered his chair to face him. "So, what's up?"

Koshiro studied the siblings again. They seemed to have banished whatever issue had been driving them apart. "I, um, think I might have made a breakthrough in the program. I just need to scan your data again."

Taichi nodded. "Sure, go for it."

Koshiro removed the equipment from his backpack and attached the scanner to his laptop. Hikari watched with eager eyes as he ran the device over Taichi's body. Lines of text appeared on the laptop screen. "Okay." He started typing. "Just let me run the program and…"

A low beep emerged from the device while the green text turned red. His heart sank. "No! No!" He tried again but with the same result. "No!"

"Koshiro?" Hikari asked.

He groaned and rubbed his eyes. "Ten times! I tried ten times and each time I failed!"

He wrung his hand through his hair. "I tried the first program three times! The third time it crashed my computer and I was up all night to reinstall everything. The second program showed some promise and I continued tweaking it until the fifth run when I forced myself to try again. The third program made it even farther, but it still failed. No matter what I tried, what program I wrote, what processor I used, the error in the data is still there. I can't get rid of them. If I can't do it in a simulator, then it's impossible!"

He screamed and dropped to his knees. "I failed. I can't do this." He turned to Taichi. "I'm sorry, I can't fix this."

Taichi stared. "Koshiro, you don't have to fix anything. I never said you did."

"But you were so-"

Taichi winced. "Never mind about me. This isn't your problem. I mean, thanks for trying to help me out but I…" He hesitated, "You can't fix this."

Koshiro was going to protest but Taichi gestured to Hikari. She hopped off the couch and handed him a Gamecube controller. "Come on," he smiled, "Maybe the two of us together can beat her."

Koshiro turned from Taichi to Hikari. He chuckled and took the controller.

End Chapter 7 of 8.