The first thing Koichi was truly aware of was not his body, but his brother's. He felt legs walking and hands twisted awkwardly, supporting something on his back. Something heavy. Wrists strained painfully and sweat made flesh damp and itchy. His lungs hurt, but he refused to alter his breathing. He wasn't going to drop his twin… he wouldn't let him fall again. This time he'd protect him… save him from the blackness which hunted his soul. And if that meant he had to carry him to the ends of the earth, then so be it.

That was when Koichi pulled back, suddenly reminded of his own existence. He was the one being carried, the limp hunk of meat that weighed so much. There wasn't much sensation in it, but he had a body. His mind knew he couldn't see because his eyes were closed and he couldn't move because he'd been drugged, but panic crept into his heart nonetheless. Paralysis isn't a pleasant feeling; it's not like the floating of unconsciousness. Paralysis is being smothered by your own uselessness… a feeling with which Koichi was already too familiar. Koji's mind reached out to his, sensing his sudden absence and distress. A tenderness few knew existed tickled the edge of his thoughts and Koichi felt his mouth smile into his brother's shoulder.

Sorry I'm so heavy he thought jokingly. I'll try to wake up now. So you won't have to carry me anymore.

Uncertain amusement.

Almost seconds after Takuya opened the apartment, Izumi had the sitting pillows set up in the living area and Koji was gently lowering his twin onto them, propping him up against the wall. The two had silently agreed that they wanted Koichi where they could watch him and, although his room would be more ideal, they did not want the entire gang crowding in there. During this invasion of their lives, something had to be kept sacred. Dorian either didn't find anything particularly irregular about the set up or just didn't care. Takuya was too focused on Dorian to notice much of anything else and Koichi…

Koichi'd regained some form of consciousness during the walk to his place, but the full range of human expression still escaped him. He'd stopped projecting into Koji's head, which was a welcome change, but keeping his thoughts to himself seemed to be taking up the little energy he had. His eyes had a glazed quality to them and his body was still floppy as a dead fish. There was awareness and frustrated effort in the way he leaned his head back against the wall and surveyed the room, yet to say he was alert would have been a lie. All and all, the anesthetic had really done a number on him.

"Are you comfortable," asked Izumi kindly, hovering as Koji tugged a blanket over Koichi's legs. "Would you like some tea?"

Koichi's eyes moved to her face, his pupils dilating as they tried to focus. "No," he breathed with a faint smile. "Thank you."

"All right," returned Izumi, looking just a little put out. "Let me know if you change your mind."

He nodded and his gaze shifted to Dorian. There was something that might have been curiosity on his face, though if truth be told, it was difficult for him to determine what about this stranger struck him as odd through the haze in his head. Its presence was obviously a source of uncertainty and… resentment to his friends. From what Koichi could read from Koji, this foreigner was somehow involved in what had just happened in the alley, but beyond that he knew nothing. There was something about him, though; a coldness Koichi didn't like. He didn't feel well enough to experience anxiety, but still…

"Who are you," he asked slowly, deliberately. The words rasped in his throat and he closed his eyes for a moment, licking his lips and focusing. "Why are you here?"

"It lives," commented Dorian sarcastically, casually pulling out a chair at the kitchen table and sitting down. "What a relief."

"Answer the question," growled Koji, settling into a battle-ready squat on the floor next to his brother. Izumi kneeled maybe a meter away, near the boarder between the entryway and living area, delicately tucking her feet off to one side. Takuya leaned on the wall next to Izumi, folding his arms and frowning in an irregularly suspicious manner. Dorian looked at the four of them putting on such a brave, united front, and smirked.

"Well, since you asked so nicely," he mocked.

"We're serious," said Takuya. "This may all somehow be funny to you, but our friend was just attacked and none of us are in a joking mood. You're obviously involved, so cut the crap."

"I told you," said Dorian, leaning back calmly. "I'm Digidestined. My friends and I went to the Digital World, fought evil, and saved it. Just like you."

"That doesn't explain how you knew those guys would be there or how you knew they were sensitive to light. Or what you're even doing here to begin with!"

"Japan tends to be the epicenter of Digital activity. More so than France, at any rate. Maybe I'm on a pilgrimage and just stumbled upon you. Helped out of a sense of comradory."

"We may be younger than you, but we're not stupid," said Izumi unapologetically. Her green eyes were hard as jade as she evaluated him, looking for anything that would justify this innate distrust that was in her gut. Something about this guy, maybe his too convenient appearance, just rubbed her the wrong way. Or maybe she was just upset that he'd been able to rescue Koichi while she'd been so helpless. Maybe he was actually a nice guy and they all just resented him for doing what they couldn't… though his flippant attitude was not helping that case.

"As you've already stated, we've been through the same things you have with the Digital World-"

"Don't," he snapped, his voice subliming cold rage. The smile was gone from his face and he looked like he might slap her. "You have no idea what we went through. There were six of you, right? And you fought with the Spirits of the Ten Legendary Warriors? Well, there were only three of us: myself, Ysault, and Bahar. Loyalty, Charity, and Justice. And we didn't have the same luxuries you were afforded. We were in our final year of high school when we received the call. Maybe there were supposed to be more, but they just didn't answer. I don't know how it is here, but missing any school or leaving for any reason during that last leg before university is very difficult in France. We didn't know the flow of time had changed and= spent the whole trip terrified for our lives and our futures, wishing we'd ever left home yet honor bound to stay. Not to mention the losses we sustained in the Digital World. All three of us regretted it, at one time or another. It was not fun for us."

There was a very tight silence like thin ice as the two Digidestined stared each other down.

"Where are they now," Izumi retorted. "Your friends? Bahar and Ysault? Why aren't they here?"

For the first time, Dorian looked genuinely amused. But it was in a sad, nostalgic kind of way, his gaze falling to the floor for a moment.

"Whose to say they aren't?" He stiffened suddenly, remembering his purpose and replace the casually critical mask. "Anyway, as I understand it, your task was to put the fallen angel Lucemon back in his pit. Well, lets just say ours was to clean up your mess."

"Our mess," repeated Koji humorously. "What is that supposed to mean?"

"More specifically," continued Dorian, pretending no one else had spoken. "His mess. The taint he left behind in the Digital World. And the good news is we cleaned it out of the data-scape. The bad news is…"

His cold blue eyes slid fluidly to Koichi, and rested there until everyone else had done the same. The sudden attention did not go unnoticed and the dark twin frowned, blinking away the fog in his mind. He'd listened and understood Dorian's words, but it wasn't until he met that hauntingly blue gaze that he started to comprehend what he was saying. Why two creeps had just tried to shove a needle into his brain and why this Frenchman had shown up just in time to stop them. Somehow, discontinuous and random as it seemed, everything, what happened five years ago and what was happening now, was connected. There was only one mess to which Dorian could be referring. Koichi tried to sit up, but a wave of nausea pushed him back against the wall and shortened his breath.

"Duskmon," he hissed, closing his eyes and pursing his lips as if in physical pain. "Duskmon is here? In the real world?

"Duskmon," snapped Koji, rounding on Dorian. "That's not possible. We destroyed him."

"No, it's not Duskmon. Not without that one, at any rate. But what's left of him is here, in the general Tokyo area. You didn't destroy anything, that's just the fact of the matter. In the Digital World, nothing really dies; it just gets recycled and reformed, darkness included. The evil there has manifested many times in many ways and each time it gets too powerful, a group of humans is recruited to beat it back. The world becomes a slice of paradise for a while, then the evil returns and it starts all over again. That's the cycle. It's a cycle because historically the evil doesn't learn from or even remember its previous incarnations. It's just a force, like the moon's pull on the tides. It was never conscious."

"So what, somehow Duskmon changed that?" Izumi was never one for hiding her emotions and her tone expressed the frustrated confusion they were all feeling and then some. Dorian crossed his legs and laced his fingers, patronizing them.

"When you left the Digital World, you Digivices turned back into cell phones, releasing everything that was stored inside into the soup-like reserves of unrepresented data. That included all the corruption you'd purified from the Digimon you fought… the corruption that created Duskmon. This was problematic because, unlike all the previous disembodied evil, what was left of Duskmon had a consciousness. Turns out the total hybridization of a partial Digimon (i.e. the Spirit of Darkness) and a human soul creates a new breed of energy that is aware of its own existence. Aware of its own… incompleteness. Five years of our time corresponds to millennia in the Digital World and now that little baby consciousness that controlled your Chosen of Darkness like a puppet has grown up into something much more sinister. Something with a goal and the power to accomplish it.

"The forces in the Digital World didn't know the difference, so when it started acting up, they called in a group of humans like always to restore balance. Things didn't work out like that, and now it's here."

There was a long moment during which they tried to process what he was saying, but weren't quite able to put the pieces together. Dorian's mouth curved in a skin-deep smile and he seemed almost amused by their uncertain silence. Like a vindictive teacher who, instead of alleviating his student's ignorance, preferred to taunting them with it.

"So you're saying there's some digital entity, that's not a Digimon, actively surviving in the real world. Were you planning on telling us how that could possibly happened, or are we just supposed to assume it was by magic," said Koichi in one of his rare moments of terseness. Usually he tried to be a little more diplomatic, but under the circumstances he didn't see much of a reason to put in the effort. A look of annoyance came onto Dorian's face and there was another moment while he shifted leisurely in Koichi's chair. Asserting his control over the situation.

"Fine, I'll spell it out for you. We can think genetics or neurobiology or whatever, but the fact of the matter is modern science doesn't know what we are. Sure, there are traits and stimulated regions of the brain, but what makes you you and me me, what makes up our self, isn't fully understood. The best we can do right now is that individual personalities and thoughts are the product of electrochemical signals. We are electrochemical energy, which at its most fundamental level isn't that different from data on a computer… And computer data can be transmitted wirelessly."

"I'm a little foggy on what exactly you're trying to say."

"You guys have had basic physics, right? E-fields, B-fields, electromagnetic waves?"

"Yes," said Takuya shortly, not looking at him. "We've had basic physics."

"Then you should know what I mean when I talk about wireless data transfer. Electrical energy is transformed into a wave of some kind, travels from origin to destination barring any barriers, and is then transformed back into electrical energy. There's no reason memories or a personality shouldn't work the same way. Just think about it like this: The human consciousness is a signal and the brain acts as both the transmitter and receiver."

"No reason except everything we know about the brain," scoffed Koji. "It's a real organ with real functions and real constrains, not a cell tower. What you're suggesting is science fiction."

"Says the kid who spent how many months of his life in a world composed entirely of computer data periodically transforming into a "Digital Monster" to save the program?"

"Can we please get back to how this relates to Duskmon," said Izumi, placing her elbow on her bent legs and pressing one finger to her temple.

"I told you, it's not Duskmon without the original host." He shot a pointed look at Koichi, who tactfully ignored it. "It's not anything, just a will that hops from body to body. We've been calling it Tache- 'Taint.' We could never kill it in the Digital World because, no matter what we did to the host, even if we just let Tache erode it from the inside out, it always found a new one. And somehow it's gotten out here into the real world and I think it's because of that "science fiction" I was talking about. It's made the leap form electrical systems to bioelectric systems and, if I know Tache, it's after one thing."