Warnings: orphans, death, awkward convos.


Chapter One - Orange - 1973

When Taichi opens his eyes, for a moment, he figures he is only back a few hours ago, when they'd appeared with the Digimon and promptly terrified the entire population.

It's the same sensation, with people gawking at sixteen teenagers in various states of health and disarray, uniforms with better, stronger fabric than they should have, and also Mimi's dyed hair, let alone Miyako and Jou's and Ken's... colored hair. If he vaguely remembers right from what little he'd paid attention to in biology, isn't well-documented as a thing until the 1980's, right before he was born. Mimi likely looks like a delinquent. That narrows things down absolutely not at all.

What she looks like however, is irrelevant to the rest of the situation which is thus:

One, they're alive.

Two, the younger kids might not be if they don't book it to a hospital with decent doctors that aren't Jou and his lack of university credentials.

Three, the digimon are still here, and they're twitching like they don't know what to do with themselves and with watery, worn out eyes. He'll unpack that later, he has to.

Four, Hikari and Meiko look absolutely devastated about something or other and that is sending off all his alarm bells. He doesn't need more disasters today.

Five, what darn year is it?

Six, oh right. He's still alive and sensei isn't, and sensei has a higher likelihood of knowing what to do right now. And Taichi's hands feel tacky and gross and as if they've been dirty forever and don't know how not to be.

He can solve… two parts of the situation. He turns to the nearest bystander and says, in a voice he will years later call his "I sound like I know what I'm doing" tone. "Excuse me? Can you point me to the closest hospital? My friends here got into a fight with some foreigners and I need to get them checked."

Understanding dawns on the person's face and they smile, disarmed by the sparkle in his eyes and the way Hikari is leaning on him. Within seconds, someone's at a payphone, calling an ambulance, and for a moment, it would be like being in 2005, except for the serious lack of televisions and amount of people lacking cell phones.

Taichi turns to his friend and hopes he looks confident. "Jou, Takeru, follow with them."

Both nod to him, Takeru shooting him a look of betrayal. Tough. He has to look after Hikari. He needs an explanation, she needs an apology.

And Daisuke and the others do need answers, even if they won't like them at all.

Daisuke looks at him with nothing less than betrayal itself. And Taichi meets him squarely in the eye. His hands are tacky, his chest is hurting, Sensei's voice is ringing in his ears.

He is in no state to provide that explanation.

"Yamato, can you?" he adds.

Yamato raises an eyebrow at him, as if ready to disagree just because of the hell of it. But he nods and joins them. They need one more.

He hesitates, because this is the first time in a while he's wanted Sora at his side for no other reason than to tell him he's crazy and they love him anyway. But, he can't offer that. "Sora… please."

Sora smiles at him, and her eyes are also wet. Dang it. And how does he say-

He could have not come back but he's here. He's here and the adults in their life are not (yet) and everything is confusing and-

He wants to break, he wants to break so badly. He can't help himself because he can't do ityet.

He waits for them to go, feels Hikari's shoulder gently nudge at his arm. She's wiped her eyes already, found her feet so fast he wonders if she actually lost them at all. Koushiro's on his other side. His fingers tap on his laptop case on and off and for a moment, Taichi can almost hear his brain whirring.

"Mimi," he says, when he finds his voice. "Go with Meiko. Find us a hotel. You've got credit cards, right?"

"From last year," she says and there's a hint of reproach there. But she seems to understand. As always she just seems to know things. "I'll see if it still works, okay?" She smiles. "Count on us!"

"Always do," he says, and from his side, Hikari snorts. Not at the cheesiness no, but the adrenaline is wearing off and he knows it's not true. He knows that before it was easy and there was no choice but to rely on everyone like in soccer. But this isn't soccer, this is real life and he has no idea what's going on.

If only everyone else could give them his answers. It would save him trouble.

"Hikari," he says, and it sounds heavier than he means and he can't help it. "What… what happened?"

Hikari shifts. They walk together, settle against a tree. People are already turning away, not paying attention because the novelty of it is gone, the kids have scattered, it could have just been a hallucination. Already the excuses were forming in their minds. This would be forgotten soon enough.

She looks up at the trees, at the sunlight shifting through them without a care. "She died," she finally says, looking back down. "Homeostasis, I mean. To bring us our Digimon at full strength, to save Meicoomon, to make sure we ended up like this and not-" She stops and Taichi pauses, thinks, feels revulsion well up in his gut because they could have easily been rebooted to be born again, if at all, to do this all over again. "Not be us," she finally finishes. "But it must have been too much energy, or something because we're further back and we're…"

Koushiro frowns. "But how could it die?" His voice is thoughtful. "Homeostasis is considered a security program without a body, hence why it possesses you. It can't die."

"She wasn't." Hikari doesn't stress the pronoun, she doesn't have to, really. "I don't think she was ever really alive. But I think she'd had something once, something that could act and think and feel. But I think it was taken away, leaving her-" She shakes her head. "Relying on us."

"Daigo-sensei too," Taichi adds, turning down to his shoes. "That Himekawa-san too… they were…"

No one even knew what had happened to her after the first reboot. Let alone the second. "Sensei said she had manipulated the whole thing. For some reason."

"That doesn't make any sense," Koushiro says, shaking his head. "Not that she wouldn't have a reason, Ichijouji-kun had reasons of his own, but that she could complete it on her own." Hikari raises an eyebrow and he shakes his head. "No, not what I mean. No matter how much time, experience, and knowledge I accumulate about the Digital World, the decline of the balance took years normally. For them and for us."

"She did have years to do something, years to think and plan and work," Taichi says because even though he doesn't want to believe a Chosen would willingly destroy everything they worked for for reasons he didn't know, he wants to believe his teacher who had given up his life -uselessly now, the blood is uselessly everywhere- and carry on that they know.

Hikari swallows, but Koushiro shakes his head. "Not to that extent Taichi-san. I'm merely saying that it couldn't have just been her. At best, she was a puppet. A human here. Like that Gennai-san. Like Meicoomon."

And now Taichi understands, understands in a way that cloves and garlic go well in olive oil sometimes.

"It could happen again," he says. "We didn't stop Yggdrasil, or find the source of what really infected Meicoomon aside from some theories. It could happen again."

Koushiro nods and looks at the laptop he may not be able to use ever again. "It could happen again," he repeats. "If we don't start preparing now."

Tentomon buzzes at his side. "Koushiro-han…"

"We'll find the state of technology in this world," Koushiro says. "And we'll see what we can do."

Taichi nods. His heart rate is slowing. He feels the way he did when the pod reached earth soil. His soul is resolute.

Unbeknownst to him, a familiar pointed star burns on his chest.


Showa 48 is a strange time. It's not particularly exciting, it's just before things had started to move, technology wise. It isn't able to replicate the things that the chosen had grown up around. People were still moving, computers were nothing like Koushiro's rigged anything. Yet.

Yet the more things change, the more things stay the same.

For instance-

"Our parents aren't listed."

There's always a wrinkle.

Koushiro clutches the sides of his keyboard. The outlets here are the same, so he can still charge it and risk breaking the stream of time every time he turns it on. But they can't worry about that yet. "Mostly. Anywhere. They don't exist. They…" He stops, chews his lip, a habit he's picked up. "We exist, but they don't. Orphans, all of us. From-" He stops, shakes his head, chews on words.

Mimi pales and Sora has to catch her. Her eyes are already watering.

Taichi watches, keeps his panic to digging grooves into his legs. Keeps the concern, the wonder, the

"From what?" Takeru sounds steady, like he had twelve seconds. "Not the bombs?"

Koushiro shakes his head. "I'm still looking into it. However, based on our placement at our current ages, we are too young for that to be the case. There was an… event, called The Rising of the Cradle, but until I find some old newspapers, the likelihood of me being able to find anything that concrete that isn't rumor will be low until I can hack into facilities."

"Until, he says," Mimi manages to say, shoulders shaking with laughter and sorrow.

Taichi makes himself smile. And it hurts. But he is the leader. He has to unite them. He brushes Agumon's snout with his fingers. He gets that familiar, puzzled look. "What about the digital world?" He asks. "The Digimon are still here, so it exists right?"

"Yes." His voice almost chokes but he nods. Relief bubbles in his eyes. "It's there. It's not the world we know, but it's definitely there, still growing. It's very young."

"We need to go back," Taichi says before he can stop himself. Then he stops, thinks deep. "But we also need to adjust to this world as soon as we can. We need as many answers as possible. We have to feed ourselves and the digimon. Then we'll see if we can make a way to and from the Digital World."

He pauses, and looks at them all. "I don't want to see the Digital World with nothing again. Rejecting us. It… it's all we have now. So, say, if we can do something to prevent what happened in our time from happening now, I want to do what I can. That said, I don't want to choose for you. Back then, I was this close to doing that and well, most of us saw what happened."

Yamato makes a noise between a cough and a snort, and for a moment, everyone shares a bland kind of smile.

"The Digital World is ours, as much as it belongs to the digimon," he continues. "And Homeostasis probably brought us back here for a reason. From what Hikari said, it may not exist anymore. We'll… We'll probably never know what that reason is. So we'll have to make up our own, and I dunno about you but this sucks. And I don't want to be the reason it stays that way." His shoulders suddenly sag and he leans back in his seat. "But… that's just me. If you will help me, I'll be grateful, and even if you don't, I'm going to help you anyway." He looks Daisuke in the eyes, and the burgundy glare meets his, struck by his firm settlement and acceptance, that that was for his team as much as it was anyone else, but particularly for them.

Daisuke's glare seems to dim into an echo, fade into something Taichi has seen in himself a little too muchuntl now.

Koushiro breaks the silence left in the wake of his long dribble of commentary. "It's a bit too late to tell me to stop, since i'm still hacking over here."

Miyako guffaws, and while it sounds somewhat tinged with pain, she means every single bit of it. And almost like a cue, Mimi bursts into hysterical laughter that falls into tears. No one speaks. No one has to.


Their address is the same. No one lives in the Yagami apartment that shouldn't. The others had called around. Their addresses had been the same, even Meiko's. Just empty, a minor bit of dust, no air conditioning in a few, a few ethernet posts and less outlets… Some outdated things. Some top of the line for their time.

The first thing Taichi notices as he walks in, his sister trailing after him with Tailmon and Agumon in their arms, is the calendar. It reads the year, it reads the month. And the fridge is covered in childish doodles on printer paper.

"Good to see your art skills never improved," Hikari comments, looking at one with one of her worn smiles that says pride.

"Says you, photo girl." He watches her shut the door, watches the Digimon scamper about. Or well, Agumon scamper about towards the fridge and Tailmon climb onto the sofa and curl up there. "Do you think we should have brought Meiko here?"

"She needed some time alone," Hikari says, not firmly but not with disinterest either. "We all do."

He nods. He looks at his fingers, his painfully human fingers. For a moment, he reaches into himself and begs for fire. Begs for rage and pain and mourning to come out alive and-

The smoke alarm goes off and his sister throws a cup of water on his hands.

"Onii-chan," she chides and he laughs. Then she throws her arms around him, squeezes him tight. He pauses and feels the singular heave that she gives only him when things really hurt. When she's tired of holding everything in.

Taichi, with practiced ease of having a sister who doubled as an octopus, wiggles free enough to hug her back. "Sorry," he says, and it feels filmy in his mouth. It's not enough, not enough to encapsulate the blood that had covered his teacher's body, the four friends and one mentor locked in tubes. The silence, the digitization, the not-Gennai's laughter and twisting face that did not belong.

He squeezes her and puts his head on her head, cheek first, like they had the first few days without a bed. They'd slept on the couch, then, curled up in Hikari's quilt and with him listening to her babble about Koromon. Trying to remember, desperately holding onto things like gossamer, that had never even happened. And yet they had. The barriers had fallen before. They'd fall apart again.

"Onii-chan," she says, after her heaving has stopped and their legs are starting to cramp. "I'm going with the digimon when we find a way through."

So many things well up in his throat at once, so many things he wants to say and do and hurt about but instead, he holds her tight and says, "Okay."

He should fight, he should disagree. He should get in her face. But he knows this voice, this steady steel and knowing and understanding. It has happened so many times before. The death of their lives, their world, their everything, is really on her shoulders a little no matter how much they ended up being puppets in the end, and unlike a lot of people he knows, she is refusing to look away from it. She's refusing to be anyone's puppet now. And that is more than most people expect from the mysterious waifish girl who knew everything and said nothing.

But Taichi can't force these words out of his throat. Instead, through a sob of his own, he says, "I'll miss you."

And he feels her smile against his neck, very sad and very strong. "You won't let me go without a way back."

And that, he knows is also right. He will fight tooth and nail for her to have a way home.

She would and tried, to do the same for him.

"You should invite Meiko-san here after all," she says as they unwind from the Yagami patented twizzler hug (were twizzlers invented yet? He hopes soon). "I think you'll be good friends."

He flicks her on the forehead and his chest aches with the echo of his mother's laughter, the sizzle of the pan with eggs, and his father's shoes clattering to the ground.

All sounds they'll never make again.

"I'll think about it," he says and she laughs again, and for a moment Taichi almost forgets. Not for very long, of course, but a little at a time.

They have no choice but to take this one step at a time.


A/N: Bit of a delay on this one, I'm sorry about that. This and the next chapter won't cover as much time as the following ones. I hope you'll bear with me. But there is a lot to unpack that is not mine to tell. So I really look forward to your commentary. Thanks everyone!