Warnings: Three Part Arc of the story, violence, suffering children. It's 1995 everybody.


Chapter Ten - Lavender (1995)

It's a spring night, in the year 1995 and everything in Hikarigaoka is filled with explosions and broken bridges.

For Ken, it's been a very long night.

He'd been off duty for a grand total of twenty minutes. Maybe. It's still too late for children to be outside. And yet he finds one, a little boy, maybe six at best, with blue hair and big eyes and pajamas and screaming about his sister to anyone who will listen.

And suddenly Ken remembers what year it is and almost curses. Almost, because he's better than Daisuke at children and rude language. He flags the boy down and as the child turns he almost flinches because it's like looking at Osamu for a solid ten seconds after he'd skinned his knee and before his parents and the neighbors forgot he was a person before a brain. He shakes himself free of these thoughts.

"It's okay, I'm a police officer, I can help you. What's your name?" It sounds fake even to him, but it's the truth. Ken, may some higher power help him, would make it true.

The little boy continues to look at him with suspicion, but then his shoulders slump. He shifts in his bare feet, that are starting to go pale with cold. Ken resolves to pick him up as soon as he's heard the explanation he already suspects. "'M Dougal. My, my little sister, we're twins-"

Twang.

"An' she found an egg in front of daddy's computer she said and it hatched and turned into this big cat-"

Twang.

"-And she was scared to leave him by himself. He sounded sad!" The little boy pauses as if he can't even believe what he just said. "So when he got bigger, he jumped and she… she…"

Ken can imagine the rest, a small child, holding onto a giant monster, the two of them falling from the sky and crushing a car or two before racing off into the night. "She went with," he says.

Little Dougal nods. "She's so stupid…"

"Your sister's very caring," Ken corrects gently. "It's a good thing." His mind is racing. What if she's going to be a chosen child? What if they both are? This seems like how it started, but weren't they sure it was supposed to be their kids?

Well, Ken would be happy if it wasn't, in all honesty. Except these are tiny.

Before either of them can speak again, there is a flash of yellow, hot light flying down the street. Ken doesn't think. He grabs the kid and throws them both as far sideways as he can. He thinks he hears a crunch and stars dance behind Ken's eyes in unison with pain. And he knows. He knows what that is. He could never forget.

Chimaeramon, he thinks with terror, sick and mixing with the image seared behind his eyes of Wormmon falling like a branch in the road. Oh god how were they going to fight that? How could anyone-

The little boy whimpers, as if he's figured it out too. "She's okay," he tells the child, for lack of anything else to say.

Dougal suddenly squirms in his arms and points. "Purple! There!"

Ken tilts his head and opens his eyes. Indeed there is a tiny blob - child, if he squints a bit - of purple, with two slightly bigger redheads knelt beside them. Great, he thought, more potential injured.

"Hold on tight," he tells Dougal and only when the fingers do what he told them to (and there was another earth shaking rush of heat, filling his nose with the smell of crystallized sand) does Ken move forward towards the small, huddled group of kids.

(So focused, he misses the little boy with orange hair and empty, empty red eyes, standing in the alley, watching it all. But he remembers this later.)

"Are you all right?" he greets in his best child-friendly voice that isn't for Dai. Dai doesn't need to be child-friendly, Daiki, like his father, needs to be flipped by his ankle a couple of times and Ken is the only one who can, never mind the way his sister chases him about the house. He wonders for Miyako sometimes.

Both children, also twins he realizes in the shapes of their noses and the same striking blues of their eyes, look at him and nod. They step back for the clear authority figure he is (and that is still so very surreal) and let him see the little girl crouched over-

"Osamu," he breathes, incredulous.

The boy opens his eyes, incredulity filling his face and he coughs, "Ken?" Issat you?"


Osamu wishes that he could say that this was all a happy accident, that there was no such thing as destiny, that he was just lucky to be staring at the mid-twenties to early thirties face of his little brother.

But Osamu has always been observant. In the first life that only comes in flashes of misery and light and pride and crumpling beneath the weight of hands on his shoulders, he remembers being painfully observant and aware and knowing too much and thinking to himself -

Well everyone's happy so it's fine isn't it? -

Except no, everyone had not been happy. Ken had been miserable and his parents proud but there was no happiness in there, not really. He hadn't been happy or satisfied, just small and smart and an idiot.

The truck, his brother's anger so close to surface, the escape, the whining of the siren fading fading fading -

When he'd remembered that at age five here, he'd about lost his mind again.

But in this time he had not had parents swayed by glory and pride, he now had folks layered with caution, like they were afraid to let go of him, like if they let go they would never see him again, rather if he let go he would never want to. They were strange folks, but Osamu, two lives in and twice as cynical (he tried with his parents he really did but innocence and naivety was hard when you remembered giving it up) loved them as much as he'd loved the family from before.

He hadn't had to try to be smart so he didn't make himself but that didn't mean Osamu didn't pay attention. Things were older than the life he remembered. He hadn't been a fan of fiction, but Ken had been, so he'd ended up reading it to him. The result had become relaxing and familiar until the computer incident of course that neither of them had apologized for.

Had been able to apologize for.

Which was why he was not surprised overmuch that his late night wanderings (It was inevitable with a genius mathematician with no sense of time for a father and a very hands on education minded mother, he ended up wandering at night, still cursed with insomnia one life later) and caught up in a madness of strange giant monsters.

Like Ken had tried to tell him back then that he hadn't believed. And now it was true and he'd been knocked over by a gust of hot wind and shielded by a girl that could be his brother in age. And well, his seniors.

He had not expected to see his brother's adult face looking at him with horror and fear and confusion and all sorts of shit. Crap. He was still like seven. No cursing in front of the actual babies.

"Ken?" He repeats.

"Oh gods," his brother says. And then, like water freezing over, Osamu watches Ken's face smooth into something… professional? Adult? Something Osamu has never experienced. And it… hurts a little. He turns to Takumi-senpai, who is always sweet and friendly and warm. Though both of them are, Takumi goes out of his way to be.

"Are all of you all right?" he asks and Osamu notices the boy still attached to his chest starting to wiggle loose and drop neatly onto his hands and feet to confront the girl that had been shielding him with her tiny body.

She's also ignoring her brother and staring at the source of the wind.

"Osamu-kun just fell, that's all." The boy looks around. "Our brother had wanted something from the store even though it's late. So we'd taken him... "

"He listened when we told him to hide," says Ami. Her voice is a bit higher, but a bit more hoarse. She doesn't seem to be fond of talking. "He's farther away. This girl fell off the giant lion and we've been trying to keep her here ever sin-"

As she speaks, the little girl darts off like a shot away from her brother's furious hands and runs forward, racing with all her tiny might towards-

"And there she goes," Ami finishes. Her voice has this strange airy quality, like what they're seeing isn't quite so terrible when she says that.

That's how she is, Osamu knows. She's trying to help and judging by the milky shade of white of Ken's face, she's not helping.


Chimaeramon is there, like he'd thought. Only there's no Magnamon and instead a great, heaving lion stands there behind it. Its mane starts to whirl, spinning and groaning with electricity and for a moment Ken wonders if he's seen this before.

Then he throws himself over the group of kids, effectively stopping Dougal from chasing after her lone form.

Only Ken can see the shine of light wrapping around her skin, hear the steady bathump of the world coming into focus. He knows, with the same certainty he'd known from looking at Alphamon years and years ago and knowing that they were nothing in the face of that, that she had caused this evolution.

And she was about to do it again.

The light of the world explodes and one of the twins wriggles free, Ken has firmly planted his arm on Dougal's back so he can't try and do something reckless and stupid, so he isn't prepared for the power of two actually older children breaking free and going to help, going to care. And a part of him is absolutely certain of what will happen next, as sure as he can be about anything. The rest of him feels ready to throw up as a giant silver paw reaches out and slaps down Chimaeramon from the sky like a very irritating bird.

The ground quakes at the weight and the concrete crumbles beneath it. Chimaeramon jerks and twists and snarls through broken teeth. And from the light comes the body of a twelve-eyed giant tiger with red orb after red orb spinning around it. It is beautiful, majestic, terrifying.

So much.

Too much.

Ken's head splits open and suddenly he remembers a boy with brown hair and blue eyes and his arms loosen-

But not enough for his fingers to not catch Dougal by his shirt. The boy flails and screams but they're too far away to see his sister anymore. But somehow he knows that she's sitting by the tiger's paw as it steadily grows to dwarf buildings and trees alike. She is unafraid, he's certain of that. And the monster - the monster Ken had made once, breaks free, and lunges.

Ken sees the other two children get close just as a wave of silver light pours from the tiger's maw and once again, consumes their eyes, the eyes of everyone watching, even the screams and sounds of pain.

But when it fades, human and Digimon alike have disappeared.

"Sayo?"

The little boy's timid voice hurts to hear, but it galvanized Ken into action all over again.

His digivice, the thing he always carries, even though it hurts him, even though it rarely turns on, glows softly in his hand.

"Wormmon," he says softly. It's silent for a moment.

Then the familiar, warbling, but gentle, always gentle voice answers, "Yes, Ken-chan?"

"Can you help me? A few kids have disappeared into the digital world."

"Of course, Ken-chan." There's something different about the voice, he's sure, but he can't put to words what it is. "I'll contact the queen and let her know. She's already moving about looking for lost things and people, it'll help her to know what happened. What did happen?"

Wormmon sounds older, smoother, with something else to it. Maybe they evolved again, into something different, someone new.

Ken swallows. "It's uhm… it's 1995, and digimon have broken through the barrier."

"Oh." Wormmon lets out a strange sort of sigh. "Well, that explains a lot. I'll tell the queen to contact you then. She's been busy and it's been dangerous. But yes, definitely. V-mon and I will start looking in the meantime. Keep in mind that time passes differently here, so we may find them before you can send out a missing person's report."

"Time is distorted there again?" He has no idea who the queen is but if he's right, if he's right he's going to be so smug.

Wormmon lets out another exhausted sound. "It's always distorted now, Ken-chan. We're supposed to figure out why. But it's difficult. This will be a good divergence. Just uhm… contact us with a way point okay?"

"Of course," Ken says. Koushiro can help with that. Probably.

Wormmon pauses. "I love you, Ken-chan. It sounds like you've grown up."

"I love you too, Wormmon." And he does gods he does. "It sounds like you did too."

Wormmon laughs and Ken likes it and it hurts. "Right then. I'll see you soon." And his Digivice goes silent.

Ken feels light in his chest for a moment. Then he sighs and returns to reality.

"Can you stand, Nii-san?" he finally asks because what else does he say? He's still holding Dougal who has progressed straight into a silent meltdown and honestly Ken cannot blame him.

"I'm hardly your older brother anymore," the boy says, which is true but it still hurts. Still, Ken watches his brother, the same age Ken had been when Osamu had died, pick himself up, test his legs, then nod. "Yeah," he says with the stubbornness of a child. "I think I'm all right."

Ken decides to take him at his word. "Well," he says. "Do you think you'll be in trouble if you come with me home and your parents pick you up from there? I need to get this one's parents on the line and we're not far from my house."

Osamu bites his lip and Ken prays he can just treat his brother like he's another lost child because if not they're both doomed. Then he nods. "I can help you find them in the phone book."

Oh that helps. Ken turns to explain to Dougal, who just stares at him, numb and teary-eyed and puffy.

As he does, a soft, somewhat strange voice speaks up. "Pardon me?"

Ken is terrified to know what the rest of the night is going to hold as he turns to look at another small child roughly Osamu's age, who bears no resemblance to the twins at all yet has to be their missing little brother.

The boy's expression slants upward, uncomfortable and seeming somewhat plastic, as he speaks, "I'm sorry for bothering you, however that was my brother and sister who went missing just now. Could I also call my parents? They're going to worry."

"You don't have to be so formal with him, Koh," Osamu says, not in a derisive way, just matter of fact.

Koh shakes his head. "I must be strong," he says in this strange, matter-of-fact, and now that Ken listens, exhausted sort of way.

Ken, however, cannot be exhausted. He must be an adult. "That's fine," he says, and means it.

This is going to be a long, long night.