Intro: Next chapter! Sorry if it seems unrealistic. Yes, I know the official ages of the digidestined, but I have a hard time believing them, so I changed the first season kid's ages. Hmm, not sure if that info about Diablomon is correct, but that's ok, just bear with me, K?
Across America
Chapter 8: Hackers?
Matt and Mimi's reunion was one of the sweetest things Kari had ever seen. After arriving at the airport to pick up Mimi and Joe, Matt had been the first to sight them. Naturally. Disregarding all luggage, chairs, tables, and people that got in the way, the two flew into each other with a deep hug and kiss. They stayed like that for about 30 seconds. If Oniichan was here, he would have ruined the scene by making a gagging sound or coughing or whistling, Kari thought sadly. Izzy must have realized what she was thinking, because he gave her an encouraging pat on the back.
"Hey guys," Joe said. "Nice to see you again. I'll be right back." He dashed off somewhere.
"Where's he going?" Matt asked, his arms wrapped around Mimi.
She giggled. "Must be off to call Emma, his girlfriend. She's really nice, but they call each other so much!" She had met Emma at the San Francisco airport, since Joe wanted to pick up more things. "She said that if Joe was going back to Japan or living somewhere else, call her right away, so she could pack!" Mimi's dreamy smile lit up her face. "Those two are so cute!"
Kari smiled too, but wistfully. Everyone was coming together, why couldn't she? Why didn't everything work out for her? But she couldn't help smiling, because Mimi seemed fairly unchanged, except looking older and wiser, but still beautiful. Joe, too. His looks were even better, and he was older, wiser, not quite so worried. Her thoughts kept her occupied all the way to her home, and observant Cody finally asked, "Kari? What are you thinking about?"
She blinked, coming out of her thoughts. "Er, just glad Mimi and Joe are with us." She forced one of her "sweet" smiles up for him. "We're finally getting reunited!"
"Y-yeah," Cody agreed. "Is it all right if I call Korinn when we get back? I want to tell her."
"Of course!"
The ten young men and women piled into Michael and Kari's huge home.
"Are your parents home?" Mimi asked Michael eagerly. "I haven't seen them for four years, and I have to say hello!"
"Um, I don't know," he admitted. "Well, Dad's not home, he's off flying somewhere, let me check and see if Mom's home." He wandered upstairs. "Mom? Mom?"
"What is it, Honey?" a voice responded. "I'm about to go out, okay?"
"Oh, okay, that's fine!" Michael yelled. He turned back to the others and winked. "Mom, some friends are over, okay?"
"Of course that's fine, Michael. Show them to the kitchen and get them something to eat." A pretty woman with strawberry blonde hair and kind gray eyes walked hurriedly down the stairs, Michael close behind. She greeted Michael's friends distractedly and kissed Kari on the head. "Kari, honey, please show them around. Dinner's in the fridge." She left quickly.
Kari grinned. She loved Michael's mother, who's traits included being late nine times out of ten. "So, would you guys like the grand tour?"
* * *
After showing Joe and Mimi around, the group piled into Michael's spacious room with full stomachs. "All right, what's our next course of action?" Michael asked.
There was a second's silence. "Well, find the others, of course," said Cody slowly. "I mean, five more…"
"Oniichan, Sora-san, Takeru-kun, Daisuke-kun, and Miyako. There must be some way…some way to reach them all!" said Kari, frustrated. "I mean, we've been lucky so far, right? Some luck got us this far."
"But we can't just trust it all to luck," Izzy said quietly. "I have an idea, but…" he glanced at Ken.
At first Ken simply looked confused. Then, his blue eyes widened. "No!" he said slowly, realization dawning on him. "No way am I gonna…" he trailed off. "Besides, it would be practically impossible!"
"Hey, we're the Chosen Children," laughed Izzy. "Isn't nothing supposed to be impossible for us?"
"Um, what are we talking about here?" asked Cara. She and Ken were sitting next to each other holding hands and looking embarrassed. "Ken, no way are you gonna do what?"
"Er, well…"
"What?"
"It's…illegal, isn't it?"
"WHAT?" chorused everyone in the room except for Izzy and Ken.
"Well…hacking," Ken replied, cringing slightly. "Izzy and I do a lot of stuff with computers, you know, programming and stuff, and well…we know how to hack."
Kari, Cara, and Jess glanced at each other and started giggling. Matt gave them a slightly withering look. "Hey, at least they have an idea!"
"No, we're not laughing at the idea," Jess giggled. "It's just that Kari was telling us about how you Chosen Children were supposed to save the world, and stop evil, and all that. And here you are, ready to turn into hackers, breaking the law!"
"It's not like we haven't broken the law before," Matt said. "Remember that time when we hitchhiked…" he glanced at Izzy and blushed. Izzy started laughing hysterically.
"Oh hoho, yes I do remember that! Too bad Kari wasn't there yet," he choked out.
Kari rolled her eyes. "Well, Oniichan told me about that," she said. ("Should've known," grumbled Matt.) "When some blonde chick tried picking you up at the age of 13!"
The whole room rocked with laughter. Matt laughed, too. "Yeah, yeah, but come on guys, let's get serious. Can you two really hack?"
Izzy and Ken nodded slightly guiltily. "We've, uh, tried it before, on a small scale. But I was thinking, if we could tap into all the electronics in the U.S., finding the other five would be no problem!"
Everyone stared at Izzy. The redhead was starting to look embarrassed as well. "Well, it was just an idea," he said lamely.
"No, no, it's a good idea," Michael assured. "Just, um, short of impossible."
"Well, there's Gennai-san, and my old laptop, (I still have it) not to mention the resources of the Digital World." He looked brightly at them. "We can go to the Digital World for a bit!"
"In the meantime, that's something to do," Cody agreed. "We should ask Gennai-san about this idea, see what he thinks. In case it upsets the balance of the worlds or something."
"Can we come along too?" asked Jess. "Is it allowed? Can we?"
"Of course!"
* * *
"Wow," said Cara. She had said it about five times already. "That was-wow."
"Coming through the Digital Gate can be a shock the first time," Kari assured. "It's harmless."
Around them was an expanse of green. The sky was blue, the air was sweet, and the breeze was soft. White, puffy clouds decorated the sky sparsely like fluffy cotton balls. "It feels great to be back!" Izzy exclaimed enthusiastically. "I can't wait to see Tentomon!"
"Did someone call my name?" a voice called out. The voice belonged to…a red bug?
"Tentomon!" Izzy cried delightedly, giving the creature a hug.
Cara and Jess looked totally weirded out. "Well, I told you some of them look weird," sighed Kari.
"Who looks weird?" muttered Tentomon.
"Kari!" a small white cat bounded out of nowhere. "You found the others!"
The two partners gave each other a tight hug. "Tailmon, I'm so glad to see you!" Kari cried. She buried her face in white fur.
"Tailmon?" chorused Jess and Cara. "Isn't that the name of my cat…?" asked Jess. "Oh, I get it."
"Jess, Cara, I'd like you to meet my partner digimon, the original Tailmon," Kari introduced.
The cat's sky blue eyes focused onto the two new humans. "Pleased to meet you. Hikari has told me a lot about you two." Her alto voice was soothing and smooth.
"Hey, Tailmon! Are the others coming?" yelled Matt eagerly. Tailmon nodded and pointed behind him. The other 11 digimon were rushing towards them.
"Word travels fast in the Digital World," smirked the kitty. "Or at least the feelings of partners," she said, softer.
* * *
"What you're suggesting is tricky," frowned Gennai. He sat with the group and their digimon, listening to their ideas. "It would be one thing to access data from the Digital World and send information, but to cross to the real world…it won't be easy, I can tell you."
"But it's possible, right?" asked Izzy. "To use my laptop and the resources of the Digital World to tap into the electronics of the real world?"
"Nothing's impossible in the Digital World, as I dare say you've learned, but, that doesn't anything's easy." The formerly old-looking man sighed. "It sure has been a long time though. I haven't seen anyone except for Hikari and Sora for the past four years." When no one said anything, Gennai opened his eyes. "What? What is it?"
Everyone stared at the old man. "Ano…Gennai-san…did you just say you saw Sora-san in the Digital World?" asked Kari shakily. When the handsome man nodded, Kari stared unbelievingly at Piyomon. The bird avoided her gaze, staring at the ground.
"When was this?" demanded Tailmon. "Why didn't you tell us?"
Piyomon burst into tears. "Gomen nasai! Gomen nasai! I would've told you, honest, but Sora made me promise not to say anything…I know Hikari-chan wanted to know, but…I was so afraid I wouldn't get to see her anymore! She made me promise! A promise!"
Kari swallowed, then smiled gently. "It's okay, Piyomon. I understand. It was partly my fault. I never thought to ask Gennai-san. But can you tell us anything about where Sora is?"
Sora's partner shook her head. "She never said anything, she just wanted to see the Digital World again, visit me," Piyomon bowed her head. "I think she really did want to see you again, but she…"
"Well anyway," said Izzy uncomfortably, "Can't I plug into something like I did with Etemon's Dark Network? I got access to good stuff there."
"You can access data at my home."
* * *
"I get the feeling maybe we shouldn't have come," Cara grumbled. "I can't even understand what everyone is saying."
"Come on Car, you know some Japanese!"
"Not enough."
"Well anyway, it doesn't matter, I think you got the gist of it, right?" asked Kari.
"No!"
"I'll fill you in later."
It took a while to reach Gennai's lake, and Cody, Jess, Cara, Michael, and Ken gasped with surprise to see the lake part to reveal Gennai's old-fashioned Japanese home. "We might as well get started," Ken sighed. Izzy connected his old Pineapple laptop to a port in Gennai's library, the same library they had once gathered in. At once, his screen lit up with his old familiar screen, but there was a dialog box in Japanese: Would you like to connect?
The screen lit up with a few seconds of incomprehensible gibberish, then into swirly portals not unlike the ones some of their digimon had traveled through while trying to find Diablomon. "Where do I go from here?" Izzy thought out loud. "Let's see, I want to get access to the real world…complete access to the whole Internet…all control over electronics…go over here…now down this way…here we go!" The screen traveled wildly through what appeared to be tunnels and entered a new screen…
"Hey, that's where we fought Diablomon! Why are we going here?" asked Matt.
"Well, if your recall, Diablomon traveled around the world and shut down almost all electronics, and one of his destinations was America. There was a map…my thought is to trace back to that map, and if we "consume" all the data, we'll have control of it, right?"
"I suppose…"
"Now I'm really lost," complained Cody. "I know who Diablomon is, but a map of America? Consuming data?"
"Diablomon consumed all the data on the Internet to mess up all electronics," explained Matt. "And it worked. Izzy is proposing to do the same thing, so we can send a message over radios, TVs, stuff like that, am I right?"
"Bingo!" Izzy grinned. "Matt caught on fast."
"But…won't it take time to consume all that data? Diablomon did it pretty fast, but we're not a powerful evil digimon."
"Ken's little bugs should do the trick, right Ken?"
Ken coughed. "Hehe, yeah…"
"Bugs, Ken?" Kari asked, amused. "Have you been a bad boy?"
"Well, no, I used to program stuff when I was the Kaizer, you know, hacking stuff and the like, but I never used those, and they were still on my laptop."
"All right, stick them in!" Izzy announced. Ken typed a bunch of mumbo jumbo in the picture of America. Right away, things that looked like digital cockroaches swept through the data maze on the screen, moving so fast it was hard to follow them. "See, it's working! I knew we could do it!"
The bugs finished in record time, as Ken hurriedly typed something else to stop them from moving on to the rest of the world. "But what if they left and went to a different country?" gasped Kari, a new fear springing up. "Oh man, I never thought of that before!"
"Then we'll move on to the rest of the world," said Matt with flourish. "Don't worry, Kari. It'll work out for us."
Kari bit back a reply. How could she not worry? She had worried every day of four years.
"Okay, I think I know how to do this," Izzy reported nervously. "Of course, now that electronics are in my control, what should I do?"
"Voice mail?" suggested Matt. "Oh wait, do that thing where we could see each other and our digimon through a screen and put it through."
Izzy swallowed a deep breath. "Here we go…"
Okay, I need advice. Should there be three more chapters, or two? The epilogue is definitely a separate chapter, but should I make a separate chapter for Tai and Sora or just put them in the last chapter (besides the epilogue, of course) I dunno what to do!"