~The friend of the two gazed on at their figures as they walked off into the unknown

~The friend of the two gazed on at their figures as they walked off into the unknown. He picked up his tired feet and started after them.

No, boy, I have something special for you, it said and immediately the young lad felt an immense pain searing through his body…

Yagami Taichi groaned and thought of what he'd be doing if that stupid Fujiyama hadn't run off with that girlfriend of his. He fidgeted like he was playing some soccer game with his friends. How had he consented to become a mannequin?

"Oh give it up Taichi; stay like this until I get a pin or two to hold up your skirt," Hikari said with an evil look in her eye. "Until then, hold it up."

"OKAAAAAA-SAAAN!" Taichi yelled, "Make her stop!"

"Taichi! You're a big boy now, you can stand there for a few more minutes."

Another groan escaped his lips as he dropped his right arm back down to his side. He had always seen movies where the brother had to stand up on a stool for hours while their sister or mother or some female relative would pin and sew and prod until they couldn't take it anymore. Taichi would laugh at the sight, but never thought that he would be in this position himself. It was awkward and uncomfortable, plus he was wearing a skirt…a pink skirt…a frilly pink skirt.

He shuddered at the thought. Pink, his least favorite color; was Hikari's most favorite. They were exact opposites Hikari and he; she hated his favorite color (a deep earthy sienna), she thought Daisuke a good friend, he, a nuisance. Taichi loved soccer, she was sick of it, he liked hard rock, and Hikari loved pop. Her temper was slow; he could explode at any second, when she was mad it stayed, his anger was fleeting. Even with the differences, which could have gone on forever, they loved each other…and they loved getting each other angry. It was almost hard to believe that Yamato and Takeru, the only two siblings that were never mad at the other, teased and taunted each other as much as Taichi and Hikari did.

Sora was wrong; Fujiyama's disappearance was definitely fishy. How could the teacher had fallen in love when his looks were about as lacking as Jun's? Speaking of whom…

Remembering the fact that he never did tell Sora the white lie he told Jun to get her away from his best friend, made him grin. Taichi wished he had had Hikari's camera when he broke the 'news' to Jun. That look was priceless. Yamato would have killed to see it again, it was almost worse than the look that she had on her face when he had saved the rock star from their date.

Then again, Yamato would have killed him when he found out what he had told Jun. Unless of course it was true…

'Naaaah.'

"I'm back Taichi-chan!"

"Yeah, now could you hang up the phone for me?" he asked tossing her the black receiver.

"Lazy-bones," she muttered as she put it back.

Taichi snorted. "You try moving around in this! It's frilly…pink…huge!"

"Just how I like it, now, you're going to stay like this for a while!"

"Nani?"

"I have to go out with the other digidestined to the digiworld and while I'm gone you can't take this off! Okaa-san knows already and she won't let you weasel out of it! HA! Iteki masu onii-chan!"

"AII! Come back here Hikari or I'll-" but she was already out the door. His mother came in the room giggling. "Okaa-san, why is my imouto so mean to me? It's not fair!" he whined using a little baby's voice.

"Wakataimas," she said as she set down her cup of tea, "here, let me help you out of this fix. I did the very same thing to my onii-chan once, but he was a little more agreeable than you."

"Uncle Greg in America put up with this?"

"No, of course not, he complained and then, a little later, got me back ten times worse," she reminisced as the frills came off one by one.

"What did he do?"

"I'll save that for a later story. Why don't you call Sora-"

"Mataka?! She'd think I'm nuts."

"Then call Yamato!"

"I talked to him earlier today too."

"Jyou?"

"Studying for his exams."

"Try to visit Koushirou then."

"He's helping out Miyako-san and the others if I know him. Always trying to help out, or at least prove his intelligence."

"Mimi?!"

"Long-distance okaa-san. Otou-san would kill me when he saw the bill!"

"Aii, then get into your room out of my sight and do your homework you un-agreeable boy!" she said before giving him a little whack on the rear.

Taichi headed over to the room he shared with Hikari and plopped down on the lower bunk. Putting up with staring at the dirty boards for thirteen years wasn't too fun, but he knew she loved the top bunk and he was probably too heavy for it anyway. Besides, this gave him an excuse to put up little glow-in-the-dark stars all over the wooden beams, which had been fun to do and they still were enjoyable to look at. He'd rearrange them every month or so, putting on new putty each time they lost their stickiness.

The stars glowed even without the absence of lights; that month he had made a Bakemon out of the plastic pieces, just to frighten Hikari the night he had done it. She had been sleeping there while he slept over with the team. While the scolding afterward was severe, even Hikari had to admit (after much prodding) that it was funny. Yamato and Sora cracked up at the thought that little, wise and mature Hikari had screamed bloody murder at the image of such a wimpy and weak digimon.

The thought made him remember Yamato's current mood, depressed. When was the last time the blonde had laughed? Surely not even in the last two weeks. Even at the beach he had been moping about, and when Sora finally got him to come back to the group, he only smiled once, and that was because of a joke at Jyou's expense.

It seemed to him that Sora had been the only one who could get through to him. Taichi had tried, of course, but nothing but the cheery fire-eyed girl would do. Naturally, they were all worried, himself and Sora the most, but, "If something worked, let it work," Taichi had said because everyone surely enjoyed at least the slightly happy, exuberant Yamato more than any other current version of him.

Groaning once again, Taichi realized that if only Sora could get through to Yamato, then not even Takeru could get through to him. They were going to have to think of something to do to get him out of this mood. Thinking about Yamato's depression was depressing in itself and he rolled out of bed onto the ground and crawled over to his soccer ball.

He threw it up into the air and then quick as a flash, got up to bounce it off of his forehead a few times. Unfortunately, he had miscalculated the throw and it hit the ceiling, making a large thump that gave him both a shout from the neighbors upstairs and some reprimanding from Mrs. Yagami. The soccer ball bounced off of the top of his head, which hurt, and fell perfectly into his outstretched hand.

"Go outside to play soccer! How many times do I have to tell you before you're twenty-one and living at college?"

"I dunno okaa-san, guess!"

"TAICHI!" she yelled, but he was already out the door and bounding down the steps to go outside before she could get to him. It was fun being a kid and Sora and Yamato must have just forgotten how to be one.

'They're both so depressing and serious; I'd rather be fooling around with Daisuke-kun and Iori-kun than listening to both of them. Speaking of which…'

The Yagami boy got out the digivice he always kept in his pocket and rushed over to the electronic store near his home. He made his way in, hiding his soccer ball up his shirt (which got a few suspicious looks from customers), and held it up to the last computer in the back.

"Digiport, open," he whispered as the familiar symbol came up on the screen. A large white flash came from the monitor and Taichi turned around just in time to smile at an American and wave before completely disappearing.

The strange feeling of atoms being downloaded gave him the chills every single time he went, but, soon enough he was in the digiworld…in the air!

"AII!" Daisuke yelled as Taichi fell right on top of him. The other younger digidestined laughed at the two as Taichi helped Daisuke up onto his feet.

"Just decided to drop by!" he said, receiving a few groans from the kids.

"Onii-chan," Hikari said getting a little suspicious, "how did you get out of the skirt?"

"Oh that? I used Yamato-chan as my mannequin!" Takeru smiled.

"Jun-chan was mine," Daisuke said.

"Okaa-san must like me more than you, she helped me out."

Miyako giggled, "Ken-san here was my mannequin!"

"Baka," Ken hissed embarrassed. When people were especially annoyed with Miyako, they called her by her 'nickname', which she hated more than anything. "I thought you'd keep it a secret!"

"You should never trust Miyako, Ken," Iori commented with a rare laugh, "she couldn't keep a secret if you paid her!"

"Iori!"

"Miyako!"

"Iori!"

"Miyako!"

"IORI!!"

"MIYA-"

"All right you two," Takeru said rubbing his temples. He looked over to Taichi who shrugged while he juggled the ball between his two feet for a few seconds before heading it to Daisuke, who juggled it like a hackysack as well and then kicked it to Ken. Ken bounced it off of his chest before kicking it back to Taichi with the back of his foot. The ball went between the three before Hikari jumped in front of Daisuke and kicked the ball over to Miyako who bounced it off of her helmet back to Ken. Laughing, the older boy kicked it over to Iori who caught it and dropkicked it over to Daisuke. The ball went in a wild direction towards Takeru, who, almost out of instinct, caught the flying sphere with a SMACK!

"I think we've got ourselves a game!" Taichi said. "I've got Miyako-san and Takeru-kun. Ken-san, take Hikari-chan and Daisuke-kun. Iori-kun, why don't you be the substitute. Here's how we'll play: Every five minutes, we all rotate our positions, so everyone will get to play. I'll be the first to rotate out."

"That's too complicated," Takeru said. "Why don't we just get Koushirou-senpai to come and play? He's nearby with Tentomon; they're not doing anything important."

"Okay, I'll get him!" Daisuke said heading the leather orb over to Taichi, who started the juggling again. Ten minutes later, Taichi took his long-time friend on the 'Greymon' team and Ken put little Iori in the goal-box to play for the 'Kaiser's'. Taichi thought it was great that Ken had gotten so past his time as the Digimon Emperor that he could joke about it and even mock his former position.

"Let's GO!" he yelled as he passed the ball to Miyako, who kicked it to Koushirou. Ken stole the ball from him and gave it a hard kick straight at Takeru, who caught it and threw it straight at Taichi. The game was long and heated and ended with a score of one to one, a successful tie.

Sweaty and exhausted Taichi shook hands with Ken. "Great game Ichijouji-san."

"You know, a month ago, I never would have done this. I probably would be trying to kill you."

"Yeah, and a month ago I wouldn't have been able to come here with you guys. I probably'd be stuck with mountains of…shimatta!"

"Taichi!"

"AII! I have tons of homework due tomorrow! Bye!" Taichi said grabbing the soccer ball from Daisuke and running up to the tree where the Digiport he had opened was.

"WAIT! Taichi, use the other Digiport, on the ground!" Hikari yelled after her brother.

He scrambled down the tree again and dove headlong into the TV. Taichi crashed headfirst into Koushirou's rolling chair in his room and fell on the ground.

"Ouch," he muttered and got up rubbing his head. Turning back to the computer screen, he didn't have time to duck when his soccer ball was thrown into his face. Taichi let out a yell, but then covered his mouth and scrambled underneath Koushirou's bed as he heard footsteps.

"Koushirou?" Taichi heard the Izumi's mother call. "Koushirou? Koushirou? I must be hearing things… Where did this come from?" she thought aloud as she walked out with the Yagami's favorite ball. "It must be one of his friends', I'll just give it to him when he comes home."

'No!' the Yagami boy thought as he punched the hard wooden floor.

After a few minutes had passed, he came out of his hiding place and snuck out the door without Mrs. Izumi seeing him. As nice as she was, she was certainly quite hard of hearing, or blind, or just wrapped up in her work. Sora could get like that, so involved in whatever she was doing to suddenly become blind to the world around her. It didn't happen often, just when she was reading.

 Magic, yes, that would be his best friend's demise. Someday she would be reading a book and all hell will be breaking loose and all she'll be able to do is sit there in her favorite big chair at her house and read about some dragon terrorizing some town in an author's mind. Or, she'll be that author writing about the dragon. He could just imagine that happening.

"Leave me alone! I'm writing a new novel! I don't care what's going on! Shh!"

He smiled. That could definitely happen. If there was a world where she could find all of that magical stuff, where she could meet a unicorn or even a Chimera, where she could be a princess or a sorceress, where the trees talked (not including that ugly Cherrymon that Yamato had talked about) and she could confide in a singing bird to spread a message throughout a kingdom, she'd be there in a flash. And of course, Taichi and Yamato would be right there at her side.

But real magic? Spells and such; were all baloney. Taichi knew that better than anyone. His okaa-san had always told him that magic was the day that he and Hikari were born and Ms. Takenouchi always said that her first kiss was magical. Mr. Ishida told him once that the first time he had gotten his job done without any mistakes and he had done great in front of the camera, it was magic. Agumon told him that the first time he saw Taichi, it was magic. But none of that was the kind of magic that Sora was interested in.

"Okaa-san! I'm home again!"

"Is Hikari with you?"

"No, I saw her though, she's still playing with the others."

"It's getting late, if she's not home in ten minutes-"

"Okaa-san!" his little imouto called, "I'm home!"

She put another plate on their little table and Taichi saw a saucer laid out for Miko. "Good you two, dinner's ready."

"Stir-fry again okaa-san," their otou-san whined as he kissed her cheek, "you're losing your touch!"

"Hush up, you! Set a good example for the kids."

He bounded over to the table like a kid and sat down at his place, picking up his chopsticks and banging them together. "Gimmie food!"

"I thought okaa-san said a good example, otou-san!" Hikari laughed as she sat down at the table across from Taichi. "You're behaving like Taichi!" He gave a little expression of being shocked and then leaned back to watch the anticipated conversation between his two children.

"That just goes to show you where I get it from!" Taichi smiled. "It's not me, it's genetics. I want you to remember that the next time that you find a little wasabi in your lunch disguised as sushi!"

"How do you suppose to do that?"

"I'll ask our boy of culinary delights, Yamato-san, to make me a special batch of wasabi."

"He'd never-"

"If I pay him he will!"

"Taichi! Hikari! Now you two be quiet and eat your dinner!"

The young male of the family ate his dinner as fast as he could, gave a large and rude burp on purpose, got scolded, and then rushed to his room to start on his second-year trigonometry homework. Math hadn't always been easy for him, but 'trig' as Mimi referred to it, was about the easiest arithmetic he had ever done, and he understood it about as well as Koushirou did. He could hold this over Yamato, who was struggling, and Sora who still couldn't quite remember the difference between cosine and sine, even though this was the second year they had taken the subject. They weren't held back, as his okaa-san had thought when she discovered he was taking it again, but only in their second year of trigonometry, so later they didn't have to take it and they could move onto the 'exciting world of calculus'.

Finishing in less than ten minutes, he moved onto his bed, and into his foreign language homework. English was a hard language, having so many different rules for everything and then so many exceptions to the rules that it made his head spin. Mimi was lucky that she could learn so fast; Taichi wouldn't be able to survive in America for long. Plus the language was so boring to listen to. At least Japanese was pleasing to the ears, not hard and shrill. Even Mimi, who had tried to find at least one word that was as beautiful as her native language, had to admit that it was mind-numbing and harsh.

'Fix what's wrong in these sentences…I have much expectations for the group…boring…I have many expectations for the group…' Taichi thought as he yawned. He was tired from all of that soccer playing and the English wasn't helping his situation. 'It's only seven, maybe I'll take a nap and then wake up later to do my homework…yeah, that's what I'll do…' 

It had been a long tendency of Sora, Yamato and his to fall asleep while doing boring homework. Their parents had complained about it the one time all of their families had gotten together for a big picnic in the real world. That was probably one of the best days of his life, that picnic. He fell asleep remembering all of the fun he had there and completely forgetting about setting his alarm for eight thirty… 

~*~

Rusty once again found himself running top-speed to the cat door at his home. The time before had been for a very different reason, but since Miko was his mother, he wasn't banned from exiting and leaving at all hours, nor was the bottom floor's main door completely shut. The humans never spotted the half-chewed door (courtesy of a friendly bulldog) near the ground on the far side of the building; this included any potential robbers. It was amazing how humans couldn't see how intelligent animals really were (creating their own means of getting in and out of a building!), having their own speech and culture. Animals could communicate, a thing that Rusty did as soon as he bounded through the door.

Once again, the wind had somehow beaten him to his home, but this time, it hadn't beaten him to Taichi. Rusty bounded onto the boy's chest, waking him up from a dream with a yell. He saw the boy bring his hand to mouth and freeze for a few moments, probably waiting for the girl to wake up, a thing she never did. Sighing, he looked down at the cat at his feet; he probably thought it was Miko.

The boy examined the tabby for a few seconds before realizing that the cat he was going to kick wasn't technically his. Then, the blue mist chose that time to come into the room and curl around Rusty. It was incredibly cold but he simply walked out of it, meowing to the boy to go. Searching the room, the wind surrounded its azure glitter around the girl in the top bunk, a mistake. But it was not the biggest mistake made; the teenager's eyes filled with fear for his littermate and Rusty knew that when he had put his hand in the mist to wave it away that all of his running had been for nothing.

Quickly, the wind circled around him, smothering the boy in its magical sparkling and just like the others, he disappeared. Three children gone in one night, and what would their parents do? What could the cat do about it?

Animals were smarter than humans thought, and they were able to communicate with animals that weren't entirely normal by human standards. Rusty carefully, silently, made his way over to the sweater in the corner of the room. He nudged the rather fat, white cat with his face and when she awoke demanding an explanation, he began telling her of the one thing she could do to save this whole mess...

::fin::

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::Japanese Terms You Might Not Know::

::Iteki masu=I'm off/I'm leaving::

::Okaa-san/chan=Mother::

::Wakataimas=I know::

::Mataka=Not again::

::Otou-san/chan=Father::

::Shimatta=a Japanese cuss word ^_^()::

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::dragonfire::